Ghosts of Our Ancestors

This article was written to commemorate Black History Month in the United States and to remind us of the contributions made by so many African Americans, as well as those with biracial and mutiracial heritage, to the history of our country.

A few years ago, after I became aware that I had a Gibson great-great-great grandfather, I began my search for Gibson ancestors with virtually no facts at all. Little did I know, however, how much information I would discover about this family. My research found that much of what has been written about the Gibson family in America concerns this family's biracial roots, ones that began in Virginia and continued as the family migrated into North and South Carolina and on to Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana and places beyond. Today, descendants of the early Gibson family of Virginia can be counted in the hundreds of thousands.

My Gibson story began with one man, John P. Gibson. All I knew in the beginning was that he had been born around 1799 in South Carolina, and he first appeared on a U. S. Census record in Mississippi in 1860. I later found that he had married Margaret J. Williams, born around 1820, in Monroe County, Mississippi on January 3, 1843. Through U. S. Census records recorded in Mississippi in 1860 and 1870, I found that John and Margaret Gibson became parents of seven children. One of their daughters, Malverda Gibson, later became my paternal great-great-grandmother. But along the research road, I found not only information about my South Carolina Gibson family and its descendants, but a treasure trove of interesting books and published articles about the biracial and multiracial heritage of this country.

One such book was "The Free State of Jones," written by Victoria E. Bynum and published by the University of North Carolina Press. This publication, a portion of which is available on Google Books, begins with an interesting quote by Sam Dabney, taken from James Street's "Tap Roots," published in 1943:

"We can't boast of our ancestors, because when we get started talking about our families, out jumps the ghost of a pirate or a cousin of color."

A reference to America's rich racial heritage, contained in Victoria Bynum's book, states that racial sentiments in the South "evolved over a period of three centuries." She states that "by the 1840's, claims of Indian, Iberian (Spanish), or Mediterranean (Moorish) ancestry, defended one's whiteness against race-based laws and social harassment." Gideon Gibson, a "light-skinned slaveholder of partially African ancestry" and a member of South Carolina's so-called Regulator Movement, is mentioned in Bynum's publication as a person who exemplified how racial identity was often "fluid" and "even negotiable in some cases."

Bynum goes on to say that "many of Gideon Gibson's descendants, migrated west in search of whiteness as well as lands." We know this is true, since some of the descendants of South Carolinians, Gideon Gibson, Jacob Gibson, and Jordan Gibson, eventually settled in the state of Mississippi prior to the Civil War. Their lives and the lives of some of their descendants have been well-documented in historical publications about several southern states, including Mississippi and Louisiana. Often, these publications mention the ethnicity of Gibson family ancestors.

One thing that is known for sure is that regardless of whether a person was labeled as a Mulatto, Mestizo, Mustee, Melungeon, Creole, Cajun, Redbone, or similar names denoting something other than an "all white" ancestry, racial "mixing" has occurred throughout American history. And it has not occurred only in the South Carolina backcountry and other states commonly known as "The South." Class consciousness was widespread and very real in the 1800s; it became common for those who had migrated from the colonies, including North and South Carolina, to portray their ancestors as aristocratic patriots and slaveholders. The facts, when known, often revealed that many of these "aristocratic" ancestors were actually Regulators, itinerant preachers, and even Tories.

In my quest to find my own Gibson ancestors, I found that members of this South Carolina family were not only involved in the infamous Regulator movement in that state, but their descendants later became civic and governmental leaders in Mississippi, Louisiana and Kentucky. The involvement of Gibson family members in business and politics has been well-documented. One well-known Gibson descendant, Randall Gibson, was instrumental in the founding of Tulane University, while another descendant, Tobias Gibson, is credited with the spread of Methodism in the South.

An interesting bit of history that I stumbled upon during this research that began with the Gibson family was the story of Dr. Walter Ashby Plecker, a small-town doctor who became the Registrar of Virginia's Bureau of Vital Statistics in 1912. Dr. Plecker's views about racial mixing became the impetus for the passage of the Racial Integrity Law of 1924, commonly referred to as "Plecker's Law." Details about this law can be read on the University of Virginia's website, in an article entitled "Battles in Red, White, and Black."

