When I think about it, it's kind of ironic. All through school for as long as I can remember, I despised history. I can't memorize, I have to learn how things work to remember them, so naturally I tended to do better in more logical studies, like science, math, languages. Besides that, most of our history classes in the schools I went to focused on the stories of the French Acadians in the area ... my family was very much NOT French Acadian, which made it all the more tedious for me.
I've been out of school a long time now (I won't say how long, just take my word for it: it's been a while) and I'm finding myself drawn to all things history, regardless the origins, region, era ... the older the better.
I recalled that my Aunt Ellen (AE) had been doing some family research and mapping out our Gray family tree ... she's visited cemeteries, read through every available record or log she could find, seriously - she's done a TON of work on this. I got her to send me a copy of what she's got so far, thinking it might be interesting to browse through, just out of curiosity. Then, just for fun I started up a family tree on Ancestry.ca. Just for fun ... famous last words. I filled in as much as I knew on my tree (which admittedly wasn't a whole lot), then used the information AE had sent me to fill in the rest. My first reaction once I really realised how very much she has done was WOW! Incredible. We sent a few emails back and forth, I had questions about various people and events in our family and she answered them the best she could. Record keeping was not a priority hundreds of years ago so sometimes there is very little to go on besides what was passed down verbally through a family or notes jotted in the front of a family bible.
So now what started out as "just for fun" has become an obsession. The internet is a godsend for research, though many times you have to take what you read with a grain of salt (as with any other information on the internet) as truth is often mixed in with speculation or just plain false information. Not a day goes by now that I don't do some digging, usually a few times a day.
Family trees are indeed like trees ... every generation doubles in size as you go back to parents, grand-parents, great grand-parents, etc ... sooooo many people! I love the stories I've come across along the way ... like this one fellow who was in trouble for disrupting the church or something, his punishment was to either pay a fine or be tied to a post in the town square and have people mock and throw stuff at him. He didn't want to pay the fine so he chose the latter.
Then there are the many confusing branches of the tree where cousins married cousins, or half-brothers married half-sisters, or even closer related than that getting it on ... this takes "keep it in the family" to a whole 'nother level! Sometimes I'm amazed I wasn't born with 3 arms and a tail with all the inter-family marriages along the way. I'm not judging by any means ... times were very different from one generation to the next, but I do get a chuckle now and then when I'm trying to figure out where one guy got his wife and then discover she was his sister.
Like I said, the internet is an awesome tool for digging and reading and finding out information. But it's only as good as the people who use it, like any other tool.
So for the past few months since I started my digging I usually pick one particular branch of the tree, fill in whatever AE has on them so far, and see what else I can find to go a little farther back. Some family lines are well documented, others not so much.
And then there's Jesse.
I am a Gray. My father is a Gray. His parents were both Grays (yep, 3rd cousins). Then we go to 2nd cousins, 1st cousins, brothers (possibly twins, not 100% sure on that yet), and then we come to Jesse. Captain Jesse Gray of North/South Carolina, a loyalist and slave owner, who eventually ended up in Nova Scotia where he married Sarah and from there came my Grays.
The end. And now you say "What? The end? That can't be the end, a family doesn't start from one guy a few hundred years ago!". True ... very true. But it seems that Jesse, being a wanted man when he went to Nova Scotia, managed to erase himself from the history books so that there is very little (like NONE) information on him pre- the revolutionary war. It's like he hatched as a soldier, did his job, lived his life, got married, had kids, died. No childhood, no birth, no parents. Thus: the end.
Of course I can't just leave it be at that. Being the ever-curious person I am most of my digging has focused on Captain Jesse. Every day I dig, and every day I read about various people along the years, every day I try to fill in some details about other parts of this huge family tree, and every day I search for Jesse.
In my readings I have found that he did have a brother, Samuel. (His (twin) sons are also named Jesse and Samuel, so of course that isn't confusing at all) Samuel was also a Loyalist in the American Revolution, also a slave owner. There is quite a bit of reading on the whole slave issue, they were quite the scoundrels, for lack of a better word ... tho cruel does come to mind. There is very little information on Samuel as well, and although my line sprung from Jesse I also have to fit Samuel in there with him.
I've tried searching from every angle I can think of .... census records in both North and South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, and Nova Scotia ... Vital Statistics are sometimes available in some areas ... I've done some reading into the histories and information on the other soldiers recorded to have fought alongside them, any names that are mentioned in conjunction with Jesse and/or Samuel.
Yes, he was a wanted man and had very good reasons for not wanting to be tracked or traced ... but somewhere along the way someone had to have known him and either wrote it down or told someone else. Like they say, two men can keep a secret if one of them is dead.
I'm determined to figure out where Jesse (and Samuel) came from and I won't rest until I do.
And so the search begins .......
