Since I went down rabbit hole #4 looking for more information about Henry Nation’s son, Thomas, I got caught down there by some BSOs and decided to continue digging.

I’ve hand drawn a family tree that shows the many ties between the Nation family and the Robbins, Livingstons and Ledbetters. It’s not the easiest diagram to follow, but that means it does an excellent job highlighting the murky, undocumented but by tradition connections.

The first BSOs that caught my attention were two entries in the 1850 census of Tennessee. The first was the family of Peter Livingston, who as far as I could tell had no apparent ties to the Nation family, and lived in Overton County, Tennessee:

As you can see, the Livingstons had eight children of their own at home, yet one year old Nancey Nations is living with them.

If you read my post about Henry Nation’s son, Thomas, who turned out to be Henry Thomas Nation, he was apparently married at the age of 16 to one Nancy (MNU), aged 23 years old, c1860.

Remember, too, that the 1850 census of Thomas Nation at home with father Henry, stepmother Mary (Riddle) and two half siblings, including one year old Nancy Nations.

Were the two Nancys the same child? There is no Nancy at home with Henry and Mary in 1860. . . .

What drew me further down the rabbit hole is the fact that both Henry and his father, Isaac, who died c1849, had wives whose names aren’t known.

Henry actually had two wives, the first the mother of Joseph Michael Nation, my husband’s 2X great grandfather born in 1836, and the second was the mother of Henry Thomas Nation, born 1844.

Isaac Nation, father of Henry Nation, married three times. The first was to Margaret Tillman, mother of Henry, the second wife was Jane Robbins and the third wife is Unknown. The order in which Isaac married wives 2 and 3 is unknown, but he had four children, Isaac Jackson, born c1835, Margaret, born c1837, Mary, born c1840 and Vina A., born c1842.

That information led me to the second entry in the 1850 Tennessee census of Fentress County, Tennessee, the family of Jones Ledbetter, who had one daughter, Margaret, plus two Nations children, Margaret, 13 years old, and Vina, 8 years old.

I was hoping that these miscellaneous Nations children, living with the Livingstons and the Ledbetters, might provide some clues as to their parents, particularly to who their mothers were.

While these families are tantalizing, they actually haven’t been terribly helpful.

First, Jones Ledbetter married Catherine Nation, daughter of Isaac and Margaret (Tillman) Nation, so when both Isaac and their mother died before 1850, young Margaret and Vina were then taken in and raised by their half-sister, Catherine. One mystery solved.

What became of the girls? I find no record of Margaret after the 1850 census, but she was already 13 years old and living in an area where it was very common for girls to marry in their mid-teens. I suspect that Margaret married – Fentress is a burned county – and looking for Margaret, born c1837 in Tennessee is quite hopeless with no hints popping up. Vina still lived with Jones and Catherine in 1860, when they lived in Texas County, Missouri. She was 18 years old and probably on the brink of marriage. However, she, too, has disappeared without a trace. So, one mystery solved, but questions remain about their lives.

The Peter Livingston family is a bit more tantalizing. Peter married Martha Cravens, which still didn’t ring any bells for me. However, I took a look at the 1840 census. Look at Henry Nation’s next door neighbor in 1840:

It’s a bit hard to read, but that is Henry Cravens, aged 40-50, easily of an age to have a daughter who married Henry Nations. I suspect that Martha (Cravens) Livingston was related to Henry Cravens and that Nancy Nations, born c1849, might be the granddaughter of Henry Cravens. Another possibility is that Joseph Michael Nation’s mother was the Cravens.

It’s interesting that I’ve found an online tree that claims – no sources cited – that Henry Nation married one Mary Ledbetter and that they were the parents of Nancy Nations, born c1849. That Nancy Nations married Samuel Alexander Potter on 24 September 1868 in Howell County, Missouri, where Catherine (Nation) Ledbetter Taber was living after Jones Ledbetter died in 1862.

There’s one more clue pointing to the Cravens family. Not only did Peter and Martha (Cravens) Livingston have Nancey Nations at home with them, but they had a daughter of their own listed among their children – Nancy, born 1837, at home in 1850, but not found after that time. Could it be that Henry Nation’s son, Henry Thomas, enumerated aged 16 and apparently married to 23 year old Nancy in 1860 might have married Nancy Livingston?

That’s also another possible clue that the two Nancy Nations enumerated with Henry and Mary Nation in addition to Peter and Martha Livingston, both in 1850, was actually the daughter of Henry and his deceased wife – not the daughter of Mary (Riddle) Nation.

Given the paucity of records, this post is really just suppositions, but I believe the Nation family had a tie with the Livingstons, probably through a Cravens marriage.

Thoughts?