This law became Virginia's infamous "one drop" statute, and its language created two racial categories, "pure" white and everybody else. The law's passage allowed Dr. Plecker to pursue his alliance with John Powell of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America in waging an all-out war against the mixing of the races. One of his efforts entailed a push for "ancestral registration." Virginians were reluctant to comply with the idea of "ancestral registration," even though the state had already passed the first anti-miscegenation law in 1662. At that time, "passing" as white may have been rather commonplace, but proof of racial purity was difficult to obtain.

Plecker's method involved identifying racial impurity by compiling a list of family surnames that were "known" to be "mixed." The list was arranged by Virginia counties and included the names of "racially mixed" families who lived in these counties.

Counties and surnames included in "Plecker's List," as this list became known, appear below:

Amherst County:

Pumphrey (Migrants to Allegheny and Campbell) Adcock (Adcox), Beverly (according to Dr. Plecker, this family was trying to evade the situation by adopting the name of Burch or Birch, which was believed to be the name of the white mother of the adult generation at the time), Branham, Clark, Duff, Floyd, Hamilton, Hartless, Hicks, Johns, Lawless, Nukles (Knuckles), Painter, Ramsey, Redcross, Roberts, Southwards (Suthards, Southerds, Southers), Sorrells, Terry, Tyree, Willis, and Wood

Bedford County:

Branham, Burley (See Amherst), Cash, Clark, Coleman, Duff, Floyd, Hartless, Hicks, Johns, McVey, Mason, Maxey, Mayse (Mays), Painters, Pults, Ramsey, and Wood

Charles City County:

Adams, Allmond, Collins, Custalow (Custaloo), Dennis, Doggett, Dungoe, Hawkes, Holmes, Howell, Langston, Miles, Page, Spurlock, Stewart, and Wynn

Caroline County:

Byrd and Fortune

Henrico and Richmond City:

See Charles City, New Kent, and King William

King William County:

Adams, Allmond, Bolnus, Bradby, Collins, Custalow (Custaloo), Dennis, Doggett, Dungoe, Hawkes, Howell, Langston, Miles, Page, Spurlock, Stewart, Wynn

Nelson County:

See Essex

New Kent County:

Adkins, Bradby, Collins, Langston, Stewart, and Wynn

Elizabeth City and Newport News:

Stewart (descendants of Charles City families)

Essex and King and Queen Counties:

Brooks, Broughton, Byrd, Cooper, Fortune, Hammond, Mitchell, Prince, Nelson, Robinson, and Tate.

Elizabeth City and Newport News:

Stewart (descendants of Charles City families)

Fauquier County:

Colvin, Hoffman (Huffman), Phillips (See Prince William) and Riley

Greene County:

Shifflett, Shiflet

Halifax County:

Epps (Eppes), Stewart (Stuart), Coleman, Johnson, Martin, Sheppard, Shepard, Talley, and Young

Lancaster County:

Dawson (aka Dorsey)

Lee County County:

Bolden (Bolin), Bunch, Collins, Delph, Freeman, Gibson (Gipson), Goins, Hawkins, Mise (Mize), Moore, Mullins, Ramsey (chiefly "Tennessee "Melungeons")

Norfolk County and Portsmouth:

Bass, Bright, King, Locklear (Locklair), Porter, Sawyer, and Weaver

Prince William County:

Tyson, Segar (see Fauquier)

Lancaster County:

Dorsey (Dawson)

Roanoke County:

Beverly (see Washington)

Rockbridge County:

Southerds (see Amherst), Sorrell, Terry, Tyree, and Wood (including migrants to Amherst Co.)

