William M. G. Donaho, Sr. - William M. G. Donaho Sr - Questioning parents as John Donaho from Ireland & Eleanor Key

That's a really fascinating document, Linda. I think it works against your case, however.

Basically, the Parks family submitted an affidavit from McNabb, who said he knew William Donaho, but the allegation outlined in the document is that McNabb was told by the family to say what he said, and the affidavit was therefore found invalid. The Piles affidavit, where he says the family and knew them to be Choctaw, is viewed more favorably, but whoever wrote those pages (they didn't sign it, ugh!) says more proof is needed from Piles that he "state how they were recognized and how other Choctaw Indians were recognized; and what degree of knowledge he has of the affairs of the Choctaws in those days and the manner in which Choctaw Indians were recognized." It's an absolute shame that we don't know who wrote those pages (pp. 6-7 of the PDF), but at least from those pages we can glean that 1) there was talk of the family being Choctaw and 2) the court wasn't convinced.

We then see the Southern District judge finding the Parks family to be entitled to Choctaw citizenship in 1898, which the Choctaw Nation disputes, leading to an appeal. Then, in 1904, the Choctaw & Chickasaw Citizenship Court finds on behalf of the Choctaw Nation in the appeal by saying that the Parks family "are not entitled to be deemed or declared citizens of the Choctaw Nation, or to enrollment as such, or to any rights whatever flowing therefrom." So the two affidavits are basically tossed.

So these documents are useful in that they verify that there was talk of the family being Choctaw, but they're also counterproductive to the overall argument because they end with the Choctaw Nation and the courts saying, no, the family wasn't Choctaw, and the affidavits (like the one in the profile picture) weren't legitimate.

Parents being John Donahoe, Jr. & Eleanor Donahoe (Key) disputed. Records (see avatar) show that William G. Donaho Sr was a full blood Choctaw meaning BOTH his parents would have to have been Choctaw

I would remove this from the "About," as the document says the opposite -- it says the Parks family and one affidavit say Donaho was Choctaw, but that the Choctaw Nation and the courts didn't believe it.

Are there other documents that make the case better? Were there any follow-up legal cases? Did any of the Parks family ultimately wind up on the rolls?

(Sorry to post again.)

Realizing we should also tag William G. Donaho, Jr. here since it's relevant to that profile as well.

From what I'm gathering from the younger William's profile, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians also denied the family's enrollment, but one descendant (user thadhale42 on RootsWeb, it looks like) believes that was done out of retribution for the family moving to Texas. Do I have that right?

The current source we're showing for that, a user named thadhale42 from an unknown website (I think RootsWeb, maybe) is couched as an opinion: "It is my opinion that the reason she was rejected was because her family went to Texas when the offer from the government was first made so, she hadn't lived in the territory all the years that the other Indians had." Do we have anything definitive that says that's why they were rejected and/or that they were of Choctaw heritage?

I guess that's the core issue we're having here -- the document that we're saying finds them to be Choctaw actually says that they were legally found to not be Choctaw. So we have to overcome that problem with another document of equal or greater weight if we're going to say they were Choctaw.

I'm actually not doubting you that they were Choctaw. There are plenty of people with Choctaw ancestry who didn't wind up in either federally-recognized tribe.

The problem is that we're not showing any evidence of them being Choctaw, especially since the only evidence we have works against that argument.

If the facts are that they were Choctaw, then we can prove that. So, how do we prove that? That's what we need to do here. We can't use the court files you found because they argue the opposite. The Dawes Rolls work against us, too. So what other evidence is there? Let's find it and show it.

Yes, I saw that. Hopefully some folks will come join this discussion from that thread.

In the meantime, I've edited the introductory note in William G. Donaho, Sr.'s "About" to say the following, since we now know the court documents are more complex than the previous statement suggested:

"Parents being John Donahoe, Jr. & Eleanor Donahoe (Key) is currently at question. Please see this discussion thread for information." [with a link to this thread, of course]

We've had no follow-up comments, obviously, but I'm eager to wrap this up and cross it off my to-do list.

Here's what we currently have evidence for:

• William Donaho was named as an ancestor in a court case where the stated descendants were ultimately rejected from Choctaw Nation citizenship
• William Donaho was named in two affidavits, one of which was rejected by a judge on the grounds it was influenced/manipulated and the other of which was rejected for not having enough support
• Stated descendants of William Donaho were also rejected from Mississippi Choctaw citizenship
• There is a longstanding debate amongst descendants regarding his origins, including whether he was Choctaw

Here's what we currently do not have evidence for:

• William Donaho being Choctaw, or having any other Indigenous origins
• William Donaho being a son of John Donahoe, Jr. and Eleanor Donahoe (Key)

There doesn't seem to be any dispute that William Jr. is William Sr.'s son, especially due to the South Carolina census records. That's a blessing for us -- less work!

As for William Sr. being a son of Irish immigrant John, that seems to be the long-held contention of most genealogists. The South Carolina deeds and wills and the Irish convict records provide pretty strong circumstantial evidence. But we currently do not show any of that evidence, and would need to in order to make our profile compliant with genealogical standards.

It doesn't look like any descendants of either William are participating in the O'Donoghue Society's Y-DNA project. That group has tested descendants of at least one of John's known brothers and found that the family matches the known family in Ireland. Doesn't really help us with determining either William's paternity, but it's more support for the contention that John's family was Irish. That Y-DNA project could be another avenue for either William's descendants to pursue, to help determine if maybe there's an NPE somewhere along the way.

I suspect that some of our answers probably lie in Lynn Wood's Donahoe Nexus publication, but I'm unlikely to go through their entire un-indexed archives unless someone has a specific issue to pull.

At this point, I think our best bet is to say something like "Most genealogists agree that William was the son of Irish immigrant John, but there's also a group that contends William wasn't and was actually Choctaw because of X." At that point, we'd have to still explain that court cases found no evidence for him being Choctaw -- it's just too big of an issue to leave out of the story -- but we would at least be able to put on the record that some people hold that contention. In fairness, we'd probably also have to note that there's no evidence of William ever identifying himself as Choctaw; what we've seen so far is all from descendants saying he was. (Unless there's other evidence that hasn't been presented? I'm open to that!)