Medical leave has given me time to catch up on genealogy. I decided to pass the time by researching my Goodger kinfolk who lived in the counties of Warren, Lincoln, Greene, Hancock, and Taliaferro, Georgia after 1800. While some Goodgers stayed in Georgia, my 4th great grandfather, Stephen Goodger, and his brother, Andrew Martin Goodger, did not, migrating first to Perry County, Alabama and then on to Tishomingo County, Mississippi by the mid-1840s. I know quite a bit about Stephen and Andrew after their migration west but wanted to learn more about their lives in Georgia. And boy did I!

It started with an image a descendant of Andrew’s shared with me on Ancestry. It was a screenshot of a newspaper ad from 1824 concerning a sheriff’s sale to be held at the Lincoln County courthouse the first Tuesday in October. Up for auction was a house and lot in Lisbon and, sadly, one-fifth ownership in a slave named Jack. In a nutshell, James Herring and Company was suing Andrew to recover unpaid debts against the estate of William Goodger, Andrew and Stephen’s older brother who had died sometime in 1819 (most likely) in Lincoln County. Andrew was identified as William’s executor. I know from annual tax lists that William owned no property of value the year before he died. Nada. Since Andrew was the executor of William’s questionable estate and he was responsible for his debts, James Herring did the next best thing… he went after Andrew’s assets. In the newspaper ad, Andrew was also identified as a legal heir of Hickerson Barksdale, and as such, owned one-fifth of Jack. The only logical conclusion is that Andrew had married one of Hickerson’s daughters, thus becoming his legal heir.

I knew from many, many trees on Ancestry that Andrew’s wife was Polly or Mary Barksdale, but I had no documentation of a marriage. And that’s where the trouble started. I found the will of Hickerson Barksdale which had been written in 1800 while he was living just across the state line in Abbeville County, South Carolina. In his will, Hickerson identified his five children. He had two sons, William and Stith, and three daughters, Phebe Stinson, Sarah Lowe and Jane Murray. (Hmm. Where’s Polly?) He also owned a young slave named Jack. This information aligned with the newspaper ad 24 years later. Hickerson’s probate records also included detailed accounts of the sale of his other assets and who purchased what. Near the end I found listed Andrew and his brother, William, having purchased a few items. Okay, clearly this was the correct Hickerson but none of the three daughters was named Polly or Mary. That would have to mean that one of three – Phebe, Sarah or Jane – had married Andrew after Hickerson’s death. Whatever she owned legally became his. I quickly found wills for Sarah who had died in 1826 and Phebe or Phoebe who had died in 1836. Both of them had grandchildren. (Interesting.) Okay, that leaves Jane. For the record, I’ve found no document proving Jane married Andrew … but she’s the only one left who could have made Andrew an heir of Hickerson. And I’ve found no wills for a Murray having a wife named Jane and ownership in Jack. There’s more research to do there, but it’s indisputable that James Herring was going after property formerly owned by Hickerson Barksdale.

But what about Polly Barksdale, who is, incidentally, widely accepted as the “Mary” living with Andrew in the 1850 census? (1850 being the first census in which every household member was enumerated.) I needed to understand how Polly came about. Again, Andrew’s descendant on Ancestry threw me a bone and pointed me to an 1823 lawsuit from Abbeville County naming Polly as a daughter and heir of William Barksdale and the wife of Andrew “Goocher.” Sadly, the lawsuit was devoid a dates and only mentioned Polly and Andrew once in establishing the number of heirs William had at the time of his death. (Yeah, I read the entire case which went on for days.)

Okay, so in his lifetime, Andrew was married to daughters of both William Barksdale and Hickerson Barksdale. I should also mention that Andrew was living in Abbeville County in the 1810 census near other Barksdales. Thus, it’s not a stretch that he’d taken two Barksdale brides. But, I want to focus on Jane for a moment. As mentioned, her sisters had grandchildren named in their wills in 1826 and 1836. Andrew would only have been about 19 when Hickerson wrote his will in 1800 naming his three married daughters. Was Jane considerably older than Andrew when they married? Was it considered scandalous?

Here’s a clue: in October of 1823, less than a year before the ad of September of 1824, Andrew was sued for unpaid debts by a different person, not James Herring. The sheriff delivered a copy of the complaint to Andrew’s residence. The county clerk included a note describing it as a “most notorious place of abode.” Yes, you read that correctly. Perhaps his marriage to an older Jane was salacious!

So, we’re left with Mary in the 1850 census. Who was she? Wife number three or a reconciled Polly done wrong? Because of the newspaper ad, we can conjecture that Andrew married Jane (maybe or if at all) after Polly. Polly was identified as Andrew’s wife in a lawsuit from 1823. She’s likely his first wife and perhaps his only wife. Perhaps Andrew was having an unseemly affair with Jane and the ad was meant to embarrass him into paying the debt! Andrew obtained 490 acres in Irwin County, Georgia in the 1820 land lottery —- far from Lincoln, yet the sheriff served him in Lincoln in 1823 at his “most notorious abode.” Incidentally, I can find no records of sales after the date of the auction indicating it ever took place. Perhaps the ploy to embarrass him worked. Is this the reason I can find no other records of him in Georgia after the 1824 newspaper ad? Perhaps he got out of town quickly and started over in Perry County, Alabama where he was living by the 1830 census.

Thus ends the research rabbit hole that is Andrew Martin Goodger.

Kenfolk: Trantham
Relationship: 4th great grand-uncle
Common ancestors: Andrew’s parents were my 4th great grandparents, Martin Goodger and Elizabeth, whose maiden name is sadly unproven.