52 Ancestors - BRICK WALL: Nancy Walker Jollett

As a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, I am always interested in finding patriots in my family tree. I have identified 8, but one that I keep hoping will step from behind that brick wall is ANYBODY Jollett. He doesn’t have to have been a soldier; he could have served the colonial government as a surveyor of roads or member of a jury. He could have simply paid the Supply Tax in 1782. He OR SHE could have furnished supplies like beef or clothing or rifles. I have scoured the available sources online and found NOTHING.

Based on his marriage date of 1787, James Jollett, my 4X great-grandfather, should have been of age to serve in the militia, but I have found no signs that he did. Nor do I see any sign of his supposed father, Thomas. I now wonder if the Jolletts were Loyalists. But what about James’s wife, Nancy Walker? Did her family side with the Loyalists or Patriots? To get that answer, I needed a hammer and chisel and some luck to break down another brick wall.

The Orange County Road Orders of 1796 show 3 Walkers working alongside James Jollett: Benjamin, Sanders, and Thomas. Surely they were related to Nancy Walker somehow – father? Brothers? Cousins? Benjamin Walker looks like a possible brother based on his birth in 1770. Nancy was born between 1761 and 1770. What I like about this Benjamin is that he had a son Jeremiah. Jeremiah Walker served as bondsman for the marriage of Luraina/Lourenna Jollett and Robert Bryan in 1839.

While researching Jeremiah, I found an OLDER Jeremiah with an interesting connection: father Thomas Walker and mother Elizabeth Sanders. SANDERS! This Jeremiah had a brother Andrew Sanders. Maybe he went by his middle name. Unfortunately, no trees on Ancestry have a Nancy that remotely matches the few provable details for MY Nancy.

 

For fun, I checked the DAR database to see if there were any Walker patriots from Culpeper County or Orange County, Virginia. Nancy and James’s marriage is recorded in both counties, hence the search in multiple locales.

There are 80 Walkers from Virginia who have been verified as patriots. Eight of them lived in Orange or Culpeper. Let’s take a look:

Charles Walker – born 1755 in Orange; died after 1820 in Giles County. Too young to have been Nancy’s father. Possibly son of a Thomas Walker and Elizabeth Taylor.

James Walker – born 1726 in King & Queen County; died 1801 Madison County which was formed from Culpeper County. No mention of a daughter Nancy. Served in the House of Burgesses. Since no one in my family seemed to have been politically connected, I doubt James is mine.

John Walker – born 1744 Albemarle County; died 1809 Madison County close to the Orange County border. NOPE – had only one child and her name was Mildred. He was son of patriot Thomas Walker Sr.

Merry Walker – born 1760 Culpeper County; died 1811 Culpeper County. Son of patriot William Walker. Merry was too young to be Nancy’s father, but he was the right age to be a brother.

Thomas – born 1763 in Orange; died 1853 in Monroe County. Thomas was too young to have been Nancy’s father.

Thomas Jr – born 1748 in Albemarle County; died before 1797 in Albemarle County. Albemarle is very close to the part of Orange where James and Nancy Walker Jollett lived, so I included him in my search.

Thomas Sr – born 1715 in King & Queen County; died 1794 in Albemarle County. This Thomas left a will naming all his children but not a Nancy among them. He was another well-connected, well-to-do gentleman who hob-knobbed with George Washington and Patrick Henry. He was also a guardian of Thomas Jefferson. Yeah, not my Walker, I’m pretty sure.

William – born 1735 in Orange; died 1807 in Madison County. Father of patriot Merry Walker. He was the right age to have been Nancy’s father as well. But was he?

Two bits of information make me hopeful that I have found Nancy Walker’s family. First of all, in 1785, James Jolley/Jollett was on the Personal Property Tax list of William Walker.

1785 Personal Property Tax Culpeper Co, VA
List of William Walker
James Jolley/Jollett - last name in this clip

Secondly, William’s son Merry married Elizabeth Kirtley, and his daughter Elizabeth Walker married Francis Kirtley. What is significant about that? In 1784, James Jollett was on the Culpeper County Personal Property Tax list of Elijah Kirtley. 

1784 Personal Property Tax Culpeper Co, Va
List of Elijah Kirtley

While I have not found a connection between Francis or Elizabeth Kirtley and Elijah, there is a good chance they were related somehow. At least they were all in the same neighborhood.

More digging is needed, but I sense that a little bit of that brick wall is starting to crumble.

Amy Johnson Crow continues to challenge genealogy bloggers and non-bloggers alike to think about our ancestors and share a story or photo about them. The challenge is “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.”

Wendy

© 2021, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.

Genealogy Photo a Day 13: Document

Genealogy Photo a Day is a month-long challenge coordinated by Genealogy Girl Talks.

I love stumbling into a document I wasn’t even looking for. 

This marriage bond for Nancy Jollett and Hiram Garnes surfaced during a research trip to the Rockingham County, Virginia court house. My goal that day was to find Davis documents that would satisfy the DAR standards for proving lineage to a Revolutionary War patriot. But heck, I was there anyway, so why not check the index for Jolletts too.

And there it was: a marriage bond for Nancy Jollett. Who? The two Nancy Jolletts I knew of were Jollett by virtue of marriage. Nancy Walker married my 4X great-grandfather James Jollett and Nancy Glass married their son Simeon Jollett. So who was this young Nancy Jollett getting married in Rockingham?

