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
Repeated
Given Names Often Confuse Genealogy Searchers ~
This week I’ve spent time
back-tracking to
an article I wrote for this column on June 2, 2005 about John Little
Ingram’s
family. He was my great, great
grandfather who was born in 1788 in South Carolina, died in 1866 in
Union County,
Georgia, married three times, and had a total of twenty-one children,
nine by
his first wife Mary “Polly” Cagle, ten by his second wife, Cynthia
Kittle, and
two by his third wife, Catherine Cameron.
A question and additional research
came about the tenth child by John Little Ingram’s second wife, Cynthia
Kittle. This child was named Martin
Ingram, born in 1844 and, according to Watson B. Dyer in his family
history
book, died in Jackson, Mississippi in 1863 during the Civil War.
A very fine genealogy researcher, Dr.
Charles Ingram, read my article online at the GaGenWebProject and saw
the name
Martin Ingram. He immediately thought
that the birth and death dates were wrong, because his ancestor by the
same
name, Martin Ingram, he had documented well. He
knew that his particular Martin was born
December 26, 1816 and died November 13, 1891 and was buried at the Four
Mile
Cemetery, Pickens County, Georgia—not in far away Mississippi during
the Civil
War.
One of the difficulties seemed to
revolve around the name of the wife listed for each of the Martin
Ingrams. Both were listed as marrying a
Rebecca
Bozeman, and to further confuse, Rebecca had a nickname, Beedee or
Becky. Now is that coincidence, or an
error in
listing? Dr. Charles Ingram has a family
Bible showing his 1816 Martin Ingram married Rebecca (Beede/Becky)
Bozeman on
November 24, 1842 in Cherokee County, Georgia.
He also has authentication from Cherokee County marriage Book A,
page
46, a listing for the marriage of Martin Ingram and Beedy Bozeman.
The only record I’ve found for the
1844 Martin Ingram’s marriage to Rebecca Bozeman is a listing on page
408 of
Watson B. Dyer’s “Dyer Family History, 1600’s to 1980.”
He did not give a source for the marriage
record. Maybe the younger Martin Ingram married a cousin by the same
name of
the wife of his first cousin, 1816 Martin Ingram. I
looked in the Union County marriage records
and did not find the younger Martin’s marriage listed there. Could this be an error? Perhaps
Watson Dyer found a listing for the
1816 Martin Ingram’s marriage, and assumed that the younger Martin
married a
Bozeman, too. Since the 1844 Martin died
young, at age 19, he evidently married young, too, if, indeed, he wed
before he
went to the Civil War and was killed. I
did find a listing of Martin R. Ingram in the 52nd Regiment
of the
Georgia Infantry Volunteers, Army of Tennessee, Company G.
They called themselves “The Alleghany
Rangers,” from Union County. They
enlisted for six months and their commanding officers were Lewis B.
Beard and
Julius H. Barclay [Reference: “Sketches
of Union County History, Volume 2, 1978, p. 41]
John Little Ingram’s son,
Martin, lived
only nineteen years, and whether he married before he went away to war
(to a
Rebecca Bozeman or not?), we do not have a record that he had children.
On the other hand, the Martin
Ingram
(1816-1891) who is definitely known to have married a Rebecca Bozeman,
was the
son of Tillman Ingram (1794-?) and Elizabeth “Betsy” Dalrymple Ingram
(1799-?). Tillman and John Little Ingram
were brothers, so the two Martin Ingrams were first cousins. The 1816 Martin Ingram became a Baptist
minister and preached in churches in Cherokee and Pickens
Counties, Georgia for more than
thirty years. They had eleven children,
nine for whom we have names: Isaac N., John H., Samuel T., Nancy E.,
Hester A.,
James P., Thomas K., Mary, and Loan.
Rev. and Mrs. Martin Ingram were buried at the Four Mile
Cemetery,
Pickens County, Georgia.
Given names in any family are
important. Maybe the babies are named
for someone in the family, a grandparent, parent, aunt or uncle, or
even going
farther back to another ancestor. The
fact that brothers give their sons and daughters family names causes
confusion
at times, because there are multiple people with the same name. That’s how we got confused over the name
Martin Ingram. We could say the same of
John, Little, Isaac, Tilman and other given names, carried through
several generations.
[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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