1810 :: The Birth of America in the Family Bible

On this date in our family history . . . the 11th day of May . . . in the year 1810 . . . our very own America . . . aka America J Fears . . . is born somewhere in the state of Georgia, possibly in Greene County . . . she is the 3rd of eight children known to have been born to James Fears (1772-1857) and Mary Anthony Porter (1784-1826) . . . this America is the mother of our Josephine (1842-1899), who is a 2nd great-grandma to the Keeper of this family history blog.


The dates of America's birth and death are recorded on photocopies of Bible pages that are said to come from a Davis family Bible. I have never seen that Bible, or the actual Bible pages, but the copies I have were given to me by a cousin, Georgia Faye Kaseberg nee Henry (1925-2001), probably 25 or 30 years ago. It is believed that Georgia probably acquired the photocopies from another cousin and family genealogist, Miss Laura Hamilton (1898-1987).




We have scans (of the photocopies that were given to me) of four pages from this family Bible, including -- a page of births, a page of marriages, and a page of deaths (with additional family births listed on it).


The fourth page from this Bible has the hand-written heading, Negroes Births. On another website, I have posted what information I have accumulated that may pertain to this page of names and dates of birth. Included on that website is information from the 1850 and 1860 slave schedules that pertains to the 19th Century family members known to be connected in some way to the names mentioned in this Bible. While I have posted information about this list on various websites in the past, it never hurts to mention it one more time, just in case it might help somebody make a connection with their own past.


Research note . . . Many branches of this family have it in their records that *James* was her middle name, however, no contemporary record has been found showing what the *J* actually stands for.