In The Dixon Valley: Its First 250 Years (1991), T. Triplett Russell and John K. Gott suggested that John Morgan Harris’s maternal grandparents were first cousins.

 

I address this in a footnote on page 90 of The King of Sandon: “Because both Sarah and her husband came from Smith families, Russell and Gott … speculated that the couple may have been first cousins, but this appears to be in error.”

 

Here is how Russell and Gott got it wrong.

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Willis Golder and Sarah (Sally) Smith were Johnny’s grandparents. Willis Golder’s father was Joseph Smith. Sally’s father was John Winn Smith. This much everyone agrees on. 

 

Then we get into some speculation. On p. 105 of their book, Gott and Russell wrote: “Captain Joseph Smith was … very probably a brother of John Winn Smith (1745-1811) of Fredericksburg. Identical names were carried down in both families and there were several intermarriages among their descendants.”

 

This was based on something Russell wrote in a letter to Gott on June 3, 1978, which is held by the Fauquier Heritage and Preservation Foundation:

 

Capt. Joseph was, I am nearly certain, the father of Willis Golder Smith and the brother of John Winn Smith (1745-1811). They were sons of _____ Smith (ca. 1720-?) and his wife _____ Golder, who lived near Fredericksburg. Hence the name Golder appears in both families … Willis Golder Smith (1777-1820), married, 1805, his first cousin Sarah (Sally) Smith (b: 1779).

 

I accepted Russell’s explanation uncritically and included a line in the draft to The King of Sandon suggesting Willis Golder Smith and Sally Smith were cousins. However, Russell admitted (in reference to this and other Smith family matters): “There is some guesswork in the above. Tell me where I guessed wrong!”

 

In creating the family trees that accompany The King of Sandon, Nathan Vyklicky examined genealogical data that wasn’t readily available to Gott and Russell. He discovered they were looking at the wrong Capt. Joseph Smith from Fauquier County. “It looks like there were actually a bunch of them kicking around there back then,” Vyklicky said in an e-mail to me. “The one who was Willis Golder Smith’s dad was apparently born around 1760 — and his list of siblings DOESN’T include a match for his alleged brother, John Winn/Wynn Smith (1745-1811).”

 

Russell’s belief that Capt. Joseph Smith and John Winn Smith were the sons of a woman whose maiden name was Golder rested on shaky ground. Online family trees don’t list either of the men’s mothers as a Golder. John Winn’s mother was a Chew (a British name among the founding families of Virginia) while Captain Joseph’s mother was a Marshall. In fact, it was John Winn Smith’s mother-in-law who was a Goulder.

 

So the name Golder entered Johnny’s family in other ways, and a plank in the argument that Joseph Smith and John Winn Smith were brothers disappears. As Vyklicky notes: “There were so many Smiths in the area, a totally separate John Winn Smith once had to change his name just so a woman who didn’t want such a common name would agree to marry him!”

 

To be extra sure, we spent some more time looking into the family trees of Joseph Smith and John Winn Smith, only to reach the same conclusion: they weren’t brothers and therefore Johnny’s grandparents weren’t cousins.