Colonel B. F. Duke, 1843-1911

In one of my many conversations with Mr. George Taylor of Mason, I asked him who had been the richest man in Mason when he had been a boy (around 1900).  He replied without hesitation that would have been "Colonel Duke."  Benjamin Franklin "Tobe" Duke to be exact.  Col. Duke fought in the Civil War, but I'm not sure if he ever attained a rank higher than private.  As was the custom of the day, however, once he acquired wealth and prestige he was addressed as "colonel."

He was quite popular among the men of the town and several boys born during that era were named for him.  At one time, he owned several farms in the area that were worked by sharecroppers.  Mr. Virge Nowell, grandfather of the late Mrs. Sara Nell Seay, was the "rider" for Col. Duke.  A rider was a man who rode on horseback to the various farms checking on the progress of the sharecroppers.

Mr. George Taylor told me that Col. Duke looked "just like this Col. Sanders with the chicken on TV."  So I was thrilled to find this photo of him a few years ago.  Col. Duke never married and later lived in Memphis the last several years of his life in a mansion of Belvidere.  His obituary notes that his days were often spent at the Peabody Hotel and the Tennessee Club.  The Tennessee Club was a gentlemen's club now occupied by the Burch Porter law firm.

His plantation in Tunica County was purchased by George Day "Jack" Perry whose descendants still own it.  Jack Perry and his wife Sallie Whitley Perry had moved from Mason to Robinsonville to manage the Duke plantation.  Col. Duke instructed his heirs to sell to no one but Jack Perry!

WHITMORE FAMILY

After administering the Mason DNA project for almost two years now, I am finally prepared to summarize some of our findings.  One of the first goals was to determine if all the various branches of the Whitmore family in the Mason and Stanton areas were indeed related.  It was clear that they all probably descended from the slaves on the Edwin Whitmore plantation at the time of the Civil War.  But the question remained were they biologically related?  Oral history from some stated that they were.  Additionally, most had referred to each other as "cousin" down through the generations.  But no one could tell me how they were related.

Our testing proved that the answer was a resounding yes!  And, furthermore, all branches led back to one man, Charles Whitmore, born about 1815 in Virginia.  Three male Whitmores, each from a distinct set, took the Y-DNA test.  One was a descendant of Billy Whitmore, born about 1840, another from James "Jim" Whitmore who was born about 1842.  The third participant was a descendant of Steven Whitmore who was born about 1860.  The scanty evidence available from that time period seemed to suggest that Billy Whitmore and Jim Whitmore were brothers and Steven Whitmore their nephew.  The 1870 census listed all members of a household but did not give their relationships to each other as did later censuses.  In the 1870 household of Charles Whitmore in Civil District 5 of Fayette County, Tennessee, there was a young male named Jack Whitmore who appeared to be his son.  This same Jack is listed in the 1880 census as the brother of Jim Whitmore,  Thus, it appears that Charles was the father of Billy and Jim and grandfather of Steven. 

The three male test-takers were all a perfect match at 12 markers meaning that they shared a common ancestor through their male lineages.  But this finding needed further fine tuning in order to determine about when this common male ancestor lived.  One way to do this is through autosomal DNA testing which can predict a range of relationship between two people.  In addition to the three original male participants, several Whitmore descendants, both male and female, took the autosomal DNA or Family Finder test which can pinpoint if two persons share a common ancestor within about 5 generations.  Nearly all of them matched each other at various levels.  And, importantly, the participant from the oldest generation (a great-grandchild of Charles Whitmore) did match every single participant at fairly significant levels.  All evidence pointed to a common ancestor who would have lived about the time of Charles Whitmore

Our test results were able to tell us what sketchy records and faulty memories could not:  that the various Whitmore families in this area of West Tennessee were indeed all the descendants of Charles Whitmore.

Mason DNA project

After a silence of almost two years, I am now going to take another stab at blogging about my life's hobby and passion, the study of my hometown and its people.  If nothing else, I hope this blog will serve as a journal of the various projects I'm working on from time to time and the findings I'm making.  These days one of the most exciting new areas of research is genetic genealogy.  It is nothing less than amazing what we can now learn from a simple cheek swab.  Several companies now offer this type of testing at a fairly reasonable price.  Of them I think 23andMe does the best job of pinpointing a person's "ethnic make-up."  But Family Tree DNA seems a little more suited for genealogists and it allows its participants to join "groups" either by surname or geographic region.  These groups have administrators who can compare and analyze the results for all the group's members.

Several months ago, I created and became the administrator of the Mason DNA group.  The project welcomes anyone who had ancestors living in the Mason, Tennessee, area in or prior to the 1880s.  Our goal is to determine connections between families that could not otherwise be documented through traditional methods.  This approach holds particular promise for learning more about the early African-American families of the area.  The fact that their ancestors were enslaved in our area until 1865 often presents a "brick wall" for the researcher.  Furthermore, it would be another several decades after the Civil War before Tennessee enacted the systematic use of birth and death records.  DNA testing has now provided us with a new tool to break through previous barriers in genealogical research.

With the test results currently available, we have been able to make some remarkable and interesting conclusions.  In my following posts, I will attempt to highlight some of these while at the same time protecting the privacy of all participants.

Visit the Mason DNA project at the following linkhttp://www.familytreedna.com/public/masontennessee

Death certificates now on ancestry.com

Thanks to Ancestry.com and the Tennessee State Library and Archives I won't be needing to transcribe all my death certificates.  All Tennessee death records from 1908-1959 are now available for viewing on ancestry.com.

Area death certficates

I am still "feeling" my way through the process of setting up this blog and hope to have more postings soon! One of the projects I've been working on over the years is abstracting information from death certificates. Tennessee did not officially start keeping them until 1914. So far I've abstracted most of them for the area around Mason from 1914 through 1943. Quite a project. Most of them are from Civil Districts 9 and 10 of Tipton County, 4, 5 and 6 of Fayette County and 3 of Haywood County. Eventually, hope to have them transcribed and online. The information provided on them can vary a great deal. Some are rather sketchy but others are quite informative. It usually depended on the informant furnishing the information. But at the very least they usually give the burial site of the deceased.

Many thanks to Matana Roberts for helping me to set up this blog. She is the great-granddaughter of Dr. Rumsey Sidney Fields, 1875-1944, early physician in Mason, Tennessee and Memphis. I just learned last night that Dr. Fields' great-grandmother, Alsey Core, was still living in 1900 and listed as 11o years old!

Welcome!

Hello, welcome to my site! I am a  geneaology researcher and have set up this forum to compile my work and also answer any questions you might have. Please feel free to ask any questions you might have  in the comments section of my blog entries.