Finding biological parents in 1870's US
Hello,
If possible, I'd like some help trying to find the biological parents of Mattie Burt Stewart. https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LJRD-TZY
Her adoptive father, William Richard Stewart, is my cousin five times removed. While doing research on his family, I found that in the 1880 census, the enumerator had very helpfully noted that Mattie was William's adopted daughter. I would love to reunite her with her birth parents, if possible.
I think it is very likely that she was born to someone with the last name Burt. It's an unusual middle name to give a girl, and I also found in the 1870 census that the Stewarts were living near a family of Burts in Morgan County, Alabama (the Burts are on the next page over from the Stewarts in that census).
William https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LTKC-4B2 and Sarah Burt may have been too old in 1870 to have a child in 1874, but William had two sons (by his first wife), Lucian and Charles, who would have been in the right age range. Lucian appears to have been single and childless when he passed away in 1881, and Charles didn't get married until 1878 (according to the records I've found so far, at least), but I can't rule either of them out. (Charles's marriage record to his known wife doesn't say what number of marriage it was for him.) Mattie consistently says on census records that her parents were born in Alabama, and William Burt was born in North Carolina but his two sons were both born in Alabama.
It is possible that Sarah Lynch Burt was Mattie's mother; Sarah was 44 in 1874 and passed away 4 years later, and William may have given 4-year-old Mattie to the Stewarts to raise. But that conflicts with Mattie claiming both parents were born in Alabama, and I can't find any evidence that William and Sarah Burt were ever in Little Rock, or any reason why Sarah would have gone to Little Rock to give birth. (Plus, there would be a strange 14-year gap between Mattie and Sarah's known child Mary.)
I know civil birth records from that area and time period are scarce to nonexistent, but I'm wondering if someone knows of some other resources that could help me put the pieces together better. For example, Mattie was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, so if I could find Lucian or Charles living in Little Rock around 1874, that would be very good evidence that one of them is her father.
I've put all of my notes so far on Mattie's Life Sketch on her FamilySearch page.
Thanks in advance.
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Hello @Teresa Arispe have you been able to find your answers to this yet?
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Hello,
Sorry for the late response; I'm not used to this online community format and I don't seem to be getting email notifications when someone responds to my posts. I have not really made any progress with this mystery. I suspect that in this time period when most US states did not keep government vital records, the best source for more information about these relationships would be the family's personal records, or maybe a published family history if anyone ever wrote one. Maybe I should pursue that route.
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I suggest checking county probate and guardianship records.
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Excellent suggestion, I will have to try that!
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