Trader ... Hughes - Cleanup

Here are a couple of websites we've visited in the past:

http://www.jeaniesgenealogy.com/2011/11/im-related-to-princess.html

http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=hughe...

https://plus.google.com/117590284221217375451/posts/3b6ggy3PvYn

Mary Elizabeth Davis is time traveling to be a child of people in the Trader Hughes, John Rice Hughes, and this Nicketti, at least as I read the notes in her profile.

Quoting for clarity -- "There is a possible argument ..."

I don't believe this would be a quick decision, and would rather go ahead and merge Capt. -Trader John Rice Hooe {fake} into the MP. If there are other Capt / Trader / John / Hughes that emerge from research, those trees can be made then. So I'm going ahead with the merge, it can be undone if need be.

I don't believe this would be a quick decision, and would rather go ahead and merge Capt. -Trader John Rice Hooe {fake} into the MP. If there are other Capt / Trader / John / Hughes that emerge from research, those trees can be made then. So I'm going ahead with the merge, it can be undone if need be.

Erica, merging John Rice Hughes and Trader Hughes prematurely has complicated some of the discussions that were needed.

For example, there was the problem that wives Elizabeth and Susanna might have been wrongly attributed to Trader Hughes who is only said to have had wife Niketti. And, the children attributed to Trader Hughes should perhaps have been reassigned to John Rice Hughes. Finally, there were suggestions about the ancestry of John Rice Hughes that would not apply to Trader Hughes if the two men are different.

In short, the merge has compounded the problems and foreclosed the discussions I anticipated having on this question.

Then I will undo merge and you will have the two. You need to explain though where you want the Capt Rice Hughes. He had been attached to Hooes, which I disagreed with; there's a discussion on that. The current configuration with the extra wives is how the tree was before. Shall I let the Capt float ?

Capt. -Trader John Rice Hooe {fake}

Mary Elizabeth Davis Now has two fathers.

Advise if you need disconnect.

Do not merge i think they are to different people would mess up family trees.

Thanks, Judy. This discussion is probably pointless now. The sweeping changes with all the merging and unmerging, have turned John Rice Hughes into John Rice, Any discussion about that profile has been disconnected, and former links to parents have been cut. We're looking at a new landscape. It will take some time to re-create something we work with.

OK. I created a new profile for Rice Hughes, of New Kent County. He's currently a "brother" of Trader Hughes but I plan to disconnect them as soon as I get them "set up".

Unless there is a strong objection, I plan to use Don Greene, Shawnee Heritage III (2014) to fill in preliminary information on the children.

Greene thinks Rice Hughes and Trader Hughes are the same, so this will be tricky.

It is clearly Rice Hughes who married Susanna and Elizabeth, and Trader Hughes who "married" Niketti. Greene thinks all of the children are children of Niketti but it's clear some of the children, maybe most, are children of Rice Hughes (and probably wife Susanna). For example, there is a son and grandson named Rice Hughes, and recurring pattern of the given name Robert.

If anyone has particular feedback please let me know.

I am so glad to see this getting tackled.

And I can't speak directly to the speculation as to Sir John Hughes as an ancestor, but I can say that this family must be descended from Welsh ancestors, since Rice -- Rhys, and Hughes -- Huw's.

the Hughes COULD be Anglo-Norman, but the Rice is a giveaway.

Trader ... Hughes is your first cousin 13 times removed's husband.
You
  → Winton
your father → Frances Inez Winton
his mother → Lurlia-(Lurlie) Angeline Reed
her mother → Thomas Indiamon Prater
her father → Elizabeth Louisa Prater
his mother → Edmond Silas Elkins
her father → Gabriel Elkins, I
his father → Nathaniel Elkins
his father → Ralph Elkins, I
his father → Mary Elkins
his mother → Christian Waugh
her mother → Christian Waddington / Martin
her mother → Ka Okee "Jane" Pettus
her mother → Pocahontas
her mother → "Matachanna" "Cleopatra" Powhatan, (Sister of Pochontas)
her sister → Nicketti "She Who Sweeps the Dew from the Flowers" Hughes (Powhatan)
her daughter → Trader ... Hughes
her husband

Agreed. It's odd that many different versions of the legend say an Englishman or a Scot. And one says Huguenot Hello??? Rice Hughes? The name screams Welsh from the mountaintops.

