George Washington and Me
For 2024, I’m writing a series of blog posts I’m calling “Daughter of Presidents,” exploring my family tree connections to the Presidents of the United States. These posts will appear each Monday.
I used this chart in the introduction to this book, but I want to talk about it more specifically. When I first used it, I circled “John Lee” as the problematic link in this story; but I have come to realize that it is actually Mildred Lewis (#5 on this chart) who makes me question this lineage.
According to this chart, Mildred Lewis had a son, James Lewis. But when I researched Mildred Lewis, I saw that she married a man named Robert Hunter, and that there is no explanation for why her children would have the surname “Lewis” rather than “Hunter.” This is how the WikiTree profile shows Mildred’s family. Here’s the link to the WikiTree profile for Mildred if you’d like to take a look.
I can see two sets of children in this profile: seven named Lewis (including one “James Lewis”) and nine named Hunter, although Mildred was married only to Robert Hunter. I couldn’t find any information to explain this contradiction, so I used WikiTree’s “profile manager” feature to contact people who are in charge of this profile. Here’s who I emailed:
You can see that there are three profile managers for Mildred Lewis, and that it was last edited on December 1, 2023. This tells me that there is at least one active profile manager; I hope to hear from one of them soon to either answer my question about Mildred’s children or to change the profile information to reflect my questions. I’m not sure which will happen, but I decided to on ahead with this essay while I wait.
I can connect Mildren to the individuals that connect her to George Washington; her paternal grandmother was Elizabeth Warner, who lived at Warner Hall in Gloucester County, Virginia, in the early 18th century. Her sister was Mildred Warner, who married Lawrence Washington. Mildred and Lawrence had a son, Augustine Washington, who married Mary Ball. Augustine and Mary had several children, including George Washington, born in 1732. Here’s what this looks like.
There are more problems with this connection. See the language “wife of husband of 1st cousin 5x removed” under the first chart above? This refers to the fact that Nancy Bean (# 8 on the chart and the connection to the Lewis, Warner, and Washington families of George Washington) was married to John Doyle Lee (#9) as was Mary Workman (#10). Nancy was John’s second wife and Mary Ann (Polly) was his seventh wife. I wrote about this in the introduction, but I’m going to repeat it here:
Lee was born on September 6, 1812, in Kaskaskia, Illinois Territory, and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in 1838. He was a friend of Joseph Smith, founder of the church, and was the adopted son of Brigham Young under the early Latter Day Saint law of adoption doctrine. In 1839, Lee served as a missionary with his boyhood friend, Levi Stewart. Together they preached in Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. During this period Lee converted and baptized "Wild Bill" Hickman. Lee practiced plural marriage and had 19 wives (at least eleven of whom eventually left him) along with 56 children.
Wikipedia adds a bit more about John Doyle Lee: Lee was later convicted as a mass murderer for his complicity in the Mountain Meadows massacre, sentenced to death, and executed in 1877. You can read more about the Mountain Meadows massacre in its Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_Massacre
Geni.com, a site similar to WikiTree in some ways, has much more information about John Doyle Lee. You can look at his profile here. https://www.geni.com/people/John-Lee/6000000000836147633.
May (Polly) Workman’s father, John A. Workman, was among the people who converted to the Mormon faith in Overton County, Tennessee, in 1840. He and his wife, Lydia Bilyeu, soon moved to Nauvoo, Illinois, to join the Mormons who were moving there to join up with Brigham Young and Joseph Smith.
My connection to John Workman and Lydia Bilyeu is easier to trace: John is my 4th great-uncle; his brother, James, was my 3rd great-grandfather. I would like to show you this on a chart, but these families all had a whole bunch of children. Here’s what I mean:
My 5th great-grandfather, Abraham Workman, had 15 children
My 4th great-grandfather, Jacob Workman, had 13 children
My 3rd great-grandfather, Abraham Workman, had 10 children by two wives
My 2nd great-grandfather, James Workman, had 12 children by three wives
My great-grandfather, James Abraham Workman, had 16 children by two wives.
To make it even more difficult, these families included a preponderance of boys, and they tended to name them James, John, Abraham, and Jacob, so there are lot of men with the same name running around the country, from Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. It’s complicated – and that’s before you get to the polygamists among my LDS aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Here's the relevant part of my family tree. It takes us back to James Workman (top right).
Conclusion
I can prove my connection to Mary Workman (John Doyle Lee’s seventh wife) and thus to JDL, whose story is interesting whether I can go any further with it or not.
I can’t prove a connection between JDL and George Washington; the problem lies in the Lewis family of Virginia. George is definitely related to Mildred Lewis, but until I find out if James Lewis is actually the son of Mildred and her husband Robert Hunter, I can’t prove the connection to Nancy Bean, JDL’s second wife.
On Saturday, December 30, I received a response to my WikiTree question from one of the profile managers.
Here is the question I posted on the profile and in a private email to each of the profile managers: “Why do half of Mildred's children have the surname ‘Lewis?’ If her surname was ‘Lewis’ and the only husband mentioned is ‘Robert Hunter,’ then the surnames of her children should be ‘Hunter.’ This is important to me because I'm trying to trace her connection to John Doyle Lee (her purported descendant in the Lewis line), but the connection is through Mildred's son ‘James Lewis’ whose name I need to understand before I can prove this link.”
Here is her response (less than a day after I posed the question): “I saw that recently too. Sorry for the confusion. I am not really sure and I will correct the profile asap.”
So I guess I’ll have to strike George Washington from the list of presidents I’m related to. I’m not surprised – I think this kind of extended connection is always a little iffy. Particularly when it involves a guy who had 19 wives and 62 children. I expect that this is not the only time I’ll find that an expected link doesn’t survive scrutiny.
But the effort was still worthwhile – because WikiTree profile managers feel some responsibility for the accuracy of the information on the site, this particular problem will be resolved so that other researchers don’t fall into this trap. So that’s not a bad result.
I’m looking forward to later opportunities to look more into JDL’s story because he is my connection to five other presidents – both Harrisons (William Henry on Week 8 and Benjamin on Week 23), Andrew Jackson on Week 7, James K. Polk on Week 11, and Jimmy Carter (Week 39). It’s interesting that they are all from the South, and most likely connected to the LDS conversions that happened there in the 1830s or so. In exploring this part of my family tree, I’m also learning more about the Mormons in the 19th century.
That's ok. And I certainly understand what you're talking about. I have found "relatives" with the same husband and wife, right years, right location, but a completely different set of offspring. Very odd. Yet, we carry on. To the New Year!