Solving the Thomas Haynes Puzzle
Thomas Haynes and the Silver Goblets
Carolyn R. Haynes
Genealogy consists of finding many interlocking small puzzle pieces until the researcher has enough to build a picture which holds together - much like one can pick up a good jigsaw puzzle by the upper corners and it will still hang together. When I began to research the family of Thomas Haynes, who came to Jackson County, Texas, sometime before 1850, I soon collected puzzle pieces which would not interlock. Which of the three (or maybe four) Thomas Haynes in the earlier records was the one who came to Texas? Which of the three Christopher Haynes, if any, might have been his father? After beginning my research, I paused several times – sometimes for months – hoping more pieces of information would become available over the internet. To my surprise, no one else appeared to be researching a family which included the well-educated, prosperous lawyer Thomas Haynes appeared to be. Finally, I decided that we would have to do some traveling to locate those elusive pieces of the puzzle that was Thomas Haynes of Texana, Jackson County, Texas.
On the 1850 Federal Census of Jackson County, Thomas Haynes had reported that he had been born in Hawkins County, Tennessee. So our first genealogy road trip was to Hawkins County, Tennessee, in September of 2009, with the hope that we would find that magic document which would solve our puzzle. The area was beautiful. The people were helpful. Information was abundant. We found many references to both Christopher and Thomas Haynes. We extended our search into neighboring counties. We were able to attend the county genealogy society meeting in Rogersville at the historical home of Lucy Haynes Amis. Unfortunately, nothing we found snapped into place in our puzzle. In fact, we probably left the area with more unanswered questions since the records did suggest that more than one Christopher Haynes must have been in that area about 1800, and information about Thomas Haynes, born about 1802, was non-existent. We returned home, and I created complicated time lines and charts, hoping to make more sense of the many bits of information we had collected.
In March of 2010, being in the vicinity of western Kentucky, we detoured from Kansas City to Caldwell County on our way home to central Texas. (When one is from Texas, any destination within a day’s drive is “in the neighborhood”.) Two of Thomas’s sons were born in Caldwell County so we had hopes of finding a document revealing that important puzzle piece. The area was beautiful. The people were helpful. Information was even more abundant than in Tennessee. We found many references to both Christopher and Thomas Haynes. We extended our searches to neighboring Livingston and Christian Counties. We were even able to visit a local cemetery in Smithland in which Christopher and Sarah Hodge Haynes were buried. Although we verified that Christopher and Sarah Hodge Haynes had a son named Thomas, born about 1802, nothing in local records identified him as being the man who moved to Texas by 1850. In fact, we found nothing in Kentucky to refute or expand upon the information in the material which I had previously found at various sites on-line: Christopher and Sarah Hodge Haynes's son Thomas was born in 1802 in Livingston County, Kentucky, and that he had moved to St. Louis when young. What we did learn was that Thomas Haynes of Caldwell County was connected to the Hodge family of Livingston County, and in Caldwell County, Thomas was active in purchasing land, often at sheriff’s auctions, and selling it, sometimes for substantial profits.
While visiting the local genealogy center in Smithland, we found a book written by Donald F. Hodge about the Henry Hodge line which included the descendants of Henry’s daughter, Sarah Hodge Haynes. We made copies of pages from the book to add to the many copies we were accumulating and returned home. Once home, I entered the new information into my various time lines, and I started trying to track down the author of the book, hoping to learn the original source of his information. I sent e-mails to every Hodge researcher I could find mentioned on the various websites. I explained who I was looking for and why, and I also posted notices on several genealogy bulletin boards. No answers appeared, of course, so every few months I kept trying. I imagined that my e-mails were going into everyone's spam file, since none of them really bounced.
Meanwhile, I started new in-depth internet research through everything I could find on all the North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky Haynes in the 1700 and 1800's, exchanging e-mails and information with a number of researchers (and getting interesting information, some of which I now know is not directly related). While studying my elaborate time lines, I became convinced that Thomas Haynes of Texana was the same Thomas who grew up in Livingston County, Kentucky, after his family moved there about 1803 when he was one or two years old. We had found Tennessee and Kentucky records to substantiate this sequence of events, but I still had that contradictory information in the Hodge book (and in on-line sites) to settle. Since both the 1850 census and the 1860 census stated that Thomas was born in Tennessee, the 1860 one specifically mentioning Hawkins County, I knew that all of the Haynes researchers needed to agree on the sequence of events leading Thomas from Tennessee to Kentucky to Texas if we were to claim a connection to Christopher and Sarah Hodge Haynes.
