Approximate to the Truth- Berry P. Pool, c. 1792- 1847

James F Poole

“When you follow two separate chains of thought, Watson, you will find some point of intersection which should approximate to the truth”
– Sherlock Holmes, “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax”, Sir  A. Conan Doyle

Berry Pool of Laurens County, South Carolina is well documented as my 2nd great grandfather.  The paper trail from me to him is littered with enough primary evidence to satisfy even the most scrupulous of modern genealogists.

And the pedigree of a man who signed his name “Seth Petty Pool” and who settled in Laurens County, South Carolina circa 1785 has been well established by multiple researchers of the American Pettypool family.

But the “point of intersection” of those two “chains of thought” is a deceptively simple question:  Is Berry Pool the son of Seth Petty Pool? Continue reading “Approximate to the Truth- Berry P. Pool, c. 1792- 1847” →

…a past in which mules were central…

James F Poole

“… many people do not know how different the South used to be. In the case of the South, there are things to be proudly held up for praise, and there are things that we wish could be hidden. Both are integral components of a past in which mules were central.” Ellenburg, Mule South to Tractor South, p. 5.1

If you are tracing your family in the American South, you are almost certain to uncover some connection to the cotton economy. Regardless of how close or distant the ancestral connection may have been, the production of cotton fiber was so central to the economy and culture of the region that every family was touched in some way. And no other image is so closely related to cotton than that of the mule, with “its neck bobbing limber… lifeless ears and its half-closed eyes drowsing… apparently asleep with the monotony of its own motion.”2 Continue reading “…a past in which mules were central…” →

A Family Legend and a Legendary Family- Part Two

James F Poole

Mr. Workman Speculates on the Poole’s of Laurens County in 1914

Part Two

Part 1 of this article began a discussion of an account of the early Poole family in Laurens County SC which was published in The Laurens Advertiser on May 20, 1914. It was a reprint of an article that T. M. Workman published earlier in The Thornwell Messenger.

In those days more than one hundred years ago a man named Poole, I think it was William Poole, settled on this little stream. He had married a Miss Petty, I suppose for I find at Laurens in old papers written more than a hundred years ago that his sons were named William Petty Poole, Seth Petty Poole, George Petty Poole, and so on down. It was the fashion of that time to give a boy his mother’s maiden name for a second name.

Mr. Workman thus plunges bravely into one of the more obscure times in the Laurens County Pettypool family, and along the way falls into a common trap for unwary genealogists. Continue reading “A Family Legend and a Legendary Family- Part Two” →

A Family Legend and a Legendary Family

James F Poole

Mr. Workman Speculates on the Poole’s of Laurens County in 1914

Part One

In my search thus far, I’ve found two historical accounts of how my Pool family came to reside in Laurens County, SC. The most well known, and complete, is that of Bessie Poole Lamb and Mary Mack Poole Ezell from 1931. I’ve written about this book in The Arrival of the Scuffletown Pool Family in Laurens County, South Carolina and at the Pettypool Family in America website.

A second account was published in The Laurens Advertiser on May 20, 1914, when the paper reprinted an article that T. M. Workman had published earlier in The Thornwell Messenger. The context of the article was early corn mills in Laurens County, and Mr. Workman opens his article with the assertion that:

The first corn mill ever put up in the bounds of the present county of Laurens, S. C., might have been the mill on Enoree river owned by Edward Musgrove. But there was another one higher up on a little stream called Buckhead that flows into Enoree river that had some claim of being one of the first corn mills of Laurens county. Continue reading “A Family Legend and a Legendary Family” →

The Arrival of the Scuffletown Pool Family in Laurens County, South Carolina

James F Poole

History vs. Family Legend

Shortly after I began my research into the Pool family of Laurens County, South Carolina, I encountered a book published in 1931 by Bessie Poole Lamb and Mary- Mack Poole Ezell entitled A Genealogical History of the Poole, Langston, Mason Families and Kindred Lines of Upper South Carolina. Their account of the origins of the Poole family in Laurens County is as follows:

Migrating from Westmoreland County, England about 1784 three Poole brothers: (I) Seth Petty, (I) William, and (I) John, came to America. William Poole settled in Maryland, and called his place Pooleville. (This is probably the present Pooleville, Md.) Seth and John Poole settled near Orange Court House, Virginia. Later they moved to South Carolina. John settled two miles north of Mountain Shoals (now Enoree, SC.) He married there, then moved near Duncan, S. C., on Middle Tiger River. Later he migrated to Mississippi. He had one son, Thomas, who was a physician.

These three brothers had two sisters one of whom, Elizabeth, married a Terry and lived between Enoree and Woodruff at the old Terry place… The second sister married and lived in Chester County, South Carolina. She had no descendants. (Page 1)

By the time I found this account, I was aware that the Scuffletown1 Pool’s were really Pettypool’s, and that by 1784 the family had been in North America for about 130 years. And the point of departure from England was the Tower Hamlets of London’s East End, not Westmoreland county in the far north-east of England.2  In addition, those with some experience in genealogy and family history will recognize the “three brothers myth” so prevalent in early 20th century genealogy.3   So, I dismissed Bessie Lamb’s account of the origins, and just used her information about the later family as a guide to my own research. Continue reading “The Arrival of the Scuffletown Pool Family in Laurens County, South Carolina” →

  1. Scuffletown P.O. is shown on the 1825 Mill’s Atlas of SC.  It became the name of one of the historical townships of Laurens County SC. ↩
  2. See The William Pettypool Family of Southside Virginia: Lineage Reconstruction Based on Current Review of Evidence by Carolyn S. Hartsough, available from The Pettypool Family in America website, www.pettypool.com. ↩
  3. A web search with the phrase “three brothers genealogy myth” will find several articles on the myth  (as well as a few respondents who insist that their family really did have three brothers.) ↩