One clue was the bondsman George Sampson. George was married to Drada Jollett, daughter of James and Nancy Walker Jollett. Perhaps Nancy was a sister to Drada. If so, then there is another question to answer: why was she not living in Greene County with her parents?

Look for me on Instagram (@Wendymath27) and Twitter (@Wendymath).

  

Wendy

© 2016, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.

52 Ancestors: Up to the Challenge

Amy Johnson Crow of No Story Too Small has issued a challenge:  write one blog post each week devoted to a specific ancestor. It can be a story, a biography, a photograph, an outline of a research problem – anything that focuses on one ancestor.

This week the theme is an ancestor who is a challenge to research.  While I have managed to break down several brick walls, my 4X great grandmother Nancy WALKER JOLLETT continues to mock me as hard as she beckons.

The obvious problem is that she lived in a time when women’s names seldom appeared on public documents. She was born PROBABLY about 1765 PROBABLY in Culpeper County, Virginia based on a marriage record in that county dated 22 March 1787.   

Apparently she was the FEMALE age 60-69 in the 1830 Orange County, Virginia census along with her husband James Jollett age 50-60. In the next census the oldest female in the household was 40-50, so it is safe to assume that Nancy likely died before 1840.

Finding Nancy’s parents and siblings should be easier than it is. The Orange County Road Orders of 1796 lists three Walkers who shared responsibility with James “Jolly” and others for the upkeep of a road: Sanders Walker, Benjamin Walker, and Thomas Walker. If the tendency for people to marry their neighbors holds true, then these Walkers are surely related to my Nancy. But how? Brothers? Uncle? Father?

I pinned my sleuthing hopes on Sanders since his name is so unusual. Surprisingly, it turns out not to be so unusual after all. Whether the Sanders Walker of Orange County became the Sanders who married and moved to Barren, Kentucky or the one who became a Baptist minister in Georgia is unclear, but the fact remains that so far, no connection to Nancy has been revealed.

Family trees posted on Ancestry are no help. The ones naming Nancy Walker who married James Jollett merely jumped on a bad bandwagon assigning parents who could not possibly be Nancy’s parents. The George Walker that many Walker researchers claim was her father would have been a toddler when she was born.  Nancy’s supposed “mother” Rachel Donelson Caffery was born when Nancy was already 9. Yeah, right. Do people not look at their own research before posting such obvious errors?

Trees for Benjamin and Thomas are no better. Despite one serious Walker researcher’s efforts to distinguish between the prominent DOCTOR Thomas Walker and the plantation owner Thomas “Thundering Tom” Walker, over-zealous subscribers to Ancestry have continued to assign the same wife to both men and children to the wrong family. MY Nancy does not appear on any of the trees. I don’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved.

It has crossed my mind that maybe the difficulty of researching Nancy Walker is that “Walker” might not have been Nancy’s maiden name. Perhaps she had been married before and widowed. Until I find some confirmation on that, I will continue to pursue her on the assumption that she was indeed a WALKER.

Strategy to learn the names of Nancy’s parents

1. Look for wills of all Walker men in Culpeper and Orange counties
2. Look for will of Nancy Walker Jollett in Greene and Orange counties
3. Look for land records in which Jollett and Walker are named together
4. Create a chart of all possible fathers with the surname Walker in Culpeper County

© 2015, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.

Thankful Thursday -- Internet Connections

Thankful Thursday is a daily prompt at Geneabloggers to express gratitude for a person (past or present), resource, family history tool or anything connected to you or your family history.

I recently posted HERE about my two James Jolletts who signed the petition to form Greene County, Virginia.  For several years I wondered whether my one confirmed James (who married Nancy Walker) was the Junior or the Senior of the duo.  Was James the son of another James?  Did James have a son named James?  Maybe they were uncle and nephew.  Census records and tax records gave me no clue, so I was resigned to leaving big question marks in my research.

Then Shirley Ziemer of Indiana came into my life by way of an inquiry at my now-defunct Jollett website at the now-defunct Geocities.  She is a Sampson researcher looking for more information on John Sampson who in 1813 married my Clarissa Jollett, daughter of James.  During our correspondence, Shirley casually mentioned she had a picture of Clarissa’s brother’s tombstone. 

Clarissa’s brother?!?!?  What brother? 

You can’t read it, but James Jollett’s inscription is on top of the tombstone.  There he is, buried with his sister and brother-in-law.  The “James Jollett JUNIOR” of Greene County fame!  It turns out I couldn’t find him because his name never appears in a Virginia census.  In 1836 he left Virginia along with his sister Clarissa and her husband John Sampson and others to help settle the Northwest Territory.  From 1850 to 1883, James was a resident of Clay County, Indiana, working as a carpenter. He never married. 

The story of the younger James Jollett is short and sweet.  Without Shirley, I might never have known for sure that he even lived.  Her request for more information prompted me to do some research.  After all, she handed me an ancestor plus a fuller picture of Clarissa. I needed to give her SOMETHING. I noticed Clarissa and John’s daughter Louisa was married to Andrew Casebolt.  Maybe researching him might lead to some good Sampson information.  Instead I stumbled upon a land deal dated 1832 in which Andrew partnered with none other than James W. Jollett to buy land in a newly formed town called Rifesville, which today is Dayton, Virginia. 

Look at that James Jr. – he helped form a new county AND a new town.  Go James Go!