Hello all. I am new on here and am creating my family tree. I have hit a snag and am reaching out to get some information.
From a relative I was told that my great great great grandmother was Mary Parhams and her father was Elisha Parhams who was Cherokee. I have searched on several different websites for both of these names but nothing comes up so far.
Mary was apparently married to James Lafayette Lammons or LaMons and they had two children. James Albert Lammons/LaMons/Lemons and Amanda.
My great grandmother was Mary Beatrice Lemons-Evans.
If anyone has any information about the Parhams please contact me.
Mary Parhams was born about 1820. Her parents were Elisha Parhams (b. 1783) and Sarah Smart (b. 1774), who had moved from eastern South Carolina in the early 1800s.
Elisha was in the War of 1812, served in the 3rd Regiment (Rutledge’s), South Carolina, State Troops. He moved his family to Tennessee first, then to Morgan, Alabama by 1830, and received formal homestead land grants in that location by the 1840s and 1850s. Ge was not a Cherokee. He was a White settler receiving land in territories that had been seized from Native Americans by the Americans.
All claims or lore that state Elisha was Cherokee (or, 3/4) or that this family lineage maintained residents or affiliation with the Cherokee people is untrue. Records clearly show movement of a White family moving from eastern seaboard colonial settlements, and taking lands as standard White American settlers.
Thank you for the information. Where did you obtain this information? Just curious.
Oh, I have a number of databases that I use, including fold3 to track down any original military-related docs that might be extant. Ancestry and Family Search is good for basic docs like census records and vital stats. There are historical paper sites that I tap into in some cases (although this is hit or miss…and usually is only good for establishing closer roots…the further back you go, the less “hits” you’re gonna find).
Plus open source information that pulls up via basic google searching, when it is narrowed down to specific people. You’d be surprised at how much genealogical research might already be completed on various lines of descent. However, I don’t necessarily rely on pre-fabricated trees on the web or ancestry. They can often help, but sometimes they can be totally incorrect. So, I basically build my own trees from source documents, especially census records and records that show settlement patterns and what society they were associated with. In particular, homestead land grants are readily accessible. For example, BLM keeps a really nice database .
http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/search/default.aspx
You can search by location, keywords, names, etc, and there will usually be original documents (as pdfs).
For example, if you go to that site, type in his name Parham…Elisha…it will pull up a few homestead patents. If you click on the checkbox on the map it will take you to the quadrant or actual allotment of land (and it will tell you how many acres it was). If you click on the Patent Image tab it will take you to the actual patent. And for War of 1812 applicants, it will often give a summary of their service ( as is the case in his 1854 application).
Once you get a sufficient number of documents showing where the family was coming from, where their roots were from, and where they lived, you can then look at the historical and demographic contexts. This would also be contrasting Cherokee and American histories and social realities in a given time and place, and of course looking at indivual ancestral roots.
So, the short answer is I use an array of sources.