Joel Weed

Evidence needed to support as son of Captain Ephraim Weed, I

Biography

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Weed-690

Joel Weed was a part of Mississippi.

Joel "Joseph" Weed was long believed to have been from the New England colonies; however a record of his grandson's birth in "Southwest Louisiana Records" by Donald J. Hebert suggests that he lived for a time at least in "Carolina."[1] We do not know which Carolina they are referring to, North or South. The date of birth given for his grandson, William Bell, b. 14 April 1798, is enough to establish an estimated date of birth for Joel of about 1760, as he would have had to have been at least about 38 years old to be a grandfather.

The record also indicates a previous marriage to a Marie Hem, also from "Carolina," and a daughter named Eloise, presumably born around 1780, and therefore about 18 when William was born. No further record has been found of Eloise, her husband John, or their son William.

Joel Weed always appears under the name Joel in his tax and census records in Mississippi. He is recorded as Joseph only by the French and Spanish Catholic priests in Louisiana, whose male parishioners were disproportionately named Joseph, just as the females were Marie. The name Joel would have been foreign to them.

But Joel was still alive, if no longer in Louisiana after his son William's birth, because he appears on tax records in Mississippi through 1818. We also know from marriage records, church records and census records, that Margaret Gwaltney was married 2 other times. After her children with Joel were born she married Thomas Bowers, and their oldest child, Bridget was born in 1803. There were several other Bowers children as well. Margaret then "married" a third time. A legal marriage for this last union would not have been possible at the time, but she is known to have been in a relationship and to have had at least three children by Joseph Collins. "Margaret Collins, bastard of Margaret Gwaltney, and Joseph Collins, a free mulatto of this parish" is how the christening record of one of their daughters reads. [citation needed]

Of Joel and Margaret's five children, three, Anne,[2] Hannah, and Benjamin,[3] are believed to have stayed in Louisiana until at least two of them moved to Texas, but the other two appear to have gone back to Mississippi to be with their father. Elizabeth Weed [4] married Ephraim Drygus in 1810 in Adams County, Mississippi. William Weed[5] married, lived in, and died in Wilkinson County, Mississippi.