Finding Temple’s ancestors: which way should I go?

My great, great-grandmother, Temple Burton in the middle with her final owners, Col. W. R. Stuart and his wife, Elizabeth. We believe the girls on either side were two of Temple's daughters. (Picture courtesy Ray Bellande's website via Renee Smith's collection at the University of Southern Mississippi McCain Archives)

By the time Monday comes around, I’m eager to send my kiddies off to school so I can get down to  digging up my roots.  But today, I was overwhelmed by the size of the task.  It seemed a million different directions beckoned me to, “Look Here!” Today, it felt like I had too many leads to follow.

In order to find out more about my great, great-grandmother, Temple Burton, born a slave around 1820, possibly in Louisiana I could research:

• family histories in Warren County, North Carolina where Hill Jones was born. Jones was Temple’s earliest owner that I’ve been able to find.  Family histories might  record how Temple entered into the Jones family, perhaps as part of a will or through a marriage.
• track down deeds of sale belonging to Hill Jones which may show who Hill Jones bought her from if she wasn’t passed down to him through his family.
• Burton slave owners, since Temple’s last name is Burton and slaves often took their owners’ last name.

While three directions doesn’t seem like an awful lot, each of them splinters off into many more trails.   For example, I’d need to look up Burton slave owners in several different places.   Temple’s census records aren’t consistent and list several different states as her parent’s place of birth. That means,  I have to consider Burton slave owners in  Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, the states listed as her parents’ places of birth.

It’s doable, but not in one school day. By the time I called the Warren County records department in North Carolina, was redirected to their state archives, and abandoned that trail to try my hand at a hail mary search of Burton slave owners in Alabama and Mississippi,  it was already time to meet the girls at the bus stop.

I did at least find information about another Burton, Annie who published her memoirs on her childhood in slavery.

But I need to get organized.  I know I’m not going to find any specific record in one day, but I probably need to focus on one set of records at a time, lest I get waylaid like I did today.

What do you think is the first trail I should follow on this leg of my journey?

The Slaves of Hill Jones

List of slaves bequeathed in the 1846 will of Hill Jones

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, a will that listed my great great-grandmother, Temple Burton as part of Hill Jones’s property also listed many other slaves as well.  His will was notarized on September 8, 1846 in Madison County, Mississippi. Jones didn’t have hundreds of slaves, but he did have at least two dozen and I’ll list them and their owners below in hopes of helping one of my fellow researchers trace their family tree:

To his wife, Judith Jones:  Tiller, Vincent, William, Tempy, Marian, Phil, Reuben and Susan.

To son, Willis B. Jones:  Edmund, Philip, Martha (sp.), Austen or Auster and Rose, his wife, Alford, Rene or Remy (sp.?), Richard & Chaney (sp.?) his wife and their three youngest children Cornelius, Catherine & Eliza, also George and “my two blind boys Isaac and Britten.”

To daughter, Mary M. Whitehead:  Mose, David and Solomon.

To daughter, Martha McCauley:  John, Louisa, Grace or Green? and Jack

To daughter, Elizabeth Howcott: Essex and Huldy

To daughter Rebecca, Charles, Handy and Collier (sp.?)

Thanks, Liz for helping me decipher this challenging text!