Peachy Gilmer Boswell: the son of Thomas & Mary Woody Boswell
Many online genealogies of the Boswell/Bozwell/Bozzel/etc. line aver that Mary Gilmer was the wife of Thomas Boswell, the generally accepted son of William M. & Mary Jean/Jane Mason Boswell. This "theory" has been on the web since the advent of genealogy message boards and mailing lists in about 1998. I have not looked, but this speculation has also probably been published in book form. Almost all of the internet queries shared a common theme. They all insisted that the wife of Thomas Boswell must be a Gilmer because the couple had a son named Peachy Gilmer Boswell. After making this assumption, the writers of the messages usually asked for help in determining the parents of Mary. None of the writers offered any evidence of Mary's maiden name beyond the Peachy Gilmer assumption. Lastly, none of the many queries on this subject were answered with the name of a suitable Mary Gilmer. Unfortunately, someone invented a Mary Gilmer to fit the "theory" and published the Boswell/Gilmer connection in a WorldConnect GEDCOM without any explanation. Of course, this bogus GEDCOM was hastily copied, spliced and diced by many others. Even more inventive splicers added this fantasy Mary to established Gilmer genealogies as if she had somehow been overlooked by Gilmer family historians. Perhaps someone has already spliced in a connection to Jamestown or the Mayflower.
In the early 1800s, the given name/names of an individual would usually be a valuable clue pointing to the heritage of that person; however, there were also many exceptions to the so called "naming pattern" customs of those times. Children's names are a good starting point, but there was no law that required any naming pattern at all. At the end of this page, I have included an interesting and related example of an exception. The name Peachy Gilmer seemed like a very good clue pointing to the maiden name of Mary, but no supporting evidence has ever been discovered. So, if a clue does not produce results, other avenues should eventually be explored. Peachy G. Boswell was almost surely named for a Peachy Gilmer, but not because his mother was a Gilmer.
It is interesting to note that the most dedicated and through Boswell family historian on record has not found one iota of evidence to support the Mary Gilmore "theory". Neither has anyone else.
Some background: Thomas Boswell/Bozwell
was enumerated on every Franklin Co., Virginia Tax List from 1805 through 1813.
From 1804 through 1818, a William Boswell/Bozwell was enumerated on every
Franklin Tax List except one. This William may have died circa 1819, since he
was enumerated but not taxed, in 1818. Any serious Boswell researcher should be
interested in the fact that only one William Boswell/Bozwell was ever noted on
any yearly Franklin Tax List from 1804 through 1820. John and Bird Boswell/Bozwell
also appear frequently on these tax lists. In 1810, William, Thomas and
several other Bozzel families were enumerated in the Franklin Co. census. According to the 1850
Iowa census, Mary the wife of Thomas Boswell, was born ca. 1782 in Virginia and
Mary's oldest child, Susan, was born ca. 1805 in Virginia. If Mary was a
Gilmer, an interested family historian would normally look in Franklin and surrounding
counties for her parents. So, it is somewhat surprising that not a single Gilmer (or variant)
was enumerated in the 1810 Franklin
and Henry County censuses. Additionally, the only Peachy Gilmer
that appears on any of the Binns Virginia County Tax Lists is Peachy Ridgeway
Gilmer in Rockingham County in the late 1700s.* This was the first Peachy Ridgeway Gilmer
and his wife was Mary Meriwether. When Peachy died in 1799/1800, his son George
inherited his father's large plantation.
Peachy's four daughters are described in
some detail below. However, the name Peachy
Gilmer (or variant) is no
t found in the entire 1810 census of the United States.
The Gilmers were a very prominent and well known
family in Virginia. The Gilmers in America, published in 1897 by
John Gilmer Speed is probably the best source of unadulterated Gilmer history
and genealogy. John Gilmer Speed relied heavily on the 1855 published research
of Governor George Rockingham Gilmer entitled Georgians. Speed's
work contains autobiographies, biographies and "The Gilmer
Genealogical Records" by Miss Louisa A. H. Minor.
On May 13, 1732, Dr. George Gilmer (the immigrant) married
Mary Peachy Walker in Williamsburg, Virginia. They had two sons: Peachy Ridgeway
and George Jr. Dr. George Jr. and his son, Francis Walker, were close friends
with James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Francis Walker Gilmer assisted Thomas
Jefferson in recruiting the original faculty for the University of Virginia. Peachy Ridgeway Gilmer married Mary
Meriwether. Most of the GEDCOM splicers have decided to add the fantasy Mary
Gilmer to the long established list of children of this Peachy Ridgeway. This
was an unfortunate guess because The Gilmers in America contains
a biography of this Peachy Ridgeway Gilmer and his children entitled "The
Eldest Branch". A short biography of his four daughters appears on page 28 & 29. As can
be seen from the text image on the right, two daughters were married
and two daughters never married. The two unmarried daughters are described in
quite a bit of detail. So I guess the splicers and dicers need to return to
their Ouija boards, wishing wells and séances.
