Re: William Walter Beavers, b.1755 - Additional Descendant Information
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Re: William Walter Beavers, b.1755 - Additional Descendant Information
Dianne Nolen 6/30/09
I just thought I would fill-in-the-blanks on the distaff side.By the way, from what I've been able to discover over the Web, it's probably "Rhea" (which was a fairly common surname in far Eastern Tennessee in about 1800), although I've also come across a Braden's Hollow in Giles County, Tennessee (on the North Carolina border). Moreover, googling around, I've found a good many marriages between Rheas and Bradens, and given the surnames in question, if I were to make a semi-educated guess, Elizabeth Braden's parents were most probably William Braden and Elizabeth Rhea since then they would adhere to traditional Scottish/Scots-Irish naming practices which some of their descendants followed with little variation into the early part of the 20th-century (at least in Texas):
1) The oldest son is named after the mother's dad; for example, William Braden was the name of Josiah Allen and Elizabeth Beavers' oldest son.
2) Often times, a girl's middle name is her mother's maiden name; "Rhea" is Martha Beaver McDonald's middle name, for example.
If I come up with anything definite, I'll fill you in on my findings.At any rate, "Braden" is apparently the Gaelic translation of "salmon", and "Rhea" is Gaelic for "red-headed". Both families lived in an area of Tennessee and North Carolina that was known as "Little Ireland" at the turn of the 19th century.One source seems to indicate that the Rheas changed their name from Campbell when they migrated from Scotland to Northern Ireland during the reign of Charles II.
Incidentally, I am very pleased to discover that William Walter Beavers was a private in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.
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Re: William Walter Beavers, b.1755 - Additional Descendant Information
Dianne Nolen 6/30/09