Scott:

Dingus (see Lee County)

Smythe County:

See Lee County

Russell County:

Castell, Keith, Meade, Proffitt, and Stillwell, also see Lee and Tazewell Counties

Washington County:

Barlow, Beverly, Hughes, Lethcoe, Thomas, and Worley

Westmoreland County:

Atwells, Butridge, Okiff (Okeefe), Sorrells, Worlds (Worrell)

Wise County:

See Lee, Scott, Smyth, and Russell Counties

Surname Saturday

Last week's new "cousin matches" to my Ancestry DNA results have prompted me to add a few surnames to the list I've posted here several times in the past.  If you would like to determine the makeup of your own genetic DNA, and find some cousins, too, go to Ancestry.com and click on the DNA tab at the top of the page.  I submitted my DNA sample about a year ago, and got the results back about three weeks later.  What I found was this. My genetic ancestry is 67% Scandinavian, 7% Eastern European, and 26% British Isles. The test was easy and fast, and in less than a year, I already have over 100 "cousin matches. "

So here goes with a revised list of surnames.  If you see a name here that matches one belonging to an ancestor of yours, I would love to hear from you.  Maybe we can share some information that help add another branch or leaf to my ever-growing "family tree."

Atwood
Baskin
Baldridge
Branch
Coddington
Coggins
Fenner
Garrard
Gibson
Marble
Merriweather
Middleton
Motte
Neatherlin/Neatherland
Pettus
Porter
Ragland
Tighlman/Tilman/Tillman
Thornton
Tinsley
Trigleth
Williams

Former Mississippian Stokes McMillan Wins 2012 Mississippi Author Award

A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of reviewing here on this blog One Night of Madness, a book written by Stokes McMillan, a native of Attala County, Mississippi.  It was McMillan's first book, a true account of events that happened in that county, in the racially-charged 1950s.  According to the author, a series of photographs taken by his father who worked for the local family-owned newspaper in Kosciusko, Mississippi, the Star-Herald, was the impetus for the book. McMillan's gripping tale of  murder and mayhem in rural Mississippi is well-researched and written and is spell-binding as the events in the story unfold. The book was published in 2009 and was very well-received, earning McMillan an EDGAR award the next year. A husband, father of three sons, and a grandfather, McMillan is a graduate of Mississippi State University and retired last year from a long engineering career with NASA in Houston, Texas. His plans to write another book are on hold, at least for the present, since he is currently involved in a second career working for a private company in Colorado.

Fast forward to 2012.....

McMillan and his book seem to have made an impact on the literary world, at least in Mississippi, as evidenced by a recent article in Publishers Weekly. The transcript of that article is included below.

"Stokes McMillan's self-published book, One Night of Madness, was named winner of the 2012 Mississippi Author Award.  Inspired by articles written by his journalist father in 1950, McMillan's One Night of Madness is the true story of how local, white citizens in the pre-civil rights South unite to hunt down racist white murderers in a small Mississippi town.  A book with an unusual story gains a unique honor with the win.  According to vice president Lynn Shurden, 'this is the first time that I'm aware a self-published book has son.' Published in paperback through Amazon's CreateSpace in November 2009, the book has sold modestly with around 4,000 copies to date. 'Due to my very busy day job, I have not been actively pushing it so sales have slowed accordingly.  I have, however, signed a contract with a movie producer who is working to make it into a movie,' McMillan said. Past winners of the Mississippi Author Award include Eudora Welty, Charlaine Harris, and Kathryn Stockett.  One Night of Madness previously won a gold medal Independent Publishers Book Award in 2010.  McMillan is represented by Wendy Schmalz of the Wendy Schmalz Agency."

Stokes McMillan and his book are now part of Mississippi's literary history, and his name is among others on a hallowed list of authors who call that state "home." Although he is staying busy with other projects at the moment, I predict we will see more of McMillan's talented story-telling. 

Stay tuned.

