Isaac
Sanders/Elizabeth King Family
of Prentiss County, Mississippi
Research of Barbara Radcliffe Rogers, Barbara Burns Nall, and
Alma Sanders Owens
I first became aware of the
research of Barbara
Radcliffe Rogers (1935-2003) through
an exchange of e-mail in January 2013 with Cathy Eshmont (now
Cathy Laltrelli), my second cousin twice removed. Cathy is also a
descendant of the Sanders of Randolph and Montgomery in North Carolina,
and we are both descendants of Isaac and Elizabeth Sanders (both born
1817, died after 1880) of Booneville, Prentiss County, Mississippi.
Barbara
Radcliffe's
marriage to a
son
of Katie Sue Sanders (1912-2005), a great granddaughter of Isaac and
Elizabeth
Sanders, spurred her
interest in her husband's genealogy and
she eventually compiled her accumulated data into a booklet
that was
distributed to several descendants of Isaac Sanders' grandson, Calvin
Newton Sanders (1874-1957). All her work was done in the 1970s or
1980s, well before the
Internet was widely used and most of the research involved
searching old family records, interviewing family members, and
perhaps traveling to cemeteries or
courthouses.
Barbara Rogers' booklet consists
mainly
of family group sheets, and although
there are copies of marriage licenses, pictures, and other
documentation for the more recent generations, there were very
few notes that reveal her sources for the material about Isaac and
Elizabeth Sanders. Nevertheless, indications are that
Barbara Rogers must have had access to a family Bible
that belonged to either Isaac Sanders or to his son
Aaron Sanders (1837-1903) or to another Sanders descendant who
copied older material into a later document. For example, she has
exact
birth
dates of Isaac and his wife Elizabeth and all their children and the
dates of
death of the children who died in infancy. Most of these dates are not
obtainable through any official records as official birth and death
records were
not common in those days, and we do not even know where the children
who died young were buried. Yet her dates
match very well with the
clues we get from the census and those few cases where tombstones
or other records exist. Where the dates differ, the
difference can be easily explained. For example, she has
June 20 as the birthdate of one son, Jesse Sanders, instead of
June 30 which is the date on his tombstone; Barbara could not have
consulted the tombstone as she was unaware of anything about Jesse's
life except his birth. Perhaps the number on the page of the Bible that
the transcriber read
was so faded that either a "2" or "3" could have been
read. Still, the conclusion seems unescapable that Barbara Rogers had
access to an authentic source for the date of Jesse Sanders' birth.
In all her research, Barbara Rogers apparently accepted the data she
was
given by other family members as she had no reason to question it, and
she did
not seek further documentation on Isaac and Elizabeth. She made no
attempt
to trace the history of every child of the family, nor the history
of the grandchildren and their descendants. She did not know,
for example, that many of the children of Isaac and Elizabeth were
born in Arkansas, and she apparently assumed they were all born in
Mississippi. Her main interest was in tracing the descendants of Aaron
Sanders, one of the sons of Isaac and Elizabeth, and more specifically
in the history of the children and grandchildren of Calvin Newton
Sanders, Aaron's son, from whom Barbara's husband was descended.
When Cathy
Laltrelli sent me
her first
message in 2013, Cathy did not know the source of Barbara's birth,
death, and marriage dates for the family of Isaac and Elizabeth. Cathy
pursued further checking with family members
and in November 2016, I received another e-mail from her. As a
result, we now believe that Barbara Rogers' source for her surprisingly
exact dates of birth, death, and marriage was information that she
received from Alma Irene Sanders Owens, a great granddaughter of Isaac
and Elizabeth.
