Sarah Daves Herndon Miller Clark

 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 52 (Dec 23-31)

Prompt: Resolution

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 Literaryterms.net describes resolution as " the conclusion of the story’s plot. It’s where any unanswered questions are answered, or “loose ends are tied.” So it seems only right to come to a resolution at the end of the year, to answer at least one of the mysteries of my ancestors. The mystery was solved in the last few days with several nights of researching into the early morning hours.

 The mystery involves my 3rd Great Grandmother, Sarah Daves.  In 1850, she is living with her brother, Goodman Daves, in Ozark County, Missouri.  She was only 14 years old so the assumption is that her parents are no longer living.  An assumption that still needs to be proven, but that mystery is close to being solved as I have 2 men living in Kentucky in 1840 who are good candidates to be her father.  Her brother, Goodman, married his wife in Henderson County, Kentucky.  I used a spreadsheet and the 1840 census to determine that two men named Daves or Davis had children of the right age and sex to be her father.  Since the 1840 census doesn't give the children's names more research will need to be done to determine exactly which one is their father.  

 The second mystery about Sarah Daves involves what happened to her in later life. By 1860, Sarah was married to Isaiah Herndon who in 1850 lived only 2 houses down from her and her brother.  The 1860 census, lists her oldest 3 children of which Hannah is the oldest at 8 years old.  Due to Hannah's age, their expected marriage should have taken place between 1850 and  1852.  The two counties where they lived had their courthouses burn with a loss of all records after the expected marriage date. Ozark County courthouse burned in 1858 and the Douglas County courthouse burned in 1886.

 Toward the end of the Civil War, Isaiah was killed and is buried in Douglas County.  The family story states that he was on the way back from fighting in the war when he was set upon by bushwhackers and killed.  However no records have been found for him for military service. It has been proven that the I.O. Herndon who did serve in the Confederacy was not him. 

 Sarah's mystery comes after her husband's death. In 1870, she is living in Ozark County with her three youngest children. By this time, Hannah has married and is no longer with the family. After that Sarah disappeared.  I heard family stories that she married a man named Thompson and filed for a widow's pension for her husband's military service.  But that proved to be false as I discovered that it was Hannah that married a Thompson. There didn't appear to be any widow's pension for Sarah A. Herndon. 

 For many years, I pondered Sarah's fate. I picked up her son's story in 1900, but where he was between 1870 and 1900 was also a mystery.  I had searched Ozark, Douglas, Greene, and Webster  counties  census records page by page when census research was done by microfilm without finding them. The courthouses'  loss of records accounted for not finding a second marriage.

 This last week, I was working on the DAR paper work for a supplemental for my 6th Great Grandfather, Joseph Herndon, and I decided to try one more time to find Sarah Daves Herndon. The Ancestry search engine allows you to search for first names only and I have used that to find other ancestors. The ancestors that were found that way in the past had unusual first names so I didn't have much hope for finding Sarah, James, or Mary. Elisha would have been easier to find but I already knew where he was living with his wife in Douglas County.

 This simple technique proved to be the breakthrough that I needed.  I started with Ozark County as it was the last place that I knew Sarah lived.  But there were way too many Sarahs born close to her birth year.  So, I tried her son, James. In almost every record that I have found for him up to this point, he was listed as James W C Herndon.  I entered James W C into the first name box of the search engine, his year of birth, and that he may have lived in Missouri, USA.  Then I limited it to the 1880 census. The first name that came up and the only one that said, James W. C. was for a James W. C. Miller.  The head of household was Sarah E Miller, a widow.  Close but her name should have been Sarah A. But one of the other children was Mary A. C. Miller.  My James W.C. had a sister, named Mary Ann K.  Sarah was born in Kentucky. James and Mary were born in Missouri and they were the right ages. Despite the discrepancy in the middle initials, I am convinced I have found Sarah.

 There were two other children listed in the household that I did not know, Emma V Miller, age 4, and Sallyann R. Miller, age 3 (on the next page). Emma is listed as the daughter of Sarah and Sallyann as a granddaughter. 

The breakthrough information was from the 1880 Taney County, Missouri Census

 From there, I was able to find that Sarah A Miller had filed for a widow's pension on Burgess G. Miller. Burgess was living with his 3rd wife in 1870, living within a few house of Sarah's brother, Goodman Daves. His wife, Mary A., died in1872 and Burgess died in 1878. So it appears that he and Sarah married  between 1872 and 1876.

 Sarah Miller married Calvin Clark in September of 1908 in Ozark County. Just two years later, she  is listed as divorced on the 1910 census with the last name of Clark and living with her daughter, Emma V. Alsup and 5 grandchildren.

 Perhaps this is not the last resolution for Sarah Daves Herndon Miller Clark as there is still her final resting place to be found.

Pride Goeth before a Fall

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 42

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Prompt: Proud

One of my Mother’s reminders was “Pride goeth before a fall.”  I ruefully remembered that awhile back when doing research on my Daves line.

I tried for many years trying to find the parents of Sarah Daves, who married Isaiah Herndon.  I knew her brother was Goodman Daves as she lived with him near the Herndon family when she was 14. I knew that she also had a brother named James who lived with her and Isaiah in 1860. I found Goodman’s marriage record in Henderson County, Kentucky so I knew they came from there before moving to Missouri.  The family was even mentioned in the Turnbo Manuscripts giving many details about the relationships among the Herndon, Daves, and Lawrence families.

Using a spreadsheet and the 1840 Henderson County, KY census, I narrowed their likely father down to two men who both had sons and a daughter the right ages. However, that was as far as I was able to get without going to Kentucky to search the court records that had not been published yet.  One of the men who was a candidate for their father was William Davis.

Then one day as many do, I was searching Ancestry trees and found that someone had found their parents.  I was so excited as I followed their tree back and discovered one of their ancestors was William Richardson Davie.  William R Davie is credited with being one of the framers of the Constitution of the United States, founder of The University of North Carolina, a Revolutionary War Officer, and was the Grand Master of Masons in North Carolina.  He was certainly an ancestor to be proud of and I created a post on Facebook to announce my finding and let my relatives know that a mystery had been solved.  

There were multiple trees on Ancestry that gave this lineage and it seemed solid.  Then came the COVID-19 shut down and I started working from home which gave me more time free from commuting.  I turned to gathering the proofs for this lineage.

I guessed that perhaps the Frederick William Davie who was listed as Goodman, Sarah, and James father went by the name of William tying him into one of the men I suspected in Henderson County. I couldn’t find any information about Frederick William Davie, William Richardson Davie’s son, so I decided to start at the top and work down to them. Not the way you should do genealogical research, but it sometimes works.  As I worked my way down, I ran into a slight problem.  All of Frederick W Davie’s biographies said he had no children.  I did not want to give up this ancestor. However, his will named no children and left his estate to his wife, brother, a niece, and nephews.  A lawsuit in the Supreme Court, Bedon v Davie et al states in section 7 that Frederick William Davie died in April 1850 with no issue [children].   

I went back to those family trees on Ancestry.  Starting with the first one I found, I started tracking all their proofs. Most of them had no real proofs but would list the family tree that they incorporated into their tree.  After tracking it back through multiple trees, I found that the original tree shows a completely different Sarah Daves and with her father, Frederick Daves but not the son of William Richardson Davie.  This Sarah’s birth year and place was wildly different than my Sarah Daves and her father’s information did not match up to the Frederick William Daves that so many trees had listed.

I reluctantly gave up this ancestor and remembered again, “Pride goeth before a fall.”