Monday Is for Mothers: Polly Williams (? - ?)

This paternal fourth great grandmother is one of my brick walls. The only time we've found her name is this record of her marriage to Barnabeth Herod in 1796 in from Davidson County, Tennessee.*

[Year: 1789 - 1971: Marriages. Ancestry.com. Tennessee, Marriage Records, 1780-2002 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008. Original data: Tennessee State Marriages, 1780-2002. Nashville, TN, USA: Tennessee State Library and Archives. Microfilm.]

Here's the line of descent from Polly to me:

[Ancestry.com]

Of course it's entirely possible that Polly Williams isn't my ancestor--since we don't know her death date, Barnabas could be the son of a second wife of Barnabeth's whose name isn't recorded at all.



*Davidson County is centered on Nashville. Here's an 1795 map of Tennessee with the location of Nashville highlighted:

[Map of The Tennassee [sic] State. - David Rumsey Historical Map Collection]

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: James Harrod (About 1738 - About 1781) Early Settler in Tennessee

James Harrod* was born in the Colony of Virginia, possibly in Stafford County, around 1738 and married a young woman named Elizabeth "Betsey"** in neighboring Orange County in about 1759. By 1760 the couple had moved to North Carolina where their five known children were born, including their oldest son Barnabeth (or Barnett), one of my paternal fourth great grandfathers, in 1762.

[Carolina And Georgia. (to accompany) Atlas Minimus or a New Set of Pocket Maps of the Several Empires, Kingdoms and States of the Known World, with Historical Extracts relative to each. Drawn and Engraved by J. Gibson from the Best Authorities, Revis'd, Corrected and Improv'd by Eman: Bowen Geographer to His Majesty. 1758. Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection]

It appears that James and his family traveled west in the early 1770s to settle on land first leased then purchased from the Cherokee Indians along the Watauga River in what is now Tennessee*** and in 1779 he joined a group of 250 (mostly men and boys****) led by James Robertson moving farther west to French Lick on the Cumberland River.

On May 1, 1780, the new settlers signed a document known as the Cumberland Compact which set up "a simple constitutional government." James Harrod's name is found on the 20th line of the first column of the second page.

[Source: CumberlandPioneers.com]

[Jas Harrod signature]

Their settlement, first called Bluff Station and later known as Fort Nashborough (now Nashville), covered about two acres enclosed by a stockade and protected the newcomers from attacks by the Cherokee who rightly viewed their arrival as threatening their traditional hunting grounds.

[Postcard showing first reconstruction (on a smaller scale) of the original fort funded by the Daughters of the American Revolution in the 1930s. Source: Boston Public Library-Tichnor Brothers Postcard Collection]

I haven't been able to discover the date of James Hariod's death--but it's believed that he was killed by Indians during one of their attacks. By 1783 his widow Betsey had married Daniel Hogan, another signer of the Cumberland Compact.



*This is the spelling of his surname used in the Cumberland Compact; later variants include Herod and Herrod. My paternal grandmother Letta Estella Porter Warren Williams Turnbull is his great great great granddaughter.
**Her maiden name is unknown.
***The original English coastal colonies in North America claimed all the lands to the west as far as the Mississippi River.
****Most of their families traveled 1,000 miles by river to join their menfolks, arriving four months later. Presumably Betsey and the children were among them.



© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: John Herrod (About 1805 - 1870), Herod & Birmingham's Stage Line

In 1860 my paternal fourth great uncle John Herrod* and his partner Norman Birmingham acquired the assets of D.W. Lamkin's Line and offered a daily connection between Yazoo City and the Mississippi Central station at Vaughan,**  a distance of about 24 miles.

[The Yazoo Democrat. (Yazoo City, Miss.) 1858-18, April 28, 1860

Library of Congress. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn98021556/1860-04-28/ed-1/seq-3/]

[Detail from Colton's Mississippi. Published By Johnson & Browning, 172 William St. New York. 1860.

Entered 1855 by J.H. Colton & Co ... New York. Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.]

After the Civil War started a year later, Herod & Birmingham transported men and supplies for the Confederate States as these invoices show.**

[Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms, documenting the period 1861 - 1865;

the National Archive. Source: fold3]

The company was presumably still in business early in 1866, owning 4 carriages each valued at $125.****

[Description : District 2; Annual, Monthly and Special Lists; Dec 1865-Dec 1866. Ancestry.com. U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA. Original data: Records of the Internal Revenue Service. Record Group 58.

The National Archives at Washington, DC.]

But John Herrod had died in January of that year and on November 10, 1866, his son (also named John), acting as administrator of his father's estate, filed suit against Mr. Birmingham and the case was settled in January of 1871 but it's not clear to me what the outcome was.

[From Catherine-Seabolt's public tree Terrell2011 on Ancestry.com]

*He was born in about 1805 in Tennessee and was the son of my paternal fourth great grandparents Polly (Williams) and Barnabeth Herrod.
**This link has pictures of Vaughan, Mississippi, taken in 2012. You can find a history of Yazoo County here.
***Although the second invoice is for several thousand dollars, remember that the company would have been paid in Confederate dollars which in January, 1864, would probably have been worth about 10 cents each.
****A John Herrod is listed as the owner of a single carriage worth $100 but it seems likely that he's the son.

["CSA-T64-$500-1864" by National Museum of American History - Image by Godot13. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CSA-T64-$500-1864.jpg#/media/File:CSA-T64-$500-1864.jpg]

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.