Origins of "cherokee in the family" stories

My possible cherokee

Wi-ni We-no-nah Lowry

Erica, can you link to Shanon's post so we know what you're referencing? Thanks!

Actually I'm just tagging her; she didn't say anything about Cherokee in the family. I'm hoping she will now.

All of my Cherokee shows up in the line of Nannie Hicks. I am waiting on an email from someone that says they can explain the Nannie Hicks connection to Matilian Bickle. I do have others speradically that are Choctaw and Chicasaw as well. Some names I have that I am pretty sure are Cherokee or married to a Cherokee. Rogers, Dougherty, Lowery, Fields, Grant, Ward, Crittenden......I stopped messing to much with that branch when I got to the Thomas the trader Carpenter and found out while researching him that he wasn't even a real person. After I had already gotten frustrated finding the records for Nannie Hicks showing she had no children, and Everett White's book saying Matilian's mother was Rhoda and coming up with nothing on a Rhoda that looks like a match. I will keep u posted when I get the email that is suppose to explain it.

Nannie Bickle

@Nannie Hicks

Shanon, I think you just have a coincidence of name. There is plenty of documentation on the Cherokee Nannie Hicks; there is also documentation for John Bickle, the father of George and Matilda Bickle. There is nothing to suggest that John iwas the John Bickle married to Nannie Hicks.

The Starr book lists Nannie Hicks as the daughter of Aky Rogers and George Hicks, and lists John Bickle as her husband, with the indication that there were no children.

The Nannie Hicks in Geni is listed as the wife of John Michael Bickle, Jr., the mother of two children, George Washington Hicks b. 1831 and Matilda, born 1839

Both women have an estimated DOB of 1810-1812

Cherokee Nannie:
Dead by 1896, her only heir was a nephew named Benjamin Hicks, born 1856
This helps to support the fact that this Nannie/Nancy was born a Hicks and that she had no children
NOTE: there was a payment involved in 1896 for the ‘Old Settlers’ so the census takers made a thorough search for heirs of those who had died before 1896.

1851 ‘Old Settler’ Roll, Indian Territory, now Oklahoma:
Skin Bayou District,:Group #183 Nancy Bickle [no others in this group, so children living with her at that time]; her husband may have been alive, but would not appear on the census since he was a white man

1824: Aky Rogers listed as member of Dwight Mission in 1824, indicating the family had already moved west by this date [link to information on the Mission here: http://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=DW001]

1818: Aky Hicks with a family of 6 signs up to move west [Emigration Rolls, transcribed by Jack Baker, 1977]

“Other” Nannie, not actually named in any record I could find on line:

1850 U.S. Census: Izard, Arkansas
John Bickle
Age:40
Birth Year:abt 1810
Birthplace:Virginia
Home in 1850:White River, Izard, Arkansas, USA
Gender:Male
Family Number:246

Household Members:
Name Age
John Bickle 40 <<<<<<<<<
Rhody Bickle 25 clearly a second wife as only Nancy is young enough to be hers
George Bickle 19 <<<<<<<<<
James Bickle 17
Matilda C Bickle 13 <<<<<<<<<
Nancy A Bickle 4
James Pauff 18

This appears to be the John’s family in the 1840 U.S. Census, Cannon, Tennessee
Name:John Bickle
Home in 1840 (City, County, State): Cannon, Tennessee
Free White Persons - Males - 5 thru 9:2 [George & James]
Free White Persons - Males - 20 thru 29:1 [John]
Free White Persons - Females - Under 5:2 [Elizabeth & Matilda]
Free White Persons - Females - 20 thru 29:1 [unnamed wife, not Rhoda since she would have been only 15 at this time]
Persons Employed in Agriculture:1
No. White Persons over 20 Who Cannot Read and Write:1
Free White Persons - Under 20:4
Free White Persons - 20 thru 49:2 [John and first wife]
Total Free White Persons:6
Total All Persons - Free White, Free Colored, Slaves:6

Cannon County, TN is in central Tennessee, not near the Cherokee Nation. It was formed from Warren County in 1836.