It's All In The Name

Our names are important - they belong to us alone and make us unique. At least, that was once the case in a less populated universe.  Interestingly, naming conventions have evolved over centuries based on geography, ethnicity, and cultural and societal norms. In early England, one’s surname was usually a locational name, designating the place where a man held his land or where he already lived. After the Norman conquest of 1066, a few individuals passed on hereditary surnames, but most of the population seemed to exist fairly well without the use of more than one name. As the number of people in a specific geographic area grew, surnames emerged out of labels that distinguished an individual’s occupation or trade, such as baker, cook, cooper, and porter. As the population increased, the use of surnames to denote heredity increased in popularity, and by the14th century, most of the population had acquired a second name.

Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, families used the patronymic naming system to name their male children. In other words, a child’s personal name, consisting most often of a first name and a middle name, was the same as that of an earlier male ancestor. Generally speaking, firstborn sons commonly were named for the child’s father or grandfather. Female children also were named using a similar system, meaning they were named for female ancestors or another close family member. The primary purpose of each naming concept was to convey lineage.  But more often than not, offspring born to more than one sibling bore similar names, and the practice created confusion not only in extended families, but to family history researchers as they attempted decades later to develop a family tree. By the turn of the nineteenth century, most American families had discarded these naming conventions, although the custom remains in place today in a number of locations throughout the world.

When I first attempted to unravel the traditional names given to sons and daughters of my own ancestors a number of years ago, an article published in "The Genealogical Helper Magazine” explaining naming conventions proved helpful to me. According to the article, a family’s oldest son was named for his paternal grandfather.  Second and third sons were named for the maternal grandfather and the father’s paternal grandfather, respectively. A fourth son was named for his mother’s paternal grandfather, a fifth son was named for his father’s maternal grandfather, and a sixth son was named for his mother’s maternal grandfather. Daughters were named in a similar fashion, with the first daughter born named for her maternal grandmother and the second daughter named for her paternal grandmother. A third daughter born to the family was named for her mother’s maternal grandmother, and fourth and fifth daughters were named for the mother’s paternal grandmother and the father’s paternal grandmother, respectively.  If a sixth daughter was born to the couple, her name was predetermined to be the name of her father’s maternal grandmother. The entire concept invited duplicity of names and general confusion.

As strange as the convention may seem to us today, it was customary, also, to name the next daughter or son born within a second marriage for the deceased husband or wife. If a father died before a male child was born, the infant was named for his deceased father.  Similarly, if a mother died in childbirth and the child was a girl, the father named his infant daughter for his deceased wife.

Although history tells us that our personal names evolved for the simple purpose of establishing family lineage or for identifying heredity, names have become vital links needed to function in today’s social and economic settings. But our names are much more.....they link us to our families, past and present, and they tie us to future generations to come.  As the saying goes, “It’s all in the name.”

The Pee Dee River Colony in SC

This post was first published on my original blog, Attala County Memories, on September 30, 2008. 

Pee Dee River Valley (SC)

Many who settled in the north central area of the Mississippi Territory and later migrated, sometimes en masse, to the counties formed there after statehood from Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Virginia. came from South Carolina. It is a well-known bit of history that many of those who settled in Attala County, Mississippi and in the surrounding area came there from the Pee Dee River in South Carolina. This area is sometimes called "the low country" or the coastal area because of its proximity to the marshlands of South Carolina.

Recently, while reading a book entitled "Black Indians, A Hidden Heritage,"written by William Loren Katz, I found some interesting information about the Pee Dee River area. According to Katz, the story of the Pee Dee River area is quite unique, and he calls it "the first foreign colony on U. S. soil." It seems that Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon, a wealthy Spanish official who lived in Santo Domingo on Hispaniola, founded a colony in the area in June 1526. The settlement, Katz says, was founded "six decades before Roanoke Island, eight decades before Jamestown, and almost a century before the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock."

Katz believes that De Ayllon's effort was perhaps overlooked for two reasons: first, because most historians prefer to believe that life in the new world actually began when Anglo-Saxons who were British citizens and spoke English arrived; secondly, Ayllon's settlement suffered a tragic fate, including death, disease, and a slave revolt. Although the settlement"failed" in Ayllon's eyes, the inhabitants who survived these tragedies were reborn as a different people in the woods to which they escaped, and according to Katz, they were "not considered a part of the white U. S. heritage."

