East Tennessee Slaves Named in the 1860 Census

The 1860 U.S. Federal Census - Slave Schedules (Schedule 2) for Washington County, Tennessee contains 953 slave entries, including age, gender, race (black or mulatto), owner and location. It appears that many of these slaves were included by name (given name and master's surname) in the households of their owners on the regular census form. Those entries were then crossed out and notations added moving the entries to the Slave Schedules. 

1860 Census listing for Thomas C. McAdams, Washington County, TN

1860 Slave Schedule for Thomas McAdams, Washington County, TN

For example, the household of Thomas C. McAdams (Household 1144, Campbells District, Washington, TN) includes Sarah McAdams, aged 24, and Martha E. McAdams, aged 3.  Both were listed as black and born in Tennessee.  They were then crossed out and a faint notation made "Sched 2" which refers to the Slave Schedule, which does show McAdams with two female slaves, one aged 24 and one aged 3.  


Though I've known about the McAdams slave listing for sometime, I only recently noticed similar entries on other pages throughout the 1860 Washington County Census.  I planned to record those entries on my Slaves referenced in family research page at WeRelate.org until I realized that most, if not all, the slaveowners listed on the Slave Schedule near to McAdams also had their slaves enumerated in the Census and the numbers were far beyond my list capacity.  


If the double listings occurred throughout the county census a more detailed study should be done.  So, a new item for my "To Do" list.  I will examine the census and Slave Schedule carefully to see how many slaves were listed in both.  It would be interesting to compare the names in the 1860 Census to those in the 1870 Census following Emancipation.  Not sure I'll get to that in the near future, but I should be able to do a preliminary survey this summer.  

Amanuensis Monday: McAdams Family Record, page 1

Thanks to John at Transylvanian Dutch for providing a framework (and nudge) for transcribing family records, news clippings and other treasures.

This is the first page of the McAdams Family Record I scanned and posted separately.  It details the family of Thomas C. McAdams (1806-1881) of Washington County, Tennessee.  Better minds than mine can decide if it's an original (derivative), secondary or full of baloney source.  And before anyone asks, yes they really did have 11 children - all boys.

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Births:



(Maternal)       (John Stephenson,     May 27, 1779
                     (Elizabeth Cloyd,      October 15, 1781

(Paternal)       (Hugh McAdams       August 22, 1772
                     (Isabella Bryson         September 14, 1776

(Parents)         (Thomas C. McAdams, Sr.     December 5, 1806
                     (Cynthia Stephenson,       April 30, 1817

                     Matthew J. McAdams,     August 15, 1835
                     John C. McAdams,      December 30, 1836
                     Hugh M. McAdams,     November, 30, 1838
                     David B. McAdams,     February 3, 1841
                     William P. McAdams,     March 14, 1843
                     Samuel B. McAdams, Jr.     February 3, 1845
                     R. N. McAdams,          December 3, 1847
                     Jas. H. McAdams,        February 14, 1850
                     Chalmers S. McAdams,     February 16, 1853
                     Thomas C. McAdams, Jr.     August 29, 1855
                     C. A. H. McAdams,     April 5, 1858


Deaths:


Hugh M. McAdams,              July 14, 1840
William P. McAdams,            April 11, 1844
Matthew J. McAdams,           June 19, 1863
David B. McAdams,              January 21, 1871
Chalmers S. McAdams,         December 14, 1873
Cynthia S. McAdams,            October 20, 1874
Thomas C. McAdams, Sr.      January 1, 1881
Ralph E. McAdams,               June 16, 1882
    "     "        "         born     Jan 15, 1882


(This information copied from family record by R. N. McAdams, July 21st, 1878).

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It is clear the last three deaths listed were added after R.N. McAdams copied the record from his father's family record.

A New Recipe

We define ourselves by race, by ethnicity, and some of us, by our religions. I am far more interested in tracing my religious lineage than the others. My son is getting married soon, and joyful as that is, the planning has prompted more reflection on the role of faith and church in our lives and the choices we've made. I chose to change churches after I married, as my parents did before me.

John Newmark wrote about about religion and genealogy recently at TransylvanianDutch. I agree with him. I am wholly Roman Catholic (holy? alas, no); wholly American. I am not the sum of an ancestral equation or even sprouted from ancestral roots. Way too hybrid for that. If there is a metaphor, perhaps its a recipe - something new (and yummy) created out of a cup of this, a pinch of that. I may have to change the name of this blog... Nolichucky Soup?

That said, my passion is researching those ingredients - or roots - or equations. Only in adulthood did I match Carpatho-Rusyn, Scots-Irish, English and German ethnic labels to my Greek Catholic, Presbyterian and Baptist grandparents and ancestors. (I suppose the Germans were Lutherans at one point, but by the time they landed in Tennessee they were somewhat casual Baptists.) Many of the family stories revolved around their churches. Certainly their lives did. We visited their churches as regularly as we visited their homes.

My husband's family is of English and German ancestry, centuries removed from their immigrant forebearers. They might label themselves as Marylander or western rancher, if pressed. The German heritage is still mentioned over beer. But they, too, define themselves by their church.

Perhaps the religious labels are so strong because each of us came from "mixed" marriages of Catholic and Protestant; marriages not universally celebrated by our parents' families. Perhaps it's because our families did have real roots in their respective Churches. My Baptists have been Baptists since the Great Awakening, preaching and building churches as they moved with the frontier - defining their communities by their churches. My husband's Roman Catholics maintained their faith despite more than a century of oppression in this country and full-blown war in England before that. My Greek Catholics clung to their traditional church when they came to this country, fighting numerous court cases against the Roman Catholic Church (and each other) to worship with their married clergy in this country, as they had in Europe. They finally broke their ties to Rome in 1938. Each family devoted as much, if not more, energy to their religious identity as to their political, racial or ethnic identity.

