Do Ancestors Rise from the Dead?
There are times when it seems my ancestors are tugging at me. Or: Am I tugging at them, as if they were a security blanket my dog wanted to take away from me? This urge that we have as senior citizens to become familiar with our family tree is a bit unsettling at times. Am I preparing for my own demise? Is this pedigree chart my pathway into the cosmos or a simple record that I have been here ‘dancing on this earth for a short time?’ (Thank you, Cat Stevens, for the lyrics). I sometimes stare at the family tree before me and the tree whispers, “You were here, Doc, part of this larger family.” I go outside into our forest and piss on a tree, and the tree whispers, “Your dog was here before you, Doc.” My dog Murphy comes over, lifts his leg and whizzes over my spot. He looks at me and whispers, “Not that one. That tree is mine.”
I go back inside my home and I choose the font: 12-point Palatino, and I debate that choice of fonts as if it holds some importance. There are so many of us on the face of this small piece of galactic rock, dirt and water, spiraling through space. It becomes clear as my family tree grows that we are all interconnected, all tugging at one another, now and forevermore; and all pissing on one another’s territory like feral cats in heat.
The daughter of William Davis, aka Wineford, began tugging at me as I was running a 10-gauge wire from my 240-volt heater to the control panel in my wood shop. The thought occurred to me that my ancestors did not have this advantage. They didn’t have 10-gauge wire, 240 volts of anything or a DeWalt cordless drill. I am perched on the edge of a vast wilderness just as my ancestors were. I can go out my back door and walk 500 miles under a canopy of the Northwoods forest without ever stepping out of that forest until I enter the tundra surrounding Hudson Bay. Well, I would have to paddle across Lake Superior. But that would be the only exception. I would die doing that and never get to Ontario. Yet, I have all the modern conveniences afforded mankind in 2018. I don’t have a clue as to what it took to survive in colonial America.
My mind slowly drifted back several centuries. I suspect William Davis Esquire thought he had many of the conveniences of his time…….
And then boom…. Wineford Davis jumped out of the cortex of my brain.
“Remember me? You have seen my first name before. I am not the first in my family to be called ‘Wineford.’ And, oh, by the way: I hated that name and my father didn’t spell it right in his will either. You should know that Mr. Smartypants. You have all those note cards with what? 30,000 names? I am not the first Winifred you have thought about. You think you can just torch a note card with one of your fancy cigars and forget about us. That is shite. And those cigars you are smoking… also shite. That tobacco is low quality compared to what we were harvesting in Carolina.”
I can’t tell you how many notepads I have filled with the names of people who have surfaced in my research as a ‘person of interest’ in my investigation. Wineford Davis, the daughter of William Esq, married John Winfield, making her Wineford Winfield. The Winfield family left a paper trail on their migration from Virginia and they tended to travel with the Davis families over the course of a century, as did the Wilkinson, Jordan, Satterthwaite, Hosea, Meed and White families. You will meet all of them, soon enough.
I was certain I had seen the name Wineford Davis before, or a variation on that name, in a previous century, but where? I dug through my notecards, notebooks, note pads, legal pads, loose leaf papers and electronic files. I went through old shoe boxes of post it notes and a collection of cigar wrappers on which I sometimes scrawled names of ancestors or a craft beer I have been meaning to try. Wrappers suffice when a piece of paper is not immediately available. Finally, as if waiting patiently for a table at an A & W, she was there in front of me: ‘Winnifred Davis’ in the abstract for the 1755 will of Susannah Meads (aka Meeds):
Meeds, Susannah
March 26, 1755. June Court, 1755. Son: Timothy Meeds, Son; William Davis. Daughter in law: Winnifred Davis, Elizabeth Highe, Sara Barclift. Executors: Timothy Meeds, Robert Hosea. Witnesses: Abraham Hosea. John Hosea, Mary Crocker. Clerk of the Court: Thomas Taylor. (Source: Abstracts of North Carolina Wills, By: J. Bryan Grimes, Secretary of State, 1910, Page 245)
Susannah Meeds died in 1755 and claimed William Davis as her son and Winnifred Davis as her daughter-in-law. Susannah Meeds, the mother of William Davis, died a widow. Her husband, Thomas Meads had passed away in 1751.
In the Abstract of the 1751 Will of Thomas Meads, Meads identified “William Davis, son-in-law.” That implied that Susannah Meads was previously married to a Davis and bore him a son, William Davis. If this were true, I should find a record of her marriage to a Davis.
