As I continue to think about endogomy vs. multiple lines of descent and the impacts of both/either on my at-DNA match lists I realized I simply couldn’t hold all of the marital connections across generations in my head. Although the interconnected network of families actually includes 6 surnames I decided to try and create a visual network for just 3 of those surnames. (even then I had to pick a generation to start with since there appear to be connections at least 2 generations earlier but they are harder to document.) I used Lucid Chart to create an interconnected set of descendant trees.
Basil Prather (1742 – 1822) & Chlorenda Robinson/Robertson ( 1748- 181) were born in Maryland, married there about 1765, moved to Rowan/Iredell County, North Carolina around 1773, moved with most of their family to Clark County, Indiana before 1802 and died and were buried there.1
John Gaither (1740 -1809) & Ann Jacobs (1740-1783) were born in Maryland, married there about 1761, moved with their family to Rowan/Iredell County, North Carolina before 1780 where they died and were buried. A number of their children moved to Clark County, Indiana before 1810. Ann was a daughter of Jeremiah Jacobs and Rachel Gaither whose other descendants also moved to North Carolina and Clark County, Indiana.
Josiah (1776 – 1840) and Joshua (1765 – 1840) Bennett appear to be brothers (parents unknown at this time) who moved from Maryland to North Carolina, where they married, to Clark and then other counties in Indiana where they died and are buried.
Having established the migration patterns I began to diagram the first intermarriages. Most of these took place in North Carolina but not all are documented there (William Prather and Airy Gaither, Thomas W. Prather and Rachel Catherine Gaither, and both of the Bennett brother’s marriages.) Once all 3 families migrated to Indiana the intermarriages began increasing. William Prather’s wife Airy Gaither died shortly after giving birth to their first child in 1794. However that daughter’s descendants married into multiple lines of descent from the other two families. And the interconnections continued through 4 generations after descendants moved from Indiana to Adams and Hancock Counties in Illinois and then to York and Harlan Counties in Nebraska.
This diagram has really helped me understand the sheer amount of intermarriage in this particular line on my pedigree. I will need to create at least one and possibly two more trees to diagram the interconnections that include the Jacobs, Holman and Bottorff families of Clark County, Indiana. In the case of the Jacobs family the interconnections begin in Maryland, in the case of the Bottorff and Holman families I have not determined where the earliest connections occur. And I’ve recently become more aware of a couple more Howard marriages that intersect with these lines.
Is this endogamy or multiple lines of descent? Despite the complexity and generational depth of the intermarriage network I’m leaning toward the multiple lines of descent situation.
- For documentation of all genealogical facts presented please see my Ancestry tree “McLeland-Wieser Family“. For permission to view the tree please contact me on Ancestry as Heather McLeland-Wieser. There are also excellently documented lines of descent for these couples on FamilySearch. ↩