From strands of DNA – part 2

 From strands of DNA - part 1

I ended the last post with the connection I found between John Bailey Callicutt, from Prince Edward County, Virginia, who migrated to and settled on the Little River in Montgomery County, North Carolina before 1798 and the Sizemore family of Mecklenburg County, Virginia. John Bailey Callicutt’s daughter, Elizabeth married George Sizemore, the brother of Daniel Sizemore who found himself in a Mecklenburg, Virginia court in 1807 with John Morris for owing a debt to Speed Wilson & Co.

John Sizemore (the father of Daniel and George Sizemore) married Mary Gregory whose father, Richard Gregory married a woman named Mildridge. I do not know her maiden name. When Richard Gregory died, she married William Vaughan whose son, John Vaughan had married Amelia Jones, none other than the sister of Philadelphia Jones Griffin Yancey, the grandmother of Lewis and Robert Griffin found in the 1795 court order to be bound out alongside John Morris.

Through Uncle Don’s DNA matches I have learned that either John Jacky Morris and/or his wife Amelia are somehow related to the families of Mecklenburg County, Virginia with the surnames Vowel, Hendrick, Gregory, Vaughan, Sizemore, Griffin, Jones, Yancey, Stone, and Winn. I have now added Callicutt to my research list. I have been able to link these families together through intermarriage with one another in Virginia and learned that some of them migrated to Montgomery and surrounding counties, North Carolina.

Considering the number of DNA matches Uncle Don has with descendants of these families I am cautiously hopeful that my 3rd great grandfather John Jacky Morris is the same boy who was bound out to Mourning Winn in 1795 Mecklenburg, Virginia along with the Griffin children.

Down the rabbit hole: make it make sense

I am not one to chase family legends, rather, I tend for the opposite approach. I look for holes in the story, conflicts, discrepancies, the things that don’t make sense. And there is a lot that does not make sense with my Morris family legend. 

The legend says that John Jacky Morris was born in Clarksville, Virginia and came to Montgomery County, North Carolina in 1805. It seems simple enough until you start building a timeline only to discover that John Jacky Morris was born in and left a place before it ever existed. That is quite a remarkable achievement!  

Clarksville did not exist until 1818, and John Jacky was born in 1785. According to the official history of the place, before 1818, the area was known as Royster’s Ferry. The name shifted to Clarksville in 1818 when Clark Royster established the town and named it after himself. 

Before 1818, no one had ever heard of Clarksville!

1770 Collett map showing Royster’s Ferry

So, who was BORN in Clarksville, Virginia?

It was Thomas, John Jacky’s son, that was born in Clarksville, Virginia. According to John Coon Morris’s (Thomas’s son) death certificate, place of birth of father (Thomas) is Clarksville, VA. 

Uncle Don’s grandmother, Flora Dennis Morris, wife of John Coon Morris was the informant on the death certificate, and I am sure she did not pull Clarksville, Virginia out of a hat. She reported what John Coon Morris; her husband had told her. John Coon Morris was repeating what his father, Thomas, had told him. 

Thomas Morris was born about 1824, six years after the creation of the Town of Clarksville, so, if Thomas was born there, that would put John Jacky Morris and his wife, Amelia, in Virginia, not North Carolina, in 1824 when Thomas was born. 

John Jacky Morris was in the 1830 Census for Montgomery County, North Carolina and, if the death certificate listing Clarksville, Virginia is to be believed, that would mean John Jacky came to Montgomery County, North Carolina from Clarksville, Virginia between 1824, after Thomas was born, and 1830, before the Montgomery County Census was enumerated.

The screen shot below of the 1830 Census shows John Jacky Morris Sr and the pages before and after where he is found. A few things jumped out at me that tells me I need to do some more digging into records. First, a man named Bollen Green looks to be living near John Jacky Morris. Could Bollen Green possibly be part of the Green family who intermarried with the Griffin and Sizemore family in Virginia? Next, is Moses Grissom on the page preceding John. Who does he connect to? There is a Grissom / Gresham YDNA match to Uncle Don, and I wonder if Moses Grissom might be connected to that Gresham family in Granville County, North Carolina who are a YDNA match to Uncle Don. On the last page is found William Green and I wonder if he is related to Bollen Green. Lastly, there is Joseph Callis. I am already researching the Callis family of Lunenburg, Virginia who intermarried with a Morris family there. If I find anything of interest, I will post more information at the blog.