The term ‘son-in-law’ as used by Thomas Meads implied one of two things. Either 1) William Davis married a daughter of Thomas or 2) William was a stepson to Thomas Meads, or both. Stepsons did marry step sisters as we uncovered earlier with the pairing of Diana Carter and William Davis, Jr (son of Esquire).
The answer to this riddle was found in the abstract for the Will of Thomas Meads, 1751.
Meads, Thomas
Pasquotank, March 8, 1750-1751. April Court, 1751. Son and Executor: Timothy (“my plantation”). Daughter: Ann Nights (two negroes), Elizabeth Meads (two negroes). son-in-law Wm. Davis, Wife and Executrix: Susannah. Witnesses: Joseph Scott, John Brothers, Job Winslow. Clerk of the Court: (signature missing).
Thomas Meads mentioned his daughters Ann Nights, Elizabeth Meads, and a son Timothy. Thomas Meads does not mention Sara Barclift, or Winnifred in his will. Thus, when Susannah Meads refers to Winnifred as ‘daughter in law’ she is indicating that Winnifred was the wife of her son, William Davis. When Thomas Meads refers to son-in-law Wm. Davis, he is acknowledging that William Davis is his stepson. Thomas Meads was, like Susannah, previously married. I deduce that Sarah Barclift, mentioned by Susannah Meads in her will and not mentioned in the will of Thomas Meads, is the daughter of Susannah and a Davis gentleman. The first name of that gentleman was soon revealed.
After years of research I concluded that William Davis Esquire (d 1802) married a Winnifred (surname unknown) and by her had a daughter they named Wineford. Wm Esquire died in 1802.
Esquire’s wife Winifred predeceased him. His wife at the time of his death was Elizabeth Carter. I assumed Elizabeth Warner was married to another man in the Davis clan, not Esquire. All of this is subject to change as future family history buffs dig deeper. But I am reasonably sure I will be dead for a long time before anyone cares to dig deeper into this quagmire!
A search for Susannah Meeds and variations of the spelling of that name provided further evidence and linkage to the 17th Century ancestors waiting patiently in line outside the door to my office. I would soon find the name of William’s father.
Finding the Elusive Davis Family
“You’re out of tea, you know.”
I was afraid to look up. I couldn’t even turn my head to acknowledge that I heard the voice. In fact, I was afraid to look. My nose was crushing the keyboard on my laptop. The cursor on the screen was running amuck and the letter ‘f’ was repeating itself ad infinitum across the pages of cyberspace. I had fallen asleep and it felt good to be oblivious.
“Susannah Meads?” I muttered.
“Whose Susannah Meads?” the voice queried in kindness, as if offering a prayer to a doting old fart who couldn’t find his slippers if they were on his feet. And they were.
“What?” I mumbled, shifting my head away from the laptop, still floating through space, now with a side order of Nueske ham for a pillow.
“You were dreaming again, weren’t you?” my wife nudged me. “Dublin Breakfast Tea, you’re out of it. I’ll pick some up when I am in Appleton.” A dish rag landed on the countertop near my right hand. “Clean your face or Murphy will soon get the better of your nose. Gotta run. I have an executive board meeting. Love you. Bye.”
“Don’t leave me here alone. I think they are coming to get me.” I flipped the Meeds file aside and fumbled with a ‘quill tip’ pen I treasured, a gift from my son. I tottered over to the window in our den. I stared into a winter landscape and a quarter mile of driveway that would carry Nancy off to work. I do this every day without fail. I make her coffee and wave farewell from the window. It’s a ritual, a rite of passage allowing me to slip gracefully into senior citizenship, when all about me I am flaying against the idea of aging.
A paper trail was organizing on my desktop. Visions of index cards were dancing in my head. I was waiting for the dancing elephant in Disney’s Fantasia to land with a thud on my carpet and then she did. Susannah Meads was found in the Abstract for the Will of Tamar Keel (d 1747) of The North Carolina Historical and Genealogical Register, Volume I.
Keel, Tamar
Pasquotank, Jany 30th, 1748-9. Widow Susanna Meads wife of Thomas Meads, also his daughter Elizabeth, William Davis, Jr., Executor. Test. James Gregore, William Wallis.
