(Author's note: In the interest of dispatching genealogical boredom this post is scheduled to disappear into a flock of, you guessed it, Ravens.)
PROLOGUE: Family history often balances verifiable facts against enduring family legends. This post centers on the compelling, yet unproven, title of "Sister of Raven," which suggests a Native American (likely Cherokee) ancestor. Tracing this legend through scarce and challenging records leads to the mid-19th century and ancestors like Lucy Hembree Brown and her grandmother, Selah "Polly" Hughes, on whose side the oral tradition of Native American blood first appears.
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As always, ravenously unedited. Wink!
There's an area of genealogy that we're told not to go. It's located just beyond the rabbit hole and a few yards past the brick wall. We're all warned about this place, and, for the most part, we do heed that warning. Certainly, no genealogist worth their census records wants to be caught in that snare or admit that they ever entertained any thought of "those." That being said, just because a genealogist, per se, chooses to hold their nose when it comes to such things as "those," the family historian, on the other hand, doesn't have to.
You see, "those" things are known as family lore, or legends.
Impossible to prove, or at least give the seal of approval beyond hearsay, they are often what makes the world of family history go round. They are our oral histories, and much like those coming down from any storyteller, they may be a combination of both truth and lie, of both fact and fiction. Some of this lore is simply built on the desire to wish something to be true. Some of it is built on the desire to just spin a yarn. And yes, we all have them, these legends, this lore to some extent. It's that story proudly told by Uncle Henry, oft repeated ad nauseam, of "Grandma always said we were cousins to Jesse James," or "Uncle Reg's father gambled away his passage on the Titanic." Just rumors, just stories told. What part of true? What part isn't that may never be known?
That doesn't mean we should ignore them. That doesn't mean they aren't a blast to explore.
One of the better "myths" of any family tree, at least insofar as Americana goes, is the recurring tale of Native American blood in the gene pool. It's pretty common. My guess is that if you asked seven out of ten random strangers on the streets of, say, Kansas City, those seven would swear that they had Native American blood running through their veins. If further pressed as to "how" or as to why they knew this, five out of those seven would just stare back at you blankly and mutter something like, "Not sure, it's on my grandpa's side." And that would be it. As far as the other two in this hypothetical survey go, one might actually be telling the truth but not know how or why, and yes, the other might just actually be a Cherokee.
Where this all comes from is a mystery to me. I guess it's the notion of the elusive noble savage or probably just a huge dose of historical guilt, a desperate, ancestral plea to believe that 'our people' were less involved in the darker chapters of American history. It's that quasi family history moment of looking back and essentially asking, "Can't we all just get along?"
Well, here's to wishful thinking. But as usual, I digress.
The reason for this post is to introduce you to a name that came up when I went down this particular rabbit hole. Now, as I've written, there is a lot of hullabaloo and whack-a-mole when it comes to folks saying they have Native American blood; however, every once in a while, even though the lore—the legend—can't be proven, it doesn't make the story any less interesting. As with any subject on family history, genealogy, or not, it's worth tracking the footprints through the woods just to see where they might go. For this particular branch of the family tree, the trail led not just to a name, but to a title—an incredibly evocative, potentially fabricated title. It led me straight to Sister of Raven.
True or not, I had to wonder what she was doing in the Great Recesses of Paige's family tree.
I. "Lucy"
Lucy Hembree Brown (1822-1907)
Now I will spare you any hoochie-coo genealogy of how we get from Paige to Lucy Hembree Brown, 1822-1907, her great-great-great-grandmother. It's not relevant to the tale, as they say. I would imagine, though, that the rumors of Native American blood, at least insofar as Paige's Brown family goes, may have started about here, with Lucy, and became a little more pronounced (or elaborated on) around the turn of the twentieth century. Passed down during the previous century, by the year 1900, those legends and lore would have had whatever was enough "basis in fact" (however unverifiable it may or may not have been) to be entrenched in the family's oral histories.
So let's start with Lucy. You got some ''splainin" to do, Lucy. And it all starts with Lucy's family name of Hembree. We have no written record of Lucy's parents or of her birth beyond her gravestone marker. In looking at the Hembree family, and for purposes of this post, I am relying heavily on the painstaking work done by research Larry Petrsiky in his work called Old John Hembree, which attempts to trace all of the descendants of John Hembree and the various spellings of the name. Mr. Petrisky's work has not been updated online in over twenty years, but given his thoroughness, I believe it remains the present Gold Standard on genealogical work for this branch of the family. And while he does not specifically place Lucy with these parents, he does place an unknown female, born in 1823, within this family:
William Hembree and Alcey or 'Alerz' _______
This appears to be our Lucy.
