If Samuel and Dessie Anderson are your grandparents or great grandparents, Nancy (McGee) and Washington Ratliff are your ancestors too.

George Washington Ratliff (~1831-1889) (who was generally called Washington) is my second great grandfather, maternal grandfather of my grandpa Sam Anderson. There are a series of sad stories on this side of the family involving early parental deaths leaving the children without parents. George Washington’s father John Ratliff died in 1847 and apparently his mother was already dead because the children were put into guardianship of first William Bowlin, then after he died, his wife Elizabeth Bowlin. We have no knowledge of the connection of the Bowlin family and the Ratliff family.

So we find him and his siblings for some years in census records as living with the Bowlin family. Then he grows up and marries and has his own household. But who did he marry? All we know, again from census records, is her name was Nancy¹. I had been unable to find out any more until recently. All we know about Washington Ratliff’s wife is the name Nancy and an approximate birth date, both obtained from census records.

Pierre Morriset, a Huguenot, immigrated in 1700, arriving from London on the ship Mary and Ann. Also on that ship was Elizabeth Faure and her mother Mary Ann (Chastain) Faure.².   Pierre later married Elizabeth Faure.

If you are a descendant of Samuel Anderson, you are also a descendant of Pierre Morriset and Elizabeth Faure.

After years of persecution in France and then life in exile, they were finally on their way to a new permanent home. “The first ship was the “Mary and Ann” with Capt. George Haves that took 13 weeks crossing the Atlantic. It arrived at Hampton on 23 July 1700 with 118 men, 59 wives and girls and 38 children.”³