In 1830 a Michael Bickle and his family are found in Warren County; Michael has a son aged 15-19 who could be John. John and his first wife were probably married after the 1830 census since George was born in December, 1831. I could not find any marriage records on line for John Bickle in Tennessee or in Arkansas.

Matilda did not die until 1913. She did not file an Eastern Cherokee application, which is improbable if her mother was Cherokee.

Find-a-Grave says that George W. Bickle arrived in Indian Territory from Arkansas about 1890; he died shortly thereafter.

Your amazing, honestly!!! I hate to say it but this stuff is way over my head, LOL. I will be keeping up with the discussion though, thank u to all of the volunteer curators for doing what y'all do.

My possible Cherokee maiden.......that I am disconnected from because she is not a Cherokee? Or......I am disconnected from because I am NOt a proven Howard descendant? I am confused. Lol!

Lettica ‘Lettie Hatchet Grey’ Howard

Let's see if I can explain properly how I think Abigail Roark came to have been identified as Cherokee.

It is massively confusing several Abigails and at least two Charles Roarks.

Details are here https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/54197476/abigail-roark/flower

There was a woman named Catherine (Vanover) Perry who filed for admission to the Cherokee nation and was rejected. Her mother was called Abigail Easterd (I first saw her as Abigail Eastridge), married to the 5th Cornelius Vanover.

The name Abigail Eastridge came to be associated "also" with Abigail, wife of Charles Roark, of Ashe County, North Carolina, who was confused with Charles Roark of Grayson County, Virginia; apparently both men lived in Rowan County, NC at the same time, which didn't help. This other Charles Roark served in the Revolution. I have not yet looked to see if he's in the DAR database.

So some people solved the two Abigail problem by showing Abigail as married to both Vanover and Roark. Which was physically impossible.

Now, I haven't quite figured out yet how Abigail came to have been attributed as daughter of Dragging Canoe and Leaf Pathkiller or given a name of "Raven Canoe." I think the Canoe / Pathkiller family may have been "born on the Internet" though. I have heard for some years that no Cherokee has any children for him besides Young Dragging Canoe by an unknown wife.

So was Abigail Roark native American? Only mtDNA testing would be able to answer that at this point (female living > mother > mother > mother > Abigail). It has not been disproved as far as I know; however it appears that Abigail (Easterd) Vanover, her mixup person, has been disproved, and shown to have an mtDNA haplogroup that cannot have been native.

And I do not think Abigail was Cherokee. I do not think there's any Roark applications; and if she had been Cherokee, in all the years I've seen her listed as Cherokee, there should be more record evidence to support the claim.

I can see where family generations were told they were Indian and most people say it was "Cherokee" and it could very well be another tribe that their family is related to and they have no idea. They may have had just the story passed down.

My family story of my great paternal grandmother Bradley being Cherokee is suspect because I have found no evidence or any record of that being the case. I have however found her father to be born in Michigan and he may vary well have heritage from one of the tribes in that area.

Regarding those who were rejected by the Cherokee for enrollement as Pam has mentioned. I would like to see those particular records. With Pheobe Crews descendants, there was an actual court case with varius descendants trying to make the claim. I do belive many of these cases were political. Mixed bloods took over the government and established the Chickasaw nation after the removal and there was dissention. I can see where families were denied based on politics and what the US government wanted to happen.

Regarding the Lumbee tribe, I only have read a bit on them but, they were forced to remove three or more times. From the northern colonies, south, and west if I am not mistaken.

I appreciate all who are involved in regards to trying to make these trees and connections accurate.I do not particularly agree with snipping connections of trees and family if there is only family lore of heritage and not any documentation. There have been monuments in place for people who are supposed to have existed, for example Nicketti Hughs...but I don't want to open that can of worms on this thread and I will admit I know little of that history. I do know that one of her claimed desendants connects to my Native American tree. That in itself makes me think there is truth to the story. I have found many Native connections here on Geni. I have even found my Choctaw cousins who are now considered white via census records and lived in Texas. They were active in governmental positions.