One thing I suggest we do now is shift all the children of Trader Hughes over to Rice Hughes. This is a necessary consequence of deciding to keep the two men separate.

The known children belong to Rice Hughes. except Mary Elizabeth (Hughes) Davis, who the earliest tradition specifically identifies as the daughter of Trader Hughes and Niketii.

The confusion over the children comes only from identifying Rice Hughes with Trader Hughes. If they're not the same, then the children go with Rice.

This might be painful for some users. It means that most people who currently show a line to Niketti will lose it.

I will be just fine, believe me.

Is the objective to keep people happy in inaccurate bliss or to make this as accurate as current documentation will allow it to be? Of course we want this to be correct otherwise this tree we are building is really nothing more than a big game we are playing. I am one of those that will lose that link as my line descends from daughter Anne Pollard. As Anne says, I'll be fine, I want the tree to be right. Let's do it.

I have used Don Greene's Shawnee heritage books for sourcing many times. Sure there are some inconsistencies in them but at the point in time that he is documenting, it is many times all you have.

If we used Don Greene's Shawnee Heritage III we would merge Trader Hughes and Rice Hughes. We're not going that direction.

I've been listening to the argument on both sides for several years. There are good arguments on both sides but I don't see any proof or disproof they were the same. It becomes a matter of faith. You either believe it or you don't,

The main problem comes down to this. The children of Rice Hughes must have been born in the 1650s when he is documented in New Kent County.

There are no dates for Trader Hughes but his claimed daughter must also have been born in the 1650s. So, that looks like they could be the same.

But Trader Hughes is supposed to in far-off Amherst County. That's the whole point of the story. Except that the earliest traders didn't start moving into that area for another 50 or 60 years. To make it work, something in the story has to change.

And once you start changing the story that is your only evidence, you've left behind any idea you're dealing with facts. It can be done but not without a major dose of personal belief. Don Greene, for example, is comfortable with doing that.

Issue I always had with Mr. Greene's work wasn't so much believing he was "mostly" telling the story as it is known but the inconsistencies within each volume, seems there are subtle changes within families from volume to volume. Close but not always same death date, birthdate etc.

I believe you hit it direct with the statement of "faith", often that is all we have to go on. And much of his I'm sure started as oral history, generation to generation.

But just like the game we played as kids where one whispers something in the next ear and it goes around the room. By the time it is to the last person, it is an entirely different story. People always want to "spice up" the real, often boring, story/history....

We are put in a predicament where we must mix documentation and known facts with oral tradition. Tough spot to be in Justin. You are right, that is exactly what Don Greene has done in his career.

Yes, I think you are right. I like the way Greene gives more credit to family traditions than more conventional researchers do, but I don't he makes enough allowance for the way stories "grow in the telling".

I think if everyone here had wanted to keep Rice Hughes and Trader Hughes it would have been hard to argue, even though the evidence isn't really there for it. Going in, that's what I expected. I thought I would do some light clean up, then back away slowly :)

I'm happy we have so many people here who spoke up in favor of following the evidence.

You have to follow the evidence no fake news thks Justin for keeping them honest or we would have a fake tree?????

As a pursue the evidence for Nicketti Hughes, Person of legend, I'm finding some interesting material.

The story originated with the Davis and Floyd families, who claim to be her descendants.

John Floyd, 25th U.S. Governor of Virginia was her 3rd great grandson. He named one of his daughters Nicketti (born 1819), so that pushes the the name at least back a bit further than the first written account in 1895.

It's also interesting that there was a Nicati Floyd, age 71, on the 1850 census living in the household of the governor's daughter. She's the right age (born 1779) to have been the governor's aunt. There's no direct evidence of her relationship, but it seems likely she was a daughter of William Floyd and Abadiah Davis.

That would push the evidence for the name Nicketti in this line back to 1779, about 60 years after the supposed death of Nicketti Powhatan (circa 1720).

In other words, there is trail of breadcrumbs from the 1895 story to a Nicketti (Nicati) born 120 years earlier.

Years later, writing about the name of the 2nd Nicketti Floyd, the governor's wife wrote: "The father of Robert Davis had married a half-breed girl, Nicketti."

