I've come to that point in my research where things get very, very messy. (I know, I guess I was already there in my last post!) As we attempt to trace our Blackshear line backwards, we now face the following challenges:
The further back we go, the less information we have to start with - our family history has no stories for those ancestors, and the family data sheets in the back seem to be simply based on the information in the Blacksheariana.
There are less records available - the older they are, the more likely it is that they have been lost.
The records provide less information - the census records don't record names and exact ages, and the tax records don't record all property.
We often have to look at documents relating to other ancestors, even ones of different generations, in order to glean information about the person we are actually researching.
Old documents can be very, very hard to read!
So, pretty much, we are going to have to go around and around in circles, looking at documents across multiple generations, and looking at people who are not in our direct line in case their comings and goings can offer more clues about the person we are actually investigating.
I think this might be more of a data-gathering endeavor, and less of a story-telling one.
To make matters worse, I haven't really done any preliminary research for the rest of the line (like I had with Amelia Virginia and her parents), so I don't really have anything to pull together into nice little topics. (Of course, I could spend two month on research so I could do that, but then I wouldn't be able to write any new posts for two months!)
I say all this, because I am planning to try something new for the rest of the Blackshear research - I am just going to start looking through the sources available, beginning with secondary sources and then seeing what primary sources we can find to either corroborate, correct, or fill in the blanks around the information we start with. It will probably look something like A Week in the Life of a Genealogical Researcher, over and over again. (Maybe. I'm pretty much flying by the seat of my pants now!) Hopefully it doesn't get too confusing or too tedious, and hopefully we find enough original documents to keep it interesting.
Okay. Where to begin? We've already talked about Silas' Blackshear's father, Jacob, in a couple of different posts, but mostly we were just trying to figure out where he lived so that we could set Silas down in the proper place at the proper time. Let's see what else we can find out about Jacob Blackshear.
I think we'll start by looking at the Blacksheariana, since it pulls together information from a wide variety of sources. Here is the first part:
So, this tells us that Jacob Blackshear was born in about 1767. In my last post, I put forth the theory that he was actually born in 1768/69, based on his disappearance from the tax rolls and jury lists after 1829. The reason I didn't pin down the exact year was because I couldn't find a clear statement on whether a man paid the poll tax up to the age of 60 or through the age of 60. Well, I just remembered that I had downloaded a book with all of the tax laws for Georgia, from colonial times until 1851, and it says that free white males 60 years of age and over were exempted from the poll tax beginning in 1825. It also says that the tax debt "attached" as of January 1, which, if I am understanding early 19th century legal speak correctly - means that the tax digests reflect the property owned (and the age of the owner) on January 1st. Okay. So they paid up to the age of 60, which means that, if my theory is correct, Jacob would have been 59 years old in January of 1829. That means he would have been born sometime in 1769. And, even if the reason he is missing from later records is not due to his age, the fact that he was still on the tax rolls for 1829 means that he could not have been born before 1769, right? Because if he had been born earlier, he would have been too old to be on a tax list in 1829!
This just goes to show that a genealogist should probably always remember to think like a historian!
The Blacksheariana also tells us that he died between 1840 and 1850, in Stewart County, Georgia, which we already discussed way back when. There's something a bit strange about this assumption that I would like to point out, though. Further down on the page, the Blacksheariana says:
So, the book is basing his death on where he was living the last time we have a record for him. There are two problems with this. First, the 1840 census does not list names. It simply shows that there was one male between the ages of 70 and 80 in Silas' household. So, it could have been him (If he had been born in the second half of 1769, he would have been 70 years old when this census was taken.), but I suppose that there is a possibility that it could have been Silas' wife's father instead.
Second, if you noticed, the book also said in the first excerpt I put up that Jacob was married to Judith Moore, who was born between 1760 - 1770 and died in Houston County, Georgia between 1830 and 1840. The reason this is strange, is because the 1840 census for Silas also shows a female between the ages of 70 and 80 living in his household. So, if the book is assuming that Jacob died some time between the 1840 and 1850 censuses, in Stewart County, it should be assuming the same thing for his wife! Anyway, let's assume that those elderly people in the household on the 1840 census were Jacob and Judith (I checked for wills or estate records in Houston and Stewart Counties and didn't find them, and I looked at the 1840 census for their other sons and one daughter and didn't find anyone of the correct ages to be their parents) - our date range for his death should be whittled down to between 1840 and 1848, because Silas sold his land and headed off to Arkansas in January of 1848, which is probably not something he would have done with a 78 year old parent in his household.
As far as residences go, this tells us that Jacob originally lived in Jones County, North Carolina, where he was married around 1787 (which are two pieces of information we have not looked at yet), as well as in the counties of Twiggs, Houston, and Stewart in the state of Georgia. (If you didn't read my previous post, it went into detail about Jacob's possible residences in Georgia.)
The next bit of information this gives us is Jacob's parents. It names them as Elisha Stout Blackshear and Susannah something-or-other. (My grandmother's family history gives her the last name Ward with a question mark, and the black binder researcher wrote Ward as a definitive.)
The Blacksheariana then goes on to name Jacob's children:
1. Mary (married Wall or Watt)
2. Nancy (married Davis & Griffin)
3. John (married Blackshear, Vinson, & Nesmith)
4. Enoch (married Wall)
5. Alice (married Platt)
6. Ann (married Platt)
7. Lewis (married Platt)
8. Silas (married ?)
This is pretty close to what my grandmother's history says, so I guess we know where she got most of her information from. The black binder has the children listed in a different order, has first names for some of the spouses, and has some birth and death years as well as places added in. It turns out that most of that information can be found by looking at their own entries in the Blacksheariana.
So, I went back through the book and looked at each child of Jacob Blackshear, and already we have some problems!
Huh. Well, I guess we shouldn't list this as two separate people, should we?
