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Hello,
My name is Kristy and I have joined this site to see if I could get some information or help in which place to look next. My great, great, great grandmother was a full blooded Indian. Her name was Mary Summerscales as she married a man from England and settled in Michigan. I have a copy of her death certificate and her parents names (also Indian) were named Henry Dalton and Tinoly Kenedy. It says they all came from the Pittsylvania county, Virginia. Mary was born in 1849 so i’m guessing her parents were somewhere in the 1820’s. My goal is to find out their Indian names and what tribe they were from. I have attached a picture of Mary (Dalton) Summerscales. My grandparents took in a Sarah Mone (widowed) and her two children and they lived with them for many years. They two children, Shady & Mary Smith are in the picture here with Mary Summerscales. Does anyone know if the last names “Dalton and Kenedy” were in the Saponi Indian line? If not, does anyone know what other tribes they may have been with in the Pittsylvania, Virginia county during the early 1800’s? Thanks for all your help…its appreciated!
Kristy Moore
Hello Kristy and welcome to Saponitown. My father is a Dalton and my mother has a Kennedy/Canady line. My father always said we were “Virginia Indian but not Cherokee”. That is all he knew for sure. About all researchers agree that the earliest Dalton in America was named Timothy but nobody seems to have any proof as to his origin. He just appears in the James River area. My research seems to show that the Daltons have been mixed-bloods marrying other mixed-bloods since the late 1600s. There is no ONE tribe that we can claim as we are a mixture of several VA/NC tribal groups.
My Kenedy line traces back to the Chickahominy but again, the Kennedys have been mixed for 400 years and carry the homogenized blood of several/many tribes. So the short, blunt answer is that these lines ARE VA/NC indians but it is impossible to say they are of one tribe. There is no recognized tribe that you can join.
You are at the right place to discover all that you can about your heritage. Read the articles linked to the homepage and use the search feature and many of your questions will be answered. New questions will be raised but isn’t that the fun of doing genealogy?
Again, welcome to Saponitown, cuz 😉
Hi Kristy
This is from Cherokee communities of the South by Professor Robert K. Thomas .
Appendix I
“O. Indians of northern West Virginia
1. Taylor and Barbour Counties (colony located in Vinton County, Ohio)
2. Family names;
Adams, Miner or Minear
Collins, Newman
Croston, Norris
Dalton, Pritchard
Dorton, Proctor?
Kennedy, Male or Mayle
It would be my guess that 90 per cent of the people in southeastern Michigan who identify themselves as Cherokee are from the communities that I have been outlining. Since the Second World War there has been a lot of migration from this region of eastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia into the Detroit area. Along with that general migration came a great many poeple from these Indian, or former Indian, communites. Some of them no doubt come from communities that are fairly cohesive and which identify as Indian. Others come from communites that assimilated into the general population several generations ago, even though they might be of considerable Indian back ground. Other individuals are the result of two or three genearations of mixed marriage, after the local Indian community dissolved. Some simply have an Indian grandparent who wandered into a white community, married, and settled down there. There is tremendous social variation in the areas of origin of Michigan people who identify as Cherokees. “”..
Check it out here http://works.bepress.com/robert_thomas/24/
Thanks so much for all the information, it’s been very helpful. For years I was told were “Cree,then “Crow”…but they weren’t down in the Pittsylvania county area of Virginia. I just recently talked to my Uncle and he said no, he had always been told by his grandmother that they were “Blackfoot”. Which makes sense of being a mixed bloodline in the Virginia area. Next I will just need to find the different Indians that were in that area and then I guess that would tell me of all the different mixes that we come from. Correct? I did find out that the Indian on my mothers side was Iroquois and that they were often fighting with the Indians in the southern part of Virginia. It’s funny to think that the descendants of Indians on both sides of my parents were fighting one another. I guess its amazing that they have been married now for nearly 50 years!
Also see item “O. Indians of northern West Virginia” in the same article. This group was called “Guineas” as a derogatory term because of their mixed heritage. This because of the mixed coloration of guinea hen feathers. I always wear a guinea feather on my regalia when I dance at powwows to honor my Daltons.
Kristy, do you already have this info?
Thank you! I did use it one time and found Mary (Dalton) Summerscales grave…thats also I got a free copy of her death certificate. (online copy) But I should try using that again for Henry Dalton and Tinoly Kenedy. I don’t even know when they were born…haven’t been able to find that information. I also don’t know where they died. I know they were from Virginia (Pittsylvania county) but I don’t know if they ever moved from there after Mary left and married Henry Summerscales in Michigan. I will have to try it and see what comes up.
Thanks again!
Kristy
I couldn’t find Henry or Tinoly on Find-a-Grave. Amongst the thousands of Henry Dalton/Dolton/Dutton listings there are 3 or 4 potentials born about 1820 in Va or WVA but nothing definitive. There are no listings for Tinoly Kenedy/Kennedy/Canady anywhere.
A google search shows Tinoly as a surname. Using a surname as a given name was quite common but makes me wonder if her name was (for example) Mary Tinoly Kenedy.
There are so many alternative spellings of Dalton and Kennedy that searching databases is difficult. One letter off and you miss finding them.
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