Rumors of Legends 

The Battle of Culloden, Scotland, 1746

(Author's note...Getting to the bottom of one's relationship to a legend is always a risky business. Still, it behooves even the most impudent genealogist to try. What can be discovered? What can be known? And better yet, what can be proven?)

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As always, unequivoally unedited.

Discovering what can be proven in any family tree is always a difficult task. Much of the time, a genealogist will dig and dig only to get nowhere, or worse. Too often, you find yourself sinking your teeth into some family line that never quite works out. You think to yourself, Eureka! I've got one! only to find out that someone has added to it (to some branch of a family tree) via that time-tested method of only wishful thinking. So when this guy, the penultimate Scottish Warlord, pictured below, showed up, all I could think was,   

Really, et tu Rob Roy MacGregor? Really?

The reason I bring this up is that I have begun working on the family tree for Kevin O'Neal. Kevin is the husband of Paige Dunham, a client and recent acquaintance of mine who was referred to me by my own cousin via a DNA match, Dan Wells. (My long winded way of introductions.) I'm hoping to nurture Kevin's innate excitement and enthusiasm for his family history as I do my best to "take a look back" and blow off a little dust from his Ye Olde Branches. There's always cool stuff to be found. So believe me, when I thought there was a chance of Kevin being a lineal descendant of Old Rob Roy's through Rob Roy's grandson Archibald, well, I was pretty excited. 

Yeah, but that was a problem.

You see, Rob Roy didn't have a grandson named Archibald. A couple of hundred  Google searches later, and I realized I was barking up the wrong tree. 

This didn't or doesn't mean that Kevin isn't/wasn't a MacGregor, or even a MacAlpine (the family that married into the MacGregors). It only means that, thus far, I can't prove any tie to Old Rob Roy, citing original documents or viable published sources. So I had to ask myself: How is it that the rumors of Kevin's kinship to Rob Roy got started in the first place, that is, beyond wishful thinking? And indeed, how far back in the assumed line could I go before I truly "touched" upon Clan MacGregor? 

What could I prove?

I knew that I could get this far with reasonable certainty. To this guy below, who seems to be one Hell of a stand-up dude:                 

Yep. Captain Henry Connelly, a Revolutionary War patriot. Okay, before I get too far, though, let me get that pedigree down to look at. (I will show what I have in the way of generational proofs further on as we go.)            

As usual, the first three generations of the pedigree above are pretty easily spelled out. It's those pesky ones in the middle that tend to give us trouble. 

Say what? "Elizabeth...no no further record?" 

"Elizabeth Connelly, who married Aaron Tate? No further record? Well, that's not gonna work. It sounds to me like the guy who put "Colonial Families of America" together didn't want to work very hard or look very far.

However, this could mean I am going to need to cheat a bit to get to generation four, that is, to get to the marriage of Elizabeth Connelly to Aaron Tate. I'm using a previously verified Daughters of the American Revolution application for a gal named Kathleen Cunningham Rienstra. (Kathleen, who is also a cousin of Kevin). Now, Kathleen's isn't the only previously verified application for this couple, Elizabeth Connelly and Aaron Tate; there are seven others. And while in this instance it is strictly third-party hearsay, I think given the preponderance of other applications connecting "Elizabeth Connelly, as the daughter of Henry Connelly and Ann MacGregor, and the same woman who married Aaron Tate," that I'm good with it. There is a variation in the month of Elizabeth's birth between the published source and the DAR records, but this seems to be just miscellaneous errata. I don't see how two records don't ultimately jive just fine.

I should tell you the reason why I'm cheating and using DAR lineage applications as a reference for the couple. The truth is that if we were being completely thorough, I wouldn't. Instead, I would order the supplemental documentation listed in the corresponding application numbers to see what proofs they used. (Especially those numbers, 314562A421 and 692958A701, written in pen in between the last two generations) But that feels like a needless foray for our purposes here. And yes, please don't call the Mayflower Society and rat me out. The Historian General will bust my ass for not exhauting what could be contained in those other seven verified DAR applications.

 Now, let's get to generation four, where Aaron Tate and Elizabeth Connelly's daughter, Mary "Polly" Tate, married James Bryant. 

    Jacksonville Republican, Jacksonville, Alabama, Thursday, Oct. 30, 1862, page 3

For this, the probate notice in this 1862 newspaper does the trick pretty darn nicely. It names Aaron's widow, Elizabeth, and daughter [Mary] "Polly" Bryant, wife of James Bryant." It's especially cool because it also names Polly's sister, Susan Tate Cunningham, mentioned in the previous DAR record above. It's important, too, because Mary "Polly" Tate Bryant is oddly missing from some of the other published sources on the family of Aaron Tate and Elizabeth Connelly Tate. (See below) 

The probate notice above, though, takes care of that and clears up any missing family ties nicely.