If you notice, the end of this entry lists the source citation. I think this is a good time then, to take a little detour and talk about sources! Obviously, as we have already discovered, the Blacksheariana uses primary source documents such as census and tax records, land lottery records, wills, land deeds, and marriage records. As I mentioned in a previous post, some of the information for Jacob and his family came from a family chart created in 1865 based on an interview with Enoch, son of Jacob. The citation we see above is for a handwritten manuscript created by Dr. Thomas Hart Raines (descended from Blackshears on his mother's side), who did extensive research around the turn of the century on the three main branches of the southern Blackshear family, one of which descended from Jacob's father, Elisha Stout Blackshear. Pages 34 and 35 of the Blacksheariana quote a letter he wrote in 1902 in which he says, "I believe I wrote you that I am engaged in writing a history of the family. You would be astonished to know the vast amount of information I have gathered about them, and am yet not half through. The name Blackshear is the synonym for honesty, integrity and uprightness, and I am proud to be descended from them ..." His manuscript, which is now in the possession of the Virginia Historical Society (but unfortunately cannot be viewed online), was created more than 100 years ago, while the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of our Blackshear ancestors might have been still living, so it is much more likely that family Bibles were consulted and stories and relationships were still remembered. In fact, I saw a citation somewhere in the Blacksheariana, I've since forgotten where exactly, that said Jacob's family bible was used as a source!
So, I think, for the sake of putting together a family data sheet, we should accept what we find in the Blacksheariana, as long as it makes sense and hasn't been contradicted by other entries or any primary source documents we come across.
Alright. This is what we actually have to start with:
Of course, let's not forget that, as good as the Blacksheariana sources may be, we might not want to accept all of its information as being set in stone. The fact that the Blacksheariana is inconsistent in interpreting the 1840 census information for Jacob and his wife (or the fact that there is a typo!), as well as its discrepancy regarding the two different entries for Alice/Ann, just goes to show that when you are compiling data for hundreds of people, you're bound to have a few mistakes. In fact, the items shown in blue on this chart are ones that the Blacksheariana either had as an unknown or had incorrect, that I have been able to revise based on the past six months of my research.
Now, let's look at the specific sources cited for this information and see if those confirm, contradict, or add to the 'facts' in the chart.
I decided to skip down to the Georgia part, since it's quite likely we already looked at all of it. . . Yep. We covered all of this when researching his son, Silas. The entry about the 1826 tax digest, though, is actually mentioned again on pages 135-136 in the section of the Blacksheariana about his son, Enoch:
Well. Perry Blackshear was pretty smart, because we discovered, by looking for jury lists, that Jacob Blackshear was indeed in Houston County by the beginning of 1824. Of course, the lottery took place in 1821 and Jacob was not called for jury duty in 1822 or 1823, so he probably didn't go right away, but he does seem to have been a permanent resident there for at least a year before Enoch. Maybe Enoch went right away to scope things out and get a house put up, and then he returned to his land in Twiggs and his father went over to Houston to hold the land until he himself was ready to move there (or pay the fee and get title in order to sell it).
I think I have pretty much looked through all of the available records in each Georgia county we think that Jacob might have lived in. (If you didn't read any of those posts, look over at the Labels list on the left and click on his name.) So now, how about we start digging into the North Carolina stuff?
According to the Blacksheariana, the first record we have for Jacob Blackshear is in 1785, in the will of his grandfather. It supposedly states that Jacob was under 21 years old in that year. If Jacob was born in 1769, he would have been about sixteen years old when the will was made, so my theory on his birth year still stands. Let's see if we can find an actual copy of the will to verify that this is what it actually says.
Yep. Here are the portions that mention Jacob (we'll save the rest for later, when we talk about his father and grandfather):
(Note: Some of the copies floating around out there that say they are the will of Alexander Blackshear are actually images of the Jones County will record book, in which this original will was copied by the clerk. I haven't checked to see if they were transcribed exactly word for word or not.)
(Another note: Most of the copies of this will and the will record have been edited to the point where they are practically unreadable. I have found that using minimal contrast and then colorizing the pages makes the words much, much easier to read, so that is how I will be putting these old documents up. I will make any original, unedited microfilm versions that I have available on my Blackshear documents page.)
Okay, so , back to what the will actually says! It says, "I Lend unto my son Elisha Blackshear (after my wifes death) and until his son Jacob shall arrive to the age of Twenty one, Eighty Two acres of Land on the So. side of Trent River whereon my son Abraham Blackshear now lives; Also Fifty acres Lying on the No. side of Trent River Patented by John Wallin. - Which said Lands I Give and Bequeath unto my Grand son Jacob Blackshear son of my son Elisha aforesaid after my wifes death, and then as Soon as he shall arrive to the age of Twenty One, To him and his heirs Lawfully Begotten of his Body forever --"
So Jacob would have come to adulthood with one hundred and thirty-two acres and a house, assuming his grandmother was not still living by then. I do find it interesting that the grandfather willed some of the land to Jacob's father after his grandmother's death and until Jacob came of age. This tells me that, either he thought his wife was going to die relatively soon, or that Jacob was younger, rather than older, because it would be weird to assume that things could pass to his wife and then his son and then to his grandson in the space of just three years if his wife was still healthy. (So more support for the 1769 birth year.)
And speaking of his grandmother, that is the very next piece of evidence that the Blacksheariana provides for us. Here it is:
"To all whom there presents shall come greeting Know ye that I Agnes Blackshear for the love and affection which I bear unto my grand sons (to wit) Jacob & Alexander Blackshear do by these presents give grant convey confirm and make over unto my said grand sons Jacob & Alexander One hundred acres of Land on the north side of Trent in being part of a tract in piece of land patented Nahimiah Randall conveyed by deed to Alexander Blackshear Dec'd from him by deed of gift to Agnes Blackshear to [their] only proper we Benefit and Behoof and to them and their heirs and asigns forever."
