Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Native American Blood?

I spent yesterday evening cuddling with Nedi and Lovey, looking at a wide variety of catalogs that had arrived in the mail, and finishing the tenth book in the Foreigner series by C J Cherryh. After Jeopardy! ended, I just turned the TV off and curled up with the kits. It was a nice, relaxed evening. Tonight I'll watch NCIS and Vegas. I'm pretty sure that I identified Randy Quaid as one of the stars of Vegas in a previous blog. Wrong. I was dead wrong. It's Dennis Quaid, not Randy. My apologies if I offended or confused anyone. In any event , I watch these shows because I like to look at David McCallum, Mark Harmon and Brian Dietzen, who plays Jimmy Palmer. (Brian is a little young for me, but his family is local - in Niwot - and he's a very nice young man.) And for some unknown reason, I also like to watch Dennis Quaid and Michael Chiklis. I think it's Dennis Quaid's voice that I like the most. Of course, I could listen to Sam Elliott 24/7 and never hear enough of his voice...
  In regards to yesterday's blog and the possibility of having Native Americans on Dad's paternal side of the family - well, that just might be true... but it's something that cannot be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. First, in 1676, my 13th-great grandfather was hung by the neck until dead at the order of Governor Berkeley in Jamestown, Virginia. Captain James Crewes (aka Crews) had helped incite what is now known as Bacon's Rebellion. Crews left his property and monies to his son-in-law, but did not mention his daughter Hannah directly in his will. That has been the cause of a lot of speculation. Crews married twice to English women, but he also had a female Native American, whom he was licensed by the government "to keep." There is no real documentation on who was Hannah's mother - either Crews' Indian squaw , reputed to be related to King Powhatan and Pocahontas, or his white wives. Crews could have designated his daughter Hannah as his heir, but he chose to name his son-in-law. This has made some people think that Hannah was half Native American, which would have made unable to legally inherit anything; as there was a law on the books that Englishmen could not consort with, or marry, Natives. As I said, there is a lot of debate as to whether this is true or not... There is no hard proof.
  Second, my great grandmother might have been half Cherokee. James Loren Nocks, my great grandfather, married Nancy Elizabeth Busey, the daughter of Singleton Wilson Busey. Singleton led quite a life, and during the Civil War, was a bigamist. He lived in three places in two adjoining states, had three wives (and children with each wife), and served in the Civil War under three names, with each term of service going for a pension for each of his wives. One of his wives was a woman on the Cherokee reservation, and Singleton served in the Kansas Indian Home Guard. We have the story that Nancy was the daughter of Singleton and Nancy Goodwin. But we have no proof which of the wives was actually Nancy's mother - she is not mentioned in any Census until she pops up at the age of 16 in her father's household. So... who was her mother? 'Tis a mystery.

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