I think we will never really know if there is "evidence" for some Native claims of family members before all the required documentation of the rolls and who were allowed to call themselves Indian accoridng to the times of removal.

I suppose what you said is quite correct Kathryn, it is not who you claim but who claims you.

If families today want to keep certain family members off other their trees, why whould that not be the case in the past. Yes, I know, they were supposedly enrolled by other family, affidavits and certified letters stating who was who.

I will continue to follow, but I don't think I as excited to try to find anymore of my Cherokee heritage. I don't need to, I don't plan to try to join the tribe. I have a tribe that has claimed me.

I just liked being able to help others know possibly where they come from. That is why I am on Geni. I am not an expert. I have learned quite a bit from this site. I also know that those who are just geneaolgy hobbist may retract or be put off from including any information here if they don't have records and only family stories and traditons.

Take care all.

I find there’s plenty of space in Geni profiles for documenting family traditions. There are so many tools available to show it; the simplest is to link within the profile overview to the “traditional” parent. And / because of DNA test results coming more and more into use, and propogating upward on Geni profiles, we can more easily show what is evidence based.

If a DNA haplogroup shows that a person cannot have been the same as this other person, do we have another choice?

Another possibility for my family tradition of Cherokee may be conflating three different Mary Musgroves

Mary Cunningham

Mary Musgrove

Coosaponakesee (Mary Musgrove)

Thank-you for your post Private User .......

I was pretty drawn into the Cherokee maiden saga. Ha ......and it is interesting to learn about the particular tribe that Geni linked me to. I have read some amazing books and learned about a "new" culture.

Here's a partial list:
Every Day Is a Good Day
Reflections by Contemporary Indigenous Women by Wilma Mankiller
The Secrets and Mysteries of the Cherokee Little People by Yunwi Tsunsdi
Grave Injustice The American Indian Repatriation Movement and NAGPRA by Kathleen S, Fine Dare
Snowbird Cherokees People of Persistence by Charlotte Neely
Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835 (Indians of the Southeast)
by Theda Purdue
Brother Eagle, Sister Sky: the Words of Chief Seattle with Paintings by Susan Jeffers

Can anyone tell me why this record is incorrect?

U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900
View Record
Name Letty Du Cherokee Indian
Gender Female
Birth Year 1744
Spouse Name Thomas Howard
Spouse Birth Year 1740
Number Pages 1

To help understand some of the efforts of whites to claim Cherokee citizenship and land in Indian Territory, I'd suggest reading Nancy Sober's book "The Intruders." It is very saddening to discover the lengths that these people went to dispossess the Cherokee of their land; the same efforts (and some of the same people) went into claiming shares of the Eastern Cherokee payment. I'm not trying to separate anyone from their ancestors or their family stories. I just would like to make sure that those 'ancestors' were actually real people, and that family stories are identified as just that - stories - unless there is actual documentation that shows the story to be factual or even plausible. At the very least, a person claiming an Indian ancestor should be able to place a documented ancestor in a place and at a time when the tribe in question was there.

In the case of the Cherokee, all of the Eastern Cherokee (Guion Miller) and Dawes applications are available on Fold3. The 1896 Dawes applications (all rejected due to massive fraud) are available on Ancestry, as are thousands of pages of citizenship case records.

(No Name) Thank you for mentioning these books. I am interested.

I don't just like to learn of my family connections and tribes but those of others and their history as well.

Here’s a shortcut to the ancestry com collection

https://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=3075

Dawes Commission Index (overturned), 1896

Heather, I’ll try and find links describing the international Marriage Collection. It has many shortcomings. In my Southern USA tree it’s not terrible actually; it’s a disaster though in my Northern USA & English trees. But short answer: it’s NOT record based, it’s submitted pedigree based.

Jamey and Heather, as a longtime amateur folklorist and amateur genealogist, I can tell you that family stories and lore are extremely important and need to be preserved and shared. However, I've learned they should not be believed at face value. They often contain an element of truth, but almost never are totally true. Getting passed down, people misremember and then fill in the blanks, so over the generations the stories can get distorted. They also reflect family members' assumptions or presumptions about bits and pieces of the puzzle they were unsure about, so as a result, they guessed.

