Further Back Blackshears (Week 8)

Tracing Back the Blackshear Line, part 21

When we last looked at Alexander Blackshear, it was 1754.  He had been in Craven County, North Carolina for anywhere between seven to fourteen years by that time.  The French and Indian War had just begun, and Alexander had acquired an additional 281 acres of land, giving him nearly 400 acres total.  

Whereas last time we focused primarily on this accumulation of land, today we are going to begin by taking a closer look at Alexander's children.  The Blacksheariana tells us that he had three sons and three daughters:

Husband:	Alexander BLACKSHEAR
born	c. 1708
married	Btw. 1730-1735
Wife:	Agnes [STOUT]
born	c. 17??
Children:
	James                 b. c.1735, DE
	Eleanor              b. NC
	Elisha Stout       b. c.1736, DE
	Abraham            b. c.1742, DE or NC
	Sarah                  b. NC
	Daughter (name unknown, married                                  Fordham)

(I don't know what the deal is with this chart - Blogger has a 

new format and it adds all of that extra space to the lines!)

These six children are named in this order in Alexander's 1785 will.  Now, quite often, a will from back in the day will name all of the sons first, in order of birth, while giving out land and horses, and tools, and other manly things, and then name the daughters by order of their birth, when parceling out the leftover household goods.  Alexander didn't write his will that way, so we can assume that his children were born in the same order as they were actually named.  

But what about the daughter with the unknown name?  Well, his will lists his daughters with their married last names.  And after naming Eleanor and Sarah, he names a granddaughter with a different last name, indicating that he had a third daughter who was deceased by the time he wrote his will.  Whether she was the third daughter or not, we don't know - the granddaughter was most likely named third because she was of a lesser "rank" than Alexander's own daughters.  

Okay.  That was simple.  But what if this isn't the whole picture?

Now, I mentioned a couple of posts back that it was likely that there were additional children born to Alexander and Agnes.  Not only did the average family have about eleven children during the 1700's, but there is also the fact that we don't see traditional family names for the sons.  (Except for Abraham, which is a name we see given to a cousin who arrived in the colonies around the time his grandfather was born.)  

If we are only concerned with genealogy, it doesn't really matter if there are missing kids in our chart, especially if they died without having offspring, since nobody is going to be tracing their line through that child anyway.  But if we are actually trying to write a person's story, any of those potentially missing children become relevant, or should I even say, important.  

Let's take a look at Alexander's oldest son, James.  The Blacksheariana bases his birth year on the suspected marriage of Alexander and Agnes, which Mr. Blackshear extrapolates from land records as being between 1730 and 1735.  I guess he wanted to be careful to not give James a birth year before the last date that his parents might have been married, so he chose c. 1735.  The funny thing is, his book also shows that James made his first purchase of land in 1753 (which I have confirmed as his earliest land transaction on record), but he would have needed to be twenty-one years old in order to do so.  1753 minus 21 gives us a birth year of 1732.  Of course, this is assuming that he had managed to save enough money that he was able to jump up and purchase land as soon as he came of age.  If not, he could have been born even earlier.

And this is where we see how difficult this whole assigning birth dates thing is.  Alexander first appears in the land records in 1734 (a land grant), suggesting that he wasn't married until that year or even later.  But his son's appearance in the records implies that he was born two years before that.  This contradiction leaves us scratching our head and having to say things like, Well, maybe Alexander's mother was already dead, and there was no woman of the house, so when Alexander got married they just lived in his father's household, and then he got his own land after that because . . . collecting land was the thing to do?  Oh wait.  I just looked back at my Week 6 post, and my research revealed that it was very common for men to claim a piece of land and squat on it while they made improvements, all before they ever applied for a land grant.  (Do you see what happens when I go so many weeks between writing these posts?  I completely forget these things!!)  So I guess we should probably be looking at the evidence for James' birth year (i.e. later land records) to tell us when Alexander was married instead of the other way around.

Uuugghhhh.

(And, in case any of you care, this earlier birth date also suggests that James might have had a wife who died before he married Catherine Franks Bush c. 1758, since he would have been at least twenty-six years old already by that time.)

The next child that appeared in Alexander's will was his daughter Eleanor (who the book says was born in North Carolina but must have actually been born in Delaware), and then his son Elisha Stout is named.

Now, Elisha's birth year is listed as 1736 in the Blacksheariana, but I don't think he was actually born so early.    

