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My family descends from the VA Corns. My great great grandmother died in 1924 and her name was Matilda Corn. She was born 1849 in Tennessee. Her parents were born in VA. Her Mother was full blood and her father unknown quantum. Their names were James Fry and America (unknown maiden surname).
Matilda was married to Mathew Corn born approx 1820 in TN. His father was George Washington Corn and his wife was either Margaret or Sarah Morris. Mathew’s mother is said to have been born in an Indian town. GW and his wife were both born in VA or at least the mother of Mathew was. (we leave open the option GW was married twice).
The family tradition is very strong on the native blood lines. (Matilda’s daughter married a McKinney and this is my line, an earlier generation in this line of McKinney married an Osage female). We know little about the Osage line because in my lifetime noone was yet alive who self identified as such. Also, they never made it on the roles because they chose not to remove to OK.
With respect to the Corn line, Matilda self identified and carried on certain customs. However, all of the generation who knew her are now dead and I never recorded what the “old ways” were that she adhered to. The later generations were very guarded about indianness because of the consequences for such in MO. It was against the law to be Indian in MO from 1870 to 1930 and self Identified natives faced property forfeiture, removal and the risk of children being sent to boarding schools.
With all that said, we don’t know what area of VA we hailed from. We are using the library at UVA to try and button this down. We suspect we descend from the Saponi groups or other VA native people groups.
Please let me know any info any of you may have. We feel most people think we just died out. It is very surprising I am sure for people not in such a family line to know that we have not died out and this four generation old thread is still important in our self identity. You may post this, but please have anyone who responds do so also in direct email. Thank you TDG@Iowatelecom.net.
Welcome to the Forum, Thomas,
We would welcome your posting of any additional, specific information you might have on your CORNs so that we might be able to help further your search.
Bill
Researching my Motley/ Pain Gr,Gr,Gr,Gr,Gr Grandparents, I’ve seen a listing of the Corn family in Surry County Virginia.
That is the area of Bacons Castle so it would be perhaps possible that they were
Occannechi or another tribe of the Powhattan Federation.
I hope this will lead you t information you can use.
Have a great Day
Richardl
Hello all.
My eye caught this thread. I am new to this forum. My grandmother was Rena Bell Smith of Halifax Co. NC. According to my father she was a Haliwa . I never knew her or any of her family. My father was born in 1920 in Halifax Co. His surname was Pepper. His father died at the age of 23, and my grandmother put all four of her children into the Methodist Children’s Home in Raleigh, NC. She never took them out. As you can imagine, this caused some resentment among her children by my grandfather, David H. Pepper. My father was always very proud of his Indian ancestry. He was, however, cut off completely from it. He became an ironworker, and worked high steel construction. He started his own construction company and often told me that when he had a job in the mountains of NC, he made every effort to hire the Cherokee that lived there. He tried to work an all Indian crew.
My father died in 2000. Since then, more and more of his sayings and wisdom has come into my life on a daily basis. I have become more aware of my own Indian ancestry due to small things that occur in my life. My daughter has been talking to the medicine man of the Ocaneechee band, and she is now interested in her ancestry. She even contacted the Haliwa band by letter, but never received a reply.
When my dad was born, the Haliwa was not recognized by the state of NC. When I was born, there was no general knowledge of the Saponi, and that name was not used when he talked of the Haliwa.
I was attracted by the name of this forum, and thought that I would say hello.
Sincerely.
Pepper
howdy,
I am curious about the Osage line. When was your Osage ancestor alive, and where did she live? The Osage are one of the few tribes that are native to Oklahoma — they have always been here — they didn’t arrive here from elsewhere as did most of our Indian population.
There is no polite way to say this — I wonder if some traders “traded her” to someone back east? The Osage are also a Siouan people, and as such are related to the Lakota of the Northern Plains, which means they’d have been related to the Saponi as well.
Vance
My understanding is that the Osage had an indiginous group in MO. My McKinney(not Corn) ancestors went to MO before it was officially open to white settlement. This is rumored to be 1790ish.
