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It is difficult to write that a belief held by many Garrison and Garrason descendants has been proven wrong. I write of the erroneous belief that the Duplin County, North Carolina Garrisons and Garrasons descend from Christopher Garrison (chr 1730/1 Staten Island, NY), son of Isaac and Maria (Christopher) Garrison and grandson of Lambert Sr and Susannah (Morgan) Garrison and of Barent Christopher and Anna Catherine (Stillwell) Christopher, all of Staten Island. First, let me tell you why we know it is not so. Then I will tell you how I think the idea came about. Lambert Garrison, Sr, grandfather of Christopher, was a son of Gerrit Segers (b c1620) of New Amsterdam. Lambert had a brother Frederick whose descendants chose to use the Segers/Saegers surname (in the English custom) rather than Gerritsen/Garrison (in the Dutch custom) as did Lambert. A descendant of Frederick is a member of the Garrisons' Compass DNA Project. All descendants of the Duplin County, North Carolina group in this Project, at the present time (July 2007), descend either from (1) Jedediah Garrison (c1752-1830) who moved from Duplin Co to Franklin (now Banks) Co, GA by way of Orange (now Alamance) Co, NC and Greenville Co, SC; or from (2) Ebenezer Garrason (c1750-1801) who remained in Duplin Co while his only son James (c1778-c1811) moved to Effingham Co, GA. DNA results prove that Jedediah and Ebenezer were very closely related, so closely that it has been adjudged they were brothers. Public records show they lived in the same community in Duplin County and they witnessed each others' deeds. The DNA results for the descendant of the Segers/Saegers branch of the New York family are so different from all those members of the Duplin County family as to exclude the possibility that the two families were related even remotely. How did this mistake come about? Actually, quite innocently so it is difficult to be angry with anyone. In the 1920s when about 70 years in age the late D H P Garrison of Godfrey, GA started family research. His goal was to prove ownership to a lost mining claim out west. He failed in that and in his innocence and ignorance he led the family up the wrong tree. I believe DHP was like my grandfather Garrason - so honest he trusted everyone else explicitly. That was his innocense. His ignorance was simply not having more than a grade school education and little contact with the outside world. At the time he started he was forced to do most of his research by mail - it was too far to Athens or Atlanta to drive for mere genealogical research - and because of that he had nothing to compare to the information he got in letters. He knew that Jedediah had named a son Christopher and he believed the boy was named for Jedediah's father. So did many others, including Jane (Williams) Quillian, Jedediah's granddaughter, who in her 70s wrote a paper claiming that Grandfather Christopher Garrison had moved to Georgia with the family in 1784. The year was 1804 and she made two other date mistakes in her paper. For a serious researcher that puts the accuracy of the whole article under suspicion. Actually, I have never seen her original paper nor a photocopy of it. I could not swear that the typed transcripts in circulation are absolutely verbatim. DHP contacted Media Research. a depression-time mail-order genealogical research company. They sent him the record of Christopher's 1730 christening. Without having one iota of proof that Christopher ever left Staten Island or that he had a large family (church records show only two daughters) DHP and his relatives who joined him in the search "moved" Christopher to Duplin County and "gave" him a large family. Years later, a number of us modern day researchers tried in vain to prove that Christopher was the ancestor but we were unable to find even one speck of evidence that Christopher had ever lived in NC or was the father of those claimed to have been his children. If he lived in Duplin Co and raised his family there he would undoubtedly have left at least one record to prove it. [In all honestly, I will admit that in my younger days of innocense and ignorance I "bought" the Christopher story.] Early on, DHP teamed up with the late A T Outlaw, Register of Duplin County. In the 1930s Outlaw wrote a newspaper column for the local paper. One of his articles was on the Garrisons and it has been widely distributed. Unfortunately it contains all the errors, omissions and bad assumptions that both men had accumulated. Some time ago I wrote an 18-page article correcting and expanding on that article. It is fully documented. It is a part of this website. See the page titled "A T Outlaw Update". To show some of the other damage DHP did to the Garrison/Garrason cause and to illustrate his mind set about accepting what others sent him, let me write more. At first he had Christopher's christening as 1730 which is what the Reformed Dutch Church record shows. Apparently later he considered that was an adult baptism. A lady up North sent him a tale about five Garrison brothers coming to Delaware from Scotland about 1700. By the time they had merged their tales, DHP had Christopher born c1700 and his parents born in the 1670s or 80s. Records on Staten Island show they were born after 1700. However, DHP's adjusted dates were written in his family Bible and submitted to the GA DAR for inclusion in a book they published on Family Bible Records. Unfortunately, DHP, like many of us others for a time, thought there was just one Garrison/Garrason family who had come to America. Of course, that was not so. In fact, numerous families of the name developed here when the English ut a stop to patronymic types of surnames. There were historical inaccuracies in the lady's story that DHP did not catch. She had one brother marrying a first cousin of Pocahantas nearly 100 years after the Indian Princess had died and she had the brothers receiving land grants from George III many years before he became king in 1760. As for how the "Grandfather Christopher Garrison" came about, I offer the following simple explanation. Likely the story was told through the years that "Jedediah named his son Christopher for his grandfather." That is an ambiguous statement. Was it for the infant's grandfather or for Jedediah's grandfather. Without further clarification it is impossible to say. Here is some speculation to consider. In the mid-1700s there was a man named James Garrison with a proven son Isaiah who lived in Carteret Co, NC. Jedediah Garrison's obituary told that he was born in Cortwright (an ignorant spelling of Carteret common at one time there) Co, NC. The late Sam Garrison insisted Jedediah (and my Ebenezer) were sons of James and that James had come from Delaware where he had married _____ Hussey. Unfortunately, Sam was never able to prove his contention and I, too, have been unsuccessful. Now, if that is true, then Jedediah had a Grandfather Hussey. And (drum roll, please) Christopher is a very common name in the Hussey family going all the way back to the 1630s when the first Christopher Hussey settled in New England. Jedediah's grandfather may have been named Christopher Hussey and it would have been Jedediah's grandfather for whom he named his son. It should also be pointed out that an unidentified James Garrason (so spelled) joined Jedediah in 1770 to witness a deed for Ebenezer Garrason in Duplin Co. And Isaiah's signature was found on a 1776 petition in Orange Co with (but not next to) Jedediah's. So, my Jedediah-descended cousins, I am sorry to have to disappoint you but we cannot argue with DNA results. The lab was independent. They did not have the specimens there at the same time. They did not know who had donated any specimen. They had no idea what we were trying to prove and disprove. This paper has been slightly edited to fit the occasion of its inclusion on this website. However, all opinions in both versions are solely those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of any other member of Garrisons' Compass DNA Project or its administrators. (Posted to Garrisons' Compass on 4 July 2007) |
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