He appears to have not owned any property until 1764, when he both bought land and received a land grant.  After that, he is all over the place in the land records - buying, selling, and getting grants left and right.  Of course, he might have had to save up some money before he could purchase land, but he might have been working on that for some time before he turned twenty-one.  Now, if he purchased land in 1764 (which he did, on January 6), he must have come of age some time before that.  Now, I suppose it is possible that he had ants in his pants and ran out and purchased land on his birthday (we have good evidence that his son, Jacob, received his first deed of land within the month he turned 21), which could give him a birth year as late as 1743, but it is more likely that he had recently had a birthday, perhaps at the end of 1763, in which case, he could have been born as late as 1742.  Either way, though, he might have been born as much as ten years after his brother James!

When we try to look at the proposed birth years of his children, it is an even bigger mess than Alexander's, because it's not even clear if all of his proposed children are his children, not to mention the lack of evidence for birth order or year!  

The Blacksheariana names five sons for Elisha (we'll talk about them later), but only three have enough remaining records to establish credible birth years.  The earliest of these has a marriage bond dated 1782, which gives him a range of about 1760 to 1764 for his birth.  Hmmmm.  If we surmise that Elisha turned 21 around the time he started acquiring his own land (1764), and it is plausible that he married as young as eighteen (which would then have been in 1760/61), then a birth year of 1742/43 makes perfect sense in relation to the birth of this son.  Even if we keep the proposed (but not backed up by a single record) date of 1758 for the birth of another proposed (but once again, unproveable) son, Elisha could have easily been born as late as 1740 instead of 1736.

So why does the Blacksheariana give Elisha such an early birth date?  It isn't to accommodate a marriage date, because that date is unknown.  And as we've just seen, it isn't necessary to fit the births of his children in.  So my guess is he was trying to squeeze the children of Alexander that he knew about into a relatively close time frame.  You know, because he didn't have another name to stick into those missing years.

I propose a different approach - that we assume that there were two or three other children born between James and Elisha.  One of those could have been the unnamed daughter on the chart above who married a Fordham.  Or . . . .

The Blacksheariana makes an easily overlooked remark in the "chronologically arranged documentation" for Alexander:  

Well, that's interesting.  If this Alexander Blackshear is the right Alexander Blackshear - really, I don't know what other Alexander Blackshear it could possibly be - it means that there was another daughter that nobody (not even the author of the book himself) has seemed to notice!

Now, I looked up the will of Benjamin Simmons, and it doesn't actually say "Alexander" Blacksher.  See?

Last Will and Testament of Benjamin Simmons

Craven County, North Carolina - 1761

In case you think it's too much trouble to enlarge this and can't read that tiny writing, here is the portion in question:

Okay.  So the will actually calls him "Elexander" Blacksher.  But hey, what are the chances that there was a different guy living in Craven County at the same time with that name?  Since he was named as one of the executors, I decided to look at the papers accompanying the will to see if he "signed" his name on any of those.  This is what I found attached to one of the inventory pages:

So, same spelling, but it was obviously written down by somebody else, since Alexander didn't know how to write.  (If you look closely, you can see that the will was written out by one of the witnesses - William Brown - he makes all the "B's" the way he signed his own name - but the document was then signed by Benjamin Simmons himself.  This inventory page appears to have been written and signed by two different hands, making one think that this was "Elexander's" actual signature, and thus not our Alexander, but again I say, really, what are the chances . . . .)

In his will, Benjamin Simmons names Alexander as his "loving father." He was obviously not his father, because he had a different surname.  But it just so happens that the relationship terminology was a bit fluid back then, with words like son-in-law and step-son being used interchangeably.  (I've noticed the prefix "grand" being regularly used as an entirely separate word as well.)  Benjamin Simmons left all of his land and property (minus 150 acres he reserved for a friend) to his daughter Louise, to be divided between his own brothers and sisters if she should die without an heir.  This tells us that his wife had already died (quite possibly in childbirth), and that he had no other children besides the one daughter.

This will was made in 1761, at which point this unnamed daughter had already reached an age to have been married and have a child, which allows her birth to be neatly placed into the years just prior to or just after Elisha's.

(This really makes me wonder how many other genealogical tidbits like this are hiding in other people's documents!)

So.  Most likely one and maybe two additional daughters were born between James and Elisha.  But it is also a real possibility that there were one or two additional sons born in those early years of Alexander's marriage as well - sons who died before they came of age and showed up in the land records.  

I think that this is something that we should seriously consider, for a couple of reasons.  First, an astounding number of children died before the age of five back then.  Don't believe me?  Check out this life expectancy graph that I found on an excellent (meaning, go check it out!) living history blog called Passion for the Past:

The average life expectancy jumped dramatically back in the day if we only count those who just managed to make it past those first five years.  So it's almost downright silly not to assume that Alexander had one or more children who died while still quite young.  

