"I've a whale of a tale to tell you, lads ." - Ned Land
Ok, Ol' Br'er won't leave you hanging on that quote. A body has to be both older and have a penchant for foolish trivia to know that one. Or curious enough to research it.
Tell you what. Br'er will pause writing here to allow you to try finding the quote source before continuing.
Pause over. Did you find it? No? Ned Land is a character in Disney's 1954 film, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, played by Kirk Douglas. The line was part of a song - Yes! Kirk Douglas sang in the role! - Ned sings to his shipmates.
Anyways, back to the story.
Ol' Br'er has been silent for a long time for good reasons. Mainly, his body tried to kill him. Ok, his body betrayed him making life hell and typing extremely painful and virtually impossible. Walking was beyond difficult, and dangerous as he was prone to falling with every step. And, he did fall several times over the past few months. Fortunately, the only real injuries from those falls were to his pride. Walking across the room was difficult and risky. Galivanting in graveyards was utterly and absolutely out of the question. He is a couple of months past corrective surgery and doing much better, though has a long road to recovery ahead of him.
That is all just to explain the long silence to anyone who may be following his antics.
Well, he is back!
Recently, feeling up to spending some time behind the keyboard, he did a bit of virtual cemetery creeping whilst researching a distant branch of the family tree.
Many people have researched Ol' Br'er's family, and they have published their work. Being the distrustful curmudgeon he is, Ol' Be'er never trusts anyone else's work, instead insisting on verifying everything himself.
One 2nd Great-Granduncle's line showed him having at least 12 children with two wives, the surnames of whom no one knew. So Ol' Br'er set about seeing if he could, using modern tools and resources, suss out those names.
Things soon took an unexpected turn!
Some of the resources that popped up were for someone not appearing in Br'er's own prior research nor in anything anyone else has ever shared. Intriguing!
Ok. Let's name some players and set the stage so that the story can be followed and make some semblance of sense.
JDG (1828 - 1910)- Br'er's 2nd GGU and our starting point.
NL? (1834 - ca. 1864-5)- JDG's first wife
E? (1835 - aft. 1910) - JDG's second wife
Ok. E?'s maiden name was fairly easy to find. There is a marriage record for JDG and EM in 1866. So E? is EM. And, NL? had to have died (or there have been a divorce) before that marriage in 1866. But what was NL?'s maiden name?
During Ol' Br'er's research, a new person with the same surname as JDG, MBG (b. 1864), showed up. MBG has never appeared in any family tree for JDG. But his birth, and location, mean that he could be related to JDG in some way. More research was clearly called for!
Since MBG did not readily fit anywhere in Ol' Br'er's tree, the only thing to do was build a separate tree starting with MBG and see where it lead. So that is what Ol' Br'er did.
It was not possible to start researching MBG as a child because he never showed up in any census in a family with the same surname! The earliest records immediately available had him living in the household of WC. Odd. Tracking forward and back through the years, MBG lived almost exclusively in WC's household. Even after marrying and having children of his own, MBG and his family remained living with WC. Eventually, MBG could be found in the 1870 census, age 6, in the household of NC, a widow. WC is in that same household and NC appears to be his mother given their ages.
But why is MBG in the C family household?
Ol' Br'er was getting frustrated, but not daunted! He set off building a tree for NC and her son, WC, to see where that might lead and what it might reveal. That was the key to unlocking the mystery!
See, WC never married or had children of his own, but he left a detailed will. He left his entire estate to his sister, PC, for the remainder of her life. After her death, the estate was to be divided equally among a litany of great-nieces and great-nephews, all with the same surname as MBG, and, lastly with his nephew, MBG! Well, damn! That answers multiple questions, not the least of which was: What is NL?'s surname? C! NL? was NLC before marrying JDG!
But that would mean MBG is NLC's and JDG's son, born about the same time she died. That narrows her death down to between mid-1864 when MBG was born, and mid-1866 when JDG married EM.
While that addressed the missing surnames, and how MBG was related to WC, it did not answer the burning question as to why MBG never once appeared in his father's household. That mystery seemed destined to go unanswered.
Ol' Br'er, being the imaginative type he is, envisioned two possible stories. One, NLC died in or shortly after giving birth to MBG. JDG, heartbroken and grieving, could not bear to look upon the child and sent it to live with his mother's family. The second, more bleak, that EM, the new bride, would not abide the infant of the woman whose place she just took, and forced her new husband to ship the child off.
