Levi Butler was my 3-great grandfather. I believe that Jesse Hair
was a brother of my 2-great grandfather John Hair(e), who married
Levi's daughter Eliza E. Butler.
Because the Gadsden County courthouse burned in 1849, so far as I know
at this point there is no way to tell when Levi Butler's land (40
acres) was sold by his widow, except that it would seem likely that was
before she and her step daughter Eliza E. Butler and step son-in-law
John Hair(e) moved to Liberty County, which was sometime between 1850
and 1860. I know that those dates don't seem to make sense, but
the courthouse burned on 12 November 1849 and perhaps the reason John
& Eliza did not appear in the 1850 census is that they were then in
the process of moving to Liberty County, Levi's land had been sold but
Nancy had not left it yet, and Nancy and her children soon
followed. At any rate, I found no record of the sale in Gadsden
County records. From state records we have it that Levi bought
the land on 13 October 1836. The federal land patent date to Levi
Butler for this parcel was 28 July 1838. I don't know if it could
take that long after cash payment (this transaction was recorded as a
cash sale) for a patent to be forthcoming, but doubt that. There
was apparently a provision allowing payment for federal lands to be
deferred for up to two years, and I would guess that the delay of the
patent in this case was due to a delay in payment.
Likewise, so far as I know it is not possible to discover when or how
Jesse Hair acquired 4 parcels of land (about 260 acres) near Levi
Butler's land... except it is clear that Jesse was not an "original
owner" of any of that land, that is to say he did not acquire it from
the federal government... but rather from someone who did or their
successor in title. All I know for sure is that he sold this land
in 1868. After a tedious review of state land records I find that
the following people were the original owners of various parts of the
land later acquired by Jesse Hair:
Wiley W. Chester
William Johnson
Robert J. Smallwood and James English (together)
William Barber
Jerdin Barber
Uriah Vickers
and
Elias Whidden
Of those names, there were Smallwoods and Johnsons later connected by
kinship and I have a suspicion that there may have been existing
kinship already with the Johnsons at that time, but if there was I have
no actual evidence or "proof" of it. However I do note that Irwin
W. Johnson was an owner of land nearby, that an Irwin Johnson later
lived near the Haires and Butlers in Liberty County, and that an Irwin
Johnson married one of the daughters of John Haire and Eliza E. Butler,
Susan Selinia Haire.
I have identified and labeled the parcels owned by Levi (in blue) and
Jesse (in red) on a portion of a Gadsden County map, below. If
you will recall your basic U.S. land survey information, each numbered
section is 1 mile by 1 mile, so... each 1/4 section is 1/4 mile by 1/4
mile. Levi owned 1/4 of 1/4 of a section, and Jesse owned 6 1/2
1/4 of 1/4 sections, that is to say nearly 1/2 of a section, total,
though it was in two discontiguous parcels scattered across three
separate section numbers. At their closest points Levi and
Jesse's lands were about 3/4 of a mile apart and at their farthest
about two miles apart, in a straight line. Presuming that the
roads then ran similar to the way they run now, these lands were at
least two miles apart by road... and depending on where their houses
were, Levi and whoever lived on Jesse's land (so far as I know Jesse
lived in Baker County, Georgia) possibly rather more than that.
This is a "modern" map which shows the relative locations of places
like Grady County, Georgia, and the town of Havana, Florida, neither of
which existed when Levi and Jesse owned this land.
Richard White - Tallahassee, Florida - 11 December 2005
P.S. Just as a note of historical curiosity... if you
will look at the shaded area of the map just below the state line where
it is noted that the original owner records are "missing"... that area
was never surveyed into the township, range & section system
because it was in Georgia until a boundary dispute with Georgia that
went all of the way back to Spanish ownership of Florida was not fully
settled till 1872, at which time Florida acquired a tiny sliver of what
had been Georgia, and was surveyed into Georgia Land Lots. See: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/3010/watsline.htm
This page was created by Richard White on 11 December 2005
and was last revised on 6 April 2006.
