Sam Matteson

In a previous post I have contended that Thomas Spenser Dew married Elizabeth Atkinson of Burke County, Georgia in 1838, and was not married to Elizabeth Williams. But I feel it is insufficient only to deny the union with Elizabeth Williams. In doing so, I would be shirking my responsibility as a historian and genealogist, albeit even as an amateur. A complete accounting demands that we fully inquire into the marriage of Thomas “Due” and Elizabeth Williams. In other words, we must answer the question “Who married Elizabeth Williams in 1832?”

Among the several documents that have survived the ravages of time is a Granville County, North Carolina marriage bond sworn by Thomas Due (aka Dew) on 14 May 1832 in which he promises that there are no impediments to his marriage to Elizabeth Williams. As you will notice in the reproduction in figure 1, Thomas “Due” signed the document with his mark (X). Thus, we will designate this individual as Thomas (X) Dew/Due in our account. The fact that he signed with a mark is significant in that it suggests that Mr. Due (or Dew) was illiterate.

Also note that the co-signer is Anderson Bailey, a cousin of Penelope Bailey the widow of Redding Haswell (deceased about 1828) who married a Thomas Due in 1829, as documented by an earlier matrimonial bond co-signed by Penny’s elder brother William J. Bailey. Apparently she died before 1832, leaving Thomas with two orphaned step-children from her previous marriage.

Thus, it is likely that the Thomas Dew (aka Due) who married Penny Haswell nee Bailey and took responsibility for her two children as step father—namely, Helen and William—also married Elizabeth Williams after Penny’s death. Indeed, this Thomas joined Penny’s nephew in a legal suit in 1841 (Jeremiah Estes, who could sign his name) that disputed the will of her father John Bailey as having unjustly omitted any bequest to her orphaned children.

This Thomas seems to have made a life with Penny for a time. In fact, we find a Thomas Dew living in Beaver Dam, Granville County, N.C. with a wife and two children, viz. Penny, William, and Helen.

The Parallel Lives of the Two Thomases

Meanwhile, Thomas Spenser Dew the son of Zachariah Dew (my ancestor), who both resided near the county seat of Tarboro in Edgecombe County, N.C.—a county eighty-plus miles away from Thomas and Penny—appears in his father’s household, continuously from 1810 through 1830. In 1810 at age 2, the infant Thomas shows up along with a sister and his parents. Ten years later at age 12 he appears in the appropriate category, as do his sister and three new younger brothers, born in the interim. In 1830 at age 22 our Thomas is apparently still residing with father Zachariah in Edgecombe County while Thomas (X) Dew is simultaneously living under his own name with Penny in Granville County. But in 1840 Thomas Spenser Dew is absent from North Carolina and his father’s household, as is consistent with his testimony. Thomas (X) “Due” age 32  however, appears in the eighth year of his marriage to Betsy Dew Williams residing in Wake County, North Carolina along with three sons and one daughter under age 5 and one son and one daughters age five to 10. “Betsey” Williams Dew age 29 also appears in the 1840 Census in the female-20-to-30 category, as expected.

Recently a document has come to my attention that indirectly validates the new Wake County residence of the Thomas (X) Dew family. The School Census for Granville County, North Carolina in the mid-1840s lists among others, “Helon” in the household of William Bailey, who was the husband of Glaphrey Bailey, sister of Penny Baily Haswell Dew, Thomas’ first wife. Helen is listed as “Haswell” in household of William and Glafrey Bailey the 1850 Census for Beaver Dam, Granville County. William [Haswell] Dew Bailey, as he later chose to be called, was living with other relatives in another county. Moreover, Betsy Williams Dew’s younger siblings—children of George Williams, her father—are also enumerated in the Granville School census. However, there is no mention of the Dew children, a fact consistent with their residing in another county.

Therefore, we suspect that Thomas Spenser Dew, who—by his own account—departed for Georgia in late 1835, and thus does not appear in his father’s household in 1840 nor under his own name in 1840 in North Carolina, is not the husband of Elizabeth Williams.

Moreover, Thomas Spenser Dew was the church clerk of Little Buck Head Baptist Church in Burke County, Georgia in 1841 and does not appear to have missed any meetings.  What is more, he was quite literate and would not have permitted his name to have been misspelled “Due,” as it appears on the legal documents. Below are some samples of his distinctive signature from this period.

