Our Roots Are Showing......

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all of you who have found your Irish roots and to those of you who are still searching. Even before I began my own family research, I knew that we had some Irish blood. When I was young, growing up in Mississippi, I would ask my mother, "Where are we from?" And my mother would always answer, "We are English, Scotch, and Irish." When I asked my father the same question, he added that (his) "Grandma told me that we have German blood." My paternal grandmother's response to my question was (her) "Papa's family was Black Dutch from Pennsylvania," and (her) "Mama's grandfather was a full-blooded Indian."

The truth is that each of their answers was, in part, true, although my great-grandmother's grandfather was not Native American. I do not have all the answers yet for this particular ancestor, but it appears that his South Carolina heritage was likely a tri-racial one that possibly included some Native American blood.

Now that I am older, when I think about the names of families in my childhood neighborhood and of my classmates from school, l realize that so many of them were Scotch-Irish names. Names that began with "Mc," or an "O" followed by an apostrophe, may have outnumbered even the Smiths and the Joneses in Mississippi during those days. With over ten years of research behind me, and with a family tree that includes the names Atwood, Baldridge, Coggins, Gibson, Meriwether, Pettus, Porter, and Ragland, it seems that my mother's answer to my childhood question was the correct one.

And now that my brother has three sons with red hair and two of my own grandchildren have beautiful red hair, I do believe that our Scotch-Irish roots are "starting to show."

More About the Pettus Family

Earlier this week, I wrote a post about the Pettus Family in Holmes County. During some research for that post, I discovered that William Pettus of Fairfax, Virginia, is writing a book about the Pettus Family of Virginia. According to William, he has included information about at least one Mississippi Pettus family, that of former Mississippi Governor John Jones Pettus, who served from 1859 - 1863. Known as the "War Governor," Governor Pettus played a significant role in Mississippi's history for his involvement in leading his state to follow South Carolina's succession from the Union on January 9, 1861.

Although William is quite busy with indexing the Pettus book, with its date of publication still sometime in the future, he was kind enough to communicate with me by email. During our contacts, he and I traded some information about our respective branches of the Pettus family. One thing that I learned from William is that my Pettus relatives in Mississippi likely descend from Stephen Pettus, son of Thomas Pettus II of Littletown Plantation. According to William's research, Thomas Pettus II was the son of Colonel Thomas Pettus, of Littletown Plantation, the latter being the original Pettus emigrant from Norwich, England.

Stephen Pettus, Sr. married Mary Dabney, daughter of Captain George Dabney of King William County, and they lived in New Kent and Hanover Counties in Virginia until Stephen's death about 1775. The Pettus lineage that descends from Stephen and Mary often used Mary's maiden name as a middle name for male family members. Two of these descendants were William Dabney Pettus, a wealthy plantation owner who lived in Lafayette County, Mississippi, and John Dabney Pettus, a brother of my maternal great-grandfather, William Elza Pettus.

I anticipate that William Pettus' book, when it is published, will be well-received by the genealogical community. As a family history researcher, I am personally excited at the prospect of having my own copy, and as soon as the book is published, I plan to announce it here.

Slowly and surely, my own Pettus Family puzzle is finally taking shape, although I still have some missing pieces. I will find those pieces, so stay tuned for more later.