Those brick walls can be really hard to knock down when you're looking for an ancestor that you know nothing about. You can get to your great grandfather because someone told you his name or where he was from, but when you get to that time before anyone your know was born, and before birth and death certificates were issued, what do you do??
Try a different tool! Try a different angle!
About two years ago I broke through my MITCHELL brick wall by writing a letter to someone I thought might be related to my great grandfather. It turned out to be his son, my grandmother's half brother that she never knew about. After a few people in that family did a DNA test my theory was proven. DNA was the tool I used to knock down that wall. My great grandfather was a man that we never knew. My mother's generation never knew him. Even my grandmother, his daughter, didn't know much about him because he left before she was two years old. But the little bits and pieces of information we'd collected over the years helped to find the possible family to contact.
Having broken through that wall, I totally forgot about my grandfather's brick wall. His last name was SESSUM.... sometimes SESSUMS. I was trying to figure out which country they came from or if they were Native Americans. My grandfather was born in Louisiana. On the four censuses he appears on that state where his parents were born, two say his father was born in Arkansas, one says Michigan, and one says Virginia. So that's not much help. We know my great grandfather's name was David and I found a David in Tennessee. His father was Richard, but I had the same problem. His father's place of birth was different on each census. This was where I hit the wall. I kept trying to go back to the generation before Richard with no luck.
Then one day it hit me! Try finding the FIRST Sessum in the U.S. back in the 1600's. That's where I found Nicholas Sessums and someone had documented how he came here, when and where he landed, and who he worked for. He was from Bristol, England and lived in Surry County, Virginia. This was in the days of Queen Elizabeth I and William Shakespeare, before this was a country. It was just known as the Virginia Colony, the first English colony of the New World, named for the Virgin Queen.
Then I found Nicholas's last will and testament where it lists all of his children and his wife. So from there I looked at other Ancestry members trees. I like to find the ones that have sources of their discoveries - wills, land grants, census forms, military, church records, or some type of documents attached. I also look at the dates. Sometimes they don't add up - a child cannot be born before his parents, but it is possible that a child can be born after his father died, but not forty years later. I had to look at several of the sons of Nicholas before I found the one whose branch took me to Richard of Tennessee. I'm not 100% positive about what I have discovered, but at least I know I'm close. I have several DNA matches to people with the same info in their trees, unless they have it wrong as well. I will keep digging until I find proof, but I'm so glad I thought of working my way down the tree instead of starting at the bottom.
Arthur Sessums b. 1560 Rivenhall, Essex, England, d. 1623 Isle of Wight, Virginia
Thomas Sessums b. 1624 Bristol, England d. 1711 Bristol, England
Nicholas Sessums b. 1646 Bristol, England d. 1715 Surry, Virginia
Thomas Sessums b. 1677 Surry, Virginia d. 1711 Chowan, North Carolina
Nicholas Sessums b. 1700 Surry, Virginia d. ??
Richard Sessums b. 1742 Edgecombe, NC d.1764 Edgecombe, NC
??? Missing this generation or the dates are wrong
Richard Sessums b. 1805 Edgecombe, NC d. Searcy, AR 1863
David Watson Sessum b. 1847 Tennessee d. 1918 Hosston, LA
William Robert Sessum b. 1892 Hosston, LA d. 1971 Hosston, LA
If you disagree with this information please let me know what and why. Like I said, I don't have proof on some of this tree, but I'm still working on it.