The second part just tells that the deed was witnessed on 17 September 1790 by Elijah Blackshear (Jacob's cousin), Nathan Clifton (Jacob's uncle), and Elisha Blackshear (Jacob's father). It then goes on to say that it was proven in court in November of 1791 based on the oath of Nathan Clifton.
So, I first thought that maybe Jacob's grandmother was giving over the land that his grandfather willed into his possession upon her death. I thought maybe he had already come of age, and she hadn't yet died, so she was giving it to him anyway. But then I noticed that this hundred acres was patented to a different person than the 50 acres from his grandfather's will, so this must just be a separate tract of land. But . . . if Jacob had been born in 1769, he would have turned twenty-one in 1790, which is the year this deed was made, so even though I didn't prove that he had come of age based on his grandfather's will, it still supports my theory of his birth year, since this is the first year that his grandmother would have been able to gift him some land, and we see that she did just that!
So, the whole not on the tax rolls or jury lists after 1829 thing points to a birth date of 1769 or later, but, when considered with this deed, the combined evidence indicates that he was born in exactly 1769.
I think . . . I think that by September of 1790, Jacob had recently turned 21 years old, and his grandmother was still living, which meant that he couldn't inherit the land left to him by his grandfather yet, but he wanted to get married, so she went ahead and gave him a gift of land.
Why do I say that I think he wanted to get married in 1790, even though the Blacksheariana suggests that he might have been married as early as 1787? Well, I didn't find his name as a head of household in the 1790 census for Jones County, even though I found his grandmother, his father, two older brothers, an uncle, and a cousin. And look at the data for Elisha Stout's family:
Jacob's father is three names down. Now, I realize that these numbers mean nothing without the column headings, but those were pretty much unreadable anyway, so here is the page from the beginning of the Jones County section with the directions for the census taker:
So, the first number is the number of free white males age 16 and over, the second column is free white males under 16, the third is free white females, the fourth is any other free persons (not white), and the last column is the number of slaves.
The 1790 census shows that Elisha Stout's household had two males aged 16 and up, and five females. This makes perfect sense, because Jacob was the youngest son, and all of his siblings who were younger than him were girls. So, since Jacob was still living in his parent's household, and was not listed separately as the head of his own household, it means that he wasn't married yet when the 1790 census was recorded. (That's one more date we will need to change on the chart above!)
Okay, back to the deed from Jacob's grandmother!
I'd also like to comment about the fact that the deed begins by saying "for the love and affection" of her grandsons. The Blacksheariana tells us that this is evidence that he and his cousin were favored grandchildren. While looking through the old deed books, however, I noticed that there were quite a few deeds that began with the same wording, so I figured that maybe that was just the way a deed for a gift of land was typically worded. I decided to look it up online, and this is what I found on an online financial dictionary:
(What exactly that means that it isn't valuable, I don't know. Maybe that it doesn't represent a monetary value since it wasn't paid for?) Anyway, I guess the fact that the grandparents gave specific gifts of land to Jacob (and his cousin Alexander), but not to any of his other brothers or cousins, would mean that he was favored by them.
Moving on, the next primary source the Blacksheariana mentions is a deed from 1796, in which Jacob was a witness to a sale of land by his father and brother. I won't go into the boring details of the deed, but here is the portion showing Jacob's name, just to confirm that yes, he did indeed sign as a witness in 1796.
The deed shows that on January 12, 1797, Jacob sold 50 acres of land on the north side of the Trent River to John Gilbert for 100 pounds. There is so much to say about this!
The first thing that jumped out at me was the fact that the land was paid for in pounds. I thought I was going to be able to explain why this was in a very simple way, but it turns out that it was quite complicated! By 1797, the United States official money was the dollar (named after the Spanish dollar, silver "pieces of eight" which were widely used during colonial times, and which I've noticed quite a few deeds from North Carolina name as the currency used in the transaction). However, banks (not states) could print their own paper money, which meant that different states often circulated their own paper currency. The use of silver and gold were still common, too, though, so it's possible that Jacob Blackshear received coin for the land. On top of that, there was no monetary standard back then, so each state set its own value for how much a pound, shilling, etc was worth! And to make trying to figure out the basic value of 100 pounds more impossible, is the fact that, as it turns out, luxury goods (like bed sheets!) were extremely expensive in comparison to land and items made from lumber, both of which were widely available and not imported and thus very inexpensive (see this very interesting article).
The second thing I noticed, which I didn't say in my one sentence summary of the deed above, is that it names John Gilbert as a "planter," but does not name Jacob as the same. People usually think of a planter as being someone who owns a plantation, which means he has a lot of land and a lot of slaves. In reality, though, a planter was just someone who grew commercial crops, often just one or two kinds, as opposed to a farmer, who grew a variety of crops for his family and livestock ( and maybe small local markets). During the 1700's, a North Carolina planter might have used slaves, indentured servants, or hired laborers to work his land. Both planters and farmers could have held a large amount of land and been quite wealthy.
The deed also tells us that the land was on the north side of the Trent River, and it goes on to describe the boundaries as going down various courses of the river (without ever naming those courses) and across so and so number of "poles." You can find a nice explanation of colonial survey methods here. And now that we are talking about locations of land, I realize that I have been remiss in providing you all with a map for North Carolina!
So, this is how the counties of North Carolina look now, but Jones County, where the land in this deed was located, wasn't carved out of Craven County until 1777. That means that anything that happened in relation to our North Carolina Blackshears in Craven County before that date could very well have been on land that was later a part of Jones County. That also means that, when we see that someone was born or on a census in Craven County, but was later on the census in Jones County, it doesn't mean that they moved!
