For many years, we have known, from family records that my great grandmother Elisa Livesa Love (Fox) was born in Hardeman County, TN, 9 MAY 1832. What we have not known is why the family was in Tenn. and what they did there. Recently, in the summer of 2010, Mary and I stopped by Bolivar, the Hardeman Co. seat to see what we could find on the family. Elisa's father was David Love and her mother was Clarinda Neely, both born in Chester Dist.,S. C.

Sadly, we found nothing in Bolivar itself, which I suppose is meaningful. It means that David Love and family did little here. Mary and I looked at both the grantor and the grantee index from the late 1820's to way after 1850. In addition a lady in the deed office looked at old land grant records and found nothing on any David Love. We stopped by the tax office but no records going back to the 1830's. There were some old maps that I photoed in the tax office but none that seemed meaningful for our family.

Our next stop was the Tennessee Archives in Nashville. We hit a little pay dirt here. We found a land grant for David Love in Hardeman Co., TN, as follows:

LOVE, David - Hardeman County, 1832
50 acres, West TN District
Book 3-A, Page 237, Grant #2065

And just as important, we found tax records for Hardeman Co. around the 1830 date and David Love's name was there as follows:

1829 50 acres; District 10 (or 16); Range 4; Section 5; 1 poll; 1 slave; tax $2.44

1830 50 acres; district blank; range 4 (or 6); section 5; 1 poll; no slaves listed; tax $1.18

1831 We did not find an entry for David Love in 1831

1832 1 poll; 2 slaves; tax $1.90 (nothing in other collumns)

1833 50 acres; District 10; range 4; section 5; 1 poll; 2 slaves; tax $1.75

I did not find David Love after 1833.

In Bolivar, one of the old maps appeared to be divided into Ranges and Townships of thirty six sections each. The ranges (north & south) were designated but the townships were not obviously designated. So the above designations in the above tax records of range 4, section 5 are meaningless to me. However, one map was designated as "10th Surveyor's District." The bottom line is that I don't know exactly where in Hardeman Co. David Love's land was located.

Compiled below is what we currently know about the David Love family in the period around 1830.

1. David Love paid taxes on 50 acres of land in Hardeman Co. from 1829 thru 1833.

2. David Love claimed South Carolina as his state of residence in the 1830 Census. Family records (and probably the 1850 census) have Angelina Love, Eliza's sister, born in 1830 in S.C.

3. Family records have Eliza Love born in Hardeman Co. in May of 1832. We should be able to assume the whole family was in Hardeman Co. at that time.

4. David Love passed away 13 NOV 1833 in Columbus, MS. Family records state that he was a house contractor and was constructing his own home at the time of his death. So, I assume the family moved from TN to Columbus the latter part of 1832 or the first part of 1833.

5. Strangely we have no record of the sale of David Love's Hardeman Co. property. If there was a sale, evidently the buyer did not record it. If the land sold for taxes, one would expect that to have been recorded in the deed records. We did not find it.

Importantly, we did not find any families related to the David Love's in Hardeman Co. Most of the time related families moved together, and it seems strange that the David Love's would be there by themselves.

There is a possibility that the Hardeman Co. land showed in David Love's estate records (or deed records) in Columbus. I want to look for that the next time I am anywhere around that town.

It is my guess that David Love went from his home in SC to Hardeman Co., TN, maybe once a year with a slave or two to clear land and set up a house and/or other buildings on the 50 acres. He may have had to do this to lay his claim for the land grant given in 1832. I tried to guess on a route he might take back and forth. To me a good route would have been from his home in SC down to around Greenville, SC, then over to Huntsville, AL, and then to Hardeman Co., TN. This on todays maps is about 480 to 490 miles. On horseback maybe they could do that in about 2 wks? I would further guess that the family moved over in 1831 or 1832 before Eliza was born, but they found that David did not have enough construction work in Hardeman Co. to make a living and they moved on to Columbus, MS.

It also seem possible that David Love, in the late 1820's was looking in both Hardeman, TN, and Columbus, MS, for a place for his family. He may have chosen Hardeman first because he owned the land grant there. Then maybe Hardeman did not work out and they took their 2nd choice, Columbus.

On p. 47 of Eliza Love Fox's Greenbook is a transcription of a letter (about 1840) from her brother, Dr. Thomas Neely Love, to his sister Harriet Love Theobald in which Tom describes the family's leaving their SC home. He speaks of "the old red hills of Carolina" and "wend her way (his mother) to the far west." Sadly he does not tie down where they were going, or just when they left. He does mention that Harriet was a "little baby" but the little baby would have been Harriet's younger sister, Angelina.

Dec. 25, 2010
Albert H. Spinks
aspinks3@triad.rr.com