Unexplained Deaths in Early Kansas

 In 2018, I made a post to this blog about the families of two Reeves' brothers who migrated into the Kansas Territory as soon as it was opened for settlement.  Gaston and Terrell Reeves were sons of William Reeves and Anne Terrell originally of the New River area of western North Carolina and southwestern Virginia.  William's father was George Reeves of Grayson County, Virginia who settled on the Peach Bottom Tract there in 1767 and served in a Revolutionary War unit from Montgomery County, Virginia. The known history of these Kansas settlers can be found in my initial post Settlers in Kansas Territory

At the time, I was puzzled by the deaths of both couples and most of their children within a decade after their arrival in Kansas.  They settled along the Verdigris River in southeastern Kansas and I wondered whether there had been attacks by Native Americans to the settlement or if some forces of nature such as tornados could have been responsible for so many deaths in these families. I searched most available sources but found nothing that might explain their deaths until several years ago when one of the descendants of Gaston Reeves joined  The Reeves Project and emailed to me all of the information he had been able to locate. 

1860 Census
Greenwood County, Kansas

My distant cousin Joe had finally discovered what appears to be the cause of their deaths when he came across a letter written in 1860 by Dr. Aaron Venard pleading for medical supplies.  When I discovered that the parents of these two families were missing in the 1860 census, I had found Gaston Reeves' children living in the home of Dr. Venard in Greenwood County.  In the letter that Joe found from Dr. Aaron Venard to Thaddeus Hyatt, he details the effects of scurvy on the pioneer settlement.  I have never considered scurvy a factor in anything other than long sea voyages, but apparently drought and the limited availability of adequate food sources to prevent illness had taken a toll on these settlements.

Dr. Venard's letter details the sicknesses of the prior winter and mentions that the primary problem was scurvy. Those who had come the previous year and made it through until Christmas, began to recover when the vegetables became available in January and February.

He explained that when vegetables did not exist, the scurvy was rampant.  He wrote that over the coming winter he expected the scurvy would ravish the settlers again.

Many more died over the coming 10 year period.  By 1873 practically all of the children of Gaston Reeves were deceased as well as the majority of Terrill Reeves' children.  Only Gaston's two youngest daughters are recorded as moving further toward the Pacific coast and lived into the next century.

The ancestors of my cousin Joe Hubbell, Elizabeth Easter Reeves and David F. Carter married in 1872 and migrated to California in 1875.  Many thanks to Joe for sharing all this trove of information about these families.

Just Supposin' Again

Since I wrote the post Just Supposin' several months ago, I found a little more documentation that serves to support my theory that the George Reeves who died in Wake County in 1778 could have been the missing member by that name of the family of Henry Reeves of Essex County, Virginia. In that post I shared my recent thoughts that he could be the link that connects John Reeves of Taylor County, Kentucky whose descendants are Y-DNA matches to known descendants of Henry Reeves through John Reeves of Augusta County, Virginia. John was a son of Thomas Reeves, Sr. initially of Essex County who died in Spotsylvania County in 1760. Thomas was a son of Henry Reeves, Jr. and grandson of Henry Reeves in addition to being the father of the missing George Reeves detailed in this post.

I became aware of this George Reeves in Wake County when I happened upon a 1778 court order apprenticing his children Mary and John to residents in the county. Based upon proximity, the surname Reeves and the fact that the individuals his children were apprenticed to, Woodson Daniel and Reuben Allen, were both close associates of my ancestor William Reeves, I wrongly assumed he must have belonged to that family.

September 1778 Court
[213]-75
Ordered that Mary Reeves orphan of George Reeves deced. be bound unto Reuben Allen unto She come to age at this time being Eight Years of Age.
Ordered that John Reeves orphan of George Reeves deced. be bound an Apprentice unto Woodson Daniel untill he come to the Age of twenty one Years being about this time the Age of three Years.

Although at the time it did seem strange that these children would have been apprenticed to neighbors rather than cared for by family members and that no tidbits of information linking John and Mary Reeves, orphans of this George, to the family of William Reeves of Wake County had ever been found. It also became increasingly more apparent that it was George Reeves of Grayson County, due to both genetic and documentary evidence in Orange and Johnston counties who was a member of the William Reeves' family, not the George Reeves who died in 1778.

Excerpt from Markam Map of Early Orange County Grants

The primary impediment to my suppositions that this George Reeves could be the missing son of Thomas Reeves, Sr. from Spotsylvania County, Virginia was the fact that there seemed to be no reason for his sudden appearance in north central North Carolina. However, remembering that his first cousin Elizabeth Gatewood had married Peter Copeland who was believed to have been born in North Carolina, I felt that could have been a factor in George Reeves' appearance there after his father's death since Elizabeth and Peter were said to have moved back to North Carolina a few years after their marriage. After writing the first post and sharing this theory, I decided to do more research in the area of Wake County.