The most accurate are first-person stories, like in oral history, when ancestors tell about their lifestyles and customs. Those are priceless. However, every family has stories where someone wanted to strive for a claim to fame, and those stories often got stretched or embellished to try to make the family related to a famous person in some way or to a famous event. For example, I had a great aunt who told me her uncle left North Carolina and went to New York City where he eventually got a job on the crew of the Titanic and went down with the ship when it sailed to England. So, I tried to research this, only to realize that the Titanic didn't even sail from NYC--it sailed the other way! Duh. I felt so stupid that I'd believed her. I never found out what happened to that uncle, but he may well have gone north and gotten a job as a merchant marine or something of the sort, and maybe when they stopped hearing from him the family back home tried to imagine what may have happened to him and someone said, "Hey, maybe he was on the Titanic." And that turned into a good family story.

I've talked to so many people who have old photos of great-great-grandmothers who are wrinkled and withered and have high cheekbones and sunken cheeks, who surmise that "she must have been Indian" because, "Just look at her. Doesn't she look Indian?" On the other end of the spectrum, if you have family stories that include native customs and traditions in your family and (even if you can't document tribal affiliation) provide strong support to you that your ancestor was native--or alternately, Danish or German or Greek or Jewish or Muslim, etc.--then you may well have that ancestry. And if DNA adds evidence of that, then it's probably so. But that may be all we are able to find, if there is no paper trail. That doesn't mean it's not real, but just that it can't be documented.

Genealogists aim to build family trees based on documentable evidence. The rest, based on family lore but without documentation, is just speculative. But it enriches our barebones charts and makes the people come alive in our imaginations. Always look for stories. You should put them in your own records and pass them down, but make sure you let your children and grandchildren know what is documentable and what is speculative. It's the best information you can leave for them. Just think--our grandparents never imagined that one day we would have DNA tests to add a new layer of evidence for us, at least genetically. Culturally--that's where your family stories and oral histories can be so valuable.

A few more details before I leave the screens

About Dawes Commission Index (overturned), 1896

This is an index to over 14,000 records of individuals in the Five Civilized Tribes that applied for citizenship under the Act of 1896. The Five Civilized Tribes include the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and the Seminole. Each record includes the individual's name tribe, and case number. This compilation, in effect an Indian census, was also used as the basis for the allotment of tribal lands to individual Indians.

https://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=1238

This database contains applications for enrollment into the Five Civilized Tribes - Cherokee, Chicakasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole, from the Muskogee, Oklahoma area office. Application files may include documents such as affidavits, depositions, letters, memorials, objections, lists of evidence, receipts for service of papers, notices of appeal, and references to case numbers. Some files contain further documents and background information that may provide more detail on the applicant’s life.

https://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2397

Was your ancestor a member of one of the Five Civilized Tribes? Find out if his or her accepted application is among those in this collection.

Heather-- you asked:

Can anyone tell me why this record is incorrect?

U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900
View Record
Name Letty Du Cherokee Indian
Gender Female
Birth Year 1744
Spouse Name Thomas Howard
Spouse Birth Year 1740
Number Pages 1

Can you tell me where you cut and pasted that from? THen I can look at it and try to help answer your question.

https://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=7836

The marriage records in this database were provided by Yates Publishing. Yates Publishing has been publishing genealogical books, periodicals, and quarterlies since 1972. In 1981, the founder, Bill Yates, began a service to provide and collect the family history information in family group sheets. Called the Family Group Sheet Exchange, this service has collected over 200,000 pages of family group sheets on paper and several hundred thousand more on disk. For more information or to order an original Family Group Sheet on the Family Group Sheet Exchange, please visit Yates Publishing.

——-

In other words, this was a publishing effort based on “family group sheets” much more than marriage records.

Ugly link following

https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?_phsrc=FDW1&amp;_phstar...

