Appendix E: The Native American Question

I was always taught that William Guthrey, Henry Clay Keck's great-great-grandfather, married a full-blooded Cherokee Indian named Mary Musgrove. This tradition first appeared in print in the Genealogical Chart of Known Descendants of William Guthrey 1772-1854, by William Morris Guthrey, first printed on 2 June, 1969. There we read:

"Family tradition says that William was from Virginia, that he was of Scotch-Irish ancestry and that his wife Mary, was a full-blood Cherokee Indian. This is probably true as her children were dark."

William Morris Guthrey gives Mary's name as Mary Charlotte. There is no other evidence that this was Mary Musgrove's middle name. Perhaps the basis for this assertion is that Martha Jane Guthrey, Mary's daughter, named her first born girl Mary Ann Charlotte Stansell. William Morris Guthrey may have speculated that Martha was naming her daughter after her own mother, a common occurrence, especially in the Guthrey and Musgrove families, but the naming patterns in the Stansell family do not necessarily support that hypothesis.

Naming patterns within families can often supply clues to the names of parents and grandparents. For example, it seems possible that William Guthrey's father may have been named Barnett Guthrey because William names his first born twin sons Barnett and Harrison. Harrison is the name of Mary's father so Barnett could possibly be the name of his father. The next son is Robert Musgrove Guthrey, the middle name being his wife's surname, and hia first-born daughter is Martha Jane Guthrey, Jane being the name of Martha's grandmother on the Musgrove side. Of course not all families recycled names to the extend that the Guthreys and Musgroves did.

In any case, William Guthrey's wife is definitely called Mary W. Guthrey in the 1860 Walker County census, and she is called Polly W. Guthrey in the will of her father, Harrison Musgrove.¹ Polly is a common nickname for Mary (it is a similiar linguistic phenomenon which gives us Peggy for Margaret, Bill for William, and Bob for Robert). This W. must surely be short for Warren, her grandparents, just as her sister, Sarah, who is listed as Sarah O. in her father's will, is named after Owen, her other set of grandparents. (I would suggest that Robert H. is Robert Harrison and James G. is James Glenn, named after his uncle, Glenn Owen).

We know the ancestry of Mary W. Musgrove, I will not go into particulars here, suffice it to say that Mary's grandmother was of the Warren family of Charles County, Maryland, a prominent and often wealthy family of tobacco growers. This Warren family traces its line back to the Lords of Poynton, England, and can be traced straight back to the first Lord of Varennes in France who was born about 998 b.c.e (See Appendix D). Therefore there is no evidence that Mary was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian, as William Morris Guthrey asserts.

Furthermore, it is not likely that she was even part Indian, since wealthy plantation owners rarely married outside of their circles and most of the wives of the Warrens and Musgroves were from well-known and well-placed Charles County families. Indiscretions did occur, of course, but there is no evidence suggesting anything of the kind here.

However, the tradition that William Guthrey married a Cherokee Indian named Mary Musgrove may have a source. It is possible that Mary Musgrove who married William Guthrey is a confused echo of the so-called Cherokee Princess Mary who aided General Oglethorpe as he colonized Georgia. This Mary married a John Musgrove and thus became Mary Musgrove. There have been books written about her, and somewhere among the Guthrey descendants the Cherokee princess and William's wife may have become conflated, thus entering our family history as Mary Musgrove, full-blooded Cherokee indian.