As for a detailed map of Jones or Craven counties, those were impossible to find. So I had to look at every single map that showed the general area and see if any of them showed specific landmarks (like rivers) in enough detail to be useful. I found some that did, but none that showed everything, so we are going to have to pull information from various maps as we move forward. Right now I am going to show you a detail of an 1838 map:
As you can see, the Trent River runs from the northeast corner and straight across the county. (The Trent River branches off from the Nuese River, so a portion of the Trent remained inside the Craven County borders after Jones County was formed. Oh, and part of the border between the two counties is formed by the river, but that's not how it looks with the thick black lines I added, because my hand isn't very steady any more and I am terrible at tracing!)
And now, here is a map from 1861. I chose this map because it is the earliest one I could find that showed the county border and also all of the main tributaries of the Trent River:
That's a lot of water, huh? Even though there were some major roads in Jones County back in 1797, I read something a few days ago that said the river was used a lot for travel and especially for the shipping of crops and goods. I noticed on a different map that the roads had to cross over the river and its tributaries at several points, and I'm guessing that they didn't have many bridges back then, because I came across a file while searching through microfilm records that was full of petitions for the establishment of new ferries. See?
The petitions ranged in date from 1784 to 1815, but this one was undated. It was asking for a public ferry across the Trent River (as well as a new road from the main Trent road to the ferry) because "the inhabitants generally find it very difficult to bring their produce to market, or to attend at Newbern on public occasion, from the south side of said river."
Anyway, that little side trip was just to give you a sense of the place and time in which Jacob Blackshear lived! I originally went looking for these maps to see if we could figure out exactly where the Blackshear lands were located. This deed doesn't give us enough information for that (it just tells us that it was probably between two of the many creeks coming off the river), so let's look at the next one and see what it says.
This sale took place four years after the one we just looked at. The land was sold to the same man, but this time it was sold by Jacob and his cousin Alexander, both of whom the deed describes as "Planters." (That means he made the transition at some point in the previous four years - he would have been between the ages of 28 and 32.) This time Jacob was selling one hundred acres (on the north side of the Trent River), for only 50 pounds! Maybe the land was not worth as much (from what I've read, there were a whole lot of swamps in Jones County!), or maybe for some reason they really, really wanted to sell it. According to the Blacksheariana, this is the same piece of land that was left to the two cousins by their grandfather in his will, but that doesn't make sense because in his will he left:
To his son Abraham and then to his son Alexander after his death
To his son Elisha and then to his son Jacob when he came of age
So, in his will, he did not leave a total of 100 acres on the north side of the river. He did leave his wife, however, in a "love & affection deed" dated 1785 (the same year as his will):
And then, in her "love & affection" deed, she left to Jacob and Alexander:
So. Once again, we should always double check for ourselves what the Blacksheariana tells us, because if it is wrong about one thing, it might be wrong about something else as well.
Annnnddd, back to the deed. Just like the last deed, the description doesn't help me figure out where the land was located (I couldn't find "Hill Branch" on any map or with a google search!), but the deed does give us an interesting bit of information - Jacob owned at least one, and maybe two other tracts of land besides this parcel that he was selling.
Why is that interesting? Because the Blacksheariana doesn't mention any other deeds in which Jacob Blackshear was buying or selling land. (Remember, he had already sold 50 acres of land on the north side of the Trent River four years prior, and now that I think about it, that matches exactly with one of the parcels his grandfather left him in his will!). Lucky for us, I took the time to read through all of the indexes to the Jones County deed books, because I found another deed from the year 1801:
In this deed, Jacob Blackshear sold Jeremiah Parsons 82 acres of land on the south side of the river for 121 pounds. The deed describes the land as being the tract on which Abraham son of Alexander had lived. It goes on to say that this is the exact same tract of land that Alexander Blackshear (Jacob's grandfather) left in his will to his wife Agnes, and then to his son Elisha upon her death, and then to Jacob when he reached the age of twenty-one. So this is the other tract of land that was left to Jacob in his grandfather's will. (Although, where the extra two acres came from, I don't know! Ah! Guess what? Remember how I said that I didn't check to see if the will was copied into the will record book correctly? Well, it turns out it was NOT - the will says eighty-two acres, and the record book says eighty. I was looking at the record book when I did that part up above!)
Incidentally, Jacob's cousin Alexander, the other favored grandchild who sold land in the above transaction with Jacob to John Gilbert, had also sold (on his own) to John Gilbert ten acres back in 1796. That would have been the ten acres he inherited from his grandfather on the north side of the river. And then, in 1797, the year Jacob made his first sale to Gilbert, Alexander sold Jeremiah Parsons one hundred acres on the south side of the river, which would have been the other tract of land (left to him by his grandfather) adjoining the parcel that Jacob sold in 1801.
Hmmmmm. So it looks like, by this point in time, Jacob had sold all of the land that had been deeded to him. Hmmmm. It kind of sounds like maybe he was getting ready to move, doesn't it?
The Blacksheariana lists the will of Elisha Blackshear as the last bit of source material for Jacob Blackshear in North Carolina. It was dated 1808. I wonder if anything it says will give us a clue as to whether or not Jacob was still in North Carolina by then, or if he had already moved on to Georgia with his brothers.
I think we are going to have to save that for another time, though. Believe it or not, I have already been working on this post for two weeks - it takes a lot of time to go looking for original versions of wills, browse through children's census records, look for a quality map, and download and edit documents. (And of course, there were those five hours I spent looking into the Revolutionary War records in relation to Jacob's grandfather, which was a side trip I took while attempting to answer some other question I had, not to mention the four hours I spent reading through Quaker records and discovering some very interesting stuff, which is another side trip I took while trying to verify the identity of Jacob's wife.)
Huh. This further back research is turning out to be a whole lot more fun than I thought it would be!
See you next time,
- Therese
Okay. Where to begin? We've already talked about Silas' Blackshear's father, Jacob, in a couple of different posts, but mostly we were just trying to figure out where he lived so that we could set Silas down in the proper place at the proper time. Let's see what else we can find out about Jacob Blackshear.