The two explorers sent to the New World were Captain Francisco Gordillo, who was charged with locating a suitable landing site and with building friendly relationships with the native inhabitants or local tribesmen, and a slavehunter, Pedro de Quexos. Their efforts during the initial landing included capturing seventy Native Americans, free men and women, and taking them to Santo Domingo to serve as slaves. De Ayllon was not pleased and with the assistance of Diego Columbus, "the Indians were declared free and ordered returned." Spanish records fail to show whether the order was actually carried out. Sometime later, after his explorers landed on the wrong coast and had to return to Santo Domingo, Ayllon formed another crew and sailed with other Spanish citizens who were his followers and settled near a "great river...probably the Pee Dee."

Sailing from Puerto de la Plata were a total of "six vessels carrying five hundred Spanish men and women, one hundred enslaved Africans, six or seven dozen horses, and physicians, sailors, and Dominican priests." As the ships arrived, the Native Americans who lived in the area took to the woods to escape the newly-arrived settlers. The Spanish colonists had difficulty coping with the climate, growing the food they needed, and adverse living conditions quickly caused uprisings within the colony. The discord that resulted caused many of the Africans to flee into the woods and live with the Native Americans. De Ayllon became ill and died, but he had named his nephew, John Ramirez to succeed him after death.

And thus the Pee Dee Colony, or "San Miguel de Gualdape" grew to be an amalgamation of people, Native Americans, Africans, and those who spoke Spanish as their native language.

Genealogy and Adoption

Last year, over 120,000 adoptions occurred in this country, and according to statistics, approximately five million of all U.S. residents are adopted. Of course, this number does not include tens of thousands of other children who have been living without the benefit of adoption in foster care or with close relatives or family friends. Contemporary adoptions, often in concept, seem to be an accepted part of today’s culture. They are celebrated by families and friends with the same fervor and happiness that surrounds the birth of any new baby. 

But this fairly new attitude towards adoption in general was not a societal norm in years past. As those of us who are older can attest, adoptions occurring during our generation, as well as those before, were more likely to be cloaked in mystery, surrounded with silence, whispered about in secret, and sometimes hidden from others, even from the adopted child. Speaking from the standpoint of a family history researcher, this practice, along with few or no available records documenting so-called adoptions, an otherwise uneventful family research event can come to a screeching halt. 

 How to proceed successfully with genealogy research depends on any number of factors, such as the existence of oral history that discusses the adoption, handwritten information, including entries made in a family Bible, personal diaries, or names and details found in wills. But the unavailability of many of these records often causes the researcher to hit what is known in genealogy circles as the proverbial brick wall. More often than not, guardianships and adoptions during the last two centuries resulted when one or both parents died, often from disease, illness, accident, or sometimes war. And in countless situations, other family members may have assumed care of an orphaned child, even changing the child’s surname, with or without the benefit of a legal document. Other adoptions occurred as a result of various societal issues, such as unplanned or unwanted pregnancies, child abandonment, addiction, or incarceration. In these situations, child welfare or other public agencies may have been involved, and laws in place at the time dictated that discretion be used to ensure confidentiality and to protect the identity of the people involved. 

The resulting information, or lack thereof, has created major problems for adoptees, their descendants, and family researchers alike in answering questions about ancestry. If a child was adopted from a children’s home or orphanage, depending on the type of facility, the year, and the state, some records may be available to the researcher. But depending on when, where, and how the adoption actually occurred, particularly if the process was a "closed" adoption, legal assistance may be needed to determine the existence of records and to help obtain copies, if they are indeed releasable. If the surname of the adopted child at birth was the same as that of the adoptive parents, the fact that an actual adoption occurred may be less obvious to the researcher. In this particular situation, oral history and the possible comparison of census records that list names of family members in several households, may be the only available sources of information. 

