First of all let me refer all Sivils researchers to the Feb. 3, 2000 posting by Irv Goode on Genforum titled “Re: Sivils in Norfolk Co. VA”. This posting is full of important information which helps to solidify and verify the connection between the Norfolk Co. VA Sivils and the McMinn/Bradley Co. TN Sivils. I had not seen this information laid out so clearly or thoroughly in other postings on the Sivils family boards. I fully support the conclusions which Irv drew in this posting. At the end of this posting he relates “I could not find this family in 1810 or 1820 but I think that they were in Guilford Co later because the families that they seemed to be associated with in McMinn [Trotters, Levi Only, and Evans] were all from Guilford.”

I would be interested to know what information Mr. Goode has on the connection between the Sivils and these families he names. My information supports the connection between the Trotters and Sivils as having been formed in North Carolina, where Wallis Sivils married Jennie (Virginia) Trotter, and his brother Absalom married Sallie (Sarah) Trotter. The maiden names of Virginia and Sarah are not to my knowledge proven through documentation, but come to us through very consistently identical family traditions held by various branches of their descendants. (Thus I believe that the information in Goodspeed’s biography of Wallis and Virginia’s son Andrew Jackson Sivils of Tipton Co. TN which stated that Jennie’s maiden name was Turner is incorrect.) I, as many others, have always assumed that these Trotter women were sisters who married brothers. I have always wondered whether Jennie and Sallie had brothers or other family members who also migrated to TN around the same time, (I have seen some other Trotters in McMinn/Bradley County area around the same time), but I will have to pursue that at a later time. Perhaps someone has already researched that question and can provide more information.

In reference to Irv's statement about the Only's, I located a John Only, age 43, b. NC, Blacksmith, one of his son's named Levi (which I think makes a case for this being one of the sons of Levi Only), listed next door to Jeptha Civils in 1850 in McMinn Co.

I just recently acquired the information about the connection between the Levi Only family and the Wallis Sivils families in McMinn Co. TN, having to do with Wallis’ oldest son, Jeptha, fathering an illegitimate child with Levi Only’s daughter, Melissa, in 1860. Jeptha never married Melissa, but she and her child California were living with Malissa’s parents according to the 1860 McMinn Co. census. For anyone interested in learning more about this, you could consult Tara K. Painter’s website at: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~painter/Cp...
I found Levi Only in Guilford Co. NC census records in 1810, page 327, 31010/00010/00. He was six entries away from E. Trotter 10010/20010/00. I have not yet located any Sivils in Guilford in 1810.

I do not have any information on the connections between the Sivils and Evans families either in NC or TN., but I would be interested in learning about this.

Like Irv Goode, I had also come to the conclusion that Solomon and Mary Sivils had moved to Guilford Co. NC but through a different approach. As I said above I had several indicators from family tradition sources that Wallis and Absalom had married Trotter sisters in NC prior to coming to TN. So I began a search though all of the Trotter census records in NC from 1790 through 1820. Everywhere I found Trotters, I searched for Sivils families, which as you know is usually quite difficult due to the infinitely variable spelling of the Sivils name by owners of the name, census takers and by the people who interpreted the handwriting of the census takers to create the index to the census records. Whew! Naturally that meant that I did a great deal of browsing and manual searching in these counties where Trotters resided. I began to find a consistent line of Trotters in Guilford Co. who were growing more plentiful as time went on. These began in 1790 with Josiah and Benjamin Trotter in Guilford Co., Salisbury District, page 497. Finally in the 1820 Guilford Co. Census (which is all alphabetized so that it is impossible to know how close any of them lived) I also found two Sivils families on page 101: there is a John Sivel 110010/41010/02 and a ? Sivils 020201/03010/05 eight entries away. The part of the page where the second entry appears is almost completely unreadable; the only letter discernible in the first name is the last letter and could be either an n or m. I can tell that the last name of this entry is Sivils, but I do not think that the creator of the index even took a stab at it.

I don’t think we have enough hard and fast evidence yet to say that this ? Sivils is Solomon and Mary’s family, although I think it is certainly a good possibility based on the ongoing migratory relationships with other families which Irv Goode pointed out in his posting. We need to find more records in Guilford which can corroborate the presence of Solomon and family around 1820. Are there any Sivils researchers who live close to or have access to Guilford Co. records, who might be able to do followup research here?