So, when I research our families, I study their churches as much as any other part of their lives. I get my thrills from the itinerant preacher and missionary priest, the merchant who sent his nephews and nieces to Catholic schools, a long ago Salem witch (alleged) or a hint of Jewish ancestry.

Further reading:  Two brief articles outlining the separation of some Carpatho-Rusyn immigrant churches in America from Rome can be found below.  For far more detail see John Slivka's 1978 work Historical mirror, sources of the Rusin and Hungarian Greek Rite Catholics in the United States of America, 1884-1963.

http://quotes.orthodoxwiki.org/Orestes_(Chornock)

http://www.tccweb.org/bridgeport.htm

Teeter Tottering through Genealogy

I've been thinking about labels and about how we choose to identify ourselves.  I read a mesmerizing series in the LA Times by Mike Mozingo about racial and family identity.  Luckie Daniels prods me to examine my own attitudes about almost everything, but especially about self identity at Our Georgia Roots.  My own research has come up against a racial divide with significant evidence of mixed race ancestry provoking disturbing responses from other researchers.  And Martin Hollick sparked more thought with his post The Pandora's Box of Genealogy.  What do we do with information that troubles or disturbs other members of our family?  Do we become keepers of secrets as well as of records?


How we define ourselves changes with each generation.  In my family, ethnicity has been a complex issue. My father's family came from an area where borders and rulers changed so frequently during the 20th century that it seems tidal.  Political turmoil dictated that family ties were interrupted for decades, languages and the role of the church were forcibly changed.   Meanwhile, first and second generation Americans and Canadians defined an ethnicity as Carpatho-Rusyn that had been referred to as Lemko, Ruthenian, Rusnak or Rusin by earlier generations.  Discussions of the ethnicity can become heated.  Are my cousins today in Slovakia or the Ukraine Carpatho-Rusyn?  Many here say yes.  Many of them said no.  And it seems to me they have the right to say just that.  Their lives were transformed by the fall of the Soviet Union and are being redefined by their developing nations and nationalities.  If they chose to focus on that and not on their grandparents and great-grandparents lives, so be it.  Their own children and grandchildren may feel differently.  But surely they have the right to define themselves.  


Can adoptees choose which family they belong genealogically?  I think so.  Genealogy is far more than genetics.  Not all adoptees long for information about their families of origin.  One adoptee I know has a pat but pointed response to those questioning why he doesn't seek out his biological parents, "Why look for trouble?  Healthy families don't give their children away."  Harsh, perhaps, but heartfelt.  Is he hiding his adoption?  Not at all.  It's out there for all the world to see.  Would I look?  Absolutely, but it's not my life.  


How do we research people or issues that cause pain to the living?  I may be darkly fascinated by the raging alcoholics littering our family trees but not everyone is.  For some the stories are reminders of their own lives and not something they want to reflect on or share.  And they shouldn't have to.  Do I record the stories?  Yes, and I share them with anyone who expresses interest.  Do I publish them?  No.


Recent DNA testing has provided some unexpected results and I am torn as to how to proceed.  As a woman, none of the tests are mine.  I am dependent on others.  One result in a family I am researching has a haplogroup B which is clearly African, something that supports several 19th c. census listings of mulatto.  Rather than provoking discussion or interest, the topic has simply disappeared.  I haven't forced the issue, and maybe everyone else is doing the same, but I wonder how far should one push others to examine topics they may not want to examine?  Another test for surname group showed no matches to that surname, but several matches to another surname.  The cousin tested has stopped responding to my emails.  I want to explain that it's great information, that it could indicate a name change, an adoption just as easily as an illegitimate or adulterous birth.  Whatever happened may have been generations ago.  But it could have happened very recently.  He's not interested in pursuing any further testing.  And, reluctantly, I think I have to move away from this project.   


In all cases I am recording the information.  But at this point I am not sharing it unless it is clear the person is ready to hear what I have to share.  It's a balancing act, weighing respect for the living with my research into the past - and I don't always feel well-balanced.

Follow Friday: More than name studies

Two of my favorite websites share name study research done by meticulous researchers. Each is far, far more than a name study. Both include hundreds (or thousands) of abstracted deeds and legal records sorted by location that provide information about neighbors and extended family links. Both websites can be easily searched using Google or the find feature on your web browser.

Mary Ann Dobson, aka The Genealogy Bug, has posted her Duncan Research Files, which include a massive collection of abstracted records she has collected over decades of Duncan family research. Included is a 1991 revision of her book Some Duncan Families of Eastern Tennessee before 1800. For those researching in East Tennessee it's one-stop shopping - especially since there were several large Duncan families living there. Their marriages, land records and estates link them to dozens, if not hundreds of other families. Her notes, sources and website organization are superb and her work covers far more than East Tennessee. She has Duncan files for every state except Hawaii. Wonderful, generous work.

Carl Lawson, administrator for the Lawson Surname DNA Project, has organized his Lawson research into beautifully laid out timelines for 45 Virginia counties, emphasizing Colonial and Early Federal records. The Lancaster County Timeline, for example, includes hundreds of abstracts from 1648-1847. A quick search yields 8 references to Merediths and 7 references to Conways. There are also timelines for three North Carolina counties. Lawson, too, gives clear source information. I've found the timeline presentation so useful that I've adopted his timeline organization for my personal research log adding columns for source information and notes. Another generous researcher.

Hats off to Dobson and Lawson for sharing the fruits of their labors.