[Granville-Hough] 16 Mar 2009 - SR,JR,III, when used

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2009 06:45:39 -0800
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: SR,JR,III, when used - 16 Mar 2009

The mention of Cayman Islands as possible home for some settlers of the 
Natchez District of British West Florida from before 1783 only applies, 
so far as I know to four families which settled in Sullivan's Hollow. 
The Coles, Spell, and Carters. The four families were John Franklin 
Cole, Sr, his brother Mark Cole, Jr, his sister Susanna (Cole), wife of 
Hiram Miller, and his sister Hannah (Cole), wife of William Carter. The 
mother of these four was a Spell, so that the three surnames of concern 
in early Natchez were Cole, Carter, and Spell, of interest to 
descendants of Frank and Nora (Miller) Hough.. I believe Cole and Carter 
came on the seven flatboats down from Southwestern VA, and that the 
Spell family came from SC. I am simply not sure of the Hannah (Spell) 
who married Mark Cole, Sr, son of James Cole, the flatboater, but it 
seems that the entire Spell name in America for that era comes from one 
or more SC families. I have never seen a reference to Cayman Islands in 
any study of Natchez District History.
If you speak of the Tombigbee District of West Florida, from whence the 
Sullivans came, you get a different story. It was accessible through the 
port in Mobile as well as overland from GA . The origins of the people 
before 1797, when it passed to American rule are murky indeed. I have 
also never seen a reference to Cayman Islands in any study of that area, 
either.
Nor have I found any specific reference to Cayman Islands activity 
during the Revolutionary War. All the British, French, Spanish, Dutch, 
and Danish islands with good ports came into play in one way or another, 
but the Cayman Islands is not one of them. If the British sent someone 
to Cayman Islands for whatever reason, they would have been quite eager 
to leave it.
After the Natchez District passed into US control in 1797, there was an 
influx of "Jersey settlers." These came from New Jersey, and quite a 
number of descendants of people in that area came from this group. Their 
pre-New Jersey origins I do not know, but there were New Jersey settlers 
who had lived in the West Indies. I never found any of my specific 
relatives in that group, but it seems they became elite of the area. 
Their descendants had the "ante bellum" mansions where they charged 
admission in the 1960 era. When my family and I visited one of these old 
homes, the only person who had change for a $10.00 bill was the black 
guide. Maybe his ancestors came from Cayman Islands.
-------------------------

USAGE OF SENIOR, JUNIOR, AND III AND OTHER GENEALOGICAL QUANDRIES

(GWH). What does Sr, Jr, III, etc after a name mean? People who are new 
to genealogy and to legal practices of previous generations frequently 
do not realize that customs change. Let us take the problem of census 
records in Sullivans Hollow and the two John Franklin Cole families. 
They are shown as John Franklin Cole, Sr, and John Franklin Cole, Jr. 
Did that mean they were father and son? Absolutely not!! It just meant 
there were two John Franklin Cole families in Beat 3, Smith County, and 
one was older than the other. John Franklin Cole, Sr lived near Bunker 
Hill for many years, then moved to Covington County. John Franklin Cole, 
Jr, was son of Mark Cole, (who was son of Mark Cole but the elder had 
deceased or stayed in Pike County.) So John Franklin Cole, Jr was nephew 
of John Franklin Cole, Sr, and lived near Bunker Hill until he md and 
moved to the Shady Grove Community. In their cases, there were no more 
John Franklin Coles, so they just kept their Sr and Jr designations.
In another case I studied in Loudoun County, VA, there was a Samuel 
Hough, Sr, Samuel Hough, Jr, and Samuel Hough, III, all shown in county 
records. When Samuel Hough, Sr, died, the other two each moved up a 
notch to become Samuel Hough, Sr, and Samuel Hough, Jr, in the county 
records. So, to keep them straight and separated, you had to know which 
years were involved. To further confuse matters, one of the latter two 
had land which extended into Faquier County, where he was the only 
Samuel Hough on record, so his land there was recorded under plain 
Samuel Hough. So you had one body of land owned by one person, but it 
was described as being under Samuel Hough, Samuel Hough, Jr, and Samuel 
Hough III. When this Samuel Hough moved to Texas, he was the only Hough 
in his county so he was just plain Samuel. .The John Franklin Coles were 
smarter: once they were recorded as Sr and Jr, they just kept it that way.
This is a very pertinent discussion to the problem of Thomas Sullivans 
in the Tombigbee District in the years 1790 to 1820. Who is Thomas 
Sullivan, Sr, Thomas Sullivan, Jr, and just plain Thomas Sullivan? I 
have not studied all the records there and cannot give a judgement, 
except to say, EMPHATICALLY, that the designations of Sr and Jr in that 
era did not mean father and son. It just meant older and younger AT THE 
TIME of the record being made. It did not preclude father and son, of 
course; but other records would have to be studied to prove it. In the 
Tombigee case, I think it will take all the known records to come up 
with an educated guess about the relationships.
The "Smith County Trumpet," Winter, 2009, also mentions the terms niece, 
nephew, and cousin, and how they are found in English and early American 
wills, probate records and in town records. "Cousin" was a catch-all 
term which sometimes included relatives by marriage as well as by blood. 
I believe I have found it used when grand-niece or grand-nephew would be 
the present day term.
Nephew and niece also had different uses. Nephew might be used instead 
of grandson or cousin or it could be simply a descendant of someone, say 
a neighbor mentioned in a will. Niece had a rather general usage of 
someone who was a female relative of some degree. I have seen that usage.
What I have never seen, but is supposed to exist, is the use of niece to 
indicate an illegitimate daughter of a clergyman. (Clergymen did provide 
solace and comfort to widows, especially the younger, good-looking ones. 
When I learned about this usage, I recalled the comments of the Tom-Cat 
Salesman sitting on the garden post observing the young cat mother with 
her bevy of new kittens. He said: "If you wanna get results, you gotta 
make calls!"