By:Barbara Joyner
Date: 1/7/2012, 12:02 pm
In Response To: Re: Nelson County VA plantations (Derek Nicholas) I am researching Frances Vaughan (Frankie) listed in 1850 and 1860 Nelson County, VA census. Have hit a blank wall trying to connect to previous generation before her. IS there any documented connection to her and other Vaughans in the same generation in those censuses?
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Not too much info on Franky V. yet. but my understanding is that Frances "Franky" had a daughter named Elizabeth. They called her Betsy. And Betsy married Manuel Essex. -- I've been unable to locate Manuel's birth parents, however Patrick Strange took he as his 2 brothers Daniel and Orange Essex into their family of the Strange's. (seems kinda strange... doesn't it?)... that's a joke... get it?.. "strange"... never mind...

So let's get back to our story.. shall we?
So these many family lines are all interwinded through a very varried web of marriages stemming from slavery. These particular lines of negros were slaves of William Massie of the "Pharsalia Plantation" in Massie's Miil, and William's brother Thomas Massie of the "Level Green" Plantation. Our relatives were bounced around, breeded, traded, sold, inherited by these 2 brothers and their inlaws of the Cocke, Cabell and Steptoe families.

The only other "Essex" line that I was able to find was that of Thomas Essex.

These African American surnames and family line are Vaughn/Vaughan, Steptoe, Madison, Tailiaferro/Tolliver, Morse, Bowling, Essex, Napier, and a few more lines.

I'm still in the process to getting this all in order. The difficulty arrises from the fact that balck people were'nt counted, nor recieved a last name until after the Civil War, and emancipation in 1865. So most of us doesn't show up in the early census and marriage records at all, prior to this time.

In short... as African Americans... our leneage ends and begins at our last family's owners. And the descendants of these slave owning families still holds all of the cards, in their family wills, estates records, letters, and diaries, which we as African American slave descendants has no access to.

It's going to take ALL descendants of African American slaves to get interested in tracing their family lines for us as a people to trully heal ourselves. -- For the most part.. we don't care enough, nor are able to see the inherant value in obtaining this knowlege.