yazoo county connections: paper trail problems + genetic findings

They are laughing again. My ancestors. Perhaps I’m mistaking laughter for their cheering me on, but in either case their presence is heavy these days. And it is rather intense. I can not imagine how anyone can go about pursuing those who have walked before them without quietly holding conversation with them. I find myself whispering into the winds, so that they may hear my soft and gentle pleas for a clue. Maybe, just maybe, they are starting to hear me…

Mama Ease. She died 11 years before I was born so I never had the opportunity to know her personally. She was my mother’s maternal grandmother. And before she was Mama Ease, grandmother to my mother and her siblings, she was Louise King, born on the 12th of August in 1900 to parents Stark King and Jeannie Gilliam King. Her place of birth was likely in the Enola community of Yazoo County, Mississippi, but I’m not 100% certain. With the exception of one Census year, 1930, the life of Louise was documented very well. Since my mother knew her I know her through my mother’s memories of her. She isn’t much of a mystery. Old family photographs captured her beauty. Oral history provided me with details of her ability to make an exceptionally palatable pound cake. Furthermore, she worked for the famous Tropical Hut restaurant in Chicago as a Cook. One of my cousins who knew her well often describes how Louise would share with her and show her the doughboy uniform of her brother Riley King, who died in WWI. Of course all that was after she left Mississippi sometime in the early to mid-1930’s. No, Louise King is not a mystery, but her parents and their vague ancestral lineage mark the beginnings of my brick walls.

Incredibly little is known about Mama Jeannie or Jeannie Gilliam, so I will describe what I do know – most of which I learned through Census records. Jeannie was born about 1872 in Mississippi. Unable to successfully locate her in 1880, the first true and solid documentation I have is her 20 July 1888 marriage record to spouse Stark King. They married in Yazoo City, Mississippi. By 1900 Jeannie and Stark have established a nice growing family and can be found residing in the Enola Precinct in Yazoo County. In 1910 they’ve moved over the Yazoo County line into Beat 5 of Warren County on Ball Ground Road. From 1920 to approximately 1934 Jeannie and her family can be seen living in the Choctaw community of Shaw, Bolivar County, Mississippi. Like her daughters, whom she had sent away from the Mississippi Delta into Chicago, Illinois, Jeannie later made the bustling city her home during her later years of life. Mama Jeannie perished in 1951 leaving no information behind about her parents. This lack of information has made her difficult to locate prior to her 1888 marriage record despite her uncommon surname.

Stark King on the other hand is a bit of a different story. I can’t begin to describe how much sleep has been lost over figuring out the life of my 2x great grandfather, Stark King. Unlike his wife, Stark can be located on the 1880 Census. It is on this record that I find him living with his mother listed as Nora and his siblings, Mose King, Mary King and (half-siblings?) twins John and Susie Williams. Stark is said to be 17 years old at the time which would place his birth date in the year 1867. He should have been enumerated with his family in 1870, but I’ve had a terrible time in all my attempts to locate them in Yazoo County or surrounding areas. The rest of Stark’s life and his whereabouts for the most part are as clear as day and as follows: 1900 – Beat 1, Enola Precinct, Yazoo County, 1910 – Beat 5, Warren County, 1920 – Beat 5, Bolivar County, 1930 – Beat 5, Bolivar County. He was deceased as of September 23, 1932 in Shaw, Mississippi. Although his daughter, Brucie King Johnson provided names for both of Stark’s parents for his death certificate, I remain skeptical about the John King noted to be his father.

The real trouble I have with my ancestor Stark King lies within his own name. While the last name King was quite common in Yazoo, the first name Stark wasn’t common at all in Yazoo or elsewhere. Strangely enough there is a white doctor by the name of Thomas Stark King residing in Yazoo County as well. This doctor had only one son whom he named Stark King and his son was born a few years give or take from the date of my Stark King. To make matters even worse the white Dr. Thomas Stark King had a wife named Lenora, but she can also be found simply listed as Nora. I did mention that my Stark’s mother was also named Nora too, right? Besides racial designations the only other difference I can establish between the two families is that they were residing on different sides of the county from 1880 onward.

