Tag: Nancy Ann Morehead

52W Mark V – Week 7: Nancy Ann Morehead

Nancy Ann Morehead
(1779-1843)

If the many online unsourced trees are to believed, my Great x4 Grandmother, Nancy Ann Morehead, is descended from a long line of Scottish lairds, going back to Sir William Muirhead of Lachope, who was knighted by King Richard III.

Which I won’t, without the evidence to back it up.* I barely accept what I have about Nancy’s grandparents, although I know the information’s out there. However, I’m satisfied that I can accept that her parents were Joseph Morehead and Elizabeth Turner.

As I noted a couple of years ago, Nancy and her lineage did not attract my attention as much as other lines of my tree, so I had done very little research on her and her forebears. Nancy’s great grandmother, Martha Taliaferro, piqued my interest until I found out the Taliaferros were of British origin, not Italian as the surname suggested. Well, less Italian as I had imagined, as the family apparently immigrated to England from Venice many centuries ago. Furthermore, as I noted in my earlier post, it’s more likely that I’m not descended from Martha at all.

However, in the two years since I last posted any mention of Nancy, I’ve done some research on her. I haven’t had much success beyond second-hand accounts set out in unsourced or poorly sourced materials. At most, I’ve only managed to discount some of the information I originally had about her.

I do know that the Moreheads were a prominent and wealthy family in American history. Nancy’s nephew was John Motley Morehead (1796 – 1866), 29th Governor of North Carolina. Her first cousin once removed was James Turner Morehead (1797–1854), 12th Governor of Kentucky. Those weren’t the only members of the Moreheads to become politicians. Members of the Morehead family were founders of Union Carbide.

I am also vaguely aware that Nancy’s maternal side of the family were prominent or successful in various fields. Her grandmother, Karenhappuch Norman, was a heroine of the American Revolution, but I have never managed to maintain attention when reading about how she earned that status. What I understand is that she rushed to the aid of her son and others wounded at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1781.

At most, what’s helpful about Karenhappuch’s role in history is that there’s a statue of her in Greensboro at the site of the battle. The plaque on the statue’s pedestal names her daughter, Elizabeth, and son-in-law, Joseph Morehead. Since I know they were Nancy’s parents, this helps identify one generation further back.

Karenhappuch Norman Turner (1719-1807)

None of those individuals interest me at all. Finding famous folk was never a draw for me or why I took up genealogy. The majority of time finding some sort of notable ancestor or famous distant cousin generally bores me. Sometimes it even feels disappointing. Probably the most interesting thing about Karenhappuch is that she’s also a direct ancestor of Muhammed Ali on his mother’s side. There’s one famous person that I will admit it would be cool to be related to. Even then, it was only writing this blog post that caused me to calculate my relationship to Ali – we’re 6th cousins, once removed.

Turning to Nancy herself, she was born on April 17, 1779 in Halifax, Virginia, a few years after the start of the American Revolution and two years before her grandmother’s exploits in Greensboro. Nancy’s father, Joseph, was a well-to-do landowner in Halifax County, Virginia. While I haven’t researched the matter beyond a preliminary sketch, I would absolutely not be surprised to learn that he was a slaveowner.

Nancy was the second-youngest of 13 children born to Joseph and Elizabeth. An interesting thing about Nancy’s parents is that Joseph’s brother, Charles, married Elizabeth’s sister, Mary. So their siblings were also their siblings-in-law.

On December 3, 1795, Nancy married Daniel Thomas, a plantation owner, in Richmond County, North Carolina. That is in the southern part of the state, due south from Halifax County and as far from Virginia as you can get without leaving North Carolina. I have no idea how they met. As well, if I accept the birthdate I have for Nancy, she was 16 when she married Daniel, who was 19 at the time.

Another indicator that the information I have might not be accurate is that Nancy and Daniel were married almost 16 years when they first had children. In the span of four years, from 1811 to 1815, Nancy gave birth to four children. All four were born in Rockingham, North Carolina.

Daniel died in 1830. Sometime shortly afterwards, Nancy and her three eldest children – Joseph, Elizabeth, and Preston – moved to Tipton, Tennessee. It’s not clear whether they moved as a group or at separate times. All three children were in their early 20s and Joseph was married at the time, so it’s unlikely that they followed their mother.

From what little I have, it may be that Joseph moved first and the others followed suit. Joseph bought land that he farmed, although I doubt he was anything less than a wealthy landowner who largely had others – including his slaves – doing the hard labour. In Tipton, Preston married the first of three wives (the latter two were polygamous marriages), Sarah Ann Jane Morehead. When I wrote about Preston last year, I noted that he and Sarah (who went by Jane) were cousins of some kind. I’ve since found that they were first cousins. That meant Nancy was Jane’s aunt and mother-in-law.

Sometime in mid-1835, Joseph and his family moved to Somerville, Mississippi. One or two years later, Joseph returned to Tennessee and persuaded his mother and siblings Betsy and Daniel to join him in Mississippi. Preston remained in Tipton. Nancy lived the rest of her life in Somerville, where she died on November 7, 1843.

