A Brother for Henry
One of my biggest brick walls has been my husband’s ancestor, Henry Reynolds, c1778-1849. He appeared in KY shortly after it became a state, and the first official record we were sure belonged to him was his marriage to Nancy Sallee in 1808.
I found some references to a Henry Reynolds in indexes for tax rolls for Adair County and its predecessor county, Green, back as far as 1802 and maybe 1800, but couldn’t be sure it was the same man. The Reynolds Family Association provided information on a deed for Henry Reynolds buying property in 1804, but again, was it the right Henry? Or was it another Henry, who was probably the brother of a William Reynolds in the same area?
After almost a year tracing all of the living males from that Reynolds line in hopes of finding someone who would take a YDNA test, with no success, I gave up on that strategy. Encouraged by a webinar on using tax rolls from VA and KY, I started digging into recently available original tax rolls from Green and Adair counties. I also searched deeds for land purchases, using FamilySearch’s new full text search tool, although the multiple spellings for Reynolds made that a challenge. I made a spreadsheet of what I found about both Henry and William.
In the 1795 tax/tithe list for Green Co, there is a William Reynolds listed. He is shown as a male over 21, a landowner, with one other white male between 16-21 in the household and 2 blacks. Henry would have been 17 at the time if the 1778 birthdate is correct. William continues to show with the same household listing in 1796 and 1797. There is no existing tax roll for Green County in 1798. In 1799 William shows up without a younger male and without land (probably an error, based on general sloppiness of this roll!).
In 1800, Henry Reanales (Reynolds), 1 white male over 21 with no land, is listed on the line directly above William, who shows only 1 white male over 21 in his household. In 1801 Green County lists, the same Henry & William are shown. (After 1801, when Adair was split off from Green, there are no listings in Green County for William and/or Henry.)
In the 1802 tax/tithe list for Adair Co, both William Reynolds and Henry Reynolds are shown. As in Green County, this Henry was not a landowner and had no teen-aged men in the household or slaves. William was a landowner; he also had no teen-aged men or slaves in the household.
Given the fact that William had a teenaged male in his household for the same years that Henry would have been between 16-20, until 1799 or 1800, and that Henry then makes an appearance in the tax rolls in extremely close proximity to the listings for William, it seemed likely that they were related.
I then looked to see whether I could trace the land in the 1804 deed to “my” Henry. The seller was Joseph Miller, known by the RFA to have been an associate of William Reynolds and the group of settlers who came to KY together. There was no other Henry Reynolds in the county in 1804, so the buyer was almost certainly William’s brother Henry.
My Henry didn’t make a will, but searching for land records after his death, I found two in which land that he had owned was being sold by his heirs. In one of these deeds, his son James Henry Reynolds, my husband’s direct ancestor, purchased three plots of land from his siblings, who had evidently inherited them from Henry. The detailed description of one of the three lots matched, almost word for word, the description in the 1804 deed.
William’s brother Henry had bought this land in 1804; my Henry had owned it at his death and it was then acquired by his son James Henry. Therefore, William’s brother Henry was my husband’s ancestor Henry.
After talking with members of the Reynolds Family Association about this research, I sent out another message to the wife of a Reynolds descendant related to my husband. Her husband Robert took a YDNA test and the results are in – there is a close match between Robert and Joe Reynolds, who is the descendant of William. This confirms the connection between William and Henry.
Next Steps: We know what happened to both of the brothers, William and Henry. Although Henry stayed in KY, William moved to TN about 1805, where he raised his family, including a son named Henry. The hunt for parents for William and Henry continues.