Because of their high social standing, there is a wealth of genealogical information concerning the Gilmers, but nowhere has any serious Gilmer family historian noted a marriage of any Gilmer to any Boswell. Additionally, the bonds for early Franklin County, Virginia marriages have survived and are published. Franklin bond/marriage records exist for the five of the seven children generally attributed to William and Mary Jean Boswell. Another child was married in Mason County, Virginia. However, no bond/marriage record exists for Thomas Boswell and Mary Gilmer. It seems very unlikely that the marriage of a descendant of Dr. George Gilmer would have gone unnoticed and unrecorded in the Gilmer family history. Finally, Peachy and Mary Boswell did not name any child Peachy or Gilmer. They did have a granddaughter named Peachy Ratcliffe. None of the other the descendants of Thomas and Mary Boswell used the given name of Peachy or Gilmer. This is hardly the what the family historian would expect if Mary had been the daughter of Peachy Gilmer. So, no one has found even one piece of supporting evidence to corroborate the Mary Gilmer "theory". Miss Ratcliffe provides the only positive supporting evidence and her grandfather was Peachy. There is no additional circumstantial evidence: None at all. In fact, nearly all of the circumstantial evidence detracts from the "theory". With reference to the Mary Gilmer "theory", these facts should raise a very bright red flag. Not only was the wife of Thomas Boswell not the daughter of Peachy Gilmer, she was not the daughter of any Gilmer.
On the
other hand, there is substantial (certainly more than a scrap)
primary (not
whimsy, not wishful thinking, not circumstantial) evidence for the marriage of Mary Woody to
Thomas Bozzel:
1. The
Dec 10, 1803 Stokes
2. The
3. The
1800 Franklin County, Virginia Tax List includes Henry, David, John, Martin, Randolph & Weyott Woody. William Bozwell
was also listed.
Although not proven, William is the
generally accepted father of Thomas and his siblings.
4. The
early marriage bonds of Franklin County, Virginia are well documented. The marriage
bonds of the other Henry and Susannah Woody children married in
5. Thomas and Mary Bozzell named
their first known child Susan. Mary Woody's mother was
Susannah. If it were not
for the evidence mentioned above, I would not even include this fact.
6. The Thomas Bozzel family was enumerated
in the
1810 Franklin County, Virginia census: 2-0-1-0-0 &
2-1-0-1-0. Since William Bozzel, the posited
father of Thomas, was enumerated two residences away from Thomas, there may may
been some intermingling of the families. Susan, bc. 1805 & Peachy, bc. 1807 ,
were almost surely in this enumeration. The Thomas Bozwell family was again
enumerated in the 1820 Mason County, Virginia census next to the Gilbert Bozwell family.
However, since this listing is a clerk's
alphabetical listing, it is impossible to know if there may have been some
intermingling of the two families. The enumeration for Thomas' family was 4-1-0-0-1-0 & 1-2-0-1-0.
It is interesting to note that all eight of the younger members of the family
were enumerated as born between 1803 and 1820 and that this age enumeration
of
agrees exactly with the generally accepted ages of the children Thomas and Mary
Boswell.
Summation: On December 10, 1803 Thomas Bozzel made a marriage bond
with Mary Woodey. At the end of December, 1807, Henry Woody had a married
daughter named Polly Bozzel. The December 1807 Thomas Bozzel family most likely
consisted of three children, one of which was Peachy G. (born circa 1807 based
on later census data)
Conclusion: Peachy G. was the son of Thomas & Mary
Woody Bozzel and so were Peachy's siblings. Mary Gilmer was never married to
Thomas Bozzel. Since there is substantial primary evidence for this conclusion, I will
let other "researchers" try to prove a different conclusion based on
the facts.
Some interesting questions:
1. Why did Thomas and Mary Woody Boswell
name their child Peachy Gilmer? I doubt that we will ever know for sure, but
many, many children have been named for people that their parents admired or
were "indebted" to for some reason.
2. Why did Mary & Thomas go to North Carolina to get married? I don't know, but I have been informed by resident researchers of the Bassett Library that it is/was not an unusual occurrence. When I visited this great facility in Henry County, these researchers suggested that I look at the records of the North Carolina border counties for marriage records of Virginia residents. I followed their advice.
3. Why is there so much current enthusiasm for the Gilmer connection? The Boswell and Woody families were average frontier families in 1800 Virginia. Both families had their up and downs; sometimes more downs than ups. But the Gilmers were a prestigious and wealthy Virginia family that had intermarried with the equally prestigious Meriwethers of Lewis and Clark fame. Human nature yearns for a connection with fame, no matter how distant, dim and obtuse. Some folks just feel a lot better with a fictional lineage that includes a touch of celebrity. Other folks could care less: They a just splice their way to a million person GEDCOM.
