Wooten DNA

 Yesterday I received an e-mail from FTDNA saying that David Wooten had a new yDNA match at 37 markers.  David Wooten did yDNA testing for me a couple of years ago.  I also have another yDNA participant named Scot Wooten.  Both men are autosomal matches to me.  Both me have tree that shows a connection to my ancestor, Silas P. Wooten, who fought in the Revolutionary war....then married Phebe Worth in Guilford County, NC.  Silas and Phebe moved to Eastern Kentucky and their descendants are found all over Eastern Kentucky.  

The new match has Massey as surname.  And it turns out that another of the matches to David and Scott also has Massey as surname.  So I reached out to all four men with an e-mail.  There are only two Wooten men and two Massey men in the list of matches.  Many of the other matches carry the surname Cochran or other spelling so that name such as Cockerham etc...it seems clear that the common ancestor was a man with last name Cochran.  

Much to my surprise, I received an amazing e-mail from Martey Massey.  There are so many leads to follow up on that I hardly know where to start.  Here is his answer:

Marsha, I am Martey Massey and I may have a solution but you are right in this being a tangled web, that I lucked into. And I am not positive this is the answer but here goes.

I had my DNA done some years ago. My kit number on the Massey DNA site is one of the lower numbers. I thought it would clear up all of my problems and we matched none of the ones on the Massey DNA but these trickled in that match our DNA that were either from South Carolina or Mississippi but Massey name. One day I got a email from the (then, he has passed since) saying that my DNA matched their Cockerham, Cochrane etc. DNA web site. I checked it out and sure enough there were almost a dozen people that matched my DNA.  He told me about an Elizabeth Massey in Caroline County, Virginia. ( I also found this information in a couple of books about Caroline County, in Grapevine and Dallas Genealogy Libraries)  It states that in 1747-48, Elizabeth Massey, an indentured servant to Nathan Chapman, had a child born out of wedlock and declared that William Cockran was the father of the child. He did pay her fine, but the question is who was the child? Also I found a note in the Dallas Library about Elizabeth Massey and 3 other people had their children taken from them because they weren't taking care of their children and if you think this is confusing, I corresponded with another lady, who had an Elizabeth Massey from Caroline County, Virginia about the same time who had been living with and had a son named John Massey, and the man, John Clatterback, (a well documented Revolutionary War Veteran) later married her and had more children.  You can find bits and pieces that you can put together and get a lot of different answers. 

.....

..... My Massey family, we believe came from Virginia, to North Carolina, (Granville County), South Carolina, (Laurens, Union Co, Spartenburg),  then to Monroe County, Mississippi, (1837-1856 or so) then to Columbia County,Arkansas before the Civil War and mostly to Texas after the great Panic Depression of 1892. 

.....

So I will start with Caroline County.  I know almost nothing about Caroline County!  

I have done lots of research on Fredericksburg and Falmouth and the Northern Neck and the Rappahannock River, but somehow I have always skipped over Caroline County. First question is where was Nathan Chapman living in 1747?  And who was Nathan Chapman?  And Was William Cockran a neighbor or another indentured servant?

Ok...all the time I have tonight and I have found almost nothing!

So I slept on my thoughts about this puzzle.  And my thoughts this morning are that Silas P. Wooten did not come from any of this Massey information.  Although Martey's explanation has given me a lot to think about....Could Silas' mother have had surname Wooten?  I have not looked at the Wooten women.

The most likely scenarios for Silas's earlier life before his enlistment in the army would be:  He lived in the area of Halifax, Virginia.  He enlisted in the army in Halifax.  Could this have been close to home?  Or he lived in the area of Guilford County, NC.  He married Phebe there.  And they lived there for the early years of their marriage.  Or he lived in Surry County, NC (county that adjoined Guilford to the west).  I have written about this before at:

http://marshamoses.blogspot.com/2018/09/revolutionary-war-vouchers-for-silas.html

  

 

How many of the friends and family of Jacob Elliott made the move to NC?

Of course, this entire research begins with the two brothers, Jacob and Abraham, moving to NC in 1763.  But who else made the move from PA to NC?  

Jacob's mother, Sarah Farmer and her husband John:

There are Fraziers who moved to Cane Creek from Newark MM...but earlier than the 1763 date.  And none of them have name Alexander nor Phebe.  And Davisons who come in time period of Fraziers but not a Sarah nor a Thomas Davison.  This is at Cane Creek.  So it is not clear yet if daughter's moved with the group.  I may look on Ancestry a bit before spending more time on Quaker records.

