Virginia – A Deck of Ancestors

52W Mark V – Week 17: Louisa Thomas

My 4xG Grandmother, Louisa Thomas, had a short and difficult life. While she passed away when she was 35, she had married three times and had partaken in one of the great westward treks of American history, the Mormon Migration.

While by every account Louisa was possibly born on May 28, 1811, I have had a great amount of difficulty in determining where her birth occurred. I have not found any primary records on the matter. The few sources I have are secondary or tertiary in nature.

When I first learned about Louisa in the mid-1990s, what little I found indicated that she was born in “Berks” or “Berks County” Virginia. However, there is no such place.

There’s a Berks County in Pennsylvania, not Virginia. There is a Burkeley County in West Virginia, in the panhandle bordering Maryland, which would have been part of Virginia when Louisa was born. There was also a Berkley, Norfolk County, Virginia, but the town was annexed by the City of Norfolk and the Norfolk County no longer exists. There is also Burke, Virginia, an unincorporated community in Fairfax County, about 20 kilometers southwest of Washington, D.C. The death certificate for Charlotte Liggett, Louisa’s daughter, says Louisa was born in West Virginia. The entry for Louisa’s death in the Winter Quarters Sexton’s Records says she was born in Maryland.

Considering all this information together, it seems that Louisa was most likely born in Burkeley County, then part of Virginia, close to the border with Maryland.

Louisa’s parents are also largely a matter of speculation and were said to be James Thomas and Elizabeth Stevens. The one source I had that named Louisa and her parents was a family history of Louisa’s second husband, the Liggetts, which I first consulted in 2013. The current version of that document no longer mentions Louisa or her parents. However, after writing this paragraph, I came across a history of Scioto Township in Delaware County, Ohio, which includes mention of James and Elizabeth. Unfortunately, the book does not indicate the source of this information.

FamilySearch had a James Thomas named as Louisa’s father, but named a Catherine Simmons as her mother. There were no sources for this connection, so I edited Louisa’s entry on FamilySearch by disconnecting her from those individuals. As it stands, I have no actual knowledge of who Louisa’s parents might have been.

The fog of history continues with Louisa’s first marriage. She is said to have married Lazarus Absolom Beakley in 1835, when Louisa was 24. However, I cannot find any record of this marriage or of Lazarus himself, who is said to have been born in 1811 and died before 1837. One secondary source even suggested that his name was only Absalem, with no Lazarus as a first name. Lazarus and Louisa supposedly had a son. Not only can I not find a record of this child, I can’t even find anything indicating what his first name might have been. Most of what I have about this marriage comes from a memoire by George Burgess, who was born 50 years after Louisa died, so I do not consider it particularly reliable.

At most, the registration of Louisa’s marriage to her second husband, Conrad Liggett (my Great x4 Grandfather) names her as “Louisa Beakley”. For the longest time, I had assumed this indicated a previous marriage to a man with the surname “Beakley.” However, that was based upon the belief that Louisa’s surname at birth was Thomas. The record of her marriage to Conrad does not indicate she was a widow.

The registration of marriage for Conrad Liggett and Louisa Beakley. There is no indication that Louisa was previously married or whether Beakley was her surname at birth or that of a previous husband.

What if there was no Lazarus Absolom Beakley (given that I can find no record of him) and Louisa’s surname at birth was Beakley? I’ve been unable to find any record or mention of a Louisa Beakley, so that thought remains largely theoretical.

The real paper trail for Louisa begins with her marriage to her second husband, Conrad, as reproduced above. It’s the first tangible record indicating that Louisa even existed. Louisa and Conrad married on February 28, 1837 in Delaware County, Ohio. They had one child together, my Great x3 grandmother, Charlotte Liggett. It was a short marriage, as Conrad died on April 21, 1838, when Charlotte was only five months old.

With Conrad’s death, Louisa had to find work to support her family. As a result, Conrad’s parents, James Liggett and Susana Carr, took Charlotte in, possibly along with her half brother through her mother’s marriage to Lazarus Beakley. It is not clear if Charlotte’s grandparents had full-time custody and care of her or whether they only looked after her during Louisa’s working hours. Based upon the second-hand descriptions of their custody I’ve read, it appears that James and Susana had full-time care of Charlotte.