Andrew McKinney married an Osage woman in this time period. Thus, this is so far back and before anyone who lived in my life would have known her first hand, we have very little info. If I am wrong that the Osage had an indigenous group from MO at about this time, your theory could be good. Thanks for the comment. Our family cemetery in TX county MO has all of these parties buried there. The first grave is for one of my ancestors who died there in 1797. This is well before MO was officially open for settlement. One of the old McKinney theories was that they entered MO from TN at that time because they were intermarried with what became the Eastern Cherokee who had treaties etc. with Spain early on to settle west of the Mississippi. Again this is just theory and probably romantic whimsy.
TDG
Thanks —
Yup, Osage were in E Ok, E Ks, N. Ar and S. Missouri in the 1790s.
What county was your ancestor buried in, in 1797 in Mo? The earliest Cherokee who remained in Mo. arrived about 1794, but they had come and gone to and from that location for the previous 20 years. They were in SE Mo, from the St Francis River to the Mississippi. Most (if not all) Cherokee left Missouri after the 1811 (I think that is the year) New Madrid earthquake and settled on both sides of the Arkansas River, near a location called “The Dardenelles”.
That is an interesting story. I have ancestors in NE Ar at an early date. Were your “Corn’s” also in Missouri at an early date?
vance
Vance.
The family cemetery is in what is now TX county. Very south central MO. There is a web site that purports to give the history of MO counties county by county. When I searched it, my family was nowhere mentioned. They claimed earliest families were 1820-1830. Go figure. We have been there for 215 years with same family surname. We at least have the cemetery to prove it. Although all graves have headstones with dates names etc., it may be considered an Indian cemetery and thus we don’t count as early settlers.
The Corns didn’t come to MO until mid 19th century. They had done a thirty year stint in TN after leaving VA.
TDG
Vance,
You seem knowledgable about Siouan people generally, so I’ll ask you another one relative to our Osage McKinneys.
The move to TX county MO may not have been totally random in the 1790s. This spot is still considered the McKinney homestead and was obtained by patent from the US a number of years later. My great grandfather purchased it from his uncle’s widow in 1934. It is now owned by a collateral relative.
This land had significant pre-white settlement significance as a campsite on local native population migratory routes. On the property were mounded up campsites suitable for one dwelling each that drained properly due to the mounding. I’m not talking burial mounds here, but campsites. Each could accomodate one dwelling unit for example ie tents.
My great uncle one time counted the mounds and came up with over 300. They are all still there to the best of my knowledge.
From the beginning, my family “hosted” traditionals on this land as they migrated through or stayed for a season. The McKinney land was known in native circles as a safe place to land as a more traditional native. MO was not otherwise very hospitable in this regard. This continued on up through the 1920s until most of the traditionals either died out or assimilated. No money ever changed hands and as late as my great grandfather, the edict was that any Indian looking for a place to camp was welcome for as long as they needed.
I assume that these people were Osage? Who else would have been likely. This part of MO is very hilly and Piney. Very good for hunting and good for getting lost before the days of good roads.
Interested in your thoughts.
TDG
Plase know i am NOT all that knowledgeable about siouan peoples — all I know is what I read.I try to check documentation and I try to use reason. I also make mistakes — lots of mistakes. :).
Do you know the years that these dwellings can be dated to? That would go a long way to telling who the Indians were that occupied thie site. Have any archaelongists examined the site? Do any know of it? Have yu checked the local library for histories of the county?
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chickamauga_researcher/
Would you mind coming to the above link and posting what you just posted? We are trying there to locate known places the Cherokee were and separate them from other tribes that might have lived on those same regions. hre is a man at that website who is very interested in the possibility of Cheroke in S Mo as he also lives there I belive.
Personally I have never seen historic documentation for an Cherokee in other parts of Missouri than what i just stated. I also know there are many in Missouri who say they are Cherokee. Delaware, Shawnee, Miami, Kickapoo and many others had to migrate through Missouri. I found a record where a Cherokee Old settler war Chief went to Ohio, Indiana and Illinois to try and get Indians from there to emigrate to Arkansas and it was written many had agreed to join him, but I have found nothing more about this, other than Takatoka (that War Chief I just mentioned)died in Kaskaskia, Illinois on a return journey after visiting those tribes. I’ll try and find that link.
This was in the 1820s. Robert Conley (well known Cherokee author of historical fiction) wrote in “Captain Dutch” that Tah-chee aka Captain William Dutch aka Tatsi aka Datsi became war chief of the Old Settlers after Takatoka died, and his first known wife was Osage.
