MyFather's Possible Descent from A Marion County, South Carolina Turner Man That Was in Natchitoches, Louisiana

 

There is a possibility that my father Lawrence Nolan Scott descended from a Marion County, South Carolina Turner man that was in Nanchitoches, Louisiana. 

Turner ancestral family was discovered through DNA relative matches in connection to a predominantly Southern East African segment with Filipino/Austronesian on Chromosome 9.

One of my enslaved African American 3rd Great Grandparents on my African American father Lawrence Nolan Scott's side descended from this family.

John Turner was the son of his English American owner Thomas Weathersbee and an African American slave. His wife Patience bought him from Thomas Weathersbee in 1769 in Halifax County, North Carolina.  Patience was noted as being 1/4 black and that her mother was Rachel Smith and of Irish ancestry. John and Patience relocated to Marion County, South Carolina. Some of John and Patience's children married into European American families which led to many European American descendants with some of them showing up as my paternal DNA relative matches. The matching segments are up to 32 cM in length. Some of them are African Americans including even Louisianans whose 23andme profiles show four grandparents born in Louisiana. My father was a 7th generation Southern Louisianan, and all of his 2nd great grandparents were African American slaves except for his European American 2nd great grandfather James P. Cross who was son of English American plantation owner Benjamin Cross and 3/4 Acadian Anastasia Bourgeois. 

A Frenchman B Portier matches me on just my Filipino/Austronesian paternal Chromosome 9 segment with the shared segment being 5.19 cM, and it is my entire 0.1% Filipino/Austronesian in my 23andme Ancestry Composition. He has much longer Filipino/Austronesian segment on Chromosome 9 and other Filipino/Austronesian segments. His paternal grandmother was born in Madagascar.  Therefore, I am very certain that my Filipino/Austronesian segment is Malagasy from Madagascar.  I can come to the conclusion that one of lmy father's enslaved ancestors was a Malagasy brought to the Americas before the 1740s. 

DNA Connection Between My Paternal Ancestors in Louisiana And The Colonial American Turners of Marion County, South Carolina  https://diversegenes.blogspot.com/2023/03/dna-connection-between-my-paternal.html

The Marion County Turner Researcher, who gave me information and documents about Stephen Turner's mixed African-European ancestry and Thomas Weatherbee being John Turner's father, just recently informed that two sons of John and Patience's son Reuben Turner named  Martin Turner and James Turner joined the U.S. Army in Marion County in 1814 and were sent out with the Third Rifles to patrol the western rivers, and she gave me attached service records. She also told me about Billy Higgins' book A Stranger and a Sojourner" provides additional information on their time in service and that one of the things he notes is that they spent considerable time in Louisiana between 1815-1819. She told me that either one would be an excellent candidate to be my forebear.

Marion County Turner Family May Be Connected to my Paternal Grandmother and Information Given to Me about the Turners https://diversegenes.blogspot.com/2023/06/marion-county-turner-family-may-be.html

I looked up the book at Internet Archive and found it.   It's A Stranger and A Sojourner : Peter Caulder, free Black frontiersman in antebellum Arkansas. 

I immediately checked it out. I read that Peter Caulder was from Marion County and the son of Moses Caulder who had land next to land of John Turner Sr.  Peter Caulder was childhood friends and army comrades of John Turner Sr's grandsons Martin Turner and James Turner.  They were members of the 3rd Rifle regiment that ended up being assigned to Fort Claiborne which was in Natchitoches, Louisiana.  They arrived there in December 1815. The book mentions that they were in Louisiana for a year. 

The book even mentions some history about the Turner family. 

"John Turner, "a free person of color" and his wife Patience, a white woman, owned a diamond-shaped tract of land along Catfish Creek adjoining that of Moses Caulder. John Turner, whose mother was a slave on his white father's plantation, came to freedom through purchase and manumission by his Irish-born wife Patience.  In colonial Carolina on sandy lands at the edge of a pine forest, the couple set up their homestead and acquired not only land, but livestock and bank account as well. The Turner family grew to include several children, including John Turner Jr., and grandchildren, two of whom were Martin Turner and James Turner. These brothers, six years apart in age, came to be the childhood friends and military comrades of Peter Caulder of the neighboring farm, who stood between the Turner brothers in age."

