Not so elementary, my dear Watson ...

Names.  Over the years, some names have become more and then less popular, depending on things like trends, media, creativity ... and some have maintained a steady level, usually due to simple tradition.  Some names are repeated over the generations to keep them in the family, or to honour or commemorate those who have passed.  Sometimes the maiden name of the mother or grandmother was used as the first name of a child.  I knew a woman who had twins and named one of them after her husband, the other after the man who actually fathered the children ...

Nowadays it seems people are sometimes just making up names off the top of their heads, to invoke some kind of individuality for their child.  Names like Edith, Archibald, Maud, or even my own Deborah aren't used as often now as they once were.  

In the not so distant past though, traditional names handed down from generation to generation were very important.  Often in a line of grandchildren you would see several cousins with the same name, after their grandfather or grandmother.  I'm sure this would have made for a very confusing family reunion with all these cousins called Robert or Sarah.

Which brings me to Henry and Watson.  Capt Jesse's eldest son was James.  Nothing spectacular there, James has always been a very popular and traditional name all the way through history and even today.  Likely he had a brother or uncle or even his father named James ... not much to go on.  James named his first son Henry.  Also a popular name, although less so than James in some parts.  Capt Jesse had no sons named Henry.  James' wife's father and grandfather were not named Henry.  She did have an uncle Henry but he died in infancy.

Capt Jesse's second son, Jesse jr, named one of his sons Watson.  Now that's an unusual name.  One does not just come up with a name like that out of the clear blue sky ... not in the 1800's anyhow.  Watson was not commonly used as a first name, but it was a surname in some parts.  

So, this is where I'm looking now ... Henry and Watson had to have come from somewhere ... either his father, grandfather, uncles, brothers, or his mother .... Yes, that's casting a hugely wide net, but when you factor in the relevant dates and geographical possibilities and likelihoods it narrows up just a little bit.  Hopefully just enough to help me figure out a bit more of the puzzle that is Capt Jesse.

Taking the time to get it RIGHT ...

One of the main stumbling blocks I've come across on my journey to find Capt Jesse is actually, believe it or not, other people trying to do the exact same thing.  When I do a search in Ancestry for information I try to stay away from other people's public trees.  I know they are on their own quest to find out where they came from, and they very well may be on the same route I'm on, but that doesn't necessarily mean we're after the same thing ... if that makes any sense at all.

Yes, it's good to share .... yes, it's good to link up names that go together, and often other people's trees are the only way to do that.  BUT ... and this is a big BUT ... some of them are just WRONG.  There is a guy in particular that I've gradually come to accept that I should never accept his family tree as being valid information.  He tends to find hints, take them as gospel, fill in his tree without further research, then moves on to the next one.  Then all of these newbies come along and think that since he has so much done on his tree, he must be right.  They copy his tree info into theirs, now we've got 2 invalid trees, and from there it grows exponentially.  I've sent him a number of emails asking for sources for some of the things he has posted ... of course I never get a reply.  

I do end up checking his tree every now and then as comparison to mine, take it all with a grain of salt, then go looking for verification sources to back it up.

With all the work I've put into this search: reading wills, obituaries, birth-marriage-death certificates, letters, cemetery inscriptions, anything I can get my hands on, I try my hardest to be able to list sources for my finds.  Not always, but as often as I can.  My ultimate goal, of course, is to figure out Capt Jesse.  Until then I try to keep my records as accurate as possible, in regards to spelling, dates, places, etc, with sources for as much as I can possibly manage.

Backtracking for another look ....

A few times now I have gone back to the family tree of Henry Gray & Sarah Hardin/Harding.  It has been suggested, even recorded as truth by several people also doing genealogy research on this family, that Capt Jesse is their son.  That I do not believe ... mainly because the dates don't match up.  Their son Jesse was born in 1738.  My Capt Jesse was born closer to 1760.  But that doesn't mean he's not in the next generation.  Henry's brother, Richard, was the father of James Samuel Gray, who married Mary Mangum, cousin to Sarah and Mary Mangum that married two of Capt Jesse's sons.  There isn't a lot of information readily available on the rest of Henry Gray's family, the descendants of his brothers.

Looking at Capt Jesse's own family, his first son is James.  James married one of the Mangum girls, and his first two sons are Henry and William.  He has another son named James F Gray ... I don't know what the F was for, but I think I should find out.  

I think for now I'll focus on that ... try to find more information on them all and see where it leads me.......