If your ancestor was Cherokee, he was probably near Muscle Shoals Alabama before going to Missouri — that’s where Duwali was before going west in the 1790s. This was really Chickasaw land but many Cherokee and Creek passed through this area relatively unopposed, with a few efforts of the Chickasaw to keep them in line from time to time.
Vance
Dream of United Indian Land Dies with Chief
KASKASKIA, Illinois – We have learned that Cherokee Chief Ta-Kah-To-Kuh has died in this year 1827 in Kaskaskia, Illinois. His death marked the end of his dream to persuade Indian tribes from all over the United States to migrate to Arkansas and thus establish an Indian Nation within the Territory’s boundaries.
Chief Ta-Kah-To-Kuh believed that if he could convince all Indians in America to move to Arkansas, they could combine their forces to stop white expansion at the Mississippi River. Although he was considered among the Cherokee to have the most prestige among other tribes, the Osage Indians had always refused to join an alliance against the whites.
It is reported that at his death, Chief Ta-Kah-To-Kuh had in his possession wampum belts signifying the commitment of nearly twenty thousand Indians to migrate into the Arkansas Territory.
. . .
===================
the article continues with an anecdotal story of some missionary trying to convince Takatoka that the Earth was round and went around the sun.
It is possible some of these Indians from Ohio and Indiana and those regions DID go to settle in Missouri or Arkansas as a result of Takatoka’s efforts, I have never heard anything else about this except this one Arkansas article. And since they were invited by a Cherokee chief they might have felt it wise to “claim” to be “Cherokee” — a powerful tribe — rather than members of a smaller tribe.
Vance
Thomas,
A couple of Shawnee groups crossed the Mississippi to MO rather than continue fighting the the wars in Ohio. However, I am not sure if they moved that far west. They settled around New Madrid. But Boone was known to entertain visiting Shawnee after he went to MO. Wasn’t he a little farther west?
Techteach
Vance,
I knew the mounds on the homestead would plow up some rocks. As far as I know, no archaeologists have ever examined the site. It is way off the beaten path. I doubt if any know about it. I know the campsites predate my family arriving 200 plus years ago.
As far as my Cherokee account, I disclaimed earlier that this was not verifiable. I believe the justification for being in MO too early may be just that ie intermarriage talk being the ticket to legitimate being where they weren’t supposed to be. However, if there is any truth to the intermarriage Cherokee story prior to the Osage ancestor, my family was in that part of MO that early as one family of pioneers or a small group and not a part of any official people group Cherokee or otherwise. There is no family story to the contrary.
The Osage and Cherokee lore are probably just unsubstantiatable after all these years. As a family, we are comfortable Andrew McKinney married a local woman, according to family history Osage, the family history there is very matter of fact. Of course, the Cherokee account is much more dubious and of course everyone has a Cherokee ancestor, right?
Which brings us back to my Corn line from VA. Since I now know that Corn was one of the few Saponi surnames from way back, we may have finally a verifiable and documentable Native Pedigree. As soon as I get a little time I will post the begats on this site and see if anyone matches. I may start a new thread entitled “Corn surname” so more people with info see the thread. It is more descriptive.
TDG
In the absense of proof you can still dig up circumstantial evidence.
I firmly believe that in Missouri, like Kentucky, many people with a story of a Cherokee ancestor really might have an “Indian” ancestor, but perhaps from another tribe. Knowing who was and who was not Cherokee is a great help in understanding history.
There are arguments pro/con for telling archaeologists about the site.
Pro –they document history, and they are objective.
Con — they might destory the historic site and sometimes desecrate graveyards.
Maybe first try writing the Osage Tribe themselves —
go here
Click on “side menu”, click on “tribal museum”, and there is a phone number for the museum listed. Tell them what you have told us about the campground and mounds, and as much as the rest as you want. Who knows, when you mention your S. Mo. family surname they might already know who you are talking about.
I’d wager that they’ll be very interested in the campgrounds and very grateful that you chose to contact them. I think you have an obligation to them, to contact them.
Quapaw might have also been in that region, but I think they were more than likely to the south. I might be wrong.
Thanks.
Vance Hawkins
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