Time line for the Elliott family in Pennsylvania from 1722 until 1763

 This is a continuation to the blog post that follows, so please go back and read the earlier blog posts before reading this.

So I have taken John and Sarah Elliott from Burlington Monthly Meeting to New Garden/Nottingham. This would have happened in 1722.  

John died before 1735.  Sarah married John Farmer.  Other researchers say he was the next door neighbor. In 1735 New Garden Monthly Meeting dis Sarah for marrying out of unity:

So Sarah was still affiliated with the New Garden Monthly Meeting in 1735.  

it was approximately 1745 when the first Quakers settled in Warrington Township and Warrington Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) was established. Our Elliott family had first settled at the Nottingham Lots and attended Quaker meeting there.  At least this is my theory based on information that the land west of the Susquehanna was not yet settled.  Since they moved in 1722, they must have lived somewhere on the east side of the Susquehanna River for at least five to ten years and maybe much longer.  Perhaps Sarah and second husband, John Farmer, moved to York County after their marriage in 1735,

Lauren sent me a brochure of the Nottingham Lots.  It does include man original owners of the plats that I am not including here.  There are no Elliott names on the list.

At the time of John and Sarah's move, the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland was in dispute.  This continued until the Mason Dixon line was drawn in April 1765.  You can see that only a very small part of a few of the lots were in Pennsylvania after 1765.  By that time John Elliott would have been deceased for 30 years and Sarah and her second husband were living in York County, PA on the western side of the Susquehanna River.  Lauren says that John and Sarah were paying taxes in West Nottingham Township in 

1724, 1725, 1726/27.  But by 1731 and 1732 they are paying taxes in Sadsbury township and by 1734 widow Elliott is paying taxes in Sadsbury.  So perhaps they never actually lived in the Nottingham Lots.

Here is another map that helps to clarify the location of the Nottingham lots

In 1729, John and James Hendricks established the first authorized settlement in what is now called Kreutz Creek in York County. Germans, originally lured from the Rhenish Palatinate by William Penn's agents, soon followed Englishmen into the new frontier.

1755 Jacob Elliott was a part of Sadsbury MM in Lancaster County, PA as in the 10th month of 1755 the men's minutes state that Jacob has condemned his outgoing in marriage:

https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/2189/images/31906_284088-00568?treeid=&personid=&hintid=&queryId=059e767fe99ffd2b97fd8925052283ee&usePUB=true&_phsrc=adf1472&_phstart=successSource&usePUBJs=true&pId=2989046

The next month's meeting minutes James Moore reports that he read Jacob's condemnation of his outgoing in marriage to the membership:

at the next Sadsbury meeting, Jacob requests a certificate to take with him to Warrington MM.  James Moore and Joseph Williams are asked to enquire into if indeed Jacob is in good standing and if so to prepare a certificate to present at the next meeting.

Jacob and his family appear to have moved west of the Susquehanna River in 1755 and lived there for the next eight years.  I believe there were Indian troubles in the area that caused them and others to make the move to North Carolina in 1763

The 11th month of 1763 Jacob and family have requested a certificate to take with them for New Garden MM in North Carolina

https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/2189/images/43154_1821100519_5287-00150?treeid=&personid=&hintid=&queryId=059e767fe99ffd2b97fd8925052283ee&usePUB=true&_phsrc=adf1477&_phstart=successSource&usePUBJs=true&pId=1107354316

There are some more Quaker records after the Elliott family move to NC.  I am not at this time going to insert screen shots.  I am going to summarize these records:

26 Nov 1763 Jacob Elliott and wife and 5 children received on certificate from Warrington MM, PA dated 20 Sep 1763.

Center MM Set off from New Garden MM in NC in 1773

New Garden MM n NC on 27 April 1782 Jacob Elliott and wife Elizabeth and 4 children received on certificate from Center MM dated 21 Jul 1781 (this was in preparation for their move to the area on Chestnut Creek in what is now Carroll County, Virginia

New Garden MM on 31 Jan 1784 Jacob Elliott and wife Elizabeth and 4 children granted certfiicate to Center MM. (This is the move back to Randolph County at the end of the Revolution)

Indian problems

 I have been thinking about the fact that my Elliot family moved to NC in 1763.  I am working on the migration path taken by John and Sarah Elliott that put them on the Pennsylvania frontier by the years between 1722 and 1763.  And the idea started nagging in the back of my head that the reason for the move to NC was Indian problems.  