FindAGrave.com Memorial No. 49909312
Although Lucy isn't listed in the above genealogical summary for the family of William and Alsey, what compounds the "idea" that this is Lucy (or rather that this is likely an accurate accounting of her immediate family) is aided by the image of her brother William's grave below:
Above: FindAGrave.com Memorial No. 49911663 for William Isaac HembreeThe reason for this is that both Lucy (Hembree) Brown and her presumed brother William Isaac Hembree are buried in the same Tugalo Cemetery, in Tuccoa, Stephens County, Georgia. These gravesite photos of a likely brother and sister, combined with the census records, give credence to the family lore, if not the tireless research efforts of Mr. Petrsiky, that William and Alsey are indeed Lucy's parents.
But that isn't the mystery, is it?
II. William, Sr.
The conjecture behind just who Lucy's parents were (William Hembree 1797- ca. 1860, and his wife Alsey or "Alerz"______) seems resolved well enough. Based on Petrisky's work, I am comfortable including them in the family tree with a comment or caveat that they haven't been formally verified, at least through the usual means. The next step, generationally, would be to determine who Lucy's grandparents were. As the information behind "Alerz" or Alcey" is especially sketchy, we're gonna skip here and move right onto William Hembree's father, another William Hembree, 1774-ca. 1811. Again, I am going to fall back on Mr. Petrisky's work on the family by way of explanation:
The generation for Lucy's paternal grandparents looks like this:
William Hembree, Sr., and Selah "Selle" Mary (Polly) Hughes
We'll start with an excerpt from Petrisky's work about them here:
Mr. Petrisy cites various land and census records as to why he believes the above information to be true. Mr. Petrisky carries this line back to "Old John Hembree," who is the subject of his genealogy and speculates on his origins and tells the very interesting tales of Old John's four wives and bastard children along the way. It's all good stuff, but in the interest of time and space, something to explore another day. Old John is not without his rumors or share of connections to the Native Americans, too.
Now, though, I wanted to pay special attention to this first mention (in this instance) of Native American (likely Cherokee) blood in the family tree. Here is the first mention of Lucy (Hembree) Brown's grandmother, Selah Mary "Polly" (Hughes) Hembree, and her father, Charles Hughes. This is a word salad combination of names for this woman, who may in fact be a composite of two women, two wives at different points in the life of this Charles Hughes.
What appears to be the case, however, is that Selah Hughes is, or would have been, William II's mother, and Lucy's grandmother - if it all holds water.
Above: Anderson, South Carolina, Register of Mesne Conveyance Records, 1804, Family Search.org, Image number 007856755Remember, there are no vital records to go on here. There are a few land sales, and that's about it. The land sales in question refer to this couple as "William Hamby" and his wife, "Selle Hamby," but researcher Petrisky is quick to point out that the name "Hembree" is often mispelled or spelled phonetically, and is actually derived from the English surame of "Emory" or Emry" and that Hamby is just anotehr variation of the same. He also shows that the name "Selah" can be written or sound like "Selle." This is a credible; whether it is accurate in this instance is yet to be determined.
However, for a moment, let's consider that it is.
So just who is Selah Hughes, daughter of Charles Hughes?
Well, what you don't see in the above cropped image is the names of Charles Hughes, Selah, or "Selle's" alleged father, doing land sales and transactions with William Hembree, Lucy's father. We also see Selah and William in the deed conveyance below:
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Above: Anderson, South Carolina, Register of Mesne Conveyance Records, 1801, Family Search.org, Image number 007856754
An interpretation of these land sales and deeds, and the timeline linking William and Selah to her father Charles Hughes, is better explained here in the image below:
And for me, this is where the story really starts to get some meat in its bones.
So just who the heck is Charles Hughes?
III. "Charles Hughes"
Generationally, the flow of the pedigree now looks like this:
We can, with some trepidation, chart Lucy (Hembree) Brown back to her great-grandfather, Charles Hughes, with this schema:
PROVISIONAL PEDIGREE:
This is where it gets interesting, at least in terms of the legend or the lore. And while there are varying accounts past this point. I think we are "safe" to move Lucy (Hembree) Brown's line as far as Charles Hughes and __________.
It is without too much ado that I will show this image below.
Without much more than conjecture, researcher Larry Petrisky links Selah (Hughes)Hembree to Charles Hughes and then to Bernard Hughes. (Mr. Petrisky omitted a period after "...trader Bernard Hughes" in this sentence, mistating here that Selah was the wife of Bernard when she was, by his other accounts, Bernard's granddaughter.)
Again, Mr. Petrsiky has done the most thorough research on the Hembree line that I can find. I have no reason to doubt his work. It is cited by other family researchers. There are, however, some discrepancies about linking "Charles to Bernard." They involve that same old genealogical question of "Are they one and the same?"
IV. "Bernard"
So what about Bernard Hughes? He is, after all, the key that connects this legend back to Sister of Raven.
Now the proposed (and very provisional) pedigree adds another line to look like so:
PROVISIONAL PEDIGREE:
Below: Bernard Hughes, husband of Sister of Raven, aka Ailsey, aka "Old Mrs. Roe"
Well, there is further anecdotal evidence that Bernard Hughes did have a son named Charles. And indeed, all the accounts show that he (Bernard) was married to "Sister of Raven."
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