Alexander Articles Archives - Digging Up Dead Relatives:

Alexander’s Gambit: How to Snare an Unwilling Rankin

Right off the bat, I need to put this story in context. First, my friend and distant cousin Roger Alexander is the main character. Roger is the all-time gold medal award-winning recruiter for convincing men to swab a cheek for the sake of country, motherhood, world peace, and the Alexander DNA Project. Second, this story takes place in the Genealogical Dark Ages, when amateur family history researchers had to walk barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways, in order to do research in person at a genealogy library.

I explain Roger’s success like so: you have either agreed to Y-DNA test, or you are still talking to him. Today. If you are within a three-hour radius of where he lives, he may show up at your front door. As a favor to me, he once convinced a Rankin about whom he knew virtually nothing to Y-DNA test. He has retired from the recruiting business, or I would still be pestering him for help.

Some of you may not know what the genealogical Dark Ages were like. The Church of Latter Day Saints (“LDS”) had not yet made available online the zillions of county records it has microfilmed, now accessible free at FamilySearch.org. Consequently, family history researchers back then either had to (1) rely on abstracts and microfilm[1] at their local libraries, (2) go to county courthouses to look at original records, or (3) go to the LDS main library in Salt Lake City to access the church’s vast microfilm library.[2] Alternatively, one could write a snail mail letter to a clerk of court to ask for copies of original deeds. I actually did that once and only once, and the resulting deeds play a minor role in this story.

O.K., now to the actual story. It begins a quarter-century ago, in the mid- to late 1990s. The Genealogical Dark Ages. I struck up an email conversation with a very nice man named John Alexander. One of my ancestors is Eleanor (“Ellen”) Alexander, the wife of Samuel Rankin of south-central North Carolina, so John and I had that surname and approximate location in common. He is the best researcher I have ever known, bar none.[3] We were unable to help each other, and the correspondence ended.

Fast forward about ten years, to 2005-ish. Not only was this still the Genealogical Dark Ages, it was also a time when many of us still had land lines, a telephone option some of you may not be familiar with. Landlines featured phones that may have actually dialed, and they were connected to the wall with a wire. We had eliminated our land line because it was a magnet for junk calls.

About this time, John Alexander and his cousin and fellow researcher Roger Alexander had reached an impasse. They had been convinced they were descended from a famous Alexander family known as the “Seven Brothers and Two Sisters.” That Alexander family had probably been among the early arrivals to the Colonies during the so-called “Great Migration” of Scots-Irish that began in 1717. Many of them moved to the Piedmont Area of North and South Carolina, which includes both Mecklenburg County, NC and Spartanburg, South Carolina. Several men from the line of the Seven Plus Two signed the famous Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence.[4]

John’s and Roger’s earliest proved Alexander ancestor first appeared in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, just a short hop across the state line from Mecklenburg. When Y-DNA testing disproved their descent from one of the Seven Brothers, they labeled themselves the “Spartanburg Confused,” or “SpartCon” for short.[5] Because their Alexanders first lived in North Carolina, they mucked around in NC records. They found — in a deed abstract rather than a film or an actual deed book — a series of gift deeds from James and Ann Alexander to their children James, David, Robert, and Eleanor. Roger’s and John’s mutual Alexander ancestor was a James, the right age to have been a son of James and Ann.

This was exciting, but for one problem: Y-DNA testing also suggested that their ancestor James had a brother named John. There was no John among the gift deeds in the deed abstract, however.

Roger’s cousin John Alexander, whose memory is as outstanding as his research skills, recalled having had a conversation some years earlier with a descendant of Eleanor Alexander Rankin. Roger and John thought I might be able to help them solve their puzzle.

Unfortunately, my email address had changed, eliminating the obvious means of contact. Roger switched into detective mode in high gear, trying to track me down.

Our next-door neighbor Sabrina rang our doorbell one morning. She handed me a scrap of paper with a name and phone number on it: Roger’s. I invited her in, but she was busy.

“What’s this all about?” I asked.

“I just got off the phone with this Roger guy after a half hour conversation. He is looking for you.”

“OK,” I said, still in the dark.

“He tried to get me to tell him your phone number or email address.”

“Did you?” I asked.

“Hell, no,” she responded. “He claimed he needs to get in touch with you about something having to do with Alexander genealogy. He made it sound like the earth would stop rotating on its axis if he couldn’t talk to you.”

I’m still confused by all this.

“So … why did he call you, rather than me?”

“Because he couldn’t find your phone number since you no longer have a land line.”

“OK, that’s why he didn’t call me, but why did he call you?”

“He was able to tell from an online map that we are next door neighbors, and he was also able to find our land line.”