It seemed that the story was to end there. Except that Ol' Br'er has tree-tracing, grave-galivanting compatriots who love a good story as much or more as he does. And he could not resist the opportunity to do a little bragging about how he had sussed out the wives' surnames and MBG's place in the family tree.
This was his undoing.
After he related the whole saga to them, one asked a question and posed a third possible alternative to MBG's story: Did JDG serve in the war? It might well be that JDG was not MBG's father!
SON OF A BITCH!
Ol' Br'er turned back to his records for JDG. Sure enough, he served in the Confederacy. He was one of the many who surrendered at Vicksburg on 4 July 1863. He was also wounded at Atlanta in August of 1864. And, lastly, he mustered out in August of 1865 in North Carolina. Hmm. MBG was born in late July 1864. That meant he had to have been conceived sometime around November of 1863.
All this means that for JDG to be MBG's father, he had to have made his way from Vicksburg, Mississippi to Walton County, Georgia starting no sooner than 3 July 1863 (during a war, and with no real support), spent enough time with NLC to conceive MBG. That would be no small feat under the circumstances!
Now, if that was not feasible (and it would be on the low end of that scale!), then there is a third possibility: JDG came home after the war to find a 'son' that he could not possibly have conceived. Perhaps NLC was alive when he returned in 1865, perhaps not. There is no way to know. Perhaps she died in or shortly after childbirth in 1864. Perhaps she took her own life, unable to face the disgrace of her affair (or rape?) and illegitimate child. Perhaps JDG came home and killed her in a rage over her infidelity. Whatever the truth of his conception, it is entirely possible that MBG was not the biological son of JDG, even though he used that surname his entire life.
And this third possibility would more than align with MBG never living in JDG's household. As well as his effectively being adopted by NLC's brother.
Talk about ignominy! Not MBG possibly being the result of an affair, no. The ignominy was Ol' Br'er's in utterly and absolutely missing this probability. His research buddies took no small degree of delight in being the ones to catch his grievous error.
Some time back, Ol' Br'er was clued in on a lone headstone that no one had ever recorded or researched before. It was his second Cemetery Unicorn - a cemetery that is not listed on Find A Grave. And anyone who has spent any amount of time researching genealogy, graveyards, and cemeteries can tell you how rare it is to find such a thing.
Much as he tried, Ol' Br'er could not find anything more than what he could read on the headstone: Mr. and Mrs. Knox and Child. He searched the Knox family in the area, but all the names he could find had marked graves elsewhere. It was a real stumper!
Well, the thought of this lone marker haunted Ol' Br'er. He recently dusted off his research hat and restarted his attempts to find the names of this family.
This time the results were . . . mixed.
Initially, he found the same lack of results from his original efforts. The only Knoxes appearing in Census records could be quickly and easily dismissed as not being the correct person. They either appeared in the 1850 Census or later or could be identified as buried elsewhere. Or were too old to have a child in the late 1840s.
It was while he researched one of these dead-ends - one John A P Knox - that a possible, even probable, break came up. John A P Knox died in 1833 (possibly 1832). At least he will was probated in 1833.
Now, at first, Ol' Br'er thought that the mysterious grave might be that of John A P Knox, his wife, Elizabeth Denham, and their child. Birth years for the couple remain a mystery. But, as they married on 18 July 1816, it is entirely possible that they had a child in the mid-1840s and died shortly thereafter. Neither immediately appeared in later Census records.
Only that proved to be impossible when John A P Knox's will turned up. The notes on the estate paperwork folder cite that he died in 1833. It also has a notation as a question that one of the heirs at law (that was a new term for Ol' Br'er!), John D Reed, married Knox's widow. Looking forward to the 1850 through 1870 Censuses, there is an Elizabeth/Eliza Reed with a William (A or A P) Reed in the correct county. Further, her birth year calculates out to be about 1800, so all the dates are plausible. Digging more, Eliza Knox married John L Reed (Reid) in 1839. William A P Reed was born in 1841. And, if there needed to be a bow wrapping up this portion of the puzzle, there is a Cornelia Knox living with Eliza and William in the 1870 Census. More on Cornelia later.
Back to John A P Knox's will, there are what appear to be children noted: Frances (Knox) Swift, Ephraim M Knox, and Andrew Knox. Obviously, our mystery family cannot be Frances since she married a man named Swift. That leaves us with two possibilities: Ephraim and Andrew. Another important fact to note is that Andrew is specifically stated to be a minor, that his bequeathment be held until he comes of age. So it is reasonable to speculate that Andrew is younger than 16 or 17. Probably younger than that, say around the age of 10, give or take. So he had to be born somewhere around 1820-1827.