Roy C. Shild, Dola S. Taylor, The Tate Family From England to Tennessee, 2nd edition, PDF, Hobby Press, no date. Daughter Mary "Polly" Tate is noticeably missing from the list of their children.

So you can see that I haven't relied solely on the DAR records, nor other erroneous genealogies like the one above, but have also opted to use this published source to complement that generation:

Above: Ethel Speer Updike, Laura Watson Mentzel, Tate Families of the South, Volume 2, Tate Family of Washington and Russell County, Virginia, Independent Enterprise, Payette, Idaho, 1984, page 12.

Ethel Updike's 1984 publication is well-researched with good citations that carry us back to Henry Connelly and even as far as Archibald MacGregor and Edith MacAlpine. What's perhaps even more noteworthy or helpful for our purposes here is that it corresponds to that probate record in the newspaper in that it provides a good sequence into the next generation of Mary "Polly" Tate, who married James Bryant. While there is a variation in the middle inital for "James Bryant" in the records (Some recording it as an "S" and others as an "A") it feels pretty evident we are moving along the right path in getting from the MacGregors, the MacAlpines, and Captain Henry Connelly, on down to Kevin.

It looks, though, like we are going to have to rely on the census and other records for the family of Mary "Polly" Tate and James Bryant. ("Polly" is a common nickname for Mary) To do so, we are going to have to start with "something we know," and that is that James and Mary moved to Marion County, Tennessee. Here is a copy of the U.S. Census for 1850 showing them there.

While the generations for this record need a whole lot more polish, it does show the family, most notably their daughter Sarah. Sarah, who, in the 1860 census image shown below, is now "Sarah Bryant." So, just how do we know that we have the same family? How do we know that "this is" the family who moved to Marion County, Tennessee? 

Well, first, check out that 1860 census:

Outside of the Bryant and Coldwell families living next door to each other here in, you guessed it, Marion County, Tennessee, there is one name at the bottom of the census record that really helps us tie them all together. The name is "Aaron Bryant." 

Now check out his death certificate:

"Aaron Bryant," likely named for his grandfather, Aaron Tate, who married (you guessed it) Elizabeth Connelly. The beautiful part is that the d/c tells give us the names of his parents that correspond to the census records. 

"Aaron Bryant," whose older sister, "Sarah Bryant," married "James Coldwell" in Generation Five as shown above. Now I am going to skip a record or two at this point. I am going to insert the obit for James Coldwell here, though, as while it isn't a marriage record for him and Sarah Bryant, it does lead nicely into Generation Six for his daughter, Amanda Coldwell [sic] O'Neil.

Above: Rumored to be Sarah Bryant Coldwell, 1827-1910

This rather troubling obituary, which mentions "Mrs. J. W. O'Neal, "who is the key to the next generation shown here:

Okay, we are making progress. This death certificate for Kein's great-great-grandmother looks to have been signed by Kevin's great-grandfather, and it names his great-great-great-grandparents.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Now I know that Kevin has mentioned an O'Neal name change for one of his immediate generations. And while this can spell out a 'non-paternal event' such as an adoption, etc, these given source records do tie him back fairly succinctly to  Revolutionary War patriot Captain Henry Connelly.

They also tie him back to Clan MacGregor and MacAlpine.

So, just where did these rumors about Rob Roy start? 

Near as I can tell, they started with old Archibald.

"Edith and Archie's" home castle. (Or Edith's anyway :)

  

The above three images from William Elsey Connelley's, "Eastern Kentucky Papers, The Founding of Harmon's Station..." Torchlight Press, New Youirk, 1910, pages, various.

 

I guess I need to stop here. While I'd hoped to connect Kevin to the infamous Rob Roy of Clan MacGregor fame, I'm happy to have been able to bring his legally paternal lines to Captain Henry Connolly of the RW and at least approach the subjects of connections to Clans MacGregor andMacAlpine.

But then again, I'm just getting started.

Check back as you can. My posts here are fluid, and new content may be added.

☮

Post script: The following names in Kevin's tree are curious to me and deserve further exploration. They are (of course) "King," as it may connect to Paige, but also the name "McClung." In addition to this, the name "Pearson" as it might remotely connect to Dan Wells, and lastly, the name "Killian" - as it connects to yours truly.

Stay tuned.