My Love-Hate Relationship with Genealogy
I can’t precisely say when it began, but my love for family history seems to have always been strong. Whenever it may have started, my interest got a big boost the day Granddaddy Lott carried me over to the cemetery where his parents and his Lott grandparents are buried.1 I was just a youngster, but I marveled at the fact that my Lott great-grandparents were both born in the 1850s and that they died some 40 and 50 years before I was born. It further astounded me that my great-great-grandparents were born in the first decade of the 1800s, way back before Mississippi even became a state. As remarkable as that new knowledge was to me, it almost blew my mind when it dawned on me that these people, my ancestors going back several generations, lived only a couple of miles from my birthplace there in the upper Big Level community. They had spent their entire lives on that very same land where I lived, where I had played, gone to school and to church. They had actually stood in the very same spot upon which I was then standing, burying their loved ones in the very same graves that I was then viewing! My little adolescent head almost exploded that day.
Even today, it fascinates me to contemplate these people as parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins, to think that they existed as flesh and blood real individuals and not just as two-dimensional objects denoted only by the dates of their birth and death on flat, weathered grave markers. It amazes me to think that they, in their respective generations, witnessed all the great events in our national, state, and regional history of those decades, centuries even—the War of 1812, statehood in 1817, the Civil War and the abolition of slavery in 1861-1865—not to mention all the lessor historical and cultural events of those eras. I sometimes wonder which of these ancestors I look like the most. How many of them besides my Aunt Ruby were lefthanded like I am? It seems that Great-Great-Uncle Crab wasn’t the only one with the urge to write. Just as I passed on many of my genes to my daughters, I have inherited many family traits from these individuals—I know for a fact that I have some of grandad’s taste buds and quirky sense of humor. It’s fun to imagine, but I think I would recognize more than a few of these long-gone ancestors by their voices and mannerisms as well as their looks.
Absalom Nathan (1806-1887), Jerry Bond-Lott Cemetery, Big Level, Stone Co. MS ( gravestone image 2)
It was in the mid-1970s, not long after I married, that my passion for genealogy was genuinely ignited. It happened when Grandma Lott shared with me a photocopy of a statement made by my Great-grandfather, Elisha W. Lott, from his deathbed in December of 1904. This document, handwritten by his daughter Elva and stated in the third person, reads in part: "Elisha W. Lott was born Sept. 24, 1850. He joined the Baptist church the first Sunday in Aug. 1872 at Ten Mile and was elected Church Clerk in 1875 and served about five years. Afterwards he came to Paramount and was ordained Deacon, April 1902. He requested that his children and grandchildren should know when and where he joined the church, the kind of life he led, and that attending church and associations was the joy of his life." Note that Ten Mile and Paramount are two of the oldest, extant Baptist churches in the eastern part of Stone County. My family and I were members of Paramount and I know firsthand how important church life still is to that community and how important those big meetings were, particularly with all-day revival services and singings and with dinner on the ground. Shoot, I’ve attended more than one associational meeting myself.
My genealogical quest started with the Lotts and quickly included Mama’s family, the Bonds, but then branched out to include the other family lines of my grandparents and great-grandparents, the Brelands, Hintons, Whittingtons, and others. After talking with my grandparents, gathering bible records and other family documents, plus visiting numerous local cemeteries, I began hitting the libraries that housed historical records. I spent a lot of time viewing census records on microfilm and microfiche. I wrote several letters to out-of-state libraries and historical societies. By this time the easy pickings had been gathered, new revelations were further and further apart. This genealogy business was getting to be hard work and it was taking much more time than I had available. Even so, I had discovered quite a bit, not only about my family tree, but about the role my ancestors played in the development of our region of the state and the larger territory. Permit me to list a few of the things I learned:
My GG-grandfather, Absalom Nathan Lott (b.1806, d.1887) and his wife, Elizabeth Williamson (1809-1887) moved from their birthplace in Covington County, MS, in the early 1840s to settle in Big Level.
My GG-grandfather, Bostick Richard (Dick) Breland (1835-1925) and his wife, Louisa (also a Breland) settled in Big Level upon their marriage in 1855. (He was the son of Jesse Breland, she the daughter of Lemuel Breland.) At the time of his death in 1925, Dick Breland was reported to be the oldest living resident of Stone County. His father, Jesse Breland (1799-1874), was one of the early settlers of the Ramsey Springs community of the county.