Here is an excerpt from Cathy's e-mail:
"Had an interesting phone call last night with Donna Davis. I had
seen her name bantered about but did not know until I spoke with her
last night that she is the second of four kids born to Lynn
Tinsley[Marjorie Lynn Tinsley-gs],
Vivian Sanders Tinsley's daughter. Vivian is one of the six
daughters of Calvin Newton Sanders; Vivian and my grandmother were
sisters. Anyway, she described an old trunk full of family papers that
Vivian had at her home in Joiner, Arkansas. Before Barbara Rogers
(Katie Sue Sanders' daughter-in-law) got into genealogy, Barbara Nall
did a lot of gathering of information, in large part with the contents
of Aunt Vivian's trunk which was in part from papers of Calvin Newton
Sanders since he went to live with Vivian in c. 1940 after 'Newt' was a
widower. Who was Barbara Nall? She was the daughter of
Vivian's husband's sister, Florence Tinsley Burns. Anyway, Donna
found a letter, written from the details of an old Bible that gave the
maiden name 'King' of Elizabeth (Mrs. Isaac) Sanders and their wedding
date. I asked Donna to ask her mom, now 85 years old, if she
remembers
the actual Bible, whose it was, and does it still exist/who has it
now? Donna knows what happened to the trunk but she says
it's empty, unlike what she remembers as a child visiting grandma
Vivian's house. "
Therefore, as both Cathy and I had suspected, there had been a family
Bible that was the source of Barbara Rogers' dates. What follows is a
summary of what Cathy thinks is the timeline:
In January through April of 1971 Donna Clark Davis (>Marjorie Lynn
Tinsley>Vivian Ann Sanders>Calvin Newton Sanders>Aaron
Sanders>Isaac Sanders) was trying to join the United Daughters of
the Confederacy. She wrote to Barbara Nall (her first cousin once
removed; Donna's grandfather George Lester Tinsley was the brother of
Florence Tinsley, Barbara Nall's mother). Barbara wrote Donna back
on
April 15, 1971 and included information about the service of an A.
Sanders who served in the 5th Regiment, Mississippi State Troops
Infantry, Company E. This person enlisted on October 15, 1862 at
Columbus, Mississippi, and was captured at Vicksburg on July 4, 1863
and was paroled six days later. Both of them assumed this soldier was
Aaron Sanders, the son of Isaac. Neither was aware that Aaron, the
son of
Isaac, moved with his parents to Montgomery County, Arkansas in 1850
and that he
was there until the family returned to Mississippi in 1868 or 1869.
He was therefore not in Mississippi during the Civil War. Some of the
six daughters of
Calvin Newton Sanders (>Aaron Sanders>Isaac) joined the
United Daughters of the Confederacy on the record of A.
Sanders who was captured at Vicksburg. Later, when Donna Clark Davis
attempted to join based on the same record, her application was denied.
Apparently, by then, the United Daughters of the Confederacy realized
that the A. Sanders who was captured at Vicksburg was not the son of
Isaac.
Although this information helps to establish a more accurate account of
Aaron Sanders' war service(he did fight for the Confederacy but in an
Arkansas unit), the other material in the letter is even more
interesting.
In the same letter of April 1971 from Barbara Nall to Donna Davis,
Barbara enclosed five pages of a letter she had received from Alma
Sanders Owens (>Jesse Benjamin Sanders>Aaron Sanders>Isaac
Sanders). The four pages have dates of birth, death, and marriage and
were transcribed from an old bible. As Cathy Latrelli said in her
e-mail, "Donna
isn't sure how long Barbara had been in receipt of
the four pages before she shared them with Donna but they're at least
from 1970-1, possibly older. Barbara and Alma might have been in
correspondence for some time as I see that Alma died in
1979. I definitely think this information is the 'real deal' but
would like to make contact with the Jesse branch to see if the Bible
still exists." Donna Davis stored the letter in her house for over
forty-five years and only recently (November 2016) examined it again in
a recent remodeling. As for the date of the letter that Alma Sanders
Owens sent to Barbara Nall, we know only that it predates 1971. It may
go back years or decades before that, roughly anywhere from the mid
1940s to 1971.
