Jeremiah Evans Married Martha Boreland?

For many decades, I had Jeremiah and Martha Boreland as the parents of my great-great-grandmother, Lucy A. Evans, wife of Amos Glover Slaughter. Lucy was in the 1850 Census for Person Co., NC as the daughter of Jerry and Patsy Evans. The Orange Co., NC records had the marriage of Jeremiah Evans and Martha Boreland on April 9, 1833.

I decided earlier this week to attempt breaking through a brick wall and find Martha Boreland’s ancestry.

The first thing I did was search the 1850 Census for Orange Co., NC and note all the Borelands. I found a number of them, spelled “Borland” in the records. I then researched each family to see if I could find evidence of Martha or where she could fit in.

The first family I looked at was Andrew Borland, but he had a daughter named Martha who was much too young to be mine. Then I looked at the next family, Archibald Borland. He didn’t have a daughter in the census, so I added him to Family Tree Maker so I could research his family. I found his estate file, and in that was a listing of his children. There was no Martha.

The third family I checked out was Willis Borland. He had a Martha, age 80, living with him, who might be his mother. This looked promising, so I entered him and his family in Family Tree Maker.

When I started checking references on Willis Borland, I found the alternate last name of Bolling. Allowing for southern accents, I could see how the two names could be mistaken by record keepers.

I changed his last name to Bolling in my data and started researching again. This time I found genealogies of the Bolling family. They all gave Willis’s parents as John Bolling/Boling and Martha Mangum. In addition, among the children I found Martha, and she was exactly the correct age, born about 1810.

So John Bolling and Martha Mangum are the elusive parents of Martha “Boreland.”

For anyone in the immediate family, an added bonus is that John Bolling was a private in the NC Militia during the Revolutionary War. So Jeremiah and Martha’s descendants are qualified for the DAR and SAR.

Check out the Genealogy section for more ancestors of John Bolling and Martha Mangum.