It has been said on many occasions now, that the new experiments found at familysearch.com, are a game changer. That's so true, especially for the "Full Text Search". This feature allows a sweeping search, over a varying range of documents, of a name, or key word, in a particular time, or place, using AI. Of course, AI can't pick up every nuance of centuries old handwritten script, but it does a good job trying. Thinning out the criteria and boundaries can sometimes help with that. Yes, it still comes down to good, old-fashioned document scanning, but this new feature certainly gives that a huge lift.
I've been using this feature off and on for several months now. However, oddly, I had never input the name of the one ancestor that started me on this never-ending journey of discovery, Job Davis. Not in the context of the place he was born, anyway. But yesterday, I did, and I was floored.
All the trips to Virginia, all those hours of scouring records, I had never once found a mention of my Job Davis in Mecklenburg, Virginia, the county in which he was born on April 10, 1773. He left those parts as a very young man. I'm not sure how many stops he may have made along the way, but he didn't put down roots until he landed on the Rocky River, on the Montgomery/Anson County border, at the time. He wasn't alone, we know he had accompanied the Floyd and Tillman families, and possibly others. He may have spent a little time in Chatham County, as I know he had family there. He would also buy property in Cumberland County, where he traded, but I believe that came a little bit later.
Yesterday, I discovered Job's name, in accompaniment with that of a family named Evans.
These documents all came from the Mecklenburg County, Virginia, Personal Property Tax Books of 1792, 1793 and 1794. Job Davis would have been between his late teens and early twenties during this time. 1794 was also the year that he arrived upon the Rocky River, in what is now Stanly County, North Carolina.
In the first excerpt, below, Job Davis appears in the list of taxables for Anthony Evans, along with a slave named Peter. Anyone shown without a surname can be assumed to be a slave. You can see this trend among the Davis families listed in the adjacent row, several who had a slave named Peter. It must have been a popular name in that location.
Next, we see that this time, Anthony Evans has listed William Evans, Job Davis and Peter as taxables in his home.
The next just shows Anthony Evans with Job and Peter again.
Lastly, it's just a repeat of Anthony Evans with William Evans, Job Davis and Peter again.
I looked a little bit into the Evans in these documents and a Benjamin Evans also shows up, later, with these other two.
These documents give no answers, just questions, but it was something I had never seen before, a mention of my Job Davis in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, during a small time frame when it was probably him.
What was Jobs relationship to the Evans family? Was he an employee, an apprentice or a relative? I have no idea who his mother was, so that's a possibility.
Who were the Evans family, and what were their ties to each other? Were William and Benjamin sons of Anthony, showing up in the tax list at the time they became old enough to be taxable?
These are all just guesses, and if anyone has any ideas, please feel free to send a message.
It will take a length of time to find out more about the Evans family of late 18th Century, Mecklenburg County, Virginia, who they were, how they relate to each other and, if possible, the nature of Job Davis' connection to them. It's not much to go on, but it's more than I had before, which was nothing. Now I know Job, my fourth Great Grandfather, lived with Anthony Evans before relocating southwest, and plant our family roots here, in Stanly County.
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