Bennett Solomon Jr.

Bennett Solomon Jr. was born in Montgomery County, North Carolina about 1797. In the old land records of Montgomery County, North Carolina, the Bennett Solomon who was a chain carrier in the late 18-teens and 1820's, in conjunction with a number of Carter's, was not Rev. Bennett Solomon, husband of Ava McGregor and co-founder of the Pee Dee Primitive Baptist Association, but would have had to have been this Bennett, as the elder Bennett passed away about 1818.

Rev. Bennett Solomon inspired so many 'spin-offs', a son, grandsons and nephews, it's difficult to keep them straight. This Bennett Solomon, whom I refer to Bennett Solomon, Jr., is actually the oldest of all the spin-offs, and he wasn't a son of Bennett Sr. I believe, instead, that he was a nephew. 

The reasoning behind my theory is the variance in the DNA I share with descendants of another, younger, Bennett Solomon and the amount of DNA I share with descendants of this Bennett and the others.  The Bennett Solomon who married Anna Carlyle Morton and moved from Warren County, Tennessee to Benton County, Missouri, by virtue of a number of facts, must have been, no, had to have been, the son of Bennett Solomon, Sr. 

First of all, the children of Bennett Sr. and Ava McGregor Solomon gave their children McGregor names. The other Solomons were Not McGregor's. Bennett (1812) and Anna Morton had a daughter named Avy and a son named Willis. Those were McGregor names. Second, is the greater amount of DNA. Not only is this a closer generational match, sharing 4th Great Grandparents instead of 5th, I believe that I am probably related to Anna Morton Solomon, separate and apart from her husband.

Bennett Solomon, Jr married Nora Elizabeth Parker, supposedly the daughter of an Eldridge Parker. From my own digging, I would bet more that she was a daughter of a John Parker, and maybe Eldridge Parker was a close relative. The Eldridge Parker  who lived  in Montgomery/ Stanly County was not  her father. Things don't match up concertedly for me. His wife also had Montgomery/ Stanly County roots, but I don't have Parker heritage. Their children also had Solomon and Parker names, not McGregor names. They were not McGregors.

The first records in Montgomery County, NC, that I know would have had to have been Bennett, Jr., was one in October of 1818.

Will Stone sold to George Crowell a 50 acres tract of land that joined the properties of John Kirk and James Watkins on the southwest side of the Yadkin River that started at a Spanish Oak on John Kirk's corner east of a small branch and joined the properties of Samuel Carter and Bennett Solomon. William Crowell and BennettSolomon were chain carriers. 

Did this land belong to Bennett Solomon the elder or younger? This was the year Rev. Bennett Solomon passed away. Chain carriers were usually young men and teens. Bennett Jr. would have been 21, prime suspect to have been the chain carrier.

This second deed was without a doubt Bennett the younger. Rev. Bennett Solomon was deceased and his son, Bennett II (not jr.), would have been a small child. 

Duncan McRae sold to John Parker (see the Parker association?) , 18 acres that joined property he already owned (ie), 'his own line' . It began at Bennett Solomon's corner red oak in his own line, David Kendall and Newton Howell were chain carriers. This transaction was dated January 1, 1821.

So, from looking above, we see that Bennett Solomon Jr. lived on property adjoining that of Samuel Carter and John Parker. 

In looking through the old court records of Cabarrus County, I've seen names of those folks whom I know lived on the Stanly County side of old Montgomery County, and in Anson County as well, taking their cases up in the courts of Cabarrus. It may have been because crossing the Pee Dee was so treacherous. It required a boat or ferry, while the much smaller Rocky River, between Anson and Montgomery, could often be safely forded in several places. 

On Wednesday, October 17, 1821, Bennett Solomon Jr. was ordered to court in Cabarrus County where he posted a $200 bond in a Bastardy Bond case, for the charge of "begetting a base-born child on the body of Elizabeth Carter".

I have not discovered exactly who Elizabeth Carter was, but it would be a logical bet that she was the daughter of one of the Carters who lived near Bennett in Montgomery County. Likewise with Nora Elizabeth Parker, whom he would marry soon after this. She was, in all probability, related to his neighbor, John Parker.

