Nancy CARR PRUITT is my paternal great grandmother. She the wife of Henry Bristol PRUITT and is the mother to my grandfather, Samuel Wilson PRUITT. I will just say that I don’t know as much as I would like to know about her. I was able to obtain her death certificate1, thanks to the work of the Rankin County Historical Society in Rankin County, Mississippi and their documentation of the cemeteries there2. I was excited to find her death certificate, because it was one of the first ones that I was able to find during my first research trip to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. When reviewing the document, it seemed to be riddled with a lot of ‘I don’t knows’, but that could have just been my frustration making those words more noticeable on the paper. Either way, it didn’t give me very much new information to go on.
I did find her on the census the 19103 and 19204 census with Grandpa Britt and their children, but I have yet to find her in the other census years. The thing that has lingered in the back of my mind is a question of her really being a Black Creek Indian. That is really the only thing that my family members remember being told about her, other than that she was from Alabama. I know, I know! Everyone says that they have Indian in their family and yes, I have read Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr’s article on “Why most black people aren’t “part Indian,” despite family lore.” But I don’t want to count the Indian out just yet. It is something that I want to research, but haven’t gotten enough information on her to even know where to start. It would definitely help to have some documented evidence to corroborate family stories. In the meantime, I will work on trying to get all the information I can find about her during the period of 1870 – 1943.
| This is my ninth post as a part of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge, created by Amy Johnson Crow of No Story Too Small. |
Footnotes:
1. Mississippi State Board of Health, death certificate 4442 (1943), Nancy Pruitt; Death Certificates and Indexes; Mississippi Department of Archives & History, Jackson.
2. Rankin County Historical Society, Rankin County, Mississippi Cemetery Records, 1824-1980 (Brandon,MS: Rankin County Historical Society, 1981), 120.
3. 1910 U.S. census, Clarke County, Mississippi, population schedule, Enterprise, p. 3, dwelling 31, family 33, Nancy Pruitt; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com: 2014); citing Family History Library microfilm: 1374749
4. 1920 U.S. census, Clarke County, Mississippi, population schedule, Enterprise, p. 6, dwelling 55, family 58, Nancy Pruitt; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com: 2014); citing Family History Library microfilm: 2340876.
© 2014 Amy L. Cole and Tracing Amy: My Ancestral Journey. All rights reserved.
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Amy L Cole, “52 Ancestors #9: Nancy CARR PRUITT – Is she really a Creek Indian?,” Tracing Amy: My Ancestral Journey, 29 April 2014 (https://tracingamy.wordpress.com: [access date]).
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I am very excited to come across this information. My husband has been searching for years to find information about his grandfathers family and where they were from. He is the greatgrandson of Dobie Shanks, but he is unable to find photos or anything other than a 1880 Perry County, MS census. He knows a lot of his grandmother’s family, but little of his grandfathers side. We always thought that the Pruitts were on his grandmother side, but here I see, that Shanks and Pruitt is linked. Thanks Amy!
Hi Sonya! Thank you for stopping by! I am excited that you were able to find my post useful. The Shanks line that I speak of on my site is on my mother’s side of the family and the Pruitt’s that I mention are on my father’s side. I have not heard the name Dobie, but I have not tracked all of the Shanks on my mom’s line. I still have some work to do there. The Pruitts have been the hardest to research. I only know back to my great grandparents. Do you have any names on the Pruitt side? Where were his Pruitts located?