Thomas Jefferson Feazel

NOTES:

"Thomas Jefferson and Mariah Thompson Feazel

Thomas J. and Mariah Thompson Feazel were the first Feazels in Mississippi, coming to Smith County by 1855, where they joined members of Mariah Thompson's family. Thomas Feazel was born April 24, 1807, in Bedford County, Virginia, and Mariah Thompson was born April 20, 1810, in the Pendleton District, South Carolina. They married in Carroll County, Georgia, on December 24, 1835, and were listed in the 1850 Census there, next to Mariah's parents, Robert Thompson, age 74, and Eleanor Dalrymple, age 64, who had moved from the Pendleton District of South Carolina to Georgia with their family between 1810 and 1814. Robert Thompson was one of the nine children of Joseph Thompson, a Revolutionary War Patriot, of South Carolina, during the Revolutionary War. This Feazel family was listed in the 1850 Census of Carroll County, with six daughters and a son as follows, born between 1836 and 1850; Sarah M., age 14; Rachel, age 12; Miranda, age 11; Mary, age 9; Nancy, age 5; Georgia Ann, age 3, and Joseph, age 1, all enumerated as being born in Georgia. Another daughter Jerusa, born June 10, 1844, apparently died before 1850. I have not found the family in the earlier 1840 Census in Georgia, and it may be possible they were living in Alabama for some of the time prior to 1850 because Thomas on August 5, 1837, bought forty acres from the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Benton County, Alabama (later Cleburne County), just over the state boundary from Carroll County, Georgia. In 1854, Thomas bought 120 acres from the Bureau of Land Management in Clarke County, Mississippi, some sixty miles directly east of Smith County. One researcher found him listed there with his family in an 1853 Census of Mississippi. In 1860, the Feazels were enumerated on their farm in the Waco District of Smith County, an area somewhat equidistant from Raleigh, Sylvarena, Mize, and Taylorsville, and not far from several members of Mariah Thompson's family who also moved to Smith County after 1850. Joseph Thompson, an uncle of Mariah's, bought 120 acres from the Bureau of Land Management in Smith County, on May 2, 1859. Ransom Thompson, another uncle, bought 108 acres of Bureau of Land Management land in Smith County on July 1, 1861. Many Thompson descendants still live in Smith County. This Feazel family may still be found listed somewhere in Georgia or Alabama under one of the many spellings of the name used by family members, courthouse, scribes, census enumerators, and others as Feasel, Feazell, Feazle, Feezle, Feezell, Feisel, Fissel, Fizzel, Phissel, and Viisel. The Feazels' only son, Joseph R., adopted the spelling Feazell, which has become, over the years, the most-favored spelling of that name. I am unable to document Thomas Feazel's parents, but several Feazel researchers believe that he and Isaac Feazell, also born in Bedford County, Virginia, on September 19, 1801, and also married in Carroll County, Georgia, to Louisa Ann Philipps on December 16, 1832, were brothers. The marriage rites for both Isaac and Thomas were administered by Ransom Thompson, Mariah's uncle. Isaac and family settled in Talladega County, Alabama, before 1840. Both Isaac and Thomas are thought to be descendants of Philip Martin Feazel, the earliest known Feazel emigrant to America, who came to Philadelphia from Germany in 1740. One researcher believes that Isaac, Thomas, and other siblings, Sarah Ann, Nancy, and Jerusa M., were the children of Joseph Feazle and Rachel Sinkler (aka Sinclair, Saint Clair), who married in Bedford County, Virginian November 24, 1800. Why did these two unmarried young men migrate from Virginia to Georgia? Although there are exceptions, my genealogical studies lead me to believe that not many young single men moved to another part of the country without their elders. People migrated mainly because of the availability of new land from Indian cessions. I suspect their elders were somewhere nearby and may have moved to Georgia to establish the residential requirements for drawing in the 1827 or 1832 Georgia Land Lotteries, a system used by Georgia to distribute land made available form Creek or Cherokee Indian cessions. Two of the Thomas Feazel children apparently never married. They were Jerusa A. Feazel, born June 10, 1842, who did not live until the 1850 Census in Carroll County, Georgia, and Miranda N. Feazel, born April 8, 1840. Miranda was twenty years old in the 1860 Census of Smith County and thirty in the 1870 