So where does the name Stark come from and where am I really going with this? In regards to the name your guess is as good as mine. In regards to every other matter I can’t help to wonder and cling to the idea that the two families could have been connected biologically or other. Dr. Thomas Stark King had a brother named John King who was of the right age to be my Stark King’s father. However, I have very little to support that theory of parentage. I’ve had the kindest volunteers in the world to collect wills and probate records on the white Thomas Stark King family and related individuals. Sadly, those documents did very little in solidifying a connection. My Stark King was listed as a mulatto only on the 1910 Census year and I’m not even sure if his father was white or black. So I’m stuck in regards to paper records here.

Luckily all hope is not yet lost. The ancestors are still laughing. They are still rooting for me. A few years ago I turned to various types of DNA testing to see whether it could provide me with any additional clues about my ancestry both far, deep and more recent. Up until a couple weeks ago things remained relatively calm on my Gilliam and King lines. I will have to back track and detail my DNA testing experiences in upcoming blogs, but I will say this – everyone is a gatekeeper to unlocking the past. Get everyone in your family tested if possible. Initially I was riding on my mother’s DNA to provide me with clues for this line. Nothing was shaking up, so I begged a 2nd cousin who shares Stark and Jeannie as ancestors to test. She tested and still nothing. Finally I decided to have my maternal uncle and my maternal aunt to take an autosomal DNA test. My uncle went with FTDNA and I had my aunt test with Ancestry.com. When their results returned I was floored by the revelations coming to me.

Let me start with my uncle and Mama Jeannie. Over at FTDNA within my uncle’s results were two sisters who do not show up within my mother’s matches or my matches. They match my uncle at a suggested 3rd-5th cousin range. I immediately noticed that they have the surname Gilliam in their pedigree. One thing that was always on the rumor mill about Mama Jeannie was that her people (whoever they were) were from Kentucky. As it turns out the Gilliam family in these two sisters lines are from Kentucky and Virginia. By this time I am at a point where I almost cannot contain myself. I was able to exchange a few rounds of email with this match before we decided to place things on the back burner provided the difficulty at making a connection. However, I’m still at it and what I gained from our correspondence was extremely insightful. For instance their Gilliam ancestor married a Lewis. Seeing this triggered my memory on another DNA match within my own Ancestry.com results. The match within my results is a suggested 4th-6th cousin and they have an ancestor with the surname Lewis residing in the same area (just a few Census pages away) from Mama Jeannie’s family for two Census years! Hot tamale! Am I onto something? I hope so. I think so. Their Lewis ancestor’s mother states that her parents were born in Kentucky and Virginia. It feels like I’m really close to something. But what this truly means for me is that I have a whole load of new scenarios to work with. I’ll zoom in on those later as I start researching them.

As for Stark King, a similar situation recently occurred when my maternal aunt’s DNA results returned. As I was going through her high confidence matches I came across one within the 4th-6th cousin range that had some serious ties to Yazoo County. It turns out that this individual in particular was in my results and my mother’s, but they were such a low confidence result I may have never come across them in my long list of results at Ancestry. When I took a closer look I see too that her ancestors were residing in the same enumeration districts as my Stark King in 1880 (Phoenix) and 1900 (Enola). Once again this match has ancestors who are living pages away from my ancestors. Be still my beating heart. I’ve recently started communicating with this match and trust that one day, if not soon then later, that we will discover the connection.

Until then, this leaves me with a number of new angles and surnames to explore. Initially I was limited to King and Gilliam, but now I also have Gaither, Gibson, Hall, McCafferty, Lewis, Morris, Hawkins and Miller to be on the look out for. I’m also learning over again to pay more attention to surrounding counties. Like my ancestors these DNA matches had folks who bounced back and forth between Yazoo and the northern parts of Warren County. And like my ancestors I will definitely need to pay these areas some mind on my upcoming genealogy road into the Mississippi Delta this fall.