I think we'll start by looking at the Blacksheariana, since it pulls together information from a wide variety of sources. Here is the first part:
Jacob Blackshear
excerpt from Blacksheariana
by Perry Lynnfield Blackshear
page 171 (part 1)
So, this tells us that Jacob Blackshear was born in about 1767. In my last post, I put forth the theory that he was actually born in 1768/69, based on his disappearance from the tax rolls and jury lists after 1829. The reason I didn't pin down the exact year was because I couldn't find a clear statement on whether a man paid the poll tax up to the age of 60 or through the age of 60. Well, I just remembered that I had downloaded a book with all of the tax laws for Georgia, from colonial times until 1851, and it says that free white males 60 years of age and over were exempted from the poll tax beginning in 1825. It also says that the tax debt "attached" as of January 1, which, if I am understanding early 19th century legal speak correctly - means that the tax digests reflect the property owned (and the age of the owner) on January 1st. Okay. So they paid up to the age of 60, which means that, if my theory is correct, Jacob would have been 59 years old in January of 1829. That means he would have been born sometime in 1769. And, even if the reason he is missing from later records is not due to his age, the fact that he was still on the tax rolls for 1829 means that he could not have been born before 1769, right? Because if he had been born earlier, he would have been too old to be on a tax list in 1829!
This just goes to show that a genealogist should probably always remember to think like a historian!
The Blacksheariana also tells us that he died between 1840 and 1850, in Stewart County, Georgia, which we already discussed way back when. There's something a bit strange about this assumption that I would like to point out, though. Further down on the page, the Blacksheariana says:
So, the book is basing his death on where he was living the last time we have a record for him. There are two problems with this. First, the 1840 census does not list names. It simply shows that there was one male between the ages of 70 and 80 in Silas' household. So, it could have been him (If he had been born in the second half of 1769, he would have been 70 years old when this census was taken.), but I suppose that there is a possibility that it could have been Silas' wife's father instead.
Second, if you noticed, the book also said in the first excerpt I put up that Jacob was married to Judith Moore, who was born between 1760 - 1770 and died in Houston County, Georgia between 1830 and 1840. The reason this is strange, is because the 1840 census for Silas also shows a female between the ages of 70 and 80 living in his household. So, if the book is assuming that Jacob died some time between the 1840 and 1850 censuses, in Stewart County, it should be assuming the same thing for his wife! Anyway, let's assume that those elderly people in the household on the 1840 census were Jacob and Judith (I checked for wills or estate records in Houston and Stewart Counties and didn't find them, and I looked at the 1840 census for their other sons and one daughter and didn't find anyone of the correct ages to be their parents) - our date range for his death should be whittled down to between 1840 and 1848, because Silas sold his land and headed off to Arkansas in January of 1848, which is probably not something he would have done with a 78 year old parent in his household.
As far as residences go, this tells us that Jacob originally lived in Jones County, North Carolina, where he was married around 1787 (which are two pieces of information we have not looked at yet), as well as in the counties of Twiggs, Houston, and Stewart in the state of Georgia. (If you didn't read my previous post, it went into detail about Jacob's possible residences in Georgia.)
The next bit of information this gives us is Jacob's parents. It names them as Elisha Stout Blackshear and Susannah something-or-other. (My grandmother's family history gives her the last name Ward with a question mark, and the black binder researcher wrote Ward as a definitive.)
The Blacksheariana then goes on to name Jacob's children:
1. Mary (married Wall or Watt)
2. Nancy (married Davis & Griffin)
3. John (married Blackshear, Vinson, & Nesmith)
4. Enoch (married Wall)
5. Alice (married Platt)
6. Ann (married Platt)
7. Lewis (married Platt)
8. Silas (married ?)
This is pretty close to what my grandmother's history says, so I guess we know where she got most of her information from. The black binder has the children listed in a different order, has first names for some of the spouses, and has some birth and death years as well as places added in. It turns out that most of that information can be found by looking at their own entries in the Blacksheariana.
So, I went back through the book and looked at each child of Jacob Blackshear, and already we have some problems!
Huh. Well, I guess we shouldn't list this as two separate people, should we?
If you notice, the end of this entry lists the source citation. I think this is a good time then, to take a little detour and talk about sources! Obviously, as we have already discovered, the Blacksheariana uses primary source documents such as census and tax records, land lottery records, wills, land deeds, and marriage records. As I mentioned in a previous post, some of the information for Jacob and his family came from a family chart created in 1865 based on an interview with Enoch, son of Jacob. The citation we see above is for a handwritten manuscript created by Dr. Thomas Hart Raines (descended from Blackshears on his mother's side), who did extensive research around the turn of the century on the three main branches of the southern Blackshear family, one of which descended from Jacob's father, Elisha Stout Blackshear. Pages 34 and 35 of the Blacksheariana quote a letter he wrote in 1902 in which he says, "I believe I wrote you that I am engaged in writing a history of the family. You would be astonished to know the vast amount of information I have gathered about them, and am yet not half through. The name Blackshear is the synonym for honesty, integrity and uprightness, and I am proud to be descended from them ..." His manuscript, which is now in the possession of the Virginia Historical Society (but unfortunately cannot be viewed online), was created more than 100 years ago, while the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of our Blackshear ancestors might have been still living, so it is much more likely that family Bibles were consulted and stories and relationships were still remembered. In fact, I saw a citation somewhere in the Blacksheariana, I've since forgotten where exactly, that said Jacob's family bible was used as a source!
So, I think, for the sake of putting together a family data sheet, we should accept what we find in the Blacksheariana, as long as it makes sense and hasn't been contradicted by other entries or any primary source documents we come across.
