Saturday, August 31, 2019

Fact Checking Frustrations ...

I've had a fair number of emails and facebook messages from people who have also been on their own search for Capt Jesse Gray's roots over the years.  Some have been very helpful, mainly in regards to more recent ancestors, like Capt Jesse's grandchildren or great-grands.  This information is often provided via old family bibles, which is an excellent source.  I love getting copies of these pages, mainly because they were usually written down as the events happened, so how much more accurate can you get?  Headstones are often mis-named in spelling, or name order (mixing up first and middle names according to how they were used, rather than how they were actually named), and sometimes if a stone isn't placed immediately after a person has passed the dates are guesstimated and often off by a year or so, but the bible records can usually be counted on to be pretty accurate.

Then there are the people who have done their own family tree online and have read something somewhere on someone else's tree and copied it over to their own.  This is great IF that information is correct, but unfortunately is often is not.  Too many people still figure if it's on the internet it must be true.  I have news for you people:  THE INTERNET LIES.
I fell for it too at one time, for about 3 minutes, then once I saw the unsubstantiated claims of "truth", lack of documentation, waaaayyyy too much guesswork, I pretty much stopped believing most of what I see online unless it's in an actual official document.  And even then sometimes you have to take it with a grain of salt.  Always try to remember that the information recorded online is only as accurate as the person who put it there.

There are two lines in particular that several people have decided are Capt Jesse's family.  These trees do both have a Jesse Gray in them, and in theory if you're not really looking closely they could be plausible.  I'm not going to say right out that it's impossible, because at this time I just can't prove it beyond a doubt.  But I will say that both are highly unlikely.  Like super sky-high unlikely.  I do have my reasons, so I will elaborate. 

One of them is the family tree of Henry Gray and Sarah Harding.  We do have many Harding relatives sprinkled throughout the tree, so even there we could be related to her, but I haven't found a link there so far.  This is probably the most common tree that people have brought to my attention, swearing up and down that this is IT.  Nope, sorry people, I do not believe it is.

Henry Gray  (1714-1773) and Sarah Harding/Hardin (1702-  ) did have a son named Jesse.  They lived in Virginia, which is one of the possible places Capt Jesse may have come from.  Their son Jesse was born in 1738.  Now here is why I don't believe he's my guy.
Capt Jesse Gray died in Kemptville around 1843.  I don't believe he was 105 when he died, that would have been extraordinary considering the rough life he led and it would have been documented somewhere as such.  Plus his youngest child was born in 1815 .... I really don't think he was still making babies when he was 80, which is how old he would have been if he was born in 1738.  Plus every family story and historical records of the American Revolution state that he had a brother named Samuel.  Henry Gray did not have a son named Samuel.
Now, it could be that one of Henry's sons was the father of Capt Jesse & Samuel Gray, but so far I haven't been able to find anything that indicates this.  I haven't given up on that idea, but I'm pretty much convinced that Henry Gray and Sarah Harding are not the parents of my Capt Jesse Gray, so unless you have absolute definitive proof that they are, please stop insisting the ridiculous.
If you look in my Patch of Gray tree on Ancestry you will find them there, but not because of the Grays.  Rather, my connection to them is through Henry Gray's nephew James Samuel Gray who married into the Mangum family.  Yep, the same Mangums that married 3 of Capt Jesse's sons, or cousins of them, but the same gang nonetheless.  So there is definitely a connection there, and to me it's too much of a coincidence to ignore, so I'm still looking for other ways Capt Jesse could fit in there, but I haven't found it yet, I just know it's not Henry.

There's one other family that many people have also tried to convince me are the roots to Capt Jesse.  This would be the family of William Gray and Lydia Anderson.  They, too, lived in Virginia.  William's parents were John Gray (1690-1751) and Agnes Rose McGowan (1695-1759). William and Lydia have sons Jesse and Samuel.  It's always been a story in my family that Jesse & Samuel were twins ... whether that was true or not, I don't know, but we do know they were brothers.  So far, so good, right?  Nope. This Jesse Gray was born in 1765, which is both logical and likely for my Capt Jesse.  But this particular Jesse moved to Kentucky, where he was married twice and died in 1819.  See what I mean when I say it pays to do your homework.

One thing I've learned over the past few years is how bloody common the name Jesse Gray was in the southern states in the mid to late 1700's.  There are a LOT, like seriously a LOT of Jesse and Samuel Grays and it's really hard to distinguish them from each other unless you do a ton of serious digging and reading.

I do appreciate each and every piece of information anyone offers me that they've found in their own search, and I will do my utmost to try to prove or disprove whether it's valid or just another wandering trail to the wrong family.  So please do keep messaging me and keep sending me whatever you have or think you have and we'll go from there.

For now, the search continues .......

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