The 1820 Census for Montgomery County was lost or destroyed and 99% of the court records were burned in courthouse fires. So, there is no real way to verify if John Jacky and his family were in Montgomery County earlier than 1830.

The 1820 Census for Mecklenburg County, Virginia does exist, but John Jacky Morris is not found in that Census as a head of household. The only Morris family listed in Mecklenburg County, Virginia in the 1820 Census is the Jesse and Jane Morris family and they lived about 60 miles east of Clarksville around Little Genito Creek near the current-day Mecklenburg-Brunswick Regional Airport very near the Brunswick County line, so, on the other end of the county. 

Shown below is Jane Morris, widow of Jesse Morris Sr and their sons Daniel and Jesse Jr. Jesse Sr died in 1807 and Jane in 1823. Neither Jesse nor Jane listed a son named John in their wills.

Ancestors of the DNA matches for Uncle Don are shown living between the Halifax County, Virginia line and the Town of Clarksville, Mecklenburg, Virginia in the areas of Aaron’s Creek and Buffalo Creek.

Searchers in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama could not find a family with John Morris as head of household with 5 other family members in 1820. So, they were either missed, they lived in another household, or the 1820 Census for wherever they lived is lost/destroyed. 
 

What the John Jacky Morris family looked like in 1820 

John Jacky b. 1785 (age 35 in 1820)
Amelia b. 1790 (age in 30 1820) 
William b. 1813 (age 7 in 1820)
George b. 1817 (age 3 in 1820)
Eliza b. 1818 (age 2 in 1820)
John Jr. b. 1819 (age 1 in 1820)

The Callicutt family

Some of the earliest records I could find on the Callicutt family (and its various spellings) are in Amelia County, Virginia, formed 1735 from Brunswick and Prince George counties. James Callicutt, the father of John Bailey Callicutt, in 1753, purchased 108 acres from James Parrott of Lunenburg, Virginia in the county of Amelia on the Reedy Branch (the area that became Prince Edward County in 1754) and in the Fork of Nottoway River. One of the witnesses to that deed was Hampton Wade whose son Horatio Wade migrated to Richmond, a county that borders Montgomery, North Carolina. Horatio’s great granddaughter, Ella Wade, married my great grandfather, John Coon Morris, the grandson of John Jacky Morris. Ella Wade died in 1895, and John Coon remarried to Flora Dennis.

Flora was the one who reported her father-in-law Thomas Morris’ birth location as Clarksville, Virginia. 

In 1756 James Callicutt of Prince Edward County sold to John Hoskins of Amelia County, the same 108 acres on the Reedy Branch of Nottoway River. 

John Bailey Callicutt had a son named William Harrison Callicutt born about 1770. I think he may be the same man mentioned in an 1816 land grant for 50 acres of land in Montgomery County entered by John Bell. The order went to the county surveyor to lay off and survey the land joining William Callicutt and Joel Hurley. The survey was completed and returned in 1817. Richard Bell and Thomas Bell, the brothers of John Bell, were chain carriers. 

I have spent several days trying to figure out who the parents of Joel Hurley were but, so far, no luck. He may be the son of Cornelius Hurley, but I cannot find any proof documents. What I do know about him is that in 1810 he lived in Hattom close to the Bell, Dennis, and Morgan families and he had an 1813 land grant showing his land on the East bank of the Uwharrie River near the mouth of the Hall (Haw) Branch joining Turner Harris. He also owned a fish trap on the Uwharrie River.  

