SANDERS

 OF RANDOLPH AND MONTGOMERY COUNTIES, NORTH CAROLINA, AND JACKSON COUNTY, ALABAMA, AND OTHER COUNTIES IN MISSISSIPPI, ARKANSAS, AND TEXAS
Copyright to original articles  2001-2008 by Gary B. Sanders.  Graphics by Kari Buziak, midi files by Barry Taylor.

The following Sanders genealogy articles are supplements to my RootsWeb World Connect Web file burton-sanders. For comments, questions, or suggestions please contact me at the e-mail address listed at the World Connect file. I hope you find the information provided here interesting and helpful, and I welcome any additional information or updates you can provide. If you quote material from this site in your research, please give credit to the source of your information, whether the material is my work or that of others I have quoted. See endnotes for further information about the sources of this site.

It is well to remember that, although the lineages presented here are based on my best attempts at measured judgment and plausible reasoning, some of these conclusions may not stand the scrutiny of future research. Genealogical research is an ongoing project and is never finished. It should also be noted that not all the Sanders mentioned in the following articles have a proven genealogical relationship, but all had ancestors who lived in southern Virginia or the Randolph/Montgomery County area of North Carolina where my ancestors lived. 

Specifically, my Sanders/Saunders ancestors belong to two separate but intermarried lines in the Randolph/Montgomery area. One line descends from Isaac Saunders of Montgomery and later of Randolph County; the other descends from Joseph Sanders who died in 1803 in Randolph County. My great-great grandparents were Benjamin Saunders/Sanders, a son of Isaac, and Mary Sanders, a daughter of Joseph. Our Sanders are depicted in family tradition as of Irish, Scottish, or English origin. All we know for certain in that regard is that they were living in central North Carolina by the time of the American Revolution. DNA tests show that related Sanders were living at the same time in York County, South Carolina, and in the Fairfax/Loudoun county area of Virginia.

If you are a descendant of Isaac Saunders or any of his brothers, Aaron, Moses, or Francis, or have a confirmed DNA connection, you may want to contribute to the research on our Sanders line by joining the William Aaron Saunders research group. Membership is free and provides a means by which researchers can exchange and share information.     --Gary Sanders

List of Articles and Links
Links to articles and other files at this site: Links to PDF files at this site. These files require Adobe Reader; download free copy here:  Links to other Web sites:

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Most recent research news:

July 1, 2008:  Jim Sanders' Land Records Research

June 21, 2008:  Elden Hurst's Research on Moses Sanders

May 14, 2008:   Mary Hamilton, wife of Moses Sanders

 Introduction to the Sanders/Saunders Family of Randolph and Montgomery Counties

There were several Sanders families in the Randolph/Montgomery County area in the late 1770s and 1780s, and we do not believe all of them were related, but my research, and that of many other individuals who have generously shared documentation, indicates that there were at least four brothers who lived in that area of North Carolina: William Aaron Saunders, Isaac Saunders, the Reverend Moses Sanders, and Francis Sanders. Moses Martin Sanders, a grandson of the Reverend Moses Sanders, referred to Francis Sanders as his great uncle in the ordinances he completed for the LDS church in the late nineteenth century. One of Aaron's descendants, Thomas Bailey Saunders of Texas, wrote a letter about 1890 in which he referred to William Aaron, Isaac, and "another brother named Moses, who was a Baptist preacher." There was at least one sister, believed to have been named Tabitha, in the family, and there may very well have been other siblings. Family tradition is that the parents of Aaron, Isaac and Moses were John Saunders and Catherine Nimrod of Virginia, but the parents are shadowy figures, known only through family lore and not through documentation. In the family tradition there is a  bit of fanciful material about two Saunders brothers who helped to capture Blackbeard, the pirate, and then changed the spelling of their name to Sanders, but the credibility of this tale is untested.  We know nothing of the childhood of the four brothers, but by the 1770s they appear in the land records of the Piedmont area of North Carolina that was then Anson and Rowan Counties, but that would later become the counties of Randolph, Montgomery, Iredell, Wilkes, and others.

In 1772, William Aaron received a land grant on Barnes Creek in what is now Montgomery County.  Between 1771 and 1774, Moses Sanders received several grants of land in present day Montgomery County (then Anson County), to the west of Aaron's land. In 1774 Moses and Aaron were ordered to help construct a road. In 1782 Isaac appears on the tax roll of Montgomery County.  These are typical of the numerous references to Moses, Aaron, or Isaac in the land records.

There seems to have been a long-standing relationship with the Hamilton family among these early Sanders. Moses Sanders married a Mary Hamilton; one of the descendants of Isaac married a Hamilton;Tabitha married a Hamilton; and we know of a William Hamilton who owned land near the Sanders and is believed to have been a brother to Mary, wife of Moses.  Most of these Hamiltons appear to have moved to Randolph and Montgomery Counties from Brunswick County, Virginia. We do not know if the Saunders family was also from Brunswick County, but there is a family tradition that they were from Virginia, and before that, from England, Scotland, or Ireland. Despite widespread Web postings to the contrary, there is no proof that any of the four brothers  were born in England, and it appears that Christopher Columbus Sanders was mainly responsible in 1902 for popularizing the theory that the Reverend Moses Sanders was born in Wiltshire County in England when he helped erect the minister's tombstone and added the inscription "born in England 1742." The theory that Moses' father was a John Sanders from the village of Downton in Wiltshire, England, is apparently based on confusion with a different John Sanders and son Moses who lived in Wiltshire and emigrated to America nearly a hundred years before the Reverend Moses Sanders was born.

There are large gaps in our knowledge of Moses, Aaron, and Isaac. The name of Isaac's wife, for example, is not even mentioned in family tradition, though we do know that Isaac had a child named Jacob, and probably several others.  William Aaron's wife was Joan Bailey, who is mentioned in the Thomas Bailey Saunders letter as "of the famous old family of Virginia." No one is quite sure which Bailey family he was talking about or why they were famous. We know that Aaron died in 1782  because letters of administration for his estate were issued in that year. Aaron's widow, Joan (or Joanah) appears on the land records of Montgomery county as late as 1803. In the 1830s, Nimrod Sanders, a son of Aaron and Joan Saunders, sold  his land in Montgomery County and moved to Alabama. Moses moved away from Montgomery County after October 1781, first to Wilkes County, and then further west to the area that became Iredell County. As an itinerant preacher, he traveled frequently, and even moved to South Carolina for a while, before eventually residing in Franklin County, Georgia, where he died in 1817, a highly respected clergyman. Many of his descendants became Mormons.

Francis, who had helped Moses in Georgia with his ministry and who is mentioned in the minutes of the Grove Level Baptist Church in Georgia that was founded by Moses, eventually moved to Tennessee and probably died in that state after 1820. He is known to have had a son named Silas.

Isaac, who is said to have been the first man to build a house at Cross Creek (now Fayetteville), may have lived longer than any of his brothers, probably surviving well into his nineties. If he was really one of the first settlers at Cross Creek he must have been a young man about 1760. Like his brothers, he owned land in Montgomery County, but it appears he moved to Randolph County after 1782. He is enumerated on the 1800 census of Randolph County as over forty-five years of age, but the last documentary record of him is a transfer of land by him to Benjamin Sanders in 1808. He lived long enough that Thomas Bailey Saunders, who was born in 1816, could write a letter to a nephew about 1890 and marvel at Isaac's longevity, "I have seen your great-grandfather and his wife, and they were very old then."  If Isaac was born about 1737-1740, then he would have been in his eighties in the 1820s when Thomas Bailey Saunders was a child.

Most of the descendants of William Aaron and Isaac lived in the northern area of Montgomery County, not far from the Randolph County line,  between Duncombe Creek and Barnes Creek, particularly near the community of Ophir, which is described as a village of tradition and pastoral values in the Montgomery County Heritage Book, Volume II:

Nestled in the  Uwharries, Ophir is a family community. A community that still believes in doing things the old fashioned way.“We are all kin up here one way or another, “ said Robert Saunders. “We always tell people they better watch what they say about anybody, because more than likely, they’ll be talking about their own people.” Way back, when folks first started settling in Ophir, Ophir wasn’t Ophir. It was Saunders Hill. “I guess it was around the 1800s that the area as known as Saunders Hill,” said Myrtle Hall. “We had a post office that went across Coggins Gold Mine that was called Saunders Hill Post Office."

