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 name Kizziah given to my
great, great
aunt has fascinated me since I first heard it.
Kizziah Souther was born at Old Fort, McDowell County, North
Carolina on
March 27, 1811. She was the sixth child
of fourteen born to Jesse Souther (1774-1858) and Jane Combs Souther
(1782-1858). I began to wonder where Jesse
and Jane
Souther came up with the name “Kizziah” to give to their baby in 1811.
Searching for the name Kizziah, I
found that it was a surname, not usually a given name.
I thought that perhaps someone in either Jesse
or Jane’s family might have had the name Kizziah. My
search did not reveal an ancestor with the
name, but I did learn that Kizziah seems to be a Tuscarora Indian name,
and
that there were families in the area of North Carolina where the
Southers lived
that had the Kizziah surname. My search
did not reveal why the name Kizziah for the new baby born to the
Southers in
1811, but it sounds pretty, and still holds a fascination even now. Maybe the beauty of the name also fascinated
my great, great, great grandparents.
Kizziah Souther married John Humphries
(b. 1810) on December 27, 1831 in Burke County, North Carolina. She was 20 and John was 21.
He no doubt was a farmer, and perhaps a trapper
and timber cutter. Four of the thirteen
children who were born to this couple were born before Kizziah’s
brothers who
had already migrated to Union County in North Georgia enticed John and
Kizziah
to leave Burke County and find their fortunes on land available in
Union County
after the exodus of the Cherokees. Her
brothers, Joseph and John Souther, had already secured land holdings in
District 16 (Choestoe).
By the time of the 1840 Union County
census, John and Kizziah Humphries were living in their adopted county. In their household in 1840 were 3 male
children under 10 and 2 female children under 10. A
next-door neighbor to John and Kizziah were
her brother Joseph Souther, and a little farther away, her brother John
Souther
(my great, great grandfather).
By 1850 we learn in the census the
names of the children born to John and Kizziah Humphries, and their
ages. Jesse, 17 (named for Kizziah’s
father Jesse
Souther), Jane, 15 (named for Kizziah’s mother, Jane Combs Souther),
Catherine,
14, and Willis, 11, had all been born in North Carolina.
Since Willis was born in 1839, this gives us
a date of their leaving North Carolina, after Willis’s birth, but
before the
census enumeration in Union County in 1840.
Other children in the Humphries’ household, all born in Georgia,
were
James, 10; Philip, 9; John, 7; Noah, 5; Sarah 3; and Mary, 2.
Whether the farm in Union County could
not yield enough to support his growing family, or whether the desire
to go to
other more promising places hit John Humphries, sometime before the
1860 census
they had departed from Union County. By
1860 John and Kizziah Humphries and the children remaining at home were
in
Monroe County, Tennessee. Three other
children, bringing the total to 13, had been born to Kizziah; these
were Nancy
Ann, Joseph F. and David.
They moved on from Monroe County
to Blount
County in Tennessee where some of the family lived.
By the 1880 census, Kizziah had died (her
death date is unknown to this writer), and her husband John was listed
as a
widower, living in the household of his next-to-youngest son, Joseph. However, before John Humphries died, he moved
to Cherokee County, NC to live with one of his children there, and died
in
Cherokee County.
We will trace what we know of Kizziah
and John Humphries’ thirteen children.
The oldest, Jesse (b. 1833, NC) served in the Civil War. He married Charlotte, known as “Lottie”
Duckworth. This marriage record is
entered for this couple in Union County marriages:
Charlotty Duckworth to Jessee Umphris, March
11, 1855, performed by H. J. Scruggs, minister. The 1910 census shows
that they
were living in Union County then. Later
Jesse moved to Walker County, Georgia.
He and Lottie had four known children:
Rosetta who married a Martin; their marriage is entered, with
this
spelling in Union records: Roseta Umphas to T.H. Martin, by C. N.
Davis, JP, on
May 6, 1878. Ellen, their second child, married Juan Jones on November
17,
1882, with A. B. Harkins, JP, performing the ceremony.
Her last name in the record was spelled
Umphres. The other two children of
Jessie and Lottie were Sarah and John E.
Jane Humphries (1835-1881) married
Wiley Dean in Union County on December 26, 1854. He
lost his life in the Civil War. She had
four children. Jane and her children were
living in the 14th
District of Blount County, Tn at the time of the 1870 and 1880 census
taking. Her children were Clarissa Dean,
Eli Smith Dean, Hulda Dean and Richard Dean.
Catherine, nicknamed “Katie” Humphries
was born in 1837. Katie married John
Hix, their ceremony performed by William Pruitt, minister, in Union
County on
November 2, 1854. In the record, Catherine’s surname was spelled
Umphris. As Katie’s next-to-youngest
brother, Joseph,
recalled his memories of his family and gave information to Tennessee
genealogist, Mr. Will Parham, in 1931, he noted that Katie and John Hix
moved
from Union County to White County, Georgia.
They had several children.
John and Kizziah Souther Humphries’
fourth child, Willis, born in 1839 in North Carolina, married May
Johnson on
October 14, 1866 in Union County, with Thompson Collins, Justice of the
Peace,
performing the ceremony. By 1870, this
young couple had moved to Cherokee County, North Carolina, where they
were
recorded as having two children, but the children’s ages indicate that
Mary may
have been married before she and Willis married, and she had two
children,
Elizabeth, 11 in 1870, and Hugh, 9. They
were listed, however, under the last name Humphries.
Joseph Humphries in 1931 stated that his
brother Willis moved west to Arkansas where he “was killed” (no
indication of
whether his death was by accident or confrontation).
Willis Humphries’ wife and children moved on
to Texas after his death and settled there.
[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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