Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Sorting the Children of John Wilson Brumfield

John Wilson Brumfield
1811 LA - 1889 LA
Son of John B. Brumfield

&

Cinderella Lanier Brumfield
c1817 LA - 1884 LA

There are times when it is difficult to sort out the children in a family. Census reports are not always consistent. The handwriting of the census taker might not be clear. Unique names may be difficult to spell. In families with a long list of names they are sometimes confused. I find an excel spreadsheet helps me to make sense out of the confusion.

I also compared my research to various Ancestry Trees. I do not cite unsourced Trees but they can lend a bit of clarity to raw data.

The names for Candace & Claretta were a muddle until I looked at the big picture.




Are you related to this family? I'd like to hear from you.



7 comments:

  1. I like your format for sorting out the kids' names and dates from one Census to the next...helps in drawing logical conclusions from the evidence. Thanks for sharing!

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  2. The spreadsheet becomes very helpful in sorting out the children; all 11 of them.

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  3. I hope you get a response from someone. Some of these tangled messes take a while to straighten out. I'm working on a handful of William Hyde/Hydes/Hide/Hides from the same area in England. I'm still in the big tangled knot phase, but slowly I'm pulling out families from the mess.

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  4. Isn't it amazing how names changed over a period of time -- Lucy to Louisiana; Rosa to Rosina; Clarissa to Charity; etc. I find this among my own ancestors and I find it fascinating. As with your people and with mine, it seems to happen more often with the females. It couldn't happen so easily these with the required ID cards and driver's license to prove who we are. Your spreadsheet looks beautiful. I do something similar but not with Excel.

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    1. I wonder if the families and the census takers of the early census reports were less educated than later years. They spelled unusual names as carefully as they could. Of course, the handwriting was not the best either. It is only when I see the reports over the decades that I can make sense of the names.

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    2. John Wilson Brumfield was my gg-grandfather. If I can help please let me know.

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  5. Hello Cousin.

    My name is William Brumfield and I am descended from Milton Tynes Brumfield, my great-grandfather.

    You have John Wilson Brumfield as the son of John B. Brumfield. This is incorrect. First, John Brumfield (1768-1834) who married Margaret Kelly (referred to in "Fields of Broom" as "John & Peggy") did not have a middle name. Second, John Wilson's birth was indeed in Louisiana in 1811. However, John and Peggy did not arrive in Washington Parish until 1812 at the earliest.

    John Wilson Brumfield was the son of Ezekial Brumfield, who died at Camp Morgan following the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. Ezekial's wife was Jemima Wilson, hence the source of John Wilson Brumfield's middle name. Ezekial was the son of another John Brumfield(1750-1845) who is referred to in "Fields of Broom" as "Uncle John" to distinguish him from "John & Peggy". Uncle John Brumfield arrived in the West Florida Parishes before 1810. These two John Brumfields, uncle and nephew, have often been conflated.

    John Wilson Brumfield is descended from Uncle John's line, not John & Peggy's.

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