Musgroves and Leveretts: Rumors

Rumors

If you tried the Challenge at the end of the last post and paid heed to the Hint, you probably came up with something simple like this:

Elizabeth (Bryan Musgrove) Collins is our third great-grandmother, twice over, both by birth (to John David with James Walter Musgrove) and by marriage (to Elizabeth Arissa Collins' father, John Forbes Collins). The same is true of John Collins.

Her sister, Ellen (Bryan) Leverett, is our fourth great-grandmother by marriage only, mother of Betty Leverett, the single mother of John Leverett, who married the single mother Lucy Williams, who was the mother of our great-grandmother, Macie Carol Williams.

Simple, until you read in volume nine on page 292 of Folks Huxford's "Pioneers of Wiregrass Georgia" series, 

 

This information was provided to the Huxford Genealogical Society by the granddaughter of Samuel Leverett, the author of the Leverett genealogy book. According to that publication's introduction, she learned from Sam's daughter, her aunt Ida, about Betty Leverett, our epileptic grandmother. 

The Leverett boys
and our great-grandfather:
Half-brothers?

Her aunt also told her that Sam had "a half-brother that married one of John (Leverett)'s daughters." Then her aunt stopped remembering things. So she wrote to Marie, daughter of Charley Leverett, who wrote back that,

"...her dad had told her that the half-brother was married to the step-daughter of John Leverett. Her name was Macy Williams, a daughter of John's wife, Lucy Williams Leverett. The half-brother was a Musgrove and she thought his name was Ed."

According to the author, family historians Mary (Musgrove) Spivey and Katie (Wildes) McDonald supplied her with our family's lineage.

Her research leads her to conclude John David Musgrove, father of our great grandfather, Edward Columbus Musgrove, was also the father of Betty Leverett's children.

If all this is true, it exponentially complicates family relationships. Using the tree below as a guide, what surprises can you find?

This family page represents the most current state of our research. It will be updated as new or conflicting information becomes known. If you have any information on this family, please contact me or add a comment to this page.

Note: Relationships are expressed from the perspective of the grandchildren of Willis Edgar and Carrie (known as) Mae (Merritt) Musgrove. 

*Terms of relationship - grandmother, uncle, aunt, cousin, etc.  - are generically used to include relatives such as fourth great-grandfathers, great grand uncles, second cousins twice removed, etc.