I am quite sure that my Moore family moved from Berks County, PA to NC because of Indian troubles.  And I know that Phil Hawkins' Hawkins family moved from a more western part of Virginia to Louden County, Virginia and then on to SC because of Indian troubles.

So I was intrigued to know what was happening in the Susquehanna valley and the land to the west of the Susquehanna in the time period in which the Elliotts were living there.  And my gut feeling was right.  There were troubles.  I am still working on where John and Sarah Elliott's family were living from 1722 to 1763, so skip to the post below to see this work in progress.  But what I do know is that when their son's, Jacob and Abraham, moved their families to NC in 1763, they took certificates from Warrington Monthly Meeting to their new home New Garden Monthly Meeting in NC. 

When Sarah Elliott Farmer's daughter Phebe married Alexander Frazier, Sarah is said to be "of Manchester".  Manchester is in York County, PA.  It is just west of the Susquehanna River and just north of the town of York and  southeast of Newberrytown.  It is 13 miles between Newberrytown and Manchester.

The below answers a lot of questions for me.

Newberry Meeting, in Newberrytown, York County, was informally known as Redlands. Friends in Manchester and Newberry Townships, on the "west side of the Susquehanna," obtained permission from Sadsbury Monthly Meeting to hold a meeting for worship in 1738. Newberry Preparative Meeting became a part of the Warrington Monthly Meeting when the latter was set off in 1747..... 

http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~paxson/genealogy/graphics-pax/mtghse.html

So almost certainly, Sarah and John Farmer were a part of the Newberrytown preparatory meeting (also called Redlands) that had first been under Sadsbury....but by 1747 was under Warrington Monthly Meeting.  So they would not have had to transfer their membership from Sadsbury to Warrington...it would have happened automatically in 1747.  I can not remember if John Farmer also took a certificate with him to NC or only Sarah....I will check this at a later time.

So here is a better map of York county where Sarah and John farmer were living after it was formed in 1749.  There home was in Lancaster County in 1748 when daughters Phebe and Sarah were married in 1748.  You can see from the map below that the part of Lancaster west of the Susquehanna became York.

I found a website with interesting information while googling about the Indian troubles.   I didn't want to loose this thought from this website  ....so here it is even though it is actually about earlier generations rather than Indian troubles:

Before Pennsylvania in 1655-1681, the main Quaker settlements were in New England (i.e., Rhode Island), New Amsterdam (i.e., New York), Long Island, Maryland, Virginia, and the West Indies. In 1675-1682, records from southern NJ, across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, should also be examined -- in 1674 a group of Quaker investors, including Penn, bought a stake in the New Jersey colony, and divided it into East Jersey and West Jersey. West Jersey became the first Quaker colony in America, but it eventually went bankrupt and was rejoined to East Jersey in 1702 to form a royal colony. 

Ward, Matthew. Breaking the Backcountry: The Seven Years’ War in Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1754-1765. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004.

https://haygenealogy.com/hay/quaker/quaker-PA.html

 In 1763, renewed hostilities sparked by military occupation and land-grabbing broke out in western Pennsylvania. Pontiac’s War (1763-65) plunged the Pennsylvania frontier into another wave of violence, including an Indian siege at Fort Pitt (the British post built on the site of the old Fort Duquesne), during which British officers discussed using smallpox as a biological weapon against the enemy. In Lancaster County, a group of colonial vigilantes known as the Paxton Boys murdered the Native population of Conestoga Indian Town, which had been allied with the Pennsylvania government since 1701. The Paxton Boys then marched on Philadelphia, threatening to kill Indians from the Moravian missions who had sought refuge there, but intervention by Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) and other city leaders prevented further violence.

https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/native-american-pennsylvania-relations-1754-89-2/

Remember that the Quakers did not believe in any sort of violence.  They did not want to fight with the Indians!  Not even to save their land.  And what I know is that my Jacob Elliott was a devout Quaker.  He proved it many times after the move to NC.  He refused to pay taxes to support the Revolutionary War.  He was tied to a tree and threatened with death if he didn't join the forces to fight in the Revolution. ....and Chose death to fighting!  It makes sense that our Elliott/Farmer family group chose to migrate to a safer location.  One of John and Sarah's children "got the farm" and remained in York County where he died in 1803.

There is an easy to read account of what was going on in the Pennsylvania outlying areas during the French and Indian War in Chapter 4 of Judith Ridner's book:  The Scots Irish of Early Pennsylvania A Varied People. It is in my library.