The name was changed from Saunders Hill to Ophir in the nineteenth century when a steel mill was built. Ophir was a reference to the land of Ophir mentioned in the Bible as a place where King Solomon obtained gold. From this small area, the descendants of the Montgomery County Saunders moved to other states in the South, Midwest, and West.

The articles offered here and the links to other Web sites cannot possibly cover everything a descendant would like to know about the Sanders of Randolph and Montgomery, nor have I tried to be rigidly systematic in arranging the articles. Rather, I add features as items of interest come to my attention. My hope is provide information that supplements that of other researchers so that, as Thomas Bailey Saunders III said in 1971 in a letter to a relative who was inquiring about family history, we may "find out how many horse borrowers, cattle rustlers, coon hunters, preachers, and just plain good Christian folks there were among us." (from William Aaron Saunders Research Group Web site.)


The following chart is provided as a brief general introduction to the line of John Saunders and Catherine Nimrod who are regarded in family tradition as the parents of the siblings William Aaron, Isaac, Moses, Tabitha, and Francis. Most of the indicated years of birth are tentative approximations, and I have used italics to indicate individuals whose parentage is especially problematic. It is likely that there were other children in this family, but their names are currently unknown.

John Saunders
( born before about 1718 in England or Virginia)
||

Wm Aaron Saunders, 1735  Isaac  Saunders,  1737 Moses Sanders, 1742 Tabitha Sanders, 1750 Francis Sanders, 1755
     1. Stephen, 1770   1. Jacob, 1760    1.  Aaron, 1769     1. Peter, 1780
     2. Luke, 1772   2. Benjamin, 1766    2. Moses, 1771     2. Silas, 1785
     3. Sallie,  1775   3. Joe, 1770    3. Sarah, 1773     3. Moses, 1795
     4. Nimrod, 1780   4. Francis, 1782    4. David, 1775     4. Francis, 1797
   5. Nancy, 1778
   6. Amos, 1781
   7. John, 1787

The descendants of John and Catherine intermarried with the descendants of Joseph Sanders of Randolph County, who made his will on March 18, 1803. Joseph's wife was name  Rebecca, but her maiden name is unknown. At least three of their daughters and two of their sons married Sanders descendants of John and Catherine. DNA testing, however, suggests that Joseph was not related to the Saunders/Nimrod line. Because, of the extensive cousin intermarriage which was common in those days, tracing the genealogical links between these two Sanders families is rather complicated. Many Saunders and Saunders of Randolph and Montgomery in North Carolina and Jackson County in Alabama are descended from both Sanders lines.  For example, Joseph Sanders was my g-g-g grandfather and John  Saunders was my fourth great grandfather, even though they were unrelated.

Below is a chart that gives a brief introduction to the line of Joseph Sanders of Randolph County, showing the marriages of his children to spouses from the Saunders/Nimrod line.

Joseph Sanders
( born about 1755, died between 1803-1805)
||

Rachel, 1779
spouse:
Francis  
Sanders
(son of Isaac
Saunders)



  Mary, 1782
spouse:
Benjamin
Sanders
(son of Isaac
Saunders)



 George, 1784
spouse:
Phebe 
Sanders
(daughter of Jacob
Saunders)



 John, 1785
spouse:
unknown






 Sarah, 1787
spouse:
Peter Wall
Rich





 Phoebe, 1789
spouse:
Jesse
Sanders
(son of Jacob
Saunders)



 Joseph, 1793*
spouse:
Deborah
Saunders
(daughter of Jacob
Saunders)
* Joseph's 1st wife was
Martha Saunders,
probably a cousin)
 Elijah,
1804		  Benjamin
1804		  Rebecca
1807		 David
1809		 Joseph
1807		 William
1815
 John Francis
1805		 Rebecca
1806		 Joseph
1808		 Joseph
1811		 Sarah
1809		 Nancy
1818
 Elisha
1814		  Sarah
1808		  Mary
1810		 Martha
1815		 Jacob
1813		 Elizabeth
1821
 Frances
1816		 George
1812
  J. Peter
1811		 John
1817		 George
1816		 Benjamin
1823
Wm. Patrick
1819		 Pheobe
1815		  Benjamin
1813		 Rebecca
1820		 Rebecca
1820		 Rachel
1825
Mary Jane
1923		 Isaac
1818		 Margaret
1815		 George
1822		 Mary
1821		 George
1826
       John
1822		 Sarah
1821		 Moses
1823		 Jesse
1824		 Ailsey
1829
 Alfred
 1827		 Deborah
1823		 Mary
1825		 Martha
1830
Anna
1825		 Jesse
1827		 Mary
1833
Phebe
1827		 Elias
1829		 Joseph
1834
Martha
1830		 Isaac
1830		 Henry (by 2nd wife)
1840
Phoebe (by 2nd wife)
1842
John (by 2nd wife)
1845

Return to Index
John Saunders and Catherine Nimrod

Information that the parents of the five siblings—William Aaron, Isaac, Moses, Francis, Tabitha—were John Saunders and Catherine Nimrod is from the research of Elva Hoge Dixon. She was born in 1923 and died in June 2007.  She had two Sanders lines in her ancestry, going back to Joseph Sanders, Sr., and to Isaac Saunders, one of the five siblings.  Elva Hoge Dixon’s mother was Phebe Charlotte Lottie Kingery (1885-1971) and her grandmother was Phebe Emaline Sanders (1842-1931). Her great grandparents were Joseph Sanders, Jr., and Deborah Saunders. The latter was the daughter of Jacob Saunders and the granddaughter of Isaac Saunders, brother of William Aaron and the Reverend Moses Sanders.

Elsewhere I have mentioned that Phebe Emaline Sanders, Elva’s grandmother, corresponded with Sylvie Escat Saunders, the wife of George A. Saunders who was the grandson of Thomas Bailey Saunders and great-great grandson of William Aaron Saunders. This correspondence occurred about 1918 when Sylvie Saunders was trying to acquire information about the ancestry of her husband. At that time Sylvie Saunders was a resident of New Orleans and Phebe Emaline lived in Alhambra, Illinois.

Elva Hoge Dixon became increasingly interested in genealogy later in life and began to go through her mother and grandmother’s papers. In a March 1999 letter to Roland Jary, she wrote, “I found all these old papers rolled tightly in an old baking powder can along with old tax papers and letters I’m not sure of…..I wished I had asked mom more questions but I wasn’t too interested then.”  Elva Dixon never owned a computer, kept all of her records on paper, and corresponded with other researchers through mail.

Among the letters she had in her possession was one written in March 1965 by her mother, Phebe Lottie Kingery Hoge, to Mabel Harmon, the daughter of Phebe’s niece:

“I start with the grandparents of Phebe Emeline Sanders although I don’t know much about them, not even their given names so I just have to call them Mr.  and Mrs. Sanders. They lived in North Carolina. He built household furniture with the use of hand tools and sold them. I don’t know how many children they had, but he gave each child a homemade chest--made soon after they were born in which to keep their clothing. A daughter named Deborah later became my grandma, my mother’s mother. She was born on March 7, 1803. I don’t know how she first got acquainted with my Alabama grandfather, Mr. Joseph Sanders, but she went to Alabama and they were married. He was much older than her for he had been married before and had 12 children, most of them grown and married, probably at ages of 14-16. I don’t know when they (Joseph and Deborah) were married but probably about 1838 for their oldest son was born about 1840. That was Uncle Henry. Then their second child was my mother who was born May 20, 1842 and her third and last child was Uncle John who was born Aug 30, about 1844. Grandma (Deborah) died when Phebe (my mother) was only 12 yrs. old and mother kept house for her father and 2 brothers (with their help) until Civil War started. Deborah’s mother who was my great-grandma lived to be 106 yrs. old. I remember hearing my mother say she and Isham were married on her brother John’s birthday anniversary and she said that Irene Ryder was born Mar. 7th which was her mother’s (Deborah’s) birthday anniversary. Mother never had the pleasure of seeing her grandparents on either side--all Sanders. I don’t think her mother ever got back to see her people in N. Carolina and I think her grandparents on her father’s side were probably dead before she was born.”

