Tuesday, April 9, 2013

116. Martha Crow

There's a student in my Mordecai rolls named Martha Crow, who attended for one session, the second half of 1813.  She's called "Patsy Crow" in the Mordecai ledger, on the August 1813 page, and her name is with Betsy Mason and Littleton Williamson--possible connections there.*  As far as I can see, that's her only mention in the Mordecai family's papers.

There are a few possible Martha Crows in the genealogical sites:

This Martha Crow was born in North Carolina about 1795, making her 18 in 1813--older than the usual student, but not out of bounds, and that would explain her brief stay.  She married John A. Dugger in 1835 ((as his second wife, when she was 40).  Same Martha Crow was definitely called Patsy, and was the daughter of Abraham (aka Abel) Crow and Sarah Willis, of Orange County NC.  Much of their family migrated to Tennessee, including Martha.

A slightly better candidate, age-wise, is this Martha Crow, born in 1800 to Rev. Charles Crow Jr. (born in NC, 1770-1845) and Sarah Harlan (born in NC, 1775-1820) in South Carolina.  In 1819 she married a James Meredith, and had two children, Permelia (b. 1822 in Georgia) and Henry Hitt Meredith (1820-1896).  She seems to have married again, to Thomas Harvill(e), before she died in 1830, age 30.

Another possibility (on the young side this time) is Martha "Patsy" Crow born c1807.  She married in 1824, in Kentucky, to John J. Tipton, and had two children, Martha and Samuel. 

Well, that's three possibilities.  None of them obviously far more likely than the others.  Maybe something will come up to help tip the balance, or bring a completely different Martha Crow to consideration. 


*I thought Littleton Williamson's origin might be a help--but he was from Georgia (I don't have any students definitely from Georgia yet, and it would have been pretty far to go). He may simply have been en route in 1813, having served in the War of 1812, and carried a few students along the way.  The "Betsy Mason" in their company could have been the "Eliza Mason" in my rolls--except that Eliza Mason wasn't a student at the Mordecai school in 1813, to my knowledge.  Nor was the only other student named Mason. Curiouser and curiouser.