Author: Donna

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John Dupee & Rebecca Dupee

Here’s another entry I found in the county court minutes for Morgan County:

Came John Dupee a mulatto man of a bright color aged about 24 years of a bright color [sic] about five feet ten inches hight [sic] his middle toes grown together on both feet with the following affidavit (viz), Personally appeared Rebecca Dupee before me John Williams an acting Justice of the peace of said County and made oath in due form of law that John Dupee a mulatto boy is her child and that he is free born and was born in the county of Clabourn in the state of Tennessee aforesaid and having no record of his age but as well as she recollects he was born some time in the year A.D. 1830. [signed] Rebecca Dupee, her x mark) Sworn to before me this 2nd day of Dec. 1854. John Williams Justice of the Peace. The court being acquainted with Rebecca Dupee a white woman whose signature appears to the above affidavit and also personally acquainted with the said John Dupee are fully satisfied that he should be recognized as a free man of color.

Source: Morgan County, Tennessee, County Court Minutes, 1848-1861, John Dupee entry, Dec term 1854, p 344, FHL #978835, item 1, image 180.

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Robert Bush & Rebecca Bush

I’m currently going through Morgan County, Tennessee, county court minute books page by page, looking for mentions of my various ancestors (& their families) who lived there in the 19th century. In that process, I’m finding occasional entries for free people of color and enslaved people living in the county. Because it can be so difficult for their descendants to trace them, I’m going to share the entries here as blog posts in the hope that researchers will find this and that it’ll be helpful to them all in some way. Here’s the first one:

Robert Bush this day presented an instrument in the form of a petition in the words and figures following (to wit), State of Tennessee Morgan County To the worshipful couty [sic] of Morgan County now sitting your petitioner a citizen of Morgan County humbly represents to your worshipful body that he is the proper owner of Rebecca a slave for life about the age of thirty two years and that she is his wife and the eversence [sic] the time of their marriage she has demeaned herself chastely and prudently as a wife and a slave and that he knowing that life is short and death sure and your petitioner having passed the meridian of life is desirous that she shall not descend or become the property of any other person he therefore petitions your worships to examine the premises and take such action as will liberate and make her free as your petitioner in duty bound will ever pray this 1st day of April 1850.  [signed] Robert Bush.  Upon the back of which is the following endorsement is made Granted by the Court.  John Williams, Chairman

Source: Morgan County, Tennessee, County Court Minutes, 1848-1861, Robert Bush entry, April term 1850, pp 88-89, FHL #978835, item 1, image 51.

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William Davis bio and map

I’m plugging away at a family profile / biography of William Davis and his wife, Farsina Brewster and am about halfway there. This is part of my broader goal of doing family profiles through all my great-great-grandparents, including reviewing all the documentation and sourcing, looking at the gaps, trying to fill those gaps, and then crafting a story about their lives to help introduce them to my extended family and to more distant relatives I’ve never even met.

This bio includes another map, this one of the civil district lines in Morgan County, where they lived, in order to figure out what their neighborhoods were and how they might have met in the first place. It was interesting and challenging to try to place their land on a map, since Morgan County surveyors didn’t seem to include precise descriptions and distances in their survey calls, making it very hard to know exactly who their neighbors were and what the shape of their land was. So a couple of these locations (Zeke Cochran and Ransom Davis, in particular) are estimates based on other fragments of information from other sources.

I’ll finish the Davis-Brewster profile by the end of this week.

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