It’s evident from this letter that Phebe Lottie Kingery Hoge was unaware of the given name of Jacob Saunders, the son of Isaac Saunders. She says only, “I don’t know much about them, not even their given names so I just have to call them Mr.  and Mrs. Sanders.” Later, Lois Brady, a descendant of Isaac, provided Elva Hoge Dixon with information from the Sampson Saunders (1801-1864) Bible that shows Jacob was the unknown “Mr. Sanders.” This information is revealed in a letter that Lois Brady wrote to Roland Jary in July 2000.

Although her mother didn’t know Jacob’s given name, Elva gave John Saunders as the name of Isaac’s father, and therefore Jacob’s grandfather, in her correspondence with other Saunders researchers in the 1990s.  For example, in a February 1999 letter to Roland Jary, a descendant of William Aaron, she said, “The only thing I can add is my grandmother Phebe’s line which is—John—Isaac—Jacob—Deborah—Phebe—me.” 

According to Michael McGinnis, “ Information about Moses being son of John and Catherine Nimrod Sanders comes from a Bible transcription which was handed down in the family of Elva Dixon, a descendant of Deborah Sanders, daughter of Jacob." The McGinnis Web site states that this information is from “Gretta.” I believe this is a reference to Gretta Saunders, a Sanders researcher whose husband is a descendant of Isaac Saunders. I tend to think the statement about the Bible transcription is a misinterpretation of the situation--this may be a reference to either the Nimrod Saunders Bible which gave the exact birth dates of his children or to the Jesse Elbert Saunders Bible which named Jacob as the father of Sampson Saunders. Elva Dixon did not refer to a family Bible as her source for John and Catherine in any of the letters that I have seen.

In fact, she didn’t give a source at all in her letters for her statements about John and Catherine and, so far as I can tell, no one asked her about her source. She did state that some of her information about the Saunders family came from others and was not based on family tradition.  In a June 1997 letter she said, “I see that you sent Andrea Gereighty a letter also. Andrea is the one that gave me some of the information I have.”  In the same letter she said, regarding Lois Brady, “I’ve copied what she sent me in letters and I’ve started with John Saunders born in 1700. This John Saunders is also in Andrea’s line.” These statements leave open the possibility that the information about John Saunders came from either Andrea Gereighty or Lois Brady. However, in a letter to Roland Jary, Lois Brady wrote, “All the information I have from Jacob back to Thomas Sanders was given to me by Elva Dixon.” 

At the end of the June 1997 letter, Elva Dixon attached a chart that begins as follows:

John Saunders
John Saunders was born in 1700 in VA.
Married Catherine Nimrod, born about 1700 or 1705
Five children
1.    Isaac Saunders (my line)
2.    Moses Saunders
3.    William Aaron Saunders (this is the beginning of Andrea’s line where it is different from mine)
4.    George Saunders
5.    Tabitha Saunders

In the left margin of the first page of the chart she wrote “came from TBS and Andrea.”  TBS is a reference to Thomas Bailey Saunders IV, a descendant of William Aaron, and Andrea, of course, refers to Andrea Gereighty. It’s difficult to determine if this reference to the source refers to the entire page or just to the part about Isaac Saunders.  She then repeats some of the information her mother gave about Jacob Saunders being a carpenter and adds that one of the hope chests that Jacob made for his children was still in the family.

From these documents and correspondence, we are still not able to make any firm conclusions about whether the information Elva Hoge Dixon provided about John and Catherine is reliable or based on an authentic tradition or record.

The fact that her mother in 1965 did not know the given name of Jacob Saunders, son of Isaac, and referred to him only as “Mr. Sanders” suggests that Elva came by her information on John Sanders at a later time and possibly from another source. Perhaps it came from some of her grandmother’s documents or it may have come from other researchers.

Among the researchers with whom she exchanged notes was Don Schaefer, a descendant of Isaac Saunders, and editor of the newsletter Sanders Siftings. On one occasion they met in person. Don Schaefer wrote in a recent e-mail to me, “I have the latest that Elva wrote, actually an original hand-written manuscript.  It has the identical line I got from Andrea going back from Isaac to John Saunders and Catherine Nimrod, Martin Saunders III, etc., back to Harlowen Saunders in 1170 A.D.”  In the other letters I have seen, Elva Dixon didn’t go further back than John Saunders.  Maybe she already had the information about John Saunders and added to that the line she got from Andrea Gereighty. Or maybe she received the information about John Saunders from Andrea Gereighty. Then the question would be whether Andrea Gereighty received that information from Sylvie Saunders’ research in the early twentieth century or from a different source. Andrea Gereighty was a descendant of Sylvie and had possession of some of the family documents regarding Sylvie’s correspondence with Phebe Emaline in 1918.

There is actual documentary evidence about the Martin Saunders mentioned by Elva in her letter to Don Schaefer, but I haven’t seen anything that provides evidence of a connection to the Montgomery County Saunders. So I think we can discount the information about Martin Sanders and his line being the ancestors of the Saunders/Nimrod line. But there is no documentary evidence that has come to light about John Saunders and Catherine Nimrod at all. That doesn’t mean they didn’t exist, of course.

I think the evidence is reasonably clear that William Aaron, Isaac, Moses, Francis, and Tabitha were siblings. I’m not certain about the identity of their parents, but I’m retaining John and Catherine in my records while keeping an open mind about other possibilities. This is not a case where many other possibilities are readily available.  Moses, Aaron, and Isaac seem to appear suddenly in the land records of Anson County in the 1770s. We have in the family tradition that Isaac, at least, was living near Fayetteville as early as 1760, but we don’t have a clue as the whereabouts of the others.

The are few alternative possibilities that come to mind as the parents of the siblings. One is William Sanders and his wife Susan. He was probably born about 1705 and he appears in the land records of Anson in the 1760s, but was exempt from taxes about 1764 due to age or infirmity. Three of his children appear to be Patrick, James, and Sarah. Among the descendants of Patrick, family tradition is that the family was from Scotland or Ireland. One of Patrick’s sons, William A. Saunders (born 1776, another William Aaron, perhaps?) moved to Prairie County, Arkansas, where there were also numerous descendants of the Saunders/Nimrod line. DNA tests show that James Sanders, believed to be one of William’s sons, is related to the Saunders/Nimrod group. The main difficulty in accepting William as the father of William Aaron, Moses, Isaac, etc. is that his land holdings were not adjacent to those of Moses and William Aaron. On the other hand, James, Jr., the grandson of William, did hold land at one time on Barnes Creek near Moses and Aaron. If John and Catherine are really the parents of the five siblings, William was probably John’s brother.

Another possible father of the brothers is Daniel Sanders who appears on the 1759 Rowan County tax list and the 1779 Montgomery County tax list. A 1779 deed by Edward Young (per information from Jim Sanders) refers to Daniel Sanders as having lived on land that is adjacent to that of Edward Young, who is referenced in a later deed as being a neighbor of Moses Sanders. If the Daniel of 1759 is the same person as the one of 1779, he certainly warrants consideration as a possible progenitor.

George Sanders is referenced in a 1773 deed as having property adjacent to Moses Sanders and was ordered to help build a road with Moses and Aaron in 1774. Tentatively, I am listing George as a possible brother to Aaron, Isaac, Moses, and Francis even though he is not mentioned in family tradition at all.  Other early Montgomery County Sanders are Reuben (1783 deed) and Joshua (1780). Though these two were in the area, we don't have either documentation or tradition that would tie them to the Saunders/Nimrod line.

Web pages that purport to trace the Saunders of Montgomery beyond the era when the brothers began acquiring land in Anson County are dubious. One suggested link is with Sir John Saunders and Alice Coles who lived around 1600 in England and whose descendants moved to Massachusetts. This was the same Saunders family whose history has been arranged by earlier researchers to give the Reverend Moses Sanders an impressive English ancestry and a birth place of Downton in Wiltshire, England. I haven't researched this Massachusetts Saunders family myself, but a quick glance at the postings shows that most of the assumptions are not plausible. For example, one researcher has Martin Saunders, born about 1632 in England having a child born in 1642 in Virginia while his parents were living in Braintree, Massachusetts. In 2004 in my article on the life and career of the Reverend Moses Sanders, I asked if anyone has any documentary evidence that contradicts the presentation in this Web page that Moses had brothers named Aaron, Isaac, and Francis. So far no one has come forward with any evidence for a different theory or any evidence that takes the line a generation or more back in time.