Three years and one week after Conrad died, Louisa married for a third (second?) time, to Aaron W. Cook. Aaron’s birth information I take with a grain of salt, because it’s exactly the same as what I have for Lazarus, and with an equally flimsy evidentiary basis. What is definitely far more certain is that Louisa married Aaron on April 28, 1841 in Delaware County, since there is a registration for their union in the Delaware County records.

The registration of Louisa and Aaron’s marriage.

Here is where the story becomes (allegedly) more dramatic. According to George Burgess’s memoire, Louisa and Aaron married in secret. Around the same time, the couple joined the relatively new Mormon church.

Shortly after the marriage, Louisa asked James and Susanna if she could take Charlotte home with her for a week or a weekend. However, Louisa never returned Charlotte to her paternal grandparents. In George’s words, they “ran off” with Charlotte and joined the Mormons in their westward migration. However, it seems to me that Louisa was well within her rights to keep her daughter with her, since her in-laws never had any form of legal custody of Charlotte.

George said that Louisa had three daughters with Aaron when they were living in Nauvoo, plus another child about 12 miles out of Nauvoo after the Mormons were driven out of there. I have no records of these children, so I have not included them in my database. Louisa and her youngest child died during childbirth. Allegedly – again! – because I cannot find any mention of a child in the record of Louisa’s death or that Louisa had died in childbirth.

After leaving Ohio, Louisa and Aaron apparently settled in Nauvoo, Illinois, where the Mormons had established a settlement and built a temple. However, in 1846, a few years after the death of church founder Joseph Smith, the Mormons were driven out of Nauvoo. This motivated the Mormons to migrate to what is now Utah, which was then still part of Mexico.

Because of the rushed departure from Nauvoo late in the year, the Mormons set up camp known as Winter Quarters, near present day Omaha, Nebraska. Conditions were rough and many of the trekkers died there. Depending on the source, anywhere from 350 to 2,000 Latter Day Saints perished at Winter Quarters. Louisa was one of those who died there.

An entry in the Winter Quarters Sexton’s Records shows that Louisa died on on November 16, 1846, about 19 miles up the river from Winters Quarters. Charlotte was only nine at the time.

“Loisa Cook. 36 years, 0 months, 0 days. Wife of Aaron W. Cook [her third husband]. Died 19 miles up the River from Winter quarters Bur[i]ed at the same place. [Died] Nov 16 1846. [Disease] chills fever. [Born] State of Mareland May 1811.”

While Louisa only lived for 35 years, I only have documentation I have for her only coves the last ten years of her lifen. What little there is shows short marriages, family strife, religious persecution, and an early death. Despite what I have found, Louisa remains a solid brick wall ancestor.

52W Mark V – Week 7: Nancy Ann Morehead

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 IV – Week 33: Card B7 Charlotte Elizabeth Liggett

I wrote quite a lot about my Gx3 Grandmother, Charlotte Liggett, when I first participated in the 52 Ancestors Challenge in 2022, particularly in Week 28, Characters. Over the last few years, particularly in the last few months, I’ve learned a lot more about Charlotte, and have managed to clarify a lot of things since I last wrote about her.

Charlotte was born on October 6, 1837 in Ostrander, Delaware County, Ohio; however, by a few accounts she was born on October 2, 1837, in Dover Township, Union County, Ohio. While in different counties, these communities are five kilometers apart. My speculation is that it may be that one set of information relates to Charlotte’s birth and the other set relates to her baptism or christening. Given the Liggett family roots and connections to Ostrander, I believe that is more likely the correct location.

While Charlotte was born in Ohio, both sets of her grandparents were from Virginia, albeit the part of the state that is now West Virginia. The Liggetts were in Virginia at least by the mid-1700s. Charlotte’s Gx2 Grandfather, James Alexander Liggett, likely came from Londonderry, Ireland and settled in Pennsylvania around 1740, before relocating to Virginia. Charlotte’s maternal line was also likely in Virginia by 1750, if not by 1800, but originated in Württemberg and Switzerland.

Charlotte was the only child of Conrad Liggett (1815-1838) and Louisa Thomas (1811-1846). Charlotte was eight months old when her father Conrad died. When I first wrote about Charlotte in 2022, I was uncertain as to where Conrad had died. After more research, I am now pretty certain that Conrad died in Ostrander and that it was highly unlikely he ever joined the Mormon church.

