Finding Your Folks: A Byram-Tidwell heads up

Byram and Tidwell family members might want to pay particular attention to this week’s story. It concerns an error in their family lineage which has been propagated over and over on the Internet and in some print resources.

Mary E. Tidwell Byram Hayes was NOT the daughter of Benjamin Tidwell and Hannah Permelia Byram Tidwell. That is now a known fact.

Last Wednesday, I had a long telephone conversation with Jackie Lambert, a member and longtime volunteer with the Coweta County Genealogy Society. Jackie is descended from William Henry Harrison Hayes and his second wife, Amanda Moody, and worked on the Coweta Cemeteries book back in 1986 when it was first published. Jackie very graciously admitted that it was she who had added the incorrect information to the cemeteries book on the parents of Mary E. Tidwell. Mary’s full name, by the way, was Mary Eunice.

Back in 1986, Jackie had received information from her living relatives on Mary and they said she was the daughter of Benjamin Tidwell and was buried at Cedar Creek. But Jackie, at that time, didn’t know there were two Benjamins.

When she found a Benjamin Tidwell in the 1850 Coweta County census with a daughter named Mary E., she assumed it was the right one.

“I was as green as could be,” Jackie told me, and added that she was, at that time, working on the final phases of the cemetery book with other committee members and was encouraged to put her family information in it.

We now know it was not the right Benjamin and the information was incorrect. It was an easy mistake to make, green or not. Mrs. McCall who wrote the McCall-Tidwell book didn’t get it right either. And she was a seasoned researcher.

Mary Eunice Tidwell Byram Hayes was the daughter of Benjamin Tidwell and the granddaughter of William Tidwell and Mary Amelia Jones. The end, period, no more discussion.

Jackie had some other stories which helped put things together too. Such as relationships between her relatives and the Boyds at Bethany in Fayette County and stories of visits between the two.

A newspaper article stated that her Uncle Oscar attended the funeral of his aunt, Luranie S. (Tidwell) Gilbert near Senoia. Jackie said she always wondered why her Uncle Oscar’s middle name was “Boyd.”

We still have a lot of research and proof to gather to nail down and prove the theory that Nancy Boyd was Mary’s mother. The only thing I know to do is to go over the Meriwether Ordinary Court (now Probate Court) minutes from 1837 through early 1840 to see if Nancy may have had property that Mary would have inherited. This is assuming Nancy died between December of 1837 (when she married Benjamin) and 1840 when Benjamin married Martha Moody. I went over the Coweta Ordinary Court minutes earlier this week and there was nothing concerning these families.

Not much is known about Nancy Boyd except that she was one of the younger daughters of John “Wagonner Jack” and Nancy Chambers Boyd and that she was born between 1810 and 1820. Depending upon her birth year, she might have been born in Kentucky as her brother James was.

That means she was very young when her mother hauled her father into court back in 1822 in Newberry, S.C., and tried to divorce him. The court declined to grant one. She was very young also when her grandfather died in 1827 in Newberry (John Boyd known as John “Buckles” Boyd) and named all his children and grandchildren (including Nancy) in his will. Meriwether records show that is about the time the Boyds of Newberry began to migrate to Meriwether, and young Nancy may have been with them.

While it is believed that Nancy Chambers Boyd remained in Newberry after her divorce attempt failed, her husband, John (Jack), and her son, James, came to Georgia and began to purchase land in Meriwether County. A John Boyd purchased land in Meriwether as early as 1827.

Sarah Boyd Bell, another child of Jack and Nancy Chambers Boyd, also came to Meriwether. And later, as stated previously, Margaret Boyd Spence, sister of James Boyd and Sarah Boyd Bell, and her husband Wilson Spence, left Newberry sometime after 1840 and moved to Meriwether.

It is said that James rode on horseback from Meriwether back to Newberry and brought his mother to Georgia. Exactly when is not known, but she is shown in the 1850 Pike county census with James and his wife, Milly Tidwell.

Although several members of the Boyd family from Newberry died in Meriwether county, there is no record of a Boyd grave anywhere, including that of Nancy. We researchers of those families believe there may have been individual private cemeteries or possibly a group Boyd family burial ground somewhere on their property — and that was quite extensive.

Did young Nancy die in childbirth? What exactly happened to her? We may never know.

My grateful thanks to Jackie Lambert for finally clearing up this mystery for us. Remember: page 454 in the Coweta Cemeteries book needs a correction. Mary was not the daughter of Permelia Byram Tidwell.

I welcome stories about your ancestors who lived in the south metro Atlanta area. Send your stories to The Citizen, P.O. Drawer 1719, Fayetteville, GA 30214, or e-mail jkilgore@thecitizen.com or JodieK444@aol.com.

Until next week, happy hunting!