I also found Peter Caulder Findagrave site profile which mentions 

Peter Caulder was born in Marion County, South Carolina, and was of African descent. The U.S. Army listed him as “a colored man.” In three U.S. censuses, he was categorized in race as “mulatto.” His life in Arkansas represents the success free blacks could achieve prior to their banishment by the state government.

At the beginning of the War of 1812, seventeen-year-old Peter joined a state militia unit for three months. He was discharged without seeing any action in the war. When the British burned Washington DC in August 1814, Peter Caulder and his father, Moses Caulder, joined the Third U.S. Rifles and marched with the regiment to defend the capital. Four other Marion County mulattoes, friends and relatives of the Caulders, enlisted at the same time and served integrated with the Southern whites recruited for this regular army unit.

When peace came, Caulder and his Marion County fellow soldiers were sent to Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania to enter training for the elite Rifle Regiment that would soon be posted to the western frontier. Caulder and his mates were under the command of Major William Bradford when the company received orders from General Thomas A. Smith to establish a fort on the upper Arkansas River.

Caulder and Martin Turner were selected for an advance party under Major Stephen H. Long, who was to determine a suitable site for the fort. Thus, in November 1817, Caulder clambered out of Long’s six-oared skiff at a flat rock called Belle Point by French trappers. Here, Long would lay out Fort Smith (Sebastian County), which was built over the next two years by Bradford’s sixty-five man company of riflemen—Caulder, Martin Turner, James Turner, Joseph Clark, and Caleb Cook among them, all men of African descent and veterans of the War of 1812 who were serving side by side with their fellow white soldiers.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/187071061/peter-caulder

The Turners were neighbors and friends of my Bethea cousins who were descendants of my paternal 7th Great Grandfather John Bethea who immigrated to Virginia from England.  John's son Tristram and Ann Goodman were my paternal 6th Great Grandparents. Their daughter Priscilla and Elisha Cross' son Benjamin Cross was my 4th Great Grandfather who relocated to Lafourche Parish, Louisiana from Gates County, North Carolina and married my 4th Great Grandmother Anastasia Bourgeois. Benjamin formed and owned the Orange Grove Plantation in Lafourche Parish. He was a slaveowner like his father and maternal grandfather. 

I have one AncestryDNA match that descends from both the Turners and Betheas in Marion County.  He descends from both Tristram Bethea and Ann Goodman as well as William Bethea (Tristram's nephew) and Sarah Goodman (Ann's sister). He descends from Reuben Turner and Dorothy Martin.  He and I share a 21 cM segment, but I don't know which of the families that it came from. He and I share Turner descendant AncestryDNA matches. Because AncestryDNA has no chromosome browser, there is no way to tell which ancestral family the shared segment came from.

Information about Martin Turner

http://www.martygrant.com/genealogy/turner/turner-martin-izard-ar.htm

Information about James Turner

http://www.martygrant.com/genealogy/turner/turner-james-izard-ar.htm

Reuben Turner was married to Dorothy Martin 

I checked for any AncestryDNA matches that descend from Martins in South Carolina. 

I have 4 AncestryDNA matches that descend from Reuben Turner and Dorothy Martin and 3 AncestryDNA matches that descend from William Turner and Catherine Martin

as well as these other AncestryDNA matches that have no known Turner ancestral family

J. Hughes   23 cM segment

matches descendants of the Marion County Turners 

2nd Great Granddaughter of Joel Martin and Anne Beasley's son Benjamin Franklin Martin

D. Martin  12 cM segment

matches a person that matches descendants of Marion County Turners

Great Granddaughter of Joel Martin and Anne Beasley's daughter Nancy Martin 

S. Hall  12 cM segment

D. Martin's sister

matches a descendant of Marion County Turners

They have Benjamin Martin b. 1780 in South Carolina as Joel Martin's father.

Service Records that has Martin Turner

Service Records that has James Turner