Catawba Indian Genealogy
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Catawba Indian Genealogy Ian Watson The Geneseo Foundation and the Department of Anthropology, State University of New York at Geneseo 1995 PAPERS IN ANTHROPOLOGY Department of Anthropology State University of New York at Geneseo Geneseo, New York 14454 Series Editor: Russell A. Judkins Number 4 Catawba Indian Genealogy Copyright © Ian Watson 1995 ISBN 0-9617915-3-5 This PDF edition was produced in February 2004. It is identical to the 1995 printed version in content except for a few minor typographical and formatting corrections. The overall pagination is the same, but a few page breaks occur at slightly different points due to a difference in the size of the font used for footnotes and quotes. A very few additional printed copies of this book are still available for $20 postpaid from the Department of Anthropology, SUNY Geneseo, Geneseo, N.Y. 14454. Checks should be made payable to the Geneseo Foundation. PREVIOUS PUBLICATIONS IN THIS SERIES Iroquois Studies: A Guide to Documentary and Ethnographic Resources from Western New York and the Genesee Valley (1987) First International Scholars Conference on Cambodia: Selected Papers (1988) Handbook for Archival Research in the Dr. Charles E. Bartlett Iroquois Collection (1989) Contents EDITOR’S NOTE ....................................................................................................... v FOREWORD .............................................................................................................vii PREFACE .................................................................................................................. ix INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................1 American Indian genealogy.............................................................................. 1 A history of Catawba genealogical record sources ........................................... 2 FAMILY SKETCHES................................................................................................15 Blue .........................................................................................................................16 Brown ......................................................................................................................19 Canty .......................................................................................................................25 Clinton.....................................................................................................................28 Cook.........................................................................................................................28 Gordon.....................................................................................................................29 Harris......................................................................................................................30 (I) Early and miscellaneous Harrises ..............................................................31 (II) David Harris ..............................................................................................32 (III) Allen Harris..............................................................................................43 (IV) Absalom (“Epp”) Harris ............................................................................51 (V) Lucinda Harris...........................................................................................56 Heart .......................................................................................................................59 Joe ...........................................................................................................................59 Kegg.........................................................................................................................60 Kennedy...................................................................................................................67 Morrison..................................................................................................................68 Mursh......................................................................................................................70 Nettles......................................................................................................................73 Owl ..........................................................................................................................74 Patterson .................................................................................................................74 Sanders ...................................................................................................................76 Stephens ..................................................................................................................79 Wahoo (Screech Owl) ..............................................................................................81 Williams ..................................................................................................................82 COMMENTARY ........................................................................................................83 The Catawbas and the Cheraws......................................................................83 Catawba marriage patterns.............................................................................84 Catawba surnames ..........................................................................................87 Difficulties in Catawba genealogical research ................................................88 White genealogy and American Indians..........................................................89 On the reliability of oral history......................................................................90 DOCUMENTS............................................................................................................93 The Revolutionary paylist of 1780...................................................................93 The Catawba petition of 1792..........................................................................94 The Catawba “census” of 1849.........................................................................94 Massey’s 1853 list of Catawbas........................................................................98 Catawba cemetery inscriptions........................................................................99 The 1943 tribal roll ........................................................................................101 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................107 Editor’s Note Ian Watson's Catawba Indian Genealogy will prove to be a valued and precious contribution to Native American genealogical studies as well as to Catawba Indian anthropology and history. It helps restore to our knowledge of the Catawba the faces and the families—the real people—who carried on the Catawba world during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through his genealogical work, the received picture of a generic, dwindling, remnant Catawba “tribe” is transformed to actual people - persons in specific places and times, living Catawba lives in specific ways. This work had its beginnings in highly skilled and competent genealogical research assistance which Mr. Watson provided for Catawba research of mine. It grew into his own, independent research and scholarly contribution, which the Geneseo Foundation and the Anthropology Department at SUNY Geneseo are pleased to publish in this volume. Mr. Watson is a graduate of Harvard University, with a B.A. degree in Scandinavian linguistics. He has written and edited travel guidebooks to a number of European countries and has most recently worked in international Internet development. Russell A. Judkins Series Editor Foreword When Ian Watson contacted me ten years ago to discuss his work on Catawba genealogy, I must confess that I was skeptical. Having studied the Catawba records myself, I doubted that anyone could penetrate the thicket of tantalizing but scattered and difficult sources on Catawba life in order to reconstruct family histories. Then, when I learned that Mr. Watson was just sixteen and that he planned to do the genealogy in a single summer, my skepticism only grew. The results of his work, presented here in revised and somewhat expanded form, quickly laid my doubts to rest. Catawba Indian Genealogy is an impressive achievement. Piecing together fragmentary sources, Ian Watson has crafted a study that succeeds on several levels. Most obviously, it brings into the light hitherto shadowy Catawba family histories over the past two centuries. But then it goes beyond that painstaking task to consider what these family connections can reveal about marriage patterns, naming practices, and the uses of oral history. Meanwhile it generously (and correctly) points out that, for all of the ground covered here, many sources that will shed further light on the Catawba past remain unexploited by genealogists, an enticing prospect indeed. Nor is the success of this work restricted to Catawbas and their students. In addition, Watson’s study stands as testimony that no group, however hidden from the more obvious forms of documentation, is truly hidden from a determined and imaginative researcher, a finding that will hearten those interested in other groups long thought to be lost or forgotten. Finally Watson raises the whole question of whether genealogical