--Gary Sanders
February 4, 2008
I would like to express my thanks to Roland Jary and Don Schaefer who have been very helpful in providing me information about their correspondence with Elva Hoge Dixon.

Return to Index
Sanders of Jackson County, Alabama

Many pioneering Saunders or Sanders from Randolph and Montgomery counties in North Carolina moved directly to unsettled parts of Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, or other points further west, but a sizable contingent of the Sanders clan settled either temporarily or permanently in Jackson County, Alabama. Originally home to the Cherokee Indians, one of the Five Civilized Tribes, the area that would become Jackson county already had established farms and villages and a thriving commerce before it was opened for white settlement when Alabama became a state in 1819. The county, named after the future President, is bisected by the Tennessee river which provided access for the early settlers to points west and south. To the north are the counties of Franklin and Marion in Tennessee; to the east is Dade County, Georgia; to the south are Dekalb and Marshall Counties; and to the west is Madison  County. Jackson County has good farm land in the valleys, but there are also several substantial hills. Crow Mountain, to the north of the present county seat of Scottsboro, is nearly one thousand feet higher than the surrounding countryside, a substantial travel barrier in pioneer days. Throughout most of the nineteenth century the county seat was in Bellefonte. Today, although Jackson County is considered part of the Huntsville metropolitan area, the total population is less than 60,000, and the country retains much of its rural appeal.   

The Sanders and related families from North Carolina arrived in Jackson County in the 1820s and 1830s, but we often don't know the exact year of arrival and have to rely on the census of 1830 or 1840 to get an approximate date. By the time of the 1840 census there were sixteen households headed by individuals with the surname of Sanders. By 1900 there were over two hundred people with the surname of Sanders in Jackson County, and most of them were probably descended from the Sanders of Randolph and Montgomery who were part of the great migration of the 1820s and 1830s.There were many others, of course, who did not have the surname Sanders but were nevertheless descendants of the early Sanders pioneers.Today, there are at least three Sanders cemeteries in the county.

Recent DNA testing reveals that the Jackson County Sanders who came from Randolph and Montgomery in North Carolina were from two separate Sanders lines. The two Sanders families intermarried and therefore their descendants were cousins, but there was not a common ancestor for the two. One line is believed to have descended from John Saunders and Catherine Nimrod whose children lived in Montgomery and Randolph; the other line was descended from Joseph Sanders of Randolph County. We can summarize by showing four progenitors for the Jackson County Sanders: Jacob is the only one of these Sanders where we have a really solid indication of his father's name. Family tradition holds that Jacob's father was Isaac Saunders, brother of William Aaron and Moses. For reasons that I explain elsewhere, I believe it is a reasonable infererence that Benjamin and Francis were brothers to Jacob. Recent DNA research shows that Joseph, Sr., was not related by blood to  Benjamin, Francis, or Jacob. Today, many descendants of Jackson County Sanders, myself included, are descended from both Sanders lines because of the original marriages between the two lines described above or because of subsequent cousin marriage.

Researching Jackson County Sanders is often a difficult task. Most of them did not have substantial wealth and therefore did not leave legal or documentary footprints that provide unambiguous evidence for paternity. Genealogists prefer to have contemporary deeds, wills, affidavits, or other documents, but we have to work with the material available to us, and  in many cases all we can do is state that the preponderance of evidence points in a certain direction. For example, just because a child appears in the household  in a certain census year does not provide reliable evidence of paternity. In Jackson County many Sanders families raised orphans, and in some cases non-orphan children of relatives.  I think Bob Griffith expressed very well the frustration all researchers in this area feel when he said in a GenForum posting:   "It's easy to get confused when dealing with the Sanders family of NC and AL. Too many Francises, Benjamins, and other favorite names. For that matter, too many Sanderses!”

Many early researchers tried to connect the Sanders of Randolph and Montgomery Counties, North Carolina, and Jackson County, Alabama, with the family of John Sanders (fl. 1676)  of Nansemond County, Virginia, who is mentioned in a  famous article in John Bennett Boddie's Historical Southern Families. As previously mentioned,  more recent research indicates that  Francis Sanders, Jacob Saunders, and Benjamin Sanders were all from one Sanders line, the John Saunders/Catherine Nimrod line. The parentage of Joseph Sanders, Sr., remains a mystery. Based on  DNA matches with other Sanders lines, my guess is that his ancestors may go back to the early Virginia Sanders, perhaps to the Nansemond  and Quakers Sanders, and maybe to the line of James Sanders of Johnston County, grandson of John Sanders of Nansemond, but we don't have any convincing evidence at the present date. 

We have considerably more evidence for the John Saunders/Catherine Nimrod line of Montgomery County. Sometime around the turn of the 20th century, probably in the late 1880s or early 1890s, Thomas Bailey Saunders of Texas, whose ancestors were from Montgomery County, North Carolina, wrote a letter to a relative in response to a question about his family heritage. Thomas Bailey was a son of Nimrod Saunders, a grandson of William Aaron Saunders, and a great-grandson of John Saunders and Catherine Nimrod. The letter he wrote is reported to be in the possession of one of his descendants near Forth Worth, Texas. According to O'Gretta Saunders, the recipient of the letter was Thomas Bailey Saunders' nephew, Elkanah Shuford Saunders.  Elkanah was the son of Henry Saunders (son of Jacob Saunders, son of  Isaac Saunders) and Polly Saunders (daughter of Nimrod Saunders, son of William Aaron Saunders). Isaac and William Aaron were brothers, the sons of John Saunders and Catherine Nimrod. Therefore Elkanah had two Sanders great- grandfathers, Isaac and William Aaron, and two Sanders grandfathers, Jacob and Nimrod.  Here is the relevant portion of the letter which is taken from a  site that is no longer on the Web (http://www.tbox.com/tsanders/Sanders/AaronSanders/johnsaunders.html, maintained by Thomas J. Sanders. Although no longer on the Web, the file is accessible through the Wayback Machine):

“My grandfather married in Virginia. My grandmother's name was Joan Bailey, of the famous old family of Virginia. My grandfather was killed in a fight with the Tories. His brother, Isaac, which is your great grandfather, was the first man that ever built a house on Cross creek below Fayetteville. And another brother by the name of Moses was a Baptist preacher and they had one sister. I have seen her myself. She married a man by the name of Hamilton. I have seen your great grandfather and his wife, and they were very old then. Your grandfather had two brothers, Ben and Joe, they moved to Alabama and their families are there yet. I saw an old lady in New Orleans a few years ago, she was a Saunders and she told me the same story about the Saunders. I have told you all about the old generation that I know…
Your Uncle,
T. B. Saunders”
If we analyze the letter sentence by sentence we see the following people mentioned:

My grandfather married in Virginia.  My grandmother's name was Joan Bailey.
According to family tradition, the name of this grandfather was William Aaron Saunders.

His brother, Isaac, which is your great-grandfather...and another brother by the name of Moses was a Baptist preacher.
According to family tradition, the parents of William Aaron, Isaac, and Moses were John Saunders and Catherine Nimrod.

Your grandfather had two brothers, Ben and Joe, they moved to Alabama and their families are there yet.

Since this sentence occurs right after the mention of  Isaac as "your great grandfather," the reference to "your grandfather" must refer to Jacob, a son of great grandfather Isaac, not to the son of Elkanah Shuford's other great-grandfather, William Aaron. Therefore, Jacob had two brothers named Ben and Joe. Many researchers disagree with me on this point and think that Thomas Bailey meant to say that William Aaron, rather than Isaac, had sons named Ben and Joe. Either way, Ben and Joe would be grandchildren of John and Catherine. Since the letter can be interpreted either way, we may never know  whether Isaac or his brother Aaron was the father of Ben and Joe unless further evidence surfaces. 