We do not know the
exact provenance of the Bible that Alma Sanders Owens transcribed or if
it still exists. Apparently, if it originally belonged to Isaac and
Elizabeth Sanders, it was passed down to their son Aaron (1837-1903,
then
possibly to Mary Ann Sanders (1873-1966), then to Mary Ann's brother
Jesse
Benjamin (1889-1973), then to Jesse's daughter Alma Irene Sanders Owens
(1912-1979).
Possibly, the Bible was that of Aaron Sanders and his wife Hester and
the dates for his father Isaac and family were copied from a still
earlier Bible. It does not include death dates for Isaac or Elizabeth
Sanders but does have a death date for their son Aaron. One page
of the transcription states that Aaron was born in Corinth, Alcorn
County, Mississippi, in 1837, but Alcorn County did not exist
until 1870. Another page merely gives the exact birth date for Aaron
with no place listed. Alma may have added the location to her
transcription, but most of the text appears to be a verbatim
copy of the original.
On the final page of her letter to Barbara Nall, Alma Sanders Owens
wrote: "All this information was copied from an old Bible. Some of the
people in this list I never heard of. Vivian (Vivian Ann Sanders
Tinsley, wife of the uncle of Barbara Nall and first cousin to Alma-gs)
may be able to tell you who a few of them are. I hope this helps. I
will try to talk to papa (Jesse Benjamin Sanders-gs), but he may not
know what I am talking about. Please give this information to Vivian
when you get through with it. She may want it someday. Yes, you are
welcome. --Alma Owens"
For the benefit of Sanders
researchers, the transcription of the Bible in the 1971 letter of
Barbara Nall to Donna Davis and the family group sheets and
other documents that
Barbara Radcliffe Rogers compiled are being made available here in PDF
format. To
prevent possible confusion where there is a conflict
with subsequent research, I have in a few cases added "sticky
notes" to the group sheets but otherwise files are presented
exactly as Barbara
compiled them nearly thirty years ago. Her work and dedication in
preserving these records is a legacy that will be helpful to
generations of Sanders researchers.
(January 2013, revised December 2016)
--Gary B. Sanders
Transcription
of Isaac Sanders Family Bible by Alma Sanders Owens
Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5
Family Group
Sheet, Isaac Sanders
(1817-after 1880) and Elizabeth King (1817-after 1880)
Family Group
Sheet, Aaron Sanders
(1837-1903) and Hester Ann Champion (1854-1920)
Wedding
Certificate of Aaron
Sanders and Hester Champion
Family
Group Sheet, Calvin Newton
Sanders (1874-1957) and Susan Katherine Azbell (1877-1939)
Veterinary Certificate
of Calvin Newton Sanders, 1895
Marriage
Certificate of Calvin
Newton Sanders and Susan Azbell, 1903
Picture
of Calvin Newton and Susan
Sanders, 1930
Files concerning Sanders genealogy that are
available at this Web site:
Moses
Sanders of Franklin County, Georgia, who died 29 March 1817 (pdf
files of the work of Elden Hurst of Salt Lake City)
The
Sanders Family of Anson/Montgomery County, North Carolina
1757-1810 (an article by Jim Sanders of Ojai, California)
The
Sanders of Stafford, Loudoun, and Fairfax in Virginia 1739-1783
(an article by Jim Sanders)
Eighteenth
and Nineteenth Century Montgomery County Original Land Grants (a
map by Joe Thompson of Raleigh, North Carolina)
Isaac
and Elizabeth King Sanders of Prentiss County, Mississippi--Research of
Barbara Radcliffe Rogers, Barbara Burns Nall, and Alma Sanders Owens
Sanders Siftings, an exchange of
Sanders/Saunders family research,
edited by Don E. Schaefer
Sanders
of Old Tishomingo County, Mississippi(John
Sanders and Abby Robins,
Moses Marion Sanders and Cynthia Bruton)
Biographical
Sketches, Sanders of Randolph and Montgomery and related families
Other files, articles, and
pictures: Sanders
of Randolph
and Montgomery
Picture at top from a
nineteenth century U.S.
government certificate. Other gaphics from the freeware
collection of Cari Buziak.