John Parker would marry Vashti Calloway, the aunt of my 4th Great Grandmother, Vashita "Vashti" Calloway, who married Rev. Samuel Parsons Morton. If one has been following my posts of late, there is that name again. Samuel P. Morton was a Baptist Minister, like Rev. Bennett Solomon. Isaac Calloway had, on several occations, accompanied both Bennett, and his father-in-law, Rev. William McGregor, to the bi-yearly meetings of the Sandy Creek Baptist Association. Rev. Morton had attended The Mouth of the Uwharrie Baptist Church, as did the Solomons and the Calloways. Samuel P. Morton married Vashti Calloway. John Parker married Vashti Calloway, the aunt the younger Vashti had obviously been named for. Bennett Solomon Jr. married Nora Parker. Bennett Solomon II, his cousin, married Anna Morton. Both younger Bennetts end up in Warren County, Tennesee. So many connections and coincidences? It's like a web of relationships. 

To further pave this path, while researching the heritage of my ancestor, Samuel P. Morton, I came across a Stephen Morton, who had migrated to Williamson County, Tennesee. Stephen is found in the 1810 census of Montgomery County among the "River Mortons" as opposed to the "West Stanly" Mortons. He may have been an Uncle of  Samuel P. Morton, who had a son or brother named Stephen Ferdinand Morton. We know from an early biography of Rev. Samuel P. Morton, that his father had died when Sammy was a very young man, maybe not even a man yet, and Sammy took over the care of his younger siblings. From this information, it can be accepted that some of the people in the 1830 census in Sammy's house, who would have been 25, were his siblings, so therefore, his father died before 1830. The James Morton whom everyone claims as his father was still living in 1830 and living near him. So is a Will Morton and a John Morton, who are in the same age group as Sammy. James  Morton is a generation ahead, and Stephen Morton was his neighbor before leaving for Tennesee. 

The three Solomon Brothers who migrated to Montgomery County, NC from Franklin County, NC had a fourth brother, a younger brother, named Jordan. Jordan was also a minister, and ended by in Lincoln County, Tennesee. Before Jordan ended up in Lincoln, where he would remain, he was first in Williamson, where he would marry. Stephen Morton and Jordan Solomon migrated to Williamson about the same time. It's possible that they traveled together. Had Jordon stayed in Montgomery for a little while before heading to Tennesee? It's entirely feasible. Something is telling me the connections are legitimate. 

Before he resettled in Tennesee, Bennett Jr. would remain in Montgomery County, NC for awhile. In the 1830 census, we see a man and a woman in their 30's with 7 children in the home, 5 boys and 2 girls, all under 9. What fun that must have been. 

By 1840, he has joined family, cousins and aunt, I believe, in Warren County, Tennesee. There are two Bennett's in Warren in 1840, one with a family of 4 and the other with a family of 9. Bennett Jr. would have been the older Bennett, with a family of 9. Still 5 sons and 2 daughters. As two of the sons were born after the 1830 census, there could have been two who were older and grown, or had passed away.

By 1850, Bennett has decided to join relatives, William Solomon III and wife Harty Bridges Solomon and Rev. Jordan Solomon and wife, Sarah, his uncles, in Lincoln County, Tennessee. 

Here, we see him living with his younger children and married daughter, Louisa Eliza Jane Solomon Brown. He's 53, working as a Carpenter, building houses. 

Nora had passed away probably aroun 1845 or 1846.

Bennett remarried to Clarinda Williams on February 7, 1847, in Lincoln County.  It must not have been a happy match.

Within months, Clarinda had ran off and left him. I wonder why? Was she a young girl who had been forced or coerced into marriage with an older man? Bennett would have been 50 at the time. I know nothing else about T. Clarinda Williams Solomon. There was a Clarinda Williams from Warren County, Tennesee, where Bennett had been,  who was buried in Cannon County, Tennesee, which is right next to Warren. That may or may not have been her. I do not know.

