Looking for Thomas Barber in Sumter County, Georgia

  ©  Kathy Duncan, 2021

My next step in pursuing my Barber clues was to try to pinpoint when Thomas Barber died and if he left a will or probate. A search for him on the 1830 Georgia census did not turn up anything. However, his widow Elizabeth Barber was in Dooly County, Georgia in 1830.

This census record reveals several interesting things. First, Elizabeth Barber is evidently widowed and has removed from Sumter County, Georgia to Dooly County, Georgia. Her household consisted of herself and six children: one male aged ten to fourteen, three females aged one to four, and two females aged five to nine. Oh, dear. That's a lot of children for a woman alone. At this time, Joseph Barber would have been 18 to 19 years old, so I don't think he is the male child. Since he is also not a head of household anywhere, he is either working and living in another household or possibly living with a Mashburn relative in Georgia.  At this point, it is hard to say where he was. The male in Elizabeth's household is also not Jackson Barber since he died the year before. If all of these children belonged to Thomas and Elizabeth, then they had a marriage of at least a ten to twelve duration by the time he died. Since there are three girls aged four and under, I would guess that he had died in the previous year or two. It is also possible that Elizabeth was a widow with children when she married Thomas and that only some of these children are Thomas's, and it is possible that Thomas had another wife after Sarah and that some of these children were Elizabeth's step-children. 

Living near Elizabeth is a John Bowen Sr. who may be the same John Bowen that she married next. He still seems to have a wife living with him. 

By 1850, Elizabeth seems to have been widowed again. Her Dooly County, Georgia household has two young Barber women living with her - Sarah aged 28 and Martha aged 23, both born in Georgia. 

Sarah would have been born in 1822, indicating that the Barbers were in Georgia by at least 1822. Martha's birth in 1827 indicates that Thomas Barber was likely still living then, which narrows the widow of his death to between 1827 and 1830. 

After I checked Joseph Barber's original deposition concerning the inheritance he was owed from his grandfather Thomas Mashburn of Onslow County, North Carolina, I noted that he stated both of his parents, Thomas and Sarah, died intestate. Now I was ready to look for a probate settlement in Sumter County, Georgia. However, their probate records don't start until 1838. Why? Because Sumter County, Georgia was formed from Lee County, Georgia in 1831. That means that when Elizabeth Bowen said that Thomas Barber was of Sumter County, she was probably referring to an area of Lee County that became Sumter County. 

Lee County, Georgia was not formed until 1826, so I was hoping to find something about Thomas there. But no, the Lee County courthouse burned in 1858 with a total record loss. Then just for good measure, it burned again in 1872. That certainly throws a wrench in my search.

Then I started thinking about what would have drawn Thomas Barber from Jefferson County, Georgia to Lee County. Land seems like the most obvious answer, but all those deeds burned. Then I thought of all those Georgia Land Lotteries, so I started hunting again. There was a land lottery for Lee County in 1827, and a Thomas Barber who was a resident of Jefferson County, living in Capt. Marshall's district, drew lot number #164 in District 17 of Lee County. 

Clearly, I needed to learn more about Georgia Land Lotteries. The registration for the 1827 lottery actually started in 1825, and a person had to register within two months of the lottery being announced, but for the 1827 lottery, people were still registering in 1827. One requirement was that a person had to be a resident of Georgia for three years prior to registering. The number of draws a person could reveal a lot if the registers were available. One source told me that there was no way to know who registered for the lottery because those records were not kept. Basically, we only know who the winning drawers were and where their lots were. 

Then I explored Jefferson County, Georgia records on Family Search, and as luck would have it, there were the registers for people who registered in Jefferson County in 1825 for the 1827 lottery.

Thomas Barber was "a man of a family" and had two draws. That means Thomas Barber would have been a married man with a wife and a son or unmarried daughter under the age of 18. He would have been a resident of Georgia since at least 1822 and a citizen of the U.S. His winning draw would have given him a lot consisting of  202 1/2 acres for which he paid a fee of $18. 

I may yet be able to find another reference to Thomas Barber's land in Sumter County. Those land records, however, are currently not viewable online through Family Search. 

At this point, I can move Thomas Barber from Onslow County, North Carolina to Jefferson County, Georgia, and then to Lee County, which shortly afterward became Sumter County. I can guess that he may have died there in 1829 and that maybe Elizabeth Bowen meant that she was married to Thomas Barber in Sumter County until 1829.