Amy Johnson Crow of No Story Too Small has issued a challenge: write one blog post each week devoted to a specific ancestor. It can be a story, a biography, a photograph, an outline of a research problem – anything that focuses on one ancestor.
Tabatha JOLLETT. So many questions. So little information.
When I discovered Tabatha many years ago, I just laughed. I thought Tabatha was a name made up by the writers of “Bewitched.” I had no idea that this name was fairly common in the early 1800s.
As best I can tell, Tabatha was the fifth daughter of James and Nancy Walker Jollett. Apparently she was born in Orange County, Virginia, sometime between 1797 and 1800. Her name appears only twice in census records. In 1850, she was living in Greene County in the household of Elizabeth King. A young girl named Frances Jollett was likely Tabatha’s daughter.
|1850 Greene County, Virginia Census|
Tabatha Jollett age 50 could not read or write
In 1860, the Greene County census taker must have been lazy as names are listed with initials only. “T” Jollett and “FEA” Jollett were in their own home.
|1860 Greene County, Virginia Census|
Tabatha age 63 valued her personal property at $40. She still could not read or write.
And that’s it for Tabatha, as far as I know. Frances, on the other hand, in 1870 was listed as “cousin” in the household of Thomas and Columbia Marsh and Thomas’s mother-in-law Elizabeth King. That means Tabatha must have been Elizabeth’s unmarried sister OR the widow of an unknown brother.
Since there is no “Three Generations” possibility for this family, I present a To Do list:
1. Search for a death record for Tabatha Jollett.
2. Search for any records for Frances Jollett, in particular birth and death.
3. Look for Tabatha’s name on any deeds.
© 2014, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.