Breaking down the brick wall: The Chavis Family

In my last post, I introduced my 6x great grandmother Rebecca Chavis. Now, I want to explain a bit more about how I discovered her. Buckle up because it’s a long, winding road! Hopefully, this post will show how you can 1) effectively research branches of your family tree from your own computer, and 2) rediscover details about your family tree branch that have been lost to time.

Mary Shafer leads to a brick wall

I stumbled on my Chavis heritage quite by accident. My search for them began with my 2x great grandmother, Mary E. Shafer, who was born in Kenton, Ohio in 1866 and died in Chicago in 1935. Luckily, Ohio and Illinois have great collections of digitized records available. I was able to find out her maiden name by finding a marriage record for her and my 2x great grandfather, Mercer Lee Fox, and further confirmed her family name through her death certificate. Mary’s father was listed as “James Shafer”.

Assumptions & mistakes build a bridge to nowhere

Since Mary was born in 1866, she should have been listed on both the 1870 and 1880 census in Hardin County or thereabouts with her father James Shafer. I found the family on the 1880 census but was unable to find any matching Shafers anywhere on the 1870 census. The only black people named Shaffer in the 1870 records were an 80-year-old man named Henry (hmmmm…) living with a much younger woman. But there were a couple of key details that stood out for me on the 1880 census: 1) James Shafer was born in Virginia and 2) his wife Harriet was born in Ohio. So, my assumptions were that James had been born a slave, but Harriet was born a free person of color.

Since Ohio records are the gift that keeps on giving, I also found a marriage record for James and Harriet! It shows that they married in 1875 in Ohio. Because this was after the 1870 census and after most of their children were born, I assumed this must have been because they had been enslaved. There are many instances of formerly enslaved couples not legally marrying until long after their children were born simple because they had not been allowed to do so by the people who enslaved them.

You can see that these two assumptions are contradictory because, while it makes sense that James could have been enslaved, Harriet being born in Ohio made it highly likely that she was never enslaved and therefore would not have been with James in Virginia before the Emancipation. But hey, I was a novice researcher and didn’t realize my reasoning was going in circles.  And this is where my certain information on them ended. James Shafer died in 1906, a couple of years before Ohio began issuing death certificates so I had no way to find any more info on him – like his parents’ names – before 1870. I hit the brick wall that genealogists dread!

A random search, big clues, back in the game!

Since I couldn’t find anything else on a black Shafer family in Ohio before 1870, I assumed there was no more to find. The trail went cold, so I set the branch of my family on the back burner for years. But just last year, on a whim I decided to comb through the Ohio Wills and Probate records database for any records pertaining to the Shaffers to see if I had overlooked anything. And I happened upon a completely unexpected record. A 1907 probate record for a spinster woman named Elizabeth Shafer that listed her surviving heirs.

She had no children, so the heirs included her surviving siblings and nieces and nephews. Among the heirs was a niece named Mary Fox. Remember above where I mentioned that my 2x great grandmother Mary Shafer married a man named Fox? This was her! This Elizabeth Shafer was my James Shafer’s sister! Which meant that I now had a whole list of new relatives that I could explore to learn more about this family! And one person listed proved to be my key to unlocking the past. In addition to her nieces and nephews, Elizabeth listed her surviving brother and sister — John H. Shafer and Sophia Kaiser.

Sophia — a key to the past

Since Sophia’s last name was listed as “Kaiser” and not Shafer, I knew she must have been married at some point. So, I went back to the Ohio marriage records and they didn’t let me down! Sure enough, I found Sophia’s 1886 marriage record to a Mr. Jerry Kaiser. But there was something I didn’t expect. Instead of the Sophia Shafer that I expected to find listed as the bride, the name written there was Sophia Chavis. This was the first time I’d seen the surname Chavis in any records for my Shafer family. Older records tend to have a lot of misspelled names because the subject themselves may not have known the spelling of their own name or the record keeper was just a bad speller. Which is why I initially figured this was just another instance of a name misspelled. But then another big clue presented itself which I knew couldn’t be a coincidence. I found an earlier marriage record for Sophia from 1860 in which she also gave her surname as Chavis!

Connecting all the dots

Finding Sophia’s marriage records was like opening pandora’s box. I started searching for the Shafer family using the Chavis name instead and their entire past revealed itself. First, I realized that the elderly black man named Henry Shafer that I’d found on the 1870 census was probably related to my James Shafer’s family after all. The younger woman that he was living with was named Elizabeth. Highly likely that this was the same Elizabeth from the probate record — James’ sister. Could the elderly Henry have been their father? One more Ohio record helped me connect the Shafer family dots — Sophia’s death certificate.

Ohio began issuing death certificates in 1908, after both James and Elizabeth Shafer’s deaths so there were no records for them that might have listed parent’s names. But, as you can see from the image, Sophia died in 1914 and was therefore issued a certificate. And it lists BOTH her parent’s names! Henry Shafer and Elizabeth Mallett. This proved that the elderly Henry Shafer from the 1870 census was their father and that their mother, Elizabeth, likely passed away before this census.

Although this was an exciting find, I still ran into the same brick wall – no Shafers on any records before 1870. So, I searched James, Elizabeth, Sophia, John and Henry with the last name Chavis instead and there they were!

From Mary back to Rebecca — 150 years free

First, I finally located the James Shaffer family on the 1870 census. They were indeed listed in Hardin Co, OH under the surname Chavis.

Although I know through Sophia’s 1860 marriage record that the Chavis family was in Ohio by 1860, to date, I still haven’t been able to locate any of them on the 1860 census. BUT, jumping back 20 years, I find the entire family (including the mother Elizabeth who was mentioned in Sophia’s death record) listed in the 1850 census as free people of color in Mecklenburg Co, Virginia. This was the record that bridged the heretofore untraceable Shaffers to the long history of the Chavises of southern Virginia.

The family is also enumerated on the 1840 census under “Henry Chavas”. Finally, an 1832 Virginia chancery suit brought against the administrator of the estate of James Chavis (Rebecca’s son!) named all of James’ children:

1. James, born abt 1777
2. Lydia, born abt1780
3. Jincy, born abt 1788
4. William born abt 1789
5. Thomas born abt 1791
6. Ann
7. Pleasant, born abt 1795
8. Ellison
9. Elizabeth
10. Henry, born abt 1798

A bound boy becomes a soldier

James Chavis, Henry’s father, is well documented through Paul Heinegg’s research. As I mentioned in my previous post, James was bound out as a child in Amelia county in 1753 and 1760 (in this order he is called the son of “Rebecca Chavis, free Negro”). But the most interesting detail about James is that he was a Revolutionary War soldier! He is listed on the 1778 rolls of the 2^nd Virginia State Regiment. He received land for his war service which is how he and his family ended up in Mecklenburg, Co. (Hmmm, maybe I should be a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution…)

There you have it! I blew up that brick wall that was stopping me for years with a little creative searching and thinking outside the box. And although the excellent info on this line in the Free African Americans book ends in 1850, my original research reconnects Henry Chavis and his family back into the larger narrative of the Chavis family and recovers them from being lost in time.

Mystery remains

Although I’m excited to have traced them this far, the obvious big mystery remains to be solved: why did the Chavis family change their name to Shaffer?? So far, all of my creative sleuthing powers have let me down on this one. Since all the people that were in on it are long gone, maybe I should write a historic novel about them and come up with my own answer! 😊