All was now clear except for the apocalyptic nature of Roger’s need to talk to me.

“He made me promise to give you the message that he urgently needs to talk to you about some earth-shattering issue concerning Alexander genealogy, but he didn’t tell me what that is.”

“OK,” said I, “thanks Sabrina. I’m sorry you were inconvenienced by this nut.”

“No problem,” she said. “This will probably be the most interesting thing that happens to me all day.”

After she left, I promptly deposited the slip of paper with Roger’s name and number in the trash, having concluded that he was a total nutcase. Who on earth tries to contact you by calling your next-door neighbor?

A week or two passed. At some point the mail arrived, including a short handwritten letter on lined paper saying this:

“Please call or email me. I urgently need to talk to you about an important matter concerning Alexander genealogy. You can reach me at ______ (phone number) or _____ (email address).

Roger Alexander”

At this point, of course, my curiosity finally kicked in and I was hooked. Wouldn’t you be? Moreover, I didn’t have to call Roger — I could just email him and find out what the deal was. If he was truly wacko, I could simply block his emails.

Turned out that Roger and John are sixth-ish cousins of mine. We are all descended from James and Ann Alexander of Anson/Rowan, North Carolina. Furthermore, Roger turned out to be smart, witty, and fun — as well as being constitutionally incapable of accepting defeat.

All they needed to know from me was that the abstract of the gift deeds they consulted had omitted the deed from James and Ann to their son John. The copies of the gift deeds I had obtained from the county clerk identified James and Ann’s children as James, John, David, Eleanor, and Robert.[7]

The unintended moral of this piece: don’t trust an abstract, check the original. That’s easy to do now, thanks to FamilySearch.org.

It is a good thing I emailed Roger, or he might have driven from his home to Texas and knocked on our front door.

If you have a better story about the lengths someone will go to in order to further their family history research, I really want to hear it.

See you on down the road.

Robin

[1] The library where my father researched in Shreveport, LA in the late 1960s had a microfilm collection limited to census film, so far as I knew.

[2] Another alternative was to go to a local LDS “family history center,” an option we didn’t use.

[3] If John Alexander tells me that James Alexander’s parents are X and Y, I will believe him without any evidence whatsoever.

[4] If you read this blog, you have run across a member of the Seven Plus Two before: Adam Rankin’s wife Mary Steele Alexander was the widow of “James the Carpenter” Alexander, one of the Seven Plus Two. If you do this hobby long enough, you will run over your own tail.

[5] You can find the lines of the Seven Plus Two and the SpartCons here.

[6] This is poetic license, of course. There are several places on the planet, particularly in Scotland, where Alexanders are thick as thieves.

[7] Anson Co., NC Deed Book B: 314 et seq., five deeds dated 12 Jan 1753 from James Alexander Sr. to his children James Jr., John, David, “Elener,” and Robert, gifts of land and/or livestock. Two other deeds prove another child, a son William, almost certainly the eldest son. Rowan Co., NC Deed Book 3: 495, 498, deeds from William Alexander identifying David and Robert as his brothers and Ann Alexander as his mother. Numerous court records establish that James Sr.’s widow was named Ann. See, e.g., Rowan Co., NC Court Order Book 1: 53, record dated 9 Oct 1754, Ann Alexander, “wife and relict of James, dec’d,” took the oath of office as administrator of his estate.

My Disreputable Ancestors

Please note: my friend and distant cousin John Alexander authored this article, notwithstanding that WordPress automatically attributed it to me. John has written a book about his Alexander family, see a book review here.

His website has a wealth of information, including the entire book as an HTML file with operable links. Check it out. Enjoy!

Robin

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

My Disreputable Ancestors, by John Alexander (Jun 13, 2019)

If genealogical researchers are ever satisfied that they have done enough digging and get around to writing their family histories, they often present their ancestors as model citizens who never strayed from the strait and narrow or, alternatively, as stick figures without personality. Although my wife assigns me to the second category by accusing my characters of being present only so they can take part in the begetting of future generations, I want to introduce you to three Alexanders, two of them named James, first cousins through fathers and through mothers, and show that these men had foibles just as we do today. One of the men, my great-great-great grandfather James, seems to have always used James C. when referring to himself, probably to avoid confusion with his cousin. However, when I began my research, I found that, in spite of this precaution, many genealogists had mixed up the identity of the two, sometimes making them one person. This tale also involves James C.’s son William.