Following the trail for Ephraim rapidly finds that he married Mary Allen in 1841 before moving to Alabama, back to Georgia, then ultimately to Texas, where he died in 1880. Clearly not our mystery Knox man! But! The story his records began to tell pulled Ol' Br'er further down the rabbit hole.
First off, he and his wife, Mary, had two daughters: Mary L (b 1846) and Cornelia A (b 1854). Yup. The same Cornelia who was living with her paternal grandmother back in Georgia on the 1870 Census. By the 1880 Census, Mary L had married James Constantine. The couple a least five children and were living in Louisiana. And who should be living with them? Why sister Cornelia, of course.
Cornelia herself married, in her late 20s, Elisha Wimbeck Lacy (now there is a name!). The couple had at least two children. This seems to have curtailed Cornelia's wanderlust as she remained in Louisiana until her death in 1921.
Sadly, Ephraim was made a widower before 1860. Mary died (Br'er could find nothing on where, when, or why). Following his mother's example, Ephraim married a second time. This time in 1865, to Sarah Elizabeth (Fewell) Jacobs, herself the widow of Claiborn Jacobs and mother of his two children James B and Mary A E. Both of these children appear in Ephraim's household on the 1870 Census, so that confirms the relationship.
James B Jacobs revealed a pattern, a mystery, and possibly a scandal!
Born in 1857, James married Josephine King in 1877, and the two "got busy," as the kids say these days. The couple had at least nine children between 1878 and 1896. Josephine died in 1903. James married again in 1907, this time to Viola.
Viola fascinated Ol' Br'er. She was born in Mississippi in 1857 to O W and Roxy Wiley. She married John Thomas Partin in 1887, with that union producing only one known child, a daughter, Bertie, born in 1889. John Thomas Partin died in 1904. And as we already know, Viola married widower James B Jacobs in 1907.
However! That may not be Viola's whole story. There is an 1881 marriage record back in Mississippi between Hiram Trevilion and - you guessed it! - Viola Miley! Could it be that Viola married a third time (or first time!) and kept it secret for some reason? Was she widowed? Or worse, divorced?
So Ol' Br'er started digging for Hiram. Assuming a birth year of 1860± ten years came up with nothing. So Br'er tried with a birth year of 1850± ten years. Only one Hiram Trevilion came up. And Ol' Br'er could not decide if he wanted the story he found to be true or not.
Hiram appears in the 1850 age zero (born less than a year before the census was enumerated), 1860, 1880, and 1900 Census records. Starting with the 1880 Census, he appears with a wife, Alice, and children (Houston, Jennie, and Clara in 1880). According to the 1900 Census, Alice gave birth to four children with three living. And most interestingly, Hiram, a reverend, and Alice have been married for 28 years. This means they were married in 1872.
1872. Yet there is a marriage record to Viola Wiley dated 1881. A marriage that, based on later records, never happened.
What? The? . . .
Now, Ol' Br'er cannot say for certain what the true story is. But! A story that fits the available documentation is this. Hiram Trevilion marries a young woman, Alice, in 1872, and the two grow a family over the ensuing years. After nine years of marriage, Hiram has a wandering eye (and a fixed lust) and illegally marries another young woman, Viola Wiley, in 1881. He is a bigamist! The truth comes out, and this second marriage is either annulled or deemed to have never happened. Viola gets shipped out to Texas to be away from the scandal. It is there that she marries John Thomas Partin as "Miss" in 1887.
Was Viola duped? Was Hiram a bigamist? It damned sure looks that way! Lord knows that he would not be the first preacher to commit adultery and bigamy. SCANDAL!
Back to Andrew, though, and the original target of Ol' Br'er's research. There are property tax records for Andrew P Knox in the correct county in 1842, 1844, and 1845. Recalling that Andrew could not receive his inheritance until he "came of age" and using 18 as a nominal age of adulthood, that would make him born about 1824. Possibly later if he inherited sooner. Factoring in that the Knox in question died in 1847 with a wife and child, and the nominal minimum marriage age in most places of 18-21, we again get a birth year in the mid-1820s. And recall that the household of John L Reed/Reid - the second husband of his apparent mother - has an extra male age 15-19 on the 1840 Census not accounted for by a corresponding male in John Reed's household in the 1830 Census. Finally, include the facts that no Andrew Knox appears in the 1850 or later Censuses nor are there property tax records for him after 1845, and a compelling case can be made that Ol' Br'er's unicorn grave is:
