LIES AND 100 ACRES

WHY LIE? WHY?

It is Only 100 Acres!

The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Forde

Why would a genealogist lie?  I was deeply disappointed after being confronted with lies about something so unimportant as 100 acres of land!  A genealogist's credibility and reputation is at stake.  

 A lesson to remember is that the first draft of history very often is a lie, and it's not an accidental lie, it's intentional. Partisans understand that history is among other things, a tool and they can use it to accumulate power. So they lie about something to suit their ends, they keep lying about it and before long, their lies are recorded as truth. They're on Wikipedia, and your kids believe them. 

Herewith, the circumstances about the 100 acres: William Lea of Mattaponi, possibly of King and Queen County, NC left 25 acres or (35 acres per the abstract) to a man named James Lea of Caswell County, NC who hired an attorney to obtain the 25 or 35 acres.   All we know of this William Lea is that he owned the 100 acres described in Book B, Page 36, Caswell County Records, State of North Carolina (Lea, William, Caswell County Historical Association.) 

Because James Lea of Caswell County, NC applied to obtain 25 acres of this property it gave rise to the mystery of what happened to the other 75 acres.  Were the 100 acres divided into four parts of 25 acres each?  Or was 25 acres all that was left of the 100 acres?  

There are folks who claim there are deed records for the 100 acres.  There are NO deed records for any portion of the 100 acres.  None. Not one. NO, there are no deeds in the estate settlement of James Sargent, nor are there deed records in the Deeds of Caswell County, or in the book, Heritage of Caswell County. Nor are there deed records to show a widow of James Lea, Jr. sold his 25 acres.  NO, NOT ONE.  

Now comes the following article by Betty Fitzgerald, who did her research very recently, claiming in the Caswell blog that she found the disposition of the 25 acres that went to James Lea of Caswell County, in the estate of his son's (James Lea, Jr.) widow, Elizabeth of Giles County, TN.  Now mind you, this was recent research in the past five years and total fabrication.  

James Lea who died in Giles County before 1830, when widow Elizabeth sold the inherited 25 acres on Mattaponi Creek in King and Queen County:

This appears to be a complete fabrication.  A search of the index to deeds of Giles County from 1810 to 1895 did not reveal any sales or purchases by Elizabeth Lea or Lee.  James Lee was noted with one deed of sale only, in Book B, page 5.  On April 14, 1812, James Lee (also spelled Lea in the same deed) of Caswell County, North Carolina appointed John Yancy of Giles County as his agent to sell sixty acres in Wilson County on Jenings Fork of Round Lick Creek, to any person who may think proper to purchase it.[1]  The sixty acres was part of a 640 acre claim, but the exact manner by which James came into possession of it does not show.  James also authorized John Yancy to obtain a duplicate warrant for the remaining 580 acres of the claim.

A check of the Wilson County abstracts of deeds reveals that James Lea of Caswell County, North Carolina sold sixty acres on Round Lick Creek to Isaiah Coe on August 26, 1814.[2]

Various sources online quote this claim that Elizabeth Lea, widow of James Lea, sold twenty-five acres on Mattaponi Creek in King and Queen County, the deed recorded in Giles County.  The only source reference that could be found was the very vague “Court Documents”.  Court records of Giles County are not abstracted into print as early as 1830, so a page by page search of the microfilmed originals ensued.  It turns out that a gap in the originals from 1829 to 1833 exists.  Another filming of county court records has a gap between 1825 to 1833.  Scrolling page by page did not reveal any such entry, but with those gaps, searching the year 1830 was not possible. [cf: Research will be conducted in Giles County, TN March 2012]

Searches for a corresponding deed or court entry in King and Queen County were thwarted by the loss of records there.  No deeds have survived before 1864.  Court minute books begin in 1858, and chancery orders in 1831.  Validating or negating such a sale of twenty-five acres is conveniently impossible, unless further clarification can be unearthed.

It appears clear that James Lea returned to Caswell County by 1812, and that Elizabeth was not his widow.  It is also clear that she did not sell land in Virginia.  A James Lee paid taxes in Wilson County in 1804, but why was the Power of Attorney for the sale of that land recorded in Giles County?  Was it simply because John Yancy resided there?   