Voila! William Davis is referred to as ‘Junior,’ alongside Susanna Meads. If there is a William Junior, there must be a William Senior. These passages always contain a twist that requires head scratching, a push back from the table, a few gasps for fresh air, a walk around the property, an appropriate amount of Scotch or all the above. The fact that ‘Meeds’ is now spelled ‘Meads’ is not an issue. Such alterations are commonplace and fact checking confirmed this to be true.
This passage alone stumps me: “1748-9. Widow Susanna Meads wife of Thomas Meads”
Susanna can’t be both widow and wife of Thomas Meads, not in 1748 or 9. Thomas Meads does not die until 1751. Another lesson to learn: Abstracts found in the county and state offices are written by third parties after the fact, often long after the death of the person leaving the will in their wake. The abstract of Tamar Keel could have easily been written by an office worker consolidating county records, or by an entrepreneurial author, hoping to pull together a compendium for sale to people like me who are bound and determined to find ancestors. The author of Tamar’s abstract was aware of Susanna Meads history, for she was indeed the widow of a William Davis Sr and following his death married Thomas Meads. William Davis, Senior would soon be revealed. A person’s death was often recorded as two dates: a date of actual death and a date one is ruled officially deceased in Probate Court, and lifetime acquisitions distributed.
Who was Tamar Keel and why was she enlisting William Davis Junior as her executor? What was her relationship to William Davis and Susanna Meads? I had encountered the name Tamar Davis in previous years and had, at one time (long ago), filed her index card in a shoebox of ‘orphans,’ people for whom I could not find a connection. The first name is also found in archives as Tamara and Thamer.
A prior abstract in the same volume (the Register, Volume I) brought things into focus.
Keel, Lemuel
Pasqoutank, Feb. 11th, 1747-8. April Court 1748. Wife Tamar, brother Charles, wife Executrix. Test, Henry Pendleton, Robert Hosea.
Everything clicked into place. It was one of those rare, crystalline thoughts that one can only savor before plummeting back into the chaos of family history; that moment before the bungee cord snaps. If you have ever been constipated for five days, then you can relate to the relief I felt when I found Lemuel and Tamar Keel dead in my living room.
Tamar Keel lost her husband, Lemuel, in the previous year (1747). They lived in Pasqoutank NC. William Davis Jr served as her executor. William Davis, Sr was deceased prior to 1747 and his widow Susannah Meads became the wife of Thomas Meads in 1748. Susannah was thus captured for posterity as both a widow (of William Davis Sr) and remarried as Mrs. Thomas Meads with adult stepchildren (Elizabeth and Timothy) from a previous wife of Thomas Meads. Sarah Barclift not mentioned by Thomas Meads in his will, but mentioned by Susannah may very well be a daughter of William Davis Sr and Susannah and therefore a sister of William Davis, Esq.
At this point I will summon into this study the names of the executors and witnesses to the wills of Susannah and Thomas Meads, and Tamar and Lemuel Keel. The list includes:
Timothy Meeds
Robert Hosea
Abraham Hosea
John Hosea
Mary Crocker
Joseph Scott
John Brothers
Job Winslow
James Gregore
William Wallis
Henry Pendleton
Robert Hosea
These are the names of folks found in the neighborhood. They are either friend or relative. I will research the above names, their deeds, wills and family affiliations to the point of exhaustion. I will test my hypothesis that William and Susannah Davis are my father’s 5th great grandparents and parents of William Davis, Esquire. If necessary, we will get a court order, exhume the bodies and run a DNA test. Ok, that would be a stretch.
After years of reading wills, deeds and various documents I have developed a recall of names like Keziah, Obedience, Prudence and Tamar. The name ‘Tamar’ was unique to my findings, it had lodged in my head between ‘Take-out pizza’ and ‘Tao Te Ching’ and distinguished itself from all the Sarahs, Marys, Lydias and Elizabeths who paraded in front of colonial cameras pretending to use biodegradable dish detergents in their wash tubs. I had seen the name ‘Tamar Davis’ in my ‘travels through time’. The LDS (Morman archives) indicate that a Tamar Davis roamed Virginia between the years 1702 and 1748. She was several decades older than our William Davis Esquire and it would be a stretch to label her as his sibling. Perhaps she was an aunt. Did she marry Lemuel Keel and thus become Tamar Keel (d 1749)? Would she and the witnesses lead me to more information regarding William Davis Sr, the father of Esquire?
I had to take a break from all of this and go see my Aunt Merle Sawyer. She is 98 years old and has put out an APB for my arrest. She informed all who would listen that she needs to see her godson, Steve. That would be me.
