Please disconnect the father of Ansel Jarrell

I now have DNA evidence that Eleanor Nellie (Jarrell) Conn really was Ansel's sister. I just noticed that one of the managers of Mary Jarrell has a DNA connection to me on Gedmatch. Geni says that this person is my fourth cousin once removed, and Gedmatch agrees that this degree of relationship looks accurate.

Hello Caroline,

I've fixed the relationships as you have described. Please check my work.

William Pigg is gone. Thank you very much!

Whoops, make that "James Pigg is gone".

P.S. on the DNA evidence - my mother has a stronger DNA connection than I do, so I made a note in the "about" section describing her connection.

Additional info on the 'unidentified father' issue. Per Familysearch note about Mary's daughter Eleanor (Nellie) at https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LT66-9P8 "Her marriage record states her mother is Polly Jarrell and she has no legal father. She was underage in 1840 and her mother gave permission for her to marry."

Some more notes in case this issue ever comes up again. Based on the information at https://www.myheritage.com/names/james_pig and https://www.myheritage.com/names/mary_pig it looks like some family trees have conflated Mary Polly Jarrell with a James and Mary Pigg who were living in England or Wales in 1841 and 1861. This is an obvious misidentification.

Still more notes to keep everything in the same place.
From https://wc.rootsweb.com/trees/209801/I00449/marypolly-jarrell/indiv... with extraneous comments and the names of living people edited out.

"Some think that the father of Ancel was James Pigg from VA… Have you found out more about Mary
Polly Jarrell & Mr. Pigg? I received a letter from a cousin that does genealogy research and he found out that Mr. Pigg was a land surveyor and he survey the land on Bull Creek, where Mary Polly's family lived, in 1825. Funny thing is that's when Ancel was born. Interesting, huh?…
 
"According to census records, Polly had the following children:
  (male) born bet. 1810 and 1820
 (male) born bet. 1810 and 1820
 (male) born bet. 1810 and 1820
 (female) born bet. 1804 and 1810
 (female) born bet. 1820 and 1825
  1. The female 1820-1825 would be ELEANOR, BORN 1820, who married IRA CONN. SOURCE: Marriage bond and consent states ELEANOR was the daughter of MARY with no legitimate father.
  2. One of the males born bet. 1810 and 1820 would be ANCIL (ANSEL), who was born in 1825 according to the 1850 census. MARY was living with him in the 1850 census.
  3. The female born 1804-1810 should be ELIZABETH, who was born in 1812
 according to the 1850 census.
  4. Another of the male is PARKS, who married JENNY ROBERSON on 11/15/1827.
  5. The other son is either AMBROSE, BORN 1805-1810 or HIRAM, BORN 1811, who married LUCINDA MEADE 6/9/1834.”

There are several problems with this narrative. Census reports indicate that Ansel's birthdate is anywhere from 1810 to 1825, with about 1820 being the date that's reported most often. It seems to be generally accepted that Mary's father William Jarrell died around 1818 at Prater Creek, Floyd County, Kentucky (south of the town of Prestonsburg). Not Bull Creek, which is northeast of Prestonsburg. It is not clear when the family moved to Kentucky, but census records indicate that Mary's brother Parks F. Jarrell was born in NC in 1801 according to https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/KG9M-6MG

If the census records at https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XH2J-BWQ are for the same family, they were living in Rockingham County, North Carolina in 1810. But this is probably not the same family; they were originally from Rowan County which is a significant distance away.

There is no direct record of where Mary Polly was living in 1825, but she would have been about 40 years old at the time and not necessarily still living in her parents' home. Especially if she'd been producing as many illegitimate children as this source says. It’s certainly possible that she could have had a child at 40, but it seems likely that her children were born before 1825. Even the second part of the quoted source favors a birthdate of 1810-1820 for Ansel, not 1825. The census records all agree that Ansel was born in Kentucky, not North Carolina.

There are no known census records showing that Mary Polly Jarrell is the mother of five children. Her name only appears on the 1850 and 1860 census, when she was living with only one of her children (her son Ansel). Prior to 1850, the census didn't list the names of everyone in the household. There is a known DNA match between a descendant of Ansel Jarrell and a descendant of Eleanor Jarrell who married Ira Conn, so we can accept that Ansel and Eleanor were siblings. The other three are speculative, and it seems likely that they belong to a different member of the Jarrell family. The records indicate that Mary Polly really did have 15 siblings so there was no shortage of Jarrells. The census records for Eleanor Conn give variable birth dates, but about 1820 is also the most common date for her.

I can't find any online record of an 1825 survey of Bull Creek, but something like this would not necessarily be easy to find online.

I am now ready to reconnect James Pigg as the father of Ansel and Nellie. Documentation has come to light indicating that there was a James Pigg Jr who was born in Virginia around 1788, and moved into Floyd County Kentucky between 1817 and 1819.

According to the Annals of Floyd County, Kentucky page 180, Pigg was appointed to survey a road near the mouth of Prater Creek on 6/21/1819. Pg 192 mentions that he had a residence on Cow Creek on 3/19/1821. Page 250 says that on 4/28/1825 he obtained a mortgage using his blacksmith tools as security.

Pigg was on the Floyd County census for 1820, 1830 and 1840, but by 1850 he had moved to Lawrence County KY. He married Sarah Ratliffe in Patrick, Virginia on 4/2/1816, apparently before he ever met Polly Jarrell. He and his wife had at least 14 children between 1817 and 1844, and they were still living together on the 1860 census. Pigg was not free to marry Polly Jarrell at the time she was having children.

There is still no formal documentation that Pigg and Polly Jarrell had a relationship. However I have learned that the story of Ansel Jarrell's paternity was passed down among some of his descendants. I also learned that my mother has a rather large DNA segment that triangulates to James Pigg's grandfather Paul Pigg (1683-1767). I did not inherit this segment.