In April 2010 I posted another round of bulletin board messages and sent more e-mails. One of the Hodges soon responded, sending me the current e-mail address of the author of the book, and at the same time forwarding a copy of our e-mail exchange to him. I immediately wrote Donald F. Hodge of Marion, Kentucky, who was apparently writing me at the same time since our e-mails passed one another in cyberspace! In his first e-mail to me he did state that he had more recent information regarding Thomas than was in the book, and that he now believes Thomas was born in Tennessee in 1801. Don attached a copy of a list found in a family Bible on a small piece of paper, written personally by either Christopher or Sarah Haynes after 1823, which gave the names, birth dates, and some of the death dates of their 13 children.
On Monday, 26 April 2010, we made a second trip to Edna, which replaced Texana in the 1880s as the county seat of Jackson County. The primary reason for our search there was to pin down Thomas's first arrival in Texas and to get copies of any wills on file. The important “Deed Book 1” had been “missing” when we made our first trip to Edna months earlier. Luckily the deed book was in place this time. The first deed for Thomas Haynes recorded in Jackson County was for a 2 August 1845 sale of two labors of land to “Thomas Haynes, late of New Orleans.” We found much interesting information at the courthouse and made copies of this deed and Thomas's will, as well as that of his son Amos. I read very carefully through Thomas’s estate and probate papers and mentally noted that an inventory mentioned six silver goblets. The wording in the inventory, treating the six goblets as “separate property” (not community property of the marriage), remained in my memory. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize the significance of the six goblets and did not think to make a copy of the inventory.
Don Hodge sent an e-mail on April 29 attaching more information about the Kentucky Haynes and asking me if I had ever heard the story of the silver goblets. I told him what we had heard when we were at the genealogy center in Smithland: one of the Haynes sisters had some silver goblets made to give to her siblings. Several years ago two of the goblets were for sale on eBay, but none of the Hodges or Haynes was able to buy them before they sold to someone else. In my answer I commented that the Haynes family must have had some family tradition regarding silver goblets, since I saw a set of six listed on a Thomas Haynes’ estate inventory.
Don immediately wrote back telling me the complete story. Adelina C. Haynes, ninth child of Christopher and Sarah, married Henry Fayette Given, whose family had extensive business and shipping interests along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. In the 1850's, while living in New Orleans, Adelina commissioned sets of six engraved silver goblets, one set for each of her siblings. Adelina died in 1860 before she had the opportunity to distribute the goblets. Her husband took them with him when he took Adelina's body to Smithland, Kentucky, for burial and distributed the goblets then. Each set was engraved with the recipient's full name, Adeline’s married name, the date, and New Orleans. Adeline had no children and hoped that the goblets would be passed down to her nieces and nephews.
On 5 May 2010 we made another trip to Edna to make copies of the estate inventory, as well as other items, primarily deed records, which we had not copied on our first visit. Herb had begun an extensive history of the Ramon Musquiz Grant property purchased by Thomas in 1848. Also, because various deed records supplied additional information about Thomas Haynes, his children, and grandchildren or suggested where we might look to find more facts, we had a new list of documents to locate and copy. (All copied documents are in our personal Haynes genealogy notebook or in our Haynes vertical file.)
The “6 Silver Goblets” were listed as “Separate Property” in the Thomas Haynes estate inventory, valued at $25.00 each. The estate inventory also “excepts” the “6 Silver Goblets” from the “common property” accumulated by Thomas and Celia Ann during their marriage. The goblets were the only property listed in this special way in the estate inventory. The existence of these six goblets, specifically mentioned twice in Thomas’s estate inventory, is one missing corner piece which holds all of the puzzle pieces together in Thomas Haynes’ genealogy, another being the deed which described Thomas as being from New Orleans. Sadly, we have no idea what happened to Thomas’s six goblets after 1864.
At the end of May 2010 we went to Knoxville, Tennessee, to attend the Destination Imagination global competition (our daughter was a team coach and a granddaughter was competing). While there we took the opportunity to research the Haynes in Knoxville’s new, impressive genealogy center. The Haynes and Hodge researchers who reported that Thomas had been born in Livingston, Kentucky, also reported that his older sister had been born in Knoxville. We were hoping to find some evidence of Christopher and Sarah’s life in that area about the time of Thomas’s birth. We found many records for a Christopher Haynes who was a miner and foundry operator in east Tennessee, but we could find no records for Christopher and Sarah. We also drove on over to Greene County and checked their records, but found nothing of interest. Being in the neighborhood, we took the opportunity to drive up to Kentucky to meet and visit with Don Hodge after the competition was over. Don introduced us to another distant cousin, Mickey Clopton, a descendant of Emilius Paulus Haynes, Thomas’s younger brother. Mickey showed us the silver goblet he had inherited, one of the six Adelina gave “E. P.” We were able to hold it, admire it, and take some photographs (one of which is shown above). Later that day, Don generously guided us around the area, identifying the sites of early Hodge and Haynes homes, as well as other points of interest.
