Merry Christmas! Our 4th Great-Grandfather Rainey Found!

Pulaski County, Kentucky

When Pat Raney took the YDNA test over ten years ago to discover distant male Raney relatives, it revealed our family was not related to known descendants of the James Raney born in North Carolina, who served on the Carolina Line during the American Revolutionary War. Our James was not his son or grandson in that large family that established its roots in Pulaski County after abandoning their Revolutionary War bounty land in Tennessee. Whenever I ran across the 1810 and 1820 censuses for Pulaski County for James Raney/Rainey, I assumed they were that other North Carolina James or his son Aaron James. Boy, was I wrong.

DNA matches led me to the siblings of our 3rd great-grandfather James (b.1814). We have rather close matches (4th-6th cousins) to descendants of William Rainey (1805 KY or NC - 1885 Sumner Co, TN); Susan C. Rainey (1815 KY - 1904 Searcy Co., AR), who married Robert Parsley; John C. Rainey (1817 KY - 1880 Wilson Co., TN). Their descendants on Ancestry don't appear to recognize that these people were siblings or know who their parents were. Many think Susan C. Rainey was the daughter of a William Rainey of Gibson County, IN, but he was living up in Indiana when Susan married the Parsley boy, who never left Warren County, Tennessee, until they moved to Searcy County, Arkansas, to live with a son.

Warren County, Tennessee

Then I discovered Stephen Rainey (c1800 NC - death unknown), who married Delilia Dunn in 1825 in Pulaski County, with a James Rainey as a witness. Our 3rd great-grandfather James Rainey was still too young to be a witness. I knew Stephen didn't belong to the other Rainey/Raney families, so I looked again at the census records for 1820 Pulaski County for James Rainey. His age didn't help because it states "over 45." But then I noted no wife was listed. This man was a widower. I knew Revolutionary War James Raney was survived by his wife, Lydia, and his son, Aaron James, was survived by his wife Polly. If Stephen Rainey married in 1825, where was Stephen living for the 1830 census?  There is no 1830 census in Pulaski County for James Rainey or Stephen Rainey. 

White County, Tennessee

I found Stephen and his father James, Sr., farming on adjacent land in White County, Tennessee, for the 1830 census.  Son William Rainey lived a few farms over.  Having married Elizabeth Lefever in White County, in 1828, William farmed near his new father-in-law, Andrew Lefever.  James Sr.'s age was listed as 50-59. A female 15-19 must have been daughter Susan C. Rainey, age 15, who married Robert Parsley in 1832 a few miles away in Warren County. A male 15-19 must have been our James, age 16. Also listed was a female, aged 30-39. Was this a new wife? I discovered that a James Rainey married Polly Drew in Pulaski County in 1821. If this woman was Polly Drew, she must have been a widow with a son.  Two males aged 10-14 were listed. One surely was son John C. Rainey (1817-1880), then age 13, who married Eveline Organ in 1838 in Wilson County, Tennessee, living there for the rest of his life. The other male of that age must have been the stepmother's son.

Wilson County, Tennessee

So, I now believe our 4th great-grandfather was James Rainey, Sr., born about 1774 in Virginia. He must have died in White County, Tennessee, before 1840 because he doesn't appear on a census after 1830.

If James Sr., sons Stephen, William, James, John and daughter Susan were in White County by 1830, how did our James end up marrying Millie Roberts back in Pulaski County in 1832?  I think he had family to return to. The 1810 Pulaski County census for James Rainey Sr. shows three males under 10 (William and 2 unknown males); one male 10-15 (Stephen); the parents; and two unknown females under 10. In the 1820 census there are three males between 16 and 25, and I can only account for Stephen; and a female 10-15 and one 16-25; and listings for the known children. So our James may have had married sisters; maybe even married brothers now claimed by descendants of the other Raney families.  James and Millie Roberts farmed on Buck Creek near Millie's father John Roberts, our 4th great-grandfather, for about 20 years, before moving with Roberts in-laws and other families to southern Indiana. I imagine leaving her old parents broke Millie's heart, but the land there was never really good farm land and they had a growing family to feed.

I'll go into more detail about our James Rainey's siblings, aunts and uncles, father James, Sr. and his putative family, putting some flesh on their bones as I do more research. To end this year, here's Auld Lang Syne in honor of our Scottish heritage. HERE