Alright. This is what we actually have to start with:
Husband:
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Jacob BLACKSHEAR
| |
born
married
died
|
c. 1769 in North Carolina
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c. 1787
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btw. 1840 - 1848
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Father: Elisha Stout BLACKSHEAR
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Mother: Susannah [WARD]
| |
Wife:
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Judith MOORE
| |
born
died
|
btw. 1760 - 1770 in North Carolina
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btw. 1840 - 1848
| ||
Father:
|
Mother:
| |
Children:
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Mary
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m. Wall or Watt
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Nancy
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m. Davis, Isaac Griffin
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John b. 22 Apr 1792, N.C.
d. 6 Aug 1885, GA |
m. Mary Blackshear, Mary Vinson (1821), Nancy A. Nesmith (widow)
| |
Enoch b. c. 1794, N.C.
d. c. 1870, GA |
m. Margaret (Peggy) Wall
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Alice /Ann
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m. John Platt
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Lewis b. 1805 in S.C.
d. Fla |
m. Civil Platt
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Silas b. c. 1814, GA
d. 1864, TX |
m. Sophama [Garrett?]
| |
Of course, let's not forget that, as good as the Blacksheariana sources may be, we might not want to accept all of its information as being set in stone. The fact that the Blacksheariana is inconsistent in interpreting the 1840 census information for Jacob and his wife (or the fact that there is a typo!), as well as its discrepancy regarding the two different entries for Alice/Ann, just goes to show that when you are compiling data for hundreds of people, you're bound to have a few mistakes. In fact, the items shown in blue on this chart are ones that the Blacksheariana either had as an unknown or had incorrect, that I have been able to revise based on the past six months of my research.
Now, let's look at the specific sources cited for this information and see if those confirm, contradict, or add to the 'facts' in the chart.
Jacob Blackshear
excerpt from Blacksheariana
by Perry Lynnfield Blackshear
page 172 (part 1)
I decided to skip down to the Georgia part, since it's quite likely we already looked at all of it. . . Yep. We covered all of this when researching his son, Silas. The entry about the 1826 tax digest, though, is actually mentioned again on pages 135-136 in the section of the Blacksheariana about his son, Enoch:
Well. Perry Blackshear was pretty smart, because we discovered, by looking for jury lists, that Jacob Blackshear was indeed in Houston County by the beginning of 1824. Of course, the lottery took place in 1821 and Jacob was not called for jury duty in 1822 or 1823, so he probably didn't go right away, but he does seem to have been a permanent resident there for at least a year before Enoch. Maybe Enoch went right away to scope things out and get a house put up, and then he returned to his land in Twiggs and his father went over to Houston to hold the land until he himself was ready to move there (or pay the fee and get title in order to sell it).
I think I have pretty much looked through all of the available records in each Georgia county we think that Jacob might have lived in. (If you didn't read any of those posts, look over at the Labels list on the left and click on his name.) So now, how about we start digging into the North Carolina stuff?
Jacob Blackshear
excerpt from Blacksheariana
by Perry Lynnfield Blackshear
page 171 (part 2)
According to the Blacksheariana, the first record we have for Jacob Blackshear is in 1785, in the will of his grandfather. It supposedly states that Jacob was under 21 years old in that year. If Jacob was born in 1769, he would have been about sixteen years old when the will was made, so my theory on his birth year still stands. Let's see if we can find an actual copy of the will to verify that this is what it actually says.
Yep. Here are the portions that mention Jacob (we'll save the rest for later, when we talk about his father and grandfather):
Will of Alexander Blackshear
1785
Page 2 (detail)
Will of Alexander Blackshear
1785
Page 3 (detail)
(Note: Some of the copies floating around out there that say they are the will of Alexander Blackshear are actually images of the Jones County will record book, in which this original will was copied by the clerk. I haven't checked to see if they were transcribed exactly word for word or not.)
(Another note: Most of the copies of this will and the will record have been edited to the point where they are practically unreadable. I have found that using minimal contrast and then colorizing the pages makes the words much, much easier to read, so that is how I will be putting these old documents up. I will make any original, unedited microfilm versions that I have available on my Blackshear documents page.)
Okay, so , back to what the will actually says! It says, "I Lend unto my son Elisha Blackshear (after my wifes death) and until his son Jacob shall arrive to the age of Twenty one, Eighty Two acres of Land on the So. side of Trent River whereon my son Abraham Blackshear now lives; Also Fifty acres Lying on the No. side of Trent River Patented by John Wallin. - Which said Lands I Give and Bequeath unto my Grand son Jacob Blackshear son of my son Elisha aforesaid after my wifes death, and then as Soon as he shall arrive to the age of Twenty One, To him and his heirs Lawfully Begotten of his Body forever --"
So Jacob would have come to adulthood with one hundred and thirty-two acres and a house, assuming his grandmother was not still living by then. I do find it interesting that the grandfather willed some of the land to Jacob's father after his grandmother's death and until Jacob came of age. This tells me that, either he thought his wife was going to die relatively soon, or that Jacob was younger, rather than older, because it would be weird to assume that things could pass to his wife and then his son and then to his grandson in the space of just three years if his wife was still healthy. (So more support for the 1769 birth year.)
And speaking of his grandmother, that is the very next piece of evidence that the Blacksheariana provides for us. Here it is:
"To all whom there presents shall come greeting Know ye that I Agnes Blackshear for the love and affection which I bear unto my grand sons (to wit) Jacob & Alexander Blackshear do by these presents give grant convey confirm and make over unto my said grand sons Jacob & Alexander One hundred acres of Land on the north side of Trent in being part of a tract in piece of land patented Nahimiah Randall conveyed by deed to Alexander Blackshear Dec'd from him by deed of gift to Agnes Blackshear to [their] only proper we Benefit and Behoof and to them and their heirs and asigns forever."
The second part just tells that the deed was witnessed on 17 September 1790 by Elijah Blackshear (Jacob's cousin), Nathan Clifton (Jacob's uncle), and Elisha Blackshear (Jacob's father). It then goes on to say that it was proven in court in November of 1791 based on the oath of Nathan Clifton.