Although I have never found him mentioned in histories of the region, the man known only as James was among the very first European settlers in western Tennessee, the area lying between the Tennessee River and the Mississippi River. He can be found on the 1820 federal census[1] where he and his brother William are listed near Amos Milligan (sometimes Milliken) and Adam Row (sometimes (Rowe). Milligan and Row, who, along with James House,[2] arrived in 1819, are credited as leading the way in settling Henry County, Tennessee. James and William were soon joined by other family members, including their parents and their cousin James C., although most of them probably arrived after formation of the county in 1821.

Religious meetings in early Henry County likely took place in the homes of settlers, but, in December 1828, as stated in the minutes of Antioch Primitive Baptist Church, James and his wife Hester (sometimes Esther) Siddall/Siddle joined six other people to found one of the first churches in the region. Although he was one of the founders, James was excluded from the church only a few years later, in May 1834, and the minutes of the church report dismissal from the church due to “reports unfavorable to Christian character, excluded for making too free with ardent spirits.”[3] Not too long afterward, James, Hester, and their family left Henry County to settle in western Missouri, where he may have found a new place of worship. Perhaps, he, William, and cousin James C. got together too often in Henry County as might be inferred from James C.’s and William’s episode, just below.

When James C. arrived in Henry County in the 1820s with wife Judith Siddle, son William, son John Priestly (my great-great grandfather), and other children, he appears to have been a man of means since he purchased property and posted money as bondsman for relatives’ legal transactions. However, by the late 1840s, his money was gone, and he and William owed many of their kinfolk and neighbors. I have not found any mention in records of the cause of their decline in fortune, but James C. and William were forced to mortgage their real and personal property and eventually sell it at public auction to satisfy claims against them.[4] Although they were not unique in losing all their money and becoming indebted, the interesting aspect of their situation is the listing of assets that were mortgaged and put on sale. There were the common-place items of “two feather beds and bed clothing, steads, & furniture, one claybank mare, one sorrel studcolt, one cow, & side saddle,” “one small bay horse, three yoke of oxen, one ox wagon,” and “one tract of land lying in the 13^thcivil district in Henry County containing by estimation about eighty eight acres,” but, in William’s listing, was also “one still, one cap & worm, & twelve still tubs.” Someone’s love for that still must have prompted separate listing of each component. With twelve tubs to provide raw material for the distillation process, there may have been enough product for William, his father, and his cousin-uncle James all to indulge too freely in ardent spirits. That I sometimes don’t remember whether the still and equipment belonged to William or to James C. can perhaps be explained by my overindulging each time I opened the books on their situation.

Lest one believes from this look into their lives that this trio were extremely different from their neighbors, the reader should know that historians tell us that men and women of that time living in the still-frontier area of western Tennessee and Kentucky did more than a bit of drinking and that speculating in land was not uncommon. James, James C., and William merely had the misfortune to have their failures spelled out in public records for all to see.

The subjects of our story survived their troubles without any record of permanent harm and prospered in their new homes, Webster County, Missouri, for James, and Fayette County and Shelby County in Tennessee for James C. and William. James and James C. – and William – have numerous Alexander descendants living today and very likely have surviving non-Alexander descendants, although I have not attempted to trace non-Alexanders after a couple of generations. These descendants include some rather prominent citizens, and I apologize if any descendants are embarrassed by these revelations. Remember, one was my ancestor also, and I am not ashamed that he was human.

[1] 1820 U S Census, Stewart Co., Tennessee, p. 233.

[2] I have never been able to find James House listed on any early Stewart County or Henry County census.

[3] “Minutes of the Antioch Primitive Baptist Church,” transcribed and annotated by Johnny Walker. A copy is in the Inman Genealogical Room, Henry County (TN) Library.

[4] Registration of Deeds, Grants, in Henry County, 1847; reprinted on-line at https://johnandval.org/genealogy/AlexFamHist.html, Appendix I (upper-case I not 1).

Alexander Family History: a “Must-Read”

If you follow this blog, you know that Gary and I do not cite compiled family histories as sources. Alexander Family History by John Alexander will be an exception. It has many things to commend it, beginning with excellent, easy-to-read writing and meticulous research. It is an absolute “must-read” if you are from the line of James and Ann Alexander of Amelia County, Virginia and Anson/Rowan, North Carolina.

Before we get into the book itself, you can order it by contacting John Alexander at this email address:

jfalex37@comcast.net

The book is also available as an html version at this link. Make a note of that link, because John will continue to add to and correct the html version. John strongly encourages other Alexanders to add to the accumulated knowledge of this family via your own research. He is also happy to hear differences of opinion, provided they are backed up with citations to records.

Alternatively, John says he will send you a copy of the pdf file of the current book, and you can print away to your heart’s content. For those of us who are addicted to highlighting, this is clearly a good option.

