My Quest to Find John Jones - part III - Marriage
Jigsaw puzzle aficionados and genealogists have much in common. Both are trying to find pieces to fit together to give a complete picture. Finding the pieces to form a complete picture of the life of John Jones has been a decades-long process that is still incomplete. It is at times frustrating, but it is thrilling to find new pieces or to see a piece in a different way which is why I still work at it. I think of him as Grandfather John and, after all these years, feel much closeness to him even though I have never met him nor even known anyone who has. This post is to examine what is known about his marriage to Sarah Sumpter and what can be learned from these documents.
This record is from Franklin County, Virginia Marriage Bonds which I found on microfilm #31523 in the Family Search Library in Salt Lake City. 
A marriage bond was a written guarantee or promise of payment assuring that the marriage could be legally performed, for example that the groom wasn't already married. The bond could be posted by the groom or by a relative of the bride or groom or sometimes an interested party. This states that John Jones and Sarah Sumpter were married by a minister named Randolph Hall on August 12, 1790. The marriage bond was given on July 5, 1790 by Solomon Jones. Some family records erroneously list the marriage bond date as the marriage date.
Another source of the marriage records of Franklin County, Virginia from prominent Franklin County researcher Marshall Wingfield states that Sarah Sumpter was the daughter of Geo. Sumpter. (I will discuss the George Sumpter family in a different post.)
This map shows the location of Franklin County, Virginia in 1790. Because this region of southwestern Virginia was still in its early times of settlement, the county boundaries changed several times in this era. Franklin County is the dark blue colored area in the bottom center of the map. This region of Virginia is on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and its settlement was impacted by the terrain and by not always easy relationships with the Native Americans in the area.
Who was the Solomon Jones who provided the surety or bond for John and Sarah's marriage? Most descendants believe that he was a brother of John Jones, but that is an assumption without evidence.
We do not have any certain birth record for John Jones nor for his siblings. In fact, the only information we have of the names of any of John's birth family comes from one of two sources. John's son-in-law James Stapleton Lewis (JSL) performed some temple ordinance work for a few members of John's family (that will be the subject of another blog), and Clara Lewis Hall recorded names of John's father and some siblings. Clara gave no source for her information, but it is assumed to be from conversations with either her grandfather JSL or her father Wilford W Lewis. There is a family tradition that JSL had a notebook with family information recorded in it; no one currently seems to know if that record still exists. While Clara's information may be correct, it also may not be totally correct or complete because it is probably based on Clara's memory as well as that of JSL. Clara gave us names of John's siblings with birth dates that appear to be estimates with John being listed as the eldest child.
When John's will was probated in 1847, the witnesses stated he was a man of about 77 years of age. That would put his birthdate as about 1770 and his age at the time of this marriage as about 20 or 21. If the Solomon Jones who posted surety for the marriage bond was indeed John's younger brother, he would not have been of the legal age of 21 to be posting the bond. So, that gives me questions on who exactly Solomon was. Was he an older brother, was he an uncle, was he a neighbor who was of no relation at all (there were other Jones families in the region that do not appear to be related?) John named one of his sons Solomon which makes it seem possible that there was a Solomon in John's family for whom the son was named. JSL stated that John's father was David Jones. But maybe it was really Solomon Jones. Some times in the marriage bond records the relationship is listed, but it isn't in this case unfortunately. This is one of the Jones family mysteries at this point.
I had long assumed that, because this marriage bond was made in Franklin County, John Jones was living there in 1790. I spent hours and hours looking for records to confirm that fact. At one point I decided to pursue information on the minister Randolph Hall. I discovered that he was a Baptist minister who came to Franklin county and became associated with the Pigg River Church there for a time before he headed further south. The history of Baptists in Virginia shows some struggles to gain official recognition in the colony because the Church of England had official status. The Pigg River Primitive Baptist Church was established in 1773.
Imagine my excitement when I came across this map of early Franklin County, Virginia land owners prepared for the Franklin County Historical Society!
The turquoise tab points to the location of the Pigg River Church where Randolph Hall had been a preacher and also the yellow tabs point to land plots owned by a David Jones and a John Jones as well as other Jones families located near to the church. I was ecstatic. But my excitement dissipated as I began to research the Jones families shown on the map. They appear to all be related, but none of the names of the siblings in our records show up in the wills, published genealogies, or other records of the Jones families shown above. So if the names of John Jones' siblings are correct as given to us by Clara Lewis Hall, the Jones families who lived near the Pigg River Church were of a different Jones line.
Rev. Randolph Hall's name gave me additional clues several years later which I will detail in the next blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment