It’s rare that I find a genealogy story in my local newspaper. But today’s Sacramento Bee has got a good one.

We’re all familiar with the controversial story of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. It is said that Jefferson had children by his slave Sally Hemings (whose name is often misspelled “Hemmings.”) Four of those children survived into adulthood, three males and one female. Historians and genealogists have been able to trace the descendants of the three sons, but many have regarded the daughter, Harriet Hemings, as irretrievably lost to history.

The Bee reports this morning that a professor retired from California State University, Sacramento, has found Harriet Hemings in a most unlikely place: his own family tree. And the story has an unusual aspect to it. While most of the media stories about the Jefferson-Hemings affair focus on the black descendants, Professor Tom Best is white. [I couldn't help noticing that Tom Best bears a resemblance to a well-known Sacramento attorney also named Best, who was one of my favorite professors in law school].

Read the rest of the story here. (May require registration). Also of interest is the report of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation on the matter of Sally Hemings.

Over the last couple of days I have told little bits of the stories of some of the relatives whose death certificates I’ve recently received. The death certificate I was most thrilled to receive, however, came today: that of William “Billy” Sanford. He was my great-great-grandfather. His four daughters included Betty Sanford, who married Otis Manson. Their youngest son was Quentin Manson, my dad’s father.

I knew from census records that Billy Sanford had been born in Virginia around 1810. Strong circumstantial evidence suggests that he was born into the household of James Sanford, 1769-1849. James Sanford moved his family to Rutherford County, Tennessee. Eventually, they ended up in Nolensville, Williamson County, Tennessee. Apparently, the slave Billy Sanford went with them. In 1854, the widow of James’s oldest son Reuben, Mary Wood Sanford, moved with her children to Milam County, Texas. Again, Billy apparently went with them as did several other slaves.

In about 1860, Billy married a woman from North Carolina. Census records list her name as “Emely” or “Emily.” The death certificate of their daughter Betty Sanford states her name as Elizabeth Scott. They had four daughters, Catherine, Anna, Betty, and Addie. in August of 1890, Betty married Quentin Manson, and three days later, Addie married a man named Abe White.

Addie White is listed as the informant on Billy Sanford’s death certificate.

The death certificate lists Billy’s date of birth as December 25, 1809. His place of birth is given as West Virginia. all of the available census records, however, state his birthplace as Virginia. Of course, there are a couple of possibilities. First he could have been born in one of the counties of Virginia that remained with the Union as West Virginia. Second, his daughter Addie may not have known exactly where her father had been born.

As to the names of his parents, Addie reported “do not know.” This was one piece of information that I really wanted to know.

Billy Sanford died on November 20, 1916, aged 106 years 10 months and 20 days old. The cause of death is given as “poor circulation and old age and a sufficient [undecipherable].” He is buried in the Rockdale City Cemetery, in the section referred to as “the old colored Cemetery” in Rockdale, Texas. In their book, 150 Years of Cemetery Records in Milam County, Texas, Perry C. Holder and Norrine Holder Holman state that Billy Sanford is the oldest person buried in the Rockdale Cemetery.

Jonathan Khalil Edwards made his first appearance on Earth a little after 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, October 10, 2006, in Oxnard, California. He is the son of Tamila and Jamal Edwards of Ventura, California. Tamila is the daughter of Donna and Terry Manson of El Paso, Texas. Jonathan arrives just one day after the 11th birthday of his cousin, Dallas Miller Manson, son of David and Creola Manson of San Jose, California.

Mother, father, baby (4 pounds, 13 ounces) and grandparents are all doing well in Ventura County tonight. The appropriate genealogical charts have been updated!

Carl Edward Manson was the first child of Otis and Betty Manson, born January 2, 1893 in Rockdale, Milam County, Texas. After leaving Rockdale, he lived for a while in Ballinger, Runnels County, Texas, where he worked as a Teamster. For some period of time he was married to a woman I can only identify as Mary M. At some point in the 1940s, he married Izola Fuqua. She was from Dallas, Texas. The couple moved from Texas to Los Angeles.

The only thing I knew of Uncle Carl was that in the 1960s he ran a dress and hat shop with his wife Zoe in south-central Los Angeles. I recall visiting their store in 1966. His death certificate, however, says that he worked as a yard man for Southern Pacific Railroad for 30 years. Of course, by the 1960s, he was no doubt retired from Southern Pacific.

Carl Manson died on April 4, 1983. Zoe was the informant for the death certificate. Somewhat surprisingly, the names of Carl’s parents are listed as unknown, although their birth places are listed as Texas.

The cause of death listed on the death certificate sets off the warning tone for me. The primary cause of death was cardiopulmonary arrest, due to arteriosclerotic heart disease. Carl’s mother, Betty Sanford Manson, also died of heart disease.

At the time of Carl’s death, he and Zoe were residing at 125 E. 36th St in Los Angeles. Their shop is pictured at left.

Carl had been hospitalized at Queen of Angels Hospital at 2301 Bellevue St in Los Angeles. He was buried on April 7, 1983, at Woodlawn Cemetery, 1715 W. Greenleaf Blvd, Compton, California.

Aunt Zoe was born Izola Fuqua on April 5, 1911, in Texas. According to her death certificate, her father was Oliver Fuqua, born in Texas, and her mother was Marilla McGuire, born in Alabama.

There’s a lot of information on Zoe’s death certificate that is new to me. First of all, her occupation is given as public school teacher for 25 years. Again, I thought she had simply run the hat and dress shop. The death certificate form in use when she died, had a space for “years in county.” There it says that she had lived in Los Angeles County for 50 years. If this is correct, then Carl and Zoe moved to Los Angeles in 1945.