And then we have the French and Indian War.  Fought between 1754 and 1763, this was the first time that the colonies had been called upon to provide men for their common defense.   Although there would be no fighting in the colony of North Carolina except on the extreme western border, they were actually one of the first colonies to call up the militia and send them to the fighting.   The following table is a partial transcription of a document in the North Carolina Archives that is slated to be digitized soon:

This shows that in 1756 there were 989 taxable white males (everyone aged 16 and up) in Craven County.  There were 934 taxable black persons, which, up until 1784, would have included free black males age 16 and up, as well as all slaves, both male and female, age 12 and up.  I have seen a few free black men in the land records for Craven County, and even a few mentioned on militia lists from the 1750's, but I am guessing that there weren't that many, which means there were probably about a thousand free taxable males altogether.  

Now, all males of the designated age were taxed, but not all had to serve in the militia.  Only men through the age of 60 were required to serve.  Anyone who was crippled or otherwise unable to fight would have been exempted as well.  The chart shows that there were 631 men registered in the Craven County's militia, which, of course, is about 63% of the free taxable males.

Although the law required all militia men to regularly drill with their individual companies and regiments, this rarely took place.  According to an article from the State Library of North Carolina, 

Governor Arthur Dobbs (1754-65) found the implementation of these laws inconsistent with the defense obligations of his office, because the militia regiments were understaffed, ill-equipped, and poorly trained. In addition, they lacked leadership, had no muster rolls, and were unable to take the field if needed.

Well, that's not a great situation to be in when war breaks out, is it?  

The problem was so bad, that "in 1758, Dobbs fashioned a stronger militia bill that increased fines for derelict behavior, improved record keeping, and required at least eight musters per year-four for each company and four general musters per regiment."

Here is a list of some militia officers appointed by the governor during the French and Indian War:

Col. Edward Griffith's Regimental Officer List

Craven County, North Carolina 1755

from Colonial Soldiers of the South, 1732-1774 by Murtie June Clark

You can see how many positions were not staffed.  The lists for most of the counties look pretty much the same, although some are even worse! 

At the outset of the war, North Carolina sent 300 men to join the troops gathering in Virginia, more than any other colony.  (They would have sent more, but they didn't have the money to pay the men or provide supplies.)  Not only were they poorly trained, but they were also very poorly supplied due to the colony's lack of money and a misunderstanding as to who was supposed to be responsible for their provisions.  There was a shortage of tents, half the men did not have a firearm (even though they were required by law to have one and bring it if called up), and they actually had to drive cattle and pigs north to Virginia to be sold there in order to buy food, because there was a shortage of gold and NC proclamation money wasn't good outside of the colony!  Needless to say, many of the men deserted.  

Now, 300 men is just a drop in the bucket compared to the total number of all militia men in the colony (around 12,000).  But more men would have been called up during the course of war.  I don't know how they decided which counties had to send men or which regiments went and all that, but I'm sure that some men from Craven County were called up at some point. 

It is a possibility then, that Alexander had a teenage son who served and died in the French and Indian War.  Any of his sons born between 1738 and 1747 would have been old enough to be in the militia during the course of the war.

Oh.  OHHHhhhhh.  Wait.   (Please imagine the sound of screeching tires now.)

I have just discovered something that I think might throw my teenage-son-who-might-have-died-during-the-French-and-Indian-War theory out the window.

I considered erasing everything that I just spent the last four hours researching and writing, but then I thought, hey, this blog is called 'my journey through discovering our family's story,' after all, emphasis on the word discovering, so I figured I'd leave it all in there to illustrate the difficult process of sifting through old documents to come up with a rough version of events that is even remotely justifiable!

So here we go . . . 

While looking through the North Carolina Digital Archives several months ago, I came across this undated document:

North Carolina Colonial Militia List

Alexander Blackshear, Seargeant

(front, back)

At the very top this says, "A List of Alexander Blackshare Serj: Belonging to the Company of Daniel Simmons Capt."

Let me tell you, I was ecstatic when I stumbled across this, because I hadn't seen it anywhere else online.  And do you know what was even more exciting?  The fact that the third and fourth names on the list are Alexander's own sons, James and Elisha Stout.  

I found this in the database labeled "Troop Returns," which from what I can tell is pretty much any document related to the military.  At the bottom of the page, the NCDA put a topic link that said:   North Carolina--History--Revolution, 1775-1783.

So, I set the document aside for the time when I finally got to my post on Blackshears and the Revolutionary War.  