4. Why is there less enthusiasm for a Woody connection? Several reasons: No GEDCOM to splice. No speculative Woody connection to Lewis & Clark. The stubborn "Not Invented Here" syndrome. The stubborn "Don't Confuse Me With The Facts, My Mind Is Made Up" syndrome.
At any rate, there is more than adequate primary evidence to support the marriage of Thomas Bozzel and Mary Woody, the daughter of Henry. If the marriage bond had been made in Franklin County, instead of 20/30 miles away, I doubt that the Mary Gilmer "theory" would have surfaced. If the marriage bond had named Mary Gilmer, a marriage location in California (or Mars) would have been ignored.
However,
there is no primary evidence that Thomas Boswell was the son of William and Jane
Boswell, just as there is no primary evidence for the names of any of the
children of this couple. There is no
extant William Boswell will and
It has been suggested that Mary Woody Bozzel died and that Thomas then married Mary Gilmer,
but the Peachy Gilmer name is the only evidence of this possibility and based
on census data and the will of Henry Woody, it is almost certain that Peachy was born
when
Mary Woody Bozzel was living.
Many years have passed since Mary Gilmer
"theory" was suggested and it has been several years since this
"theory" was incorporated into a fantasy GEDCOM and
published on the internet but, to my knowledge, no one has discovered one fact
to back up the original speculation. The power of print is powerful, but no
matter how many times this fantasy connection is copied and republished, it is
still fiction.
Research Suggestion: I am very confident that Mary Woody Boswell was the mother of Peachy G. Boswell, but other family historians obviously disagree and the GEDCOM splicers/dicers just don't care. However, I am also very interested in the reason for the Peachy G. Boswell name and I have spent more than a little time searching for this connection. Here is what I found: A Peachy Ridgeway/Ridgway Gilmer, b. 1779, in Albemarle County to Dr. George Jr. & Lucy Walker Gilmore, inherited a large amount of property in Henry County. He was a sometime lawyer and was married in 1803 to Mary House. In February, 1806, he went to Henry to spend at least part of his time. His autobiography makes it clear that he did not like living in Henry, but did practice in that area since his name appears as an attorney on more than a few legal documents in the early 1800s. In 1818, he moved to Bedford County. This is the Peachy Gilmer for whom Peachy G. Boswell was probably named. For those who might be wondering, this Peachy Gilmer had several sisters, but none named Mary.
As a very interesting and related aside, this same Peachy R. Gilmer named his first child William Wirt Gilmer in honor of his tutor and mentor, William Wirt. Do the strict "naming pattern" people insist that William Wirt Gilmer's mother was a Wirt? If so, here is an golden opportunity for another "theory" and the splicers/dicers can connect to a large Wirt GEDCOM.
It is possible that the connection between Thomas
Boswell and Peachy Gilmer might be found in one of the legal documents I have
mentioned. Also, the readily available yearly Franklin County Tax Lists raise
other doubts about the "generally accepted" children of William and Mary Mason
Boswell. I would think that dedicated Boswell family historians would want to explore every lead, no matter how small. To my knowledge, these
documents are not to be found on the internet, so old fashioned research would
be necessary to follow up on the leads that might prove useful. Jump on it. Spend a
buck. Rent a microfilm. Take a research trip. Find that iota of evidence. Prove me wrong. Perhaps you can extend the line to
Sacagawea.
June 12,
2015 Update: To date, I have seven atDNA matches with descendants of
Thomas Boswell/Bozzel/Bozwell and Mary Woody/Gilmer at the AncestryDNA Results
Page at the Ancestry.com site. Our Common Ancestors (CA) are Henry & Susannah
Martin Woody, the parents of Mary Woody Boswell. The Ancestry predicted
relationship is 5th to 8th cousins. A comparison of the lineages of these
matches with my own shows I am a 5th cousin, 5th cousin, once removed and 5th
cousin twice removed to there folks. An atDNA match is
proof of a genetic relationship; however, it is true that an atDNA match coupled
with a lineage match is not proof of a particular relationship. To prove a
particular relationship, the atDNA segments must be analyzed and each segment
assigned to an ancestor. I do not yet have enough data to make these
assignments, however, this evidence adds to the considerable evidence cited
above.
* Our thanks go to Steve & Yvonne
Binns for alerting us to this interesting tax listing.
I would
be extremely pleased to hear from anyone that has any evidence that might bear on
the marriage of Thomas Bozzel/Boswell/Bozwell.
Revised Jun 19, 2017