Because Thomas’s estate records indicated that he had owned property in Lavaca, we made a trip to Port Lavaca, Calhoun County, in June, after we returned home from Kentucky. What we learned there was very surprising. About a month prior to the first deed in Jackson County, Thomas Haynes of New Orleans, representing two other investors from New Orleans, with an additional two investors from Calhoun County, purchased all unsold lots in the town of Lavaca and divided them among themselves. (At this time the county seat was Indianola.) In 1850 he was living in Jackson County, but we suspect that he and his family lived in Calhoun County for a short while. Thomas gradually sold all of the property in Calhoun County, the last deeds being dated about 1861. On a separate trip to the Victoria Courthouse to search for any Haynes’ wills, we discovered yet another early deed. This deed, which was dated 22 December 1844 and also for the purchase of Port Lavaca property, placed Thomas in Texas about a year earlier that the other records we had previously located.
With each document we have found, the picture of Thomas Haynes of Texana grows more detailed. Unfortunately, two documents we located have created another puzzle to be solved. Thomas Haynes was referred to as “Major Haynes” twice (that we have found). The first was in the doctor’s statement we found in Thomas’s estate folder. The past-due account from Dr. Woolfolk was for “Major Thomas Haynes” and supplied some interesting insights into the family from 1862 to 1864. In the second, William M. Sanford, writing in 1930 about his early memories of Jackson County, stated that “Major Haynes” and his wife were frequent guests at the home of his parents, John R. Sanford and wife. The Sanford papers, part of the “Jackson County Scrapbook” at the Dolph Briscoe American History Library at The University of Texas at Austin, added emphasis to the new puzzle. Did Thomas bring the title with him as he arrived in Texas? Did Thomas serve in some kind of militia after arriving in Jackson County? Thomas, who died in 1864, was too old to serve in the Civil War, although four of his sons did. However, did Thomas serve in some sort of home guard which was organized at the beginning of the Civil War? So far we have not found any documents answering these questions. We are now challenged to find answers to the new puzzle, “Why was he called Major Thomas Haynes? “
Carolyn R. Haynes
Genealogy consists of finding many interlocking small puzzle pieces until the researcher has enough to build a picture which holds together - much like one can pick up a good jigsaw puzzle by the upper corners and it will still hang together. When I began to research the family of Thomas Haynes, who came to Jackson County, Texas, sometime before 1850, I soon collected puzzle pieces which would not interlock. Which of the three (or maybe four) Thomas Haynes in the earlier records was the one who came to Texas? Which of the three Christopher Haynes, if any, might have been his father? After beginning my research, I paused several times – sometimes for months – hoping more pieces of information would become available over the internet. To my surprise, no one else appeared to be researching a family which included the well-educated, prosperous lawyer Thomas Haynes appeared to be. Finally, I decided that we would have to do some traveling to locate those elusive pieces of the puzzle that was Thomas Haynes of Texana, Jackson County, Texas.
On the 1850 Federal Census of Jackson County, Thomas Haynes had reported that he had been born in Hawkins County, Tennessee. So our first genealogy road trip was to Hawkins County, Tennessee, in September of 2009, with the hope that we would find that magic document which would solve our puzzle. The area was beautiful. The people were helpful. Information was abundant. We found many references to both Christopher and Thomas Haynes. We extended our search into neighboring counties. We were able to attend the county genealogy society meeting in Rogersville at the historical home of Lucy Haynes Amis. Unfortunately, nothing we found snapped into place in our puzzle. In fact, we probably left the area with more unanswered questions since the records did suggest that more than one Christopher Haynes must have been in that area about 1800, and information about Thomas Haynes, born about 1802, was non-existent. We returned home, and I created complicated time lines and charts, hoping to make more sense of the many bits of information we had collected.
