Please meet my Great, Great Grandmother Fredonia Bradford Gamblin (nee Green). She was not nor will she ever be Cherokee, according to Twila who was researching her for me. This is what she said:
"I have been looking and don't find anything on this family that would begin to suggest they have any connection to the historical Cherokee Nation. Fredonia's parents were born in Kentucky and Illinois. The Cherokees never lived in either of these places.
I know people often claim to be from Cherokees in Kentucky, but this does not "jive" with historically known facts. The Cherokees used Kentucky as hunting grounds along with many other tribes, but they never lived there. For the time frame we are looking at for Fredonia's parents, Cherokees would have been born in Georgia, Tennessee or North Carolina. I have never found a Cherokee from the time frame we are talking about born anywhere other than these places.
There are a lot of other reasons I could list that would strongly suggest that Fredonia is not Cherokee, but it would take me hours to list all the reasons. The one above is pretty strong on its own. The fact that the Cherokees were NEVER in Illinois rules out the idea that Fredonia's mother could be Cherokee. And, like I said, they never lived in Kentucky, so that pretty much takes care of her father as well.I hope this helps.
It is nearly impossible to prove a "negative" in genealogy. The best we can do is know the history of the group of people we are talking about and then evaluate the story to see if it matches with that history. In this case, it does not. I know a lot of people will argue and say there were Cherokees in Kentucky, but I don't deal in what "people" say. I deal with what I can find as factual, historical information.
Let me know if I can be of further help.Twila"
I think the stories passed on by our parent, grandparents were just that, stories. In reality I find that kind of sad, it would have been fun to find that she was Cherokee, but no.
I have come to the conclusion that our family is boring, just plain boring. No murders (well....maybe one), no bigamy, no royalty, no great statesman. Just farmers and regular church going folk.
Then again, they were the ones who opened up the west, fought the Indian, fought in the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War and numerous other skirmishes along the way. They were soldiers, farmers, miners, doctors, teachers and many other professions we may never know about. Some loved their wives and stayed true to them long after they were parted by death, some....maybe not so much!
All in all I think we all have a name of which to be proud, I know I am.
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My grandfather, Ed Gamblin, was Fredona's grandson. He said she was of the Mississippi Delta Indians. He also said she was part Indian not full. It is understandable that Twilla could find nothing connecting Fredona to the historic Cherokee nation. Many European men married Indian or part Indian women and these women lived as white not as Indian. The only way we will ever know for sure is for one of Fredona's female descendants do a DNA test. It would have to be Fredona's daughter's daughter's daughter (etc) supplying the dna. This would show the percentage of Indian blood in the female line. I did it for my female line and it came back 100% European. So unless this happens, we will never know for sure.
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