The informant for Zoe’s death certificate was Katrina Rolland, described as “grand daughter.”I have never heard of Katrina Rolland. She lived in Long Beach, California. The death certificate says that Zoe died at home, that meaning 727 W. 27th St in Los Angeles. the date of her death was December 31, 1995. The cause of her death (third alarm for me) was acute myocardial infarction due to arteriosclerotic heart disease.

A curious fact is that Zoe was buried in Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, California. Recall that Carl was buried in a private cemetery in Compton. Usually burial at a national cemetery is reserved for veterans and their spouses. Spouses usually cannot be buried at the national cemetery unless the veteran is buried there as well. Why Zoe (without Carl) is buried in a national cemetery is a mystery.

I was going to save this particular topic until I had some more information. But as I said a few days ago, things have been a bit slow around here, in part due to the uncharacteristically lethargic response of the Texas vital statistics unit to my latest requests. So when a death certificate arrived today, I decided to to move ahead with this particular blog entry rather than save it for later.

The subject is Betty Sanford Manson, my great-great-grandmother. I’ve written about her before. She was the third of four daughter of William (Billy) Sanford, born in Rockdale, Milam County, Texas. She married Otis Manson in August of 1890, just a few days before her sister Addie married one Abe White. I’ve said before that death certificates can provide a wealth of information about an ancestor. So I requested Betty Sanford Manson’s death certificate with that in mind. Let’s analyze what we’ve got.

One of the first things I look at when I get a death certificate is the name of the informant. The quality of the information frequently depends on the knowledge or motivation of the informant. In this case the death certificate shows the informant to have been Pansy Warren. We know Pansy Warren to be my great-aunt, the sixth child of Betty and Otis Manson, born April 3, 1909. Pansy had been to college at Prairie View, the first member of the family to attend college. No doubt this explains why Pansy frequently handled official matters for the family and managed the family’s real estate holdings. In deed, to this day, Pansy’s daughter-in-law, Marguerite Warren, continues to be the family’s chief operating officer, as Pansy’s late son James and his father before him also named James had been. Knowing Pansy Warren as the informant gives me confidence in the information in the death certificate.

The death certificate says that that Betty was born on February 17, 1873. I have seen at least one other source that described her birthday as having been in February 1872. When dealing with a date that far in the past, a variance of a year in the records is neither unusual nor alarming. It’s difficult to say which is correct. As a general proposition, resolving such a conflict of of date involves a consideration of the subjective weight one wishes to give each of the records.

The next thing of interest on Betty’s death certificate is the line that describes her parents. Her father is described as “Billy Sanford,” which is consistent with census records which give his name variously as William or Billy. But his birthplace is given as Georgia. This is at odds with decades of census records which say his birthplace was Virginia. It’s also inconsistent with significant circumstantial evidence that he was born as a slave of the family of Reuben Sanford and was taken with that family to Tennessee and then to Texas.

Betty’s mother’s name is given as “Elizabeth Scott.” Census records describe her mother’s name as “Emily” or “Emely”. I never knew a surname for her Emily. And the mother’s birthplace is also described as Georgia. That, too, is at odds with decades of census records which say her birthplace was North Carolina. I’m inclined to credit the census records on the issue of where both William and Emily Sanford were born. It’s likely that Pansy had no idea where her grandparents had been born and may have believed or chosen to believe that they were born in Georgia, because her father Otis and his mother Matilda had been born in Georgia. She may have assumed that the all of her grandparents had been born in Georgia. We know that by 1955 when Pansy was called upon to give this information, her grandfather William had been dead for almost 40 years and that Emily had predeceased him.

What of the discrepancies between the first names Elizabeth and Emily? Well, this, too, is hard to make out. It could be a mistake on Pansy’s partt; or her grandmother’s name may have been Emily Elizabeth or Elizabeth Emily. We know from marriage records that Betty’s middle initial was “E”; we don’t know what that “E” stood for.

We learn from the death certificate that Betty died of congestive heart failure. We know from court records in Milam County where the family lived originally, that Betty had been twice adjudged mentally incompetent. No mention of her mental state is made on the death certificate; apparently that had nothing to do with her death. I was hoping to did have by now the court records of her mental in competency, but I do not have them yet.

Finally we learn from the death certificate that Betty Sanford Manson is buried at Fairview Cemetery in Midland, Texas. I saw a source which said that Fairview is the oldest Cemetery in Texas. This source also claimed that Fairview was closed. However, I’ve seen obituaries in the Odessa newspaper stating that decedents were being buried at Fairview as recently as this year. I will have to go and see for myself.

There is another nugget of information in the death certificate. I had wondered when the family moved from Rockdale in Milam County to Midland. The death certificate says that Betty had lived in Midland for eight years at the time of her death in 1955 meaning that the family had moved there in 1946 or 1947.

And there’s another anomaly raised by the birth certificate. Betty’s marital status is given as “widowed”. This would be consistent with the information in the Texas death index which indicates that Otis died in 1950. And this would be a fact about which Pansy would hardly be mistaken. But my father had said that his grandfather Otis died in 1960. And a cousin of mine in Midland, who’s about my age said she remembered Grandpa Otis when she was a little girl. If he indeed died in 1950, then she could not have ever seen him.

So as usual, the death certificate answer some questions, and opens others. And that’s why we keep on doing this!

Fairview Cemetery, Noble & Pecos Streets, Midland, Texas