I have always been told that our family has a long line of Indian in us, the problem is when we have tried to trace our heritage it abruptly ends once we get to where our Indian heritage should start. I have been told that I have great great great grandparents that were full blooded Cherokee Indians, also have been told at some point there was an Indian Chief in the family. Our problem comes from not knowing any of their Indian names. Our family names are Alsobrooks and Goins, we are from the Colbert County area of north Alabama. There was also a family member that founded the town of Alsoboro. Thanks for any help and info that you can provide.
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Hi,
There are Goins on the Dawes Roll. The first number is the Dawes Roll the second number is the Guion Miller Roll number.
Goins
Adam no Dawes 12367
Ethel..4155M 12373
Ezra 542M
Janette 15595 12372
Lena 21658
Missouri R 15593 12370
Noble no Dawes 30603
Okley 21659
Riley no Dawes 12368
Sherman no Dawes 12369
Hope this helps.
Good Luck
It is important to understand the historical and demographic context when doing this kind of genealogical research.
You can certainly look at rolls of both western and eastern populations and search for general surnames. But, this can often be of limited value because it doesn’t narrow down where your ancestors were living and what community they were part of, at a given time in history. However, if you have two surnames and posit a connection for GGG grandparents that were said to be fullblood Cheorkee, you can at least to a cursory review and see if any known fullblood families had those surnames. In the case of Goins and Alsobrooks, there are none.
There were only four females on the By Blood rolls with this surname: Okley, Lena, Jeanette, and Missouri. Lena was a Cherokee women married to a non-Cherokee man named Goins, and Okley was her daughter. Missouri was a Cherokee woman married to a man named Goins and Jeannette was her daughter. No other Goins were listed. This was not a Cherokee name at that time, and not associated with a fullblood Cherokee family.
http://media.nara.gov/media/images/35/21/35-2072a.gif
The other thing to realize is that the Cherokee population in northern Alabama was rather small compared to other states. The population that moved into this location also came in a bit later as Cherokees moved west to avoid pressure from White settlers pushing in from the east. It was not a heavily settled area historically speaking. This population shift included a lot of Lower Towns Cherokees, for example, displaced in the late 1700s. In any event, there were just a few hundred individuals living in the northeast part of what is now Alabama in the mid-1830s. The majority of these Cherokees moved west during the Removal Era or on the Trail of Tears in 1838-9. Only a few dozen individual Cherokees remained in the state after that point, and this did not include any known fullblood family clusters. The Cherokees that stayed behind after 1839 in Alabama were mixed-blood, mostly married to non-Cherokee spouses. No intact community persisted in that state after Removal. Likewise, there were no Cherokee communities in what is Colbert County, Alabama. This had been part of Chickasaw tribal lands.
So, understanding this demographic and historical context you can do standard genealogy and place ancestors in a certain social reality. Where did they live? In what society and community were they found? If these families stayed in Alabama after 1839, there is almost no chance they were full bloods. If they were found in Colbert County, they wouldn’t be living in any historical Cherokee community. So, they’d have to be moving in as settlers, buying land in normal fashion, and living within the larger White society. Are they listed on records in the 1830s and 1840s? What do the documents say?
The best approach here is to post SPECIFIC family or ancestral queries, rather than just surnames and general region. For example, if GGG grandparents are your “brickwalls,” you could post the information you have for GG grandparents and see if anyone else can find documents or records that point to their ancestral backgrounds. You might be able to find a few more links that you didn’t have in your tree, when you get assistance from people with fresh eyes. You’d need to post names, dates of birth and death, more specific locations, spouses name, kids, etc. This is the starting point for the research, and you keep building the tree going back each generations once you find verified documents and records.