Without a doubt, connection to family is a vital part of our lives. And the search for our ancestors most often results from our need to be part of a the larger universe, to know more about who we are and from whence we came, and to understand how we fit into a bigger picture. With the concept of open adoptions, maybe it will be easier in the future for those who have been adopted and family researchers alike to obtain parents’ names and relevant family information. 

According to Judith and Martin Land in Adoption Detective: The Adopted Child," secrecy and lack of disclosure in adoptions can result in what has been referred to as "genealogical bewilderment." In their book, published in 2011, the authors point out that discovery of genealogical roots can be a pathway to understanding an individual’s true inner being and the potential source of psychological grounding.  Although the reference is specifically directed to adoptees who are searching for birth parents, the same premise is true for those of us who are not adopted and who search for ancestors from generations past about whom we may know nothing at all.

Crossing the Color Line

Last month, I received a release from ancestry.com. As a subscriber, I often receive electronic copies of the company’s press releases. But this particular release was different.  It announced research that had been completed by some of the best genealogists and family researchers in the field about a man named John Punch and the descendants of the man’s son, John Bunch. (No, the first letter of these surnames is not a typo, but is rather an example of how the spelling of names often changed phonetically in a time when standardized spelling was non-existent.) The Bunch family story spans multiple centuries and is a most fascinating one. This press release was even more significant, because it announced the discovery that John Punch was likely the first slave in America.  Even more significant was the finding that President Obama may be descended from John Punch through his deceased mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. According to the well-researched and documented Bunch family history, John Punch, a black man, was an indentured servant in early Virginia.  As punishment  for running away, the landowner to whom he was indentured enslaved him for life. According to research findings, John Punch’s son, John Bunch, a mulatto male born to an unnamed free white female, became the progenitor of the Bunch family in America. Although his father was a slave, law in effect in Virginia at the time of John Bunch’s birth dictated that he could live his life as a free man because his mother was free. The rest of the story traces the lineage of John Bunch and his family from Virginia into North Carolina and continues as descendants move south and westward, where they would eventually settle throughout several states. A link is provided here to read an earlier blog post about the Bunch family in Mississippi.

If you have watched episodes of NBC’s “Who Do You Think You Are?” and PBS’s “Finding Your Roots” hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the discovery of a  family’s biracial roots is not a new one. But what is new is the fact that we seem to be more accepting of what has become a fairly common and sometimes public discovery. Although it was a shameful and often hidden part of a family’s history and our country’s past,  numbers of biracial children resulted from illegal interracial unions that occurred during slavery. But open relationships between the races and interracial marriages did exist and were not uncommon in early America until certain laws were enacted during the late 1700s and early 1800s.  In my own family research, I found  that one of my paternal lines descends from the Gibson family of North and South Carolina. Interestingly, Port Gibson, Mississippi, and Fort Gibson, originally in Indian Territory, are named for members of this family.  But the most interesting part of my research was finding that Gideon Gibson, the patriarch of the Gibson family in South Carolina, by most accounts, was descended from an interracial union that also occurred in Colonial Virginia.  

DNA testing and the popularity of genealogy research are changing the complexion of family history findings and are showing us as a nation that we were never neatly divided into black and white. Contributing to the availability of information about the construction of race in this country are a number of books written about American families that have biracial roots.  One of the best known of these books, entitled Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware, was written by Paul Heinegg, a respected lay genealogist and historian. With a poignant foreword by Ira Berlin, the book includes a lengthy list of surnames with known biracial beginnings and discusses the lineages of the families named. A more recent book is The Invisible Line, written by Daniel J. Sharfstein, a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School. Published in 2011, Sharfstein’s deeply researched historical narrative addresses the complexity of race in early America as it chronicles the lives of three American families named Wall, Spencer, and Gibson, who did, in fact, cross the color line.

At  a time when ethnicity and racial identity often cause wars and domestic discord, maybe we should take a closer look at  the congregation of individuals who helped form our country. We have always been a nation of immigrants, but history tells us the colors of our people have not always been well-defined.  If we know who we are and where we have been, knowing where we are going is made easier.