Census, but was not listed in the 1880 Census. The Feazel Bible does not list any death or marriage dates for her. At least two of the Feazel children became school teachers. The first Feazel marriage, on December 26, 1855, was that of Sarah M., born May 4, 1838, and died about 1883, to Thomas Johnston McCaughan, born 1831 and died 1916, the oldest of the five sons of a family that migrated from Kentucky to Smith County and settled before 1840 near Sylvarena, where Tom, according to McCaughan family history, married the "school marm, Martha Feazel." Was Sarah's middle name Martha? McCaughan served as a lieutenant in Company G of the 37th Mississippi Infantry Regiment from Smith County in the Civil War. Most of their nine children were born in Smith County. In 1878, they moved to Texas where some of the McCaughans had migrated earlier. Their children were as follows: Emma, who was born in 1859, and died in 1866, died of spinal meningitis; Lydia, who married Arthur Herring; John D., who was born in 1860 and died in 1923, married first Viola Pennington, and married second, Ida Jane Bean; Louella married Lewis Strawhorn; STella, who was born circa 1862, and die din 1906 of polio; Thomas L., who was born in 1866, and died in 1935, married Edna Bowen; Martha died of typhoid at age 12; Florence, who was born in 1877, married Walter Anglin; and Nellie, who was born in 1880, and died in 1960, married Samuel Hamlett, Martha, or Sarah, as she was listed in the censuses, died when Nellie was about two years old, probably in McLennan County, Texas. Thomas J. died in 1916, in Him Wells County, Texas. Rachel E., who was born in 1836, and died in 1905, on January 4, 1858, married Rufus Manuss, who was born in North Carolina circa 1829. He had been listed as a laborer in the household of Mariah's parents in Carroll County, Georgia, in 1850. They had two infant sons, both dying before the 1860 census. Rufus disappeared between 1860 and 1870, possibly killed in the Civil War, and Rachel was back in the Feazel household in 1870. In 1874, she married J. W. Murray, and they are shown living nexxt to Thomas J. Feazel in the 1880 Census with a son, Edward Murray, born in March, 1875. In 1900, Edward married Mary Anne Laird, who was born September 2, 1883, and they had fourteen children, eleven born in Smith and Jones Counties, before moving to Louisiana prior to 1919. Rachel died January 27, 1905, and was buried at Mount Zion Baptist Cemetery in Smith County. The next two Feazel marriages were apparently on the same day when the two sisters Mary Virginia Feazel, who was born February 19, 1842, and died June 6, 1898, and her younger sister, Nancy Mariah Feazel, who was born January 17, 1846, and died May 13, 1922, who had become engaged respectively to James Monroe Jones, who was born October 29, 1837, and died October 30, 1903, and John Lemuel Jones, who was born August 1, 1841, and died December 13, 1888, first cousins, while they were on leave from service in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. They were married "in February A. D. 1863," according to the Feazel Bible. J. M. and Mary Virginia Jones's ten children were born in Smith County. The family moved about 1890 to Simpson County, Mississippi, west of Magee. Jim Jones donated land for Goodwater Baptist Church, where he and Mary Virginia, and some of their children were later buried. Their children were as follows: Texas, who was born October 19, 1867, and died in 1934, married Franklin Goldware Stephens, who was born in 1862, and died in 1902; Edna who was born circa 1868, and died as a child, reportedly after tasting match heads; Elsie Marie, who was born in 1872, and died after 1920, married first Charles Barr, second John W. Allen, and lived in Jones County; Mellie, who was born June 20, 1872, and died January 18, 1948, married James M. Brewer, who was born July 10, 1870, and died October, 1931; Lafayette Monroe, who was born April 3, 1874, and died January 24, 1943, married Nannie Elizabeth Condia, who was born January 12, 1881, and died May 27, 1941; Ella, who was born March 2, 1876, and died January 2, 1904, married James McDonel Hopkins, who was born October 1, 1872, and died June 26, 1918; Joseph Forreste, who was born January 6, 1879, and died December 28, 1932, married Mary Mangum, who was born July 12, 1876, and died March 9, 1937; Susanna Mary Virginia, who was born January 7, 1880, and died December 14, 1938, was married on September 26, 1897, to Charles Lafayette Condia, who was born August 7, 1874, and died August 2, 