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I probably should just quit kicking this horse but after returning from being gone for three weeks I see it is still not dead so I'll make one further comment and then disappear. If you choose to decide your ancestors by a vote, survey or poll, okay.
Larry says the following statement is ambiguous. I too originally struggled with whether this could be the case but finally after carefully examining the statement exactly as it is written in the original as well as taking into consideration the deeds in both Stokes Co., NC and Shelby Co., KY, sorting through the different Lazarus and John Tilleys, I had to decide that it almost certainly meant exactly what it said. Maybe others can reach different conclusions.
I'll quote it here again so others can see it without hunting through the list to find it. Remember this is a direct quote from the ORIGINAL deposition given by Joel Tilley on 26 Aug 1840 which is to be found in the Rev. War Widow's pension application of Sally Sisk Tilley, widow of John Tilley (W4832 located on National Archives Microfilm M804, Roll 2389).
I quote where Joel is giving testimony about his Uncle John Tilley's further service: "the next he [John] went as a volunteer and THIS deponent [Joel] and his father Lazarus Tilley carried him the said John Tilley to old Richmond then Surry Court house..."
If you were asked to diagram this sentence in an English grammar glass, how would you diagram it? The only way that you could do it would be to diagram it with a compound subject "deponent" and "father"; the verb would be "carried." The object of the verb would be "him". "To old Richmond" would be the prepositional phrase telling where the subjects of the sentence carried "him."
What do we do with the other words?
"This" before the noun "deponent" is a determiner which identifies or points out a specific deponent and clearly refers to Joel who is the person making the deposition before Charles Bonner in 1840.
Likewise, "his" before father is a determiner which identifies or points out the relationship between the first component of the compound subject (deponent) and the second component of the compound subject (father).
The name "Lazarus Tilly" is then seen to be an explanatory appositive in the form of a proper noun which renames and refers back to the noun "father."
Because our English language has normal patterns of order that we use to communicate meaning without even being consciously taught the order, the normal pattern will be for the appositive to follow directly after the noun which it modifies. Thus, the normal order of English speaking would be to list the modifying appositive "Lazarus Tilly" directly after father.
If another meaning was intended, the sentence would have almost certainly been stated in a different pattern.
However, if the sentence seems to be ambiguous, could it be because someone wants to make it conform to some other information such as Larry has found in a page of a book on Stokes Co. history? I could point out other errors made in the books on Stokes Co. that would be obvious if the original records were actually examined.
Notice how the book page Larry quotes also says that Joel Tilley was born 1775 when in the deposition of Joel Tilley given in 1840 in Sally Tilley's widow's pension Joel says he was "aged 75 years last January" making him born in January 1765.
I would like to reaffirm what Janice Gerdts stresses (in posting #751) and that is to get into the actual records, read all the deeds for the surname in the county to trace how these people got the land, compare all the census data, see who were neighbors on the deeds and compare with different census years, etc. to try and sort out the different Joel Tilleys.
This research just can't always be done by internet, although the internet is a wonderful supplement and is certainly opening up the floodgates of information for sharing. For those of us who have been long-time, indepth Tilley researchers (researching in actual records long before the days of internet instant genealogy), we have learned that it takes hours and hours (make that years and years) of research and analysis of tons of data to arrive at conclusions. It isn't something that you solve by taking surveys of crooked pinkies.
I do not mean this to be condescending but I do speak from 15 years of being a full-time genealogical researcher in records.
That is my last word on this.
Gail
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