Tag: North

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.