A Couple More Bembry Discoveries

Sarah/Sally Bembry

I recently spent a bit of time perusing indexes of The Southside Virginian at our local library, and came up with one useful piece of information.

Sally “Bembra” is listed as an insolvent on the 1783 tax list in Nansemond County, Virginia, very near Elisha Darden. This proves two things:

1.) The Sarah Bembra and the Sally Bembra found in an Upper Parish record two years later are the same person.

2.) Sarah/Sally Bembra was an adult with her own household in 1783. This presumably makes her at least 21 years old (born before 1762) and likely older than that. The Sarah Bembry found on the 1820 census in Nansemond is 45+ years old, so born no later than 1775. I am now fully convinced that this is the same person.

The most likely scenario for a woman to have her own household at that time would be as widow with children. And Sarah is the only person with the Bembra/Bembray surname located anywhere near North Carolina at that time. I therefore think it is virtually certain that Sarah is Miles Bembry’s mother.

More financial shenanigans and a possible identification of Miles’ daughter

I ran across a new mention of Miles Bembry in Edgecombe County NC probate files on Family Search. In this 1825 document, Miles is listed as a co-guarantor with Kinchen Taylor for a bond, or loan, taken out by Kinchen’s brother, James Taylor. It was a very large loan, $1,508.00, and the court order directs the sheriff of Martin County to seize the “goods and chattels” of Miles Bembry to pay the debt. A potentially ruinous scenario for Miles.

So, who the heck was this James Taylor??? I could find no mention of him whatsoever in my Bembry files. So, I researched the Taylor family’s deeds and figured out as much as I could.

James Taylor was one of several children of Joshua Taylor, a wealthy plantation owner that lived very near Miles Bembry on Indian Creek in Martin County. Joshua died around 1816, and his land was divided among his kids, including James, who lived on Conoho Creek in Martin County, even closer to Miles. 

James Taylor seems to have run into some kind of financial trouble around 1820. Possibly, he had medical issues. His siblings tried to bail him out. In 1822, his sister, Elizabeth Taylor, deeded him her share of Joshua’s land “for natural love and affection.” Another sibling, Henry Taylor, sold his share to James in 1823, at what seems like a fairly low price of $12 per acre. And later that same year, Kinchen Taylor gave his share of their deceased sister, Martha Taylor Pugh’s, land to James as a gift. 

However, the earliest sign of trouble may have been in 1821, when Frances Pugh, husband of Martha Taylor Pugh, settled James’ debt to him in exchange for some furniture, a parcel of corn and a “negro boy slave, about 18 years old.” This demonstrates that James was already bartering to clear his debts indicating that he had no cash on hand to pay them.

It what was probably not a coincidence, the next two deeds recorded in the register are deeds of gift in which Miles Bembry gives his sons, William and John Bembry, all of his considerable Martin County property, over a thousand acres in total. These deeds are dated 22 Sep 1822, so a year after the Pugh deed, but they were all recorded on the same day in December 1822. I think there must have been some cooperation between the Taylors and Bembrys in this situation.

It certainly looks as if Miles could see the debt collectors coming and shielded his Martin County land from the sheriff by giving it to his sons. This was a common strategy at the time, and in fact Miles later employed a similar strategy in deeding a number of slaves to his grandchildren while under financial pressure in 1832. 

By March 1825, James Taylor was dead. Kinchen Taylor, his administrator, announced the death in the newspaper and proceeded to sell off all James’ assets within a matter of weeks.

Around this time, Kinchen’s sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, signed a deed relinquishing all claim to James’ estate, further evidence that the siblings were working together to clear up a mess. To nail it down further, later that year, they both signed deeds selling Kinchen their shares of James’ lands for $1.00.

It appears that, with the cooperation of his siblings, Kinchen was able to scrounge up enough to pay off the debts, because I could find no further mention of either he or Miles in relation to the bond that they guaranteed together. And no record exists of the courts taking Miles’ property to pay it back.

But, back to the original question: who the heck was James Taylor to Miles Bembry that he would guarantee such a large loan for him? There is no other connection in deeds or court records that I can find. So, I think that James must have been a relative. And my best guess for that would be that he was Miles’ son-in-law.

Miles had a daughter born about 1790 who is found on that census and on the 1800 census. She is not found on the 1810 census, but an unidentified woman the right age to be her is found in Miles’ household in 1820, and then in Thomas Bembry’s household in 1830. 

James Taylor married a Nancy Andrews in 1816. I believe that this is the same James Taylor that I have been researching, because he lived very near an Andrews family in 1810.

Because of the loan guarantee, I think that this Nancy Andrews–whose first name is the same as Miles’ wife, Nancy Ann Bryan–is likely Miles’ daughter. Her different last name could be explained in one of two ways.

1.) Nancy may be Miles’ daughter who married an Andrews in her late teens before 1810, was widowed shortly thereafter, and then married James Taylor in 1816. This would explain why she is not found in a Bembry household in 1810. She would have been living with an Andrews.

2.) Nancy may be Miles’ stepdaughter. Nancy Ann Bryan was a little older than Miles (she was about 27 years old in 1790, while he was about 24) and could easily have been married previously. Furthermore, the daughter on the 1790 census is listed as being under 10 years old in 1800. Assuming this is the same daughter (and there is no evidence of any other daughters) then she would have been a new baby in 1790, potentially fathered by a previous husband to Nancy Ann Bryan. And if that husband was an Andrews, her name would continue to be Andrews. (This does not explain where she was living in 1810, however.)

When James Taylor’s situation began to deteriorate (and who knows, he could have just been a raging alcoholic, so she would have been happy to get away from him) Nancy moved in first with her father, where she is found in 1820, then with her younger brother Thomas and his houseful of young children by 1830. Not an untypical situation for an older, widowed woman.

All of this is conjecture, of course, but it does explain the few facts that I have. So, I am adding Nancy Bembry UNPROVEN, wife of James Taylor, to the family tree.