Tuttle Thornsberry

I never saw much of my father’s family because we lived far away but my father and all his brother’s and sisters received some money from the sale when the Cherokee Nation sold land when I was a child in the 1960s or early 70s. My father said his grandmother Rachel Tuttle (born 26 Sept 1884 in Floyd or Knott County Kentucky) was Cherokee. That’s all my dad and his siblings knew. She was the daughter of William Riley Tuttle who was Quaker then became an Old Regular Baptist minister in his later years in Knott County Kentucky. William Riley Tuttle is on the 1860 census of Smyth County Virginia near Seven Mile Ford with his brother Gipson and mother Sarah M. Tuttle and grandmother Nancy Tuttle and Sarah’s 3 sisters. Rachel’s mother was Cynthia Ann Thornsberry and I have her pedigree way back, no Cherokees there so William Riley Tuttle must the one on the Cherokee Rolls somewhere which I have read but can’t find him. My dad’s brother told me Rachel was adopted but her son told me she was not adopted. William Riley Tuttle was born 4 JUL 1855 in Smyth County Virginia. His mother Sarah M. Tuttle was born 1828 in Virginia. I can’t find William’s father anywhere, nor Sarah’s father. My father’s brother once told me he thinks Rachel was a McCloud. On the 1860 census there is next to William Riley Tuttle’s household a Nancy Tuttle who recently married Josiah McCloud. They also moved to Kentucky before the next census. I have found her pedigree but no mention of my Tuttles in it. Rachel Tuttle married Henry Thornsberry son of Martin and Ruth Hall, son of Isaac and Eleanor McCubbins, son of John who married Susannah Starnes. Rachel’s death certificate says she is white. I did find a few Thornsberrys on an Indian Roll but don’t know who they are. I’ve been looking for documentation of the Cherokee ancestors since 1978. I’m thinking since my Cherokee ancestors never went on a reservation, they are not on any roll.