With the death of her husband, Louisa had to find work to support the family. As a result, Charlotte’s grandparents, James Liggett and Susana Carr took her in, possibly along with her half brother (Louisa’s son from a previous marriage).

Most of the information I have regarding Charlotte’s life after her father died is from secondary sources, and the accounts vary somewhat. Thus, it is not clear if Charlotte’s grandparents had full-time custody and care of her or whether they only looked after her during Louisa’s working hours. Based upon the descriptions of their custody, it appears that James and Susana had full-time care of Charlotte.

When Charlotte was three, her mother Louisa remarried, to Aaron W. Cook. (This was only six months after Charlotte’s husband to be, William Burgess, married his first wife!) According to her grandson in his memoire, George Burgess, this marriage occurred in secrecy. At the same time, the couple joined the Mormon church.

Shortly after the marriage, Louisa asked her in-laws if she could take Charlotte home with her for a week or a weekend. However, Louisa never returned Charlotte to her grandparents. In George’s words, they “ran off” with Charlotte and joined the Mormons in their westward migration. George said that Louisa had three daughters with Aaron when they were living in Nauvoo, plus another child about 12 miles out of Nauvoo after the Mormons were driven out of there. The child and Louisa died during childbirth. Charlotte was nine years old at the time. Aaron continued to Utah with Charlotte and raised her – if you can call “marrying her off to a Mormon elder” at age 14 raising a child.

Several of the accounts I have were from or by Charlotte’s non-Mormon relatives and their descendants. Some of these have a clearly anti-Mormon bias. I have several stories of how families shunned and broke off relations with family members who joined the church. However, whatever one might think of the Mormon religion, it seems to me that Louisa was well within her rights to keep her daughter with her and that her in-laws never had any form of legal custody of Charlotte.

The secondary sources indicate that Charlotte’s grandfather had made provisions for her should she ever be found. Apparently, years later her family in Ohio subsequently managed to find Charlotte, who then received her portion of her grandfather’s estate.

The “Mormon elder” I referred to was most likely my Gx3 Grandfather, William Burgess (1822-1904). They married on June 3, 1852. He was 30, she was 14. More accurately, William and Charlotte were “sealed”, a Mormon ritual meant to bind familial relationships for eternity. When he joined with Charlotte, William was still married to his legal wife, Maria Pulsipher.

William and Charlotte’s marriage was short lived, lasting long enough for Charlotte to have one child, my Gx2 Grandfather Horace Burgess. Charlotte left William sometime before September 1857, before she was 20. Most secondary sources suggest William and Charlotte divorced. However, being a polygamous marriage, there was no formal civil registration of the marriage and, therefore, no formal divorce. According to the secondary accounts, Charlotte left William because she could not get along with his first wife, Maria. Other accounts suggest Charlotte became disenchanted with polygamy.

According to my great aunt Fon, Charlotte had her sealing to William annulled in 1890 “after the manifesto and was not sealed to second husband until after her death, as [she had been] told by the bishop she couldn’t be sealed again. This second sealing was her death wish.” Fon’s reference to “the manifesto” is likely the proclamation made by the Latter Day Saints’ President banning polygamy as one of the tenets of the Mormon church.

If Charlotte had become disenchanted with polygamy, it did not last long. On September 7, 1857, Charlotte entered into a polygamous relationship with and was sealed to William Whitehead Taylor, a man ten years her senior. William was already married to a woman, Nannie Standring, who he wed around 1855.

Charlotte and William’s polygamous marriage occurred before the practice was outlawed in Utah by the federal government in the 1860s and banned by the Latter Day Saints in 1890. Even so, William and Charlotte played down the nature of their relationship. For example, in the 1880 census Charlotte was listed as “keeping house” separate from William and his legal wife, Nannie. There was no entry for the box indicating her status as head of house, spouse, or relative of others. Charlotte’s children with William were reported as those of Nannie. However, Charlotte’s surname was reported as “Taylor”.

Nevertheless, the relationship between William Taylor and Charlotte was a durable one, lasting until William’s death in 1907. William Taylor and Charlotte had five children together.

Charlotte died at home in Lehi, Utah on February 20, 1909 after having a stroke. She is buried at the Lehi City Cemetery, alongside William Taylor.

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