Spelling and Math ....

One of the resources I rely on often in my research is the Census. It is in a way both very reliable and yet very unreliable at the same time. It does tell us who was living in the house at that time, usually indicating with some degree of accuracy what their relation was to the head of the household. Ages are often wrong. I expect it's because the person giving the information didn't know the actual birthdate of each person and just gave their best guess. Like "oh .... I'd say about 9" ... not remembering that 10 years ago at the previous census the child had been recorded as being 2. 

Some census years are better than others in the areas I've been focusing on, and I imagine it's the same everywhere else. The census taker probably didn't lay eyes on everyone he was listing, so he may not have noticed that someone was older or younger than recorded, or if it should be listed as Male or Female. Some often put down the nickname of a person rather than their actual formal name. So little "Gussie" listed as being a 9 year old boy may have actually been Augusta, an 11 year old girl. Spelling varies greatly from one census to another ... if a person lived long enough to span several censuses you could see a whole slew of different spellings. 

I can't be too hard on them though, seeing as many had little to no actual schooling and were doing the best that they could with what they had. I guess I should be grateful that I haven't come across a census with "One-eyed Willie" listed in it.

Following the slaves ....

Lately I've been reading a couple of really good books:  The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill, and Black Loyalists by Ruth Holmes Whitehead.  Both excellent books, full of information, some of which I had never heard of before.  As usual, every time I read anything I'm constantly on the lookout to any reference to the Grays or other names I've seen associated with them along the way.

Of course I couldn't read The Book of Negroes fictional novel without having a look at the ACTUAL Book of Negroes.  Among the many lists are 5 slaves listed as such (the names in parentheses are in possession of the slave at that time):

Nero Denton, 40, stout fellow, (Cornet Gray, B. Legion). Formerly the property of William Denton of Goshen; left him in 1776. GMC.

Dalkeith, 25, stout fellow, (Cornet Gray, B. Legion). Formerly the property of James Ronaldson, Smithfield, Virginia; left him in 1778. GMC.

Toney, 20, stout wench, (Cornet Gray, B. Legion). Property of Cornet Gray per Bill of Sale.

Jem, 1, (Cornet Gray, B. Legion). Property of Cornet Gray per Bill of Sale.

Nicholas, 20, stout fellow, (Cornet Gray, B. Legion). Formerly the property of Benjamin Fisher, Pennsylvania.

Cornet was a rank in the British Legion equivalent to 2nd Lieutenant.  Capt Jesse's brother Samuel was a 2nd Lieutenant when he was in St Augustine, this I know.  I don't know if he was also the Cornet Gray listed above, but it is entirely possible.

In Ruth Holmes Whitehead's book, Black Loyalists, she makes reference to a letter from John Cruden, commissioner of sequestered estates, to the local magistrate, George Nibbs in 1783 advising that a Mr. Gray was transporting Negroes from Carolina under the pretense of setting them free but then selling them in the British West Indies.  A few weeks later Cruden wrote to the Honorable J. Fahia, Esq, president of the council at Tortola, about the same thing.  Cruden believed this Mr. Gray to be either Capt Jesse or his brother Samuel.  

We do know that when Capt Jesse went from St Augustine to Nova Scotia, they did detour to Bermuda before heading north.  We also know that in 1786 Samuel bought a number of slaves from Gov Tonyn in East Florida.  Samuel was later recorded as living in Jamaica in 1817.

In Ruth Holmes Whitehead's book she speaks about Boston King, a former South Carolina slave.  King had been the property of Richard Waring of Charlestown, SC, he later worked as an orderly to a militia Capt Grey/Gray in SC.  We know that Mary Postell had also been the property of a family by the name of Waring in Charlestown.

Upon doing a bit of online poking around I was reading through some ads posted for runaway slaves in the newspaper in South Carolina in 1783-85.  You can see them here.  On Sept 2-6, 1783 and Jan 3-6, 1784 a Henry Gray was looking for 4 runaway slaves.  The part that set off my alarm bells was that they had been purchased from Postell and Waring .... BOTH names associated with Capt Jesse, Samuel, and Mary Postell.

Hmmmmmm.........

So ... factual information, I have none.  Well, it's all factual and it's all information, but it doesn't all necessarily belong to me.  It is thought provoking though.  A bit too coincidental for my liking ... I am definitely going to have to do some more investigating into these areas.

Working the numbers ....

