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:
No comments:
Post a Comment