So, I first thought that maybe Jacob's grandmother was giving over the land that his grandfather willed into his possession upon her death. I thought maybe he had already come of age, and she hadn't yet died, so she was giving it to him anyway. But then I noticed that this hundred acres was patented to a different person than the 50 acres from his grandfather's will, so this must just be a separate tract of land. But . . . if Jacob had been born in 1769, he would have turned twenty-one in 1790, which is the year this deed was made, so even though I didn't prove that he had come of age based on his grandfather's will, it still supports my theory of his birth year, since this is the first year that his grandmother would have been able to gift him some land, and we see that she did just that!
So, the whole not on the tax rolls or jury lists after 1829 thing points to a birth date of 1769 or later, but, when considered with this deed, the combined evidence indicates that he was born in exactly 1769.
I think . . . I think that by September of 1790, Jacob had recently turned 21 years old, and his grandmother was still living, which meant that he couldn't inherit the land left to him by his grandfather yet, but he wanted to get married, so she went ahead and gave him a gift of land.
Why do I say that I think he wanted to get married in 1790, even though the Blacksheariana suggests that he might have been married as early as 1787? Well, I didn't find his name as a head of household in the 1790 census for Jones County, even though I found his grandmother, his father, two older brothers, an uncle, and a cousin. And look at the data for Elisha Stout's family:
Jacob's father is three names down. Now, I realize that these numbers mean nothing without the column headings, but those were pretty much unreadable anyway, so here is the page from the beginning of the Jones County section with the directions for the census taker:
So, the first number is the number of free white males age 16 and over, the second column is free white males under 16, the third is free white females, the fourth is any other free persons (not white), and the last column is the number of slaves.
The 1790 census shows that Elisha Stout's household had two males aged 16 and up, and five females. This makes perfect sense, because Jacob was the youngest son, and all of his siblings who were younger than him were girls. So, since Jacob was still living in his parent's household, and was not listed separately as the head of his own household, it means that he wasn't married yet when the 1790 census was recorded. (That's one more date we will need to change on the chart above!)
Okay, back to the deed from Jacob's grandmother!
I'd also like to comment about the fact that the deed begins by saying "for the love and affection" of her grandsons. The Blacksheariana tells us that this is evidence that he and his cousin were favored grandchildren. While looking through the old deed books, however, I noticed that there were quite a few deeds that began with the same wording, so I figured that maybe that was just the way a deed for a gift of land was typically worded. I decided to look it up online, and this is what I found on an online financial dictionary:
love and affection
The usual recited consideration when there has been a gift of real estate to a family member or other loved one. Love and affection is good consideration under applicable statutes,but it is not valuable consideration. Important concepts include the following:
• A transfer of land to a child for love and affection during the parent's lifetime will often be deemed an advancement under the parent's will and can reduce the amount the child will inherit under the will.
• Love and affection will support a deed and make it valid, but it is not sufficient consideration so as to make a contract enforceable. In other words, a contract to transfer real estate upon love and affection is not enforceable; a deed with recited consideration of love and affection cannot be set aside.
• One who takes property for a consideration of love and affection cannot be a bona fide purchaser for value, because the consideration is only good, it is not valuable.
Moving on, the next primary source the Blacksheariana mentions is a deed from 1796, in which Jacob was a witness to a sale of land by his father and brother. I won't go into the boring details of the deed, but here is the portion showing Jacob's name, just to confirm that yes, he did indeed sign as a witness in 1796.
(This says 1797 at the bottom, but that is the date the deed was recorded. The beginning of the deed says 1796.)
In 1797, Jacob appears to have sold some of his own land for the first time:
The deed shows that on January 12, 1797, Jacob sold 50 acres of land on the north side of the Trent River to John Gilbert for 100 pounds. There is so much to say about this!
The first thing that jumped out at me was the fact that the land was paid for in pounds. I thought I was going to be able to explain why this was in a very simple way, but it turns out that it was quite complicated! By 1797, the United States official money was the dollar (named after the Spanish dollar, silver "pieces of eight" which were widely used during colonial times, and which I've noticed quite a few deeds from North Carolina name as the currency used in the transaction). However, banks (not states) could print their own paper money, which meant that different states often circulated their own paper currency. The use of silver and gold were still common, too, though, so it's possible that Jacob Blackshear received coin for the land. On top of that, there was no monetary standard back then, so each state set its own value for how much a pound, shilling, etc was worth! And to make trying to figure out the basic value of 100 pounds more impossible, is the fact that, as it turns out, luxury goods (like bed sheets!) were extremely expensive in comparison to land and items made from lumber, both of which were widely available and not imported and thus very inexpensive (see this very interesting article).
The second thing I noticed, which I didn't say in my one sentence summary of the deed above, is that it names John Gilbert as a "planter," but does not name Jacob as the same. People usually think of a planter as being someone who owns a plantation, which means he has a lot of land and a lot of slaves. In reality, though, a planter was just someone who grew commercial crops, often just one or two kinds, as opposed to a farmer, who grew a variety of crops for his family and livestock ( and maybe small local markets). During the 1700's, a North Carolina planter might have used slaves, indentured servants, or hired laborers to work his land. Both planters and farmers could have held a large amount of land and been quite wealthy.
The deed also tells us that the land was on the north side of the Trent River, and it goes on to describe the boundaries as going down various courses of the river (without ever naming those courses) and across so and so number of "poles." You can find a nice explanation of colonial survey methods here. And now that we are talking about locations of land, I realize that I have been remiss in providing you all with a map for North Carolina!
North Carolina Counties
So, this is how the counties of North Carolina look now, but Jones County, where the land in this deed was located, wasn't carved out of Craven County until 1777. That means that anything that happened in relation to our North Carolina Blackshears in Craven County before that date could very well have been on land that was later a part of Jones County. That also means that, when we see that someone was born or on a census in Craven County, but was later on the census in Jones County, it doesn't mean that they moved!