1930; Esther, who was born April 9, 1882, and died November 25, 1957, married William Franklin Cooper Stringer, who was born August 15, 1884, and died November 15, 1941, married Monroe James Kennedy, who was born May 13, 1880, and died January 3, 1963. John L. and Nancy Jones spent their lives in Smith County. Their children were as follows: Annie Jane, who was born December 11, 1864, and died May 4, 1932, married Jefferson Davis Anderson, who was born March 11, 1862, and died January 12, 1946; Mary Margaret, who was born December 2, 1866, and died January 19, 1948, married Robert G. Anderson, who was born July 18, 1859, and died January 7, 1903; Thomas Claiborne, who was born October 19, 1868, and died December 8, 1949, married Ada Belle Glisson, who was born September 12, 1872, and died May 12, 1943; William Robert, who was born September 29, 1870, and died June 23, 1903, married Josephie Bryant; Nancy Leona, who born October 16, 1872, and died April 28, 1926, married William Augustus Barr, who was born June 4, 1864, and died April 14, 1933; Minnie Ideller, who was born March 2, 1874, married Sam Boswell; John Lemuel, Jr., who was born January 14, 1876, and died in 1947, married Sallie Byrd, who was born in 1878, and died in 1950; Nellie Miranda, who was born February 18, 1878, married William D. Stubbs, who was born October 28, 1870, and died May 4, 1951; Monroe Chester, who was born February 4, 1880, and died May 8, 1944, married Azzie Gertrude Barr, who was born August 17, 1881, and died November 9, 1957; Stella Melvina, who was born December 17, 1881, and died March 19, 1967, married William Walter Barnhardt, who was born July 16, 1891, and died February 22, 1921; Sidney Lock, who was born September 18, 1887, and died November 4, 1970, married first Carrie Kelley, who was born July 16, 1884, and died February 22, 1921, and second Ida Bryant, who was born November 24, 1891, and died November 17, 1959. Georgia Ann, who was born April 28, 1848, and died March 8, 1931, was married August 11, 1868, to Andrew Lafayette Ware, who was born November 12, 1849, and died February 22, 1905. They had the following children: Josephine, who was born October 23, 1869, and died August 23, 1900, married Sam D. Beard, who was born December 31, 1855, and died March 18, 1933; Thomas Franklin, who was born November 10, 1870, and died July 25, 1946, married Ruth F. Windham, who was born in 1877; Martha Marie, who was born February 11, 1873, and died May 11, 1956; in 1894, married George Loren Windham, who was born February 20, 1865, and died October 28, 1945; M. Edna, who was born March 30, 1874, and died in 1908, married James Albert Blakeney, who was born in 1873, and died in 1949; W. Wallace, who was born January 24, 1877, and died February 13, 1955, married Leona Blakeney, who was born June 21, 1881, and died October 15, 1953; James R., who was born November 6, 1878, and died April 24, 1884; Charley Newton, who was born July 22, 1880, and died October 6, 1953, married first circa 1901 Dula Ford, who was born June 18, 1882, and died March 24, 1922, second Nora Ada Jolly, who was born June 30, 1893, and died March 28, 1931; and third Lona Johnson; George Singleton, who was born March 6, 1882, and died July, 1965, reportedly married Etta Patrick, but the wife buried next to him is Kizziah Bowers; Rosa Maude Marie, who was born February 20, 1884, married James Alonzo Ford, who was born October 11, 1879; John Bunyon, who was born December 17, 1885, and died August 6, 1962, married Nola Bryant, who was born February 27, 1897, and died January 14, 1965; Annie M., who was born July 11, 1888, and died June 24, 1977, married John Henry Yelverton, who was born March 21, 1886, and died April 15, 1940; and Chester M., who was born December 3, 1889, and died in 1959. Joseph Robert Feazel, who was born May 10, 1859, and died April, 1907, was also a school teacher in Smith County. He married Sarah Margaret Cargile on November 30, 1870, and they later moved to Jones County. Their children were as follows: Magnus Pascal, who was born in July, 1871, and died in July, 1948, married Jenny Nicholson; and Julius Caesar Feazel, Sr., who was born in February, 1873, and died in 1947. Many descendants have provided valuable family information for this article, and I am grateful for the help. It is up to us to assure that these ancestors are not forgotten. They are, of course, responsible for the traits of character that made us what we are."

Source:

The History of Smith County, Mississippi, submitted by: Harold C. Hopkins.