Rachel Agnes Norris

Kathryn Forbes, Cherokee Historian, has made the following correctives to the Find-A-Grave narrative (http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=46679842) regarding Rachel and Samuel Chambers. She writes:

Here is the Find-a-Grave memorial referenced above. I have followed each section with the facts regarding the Cherokee Samuel Chambers.

FAG: Rachel Chambers was born about 1781 in North Carolina. She often told her children she was one-fourth blood Cherokee. Her father, Henry Chambers, was said to have been one-half blood Cherokee. Rachel had a sister, and a brother, named Samuel (Sam) Chambers. She told her children that this brother went with the old Cherokee settlers to the Indian Territory in 1819. In fact, a Samuel Chambers was an old settler. He was married to a woman named Nancy. They had several children. Unfortunately, all but one of them had died in the Cherokee Nation by 1880. The only son to live to the time of the Dawes Commission was Lorenzo Dow Chambers.

FACT: a man named Samuel Chambers with a family of four signed up to emigrate on September 2, 1829. He and his family lived on Beaver Creek, in Hightower [Georgia]. John Chambers with a family of four and five enslaved blacks, along with Ginny Chambers and a family of three, who all lived on Beaver Pond, Hightower, signed up the same day. They left soon after and their property was already taken over by whites by 1830.

FACT: The Old Settler Roll of 1851 recorded the following members of the Chambers family in Flint District: Samuel and five children, John, Eliza, George, Elizabeth and Anderson.

FAG: A son, Lorenzo, was born in 1852. There were apparently three additional daughters, Clementine, Jane and Ruth. William P. , dead by 1896, left a widow, Mary who was 64 years old in 1896

FACT: According to Lorenzo’s Eastern Cherokee application William was his brother. He was apparently old enough to have his own household in 1851.

FAG: He, also unfortunately, was not enrolled by the Dawes Commission at any time from 1896-1902. He died in 1909 and is buried at Dwight Missions in Sequoyah County, Oklahoma.

FACT: Lorenzo Dow Chambers was enrolled by the Dawes Commission along with his wife, Elsie and two adopted children Israel and Archibald Christie. The boys were most likely cousins or nephews. Lorenzo’s BQ was listed as ½ since his mother’s was unknown.. Card number 1138, roll number 29728

FAG: In a Guion-Miller Application in 1906, Dow Chambers did fill out a form for his deceased wife but included his vital statistics.

FACT: Elsie Christie applied for the Guion Miller payment on her own behalf. Application number 16092.

FACT: Lorenzo filed an Eastern Cherokee application claiming the payment in right of his first wife, Lydia Faulkner. Application number 16093. He listed his his own siblings, all deceased, and his father’s siblings, Jack, George, William, Jane, and Tookah, also all deceased. He further stated that he had two cousins, also deceased, named Jolly Watts and Isaac Squirrel. Lorenzo listed these family members because Old Settlers were not eligible for the Eastern Cherokee payment, so believed he could collect on a relative who was not an Old Settler. He stated that his father died in 1862, his mother in 1846 (since Lorenzo was born in 1852 he must have meant 1856]. He stated that he knew nothing about his mother, did not remember her and did not know if she was Cherokee or white .

The Drennan Roll for Flint District includes a George Chambers and wife Betsy and living next door to them, James Chambers and three children, George, Martha, and Susan.

FAG: He stated he was the son of Samuel and Nancy Chambers. That both parents had died early. He had several brothers and sisters, but he was the only one to live beyond 1880. He did name his father's brothers and sisters, but no Rachel was mentioned. He did name a Tookah Chambers, which could have been her Indian name but she was not named as Tookah Norris. One of the main reasons I believe Henry Chambers was not on any Cherokee census roll was because he left the confines of the old Cherokee Nation in North Carolina. As a result, he gave up his citizenship in the Cherokee tribe. The old Eastern Nation was in the southwestern section of North Carolina near the Georgia border. Henry Chambers lived in the northwestern section of North Carolina in Wilkes County. At that day and time, it was not a good thing to be part Indian. Whites looked down on them. Apparently, Henry Chambers must have looked more white than Indian and lived among the whites as one of them. The whites would not have taken kindly to the fact that he was a half-blood Cherokee, a "half-breed." In those days, they did not know it would be important in later years to prove you were of Cherokee descent. By the time Henry's descendants, the children of Rachel, emigrated to the Indian Territory, there was no factual proof in their beliefs. Although she repeatedly told her children she was part Cherokee Indian, her descendants could not later prove it. Rachel died in 1846, possibly from consumption. Now called tuberculosis, it is a disease which took the lives of several of her descendants. She was buried in an unmarked grave in Overton County, Tennessee.

FACT: There is nothing other than wishful thinking to connect the Chambers family who lived in Hightower, Cherokee Nation [Georgia] and moved to Indian Territory in 1829 with the Chambers or Norris family who moved from Wilkes County, North Carolina to Kentucky. Henry Chambers is found on the 1790 census in North Carolina; his family is listed as all white, with 2 males over 16, 1 male under sixteen, and 4 females. Samuel Chambers was a full-blood, living in Georgia in 1829, not the son of a mixed-blood couple. Lorenzo Chambers knew the names of all his siblings and all of his father’s siblings. There is nothing to suggest that he left anyone off his lists on the Eastern Cherokee application, and in fact he was trying to include as many people as possible in hopes that someone would be eligible for the Eastern Cherokee payment.

• Residence: Moore, North Carolina, United States - 1790
  • Reference: FamilySearch Genealogy - SmartCopy: Jul 18 2020, 14:32:11 UTC