My paternal grandmother was full Cherokee and was raised by an Irish family with the last name of Robinson. My paternal grandfather was half Cherokee and his name was John Flannigan Hillard. My grandmother’s name was Laura Robinson Hillard. Her mother died at birth and my great-grandfather was a doctor. He received permission to take the baby to raise since he and his wife had lost a female child on their way to America. She was never registered on the Role. How could I find more about my heritage?
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You’ve got several challenges and potential problems to address while you do your genealogical research here.
There seems to be a story that describes children being given to another family to be raised. So, you basically have lore that is not confirmed by documentation at this point. It represents a level of hearsay, where it might be true in some part, or perhaps it is not true at all. The veracity of these kinds of family stories can vary widely. In any event, it muddies up the parentage for the paternal grandfather and obscures actual lineage. It makes finding documents a lot harder, and if you do find extant records and those were not biological parents it could be a dead end, ancestrally speaking. You’d really have to find actual documents confirming birth parents and this adoption/rearing situation to move forward and really estabslish that lineage.
However, it also has to be pointed out in a frank manner that you’ve also got a scenario that seems highly unlikely, if not a outright suspect. For example, you’re claiming a full blood Cherokee grandmother born in a time and place where a full blood family would not be commonly found. And not only that, but she was “given” to a doctor to be raised after her mother died, and by some random happenstance she grows up to marry another “half Cherokee” in the same location who also was raised by a non-Cherokee family, again in an area where a full blood Cherokee parent would have be an extreme demographic outlier. It sounds far-fetched, but if you want to explore it you also have to be open to questioning the theories and family lore that you may now accept as “fact.” It may have to be adjusted, radically, with real documents and evidence.
The other element that has to be considered is that in this family line, other researchers and descendants (some of your cousins) are not mentioning these scenarios. They are moving forward with unbroken lineage from the Hillard and Robinson lines and there is no discussion of Cherokee ancestry and any unknown parentage or adoption situations.
First, I’d suggest you do a simple DNA test. I only suggest this for scenarios that would help in establishing straight lineage along paternal or maternal lines or confirming/debunking theories about specific family connections (for example: were these two “Jones families” related, or descended from brothers perhaps?). And I also recommend it when there is a claim that a person was “fullblood” Cherokee and it is within say two or three generations, it is easier to prove/disprove, outright. This may be the case here. If your grandmother was 4/4 Cherokee then she would only pass on Native American mtDNA. Any of her living children could be tested to see what maternal haplogroup they have inherited. If no living child can be found, a straight maternal descendant could be tested as well. Just keep in mind that it has to be straight maternal descent to pass on mtDNA. So, if your grandmother had a daughter (which Edith Fay Shultz appears to be at least one daughter, Frances appears to be another) and she had a daughter (Fran, Laura Ann?)…you could get in touch with your cousins to do a DNA test. You can find deals for about $100 or so.
Additionally, you have to explore what the extant records and timelines reflect.
Your grandmother shows up in 1880 in Madison County, KY, at age 1, living in the household of Thomas and Mahala Robinson. According to the census records, Mahala and Thomas were married about 1874. Laura was born about 1879. The lore about her living with immigrants and a widower that had lost his wife in a move from Europe is not accurate. She shows up again in the same household (along with her maternal grandfather, Green V. Holland, who was born in VA about 1827). By 1920, she is found living with her husband and children in Ohio. She died in Clinton County, OH in 1945.
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=93176251&ref=acom
She and her husband are consistently listed as White in records. And here is the other thing that you’d need to consider: she was born 40 years after the Trail of Tears in an area that had no Cherokee settlement. That part of Kentucky had been ceded by the tribe even before the American Revolution. There were never any large Cherokee settlements in Kentucky and there were no known clusters of full blood Cherokees living in that state during Siler or Chapman enumerations during the early 1850s, nor the Hester Roll of 1886. The chances of finding a full blood Cherokee family two generations after the Trail of Tears in that part of the country would be like a needle in a haystack scenario. If they were fullblood it means that her parents were from Cherokee communities further south. The question is what where they doing in Madison County in 1879? If she is listed as White on records, DNA tests were to show non-Native results, and you have no documents confirming her parentage or confirms that she was “given” to another family to be raised, then you may have quickly hit a brick wall regarding not only Cherokee ancestry, but all ancestry and lineage. It will essentially remain an unproven family story.
The same deal with your paternal grandfather. Unless you have documents showing that he was really raised by another family, it is impossible to prove or move forward with building a family tree.
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=93176316
If he was “half” Cherokee, this would also represent a very unusual scenario, where a fullblood or two halfbloods somehow showed up in Kentucky at that time (1885) and place. They would have to be from Cherokee communities further south to be of that high blood degree. No fullblood communities were found in Kentucky after Removal and few Cherokee individuals actually remained anywhere in the state after that point. A few mixed blood families could be found scattered across the state in low numbers but only a handful had tribal affiliation in latter half of the 1800s and early 1900s. John shows up in a WWI draft card from 1917 and it shows he was already married to Laura at that time, and living in Ohio. Their son Kenneth shows a KY birthplace about 1916, so they must have moved to Ohio soon after his birth. John is also listed as having grey eyes. Normally, if a person is a ½ through one full blood parent and one non-Native parent, they would have brown eyes. Gray eyes would be less likely unless both parents had some recessive genes. A full blood parent could only pass on brown eye genes which are dominant. This is a rather minor point because without establishing parentage, we can’t talk about specific degrees of blood or tribal status prematurely. As with Laura, online ancestral queries and family trees do not mention anything about Cherokee roots for John. They all seem to have him listed as the son of William Hillard (1862 – 1910) and Rhoda Lunsford (1863 – 1942). Here is their find-a-grave page:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=94347663
This claim is also essentially stating that Laura and John would produce ¾ Cherokee children. However, in no records is this family every described as non-White. Their children were born in the mid-teens to early 20s and they can be found in various records, including death records, where they are consistently listed as White.
At this point, exploring heritage is a matter of establishing proof of lineage and building a basic family tree. I’d recommend reaching out to distant relatives researching the same branches and compare notes. See what documents are out there. I’d also look into DNA testing if there are claims of a recent fullblood ancestor and living, direct line descendants. There are a number of extant records that show John and Laura living with their parents, but if you believe there were different biological parents that wouldn’t be of much help. I’d recommend looking for records showing adoption or parentage first. And take the Cherokee blood claim with a huge grain of salt. Good luck with your search.