A handwritten note written in 1918 by Silvie Escat Saunders, wife of George A. Saunders, tends to support my position that Ben and Joe were sons of Isaac, not William Aaron. It is believed her information came from a Davis family Bible: 

Aaron brothers were
     Isaac the first man who build on cross creek near Fayetteville N.C.
     Moses a Baptist preacher
     1 sister a Mrs Hamilton
What we know of Wm aaron and John Bailey Saunders married in Va
Wm Aaron was a Capt in the American revolution and killed
     their children what we know of
Sallie Sanders married  Pleasant Callicut of N.C.
Luke Saunders married Agnes Callicut of N.C.
Nimrod Sanders married Elizabeth Ricketts of N.C.
Stephen we  know nothing of so far.
     Nimrod and Elizabeth children
Sarah Sanders born Dec 21st 1803
Tibitha Sanders born July 21st 1806, died Jan 15th 1892
Nathan D.C. Sanders born May 27 1808, died June 23 1832
Aaron Sanders born May 14 1810 died 1862
Stephen Sanders born Mar 28 1812
Polly and Pally (twins) Sanders born Feb 28 1814
Thomas Sanders born Oct 9 1816
a son Sanders born Oct 9 1816
Joanna Sanders born July 8 1820--1879
Jackson Sanders born Aug 21 1822--Sept 21 18??
Harris Sanders born Mar 7 1824--Feb 21 1917
Luke Sanders born Aug 30 1826 died April 10 1893
Agnes Sanders born June 3 1828 died 1900
Allen Sanders born Nov 11 1829
     Susan E Sanders born Aug 15 1854
     William McDufey Sanders born Mar 27 1855
Don't know who these 2 are but think William Luke son who died young
Sarah married Moore Graves
Tibitah married William Graves (brothers)
Nathan D.C. unmarried
Aaron unmarried
Stephen (m) first Huxey Simmons (II) Amy Moore
Pally married Louis Cranford
Polly twins married Henry Saunders {a}second cousin
Thomas our grandfather married Emily Elizabeth Harper
Joanna Married Elias Hooper
Jackson married Martha Brener (II) Frances Ingale
Harris married Teresa Turner (II) Emerline Crump
Luke married Mary Brener sister to Martha
Agnes married Jacob Hooper brother to Elias
Allen married Frances Gibson or Gipson
I found children of all but Sarah and Allen

Nimrod was 9 years at the close of the American revolution Nimrod was know in N. Carolina as Honest Rod was honest in his measure at his grit mill he left N.C. in 1837 and near all left a few years later according to letters in my possession
     Copied Feb 2 1918
     Mrs. G.A. Saunders
     2812 D'abadie St. N.O. LA

(Preceding text of the document is from the Sanders-Cook homepage at the Wayback Machine)

Notice that only Luke, Stephen, and Nimrod are mentioned as sons of William Aaron. No mention at all is made of Ben and Joe, and I believe this confirms that Ben was not a son of William Aaron. In addition, it seems rather odd that Thomas Bailey Saunders would mention only Ben and Joe in his letter and not the other three if he regarded all five as sons of William Aaron. 

If Ben and Joe are the sons of Isaac rather than William Aaron, we still must identity them as individuals.The identity of  Ben is the most obvious: he appears to be Benjamin Sanders, Sr. who moved  from Randolph County in North Carolina to Jackson County in the 1830s. Further, there are deeds in 1806 and 1808 by which Isaac Sanders of Randolph County sold land to  Benjamin Sanders of Montgomery County. The identity of Joe is more problematic. He can't be Joseph Sanders who died in Randolph County in 1803 because DNA tests show that Joseph belongs to a separate Sanders line even though his children married into the Saunders/Nimrod line.

Circumstantial evidence indicates that Ben had a brother but the brother was named Francis, not Joe. Obviously, Francis cannot be "Joe," unless, of course, his name was really "Joseph Francis," and we have no evidence that he ever used any name except Francis. All indications are that Benjamin and Francis were very closely related. They appear to have married sisters and there was probably no more than sixteen years difference in their ages, but there are more compelling reasons to suspect they were brothers.

Levi Lindsey Sanders, a grandson of Benjamin, lived in Van Zandt County, Texas from the 1860s until his death in 1917. William Redman Sanders of Arkansas, apparently a grandson of Francis, referred to Levi Lindsey Sanders of Van Zandt County as his cousin in a newspaper article written about 1900. It is not probable that these two, who lived in the latter part of the nineteenth century, were third or fourth cousins because their blood relationship would then have been so distant it’s unlikely they would have maintained contact over several generations and through several states.Therefore, the most recent common ancestor probably was the great grandfather of William Redman and Levi and I believe that person to have been Isaac Saunders. Elsewhere I will give further evidence that suggests that Ben and Francis were brothers. This evidence is based on a cousin marriage among their descendants.

The question still remains, if my argument is basically that Benjamin and Francis were two brothers who moved to Alabama, then who is the "Joe" of the Thomas Bailey Saunders letter? There is no easy explanation for this. We have already established that Joe is not Joseph, Sr., who died in Randolph County. Nor can Joe be either of the two Josephs who were in Jackson County at the time of the 1830 census. They appear to be the son and grandson of Joseph, Sr. I can only suggest as a possible explanation that Thomas Bailey Saunders knew there were two brothers but he assumed Joseph, Jr., was the brother of Benjamin rather than Benjamin's brother-in-law. After the move from Randolph County to Alabama, Joseph, Jr., lived in Jackson County the rest of his life until at age seventy he was murdered by bushwhackers during the Civil War. He was known to everyone as "Uncle Joe" and  it is understandable that Thomas Bailey Saunders would have known him as a Sanders progenitor in Jackson County.Therefore, there may never have been a  son of Isaac named "Joe."  It is also conceivable that  there was a son of Isaac named Joe, but, if so, he was missed by the 1800, 1810, 1820, and 1830 census, and he must have died before 1840. Considering the lack of evidence for the existence of  "Joe," I think it more likely Thomas Bailey Saunders was talking about Benjamin's brother-in-law.

Therefore, tentatively, I am regarding Benjamin and Francis as brothers and Isaac as their father,but Isaac may very well have had other sons and daughters whose names are unknown to us. Isaac disappears from the records of Montgomery County in the early 1780s but is living in Randolph County in 1800 and the census also shows a young male, age between 16-26, living in the household. This  is probably Francis who was born in 1782 and who married Rachel Sanders in 1801. The other sons, Jacob and Benjamin, were already married and living in their own households in 1800, Jacob in Montgomery County and Benjamin just across the border in Randolph County. Benjamin and Francis continued to live in Randolph County until first Francis and then Benjamin moved to Jackson County, Alabama in the late 1820s and early 1830s, along with some of the children of Jacob.

If my thesis is correct, Francis Sanders of Jackson County was the nephew of the Reverend Moses Sanders of Franklin County, Georgia. He was also the nephew of Francis Sanders of Franklin County, Georgia. This Francis of Franklin County was not mentioned as a brother in the Thomas Bailey Saunders letter, but is referenced as a brother through documentation left by Moses Martin Sanders, a grandson of the Reverend Moses Sanders. As part of the Sanders DNA projects, tests have been conducted on descendants of Isaac, William Aaron, and  the Reverend Moses Sanders. These tests show that the three are from the same Sanders line and combined with family tradition provide persuasive evidence that William Aaron, Isaac, Moses, and Francis were brothers.

Although a great deal of progress has been made recently in establishing the validity of family tradition for the line of John Saunders and Catherine Nimrod, we still have a several confusing issues in regard to Francis and Rachel Sanders and their progeny in Jackson County, Alabama. Distinguishing the children of Francis from the children of his brother Benjamin has been one of the most difficult of my research projects. 

The earliest record we have of  Francis and Rachel is that they were married in 1801 in Randolph County and they are certainly the same couple who lived in Jackson County in the 1830s and 1840s and who appear on the 1850 census of DeKalb County, Alabama. We have good documentary evidence that Francis and Rachel moved to Arkansas in 1851 with their daughter Mary Jane Sanders and their son-in-law James J. Biddie. For the parentage of the other children commonly attributed to Francis and Rachel by previous researchers, we have far less evidence. The best documentary evidence for a direct parental link is with Elisha who died early, with Francis being designated as the administrator of the estate, though the blood relationship of Francis to Elisha is not mentioned. There is also a family tradition that Francis was the father of Elijah Greenville Sanders. Five children usually attributed to Francis and Rachel (Rebecca, Phoebe, Isaac, John, and Alfred) are probably the children of Francis' brother Benjamin. 