From what we can see in the records and the story as it was eventually published it would have been more accurate for her to say, "The father of Robert Davis [Nathaniel Davis] had married a half-breed girl [Mary Hughes], [whose mother was] Nicketti."

This story basically but not quite as eloquently was told to me by G.J. Floyd (Geni member) a few years ago. He is a direct descendant of Governor Floyd and the Davis families. It has been a very "controversial" issue with them for many generations. Machumps, Cleopatra, Nicketti, you name it..... he has the entire story.

Thanks to Private User I now have a reference to a newer telling of the Trader Hughes that rejects the original story of him having his trading post in Amherst County, where the Hughes chimney became a survey landmark.

http://kithandkinchronicles.blogspot.com/2013/03/shopping-saturday-...

In this new version Trader Hughes wasn't out in Amherst County at all. He was right there in Jamestown. Apparently, until he arrived in the mid-1600s it never occurred to the English colonists to trade with the Jamestown Indians ;)

Not really, though. The article starts with Trader Hughes in Jamestown but by the end he's out there in the west after all, near the intersection of Virginia’s Routes 130 and 29 (Amherst County, after all). But he didn't meet the Powhatan princess Nicketti in Jamestown -- that didn't happen when they were both in Powhatan territory. He only met her when he moved into Catawba territory "out west".

One this I do like about this version of the story is that we're back to just the one baby from the original version, not poaching the children of Rice Hughes.

Folks, please be careful how much faith you put in Internet jabber. A good article is going to tell you that someone appears in contemporary documents, a list, a deed, a will, something that tends to prove what it is saying.

Notice the timeline

Pocahontas (wasn't she the youngest daughter ?) was born about 1596

https://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/pocahontas-her-life-a...

" ... eventually gave birth to a baby girl (Mary Elizabeth) in Jamestown in 1650, and she, in her turn, married Nathaniel Davis, another trader. "

Are we still perhaps missing a generation?

The "traditional" chronology is:

1. Opechancanough (an old man, died 1645 age nearly 100

2. Nicketti, youngest daughter, niece of Pocahontas, born say 1615-1625 or a bit earlier, married Trader Hughes

3. Mary Elizabeth Hughes, born 1650s, married about 1680 Nathaniel Davis

The chronology works, but there is room to argue ways it could be better. Some of the suggestions I've seen are:

1. Nicketti was granddaughter of Opechancanough instead of daughter. A theory.

2. Nicketti was Catawba not Powhatan. Supported by an alternative tradition reported in the earliest written version. Makes sense if Trader Hughes was in Amherst County. This could mean she is not connected to Opechancanough at all.

3. Nicketti the half-breed wife of Nathaniel Davis, which would mean Nicketti is an alternative name for Mary Elizabeth Hughes. Supported by a letter from Gov. Floyd's wife. This could also mean she is Catawba and that she is not connected to Opechancanough at all.

The real chronological problem is getting Trader Hughes and Nicketti out to Amherst County. Trader Hughes' trading post is supposed to have been only a dozen miles from the Nathaniel Davis trading post in Amherst County. The chimney from the Hughes trading post was used as a survey landmark. That makes it hard to shift the location of the story.

But It's hard to see how Hughes and Nicketti could have been in Amherst County much before 1710 when traders entered the area. They would have been close to 100.

Private ?

http://yanceyfamilygenealogy.org/hughes.htm

A brilliant suggestion, Private User. I have been skipping over Orlando without even stopping to look.

I've thought from the beginning that whoever Trader Hughes was he must have been someone documented in records in the right time and place. How could he not be?

In 1743 there is a patent to George Carrington for 6000 acres on both sides of Harris Creek. This is the area where Trader Hughes is said to have lived and where the remains of his cabin stand. Carrington latter petitioned to include the adjoining patents of John Floyd and Orlando Hughes. That John Floyd was the ancestor of Gov. Floyd, whose family preserved the story of their descent from Trader Hughes and Nicketti.

Shawnee Heritage says Orlando Hughes (it must be the same guy) was a son of William Hughes, and grandson of Rice Hughes. Although I never noticed it before, this must be why some people think Rice Hughes and Trader Hughes are the same man.