A very recent posting in RootsWeb’s WorldConnect Project tells that John Graves Yancy (1764-1818) was born in Orange County, North Carolina, and died in Giles County, Tennessee.  He married Elizabeth Lightfoot Moore in Caswell County, North Carolina on February 24, 1789, and they moved from Caswell County to Giles County around 1810.[3]  James must have known him in Caswell County, or even been related to him.  

Printed abstracts of other Giles County records do not mention James Lea or Lee.  Elizabeth Lea appears in the 1830 census there.  It appears that she was the female head of household age forty to fifty with young adult children.  A female age eighty to ninety also lived in the home, too old to be the mother of the young adult children.[4]

The 1820 census shows Elizabeth Lee in Giles County, with a female in each of the five columns.  She may be the one in the 26-45 age group.  An Edward Lee is listed three names above her, age sixteen to twenty-six.[5]  The 1820 census is the earliest federal census available for that part of Tennessee.  The printed census index does not show any James Leas, but a few James Lees resided in Davidson, Overton, Smith and Stewart Counties.  Of the Lees in Giles County, there was Elizabeth and Edward, also a Daniel and a William, all with the Lee spelling.[6]

As a substitute for the missing 1810 census, a reconstructed census has been created from other types of records, spanning 1809 to 1811.  In those years, a James Lea appeared in court minutes in Anderson County, and another James Lea received a military commission in Hawkins County.  A James Lee paid taxes in Davidson County in 1811, and in Sumner County in 1810, by an agent.  The only mention of a Lea or Lee in Giles County was John Lee, who served as a juror, as per court records there.[7]  It may be that James Lea of Jefferson County had already returned to North Carolina by 1810, or he just didn’t appear in any county records around that time.  

Printed abstracts of Giles County court minutes reveal that Elizabeth Lee was the widow of John Lee, most likely the same John Lee who served as a juror there in 1810.  In the March 1815 session of court, Elizabeth Lee and William Lee were granted Letters of Administration on the estate of John Lee, deceased.  ‘Alizabeth’ Lee, widow of John Lee, was allotted a “sufficient portion of stock & provisions as will maintain her & her children if any for one year from date of her husband’s decease.”  John Yancy was noted in the records as guardian for some Graves children, but no association between him and the Lee family there could be detected.[8]

The 1810 census of North Carolina shows three James Leas in Caswell County, and two in Person County.  Interestingly, one of the carried the middle name of ‘Yancy’, but was only sixteen to twenty-six years old.  Determining which one of these, if any, might have been the same who lived in eastern Tennessee would be very difficult, if he had indeed returned by then.

In summary, it seems clear that James Lea of Greene, Jefferson and Hawkins Counties is all the same person.  He obtained many large parcels of land in those counties, and apparently in Wilson County, as well.  He was an active member of the community in Greene and Jefferson Counties, but sold off most of his land and returned to Caswell County by 1812 or [cf: Note: Amite County, Mississippi]  What he did not dispose of before he returned to North Carolina, he appointed John Yancy of Giles County as his agent to sell land in Wilson County.  No sale of twenty-five acres of inherited land in on Mattaponi Creek in King and Queen County by Elizabeth Lea could be found.  No evidence that James Lea ever resided in Giles County can be found.

 

For Rev. Cynthia Forde,

Raquel Lindaas, AG®

Heritage Consulting

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[1] Document 20: Deeds, Giles County, Tennessee, Book B, p. 5. FHL Film #0968853

[2] Document 21: Thomas E. Partlow, Wilson County, Tennessee Deed Books C-M, 1793-1829 (Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1984). FHL Call #976.854 R2pt

[3] Document 22: “Caswell County Family Tree”, RootsWeb’s WorldConnect Project, Entry #59769, 20 Jan 2012.

[4] Document 23: Ancestry.com, U. S. Federal Census 1830, Giles County, Tennessee, p. 197.

[5] Document 24: Ancestry.com, U. S. Federal Census 1820, Pulaski, Giles County, Tennessee, p. 8.

[6] Document 25: Elizabeth Petty Bentley, Index to the 1820 Census of Tennessee (Baltimore: Clearfield Co., 2001). FHL Call #976.8 X22b

[7] Document 26: Charles A. Sherrill, The Reconstructed 1810 Census of Tennessee (Mt. Juliet, TN: privately published, 2001). FHL Call #976.8 X2s

[8] Document 27: Carol Wells, Abstracts of Giles County, Tennssee: County Court Minutes, 1813-1816 and Circuit Court Minutes, 1810-1816 (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1995). FHL Call #976.861 P28wc