Despite these nice alternatives, I strongly recommend that you order a bound copy of the book from John – even if you aren’t connected to this Alexander line – and donate it to your local library. Such donations are deductible. John says about $20 will cover the cost of the book plus postage.

For some information about the book, let’s just have it tell you about itself. The cover page, a good place to start, says this:

“James and Ann [Alexander], born around 1700 or shortly after, may be original American colonists or may have been born in the colonies. The story follows four of their sons, James, John, David, and Robert, and their only daughter, Eleanor, from the earliest-discovered records several generations toward the present.”

Here is some very brief information about these children that might help you determine whether any of these lines are of special interest to you …

James Alexander, son of James and Ann, was probably born about 1730 in the colonies. He appeared in the Anson, Rowan and Tryon records, and ultimately lived in Spartanburg County, SC. His wife was named Mary, MNU. He had four children of whom John is fairly certain, perhaps more. John identifies the four as James Jr., Matthew, William and Thomas. Matthew and William went to Logan County, KY, while most of the family remained in Spartanburg.
John Alexander, son of James and Ann, also born circa 1730, married Rachel Davidson and moved to the area that became Buncombe County, NC. Their four proved children were James, Ann, Mary and Thomas.
David Alexander, son of James and Ann, was born about 1736-37. He married Margaret Davidson (also spelled Davison) in Rowan County in 1762. They lived in Pendleton District, SC. David’s 1795 will (proved 1795, Anderson Co., SC, filed in Will Book c: 77) named his children Anne Gotcher, Jane Moore, David Alexander, Margaret Davis, Catherine Brown, Ellenor Read, James Alexander, Elizabeth Woods, John Alexander, William Morrison Alexander, and Ruth Alexander.
Eleanor Alexander, the only daughter of James and Ann, married Samuel Rankin in Rowan County about 1760. The Rankins and their children lived in Lincoln (later Gaston) and Mecklenburg counties, North Carolina. Four of their ten children migrated to Rutherford County, TN and Shelby County, IL.
Robert Alexander, the youngest child of James and Ann, appeared in Rowan, Tryon, and Lincoln county records. He served in the Revolutionary War and was a Justice of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions in Lincoln County, where he died. His first wife was Mary Jack; his will names his wife Margaret, MNU. His children (not necessarily in birth order) were Lilly, Ann, Robert J., Polly, Margaret, Elisa, Evalina and Charity Amanda

For the record, James and Ann had a fifth son, their eldest, William Alexander. Unfortunately, there are apparently no records that can be attributed to him with any degree of confidence after the 1750s.

The book also includes copies of many original records, photographs, and a discussion of Y-DNA analysis. Again, the best thing to do is to let the book tell you about itself. Here is the table of contents:

Preface and Dedication

Chapter 1: What They Knew

Chapter 2: The Genealogical Digging

Chapter 3: James (died 1753) Alexander and Ann

Chapter 4: James Alexander of Spartanburg County, SC

Chapter 5: The Alexander Family in Western Kentucky

Chapter 6: Henry County and Beyond

Chapter 7: James C.’s Fayette County Branch

Chapter 8: James Alexander Jr. and the East Tennessee Branch

Chapter 9: Thomas Alexander and Mary

Chapter 10: Other Alexander Kin, Parentage Not Certain

Chapter 11: Family of John and Rachel Davidson

Chapter 12: Family of David and Margaret Davidson

Chapter 13: Family of Eleanor and Samuel Rankin

Chapter 14: Family of Robert and Mary Jack

Appendix A: Pension Applications Of Matthew And Eleanor

Appendix B: Documents from Amy Riggs, Born Amy Gore

Appendix C: South Carolina Deeds, James of Spartanburg

Appendix D: Records Relating to James (died 1753) and Ann

Appendix E: Legal Documents Relating to the Death of William McMillin

Appendix F: Siddle Documents and the Alexanders in Robertson County

Appendix G: Descendants of James (d. 1753) and Ann

Appendix H: 19^th Century Marriages in Western KY and Western TN

Appendix I: Deeds of Trust, William and James C. Alexander, 1847

Appendix J: SC Documents Relating to Thomas Alexander

Appendix K: Documents from James Alexander and Rhoda Cunningham

Appendix L: Documents Relating to Ann (Alexander) Craig

Appendix M: Wills of Samuel, Alexander and James Rankin

Appendix N: Published Histories that May Be Difficult fo Find

Appendix Y: YDNA and YDNA Testing

I plan to sit down with this book, one chapter at a time, and make sure that my own family history software reflects John’s information. If it doesn’t, then I have some work to do.

Enjoy!
Robin