Hiram Lansford Fields of Hawkins County, Tennessee
Continued from Preston Fields, of Pike County, Kentucky.
I ask Fields family members and experts in early North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky genealogy to be patient with me and this article.
There are not enough hours in the day, miles left on my car, or years left in my life to begin borrowing films of land records, wills, etc., scrolling through rolls of microfilm, or sending for copies of original records from the dozen or so counties through which these Fields passed on their way from, evidently, Bedford County, Virginia, to eventually Pike County, Kentucky, and beyond.
I have relied on the online work of others when it seemed reliable, and have listed those sources in the footnotes. If my conclusions are in error, please correct me.
In the last article we briefly covered the family of Preston Fields and mentioned the tradition--now confirmed by DNA--that Preston was born a Hamilton but raised by Hiram Fields.
I worked backward along the main migration route leading into Pike County, Kentucky, looking for Fields families, and concluded that if Preston was actually born in 1795 in Tennessee, as he stated in 1850, then it was likely in the very northeast section of the state.
Hiram Lansford Fields
The following timeline for Hiram Lansford Fields was copied from a post at GenForum.Lansford, Stephen, and Davis Fields-message posted by Teresa Conley, October 16, 2006, at the GenForum Fields Family Genealogy Forum. It puts him in "the right place at the right time" namely in Hawkins County, Tennessee, in 1796. He is far and away the most likely candidate to be the adopted father of Preston Fields.
[edited March 2024 to add the question about whether these next two references are for Preston's adoptive father or an earlier man.]
1762 and 1763 Bedford County, Virginia. Lansford Fields on the tax rolls. These are online at ancestry.com. But are these for Preston's adoptive father or an earlier man by that name?
1765. the year in which Lansford's son John moved, with his father, to Rowan County, North Carolina. This according to John Fields' Revolutionary War Pension Application. But is this referring to Preston's adoptive father or an earlier man by that name?
1772 to 1786 Surry County, NC. Lansford Fields on tax records of (formed from Rowan in 1771).
1790 Stokes County, NC. Lansford Fields on tax list (formed from Surry in 1789)
1796 Hawkins Co. TN. Lansford Fields entered land on the south side of Holston River, Bays Mountain (Hawkins county formed in 1786 from Sullivan county)
There are no extant census records for Hawkins County from 1790 to 1820. I didn't find Hiram Lansford Fields on any other records. However rootsweb.com trees show children being born between 1800 and 1805 in Hawkins County to Obediah and William Fields, who are said to be Hiram Lansford's sons.A global search on for "Fields", born in "Hawkins", in 1800 +/- 5 years at rootsweb.com And Obediah is still in Hawkins County on the 1830 census.
Continued in Some Hamiltons in Hawkins and Sullivan Counties, Tennessee, 1784 to 1796.
Credits
The image of a DNA strand comes from Wikipedia:File:DNA orbit animated static thumb.png.
