I’m trying to find out if Gilbert Lee Kirk was Full Blooded Cherokee. He was born 1838 in Stevenson, Alabama. He was my GGGrandfather. My GGrandfather was James Madison Kirk and my Grandmother was Ola Mae Kirk. She looked full blooded Cherokee.
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Gilbert Lee Kirk was not a full blooded Cherokee, and there is no indication that he had any Native American ancestry. His parents were Garret Kirk and Mary Ann McCrary.
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=8696421
This Kirk family moved into Jackson County after land had been ceded by the Cherokee tribe. They were White settlers.
His parent’s findagrave pages:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=40352807
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=39869060
His grandfather:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=136928596
He was a Confederate soldier who served in Company I, 17th Tennessee Infantry. His widow filed for his pension in Jackson County, Alabama. He was shot multiple times during the war – in the left shoulder, the left foot, and hip. He is buried in the Shipp Cemetery in the Big Coon area, Jackson County Alabama.
Location:
Big Coon Creek. Turn left off Highway 72 North on Road 42, turn right on Road 55, turn right on road 53. Cemetery is on the right up a dirt road beside a log cabin house on a big hill.
There appears to be some very solid extant research for this particular family. Check out this link:
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~aljackso/kirk.html
Excerpt:
“Garret Kirk was involved in a divorce with his first wife, Mary Ann McCrary. There were three children by this marriage. The youngest, Gilbert Lee, at that time a baby, stayed with their mother, Mary Ann later married James Champion. The other two children, William I. and Eliza Jane, were with their father. Garret Kirk and his second wife, Cynthia Choat, along with two of her children and three of Garrett and Cynthia’s children on the 1850 census of Marion County, Tennessee. Gerri Garrett: Eliza was living with daughter, Lydia in 1900, Brush Creek Twsp. Wright Co. Missouri, born May and 66 years old (1834). She was the mother of 7 children, 6 still living. She was probably married in Marion Co. TN. Nathaniel Hayworth was living close to Garret Kirk, 1850. Goodspeeds shows a divorce between Nathaniel Haworth and Eliza Young in May 1866.”
Mary Anne McCrary’s father, Samuel, was born to an Irish father and a White mother from Virginia. Her mother, Elizabeth Allen, was the daughter of a Revolutionary War veteran (Ananias Allen) and her mother was from old European colonial roots. Here is Ananias’s page:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=13447796
Notice the following:
“They settled land recently acquired from the Cherokee Indians near Stevenson.”