These land grants may be an important find as John Jacky Morris lived on the “John Bell land” in 1840 and 1841. From the wording in the rental contract (found in the estate file of Henry Delamothe dated 1838) John Jacky Morris was “already living” on the “John Bell land” when this contract was signed indicating he had lived there at least the previous year and was renewing his contract for another year. If that is the case, John Jacky Morris probably rented this land from Henry Delamothe, the Frenchman who came to Montgomery County to find wealth in the gold mines, who had to acquired it after John Bell’s death. 

Of interest, John Jacky Morris was a gold miner, and I wonder if he may have worked in some capacity for Henry Deleamothe. Henry died in 1838, and John Jacky Morris renewed his rental contract with John C. Atkins, the executor of Henry Delamothe.
 
This may create another hole in my family legend because the family legend says John Jacky Morris lived near Yates Place on Dusty Level Road between Cedar Creek and Dutchman’s Creek and the John Bell land looks to have been closer to Hall Branch, current day area of Morton and River Bend Road, the area where William Callicutt and Joel Hurley had land near the Turner Harris land. 

William Morris, the oldest son and child of John Jacky Morris, owned land on Hall Branch, the same place Joel Hurley lived. But that land, or at least part of it, looks to have been sold to satisfy a debt owed in Moore County, North Carolina. I cannot find who bought that land or even how William Morris obtained it in the first place. 

William also owned two tracts of land (81 acres) on Cedar Creek and Watery Branch, which was close to Yates Place and Dusty Level Road as well as 177 acres on Island and Dutchman Creeks which was called the Spanish Oak Gap which was used for gold mining.

In 1850, John Jacky Morris made Joseph Hurley trustee over six head of cattle, eight head of hogs, one cupboard and chairs used to secure a $30 debt from Eliza Kirk. If John failed to repay the debt, Joseph Hurley was to sell as many of the items that would pay the debt. The deed was written on 1 Aug 1850 and registered on 6 Sep 1850. I do not know what the money was used for, but a guess might have been medical bills as his son, John Jr died about the same time as the loan was procured.

Why John Jacky Morris went across the river to enlist the help of Eliza Kirk is not known, but it is interesting to note that she was the daughter of George Kirk and Frances Bell whose father was Benjamin Bell, the brother of John Bell, on whose land John Jacky Morris lived. It seems that it would have been easier to enlist the help of some neighbors in the area, like the Harris or Merritt families, but for some reason he went across the river to borrow money from Eliza Kirk. This has always struck me as odd, and I wonder how John Jacky Morris might have known Eliza Kirk well enough to borrow $30 from her.

While I am not sure who Joseph Hurley is, my guess is he might be the husband of Elizabeth Callicutt, daughter of Pleasant Callicutt, the son of John Bailey Callicutt. John Jacky Morris would have had a lot of trust in Joseph Hurley to make him trustee over all that he owned. 

Pleasant Callicutt married Sarah Sanders (Saunders) who may be the daughter of William Aaron Saunders. Pleasant Callicutt was born about 1775, probably in Prince Edward County, Virginia. He lived near Callicutt Chapel Wesleyan Church on Horseshoe Bend Road in Abner, Montgomery County, North Carolina. 20 miles away from where John Jacky Morris lived on River Road. 

Pleasant died in 1843 and was buried in the Callicutt Chapel Church cemetery. His stone may be an unmarked field stone.

In 1810, Pleasant Callicutt lived one page away from the Sanders, Dennis, and Hurley families. Interestingly, John Jacky Morris’s daughter, Temperance, would marry Jacob Sanders who was a cousin of Sarah Sanders, the wife of Pleasant Callicutt.

John Bailey Callicutt died after 20 Oct 1828. A deed written on this date by John B. Callicutt of Montgomery County, North Carolina, to his daughter, Cynthia, who lived in Madison County, Tennessee and making his son, Pascal, who lived in Henderson County, Tennessee, trustee, to his interest in Gin, a slave.
 
I could not find John Bailey Callicutt on the 1830 Census, and it is assumed that he died between 20 Oct 1828 when he wrote the deed and 16 Nov 1830 when the Census was completed.