In 1807, my 4th-great-grandfather, John Lott (1740-1808) received a passport signed by the governor of Georgia to cross the Creek Indian lands to travel to the Mississippi Territory.2 He and his sons and their families made the arduous journey to what came to be called Lott’s Bluff on the Pearl River. Lott’s Bluff is now the city of Columbia in Marion County, MS. One of John Lott’s sons stayed in Georgia and was prominent in the founding of Waycross. Another son settled along the Tombigbee River, becoming the progenitor of several Mobile families. One son moved on down the Pearl becoming one of the first immigrants to settle Hancock County. Many of these men operated ferries on the rivers and creeks upon which they settled. The move for the John Lott mentioned above was apparently very hard upon him, as he died soon after arriving at Lott’s Bluff. His will was executed on April 14, 1808 and filed in the records of Washington County, the territorial district encompassing many present-day south Mississippi and south Alabama counties.3 (Marion, as a territorial county was formed in 1811.)
Arthur Lott (1750-1812), one of John’s brothers and my 5th-great-uncle, was murdered by a rogue band of Creek Indians in 1812 near Warrior Stand (in present-day Macon Co., Alabama) on his way to the Tombigbee. According to several historians, the murder of Arthur Lott, a former member of the Georgia Legislature, was the last of several precipitous events that led to the Creek Indian War.4 As a result, he is generally known in the circle of Lott researchers as Arthur "Killed by the Indians" Lott so as to distinguish him from the many other Arthur Lotts in our history.
Harriet Levicy (Hattie) Lott (1840-1895), the great-granddaughter of John Lott and one of the Mobile Lotts, was the second wife of William H. Hardy. Upon its founding in 1882, Capt. Hardy named the new town of Hattiesburg in honor of his wife.
William Arthur Lott (1859-1921), the great-grandson of John Lott and also one of the Mobile Lotts, built, in the 1890s, the house on Church Street in downtown Mobile that is presently owned by Keith and Rebecca, my brother and sister-in-law. They purchased the property in 1993 without any prior knowledge of its place in our Lott history.
These items are but just a few of the things I’ve uncovered about the various Lott families I’ve researched; there are just as many interesting details within the other branches in my ancestral tree. But lest you think I’m boasting, let me make an obvious observation: With any surname, as you go through just a few generations the lineages begin to multiply and spread out, the odds are overwhelmingly in your favor that you’ll find just as many interesting tidbits and bragging points within your own genealogy.
But as much enjoyment as I get from such discoveries, there are a few things I dislike about the hunt for my forebears. One, it’s hard work! I mentioned above how I spent a lot of time searching out family bibles, viewing census records, and writing genealogical libraries and historical societies, but I didn’t mention the time and expense it took to visit various courthouses to view deeds, wills, marriage licenses, jury lists, and other such records. Admittedly, this is all much easier now in the digital age, with so many valuable historical records online at Ancestry.com and other popular genealogical sites, but it’s still hard work to find the right sources, and it’s still necessary to verify someone else’s published data. I’ve learned firsthand that many of these sites are filled with tons of misinformation and that many online family trees have been sloppily constructed, and quite often without source documentation. I have encountered several handwritten source documents were incorrectly transcribed for publication and dozens of instances of persons with similar, if not identical names, being conflated and matched with the wrong family. Just as I went to school with four different Michael Lotts at Stone High in the 1960s, there are in every generation multiple Johns and Williams, Sarahs and Elizabeths, Arthurs and Absaloms, and Marys and Janes. I once spent weeks trying to disentangle two individuals named William Arthur Lott, both born in Mobile County in 1859, both had lived and worked in Mobile and got married at about the same time. It turns out they were first cousins. Another problem is that in many communities, some of the male individuals with the same name were identified as Jr. and Sr., even though they were not members of the same family. To compound the problem, a “Junior” often became a “Senior” when the elder person died and another person just coming of age became the new “Junior.” I think you get my point, such occurrences make it extremely difficult to get it right and make it oh so easy to get it wrong, if you’re not extremely careful.