In March of 2010, being in the vicinity of western Kentucky, we detoured from Kansas City to Caldwell County on our way home to central Texas. (When one is from Texas, any destination within a day’s drive is “in the neighborhood”.) Two of Thomas’s sons were born in Caldwell County so we had hopes of finding a document revealing that important puzzle piece. The area was beautiful. The people were helpful. Information was even more abundant than in Tennessee. We found many references to both Christopher and Thomas Haynes. We extended our searches to neighboring Livingston and Christian Counties. We were even able to visit a local cemetery in Smithland in which Christopher and Sarah Hodge Haynes were buried. Although we verified that Christopher and Sarah Hodge Haynes had a son named Thomas, born about 1802, nothing in local records identified him as being the man who moved to Texas by 1850. In fact, we found nothing in Kentucky to refute or expand upon the information in the material which I had previously found at various sites on-line: Christopher and Sarah Hodge Haynes's son Thomas was born in 1802 in Livingston County, Kentucky, and that he had moved to St. Louis when young. What we did learn was that Thomas Haynes of Caldwell County was connected to the Hodge family of Livingston County, and in Caldwell County, Thomas was active in purchasing land, often at sheriff’s auctions, and selling it, sometimes for substantial profits.
While visiting the local genealogy center in Smithland, we found a book written by Donald F. Hodge about the Henry Hodge line which included the descendants of Henry’s daughter, Sarah Hodge Haynes. We made copies of pages from the book to add to the many copies we were accumulating and returned home. Once home, I entered the new information into my various time lines, and I started trying to track down the author of the book, hoping to learn the original source of his information. I sent e-mails to every Hodge researcher I could find mentioned on the various websites. I explained who I was looking for and why, and I also posted notices on several genealogy bulletin boards. No answers appeared, of course, so every few months I kept trying. I imagined that my e-mails were going into everyone's spam file, since none of them really bounced.
Meanwhile, I started new in-depth internet research through everything I could find on all the North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky Haynes in the 1700 and 1800's, exchanging e-mails and information with a number of researchers (and getting interesting information, some of which I now know is not directly related). While studying my elaborate time lines, I became convinced that Thomas Haynes of Texana was the same Thomas who grew up in Livingston County, Kentucky, after his family moved there about 1803 when he was one or two years old. We had found Tennessee and Kentucky records to substantiate this sequence of events, but I still had that contradictory information in the Hodge book (and in on-line sites) to settle. Since both the 1850 census and the 1860 census stated that Thomas was born in Tennessee, the 1860 one specifically mentioning Hawkins County, I knew that all of the Haynes researchers needed to agree on the sequence of events leading Thomas from Tennessee to Kentucky to Texas if we were to claim a connection to Christopher and Sarah Hodge Haynes.
In April 2010 I posted another round of bulletin board messages and sent more e-mails. One of the Hodges soon responded, sending me the current e-mail address of the author of the book, and at the same time forwarding a copy of our e-mail exchange to him. I immediately wrote Donald F. Hodge of Marion, Kentucky, who was apparently writing me at the same time since our e-mails passed one another in cyberspace! In his first e-mail to me he did state that he had more recent information regarding Thomas than was in the book, and that he now believes Thomas was born in Tennessee in 1801. Don attached a copy of a list found in a family Bible on a small piece of paper, written personally by either Christopher or Sarah Haynes after 1823, which gave the names, birth dates, and some of the death dates of their 13 children.
On Monday, 26 April 2010, we made a second trip to Edna, which replaced Texana in the 1880s as the county seat of Jackson County. The primary reason for our search there was to pin down Thomas's first arrival in Texas and to get copies of any wills on file. The important “Deed Book 1” had been “missing” when we made our first trip to Edna months earlier. Luckily the deed book was in place this time. The first deed for Thomas Haynes recorded in Jackson County was for a 2 August 1845 sale of two labors of land to “Thomas Haynes, late of New Orleans.” We found much interesting information at the courthouse and made copies of this deed and Thomas's will, as well as that of his son Amos. I read very carefully through Thomas’s estate and probate papers and mentally noted that an inventory mentioned six silver goblets. The wording in the inventory, treating the six goblets as “separate property” (not community property of the marriage), remained in my memory. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize the significance of the six goblets and did not think to make a copy of the inventory.
Don Hodge sent an e-mail on April 29 attaching more information about the Kentucky Haynes and asking me if I had ever heard the story of the silver goblets. I told him what we had heard when we were at the genealogy center in Smithland: one of the Haynes sisters had some silver goblets made to give to her siblings. Several years ago two of the goblets were for sale on eBay, but none of the Hodges or Haynes was able to buy them before they sold to someone else. In my answer I commented that the Haynes family must have had some family tradition regarding silver goblets, since I saw a set of six listed on a Thomas Haynes’ estate inventory.
Don immediately wrote back telling me the complete story. Adelina C. Haynes, ninth child of Christopher and Sarah, married Henry Fayette Given, whose family had extensive business and shipping interests along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. In the 1850's, while living in New Orleans, Adelina commissioned sets of six engraved silver goblets, one set for each of her siblings. Adelina died in 1860 before she had the opportunity to distribute the goblets. Her husband took them with him when he took Adelina's body to Smithland, Kentucky, for burial and distributed the goblets then. Each set was engraved with the recipient's full name, Adeline’s married name, the date, and New Orleans. Adeline had no children and hoped that the goblets would be passed down to her nieces and nephews.