In the course of that new effort to research this theory, I happened to notice that Peter Copeland was listed as one of the early property owners in Orange County, North Carolina. This area of the upper Neuse River basin had initially been part of Craven County, then Orange County from around 1752 until the early 1760's when it became part of Johnston County and then back to Wake County at its inception in 1771. See excerpt of the Markham Map of eastern Orange County above with Peter Copland's land along the Eno River noted. This is the immediate area where William Reeves settled in 1746 and both of the individuals with whom George Reeves' orphans were apprenticed were located. Reuben Allen's tract is located a little to the south of Peter Copeland's tract while Woodson Daniel's property was on the north side of the Neuse River which is not included in this map but was also in close proximity.

Peter Copeland had been living in Henry County, Virginia for several years when he sold this property in 1779 based upon an Orange County deed of 25 March 1779 which is one of three deeds by Peter Copeland recorded in Deed Book B, pages 65-70.

Orange County NC, Deed Book B, pg. 70

As valuable as this information is, it still does not constitute proof that the George Reeves who died in Wake County in 1778 was the son of Thomas Reeves, Sr. of Essex and Spotsylvania counties in Virginia but it does add to the inferential data that suggests this connection. Surely with continued research, further tidbits can be found to add to the accumulation of additional evidence.

Essex County's Henry Reeves Family

Back in November of 2011 in the early days of this blog, I wrote a post titled Who really are the descendants of Henry Reeves? In that post, I addressed the issue of misinformation regarding the lineage of George Reeves of Grayson County, Virginia who had been believed to be descended from Henry Reeves. A George Reeves, son of Thomas Reeves (Sr.) of Spotsylvania County who was a grandson of Henry Reeves, was named as a legatee in the will of Thomas' brother George Reeves who died in 1754 and the internet was full of the theory that George Reeves who settled in Grayson County's New River area in 1767 was that individual. Y-DNA tests of individuals in the Reeves DNA Project established that participants who were documented as descending from Henry Reeves were found in DNA Group 9 of the project while three descendants of George Reeves of Grayson County were in DNA Group 6 (now Group 6A) matching descendants of William Reeves of North Carolina's Neuse Basin.

With the recent addition of images of scanned historical documents to Family Search's online catalog, it is now possible to do indepth research without traveling to a courthouse in Virginia. Over the last six months I have spent an afternoon each week at my local Family History Center browsing the deed, will, court and tax records of Essex County in an attempt to find all of the extant information regarding Henry Reeves heirs. Amazingly, there is an abundance of early records for Essex County that are available.

The family of Henry Reeves becomes more and more complete as the records are searched with numerous tidbits of information found to solve what have previously been mysteries. The surname and family of Sarah, the wife of Thomas Reeves, Jr. of Spotsylvania County can be found on an Essex Deed. Sarah was found to be Sarah Attwood, daughter of Ann Reeves and Francis Attwood, who was a cousin to Thomas. The 1766 deed states that the land being sold was devised to Sarah by her mother Ann Reeves Attwood who inherited it from her deceased brother John Reeves.

Essex County Court Minutes of 1708 provided proof that Elizabeth Reeves, the daughter of Henry Reeves, Sr. was the wife of Thomas Sthreshly. Although Sthreshly descendants had believed that to be the case, most Reeves' researchers had never included that marriage in their family records. A court record from April of 1708 concerns a case where Thomas Sthreshly and his wife Elizabeth had brought suit against the administrators of the estate of James Reeves seeking to have the court order a division of the estate with the legatees. The court minutes clearly state that the petitioner Elizabeth was a sister of the said James Reeves deceased.

1729 Essex County Courthouse

Currently most of the male descendants with the Reeves' surname have been found, with a few exceptions. Henry, the son of Henry Reeves III, son of Henry Reeves, Jr., and his wife Jochebed has never been located after he reached maturity. Two of the other male children of Henry and Jochebed died as infants, which simply means that they did not live to adulthood, but their son Henry, born after 1727, apparently left Essex County as a young adult and has not been located elsewhere. Jackson Reeves, born circa 1690, was named in the 1717 will of Joseph Reeves, Sr. but there is no further record of him in Essex County. Likewise, George Reeves son of Thomas Reeves, Sr., apparently left the area and has not been identified. This is the same George who had previously been believed to be the George Reeves of Grayson County, but DNA has now established that is not possible.

