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I know that David Willis was in the civil war and fought for both confederate and union. I’m not sure when he died but after his death Nancy Jane Wallen/Willis married James F. Sword in 1909 Lee Co. Virginia. It seems strange to me that my grandfather thinks she was Native and found in the woods when all these census reports states her as white.
Indian people in the south were listed just about everyway imaginable, but seldom as “Indian” .
David Willis would have been about 22 or 23 when the civil war began so it’s certainly possible he was involved in it.
Nancy J. Wallen was born about 9 or 10 years after that war was over.
With the 1890 census destroyed, it’s not possible to prove anything more from these records than that either David or Nancy told the 1900 census taker that they had been married for 7 years at that time, making that in about 1893.
The story of finding Nancy Jane in the woods may be true or it may have gotten changed in the retelling thru several generations – I don’t know.
Bill
Nearly all of the 1890 Federal Census was destroyed in a warehouse fire about 1921 in Baltimore, Md where they were stored. A few fragments, not sent to the Fed’s, survived, but not for your areas.
janette wrote: Redd further states that Wallen later moved to Powell Valley, lived there a short time and then moved to Mo. Redd’s statement of Wallen’s movements is borne out by a letter written to Dr. Draper by F.A. Wallen, a nephew to Elisha, from Fairlan, Livingston Co., Mo., dated Oct. l5, l853, in which he says: “He (Elisha) moved from Va. to Tenn. thence to Ky., thence to Washington Co. Mo. at a very early date.”
I missed the reference to Washington Co., MO the first time I read this.
I wonder how early this would have been.
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