But today, while working on this post, I decided to double-check before telling you all that there were no surviving records of the troops who served in the French and Indian War.  I found out that there was a book called Colonial Soldiers of the South, 1732-1774 by Murtie June Clark that has North Carolina militia lists.  I wasn't holding out much hope of actually being able to view it online, but lo and behold, it is on Ancestry!  

The book is full of typed transcriptions of original documents, so it is much easier to read.  Which is why, while scanning through the pages, I came across the transcription of the document that I thought was from the Revolutionary War.  Now, this document is undated, so I hadn't made the connection with the French and Indian War yet, but when I turned the page in the transcription, the name at the very top jumped out at me:  Benjamin Simmons.

Remember him?  The son-in-law of Alexander Blackshear who had died in 1761?  I instantly realized that this militia list was from the time period of the French and Indian War, not the Revolutionary War. 

(Those silly archivists! I assumed that they knew what they were talking about. I mean, they took the records out of the boxes to digitize them. They should have seen what else the document was grouped with. It turns out that some guy named Joel Russell was able to go down to the archives himself at some point and make a transcription of these documents - which I didn't find until today, after I figured out the whole mess I'm telling you about, because it was linked through a USGenWeb page devoted to the Taylor family of Craven County! - and he noted the dates of all of the dated documents that were grouped together with the undated documents.)

I went back and looked at the original, and sure enough, there was Benjamin Simmons' name. And then I made the connection that Alexander was serving under Captain Daniel Simmons. (I checked, and there seems to be a consensus that the two men were brothers.) Huh. I was wondering why he was serving in a company of men from the New Bern District of Craven County, even though there were several other companies from his county, at least one of which must have been closer to his home. Now I am thinking that maybe it had something to do with the fact that his daughter had married into the Simmons family. Perhaps Daniel Simmons even asked him to join his own company as sergeant.

And now I'm having a v-8 moment here folks - I should have known that Alexander would have been too old to serve in the militia during the Revolutionary War!  If he got married about 1731, he would have been born around 1710, which means he would have been over 60 years old already in 1776!!

And speaking of ages, we know that boys had to be sixteen years old to serve in the militia.  That means that both James and Elisha Stout were sixteen or older when this list was made.  But when was it made?  

Although it is undated, the other lists from Craven County that it was filed with were all dated between 1754 and 1758, or after 1761.  And we know that it had to have been made before 1762, because Benjamin Simmons was still on the roll.  If we use the date range of the other lists, we can actually narrow down Elisha's birth year a bit.  If the document is from 1754, Elisha would have had to have been born by 1738.  He could have been born earlier, but I've already explained why I don't think that is the case.  If the document was from as late as 1758, Elisha could have been born anywhere up to the year 1742.  And, it is possible that it was from 1759, which would allow us to assign a birth year of 1743, which matches up with the flurry of activity we see with Elisha's land records.  (It would be just my luck that the document with our family on it didn't have a date!)

This document also helps confirm that Alexander's son Abraham, whom the Blacksheariana estimates was born around 1742, was indeed younger than Elisha, and not only that, but that he was still too young to serve when the document was made.  

As for a potentially lost son, well, if this list was from closer to 1754, it throws a bit of a monkey wrench into the idea that a son was lost during the war.  But since it could have been from several years later, not only does it not rule that scenario out, but actually makes it more likely, since there could have been several years between James and Elisha in which another son could have been born.

And to think, had I not been looking at the will of Benjamin Simmons in an attempt to prove that there was actually proof that Alexander had more children, I never would have realized that this document was from an entirely different war.  So you see, you always, always, always have to keep your eyes open and double check what you find online!

(I feel the need to point out, also, that the transcription mentioned above by Ms. Clark is not a completely true rendering of the actual documents.  Not only did she take liberties with the the arrangement of wording at the top of the documents, but she left out specific dates as well.  For example, the excerpt above is specifically dated 1755 on the original, but she only gives a date range in her transcription.  You can view the original here.)

Well, I actually had a lot more I had intended to talk about today, but I think this is the perfect stopping point.  Before I go, though, here is my new chart showing Alexander's family:

Husband:	Alexander BLACKSHEAR
born	c. 1708    why???
married	Btw. c. 1730-1732
Wife:	Agnes [STOUT]
born	c. 17??   c. 1710-1713 – assume married 1731-ish
Children:
	James                 b. c.1735, DE    1732
	Eleanor              b. DE (married Baily)
	Daughter (name unknown, married Simmons)
	Elisha Stout       b. c.1736, DE      c. 1738-43
	Abraham            b. c.1742, DE or NC
	Sarah                  b. NC (married Clifton)
	Daughter (name unknown, married Fordham)

Still a work in progress - sigh!

                                                                                                                                             - Therese