There is still much research to be done in Essex County, particularly as it pertains to the daughters of Henry Reeves, Sr. Their spouses have all been identified but not their children. I'll be heading back to the Family History Center later this week to see what else I can find. In the meantime, The Reeves Project has created this listing of the descendants of Henry Reeves, Sr. of Essex County which links to each individual's page in the wiki.

(Photo from the website of Essex County Museum & Historical Society at Tappahannock)

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Other posts in this blog about the Henry Reeves family of Essex County
Who really are the descendants of Henry Reeves?
Thomas Reeves of Woodford County, Kentucky
The Gatewood Girls
Just Supposin' and Just Supposin' Again

New Data on George Reeves of Grayson County

Blue Ridge Vista in Grayson County

After searching for a decade for the source of a very old 1999 post on the Reeves Genealogy.com forum regarding the statements by a Mrs. Helen Trent Hobbs in regard to the origins of George Reeves who settled in Grayson County, Virginia in 1767 I have finally found the answer. An Ancestry post to the page of a distant Reeves' cousin contained a portion of the statement with a clue as to the name of the book and its author. The statements were from a letter written by 86 year old George W. Reeves of Ashe County, son of John Reeves, which were included in a 1951 volume published by LeRoy Reeves, a descendant of Edward Reeves of Bladen County, North Carolina.

The book is entitled Ancestral Sketches - Ancestry of William P. and Peter M. Reeves and contains a wealth of information regarding early Reeves families in North Carolina. It is a great shame that LeRoy Reeves did not have access to the historical records currently available and the added blessing of Y-DNA results. He has done an excellent job in researching these families and attempting to find possible familial relationships. The passage quoted from George W. Reeves' letter contained the following:

In December, 1897* (sic) George W. Reeves of Jefferson, Ashe County, North Carolina, then almost 86 years of age, wrote: "My grandfather's name was George Reeves whose birthplace I am unable to give, but was principally raised in eastern North Carolina. He was born about the year 1704 or 1705 (sic) and came from Neuse River, N.C., to New River, Grayson County, Virginia, about the year 1725 (sic) bringing his wife with him. They had born to them seven daughters and four sons, the youngest of which was John Reeves who was my father. When my grandfather came to Virginia no others of the Reeves family came with him, but my recollection is that he left others of the Reeves family in eastern N. C. whose names I am unable to give. But well remember my father had two cousins, William Reeves and Jeremiah Reeves, who visited my father since my recollection. I also remember that my grandfather's family frequently visited their relatives in eastern N. C, and I am sure that my grandfather left brothers and sisters in that part of the state...My grandmother's maiden name was Jane Burton."

Finding the source of these statements by George W. Reeves has been a complete thrill and further confirms the family connection between William Reeves of Wake County, North Carolina and George Reeves of Grayson County, Virginia that was discovered when descendants of both participated in the Reeves Y-DNA Project. It also should put to rest any lingering belief in the debunked theory (see posts in this blog) that the wife of George Reeves of Grayson County was a daughter of Joshua Epps of Halifax County, Virginia since George W. Reeves was obviously knowledgeable of the fact that his grandmother was Jane Burton.

I also found the remembered visit by his father's cousins, William and Jeremiah, of particular interest since two of the younger sons of William Reeves, Jr. of Wake County, North Carolina, by those names had migrated to Madison County, Kentucky with their father which would have been in relative close proximity. Any trip they would have made back to their previous home in Wake County would have taken them through the New River area of Virginia.

LeRoy Reeves speculated in his book on possible connections between George, William and Edward Reeves of Bladen based upon their arrival in the eastern portion of North Carolina at about the same time. He collected a tremendous amount of census and land records for the early Reeves of North Carolina but by not being privy to Y-DNA the majority of his proposed connections have been proven to be unfounded and to have been primarily based solely on proximity. The Reeves Y-DNA Project has no record that any descendants of Edward Reeves of Bladen County have ever participated so we aren't able to confirm any family connections. For the sake of adding more authenticity to Reeves genealogy, we'll have to hope that eventually some of those Bladen County NC Reeves' male descendants decide to participate in the DNA project.

In the meantime, I'll just continue to bask in the joy of finding the published information from George W. Reeves' letter.

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* Note that the date the letter was written appears to be in error since George W. Reeves died in October of 1896 according to the inscription on his gravestone pictured at Find A Grave. George W. Reeves was born in April of 1812 and he would have been almost 86 in December of 1895, not 1897 which appears to have been a transcription error.

UPDATE:  Since this post was originally published, two descendants of Edward Reeves of Bladen County, North Carolina have now participated in the Reeves' DNA Project.  Neither is a match to other Reeves in North Carolina and they are the first members the new DNA Group Nbr. 22 at FtDNA.