THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
The surname Self has a long
history, going
back at least to the time of the Vikings, who in their ships made ocean
voyages
and explored lands they found long before Columbus discovered America
in
1492. This group of hardy people,
explorers, were called (anglicized) Seawolf.
That surname was eventually shortened, probably by pronouncing
it as one
syllable, to Self. It is spelled
variously Self, Selffe, Selph, Selphe.
But to link the surname up to those first daring explorers, we
need to
remember it as Seawolf.
In Union County in 1834 when the first
census was taken, we find three families with the surname Self, and one
with a
much different spelling which I will list, not knowing quite whether to
include
it with Self settlers. These I found
listed as living in Union in 1834:
Job
Self’s household had 6 males and 6 females;
Thomas
Self, one male and one female;
Francis
Self, one male and one female.
These made the Self population
in 1834
total 8 males and 8 females. Then I
found the unusual spelling Seffle, for a household with Isom as head,
and 6
males and 6 females living in that household.
I did not find a last name spelled Seffle in subsequent census
records
for the county, nor an Isom as head of household with a similar last
name. This is one of those odd mysteries
of old
census records.
Since she was my great, great
grandmother, I know of another Self, married to Thompson Collins who
lived in
Union and was recorded in the 1834 census.
I refer to Celia Self Collins
who married
Thompson Collins in 1810 in Buncombe County, North Carolina. Thompson Collins was born about 1785 in North
Carolina and Celia Self was born about 1787 in North Carolina. Much research has been done to try to
identify the parents of Thompson Collins and Celia Self.
We can be fairly sure that a Nancy (maiden
name unknown) Collins was Thompson’s mother and that his father might
have been
named Thomas.
Celia Self’s father was believed to be
Francis Self. Since no age is given for
the Francis Self family, residents of Union in 1834, these may have
been Celia
Self Collins’s parents. The Job Self,
with 6 males and 6 females in the family in Union in 1834 is believed
to be her
brother, as was the Thomas Self, with one male, one female as residents. Maybe Self researchers who read this can give
illumination to more specific tracing of the lines of Celia Self
Collins, Job,
Thomas and Francis Self, all of whom were residents of Union County in
1834.
The 1840 census shows that Job Self
and Thomas R. Self were still in Union, and two more households of Self
had
settled here, Robert B. Self and William Self.
The Francis Self listed in 1834 does not appear in the 1840
census. This leads me to wonder if,
indeed, they were
the elderly parents of my great, great grandmother, Celia Self Collins,
and
that they had died between 1834 to 1840.
No marked gravestones of same are present in county cemeteries
to answer
this question.
The 1840 population of Self families
had a total of 28 persons. The families
registered in that census had constituents as follows:
Job
self, 5 males, 7 females
Thomas
R. Self, 3 males, 4 females
Robert
B. Self, 1 male, 2 females
William
Self, 4 males, 2 females
Checking the Union County marriage
records for this early period of the county’s history, I looked for
Self and
found the following registrations of marriages of Self surnames by 1840:
Thomas Self married Nancy Cook on July
11, 1833, with John Thomas, Justice of the Inferior Court, performing
the
ceremony.
Robert Self married Marthy (sic) Cook
on January 25, 1838, with Jarrett Turner, Justice of the Peace,
performing the
ceremony.
Since their marriage occurred in July,
1833, Thomas and Nancy Cook Self did not have children by the time of
the 1834
census. But, in looking at the 1840
census for their household, they had two male children and 3 female
children,
all under 10. Since Robert and Martha’s
marriage on 1838, the 1840 census showed they were the parents of one
female
child before the 1840 census.
Were Nancy Cook and Martha Cook, who
married the Self men, sisters? And were
Robert and Thomas Self brothers? This
writer assumes they were. Maybe our
readers can help us with these puzzles about the early Self settlers of
Union
County.
[Ethelene Dyer
Jones is a retired educator,
freelance writer, poet, and historian. She may be reached at
e-mail edj0513@windstream.net;
phone 478-453-8751; or mail 1708 Cedarwood Road, Milledgeville, GA
31061-2411.]
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