No documents indicate that Thomas (X) Dew/Due was a near relative to Thomas S. Dew back for several generations nor that their paths ever crossed. Nevertheless, extensive genealogical research has revealed two estimated recent common ancestors (ERSA) in Thomas Dew (1600-1660), Speaker of the House of Burgess and his wife Elizabeth Ann Bennett (1603-1667). This couple were the 5x great grandparents of Thomas S. Dew and 4x great grandparents of Thomas (X) Dew/Due. Thus, the two Thomases were 5^th cousins once removed. Each of their Dew family lines had diverged in the approximately two hundred years that they had dwelt in the colonies only to coincidentally settle as “Thomas Dew” and be born the same year (1808) about 88 miles apart in Tarboro, Edgecombe County, N.C. (Thomas S.) and Beaver Dam, Granville County, N.C. (Thomas X). Making matters even more obscure, the Dew cousins each married a woman named “Elizabeth” in 1838 and 1832, respectively. Genealogical confusion inevitably followed.

Tracking Elizabeth Dew

What is more, as of this writing, I have found 28 descendants of siblings of Elizabeth (Dew) Atkinson, as well as 12 descendants of her maternal first cousins who share the parents of Elizabeth’s grandmother Mary Ann Polly Shepard, and 41 descendants of her paternal first cousins who share the parents of her grandfather, Adam S. Brinson, all of whom are my DNA relatives. This forms a pool of eighty-one (81) 5^th cousins (sometimes 5^th cousin once removed) who are unique to Elizabeth Atkinson. Such a large data set makes for compelling genetic evidence that Elizabeth Atkinson Dew is indeed my 2x great grandmother. Therefore, it is likely that my ancestral “Elizabeth” was not Elizabeth Williams. Indeed, the two Thomas-Elizabeth Dew families lived parallel but disparate lives.

The decade of 1850 finds Thomas S. Dew, wife Elizabeth (Atkinson) Dew and his girls Sarah Ann, Ruth Ann, and Martha A. in Ozark, Dale County, Alabama while Thomas (X) “Due,” Elizabeth, and their seven boys and two girls appear in the census for Henderson County, Tennessee just east of Jackson. In about 1851 came further confirmation that the Thomas (X) Dew family had indeed left North Carolina in the form of a newspaper legal notice that “Thomas Dew and his wife Betsy” were defendants in a complaint brought by Betsy’s step-mother Elizabeth Henly Williams (as if we needed more confusion) against the estate of her late husband George Williams and his heirs. The advertisement stated that the Dews no longer resided in North Carolina and consequently the advertisement put them on notice of the complaint.

In 1860 Thomas S. Dew, Elizabeth and his now four girls appear in Eucheeanna, Walton County, Florida while Thomas (X), “Bitsie,” and their children had settled in Denmark, Madison County, Tennessee about ten miles southeast of Jackson. Thomas and Betsy lived out the remainder of their lives in the community where they are buried. My great great grandfather Reverend Dew on the other hand, after burying his dear Elizabeth, married his second wife Caroline Slay of Washington County, Florida whom he out-lived another decade before he ultimately settled in about 1842 in Houston County, Alabama near Dothan. There he lies buried, having died in 1899 at the age of nearly 91.

In an ironic twist, Thomas Spenser Dew’s 3x great granddaughter, my daughter, recently moved to Dyer County, Tennessee about ten miles from the grave of Thomas (X) Dew/Due and Betsy Williams Dew’s son Thomas Jefferson Dew.  In the photograph my daughter appears with her daughter. Thomas J. Dew is their 6^th cousin 4x and 5x times removed, respectively. The evidence is compelling that Lisa is the descendant of Thomas Spenser Dew and Elizabeth Atkinson Dew, not Thomas (X) Dew/Due and Elizabeth “Betsy” Williams Dew/Due.  Thus, we now can answer the question of who married Elizabeth Williams (1811-1873): the widowed husband of Penny Bailey Haswell, namely, Thomas Dew/Due (1808-1862) of Beaver Dam. Granville County, North Carolina, the son of Seth Dew and the father of Thomas Jefferson Dew (1847-1927).

Case closed.