A lot of controversy has resulted from the  the statement by Carroll Jackson Brewer in the Southern Claims Commission file of John Sanders, quoted by Don Schaefer in a  Web file and  referring to the murder of Rachel's brother Joseph in 1863: " I know that Thomas Houston and others searched for him (referring to John Sanders) often and did take out his uncle Joe Sanders who was seventy years old. They taken him out of the field where he was at work and shot him on the side of the mountain."  Joe Sanders was murdered because his sons and nephews were serving in the Union army. We know that "Uncle Joe" and Rachel were brother and sister because of the will left by their father in 1803 in Randolph County, North Carolina.  It appears that Joe Sanders was known as "Uncle Joe" by nearly everyone and therefore the use of the name by Carroll Brewer does not constitute irrefutable proof John was the nephew of Joseph. On the other hand, John and the other siblings are almost certainly the nephews and nieces of "Uncle Joe" because the only possible parents for John and his four known siblings are either Francis or his brother Benjamin, both of whom married daughters of Joseph, Sr.  

John Sanders, who was my great granduncle, stated in his deposition to the Southern Claims Commission about 1873 that he had a half-niece who was married to Carroll Jackson Brewer. This statement baffled researchers in the past because most of them believed John was the son of Francis and Rachel and there appeared no possible way for either Francis or Rachel to have had another spouse, unless one of them married someone else before 1801, and their youth in 1801 made a previous marriage unlikely. Other researchers have stated a family tradition that Carroll Jackson Brewer's wife almost entirely of American Indian parentage.  If so, it's unlikely the American Indian heritage was on the Sanders side, but it's possible her mother was of Indian ancestry. It's difficult to reconcile these conflicting statements.

In short, much of the evidence we have is contradictory, fragmentary, and confusing, and a great deal more research is needed to give us a more satisfactory understanding of the genealogy of the Jackson County Sanders. In the next article I hope to provide a possible reconstruction of the families of Francis and Benjamin that will reconcile the competing claims.


Return to Index

Testimony of John Sanders and Carroll Jackson Brewer,
Southern Claims Commission

(This material written October, 2004, revised February 2006)

In the article on Jackson County Sanders, I mentioned the apparently contradictory statements of John Sanders (1822-1896) and his friend Carroll Jackson Brewer (1834-after 1880) in their Southern Claims Commission file.  Here, I would like to propose a possible solution to this contradiction in the hope that others will find evidence to confirm or refute it.

Carroll Jackson Brewer referred to Joseph Sanders, Jr., who died in 1863, as the uncle of John. Taken literally, this statement means that John Sanders has to be a son of a daughter of Joseph Sanders, Sr., who died in 1803 in Randolph County, North Carolina. Because Joseph’s daughter Rachel is known to have married Francis Sanders in 1801, most researchers have concluded that Francis and Rachel have to be the parents of John Sanders. There is no clear family indication among the descendants of John or his brother Isaac as to the identity of their parents, so family tradition is useless in this context.

John Sanders, in his testimony, stated that Carroll Jackson Brewer was married to his half-niece. The wife of Carroll Jackson Brewer is believed to have been Lucrecia Sanders (1834-after 1870).  It is also believed that Lucrecia was the daughter of William Sanders and Martha Sanders because she appears in their household in the 1850 Jackson County census. If John’s testimony is taken literally, William Sanders (1789-about 1872) was John’s half-brother.

The difficulty is that if William is John’s half-brother, then Francis can’t be John’s father because this scenario would require that Francis father a child in 1789 when he was only seven years old.

Is there a way to reconcile these two statements of John Sanders and Carroll Jackson Brewer?  I believe there is.

All Carroll Jackson Brewer’s statement that Joseph was John’s uncle requires is that the mother of John was a daughter of Joseph Sanders, Sr., and that she was married to someone with the surname of Sanders.  It does not require that the mother be Rachel; the mother could have been one of Joseph's other daughters. As it turns out, we do know the names of Joseph’s daughters and the names of their spouses. The 1811 settlement of the estate of Joseph, Sr., does not specifically state that the men mentioned are husbands of the daughters but the implication is clear that the reference is to the spouses. One of the daughters, Sarah, married Peter Rich, so we can rule her out as the mother of the siblings.  Another daughter, Phoebe, married a Jesse Sanders, but they are believed to have moved to Tennessee.  If we rule out Rachel, the only daughter left is named Mary.

Mary married a Benjamin Sanders.  If this Benjamin is the father of John and William Sanders and the two were half-brothers, Benjamin must have been born before about 1770, and his marriage to Mary must have occurred after 1789 when William was born.  Since Mary was born about 1780, the marriage to Mary probably occurred closer to 1800.

Do we have any other records that refer to a Benjamin Sanders, born before 1770 in the Randolph/Montgomery County area, who moved to Jackson County and left numerous descendants?  Yes, there is a person who matches this description exactly, but previous researchers have assumed that he is the same  person as the Benjamin Sanders who married Jane (usually called Jinny or Jenny) Clark in 1803 in Randolph County.

For some time, I have had doubts that the Benjamin who married Jenny Clark was the same person as Benjamin Sanders who moved from Randolph County to Jackson County.  In a book called The Johnsons and Their Kin of Randolph,  p. 81, Jessie Owen Shaw states: “the 2nd child of William Clark and Eleanor Dougan Clark was Jane Clark, b. 9-9-1781, who married a Methodist minister, Benjamin Sanders.”  Further, according to the research of Roger Kirkman,  William Clark and a Benjamin Sanders were members of  a slavery manumission society that met in the part of Rowan County that became Davidson County, adjoining Randolph County. William Clark became a Quaker in 1802 and the Back Creek Monthly Meeting that he attended was in northwest Randolph County. 

Nothing in the family tradition about Benjamin Sanders of Jackson County, Alabama indicates that he was a Methodist minister.  Indeed, the family tradition in Texas is that he was a Catholic who converted at a camp meeting when he was over ninety years old. We know there were at least two Benjamin Sanders in Randolph County about 1800.  The question is which one was the Benjamin who moved to Jackson County, Alabama.

Therefore, I propose that researchers consider the possibility that Benjamin Sanders, Sr., who died in Jackson County between 1840-1850, may have been the father of William Sanders by an unknown first wife and the father of John Sanders by his second wife, Mary Sanders. This suggestion is compatible with the testimony of John Sanders and Carroll Jackson Brewer to the Southern Claims Commission. It is also compatible with the census data of 1810, 1830 and 1840.

Another reason to give credence to this theory is the close friendship between John's nephew Jesse Sanders and Levi Lindsey Sanders, who was a grandson of Benjamin, Sr.  Even though they did not live in the same state when they were children, they regarded each other as close enough relatives that they made frequent visits to each other after they both moved, as adults, to neighboring counties in Texas. Jesse's father, Isaac, is enumerated next door to Benjamin, Sr., in the 1840 Jackson County, Alabama, census. Aaron, one of the sons of Isaac, named one of his sons Levi Lindsey Sanders, presumably in honor of the elder Levi Lindsey Sanders, even though Aaron moved from Jackson County when he was about four years old, and therefore could not have known Levi until he was nearly an adult.  If Benjamin, rather than Francis, is the grandfather of Jesse, then Jesse and Levi Lindsey were first cousins.

I decided to test the Benjamin Sanders parentage hypothesis by comparing the 1830 and 1840 census to see whether Francis or Benjamin appears more likely as the father of the children in question.  Before this can be done, we need to narrow the field of possibilities, and that can be done only by examining evidence for the paternity of each child.

Here are some of the known facts about the siblings we are researching:
 
There is documentation from reliable sources that Rebecca, Phoebe, Alfred Head Mash, Isaac, and John were siblings. For example, there is an article in Sanders Siftings, July 2000, about a letter written by Louie Davis of Weatherford, Texas, in 1974, stating that Phoebe Sanders Lee, Louie’s great grandmother, was born in 1813 and she had a brother named Mash and a sister named Rebecca and maybe a brother named John. Alfred Head Mash Sanders (called Uncle “Mash”) stated  on  the pension application of his sister-in-law in 1896 that John Sanders was his brother. John Sanders stated in his file to the Southern Claims Commission after the Civil War that Isaac Sanders of Montgomery County, Arkansas, was his brother. Therefore we have really good evidence that Rebecca, Phoebe, Isaac, John, and Mash were siblings.
 