For now though, let’s just say that this is Solomon’s family. What correlations can we find with what we know about the McMinn/Bradley Co. TN Sivils brothers? In the Guilford Co. census records there are two sons b. 1794 – 1802 and two sons b. 1806 – 1810, and three daughters b. 1804 – 1810. Wow, that was an awful lot of children between 1804 and 1810, 5 in 6 years! In 1820, we know that Wallis (b. Jan. 16, 1789 from his tombstone) would have been 31 at this time, so I do not think that any of these sons could be Wallis. His wife would have been around 18 – 19 at this time (her tombstone birthdate is 1801), so I would assume that he was already married and living in an independent household, although I could find no trace of him in Guilford. All we know about Absalom’s age from subsequent census records is that he was born sometime in the decade from 1790 – 1799, but we also know from the 1800 Halifax NC census that Solomon and Mary had two sons born in this decade. So the sons born between 1794 and 1802 could have been Absalom and an unknown brother. It is entirely possible that Absalom could have been married to Sallie Trotter by this time as well. As is the case with many census records for Sivils family members, Sallie’s recorded ages are very erratic through the years, e.g. sometimes 5 - 10 years too young, sometimes 5 – 10 years too old, etc. My best assessment is that she was born between 1800 – 1805, so she would have been old enough to marry by 1820.

Jeptha’s age data from census records also tended to be very inconsistent in his later years of life, but in 1850 in McMinn and Bradley Co. TN (Please see my posting on Jeptha and Jefferson Sivils on May 6, 2008), his given age would have made his birthdate around 1802. So the other son 18 – 26 could well have been Jeptha. There was another McMinn Co. Sivils named Silas, who first appeared in the 1840 census, fathered a large family and remained in McMinn Co. until he died; he gave his age as 50 in the 1860 McMinn Co. TN census. He also gave his birthplace as TN, but if he is indeed a brother to Wallis, Absalom and Jeptha, then this recording of his birthplace was a mistake on someone’s part. So he could well be one of the two sons born 1804 – 1810. There is one more Sivils male of this generation who appears only once in the McMinn Co. 1860 Census, p. 301: A. Sivils, age 55, b. NC, no occupation given, no family but living with a 28 year old male day laborer named Levi Kirby. Since this is all the information we have on this individual, it is harder to assess whether he is related, but if he is a brother, he could possibly be the other son born 1804 – 1810.

While I am on the subject of Silas, I did come upon a record of a Silas “Seevely”on p. 117 of the 1830 Sevier Co. TN census: 00001/200001. Silas does not show up on the McMinn census until 1840, so this could possibly be him. The ages of his oldest two daughters jive with the two young daughters on this census. I mention this only as a possibility, which needs further research.

As far as the females listed in the 1820 Guilford Co. Census, I do not think that the female 26 - 45 is likely to be Solomon’s first wife Mary, as I think Mary would have been older than 45, as Solomon was at this point. Has anyone been able to figure out a birthdate for Solomon? I would love for someone with this information to post it for us? This could be Solomon & Mary’s oldest daughter, whom we saw in the 1800 Halifax Co. census as age 16 – 26. She had to have been born by 1784 to be 16 at that time. Or this could be a younger woman whom Solomon married after being widowed. At any rate I don’t know anything else about the three girls born 1804 – 1810.

However, if this family is Solomon’s, then I think we can say that the Elizabeth Sivils, b. 1815 in TN (?) who married John Perry (also spelled Pary) and lives next door to Jeptha Sivils and family in Bradley Co. TN in 1840 and 1850, is probably not a younger sister of Wallis, Absalom and Jeptha, or else she would show up on this census as a daughter younger than 10. And if she is not their younger sister, what would her connection be? As a matter of fact, what proof do we have that her maiden name was Sivils? Is it simply that Absalom’s widow and son, Sallie and Timothy George Sivils, are living with Elizabeth and her family in Bradley Co. in 1850? Is it simply that she and her husband lived next door to Jeptha through the 1840’s and 1850’s? Is it that their son 16 year old son, John Pary, ends up working as a farmhand on the farm of Wallis Sivils’ widow, Virginia, in McMinn Co. in 1870. All things seem to point that she is so closely connected to these other Sivils families that she herself must have been a Sivils, but where can we find proof?

Sorry, folks, there is a great deal of conjecture in what I have just written, but I mean to be observing, exploring and questioning at this point, not drawing conclusions. I hope someone can add to, prove and correct some of the above.