After the 1850 census, Bennett Solomon, Jr is no more. Some give his date of death as 1857, when he would have been about 57. I have not seen any evidence of a date or where he is buried. It could be correct as he has disappeared by 1860.

The chidren and possible children of Bennett Solomonn, Jr. are listed below. There seems to be a great deal of confusion between those of Bennett and his Uncle, Jordan Solomon, as they died in the same countyand neither left a will.

1)Henry (b 1815)  Henry earns a closer look of his own. While an 18 year old can certainly be the father of a child, to the dismay of many a teenaged girl, I have a tendancy, and solid reasons, to believe that Henry was actually Bennett's brother, not his son. As there was no Will, it gets confusing.

      

William is often seen as William Bennett, for no reason, apparently. Now, he did have a son named William Bennett, and that would make sense, but in no single record shows him as anything but William, which makes sense, as he had a younger brother named Bennett. So William was just William, not William Bennett. This famlies with their proliferation of names can make it difficult to keep them separate, so I can understand the confusion. William and his cousin, (1st cousin once removed), William Calvin Solomon, son of William III and Harty Bridges Solomon, was only one year younger, and they ended up living in the same county for several decades.Thank goodness he is seen with his middle intial or went by Calvin.Otherwise, the wives have to be used for clarity.There was William who married Sarah and William who married Dorinda.

William came of age after his faily moved to Warren County, Tennesee and there married Dorinda Blackwell.

Dorinda was the daughter of Pleasant Blackwell and Margarer Abercrombie Blackwell. Pleasant was born in Virginia. The family was in Rowan County, NC for awhile, and related to people there, but arrived in Warren County fairly early, by 1820.

Pleasant did all of the things one would want an ancestor to do, buy land, live a long time, leave records, leave a will, and garner an obituary. Can't say that for all of the Solomons.

William and Dorinda are in Lincoln county, Tennesee during the 1850-1870 census and raised a large family of 10 children. William worked a an Overseer before purchasing his own farm.

Sometime before 1880, they moved their large brood to Giles County, Tennesee, just west of Lincoln. William died there sometime after 1880.

Dorinda, being 12 years his junior, born in 1828, and yes, she was excruciatingly young went the married, barely 13, outlived William and made the jounrney into the 20th century and to Johnson County, Texas, where she died and where she was living with her son, Pleasant Riley Solmon in 1900.

William and Dorinda's 10 children were: 1844 Mary Ann , 1845 Minerva, 1849 Elizabeth, 1851 Martha Caldonia, 1853 William Bennett 1856 Richard 1860 James Carrolll, 1861 John Franklin 1864 Emily, 1866 Pleasant Riley. 

Eldridge Parker Solomon was a merchant and grocer in both Fayetteville and Mulberry, Lincoln County, NC. He fought in the Civil War and escpaed with minor injuries, surviving until a respectible age.  He attained the rank of Sergeant in the Nnith Battalion Sharp Shooters. Before the War, he had removed to Indiana for  an education and worked as a machinist.

Eldridge married Miss Mary "Mollie" Elmore on Octover 8, 1867, in Lincoln County, Tennessee. She was the daughter of Thomas Marshall and Martha Ann Caldwell Elmore.

Eldridge and Mollie raised seven successful children :

A) Eldridge Elmore Solomon (1869-1917)

B) James Thomas Solomon (1871-1955)

C) Charles McLaughlin Solomon (1874-1931)

D) Martha Earl "Mattie" Solomon (1876-1953)

E) Annie Pearl Solomon (1877-1925)

F) Alice May Solomon (1879-1973)

G Mary Glenn "Rosa" Solomon (1882-1945)

4) Mary Ann Solomon (bon abt 1822 Montgomery County, NC, died between July and December, 1880). Mary Ann married Richard Blackwell,  the brother of William's wife, Dorinda, in Warren County, Tennesee in 1841. By 1850, they had migrated to Smith County, Texas. Within another 10 years, they had moved to Denton County, Texas and eventually, they would settle in Wise County, Texas, right next to Denton.

