I have so many questions about Minnie C. Rutherford, my 5th great-grandmother. I first encountered her when researching my Dad’s maternal lines. Following maternal lines back is fascinating work because the family names change every generation. Imagine my surprise when I find Minnie C. Rutherford in the census living with her daughter, Macy Ann Rutherford, and her mother, Martha Ann Rutherford! Three generations of women with the same family name! I was intrigued and I knew there was a story there.
Minnie’s mother, Martha Ann Rutherford, was born about 1843 to James Wood Rutherford and Barbary Mull. She was the sixth of eight children! John Rutherford (1824), William Rutherford (1825-1863), Samuel F Rutherford (1827-1866), James R Rutherford(1829-1919), Margaret Amanda Rutherford (1834-1907), Barbara Adeline Rutherford (1840-1874), and Mary Mariah Rutherford (1844-1923). She lived in the small, close-knit community of Buncombe County, North Carolina, where the families were all related somehow. Family connections might be made at several points in the family tree. For example, a couple’s siblings might also marry within the same family or cousins would marry. Martha’s brother James Rutherford married Nancy Jane Hutchison about 1856, and Martha Ann also married a Hutchison, John Henry Hutchison (1836-1862), who is most likely Nancy Jane’s brother.
The Civil War occurred from 1860-1865, and most of the young men of that area enlisted and fought for the Confederate army, Martha’s brothers being no exception. A lot of women became widows during that time, including Martha, and her sisters Mary Mariah and Margaret Amanda. In the 1870 Census, we can see them all living together with their mother Barbary, listed as widows, 10 years after the end of the Civil War.
Now, what’s interesting about Martha, is that her child James D. Rutherford, was born in 1869, 5 years too late to be the child of her dead, soldier husband. And Minnie C. Rutherford is born 10 years after James, in 1880! Both children were born to a widowed Martha, years after her husband’s death.
Who is Martha’s husband? We know she married a Hutchison for several reasons. She is listed as Martha Ann Hutchison in the 1870 and 1910 censuses. There is a marriage between a Martha Ann Rutherford and John Henry Hutchinson, of Buncombe County, for the year 1858, listed in the “North Carolina, U.S., Marriage Records, 1741-2011”. That would have meant that Martha married very young, at the age of 16! She is also named Martha Hutchison in the probate records of her father, James Rutherford, who died in 1860. Her husband, John Henry Hutchison was a soldier in the Confederate army and died in 1862. They did not have any children together.
What’s curious, is that she is sometimes listed in documents as Martha Ann Rutherford, instead of Hutchison. I haven’t been able to find a grave for a Martha Hutchison, but I did find Martha Rutherford, in the same cemetery as her family.
Let’s return to Martha’s children, James D. Rutherford and Minnie C. Rutherford. Who was their father? Did they have different fathers? Sometimes we can find clues about family connections from first and middle names. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any documents with their middle names written down, only initials. Minnie is possibly a nickname for Araminta, which was a common name in that area at the time.
Minnie C. Rutherford married Harley Preston Jackson, on the 4th of November, 1911, in Haywood, NC. He was a widow with two young children of his own; Hazel Beatrice Jackson (1906-1974) and Edward Arthur Jackson (1909-1988). Minnie was already a mother herself. Her daughter Macy Ann Rutherford was born in 1908, but I have yet to discover who the father was. I assume Minnie was not married to the father, given Macy’s last name is the same as her mother’s, Rutherford.
Minnie and Harley have four children together, McCoy William Jackson (1910-1995), Martha Lucille Jackson(1917-1975), Christine Mary Jackson (1920-1995), and Helen Jackson (1922-2006). Minnie died in 1941, at the age of 61.
aspen mitchell 