Further, with the “copy and paste” mentality of many amateur genealogists, it is nigh on impossible to correct an error once a bit of misinformation has been published and republished numerous times. It pains me greatly when I come across family trees that contain errors about my own families. A particularly maddening case in point involves my great-grandfather, Elisha William Lott (1850-1904). He was the youngest son of the Absalom and Elizabeth Lott mentioned above. I was puzzled when I encountered a few published trees that listed a daughter in this family, Melissa (sometimes as Melissee), who was the same age as Elisha. Oddly, in some of those trees Elisha was also listed, but in others he was not. Was this mysterious sibling a twin never mentioned to me by anyone in my family? A great aunt I never knew I had? My best efforts to track her down came up dry until one day at the Memphis Public Library I viewed the microfilmed copy of the 1870 U.S. Census for Big Level. There was Melissee! Right there where Elisha should have been! Instantly, I realized what had happened. I knew from from family papers and conversations with my grandparents, that Elisha’s name was often pronounced as Elishee or just ’Lishee (both rhyming with missy). Despite his very legible handwriting, either the censustaker’s poor hearing or my gg-grandmother’s failure to properly enunciate caused young Lishee to be listed for posterity as Melissee, and to be counted as a female to boot! Sheesh!
A clip of 1870 U.S. Census, Beat 5, Harrison Co., MS. In the Absalom Lott household, youngest son Elisha is listed at Melissa or Melissee, a female, aged 19.
I won’t bore you with other examples of my frustrations, but I’ll have to say that these things are minor when compared to the many satisfactions I’ve received in peeling back the layers of time to reveal another ancestor in my family tree. I’m proud to say that I have, with solid documentation, traced each of my major surname lines back to colonial times, some to the 1600s and some even back to England and Scotland. What’s remarkable to me is that each of these families—the Lotts, Watts, Bonds, Brelands, Hintons, and Hattens—were found in the tidewater areas of Colonial Virginia in the 1600-1700s and that they later migrated down through the Carolinas to Georgia in the 1700-1800s and on to Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas in the 1800s. In each case, these families made these moves together, or in near succession, as old lands became depleted and new lands, and opportunities for a better life, became available.
It’s somewhat disappointing to me that as of yet no solid evidence has turned up connecting my Lott ancestors to any of the English Lott families. I’ve no doubt that the connection exists, but so far that will, deed, or other key document hasn’t been discovered. For me, that would be the holy grail. However, there are some tantalizing clues, such as the John Lott who at Bristol, England, who indentured himself for four years to Samuel Hatten, a Virginia planter in order to gain passage to the colonies. As much as I’d like to claim it, this rise to the standard of proof needed to conclusively say that this is my John Lott. It may be that the needed records don’t even exist any longer. In that case, I guess I’ll have to content myself with something my granddaddy told me years ago—I’m sure it was after one too many of my adolescent “Why?” questions—"Well, son, there are some things you just can’t know.”
Notes:
1The cemetery referred to is the Jeremiah (Jerry) Bond-Lott Cemetery east of Wiggins in the Big Level Community of Stone County, Mississippi. It is located south of Highway 26 on Bond Lott Cemetery Road near Flint Creek.
2A passport entitled the holder to a military escort through the Creek Nation.
3Washington County was created on June 4, 1800, as a county of the Mississippi Territory. Its original boundaries were the Chattahoochee River to the east, the Pearl River to the west, the 32nd parallel to the north and the 31st parallel to the south, an area containing 26,400 square miles. Named for Pres. George Washington, this large county was later divided into 16 Mississippi counties and 29 Alabama counties.
4"The Creek War" by Halbert and Hall (Univ. of Alabama Press, 1969, p. 86-90)
Words to Ponder
love–hate relationship: an interpersonal relationship involving simultaneous or alternating emotions of love and hate—something particularly common when emotions are passionate.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgcon·flate (verb)
1: to bring together, to fuse or confuse two or more disparate facts
2: to combine multiple things into one, to create a composite whole
Source: merriam-webster.com
Song of the Day
“Grandpa Told Me So” by Kenny Chesney (All I Need to Know, 1995)