Richard and Mary Ann seemed to be a simple farm family. Neither of them lived to be very old. They died in Wise County , Texas, Richard at about 47 and Mary Ann at about 57.

They raised 10 children, the youngest of which were still minors at their death. As William and Dorinda and Richard and Mary Ann,  were two sets of siblings who married two sets of siblings, some of the children carried the same names, except this bunch were Blackwells.

A) Amira "Myra" Blackwell Birdwell (1842-1906)

B) Evelina Blackwell (1844-1870) Died as a young woman, unmarried.

C) Elmore Blackwell (1846-1933)

D) Eliza J. Blackwell (1848-1916)

E) Erwin/Irwin Blackwell (1854 -1898)

F) John Calvin Blackwell (1857-1937)

G) Richard Blackwell Jr. (1859-1898)

H) Pleasant Blackwell III (1861-1951)

I) William Grant Blackwell (1866- 1926)

J) Ernest Richard Blackwell (1869-1938) Los Angeles

5) Elizabeth D. Solomon (1825-1919) Elizabeth D. Solomon is a possible daugther of  Bennett and Nora.

Otherwise, she could have been a daughter of Bennett Jr.s uncle. Jordan Solomon. There are two coincidences with Elizabeth. First, she married Edward A. Brown on June 6, 1844 in Lincoln County, Tennesee, by Justice of the Peace, Thomas Hamilton. On the same day, Lena Harriett Walker Solomon, young widow of Jordan Solomon, remarried to Alexander Jackson Helms, also by  Thomas Hamilton, JP. So, it could have been a double wedding between a step-daughter and step-mother. 

Another fact that points towards Jordan being her most  likely father is that she is shown as being born in Tennesee. Jordan was in Tennesee in 1825. Bennett was in North Carolina.

However, Louisa Eliza Solomon, just a year younger than Elizabeth D. Solomon, who is a definate daughter of Bennet, Jr. and is living with him in 1850, married John N. Brown, just four years later. Ther Browns were also from North Carolina. So did we have two siblings marrying two siblings again? Hopefully more research into Elizabeth and Edward will reveal more clues. 

6) Evelena Solomon. I've added Evelena simply because I've found her in several family trees, but I know she was not a daughter of Bennett. Not only is that too many daughters , she was much older than his other daughters, and she was definately the daughter of Jordan. Jordan, like Goodwin, had two wives aof two different ages. 

7) Louisa Eliza Jane Solomon was definately the daughter of Bennett and Nora. She is living with Bennett in 1850, with her husband, John and first born son. She was born in 1828 in Montgomery County, North Carolina and died just before March 30, 1901, in Clinton County, Kentucky.

Eliza married John N. Brown on Sept. 7, 1848 in Lincoln County, Tennessee. In 1850, they were living with Bennett Solomom in Lincoln County and their first child had been born.

By 1860, they had moved to the community of Commerce, in Scott County, Missouri and a nomadic lifestyle was showing. While the first three of their 4 little boys had been born in Tennesee, three year old John had been born in Kentucky. Now, the were in Misouri and father, John, was working as farm labor.

Missouri was a hot bed state during the Civil War. It was truly the land of brother finghting brother. John and Eliza would have one last child, and only daughter in 1862.  John N. Brown died on April 14, 1863 in Scott County, Missouri. The circumstances of his death remain a little shady. I can not find that he enlisted in service, but he was in the right age range. There were both Confederate and Union factions in Missouri in those years. He was in a dangerous place in a dangerous time. He was possibly murdered by Guerilla bands.

Eliza and the children would flee back to Kentucky, perhaps to friends and associates they had met while there previously. I've not connected her to any family in Fulton County.

The 1870 census shows Eliza wtih 200 dollars in personal property, sons William and James being born in Tennessee, son John in Kentucky, and daughter ,Mary in Missouri.  The two older sons, now 21 and 18, were certainly old enough to help support the family. 

