If you are descended from Samuel Anderson, you are descended from John Ratliff (ca 1805-1847), my third great grandfather.
It seems that when you “go west young man” you get forgotten back home. [Footnote the quote below re brick wall] So when someone decides to write down the names of the children of your parents, well, you just aren’t there! So John Ratliff moves to Platte County Missouri and apparently pretty promptly dies. Who was he? Who was his wife?
We do know a few things. On the 8th of December 1847 his two older boys appeared in court and chose William Bowlin as their guardian. The three younger children were also put under his guardianship. They are listed as “minor heirs of John Ratliffe deceased”. From then on, the children are pretty well documented. They say in future census records that they were born in Kentucky but they lived out their lives in northwest Missouri.
You can find a false story though. His children existed and are well documented, so hundreds of “genealogists” decided they are the children of a possible brother Richard Ratliff who never left Kentucky. There are multiple records in Platte County that state their father was John Ratliff. Not only the guardianship records, but also several of the children are mentioned later in their lives in Paxton’s Annals and listed as “son of John”.
I can find no John in the records or in trees that would fit the dates and life of our John, so I have assigned him to the most likely family, as a brother to the Richard named above. DNA matches help confirm that this is the correct family line.
We have one possible census record for John. The first U.S. census records that name all of the people in the household is 1850, and John died in 1847 in Platte County, Missouri. There is a John Ratliff in the 1840 census in Pike County, Kentucky, that might be his. Not only did they not name other household members, you don’t even get ages. Everybody is put into age brackets… This is confounded by the fact that we do not know the exact birth year of any of the children. But this census does seem to fit our John, with 5 children and a female presumably his wife. Plus we learn that his father’s name is John because this John called himself John Jr.
The next question is who was his wife and was she dead by the time he died. After he died, the children were given guardianship to William Bowlin. I had assumed their mother was dead already, but that may not have been so. Women often did not get guardianship of minor children. And when I asked about this situation, someone commented that there might have been a relationship with the family that got the guardianship.
We don’t even know if they lived close. The only census I have for him, and it is not clear that it is in fact him in the record, was in Pike County, Kentucky. The same county his possible brother Richard spent his life in. In that record on the same page I find not only 3 other Ratliffs, but also a James McGee. One of John’s sons married Nancy McGee, daughter of David McGee and Elizabeth Bowlin, brother of the William Bowlin who got the guardianship of the children.
This then gets even more complicated because William Bowlin promptly dies. Guardianship of the children is then granted to Elizabeth Bowlin, who had apparently recently married the now deceased William Bowlin. Who is she? No one knows. Could it be possible she is the actual mother of the children? She had apparently been caring for them. We know even less about this Elizabeth ?? Bowlin than we know about John Ratliff.
Guardianship is as much about the property of the deceased as it was care for the children. [REF HERE]
The obvious possibilities are:
1) A Childers. There was a lot of intermarriage between Ratliff and Childers families and John’s presumed brother Richard married a Childers.
2) Assuming there was a relationship between the Ratliff family and the Bowlin/McGee families, maybe his wife was a McGee.
3) It is also possible they were living with their mother all along because she could have been the Elizabeth who married William Bowlin. But we do not know what her maiden name was or who her parents were.
OK, you say, just build the tree out further and find out where they belong. It turns out these families had so many children, reused so many names, and there are so few records that what I have done in this regard has been pretty much a waste of time.
Is your head spinning yet? Mine sure is! Basically the only change over the last year is that DNA has given us some confirmation of the father I’ve assigned John to, as well as his grandfather and great grandfather. We’ve got the correct family.
This story is complicated by some interesting rumors. I’ve read several places that the person who I think is his father, also John, left his wife and possibly died in Missouri. Were the two Johns together? No one else guesses this because they don’t even know about John Jr. In the 1830 census John Sr’s wife is head of household with 3 people under 20 (no names except head of household are included in an 1830 census). In 1850 his wife was living with their son William. This is how that story is told:
“John RATLIFF was born in Augusta County, Virginia. He was the son of Ruben RATLIFF and Francis ???. John died in Jackson County, Missouri. He married Charlotte WHITE in Russell County, Virginia. John and Charlotte’s marriage record was destroyed in the Russell County courthouse fire. She was born 12 February 1774 in Prince George County, Maryland. She was the daughter of Abednego WHITE and Mary???. Charlotte died in Tazewell County, Virginia. “
–This quote is from “Some Descendants of John Ratliff & Charlotte White” by by Larry Ratliff, Jack Hockett, and Gerald Ratliff. Note the title — the word “some” would seem to admit they did not have a complete list of children.
Also, one of his (presumed) sisters died in Chillicothe, Missouri, in 1892. That is about a hundred miles from Platte County.
These is by no means the only ancestors whose parents died young. My grandfather Samuel Anderson’s father died when he was 8 years old. His mother lived longer, but we don’t know where she was or where he was. The 1890 census was destroyed and we have no other records. My mother said both of her parents were orphans, but unfortunately I did not ask for more information. The parents of Grandma Anderson (Dessie Ellen Kimsey Anderson) also died young: her father when she was 4 and her mother when she was 7. After her father died she is found living in the household of a Kimsey aunt. I personally believe most of the deaths were from tuberculosis, then called consumption.
More information:
Guardianship