I began knowing only the unexceptional name of my great-great grandmother–Mary E. Mitchell–and that her first child was born in Texas in 1859. I have yet to find any sort of marriage record for Mary E. and her husband John B. Cooper.
By consulting Texas school census records and comparing them to the federal census, I found her father’s name –Ephraim M. Mitchell.
This helped me make contact with others who were researching Ephraim and his wife Rebecca R. Jones, and their 13 children!
There is family lore about Rebecca being the daughter of Sam Jones and Itee– Sam, aka Arpeika, the fierce Seminole leader and Itee, 1/2 Irish and 1/2 Choctaw.
But what about the Mitchells? No one in my family knew anything about them. Mary Mitchell’s husband was killed in the Civil War and she died shortly thereafter, leaving my great-grandfather George C. Cooper and his sister Rebecca Ann. The children were reared by their father’s family and very little was known about their mother Mary, much less her family.
But this year, with the help of some other Mitchell researchers, we have connected the dots, as one of them so aptly put it. With all the apparent relationships so obvious after the fact.
Ephraim’s father has been identified, as have some of his uncles–indentifying the uncles is part of how we got to Ephraim’s father John Mitchell. And, we found his mother, identified in Lightfoot’s “Let the Drums Roll” about Maury County Tennessee Revolutionary War veterans, only as “Patsy McClain.” Just this week we not only found her name to be McLean, but we likely found her father and mother and more.
Of course the path was not straight. John Mitchell apparently died in 1847 in Mexico as the result of illness contracted during his service in the Mexican War. The probate file for settlement of his estate is missing from the Shelby County, Texas, courthouse. (of course it is!) There is another younger John Mitchell enlisted in the same unit–but he cannot be found after the war in 1850–at least not yet. And is he even the son of John Sr. or is he a nephew?
Gratefully, someone saved some family letters and shared them with the rest of us. It’s only the transcription of a letter John Mitchell wrote in 1847 from Austin Texas where he’s awaiting deployment to Mexico. He talks about having stopped by Corsicana to visit his brother D.R., he mentions his horse Charley, and he admonishes his son Ephraim to take care of his mother. D.R. turns out to be John’s brother David Reed Mitchell, living and working in Corsicana, Navarro County, Texas, and early correspondent from Maury County Tennessee with President Andrew Jackson regarding his deceased brother James’ estate. Charley the horse is mentioned later in another preserved letter written to Ephraim by an attorney on behalf of his cousin “H. R. Mitchell”–H.R. had evidently traded the sorrel horse Charley for 100 acres of John Mitchell’s head right land in Rusk County. H. R. turns out to be Hiram Reed Mitchell, probably the son of David Reed Mitchell. Researching his family takes us back to Mississippi where there are indications that the Mitchells were between the time they were in Tennessee and Texas.
When a Patsy or Martha Mitchell who would be a good candidate for John’s wife cannot be found in the 1850 Texas census, I go looking in Mississippi. Sure enough, there’s a good possibility living in an R. L. Boyd’s home, listed as “mother-in-law” and R. L.’s wife’s name is Mary E. The longer I examine this family, the more convinced I am that this is John Mitchell’s “Patsy McClain” and Ephraim M. Mitchell’s mother. The name Boyd keeps appearing, too, as a middle name for Mitchells–both Hiram and Ephraim have children with Boyd middle names. Robert Louis Boyd dies too early for them to be named for him, so where did this name come from? My search for more info on R. L. Boyd ends up in a dead end, but I believe the Mitchell search has yielded some more clues.
I am grateful that Martha “Patsy” McLean and John Mitchell broke out of the Mitchell’s inclination to name sons John, James, Andrew or David, and named my ancestor for his maternal grandfather, Ephraim McLean, Jr. And Ephraim McLean, Jr. is married to Mary “Polly” Boyd. The McLean line is well-documented–there’s even an DAR chapter named for Ephraim McLean, Sr., a Revolutionary War vet who lived to be +90, living in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee.
So it’s been a very good year for Mitchell research. Of course, I still have questions–and this is still a challenging search because all of the Mitchell families apparently named their multitudinous sons for their relatives–John and Andrew and James with an occasional David thrown in. But it feels like a brickwall has come down, and much of it since the 4-days-ago Mad Monday post about the Mitchells.
It’s a great way to end one year and start another.
Still digging.