Eliza would remain in Kentucky another 3 decades until her death in 1901. She left a simple will and small estate. Her five  children were:

A) William Calvin Brown (1850-1910)

B) James henry "Jim" Brown (1852- 1936)

C) Frankin P. Brown (1854- before 1870)

D) John Wesley Brown (1858-1924)

E) Mary Ann Brown Smith (1862-1936) She would return to Lincoln County, Tennesee to marry and then reside in Alabama.

Fulton County is located in the very southwestern tippy toe end of Kentucky. Cayce's Station was a little railroad crossroads community whose claim to fame was legendary railway engineer, John Luther 'Casey' Jones, nicknamed for his hometown. Today, it's a very small rural community.

8) James Washington Solomon was born on Jul;y 16, 1830 in Montgomery County, North Carolina and died on  July 29, 1905 in Kelso, Lincoln County, Tennesee. He is in the 1850 census with his father, Bennett. He married Mary Taylor on February 13, 1851. She was the daughter of John Alexander Taylor and wife, Elizabeth 'Betty' E. Stubblefield.

Jim and Betty lived  the life of a simple farm family in Mulberry, Lincoln County, and raised their large family of 11 children there.

A) Rhoda Elizabeth Solomon Stubblefield (1850-1930).

B) George Washington Solomon (1853-1899).

C) Malinda A. Solomon (1854- ?)

D) Hulda A. Solomon Webb (1856-1936)

E) Rufus Alexander Solomon (1957-1903)

F) John Bennett Solomon (1858-1894)

G) Sarah Lavina Solomon (1861-1862)

H) James Young Solomon (1863-1935)

I) Mary Angeline Solomon Stubblefield (1865-1905)

J) Emma Eglentine Solomon Ward (1869-1848)

K) Anne Lou Dora Solomon Franklin (1872-1911)

James Solomon served in the Civil War and also deserted. He and Mary are buried at the Kelso Cemetery with most of their children. He left a will, probated in 1905. His children heavily married back into the Stubblefield family, the family of their maternal grandmother. 

9) Willis Calvin Solmon was born September 28, 1832. More research needed. May have married a Rosa Harris.

10) Bennett Sanford Solomon Sr. was born on August 26, 1835 in McMinnville, Warren County, Tennessee and died on July 9, 1918. 

He first married Nancy P Stubblefield on July 24, 1856. She was the daughter of Allen Stubblefield and Mabel Lavina Taylor. Bennett and Nancy would have two children, Sarah, born in 1857 and died in September 1858, and James born in 1859. Both Nancy and little James would die in 1863 while Bennett was away fighting in the Civil War.

Bennett would remarry on May 20,  1864 , to Mary Renegar, daughter of David Renegar and wife, Elizabeth Tucker.

Bennett Sanford Solomon and his family were long-standing members of the Mulberry Community and the Methodist Church. He and Mary would be buried in the Mulberry Cemetery, Lincoln County, Tennessee.  Bennett died on July 9, 1918. He had a death certificate and named Bennett as his father. Mary Elizabeth Tucker -Renegar would follow him to the grave in 1923. 

Their nine children were.

A) Bennett Sanford Solomon Jr. (1865-1936).

B) John H. Solomon (1870- aft 1940)

C) Frank Manson Solomon ( 1871-1925)

D) Lula Solomon Hazelwood (1874-1898).

E) Collins Bright Solomon (1876-1947).

F) Anna E. Solomon Mansfield (1878-1965).

G) Mary Abbie Solomon (1883-1909).

H) Emma Morgan Solomon Baker (1889-1970).

So Bennett Solomon Jr. wasn't the son of Bennett Sr.. Neither was he the son of William Solomon III. So, who does that leave? Why, only Goodwin. Goodwin was not only the oldest of the three Solomon brothers who migrated to Montgomery County, North Carolina, he also was the one who lived there the longest.

Bennett Solomon Jr ended up moving to Lincoln County, Tennessee, where William III and Jordan lived, yet, neither was he a son of Jordan. First, Jordan was younger than the other three, and not only that, he had his own son named Bennett. Yes, another Bennett. 

The unraveling continues.