I am working on tracing my Cherokee heritage through my grandfathers paternal side of the family. His gg Grandfather was Julius Willhite who married Polly Anna Fryar, the daughter of Garrett Fryar and his wife Elizabeth Goodner/Fryar whom I am told came over to O.K. or thereabouts during or around the time of Trail of Tears. My grandma says Garrett and Elizabeth were originally from South Carolina. I would love to know their Native American names, maybe who their parents were, and when Polly Anna was born…I read one post that she was adopted?
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Polly was born about 1819 in TN. Julius and Polly can be found in an 1837 marriage record in Hardeman Co. TN.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardeman_County,_Tennessee
The coupld then shows up in records residing in Tippah Co. MS by 1840. They were living in AR by the 1850 Census enumeration. Polly’s place of birth is listed as “TN” in several records.. She lived a very long life, so she shows up in Census records through the decades, up until 1900.
Her grave can be found here:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=126365918&ref=acom
Garrett and Elizabeth’s lineages are very well-traced. They were originally from NC. They were not Cherokee. They were early White settlers that moved into lands taken from Chickasaws in northern Mississippi and southwest Tennessee. They then moved into AR with a large pioneer group. They did not move to Oklahoma on The Trail of Tears. They were taking up lands of the Indians that had been removed.
There is a bunch of info here:
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~armontgo/Goodner_book.htm
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~armontgo/1848_wagon_train.htm
Elizabeth’s father was Henry Goodner. He was a War of 1812 veteran, who received bounty land in Bedford TN in the late 1820s. Elizabeth’s mother was born about 1772 in Maryland. She was not Cherokee either. I have no idea where the lore of Cherokee ancestry is coming into the picture of Polly. Her roots are solidly Euro-American settler stock.
Thank you, yeah I haven’t found anything that would prove this theory either…I just think some conclusions were drawn somewhere, so I thought I’d iron it out.