Researching the family history of potential slave owners part six

This article is part of the continuing case study into the roots of former slave Jefferson Clark of Leon County, Florida.  To catch up on the previous articles, read “Summary of the Jefferson Clark online case study.”  The first four articles in this research segment can be read here: part one, part two, part three, part four, and part five.

In the last article, we examined the 1800 and 1820 federal census enumerations for Tubb families in South Carolina and Tennessee, respectively. By comparing the records with the estimated ages of the subject Tubb family, we were able to narrow down which of these households might contain the the family we are looking for.

Now we will examine the 1830 federal census enumeration of Perry County, Alabama. Using the age estimates calculated in part four of this series, we can look for a household that contains at least the following individuals:

• Elizabeth (—?—) Tubb, aged 53 years, would appear as a free white female aged 50 to 60 years
• Elizabeth (Tubb) Williams, aged 20 years, may appear as a free white female aged 15 to 20 years or aged 20 to 30 years, may be married already and not appear
• Lucinda (Tubb) Cole, ages 16 years, would appear as a free white female aged 15 to 20 years
• George W. Tubb, aged 11-12 years, would appear as a free white male aged 10 to 15 years
• Isabella (Tubb) Ikard, aged 10 years, would appear as a free white female aged under 10 years or 10 to 15 years

Out of the thirteen Tubb households in Perry County, only three contain free white males of the appropriate age to be George W. Tubb:

• Geo [George] Tubb, Senr., contains 1 free white male (FWM) 5-10 years, 2 FWM 10-15, 1 FWM 50-60, 1 free white female (FWF) 10-15, 2 FWF 15-20, 1 FWF 50-60.[1]
• Jeremiah Tubb, contains 2 FWM under 5, 2 FWM 10-15, 1 FWM 30-40, 2 FWF under 5, 2 FWF 5-10, 1 FWF 10-15, 1 FWF 30-40.[2]
• Nancy Tubb, contains 1 FWM 5-10, 1 FWM 10-15, 1 FWF 5-10, 2 FWF 10-15, 1 FWF 40-50.[3]

Of these three, only that of George Tubb, Sr., also contains a woman of age to be Elizabeth (—?—) Tubb, the mother of George W. Tubb.

Does George Tubb appear in the previously-reviewed 1800 and 1820 federal censuses? This is our next step.

Only a single George Tubb appears in the 1820 census, in Dickson County, Tennessee. This George Tubb was examined during part five of this series, and excluded. This George Tubb’s household does not contain inhabitants of the appropriate ages to be the family in question.

There are several reasons why we might not be able to locate the appropriate George Tubb in 1820:

1.             The simplest reason is that he could have been in the process of migrating from one location to another, and simply not been enumerated.

2.             He may have been enumerated, but not been the head of household. Only heads of household were named in the 1820 census. If he were living with another family, he could therefore not have been named.

3.             He may have been enumerated, but been missed by the indexer or simply misindexed. We have to keep in mind the tools that we use. In this case, I have been using the online census databases created by Ancestry.com. In order to optimize the chances of identifying all households, I searched using various methods. One method is using the “exact matches” option with the additional options of “Soundex matches,” “Phonetic matches,” and “Names with similar meanings or spellings.” Another method is using wildcards, such as ? and *. The ? wildcard replaces one letter. I searched for “?ub,” “?ubb,” and “?ubbs.” I also tried to search for possible errors in the indexing by replacing commonly mistaken letters. In this case, I searched for both “Fubb” (and variants) and “Tull” (and variants). Despite all of these searches, George Tubb was not located.

4.             He may have been enumerated (or indexed) under a different name. At times, some men were enumerated under their middle names.

Moving back to the 1800 U. S. Census, when George should have been living in South Carolina, we find two possible households for George Tubb, one in Greenville County, South Carolina, and the other in Pendleton District.

The household of George Tubb, Greenville County, South Carolina, contains 4 FWM under 10, 1 FWM 10-16, 1 FWM 26-45, 1 FWF under 10, 1 FWF 10-16, and 1 FWF 26-45.[4]

The household of George Tubs, Pendleton District, South Carolina, contains 1 FWM under 10, 1 FWM 16-26, 1 FWM over 45, 3 FWF under 10, 1 FWF 16-26, and 1 FWF 26-45.[5]

The household of George “Tubs,” in Pendleton District appears to more closely resemble the household of George W. Tubb’s father. Additional evidence is also provided by the appearance on the three immediately subsequent lines, of the following households: Wm. Tubbs, William Floyed, and Alexr. Floyd. In the transcription of George W. Tubb’s brother William F. Tubb’s will, as examined in the article “The Jefferson Clark family of Leon County, Texas: an online case study (part eight),” William was identified by the transcriber as “William Floyd Tubb.”[6]If this identification is correct, this could indicate a relationship between the Tubb and Floyd families.

This case study will continue with additional information on George Tubb, in an attempt to discover whether, as originally believed, Jefferson Clark and his family were indeed enslaved by this Tubb family.