John Mason Rankin letters: the real deal!

I reluctantly surfaced from a deep sleep when the cell phone rang. I looked at my watch. 3:00 a.m. It could only be one person: Spade, the family history detective. He digs up dead relatives, including Rankin relatives.

Yep, that’s the name that appeared on caller ID. I flopped back onto my pillow and waited for the phone to quit ringing. The old reprobate could just leave a message. He was probably loaded with Cutty.

Five seconds after it quit, the phone rang again. Voicemail messages are not Spade’s style. I capitulated.

What the hell could possibly be so urgent that it can’t wait until a decent hour, like 6:30 a.m.? said I.

IS IT TRUE? he asked, with considerable asperity.

I sighed. Is WHAT true?

I talked to Gams this evening. (She is also a Rankin researcher and a friend of Spade’s and mine). She claims you found copies of the John Mason Rankin letters from the 1850s in a library in San Augustine, Texas. IS THAT TRUE, and why didn’t you tell me?

My patience, if any, vanished, along with my lovely sleep.

Spade, how long has it been since you checked your damn snail mail?

Silence. That evidently took him by surprise, which is no small feat with Spade.

I repeat, how long has it been since you checked your $!#@!!&*%  mailbox?

Another long-ish pause. I dunno, he said. That mailbox down the street is a pain because I can never remember where I left the key.

I now had the upper hand, and we both knew it.

Here’s the deal, Spade. Listen carefully. I’m going back to sleep. I will get up at 6:30 when the alarm goes off. Then I will turn on the coffeemaker, have two or three cups, and scan the New York Times and Guardian. You, meanwhile, will go pick up your snail mail and see what I’ve sent to you. By then, it will be 8:30 or so. You can call me at nine, the universally accepted earliest decent hour to call someone.

 I hung up. For good measure, I reset the alarm for 7:00 am, rolled over and went back to sleep.

At 9:30, the phone rang. He was uncharacteristically pleasant.

Thank you for sending copies of those letters to me! Do the actual letters, rather than the transcriptions we’ve had, change our minds about anything? Who does John Mason identify as the father of Adam Rankin who died in 1747?

I paused before replying. As you NOW know, the 1854 letter says that Adam’s father was also named Adam. So we are still left with a glaring inconsistency between the letter and John Mason Rankin’s Bible, which says Adam’s father was named William.

Oops! he said. I guess I forgot to tell you. He actually sounded contrite. Robert Rankin of McAllen, Texas, the owner of the original letters, told me he thinks John Mason Rankin (JMR) made an error in the letter. He believes the Bible entry, which matches JMR’s handwriting, is correct.

 He continued. Also, the Bible was printed in 1813, making it nearly as old as JMR himself. It is probably the Bible he refers to when he says “my father’s Bible.” The earliest entries, including the genealogy, are probably from 1836, around the time his mother died. One would think that SHE provided much of the copious detail on the family, including the fact that Adam’s father was named William. That leads me to believe that when JMR refers to “my father’s Bible” in his letter, he is talking about the 1813 Bible and quoting his own writing. And information from his mother, which obviously has a great deal of credibility. 

I thought for a moment. That all made sense to me, even if some of  it was speculative. OK, let me see if I can sum up what we have concluded about Adam from JMR’s documents and our own research. I am accepting his information as the gospel truth, except on the inconsequential matters where we know he erred:

The Adam Rankin who died in 1747 was a son of William Rankin, who moved from Scotland to Ireland. Despite speculation by some, there is no evidence in the records that William came to the Colonies, and JMR doesn’t claim that he did.

Adam had brothers John and Hugh and a sister Jane. *** RRW NOTE: the John Rankin who died in Lancaster in 1749 was NOT Adam’s brother, according to Y-DNA tests. That contradicts the conventional wisdom, which has long held the two were brothers.

In 1720, Adam and Hugh came to the Colonies. Adam was then married to Elizabeth May, who died shortly after they arrived. He then married “Mrs. Steele,” who is proved in county records to be Mary Steele Alexander, widow of James Alexander.

Adam and Mary Steele Rankin had three sons, James, William and Jeremiah, as well as a daughter not mentioned by JMR.  James was therefore NOT, as some have speculated, a son of Elizabeth May. 

Adam died in 1750, says JMR, although county records prove he died in 1747.

 JMR goes on to provide considerable detail about the family of Adam’s son Jeremiah and his wife Rhoda Craig, JMR’s grandparents. 

 I ran out of steam. We were silent for a moment.

You have left out the most important thing, he said. He continued:

The JMR letters and Bible do not make any mention of the so-called “Mt. Horeb legend,” which contains the story about Rankin family martyrs during the Killing Times in Scotland. This undoubtedly means the legend was NOT a part of John Mason Rankin’s family history!!!

I thought about it. There is no way a family with so much detail in their oral history would omit something that momentous.

You’re absolutely right, Spade. That’s brilliant! Of course, there can’t be less than 500 trees on the internet which continue to assert incorrectly that the Mt. Horeb legend applies to both Adam and John. To the extent the legend contains any truth at all, it must apply to John’s line but not Adam’s.

There is nothing like a little flattery to restore Spade’s hubris.

OK, doll, he said, your next job is to contact all those online tree owners and point out the error of their ways.

And with that, he hung up. I hate it when he beats me to it.

I will transcribe the two letters and post them. That’s probably not necessary, since the available transcriptions are likely substantially accurate. I’ll do it anyway. Eventually.

That is all. See you on down the road.

Robin