52 Ancestors - With a Little Help from the Non-Population

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.

Our challenge this week is to look at one of the non-population schedules to learn more about our ancestors. In my on-going quest to sort out the various William and Sarah/Sallie Sampsons of Greene County, Virginia, I recently reviewed the non-population agricultural schedules.

There were two William Sampsons in Greene when the special census was conducted in 1850. Both had wives named Sarah. Both couples were roughly the same age. While only one Sarah was Sarah Jollett, both couples lived near other Jolletts or married Jollett cousins making it difficult to determine which Sampson couple is “mine.”

I wonder if the size of farm and near neighbors could shed some light on this puzzle.

1 – William Sampson

1850 Non-Population Agriculture Schedule

100 acres improved land and 142 unimproved

Value of the farm $700 and value of tools $100

2 horses, 2 cattle (non-milking), 7 sheep, 12 swine; value of livestock $250

Production: 100 bushels wheat, 18 bushels rye, 500 bushels Indian corn, 45 bushels oat, 300 pounds of tobacco, 22 pounds of wool, 10 bushels Irish potatoes, 50 pounds of butter, 15 pounds of flax, 1 bushel of flaxseed; value of products $100

Value of homemade manufactures $40

Value of slaughtered animals $80

This William lived close to Lucy Sampson, widow of John Sampson and mother of one of the Williams. His close neighbors in the non-population schedule included John McMullan, James Knight, Jacob Hammer, and Hiram Eddins.

These neighbors match those of the 1850 census in which the household of William and Sarah included two of five children, Maria and Franklin. I know this is Lucy Sampson’s son William and his family because William and Franklin took care of selling some land that had been left to William’s brother in their father’s will.

2 – William Sampson 

1850 Non-Population Agriculture Schedule

76 acres improved land and 71 acres unimproved

Value of the farm $50 and value of tools $6

1 horse, 1 work cow, 3 other cattle, 6 swine; value of livestock $70

Production: 30 bushels wheat, 10 bushels rye, 150 bushels Indian corn, 20 pounds of butter, 1 ton of hay, 1 pound of hops

Value of homemade manufactures $20

Value of slaughtered animals $45

This William’s neighbors included John Jarrell, William Conway, Rufus K. Fitzhugh, John Teal, and William Sims. Close neighbors in the 1850 census were Jarrell, Conway, and Sims. Jarrell and Conway are also mentioned in a deed from 1850 in which this William gave his land to his wife and the children listed in the 1850 census.

What does matching the census and non-population schedule do for my research? Probably not a whole lot. I had previously determined that the second William and Sarah are mine based on ages and gender of children in the 1840 census. However, a closer look at the description of the two Williams’ farms and production has reinforced the impression I’ve long held: that the OTHER William and Sarah were more well-to-do than MY William and Sarah.  

© 2015, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.

Mystery Monday: William and Sarah Sampson

Mystery Monday is a daily prompt at Geneabloggers that invites us to post about mystery ancestors or mystery records – anything in our family history research which is currently unsolved. This is a great way to get fellow genealogy bloggers to lend their eyes to what has been found so far and possibly help solve the mystery.

In the mid-1800s in Greene County, Virginia, every Tom, Dick, and Mary was named William and Sarah Sampson.   There were at least 5 sets of them, but only 1 of them included Sarah/Sallie Jollett.  But which?

Three of the William-Sarahs can be eliminated easily.  The oldest was William Sampson and his wife Sarah Coleman.  He was a Revolutionary War soldier who moved on to Indiana in 1805.  Coincidentally, their son William married a Sarah too – Sarah Ann Parker – but since they were out of state, they are not part of the problem.  The other William-Sarah were much older too, like the first set.  This William wrote a will in 1815 leaving his land to his wife Sarah and naming his son William as executor.  The will was witnessed by Sarah Jollet’s father James Jollett and his son-in-law Peter Marsh. 

This might also be the same William Sampson who granted permission for his daughter Sarah Sampson to marry guess who -- William Sampson.  This makes my head hurt.

Any attempt to apply logic or common sense in analyzing wills, deeds, and census records is fruitless.  I cannot connect the dots because the dots go everywhere.  I’ve tried looking at the neighbors to see what other Jolletts were living nearby.  In the 1850 Greene Co, Virginia census, Sarah and William Sampson, the miller, were living next door to James Madison Marsh, nephew of Sarah Jollett. Since families tended to live close to one another, we might conclude that our Sarah was married to the miller. However, in that same census, another of Sarah’s nephews, John Marsh, was living in the household of Sarah and William Sampson, the wheelwright. See what I mean?

Fasten your seatbelt, because now the story gets really bumpy.

In 1860, the wheelwright was in Albemarle, running a hotel; apparently his Sarah was dead. Right down the road was Sarah Jollett’s nephew Hiram Marsh who was married to the wheelwright’s daughter Peachy.  Meanwhile back in neighboring Greene County, the miller was dead, but Sarah was still there with 3 daughters and several grandchildren.  Two doors down was Tabatha Jollett, an unproven sister, but still a JOLLETT.  Soooo, was Sarah Jollett dead or a widow?

In 1870, William, the wheelwright/hotel keeper, was retired and living with his son Franklin while daughter Maria was living as a housekeeper to her sister Peachy’s husband Hiram Marsh, who was also her cousin IF her mother was Sarah JOLLETT Sampson.  In 1880, William, Maria, and Franklin were back together again in Albemarle.  In Greene County, Sarah Sampson was dead by 1870.  

In 1883, the wheelwright’s son Franklin married his cousin Clarissa Ann Sampson Rodenbarger, daughter of the wheelwright’s brother John Sampson and Sarah Jollett’s sister Clarissa.  Were they cousins ONLY on their fathers’ side, or on both their fathers’ AND mothers’ side?

Thus, it’s not just the sameness of the names that presents confusion; it’s the intertwining of these two families across the decades that makes sorting them rather complicated.