Wherefore Art Thou, Cappleman?

How is it that a map can show a populated place called Cappleman in the vicinity of where you expect your Capplemans to be living, but there are no records of deeds in their name? Ah, a mystery. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

A followup on yesterday's task: finding the current location of what was once Ulrich Boozer's land. Sadly, there are multiple industrial complexes currently on that land, including a power station. Soooo... we won't be able to stand on that little piece of ancestral land.

Today's search took us to the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, where we dove into deed and will abstracts, then culled microfilms for scans of the original documents in their fullness. My goal was to locate the land of Francis Mason (my 4th great grandfather), and therefore that of his son James Mason as well. They moved to Spartanburg from Virginia after the Revolution, so they didn't have original land grants but rather purchased from those who did. There are several descriptions of the physical pieces of land, but I once again have to try to piece together a location from those tidbits of information. Like, for example, this drawing that shows where one person's land meets another - in this case John Golightly, who sold part of his land to Francis Mason.

Mother spent most of the day deep in the Boozer and Cappleman estates, which are quite considerable. The tricky thing is: no deeds for Cappleman (as I mentioned at the beginning of this post). We know he had land because his land is referenced in other deeds as the boundary for other land that was sold. I have yet to find evidence that he might have had an original land grant. But old maps of the period clearly show a populated place called Cappleman. So... still work to do there.

Back on the Mason side, I'm still trying to untangle these webs of connection between families: Bomar, Cannon, Mason, Hammett, Underwood, Wood, and even others who are being added in with each marriage. These folks were neighbors and moved together from Virginia to South Carolina, and then on to Georgia, and possibly also on to Texas. I'm not sure if any of the neighbor families ended up there, but I have a feeling they might have. 

The interesting note about Cannon is that there are references to the Cannons in the Cappleman and Boozer documents. Cappleman and Boozer are on my mom's side; Cannon on my dad's side. This is not the first time that my distant ancestors crossed paths (the other is the Camp family in Georgia - which, by the way, I also found evidence of in South Carolina by way of a deed sold by Hosea Camp, who I believe is the grandfather of my 2 greats grandfather Berry Wilson Gideon and his brother Hosea Camp Gidden). What a tangled web we weave! Note, by the way, that the Gideons are on my mom's Deering side and the Capplemans are on her Robinson side. All of these people seemed to know each other! Generations before my parents even met or my mom's parents met! I guess it was a much smaller world back then.

But I really, really digress. This is just what we did all day. When we left the archive, we went on the hunt for a Cato because I needed some new work pants. I ended up getting those and some shirts (for both myself and mom) and then we headed back to the Rabbit to Grubhub dinner. Our selection was Willie Jewell's Old Fashioned Bar-b-q. I'm not usually a bbq fan, but thought it would be worth a try, and they had smoked turkey and smoked sausage, which I like...as well as collard greens and mac and cheese. Can't go wrong there!