Or so it seems. I haven’t found much beyond poorly sourced secondary accounts documenting Nancy’s death and burial. I cannot find any primary sources documenting Nancy’s death. Many online trees say that Nancy died in “Somerville, Kemper, Mississippi”, which is unverified second-hand rubbish. Somerville isn’t anywhere near Kemper county. It is half a state away in Leflore county.

I have been unable to find anything in the census or other civil records showing that Nancy lived or died in Mississippi. I found Joseph Morehead Thomas in the 1840 US census for Kemper county, but the entry did not include anyone in his household who might have been Nancy. I am unable to find anything for Nancy in Leflore County, Mississippi, where Somerville is located.

* I am well aware of the book, The Morehead Family, by John Motley Morehead III, grandson of the North Carolina governor, self-published in 1921. It’s typical of those old family histories you can find on the Internet Archive and elsewhere – very detailed, but very little indication of the sources the author relied upon. For generations further back than his grandparents and grandparents, there’s a lot of speculation and conjecture, as well as placing a great deal of weight on thin evidence. I don’t find it as reliable or authoritative as others suggest it might be.

52W Mark II – Week 8: I Can Identify

Can we identify James Turner’s parents?

Heck, are we even related to James Turner?

There are branches of my family tree in which I am keenly interested, and others that just haven’t caught my fancy. Maybe it is because I identify with some branches more than others. I suspect many genealogists might be like that. However, in recent years I now have someone to prompt me about those ignored or forgotten family lines.

Like me, my eldest son developed an interest in genealogy when he was about eight years old – without any prompting by me, I’d like to add. He has been invaluable to my own research, as he often asks very good questions that set me off on a new line of inquiry. In addition, there are times he’ll look through our pedigree on my database and ask about ancestors who I literally haven’t looked at in thirty years. It always results in the two of us working together to learn more about that individual and their branch of the family. Perhaps the one he has been most interested in was his great x8 grandfather on his mother’s side of the family, Francis Lecain. He is fascinated with the fact he has an ancestor from the Bailiwick of Jersey.

One branch that my son asked about very recently, who I haven’t thought much about since my early days of research, is that of my great x4 grandmother, Nancy Ann Morehead. She is the mother of Preston Thomas, someone who I actually have spent quite a bit of time researching. However, I have little more on Nancy other than her date of birth (April 18, 1779, in Virginia) and date of marriage (December 3, 1795, in Richmond County, North Carolina, to Daniel Thomas). Pretty much the only “research” I’ve done in relation to Nancy was through Ancestral File (am I dating myself?) in 1995 and 1997. Needless to say, that was well before the development of the Genealogical Proof Standard. Other than that, my research notes show that I looked her up on FamilySearch in 2014, almost 10 years ago.

Looking at Nancy’s paternal line, I see that the last time I touched it was when I transitioned from using Cumberland Family Tree to RootsMagic in 2008. That information also probably dates back to 1995 and Ancestral File.

However, I have taken occasional passing interest in Nancy’s maternal line, although not too seriously and without any real research into it in decades. What has caught my eye about that branch was the surname of the person said to be Nancy’s great grandmother, Martha Taliaferro, who was also from Virginia. Martha was the mother of James Turner, Nancy’s maternal grandfather. I think what piqued my interest was that “Taliaferro” looks Italian to me. In later years, I learned that the Virginia Taliaferros were of British origin, although they most likely came to England from Venice centuries before. I also learned, either through Who Do You Think You Are or Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was that the name is actually pronounced “tolliver”.

About two weeks ago my son asked if we could do some genealogy together. The request usually results in him going through our pedigree and choosing someone who catches his eye. That day it was Martha Taliaferro. If I recall correctly, we ended up trying to find better information about her parentage. However, as I often do, I remind him that we need to ensure that the links between our generation and that of the person we’re researching are sufficiently proven. That’s when the loose threads began to unravel.

Looking at the information I had and the information we found, it seemed that Martha and her husband Thomas Turner could not be James’s parents. First of all, the most likely date of their marriage is inconsistent with the likely date of Jame’s birth.

Most of the sources linking James to this couple are centuries old compendiums with little or no notation of the sources. More recent research I found indicates that this connection is likely incorrect. Among other things, Thomas Turner’s will makes no mention of a son named James, nor do there appear to be other records, such as deeds, suggesting any connection. As one person posted on an Ancestry message board, “It is unfortunate so many people continue to ‘input’ this erroneous family relationship into their ‘databases’. All they have to do is a little bit of actual research to discover this simple fact.“

While it remains to be confirmed with more certainty, James’s parents might be Edward Turner Sr. and Sarah Meredith, or Edward Turner and Sarah Palmer.

I haven’t done any further or significant research into this conundrum. Before doing so, I first want to prove the lineage I have from Nancy to James. I would then dig into James’s parentage. I have created a research log for this problem, complete with some of the possible sources I have identified. However, I have only rated it as being of middling urgency. Until then, the mystery remains.