On 5 May 2010 we made another trip to Edna to make copies of the estate inventory, as well as other items, primarily deed records, which we had not copied on our first visit. Herb had begun an extensive history of the Ramon Musquiz Grant property purchased by Thomas in 1848. Also, because various deed records supplied additional information about Thomas Haynes, his children, and grandchildren or suggested where we might look to find more facts, we had a new list of documents to locate and copy. (All copied documents are in our personal Haynes genealogy notebook or in our Haynes vertical file.)
The “6 Silver Goblets” were listed as “Separate Property” in the Thomas Haynes estate inventory, valued at $25.00 each. The estate inventory also “excepts” the “6 Silver Goblets” from the “common property” accumulated by Thomas and Celia Ann during their marriage. The goblets were the only property listed in this special way in the estate inventory. The existence of these six goblets, specifically mentioned twice in Thomas’s estate inventory, is one missing corner piece which holds all of the puzzle pieces together in Thomas Haynes’ genealogy, another being the deed which described Thomas as being from New Orleans. Sadly, we have no idea what happened to Thomas’s six goblets after 1864.
At the end of May 2010 we went to Knoxville, Tennessee, to attend the Destination Imagination global competition (our daughter was a team coach and a granddaughter was competing). While there we took the opportunity to research the Haynes in Knoxville’s new, impressive genealogy center. The Haynes and Hodge researchers who reported that Thomas had been born in Livingston, Kentucky, also reported that his older sister had been born in Knoxville. We were hoping to find some evidence of Christopher and Sarah’s life in that area about the time of Thomas’s birth. We found many records for a Christopher Haynes who was a miner and foundry operator in east Tennessee, but we could find no records for Christopher and Sarah. We also drove on over to Greene County and checked their records, but found nothing of interest. Being in the neighborhood, we took the opportunity to drive up to Kentucky to meet and visit with Don Hodge after the competition was over. Don introduced us to another distant cousin, Mickey Clopton, a descendant of Emilius Paulus Haynes, Thomas’s younger brother. Mickey showed us the silver goblet he had inherited, one of the six Adelina gave “E. P.” We were able to hold it, admire it, and take some photographs (one of which is shown above). Later that day, Don generously guided us around the area, identifying the sites of early Hodge and Haynes homes, as well as other points of interest.
Because Thomas’s estate records indicated that he had owned property in Lavaca, we made a trip to Port Lavaca, Calhoun County, in June, after we returned home from Kentucky. What we learned there was very surprising. About a month prior to the first deed in Jackson County, Thomas Haynes of New Orleans, representing two other investors from New Orleans, with an additional two investors from Calhoun County, purchased all unsold lots in the town of Lavaca and divided them among themselves. (At this time the county seat was Indianola.) In 1850 he was living in Jackson County, but we suspect that he and his family lived in Calhoun County for a short while. Thomas gradually sold all of the property in Calhoun County, the last deeds being dated about 1861. On a separate trip to the Victoria Courthouse to search for any Haynes’ wills, we discovered yet another early deed. This deed, which was dated 22 December 1844 and also for the purchase of Port Lavaca property, placed Thomas in Texas about a year earlier that the other records we had previously located.
With each document we have found, the picture of Thomas Haynes of Texana grows more detailed. Unfortunately, two documents we located have created another puzzle to be solved. Thomas Haynes was referred to as “Major Haynes” twice (that we have found). The first was in the doctor’s statement we found in Thomas’s estate folder. The past-due account from Dr. Woolfolk was for “Major Thomas Haynes” and supplied some interesting insights into the family from 1862 to 1864. In the second, William M. Sanford, writing in 1930 about his early memories of Jackson County, stated that “Major Haynes” and his wife were frequent guests at the home of his parents, John R. Sanford and wife. The Sanford papers, part of the “Jackson County Scrapbook” at the Dolph Briscoe American History Library at The University of Texas at Austin, added emphasis to the new puzzle. Did Thomas bring the title with him as he arrived in Texas? Did Thomas serve in some kind of militia after arriving in Jackson County? Thomas, who died in 1864, was too old to serve in the Civil War, although four of his sons did. However, did Thomas serve in some sort of home guard which was organized at the beginning of the Civil War? So far we have not found any documents answering these questions. We are now challenged to find answers to the new puzzle, “Why was he called Major Thomas Haynes? “