All Things Cherokee

All Things Cherokee is an online resource for Cherokee genealogy information, history, culture, and art.

Bankston

by 1 Comment

I’m trying to find out more about my lineage. My grandfather was Walter Alexander Bankston and lived near Huntsville, Alabama in the Walnut Grove community. I was always told that his mother was full Cherokee but I never knew her or was told her given name. There is no birth certificate for him since he was born at home and I have never seen his death certificate. He was married to Annie Nora Andrews, my grandmother and they had one son Lois Melvin Bankston.

Comments

  1. Walter was born in 1909 to James and Lula B. Bankston. He is found in 1900, age 1, living with his parents and older sister Minnie and brother Marion, in Sulphur Spring, Madison County, Alabama. They are again found in the same location in 1920. By 1927, he shows up on a marriage certificate in Fouke, Howard County, Arkansas (marriage to Nora Andrews). However, by 1935 he is back in Madison County, Alabama. He died in 1985 and was buried in Bevill Cemetery.

    http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=bankston&GSiman=1&GScid=21609&GRid=14275892&

    If you do a keyword search for the cemetery (using “Bankston” surname), you can find his older sister Minnie as well. Her entry has a transcribed newspaper obituary from 1991. It gives her mother’s maiden name as Lula B. Manley.

    http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=bankston&GSiman=1&GScid=21609&GRid=14468197&

    Lula B. was born about 1882 in AL. She also went by her middle name Bell. She is found on the 1900 Census in Madison County, Alabama with her parents William and Mary T. Manley. Census records give a place of birth for William and Mary as Alabama, 1836 and 1848 respectively. William and Mary were married around 1871. William was married previously and shows up in Madison County as early as 1856.

    Madison County Alabama was claimed by both Chickasaws and Cherokees, however, Cherokee settlement of this area was rather sparse. It was ceded in the early 1800s and became a county in 1808. It was expanded by final treaty and land cessions in 1816 and 1819. Most Cherokees in Alabama moved out, mostly ending up in Indian Territory. There were a few Cherokee families that stayed in the east but they were concentrated in Jackson, DeKalb and Marshall Counties. These counties are in the extreme northeast part of the state. Thoe few recognized Cherokee families that stayed in the east had the following surnames:

    Keys, McCoy, Jeffreys, Henry, Neal, Lamar, Nicholson, Tiner, West, Polston, Merrell, Paden, and Langley.

    http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nativeamericangen/siler.html

    These Alabama Cherokee families were all of mixed ancestry and there was no full blood communities left in that state after Removal (AKA Trail of Tears), which was over by 1839.

    Lula Belle Manley Bankston was born 43 years after the Trail of Tears ended to parents that were born in Alabama in the 1830s and 1840s and lived in a county that was not associated with Cherokee settlement. Likewise, no fullblood families were known to have stayed in the state after Removal. If they moved in from another Cherokee community you’d have to keep moving back in the family tree. It is very unlikely that Lula was a fullblood Cherokee and there is no indication that William and Mary had any Cherokee tribal ties in their lifetimes. William was not listed on the Siler or Chapman Rolls for Alabama and Mary’s maiden name still needs to be established. They are listed on records as White and lived in White communities. A potential Cherokee connection would likely be further back, and you’d still need to develop a paper trail to get back that far and establish this ancestry. But, hopefully this will get you back a little bit and give you a starting point.

    Good luck with your search.

Leave a Reply