That's what it all comes down to ... the numbers.  If the dates don't line up within reason, then certain names and associations go right out the window.  This is one of the 3 main reasons I have discarded the many Jesse Grays I've come across until now, the dates just don't work.  The next reason is locations.  Based on the bits of information I do know about Capt Jesse since the American Revolution, I can reason out certain places that just don't make any sense.  This goes along with the 3rd reason, which is common names.  First names were handed down through the generations, naming children after parents, grand-parents, uncles, etc.  Often a child would be given the mother's maiden name as a first name.  They also married locally, so often we have brothers marrying sisters or cousins, with common surnames popping up all over the place within that particular section of the tree.

Using these 3 main processes of deductive reasoning I've eliminated pretty much every Jesse Gray I've come across.  Every now and then I get an email from my dad asking if I'd checked out a name he'd gotten from Uncle Gary (his brother).  So far every one I've been able to definitively tell him they're not the one we're looking for.

But every now and then I get a family line that looks too good to NOT be ours.  There's a Fielding Gray who was born in 1799 in VA, died 1850 in TN.  On the face of that it doesn't look like anything.  Just another Gray.  His middle name is Wells.  Interesting ... Capt Jesse's father-in-law's name is Wells.  Still, not much to go on.  Fielding's father is usually listed as James Gray.  Again, no big deal, there are lots of James Grays out there.  Then I discovered his name is actually James Samuel Gray and he married Mary Mangum, of the same Mangums that my Capt Jesse and Samuel had dealings with in the Mary Postell trial and more.  Capt Jesse has 2 sons that married Mangums.

James Samuel Gray didn't, to my knowledge so far, have a brother named Jesse.  But he did have a cousin Jesse. 

On the face of it I'm only related to these Grays through the Mangums:

James Samuel Gray (1750 - )

husband of 2nd cousin 5x removed

Mary Mangum (1775 - 1800)

wife of James Samuel Gray

Micajah Mangum (1730 - 1787)

father of Mary Mangum

Joseph Micajah Mangum (1710 - 1762)

father of Micajah Mangum

John Mangum (1674 - 1737)

father of Joseph Micajah Mangum

William Mangum Sr. (1706 - 1787)

son of John Mangum

William Mangum Jr. (1736 - 1818)

son of William Mangum Sr.

Mary Mangum (1800 - )  ***** married to Capt Jesse's son, Jesse jr. ... she is 2nd cousin to the Mary that James Samuel Gray married!

daughter of William Mangum Jr.

Benjamin Samuel Gray (1820 - 1890)

son of Mary Mangum

Edgar Athlene Gray (1863 - 1925)

son of Benjamin Samuel Gray

Keith Albert Gray (1908 - 1976)

son of Edgar Athlene Gray

Keith Gerald Gray (1940 - )

son of Keith Albert Gray

Deborah Gray

No matter where I start to dig and add names to fill in holes in the branches, I always have to return to these people.  The dates line up.  The locations are plausible.  The people are familiar.  I have to keep at this until I can definitively say that these people are or are not Capt Jesse's people.  Then I can either do a happy dance or roll up my sleeves and set this branch aside and move on to another.

Haven't given up, just been busy ...

Just realized now that I haven't posted anything since the end of July so I figured I'd best do something about that.  I'm still digging, though I haven't found anything of any great significance in a little while.  Still reading everything I can get my hands on that even mention a Gray in eastern and southern states and in Nova Scotia.  Mainly I've been doing a lot of filling in names and dates of distant relatives, like 3rd cousins twice removed and stuff like that.  I still keep finding a lot of repetition in names that are familiar throughout the parts I already do know about ... so it's good to be reassured even when I'm off on a distant trail that I'm still on the right track.

I've seen some intermingling with families named Crocker, Cann, Robbins, and more.  In the case of Capt Jesse vs Mary Postell there was a similar dispute between a Joseph Robbins and two of his slaves.  Robbins had also been in St Augustine at the same time as Capt Jesse, he moved to Nova Scotia around the same time, and also lived in Kemptville.  They were both friends with the Andrews, Fannings, and Mangums, and had several dealings with each other, and there are some Robbins in my tree (haha!) that lead back to Joseph.

It's so weird finding out that I'm related to these names that I've heard my entire life and had no idea.  Of course, they didn't either, it's all pretty much lost history.  

Anyhow, back to the digging I go ... hopefully I'll match up some more names that will lead somewhere other than down the rabbit hole again.