As for a detailed map of Jones or Craven counties, those were impossible to find. So I had to look at every single map that showed the general area and see if any of them showed specific landmarks (like rivers) in enough detail to be useful. I found some that did, but none that showed everything, so we are going to have to pull information from various maps as we move forward. Right now I am going to show you a detail of an 1838 map:
As you can see, the Trent River runs from the northeast corner and straight across the county. (The Trent River branches off from the Nuese River, so a portion of the Trent remained inside the Craven County borders after Jones County was formed. Oh, and part of the border between the two counties is formed by the river, but that's not how it looks with the thick black lines I added, because my hand isn't very steady any more and I am terrible at tracing!)
And now, here is a map from 1861. I chose this map because it is the earliest one I could find that showed the county border and also all of the main tributaries of the Trent River:
That's a lot of water, huh? Even though there were some major roads in Jones County back in 1797, I read something a few days ago that said the river was used a lot for travel and especially for the shipping of crops and goods. I noticed on a different map that the roads had to cross over the river and its tributaries at several points, and I'm guessing that they didn't have many bridges back then, because I came across a file while searching through microfilm records that was full of petitions for the establishment of new ferries. See?
The petitions ranged in date from 1784 to 1815, but this one was undated. It was asking for a public ferry across the Trent River (as well as a new road from the main Trent road to the ferry) because "the inhabitants generally find it very difficult to bring their produce to market, or to attend at Newbern on public occasion, from the south side of said river."
Anyway, that little side trip was just to give you a sense of the place and time in which Jacob Blackshear lived! I originally went looking for these maps to see if we could figure out exactly where the Blackshear lands were located. This deed doesn't give us enough information for that (it just tells us that it was probably between two of the many creeks coming off the river), so let's look at the next one and see what it says.
This sale took place four years after the one we just looked at. The land was sold to the same man, but this time it was sold by Jacob and his cousin Alexander, both of whom the deed describes as "Planters." (That means he made the transition at some point in the previous four years - he would have been between the ages of 28 and 32.) This time Jacob was selling one hundred acres (on the north side of the Trent River), for only 50 pounds! Maybe the land was not worth as much (from what I've read, there were a whole lot of swamps in Jones County!), or maybe for some reason they really, really wanted to sell it. According to the Blacksheariana, this is the same piece of land that was left to the two cousins by their grandfather in his will, but that doesn't make sense because in his will he left:
To his son Abraham and then to his son Alexander after his death
- 100 acres on the south side of the river
- 100 adjoining acres (on south side of the river)
- 10 acres on the north side of the river (originally patented to Nehemiah Randall)
To his son Elisha and then to his son Jacob when he came of age
- 80 acres on the south side of the river (where Abraham Blackshear lived)
- 50 acres on the north side of the river (originally patented to John Wallin)
So, in his will, he did not leave a total of 100 acres on the north side of the river. He did leave his wife, however, in a "love & affection deed" dated 1785 (the same year as his will):
- 100 acres on the north side of the river (originally patented to Nehemiah Randall)
And then, in her "love & affection" deed, she left to Jacob and Alexander:
- 100 acres on the north side of the river (originally patented to Nehemiah Randall)
So. Once again, we should always double check for ourselves what the Blacksheariana tells us, because if it is wrong about one thing, it might be wrong about something else as well.
Annnnddd, back to the deed. Just like the last deed, the description doesn't help me figure out where the land was located (I couldn't find "Hill Branch" on any map or with a google search!), but the deed does give us an interesting bit of information - Jacob owned at least one, and maybe two other tracts of land besides this parcel that he was selling.
Why is that interesting? Because the Blacksheariana doesn't mention any other deeds in which Jacob Blackshear was buying or selling land. (Remember, he had already sold 50 acres of land on the north side of the Trent River four years prior, and now that I think about it, that matches exactly with one of the parcels his grandfather left him in his will!). Lucky for us, I took the time to read through all of the indexes to the Jones County deed books, because I found another deed from the year 1801:
|
Jones Co., North Carolina
Deeds - Book 3, pg 593
Jacob Blackshear
to Jeremiah Parsons - 1801 |
Jones Co., North Carolina
Deeds - Book 3, pg 594
Jacob Blackshear
to Jeremiah Parsons - 1801 |
Incidentally, Jacob's cousin Alexander, the other favored grandchild who sold land in the above transaction with Jacob to John Gilbert, had also sold (on his own) to John Gilbert ten acres back in 1796. That would have been the ten acres he inherited from his grandfather on the north side of the river. And then, in 1797, the year Jacob made his first sale to Gilbert, Alexander sold Jeremiah Parsons one hundred acres on the south side of the river, which would have been the other tract of land (left to him by his grandfather) adjoining the parcel that Jacob sold in 1801.
Hmmmmm. So it looks like, by this point in time, Jacob had sold all of the land that had been deeded to him. Hmmmm. It kind of sounds like maybe he was getting ready to move, doesn't it?
The Blacksheariana lists the will of Elisha Blackshear as the last bit of source material for Jacob Blackshear in North Carolina. It was dated 1808. I wonder if anything it says will give us a clue as to whether or not Jacob was still in North Carolina by then, or if he had already moved on to Georgia with his brothers.
I think we are going to have to save that for another time, though. Believe it or not, I have already been working on this post for two weeks - it takes a lot of time to go looking for original versions of wills, browse through children's census records, look for a quality map, and download and edit documents. (And of course, there were those five hours I spent looking into the Revolutionary War records in relation to Jacob's grandfather, which was a side trip I took while attempting to answer some other question I had, not to mention the four hours I spent reading through Quaker records and discovering some very interesting stuff, which is another side trip I took while trying to verify the identity of Jacob's wife.)
Huh. This further back research is turning out to be a whole lot more fun than I thought it would be!
See you next time,
- Therese
I love the idea you are running with here.... Fun fact that I realized from your map: 2 of my sisters were born in Craven County, NC....
ReplyDeleteThanks! Isn't it amazing what we can discover by just taking a closer look at those old documents?
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