Treavy to Patterson

 

Sarah Jane Echard

One of my 3rd great grandmothers is named Sarah Jane Echard. She comes Virginia though she married into the Ware family which I've traced back through southern Indiana to Kentucky. Perhaps 20 years ago when I last researched her origins, I was convinced at the time that her parents were Christian Echard and Lydia Treavy Echard. But as I have started the process of compiling my research notes for my 4th great grandparents, all 64 of them, I realized that perhaps I have at least one of the parents wrong. 

Sarah was born in 1837 according to her tombstone. Recently when I went to the historical center in the county south of me, which I wrote about Here on January 1st, I found an obituary for her. I will post it below but essentially, is says her parents were Christian and Sarah Echard, not Lydia as I had written in 20 years ago.

So I started digging a bit into records for my 4th great grandfather Christian Echard and sure enough discovered a marriage record between him and one Sarah Patterson in 1831 in Augusta County, Georgia. As I was making note of this in my research notes, I also realized that his marriage to Lydia Treavy didn't happen until 1839, two years after the birth of my 3rd great grandmother Sarah. Plus, naming conventions of the time had first born daughters names after their mothers and so I am now pretty confident that the mother of my 3rd great grandmother Sarah Jane Echard is actually Sarah Patterson.

But that isn't why I started writing this post.

Something tickled my brain and I had to go back and read through my completed research notes on Sarah Echard. Sure enough, I discovered that after her mother had died when she was little, she had gone to live the John W. Patterson family according to the 1850 U.S. Census records. The obituaries list James Patterson family. To complicate matters more, her mom's maiden name is Patterson.

I'm not much of a betting man but I'm guessing the John/James W. Patterson family is somehow related to Sarah Echard's mother Sarah Patterson. It all fits fairly nicely except that as of this writing, I do not know how they are related. My guess is that John/James is an uncle. 

Even better than now having my 4th great grandmother correctly identified, The James W. Patterson family is heavily documented by other genealogists in their trees while the Echard branch of my tree is greatly obscured and murky. As you can tell from the picture at the top of this post, Sarah Jane Echard is one of the 10 3rd great grandparents whom I am missing a photo for. Perhaps with so many pictures associated with James W. Patterson online, I might get lucky and find one of a young Sarah Echard before she married my 3rd great grandfather George Ware.