The Disputed Origins of Elizabeth Isabelle Gaston Bigham

Aerial view of contemporary Chester County, South Carolina

Recently, I've been doing some additional research on my Gaston ancestors. This is a fascinating family. They were deeply involved in the American Revolution, and the Gaston tree is full of memorable, often larger-than-life characters. 

It's been fairly well established that the earliest known Gaston ancestor in our tree was Jean Gaston, born around 1600 in Foix, France. Foix is in the Midi-Pyrénées region of southern France. Jean was a Huguenot, a Protestant forced to flee Catholic France in the mid-seventeenth century. He took his family to Scotland, and he died in Melrose, located in Scotland's borders. His sons moved on to County Antrim in Northern Ireland, and his grandchildren and great-grandchildren left Ireland for America in the mid-1700s, during the wave of Scots-Irish emigration. The Gastons settled in various locations from South Carolina to Pennsylvania. Our line, starting with immigrant ancestor Robert Gaston (b. 1720), set down roots in Chester County, South Carolina, and intermarried with the many Scots-Irish families gathered there. The Gastons were heavily involved in Revolutionary War activities, often leading local militias against British troops, and they suffered terrible losses as a result. After the war, the Gastons headed west, moving into Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama. My family made its way to Illinois, and they did so in large groups of Scots-Irish. The same surnames that surrounded the Gastons in South Carolina were found on neighboring farms in Illinois.

My fourth great-grandmother, Elizabeth Isabelle Gaston, was born about 1810 in Chester County. There, she married Elijah Bigham, the son of Isaac Bigham and Rachel Weir. Together, they had ten sons who survived to adulthood. Sometime between 1850 and 1860, Elizabeth and Elijah moved from Chester County to Perry County, Illinois. Elizabeth died there in about 1890. However, when looking more closely at the documentation I have for Elizabeth's life, I realized that all I actually have is census records and a pension file. None of these things list the names of her parents or siblings. The more I dug around online, looking for documents that connected her with her parents, the more I realized, with a terrible, sinking feeling, that they didn't exist. Cue the panic.

Until that moment, I had believed that Elizabeth's parents were William Gaston, Jr. (b. 1786) and his first wife, Jennet (or Jane) McMillan (b. 1790). I dug into my files on William and Jennet, and had another horrible realization. Nearly everything I read about them indicated that they married in 1813, following William's service in the War of 1812, and that their first child was born in 1814. Elizabeth was born in 1810, and perhaps even earlier. I was practically breathing into a bag at this point, but decided on a plan of action. 1) Make a list of everything I know for sure about Elizabeth. 2) Revisit all my grandmother's notes.

Creating a list of everything I know about Elizabeth meant going through the records I have with a fine tooth comb. One issue became apparent immediately. In not a single one of the census records does Elizabeth use that name. She is consistently listed as either Isabelle or Isabella. In her husband Elijah Bigham's will, he references his wife "Ezabela." Where had I gotten the name Elizabeth? I hit my filing cabinet and got out the stacks of reference material my grandmother had compiled about the Gastons. I'm ashamed to say that I hadn't looked at these in great detail before, but had only skimmed for names and dates. Amongst all the papers were multiple letters Grandma had written to other Gaston researchers, asking the same questions I was asking now. The responses from those researchers seemed to indicate that it was unlikely that Elizabeth was the daughter of William and Jennet. One even got a little huffy and asked why my grandmother would suggest such a thing. I was wondering the same. My grandmother was a careful and thorough researcher, the wide array of documents she'd collected regarding the Gastons indicated that she'd given this project years of focused attention. My grandmother's response to the huffy researcher was that her information had been passed down in the family.

In my Grandma's files, I found four sheets of paper, written in pencil, and not in my grandmother's distinctive handwriting. They are handwritten family trees, detailing the connection between Levi Bigham and his grandmother, Elizabeth Isabelle Gaston Bigham. There is no clear identification as to who wrote them, but I think they must have been created by either Levi himself or his wife, Grace. They had no children. Levi died in 1949, and Grace in 1954. This was exactly the period when my grandmother was becoming interested in genealogy. Also, my grandmother would definitely have consulted Levi's sister, Julia Bigham Smith. Julia lived in Los Angeles and visited with my grandmother's family regularly. She lived until 1958. Surely my grandmother would have asked her about the identity of her grandparents. These handwritten family trees all have the same information, in varying formats. They list the wife of Elijah Bigham as Elizabeth Gaston, or simply Gaston. They list her father as Billy or William Gaston and her mother as unknown.

There are two reasons, other than these family trees, that I'm pretty sure Isabelle was a Gaston. On his marriage license, her son Samuel T. Bigham listed his mother's maiden name as Gaston. Also, I have DNA connections to 7 people with the surname Gaston, and a couple dozen people with the surname Gaston in their trees, with ancestors in the same time frame and location as the Gastons I've been researching. So, is it possible that Elizabeth is the daughter of a different William Gaston? Certainly. I went through my tree and looked at other William Gastons. From their earliest moments in America, the Gastons had enormous families, and all the children were given the exact same names (Hugh, William, John, James, and Alexander). There are so many William Gastons in my tree, it's ridiculous. Unfortunately, I don't see that any of them could be the father of Elizabeth. The timing is off for all but a couple, and for those where the timing is appropriate, any daughters named Elizabeth or Isabelle have documented marriages to other men. I returned to William Gaston, Jr., the man I'd originally believed was her father. Could he have fathered Elizabeth out of wedlock? Could his marriage to Jennet have happened earlier than believed? It's possible, but not a single mention of this family includes information about a child or marriage pre-1813. Is there another William Gaston from Chester County who has been unaccounted for all this time? It seems like the most likely scenario at this point.

I emailed my grandmother's niece, who worked with her for many years on genealogy projects and is also connected to the Gastons. I was hoping she might have some insights. Unfortunately, she'd gone down the same road I was now traveling some years ago, and had not ended up reaching any conclusions.

It's very probable that Elizabeth was a Gaston, but I have no idea which Gaston was her father. I also think her name was probably just Isabelle or Isabella, not Elizabeth at all. In some languages and cultures, Elizabeth and Isabelle can be somewhat interchangeable names, but that's not typically true in Northern European countries, where Elizabeth's family originated. 

At this point, I'm struggling to determine next steps. If you are one of the handful of people who read my blog, I would eagerly accept any suggestions. I will not be deleting all the Gastons from my tree, as I still think we're connected. However, this broken branch is really unexpected and problematic.

These pages, not written by my grandmother, were found in her files about the Gaston and Bigham families. I think they were created by Levi Bigham or his wife Grace. Also, Levi was not the Duke of Argyll, although we are descended from Campbells.