Notice the source citation

Source Citation
Source number: 19338.000; Source type: Electronic Database; Number of Pages: 1; Submitter Code: WAY

Further to Roark, I do find a couple of records for probably two different families

https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=AppsCivilizedTribes&...

Name Ruby Lourinda Roark
Birth Date 19 May 1904
Application Date 25 May 1906
Age 2
Place Muskogee, Indian Territory, USA
Tribe Chickasaw
Enrollment Category Chickasaw

——
Name William Roark
Birth Date 1855
Application Date 21 Nov 1902
Age 47
Place Muskogee, Indian Territory, USA
Tribe Choctaw
Enrollment Category Choctaw by Blood

Yes, yes......me too. In the area I grew up (near Seattle, WA) there are many tribes. Here is a partial list.
Makah (ancient whalers), Quileute (10 miles from family home), Hoh, Queets, Quinault, Jamestown S'Klallam, Chemakum, Quilcene, Suquamish and Duwamish (Chief Seattle)......just to name a few.
Learning about American Indian culture and history from the native perspective gives me hope for the future. I love history and the stories of my family. I have a deep respect for American Indian tribal protocol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qalhDKLrWEQ

Oh, I found it. Never mind. Here is the source, pasted below, which one needs to take with a HUGE grain of salt. As a long-term genealogy researcher, I can definitely tell you why this source is not credible. Do you see where they got the records? "Originally, the information was derived from an array of materials including pedigree charts, family history articles, queries." What this means is that individual family members like you and me submitted the material (probably to the Church of the Latter Day Saints aka Mormon, which is the source of most of the early computerized genealogy data) and they compiled it all (WITHOUT ANY CREDIBLE SOURCES) and then have put it back out there in this misleading way leading people to believe it is documented fact. It's really inexcusable that Ancestry.com is still sharing this information, but again, it's the politics of Ancestry's relationship with the LDS Church and the LDS Church's relationship to the beginnings of online genealogy. This is a long story, but because the LDS Church has a vested interest in developing the genealogies of its members, it invested many resources back in the 1990s into developing ways for its members to share genealogical data. This database was one way, as well as the Family History Centers around the country. Then thousands and millions of people beyond the LDS church discovered they could research their families online and they began using the LDS databases. The history continues, if you're interested, with the development of the US GenWeb and Rootsweb projects, which were efforts of huge corps of volunteers trying to digitize and share public records and also use email listservs to share genealogy information. Then the corporatization of online genealogical information happened when a few for-profit companies started charging people for access to document databases (like Ancestry.com) and then they bought out the non-profit organizations like Rootsweb.... The bottom line is that each researcher needs to be a critical consumer and learn where the so-called data they are using has come from--public records, like censuses and military records? or someone else's family tree? And if someone else's family tree, then you have to look for their sources and documentation. And most online family trees don't have any. That's what we're trying to improve upon here, with this project and others in Geni.

SOURCES:

U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900

Source Citation
Source number: 19338.000; Source type: Electronic Database; Number of Pages: 1; Submitter Code: WAY

Source Information
Yates Publishing. U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004.

Original data: This unique collection of records was extracted from a variety of sources including family group sheets and electronic databases. Originally, the information was derived from an array of materials including pedigree charts, family history articles, queries.

Description
This database contains marriage record information for approximately 1,400,000 individuals from across all 50 United States and 32 different countries around the world between 1560 and 1900. These records, which include information on over 500 years of marriages, were extracted from family group sheets, electronic databases, biographies, wills, and other sources.

Pam - the citation for Letty Du Cherokee Indian had this

Source number: 19338.000; Source type: Electronic Database; Number of Pages: 1; Submitter Code: WAY

Isn’t that suggesting it was submitted to the LDS database by person WAY? (Not sure I’m interpreting right)

Pam Wilson (on hiatus)

Hi, Pam.....it was in Ancestry.com. I was unable to identify specifically the where or how of it.

OK Lots of super information. Thank-you all for your patience and sharing your time and experience.