We also have family tradition and documentation that Jesse Sanders of Henderson County, Texas and Levi Sanders of Van Zandt County were cousins (first or second, probably, very unlikely they were third cousins); and that William Redman and Levi Sanders were cousins (again, first or second and very unlikely to be third). Jesse was a son of Isaac, and William Redman was a son of Elisha Sanders (about whom more later).
 
A few years ago, I received information about an interview with an elderly descendant of Elijah Sanders who stated that Francis Marion Sanders was Elijah’s father. I think this is significant because it appears she got that information from family tradition, not from the Internet or published sources. That this is an independent tradition is also shown by her use of the middle name “Marion” which has not appeared in other sources. Elijah died in 1858 and one of the administrators for his will was a Francis Sanders. Presumably, this was John Francis because Francis, Sr., the father of Elijah was living in Arkansas at that time. Even so, this record of the will suggests that Elijah and John Francis were brothers.
 
The research of Ralph Jackson shows that Elisha Sanders who died in Marshall County, Alabama, in 1840 was a very close relative of Francis Sanders. Although it appears most likely that Francis may have been Elisha’s father, he could have been an uncle or even a half-brother. 
 
The Biddy family application for Choctaw citizenship, provided by Cathy Gallen, provides convincing evidence that Mary Jane Sanders and William Patrick Sanders were children of Francis Sanders.  In fact, this recently discovered evidence is the strongest documentation we have for any children of Francis and Rachel.
 
Southern Claims Commission files give us the testimony of John Sanders that Lucretia, the wife of Carroll Jackson Brewer, was his half-niece. In the same record, Carroll Jackson Brewer stated that Joseph Sanders, Jr., was the uncle of John Sanders. 
 
When we try to arrange the evidence for parentage, we get this:

There are three children where the preponderance of available evidence points to Francis and Rachel as the parents: Elijah, William Patrick, Mary Jane. 

We have one child, Elisha, who is associated with Francis because Francis was administrator of that child’s will, but we can’t tell whether Elisha is a sibling to anyone else.  We know, however, that his son, William Redman, was a cousin to the grandson of Benjamin, Sr. Therefore, Elisha almost certainly has to be either a son of Francis or a son of Benjamin, Sr.

We have five children who are known to be siblings and are traditionally assigned to Francis and Rachel but documentation for their parents is lacking:  Rebecca, Phoebe, Isaac, John, and Mash. However, Justin Sanders has recently discovered that  Benjamin Sanders (presumably the elder Benjamin) was the bondman for the marriage of Rebecca and William Cornelison in Randolph County in 1824. Further Rebecca and her husband were living next door to Benjamin, Jr., at the time of the 1830 Montgomery County census.

We have other children, traditionally assigned to Francis and Rachel, but we have no documentation for their parents or even that they are siblings: John Francis, Frances, and Charles. In the case of Charles there is no documentation for him whatsoever.
 
So, in order to make the 1830 and 1840 census the test case, we need to limit the search to the children that we presume were at home in 1830 and 1840, that is, the ones that we know were not married. We can eliminate William Patrick and Mary Jane because we know Francis was their father. We also eliminate all those who can’t be easily designated as siblings. 

Therefore we are left with Mash, John, Isaac, Phoebe, all of whom should appear on the census of 1830 but only Mash and John in 1840 (Isaac married in 1837, Phoebe in 1839). Phoebe was born in 1813, Isaac was born in 1818, John in 1822, Mash between 1826-1829. 

Therefore in 1830:
Mash was 0-5 years old.
John was 5-10
Isaac was 10-15
Phoebe    15-20

And in 1840:
John was 15-20
Mash was 10-15

If we now go to the census of 1830 (Benjamin still in Randolph, Francis in Jackson County) and 1840 (both men in Jackson), and record every occurrence in which a child listed in the census would be of the right age to be Phoebe, Isaac, John, and Mash, we have a chart like the following: 

Household:

  Number of  male children recorded on the census:

 

 Age: 0-5

 Age:5-10

 Age:10-15

Age:15-20

Age:20-30

1830-Francis

 

1 (John)

1 (Isaac)

1

 

1840-Francis

 

 

 

 

3

 

  Number of female children recorded on the census:

1830-Francis

 

1

 

1 (Phoebe)

 

1840-Francis

 

 

 

 

 

 

Number of male children recorded on the census:

1830-Benjamin

2  (Mash)

1  (John)

1 (Isaac)

1

 

1840-Benjamin

 

 

3 (Mash)

2 (John)

 

 

 Number of female children recorded on the census:

1830-Benjamin

 

1

 

1 (Phoebe)

 

1840-Benjamin

 

 

 

 

1

Therefore, from this chart, it appears there are six slots where these children appear if they are the children of Benjamin, but only three slots where  they appear if Francis is the father. The census record seems to indicate that Benjamin is more likely than Francis to be the father because every child appears in every single predicted slot in the case of Benjamin. For example, Mash, John, Isaac, and Phoebe appear as expected in 1830 and 1840. But in the case of Francis, there is no place for Mash in 1830 or 1840 and no place for John in 1840.

A further difficulty is that we have very good evidence that Francis was the father of William Patrick Sanders who was born about 1819. Therefore, if Francis is the father of Mash, John, and Isaac, we have to have an additional 10-15 slot for William Patrick in 1830 (not available) and a 20-30 slot for him in 1840(available).

Now, all of this may be coincidence based on mathematical probabilities, but when nearly every proposed test supports the theory of Benjamin's paternity of the five siblings, we probably need to re-evaluate the tradition that Francis was the father. One may wonder if Benjamin is the father of John, Isaac, and Mash, then how is Francis related?  If we follow this alternative proposition, it’s still likely he and Benjamin are brothers. But in this scenario, Benjamin can’t be the same person as the Benjamin Sanders who married Jenny Clark; he has to be the Benjamin who married Joseph Sanders’ daughter, Mary. 

What if we try to go back to earlier census records?  I can't find Benjamin on the 1820 census, but in 1810, as mentioned before, there are two Benjamin Sanders in Randolph County, or rather one Benjamin Saunders and one Benjamin Sanders. According to the research of Roger Kirkman, Benjamin Saunders' property is near the Montgomery County line.  Because this location is near the property of Joseph Sanders, Sr., the father of Mary, it is likely that this Benjamin married Joseph's daughter Mary.  It also appears that this is the Benjamin who sold  his property in 1833 and moved to Alabama. In the 1810 census, he is listed as being between twenty-six and 44 years old.  This would indicate that he was born after 1766. However, the 1840 Jackson County, census lists him as between seventy and eighty years old, so he couldn't have been born after 1770. There is a woman in the household, presumably his wife, who is twenty-six to  forty-four years old. This is compatible with the age of  Mary Sanders who is reported to have been born in 1782. There are two male children in the household. One is under ten and that person is probably Benjamin, Jr., who was born in 1804. Another is between ten and twenty-five and that person is probably William,  who would become the father of the half-niece that John Sanders referred to. William was born in 1789, according to later census reports.   

The other Benjamin of the 1810 census owned property near the Back Creek area of northwest Randolph County. It may be remembered that this is near where William Clark, father of Jinney Clark, joined the Quaker denomination. Therefore, it appears likely that the Benjamin who lived in northwest Randolph County was the one who married Jinney Clark. Further is is most likely that it was he who was the Benjamin who was a Methodist minister and was active in the Manumission Society.  Although this Benjamin is listed as between twenty-six and forty-four years old, I believe he was younger than the Benjamin Saunders of the Randolph border area because he doesn't appear in the 1800 census and was probably still living in his parents' household at that time.   

The older Benjamin Saunders, the one living in Randolph near the Montgomery County line in 1810, is probably the same Benjamin Sanders who appears on the 1800 census in Montgomery County.  He is listed as between twenty-six and forty-four years old, which is still compatible with his being born between 1766 and 1770. This Benjamin Saunders is listed near Luke Sanders, Nimrod Saunders, and Walter Hamilton, all relatives of the John Saunders/ Catherine Nimrod line.  I believe this is the same Benjamin who is mentioned in an 1806 deed by which Isaac Sanders of Randolph County transferred one acre to Benjamin Sanders of Montgomery. I have presented elsewhere in these Web pages the evidence that leads to Isaac as the father of Benjamin. In the 1800 Montgomery census, there is a male child, age ten to fifteen, in Benjamin's household. This appears be William, the future father of John Sanders' half niece. William would have been eleven years old in 1800.  So far, the 1810 and 1800 census are fully compatible with the proposed reconstruction.

Isaac at one time had owned property in Montgomery County, but no records have been found of him in the land records there after 1782, according to the research of Jim Sanders. It appears that Isaac moved to Randolph County, where he appears on the 1800 census, but that his son Benjamin continued to live in Montgomery, probably near the county line, until some time between 1806 and 1810.  Maybe the marriage to Mary Sanders was the motivation for the move to Randolph or maybe Isaac was getting too old to take care of the family property and Benjamin moved in to help or maybe Mary wanted to be closer to her relatives. Of course, land records are not always reliable evidence of where people lived, and  Benjamin could very well have owned property in both counties. At any rate, Benjamin was living in Randolph by 1810.

The theory presented here won't work unless Benjamin was married two times, with the second marriage occurring between 1800 and 1810. By  the time of the 1811 estate settlement, Benjamin's wife is referred to as Mary, but because both the 1800 and the 1810 census show a female age twenty-six to forty four in Benjamin's household, the census remains neutral on the basic question of whether Benjamin was married two times. We know that because Mary was born in 1782 and would have been less than 26 years old in 1800, she can't be the female age twenty-six to forty-four on the census of that year. Therefore, if she married Benjamin, the marriage had to take place between 1800 and 1810, and  Benjamin, Jr., born in 1804, could have been either her child or the child of the first wife.  

A question still remains concerning the identity of the other Benjamin Sanders who we may call the Back Creek Benjamin.  I think this is an open and intriguing question. Possibly he is related to the Joseph Sanders, Sr., line, or he could be related to any of the many Quaker Sanders families in the area. It's also possible he is related to Benjamin, Sr.

I have found the evidence for Benjamin Saunders' parenthood of the five siblings previous attributed to Francis plausible enough that I have changed my genealogical charts accordingly. This is a time consuming process, and one which I hope I don't have to do often, but it is sometimes unavoidable if documentation warrants a change.  At one time I thought it was possible to retain the Francis Sanders' parentage theory by the proposal that the father of Lucretia, William Sanders (born 1789), was the half-brother of Francis and therefore John's half-uncle. John  therefore  could have referred to William's daughter as his half-niece because she was the daughter of John's half-uncle. Of course, if this is the case she wouldn't really be a half-niece but a half-cousin, but that distinction might not have been obvious to John. To test this theory, I asked several people at work and in my family what one would call the daughter of one's half-uncle.  About half of them knew the correct answer of half-cousin, but the rest said "half-niece."  Though this theory of the half-cousin as the half-niece is not impossible, it's also more complicated than accepting Benjamin's paternity and it doesn't answer the other questions about the 1830 and 1840 census.

On the other hand, the Benjamin Sanders' parenthood theory has no major problems and is fully compatible with all the available evidence. One small matter that might appear to conflict with the new theory is that Alexander Gray was a witness to the marriage bond of Francis and Rachel Sanders in 1801 and of  Benjamin and Jinney Clark in 1803.  For a long time, I thought that there must have been a kinship relationship among the three, but I now believe that Alexander Gray may have been a public official, such as a notary or county clerk, who regularly witnessed marriages in Randolph County.  It's equally possible that the Benjamin who married Jinney Clark was related to  Francis,  the Benjamin who married Mary, or to Alexander Clark himself.

Although I think the situation is somewhat easier to comprehend as a result of these findings,  we still have a lot to learn about the Sanders of Randolph, Montgomery, and Jackson. There is still enough ambiguity in the records that scenarios other than the one presented here are plausible, but the DNA results from the summer of 2006 that proved that William Aaron, Francis, and Benjamin all belonged to the same Sanders line provide further confirmation of the thesis of this article.  It is my hope that other researchers descended from Benjamin Sanders, Sr., or Francis Sanders will provide clues that may help us make a certain determination of our origins.

(Don Schaefer, editor of Sanders Siftings, provided much of the information about the Southern claims file of John Sanders.)
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 Benjamin and Francis, who moved to Alabama

“I have seen your great grandfather and his wife, and they were very old then. Your grandfather had two brothers, Ben and Joe, they moved to Alabama and their families are there yet. I saw an old lady in New Orleans a few years ago, she was a Saunders and she told me the same story about the Saunders. I have told you all about the old generation that I know…”
--Thomas Bailey Saunders, from a letter written in Texas in the late 1890s

In the two previous articles, I presented the thesis that the two brothers who moved to Alabama were  Benjamin and Francis, not Ben and Joe. This thesis is based on there being no person in the records of Randolph, Montgomery, or Jackson counties who could be the Joe of the letter. There is no Joe in the land records, nor is there one in the census records. There is not even a Joe, son of Isaac or William Aaron, in the family tradition, except for the brief mention in the Thomas Bailey Saunders letter.

On the other hand, we do have evidence regarding the life of Benjamin and Francis.Though there is no direct evidence they were brothers, their fraternity is suggested by their having married sisters, by their living near one another at the time of the 1810 census, by their moving to Jackson County within a few years of each other around 1830, and by the pattern of migration of their descendants through Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas.  Further, in a newspaper article written about 1900, a grandson of Francis referred to a grandson of Benjamin as his cousin. Furthermore, another grandson of Francis married a grandchild of Benjamin, Sr., and family tradition is that the couple were double cousins. The best explanation for that double cousinhood is that Francis and Benjamin married sisters.

Now, of course, there was a Joseph Sanders in Jackson County, Alabama, and he was generally known as “Uncle Joe.”  But Joe was not the brother of Ben. He was Ben’s brother-in-law, and Ben was married to Joe’s sister, Mary. Joe’s father, Joseph, Sr., who died about 1803, lived near the border of Randolph and Montgomery Counties.  Like Ben and Francis, Uncle Joe moved to Alabama with the great Sanders migration of the late 1820s and early 1830s.  A further connection of Joe to Ben and Francis was that he was married to Thomas Bailey Saunders’ second cousin, Deborah Saunders, who appears to be Benjamin’s niece, also.  DNA tests reveal that Joe's Sanders line is not related to that of Benjamin, Sr., and therefore neither Joe, Sr., not Joe, Jr., can be the "Joe" of the TBS letter.  Maybe, Thomas Bailey Saunders confused the brother-in-law with the brother.

Therefore, we are left with a situation in which it's difficult to reconcile the plain statement of Thomas Bailey Saunders with the individuals for whom we have documentation.  Everything would fall into place if Francis were named Joseph Francis rather than just "Francis,"  and considering the number of individuals in the Sanders family with two given names (William Aaron,  Thomas Bailey, Jacob Henry, William Patrick, Mary Frances, Levi Lindsey, Aaron H., John Francis),  this is not an improbable solution, but  there is no evidence for it  whatsoever.  Every record we have refers to Francis as "Francis."  His  reported son, John Francis, was sometimes called  "Frank" but Francis himself is never referred to by a nickname. Our records, of course, are so meager, it's still possible he did use a nickname or had a second given name. 

Unfortunately, most of the individuals we are researching here did not leave wills or land documents that give us a clear record of the names of their children. We have to reconstruct the family based on the census tracts, bits of family tradition, chance references in legal documents, and vague hints in old letters about the parentage of individuals.  What is most distressing about research in the history of the Saunders/Sanders family of Randolph/Montgomery and Jackson County is that most of the material with which we must work is infuriatingly ambiguous. It’s possible we can develop a theory that is plausible and explains everything, but it could still be wrong. Nevertheless, I think we must try to make sense of the situation.

What follows is my attempt to identify the children of Benjamin and Francis who are listed on the 1800, 1810, 1820, 1830, and 1840 census. I started with the children whose names and date of birth are known, and then added the ones who are known only through gender and range of birth dates in the census. For those children with whom we have no possible name and only a range of dates, I have assigned a hypothetical year of birth as a tracking method to see where the child should be placed on the chart. I offer these charts as research guides, realizing their limitations. Further research is needed before we can see how closely these reconstructions correspond to the actual situation at the time the census was taken.