When I started working on tonight’s blog post, I was originally going to do a quick thing on the parents of Zeresh Puckett, my 3rd great grandmother who married Benjamin Coppock.  Well, that ain’t happening, at least not tonight.  The more I tried to make the pieces fit together, the more they fought back.  I wasn’t convinced that Rebecca Hughes Puckett was Zeresh’s mother.

In the 1850 Census, you can find Elihu Puckett (Zeresh’s father) in Clay County, IN as follows:

Elihu Pucket          41
Rebecca Pucket     41
Zerish Pucket        19
Lewis Pucket         15
George Hughes     14
James Sanders       6
Minerva Sanders    4
Godentia Sanders   1
Elias Pucket          19

If you aren’t familiar with census records, the immediate family is listed first in order by age, then extended family (siblings, inlaws, nieces/nephews, parents, etc) and other people like servants or boarders.  Keep in mind that 1850 was the first year they listed each person individually in the census, but yet they didn’t collect enormous amounts of information.  They didn’t start listing relationships to the head of the household until 1870 or 1880.

So, we have Elihu, his wife Rebecca, Zeresh, and Lewis which are all expected.  But then we have all these other people and no idea how they fit in the grand scheme of things.  My first inclination was that Elias Pucket is a much younger brother of Elihu.  Elihu’s mother died during the 1840s so that seemed logical and I set him aside.  The three Sanders kids were probably orphans of some sort so I didn’t worry too much about them, either.  That left George.  Let’s just say that George is an enigma and here’s why.

Puckett-Swickard Family Bible, courtesy of legacykwst on ancestry.com

There is some question as to what Rebecca Puckett’s maiden name was.  Among the researchers who have posted their trees, there are about half a dozen different last names out there, including Hughes and Sanders.  At first I considered that Zeresh and Lewis were Elihu’s from a different wife, but the closeness in ages for George and Lewis bothered me.  I started looking at what other researchers had for sources and found a Puckett Family Bible posted by a user named “legacykwst”.  Rebecca was listed as Rebecca Puckett and no marriage date was listed in the bible for her and Elihu.  They were listed with four children, including a George Puckett.  So what is George’s real last name, Hughes or Puckett?

So I looked at some of the other documents that legacykwst had uploaded, and there were several pertaining to George trying to get disability as a result of the Civil War.  One in particular was a deposition of Aquillar Field in 1884. When Aquilla was asked what his relationship to George was, he responded, “My first wife is his mother.”  So, after checking a few things about Aquilla, I discovered he had been married at least twice–first to a Becky Hughes in 1840 in Vigo County and then to a Nancy Holliday in 1864.  Then I checked to see who was listed with him in the 1850 census and there was a Martha, age 30, and three youngsters with the last name of Field, probably Aquilla’s kids.  By 1860 it was just him several children…no Becky, no Martha.  So what happened to Becky?

After locating a biography on Lewis Field, one of Aquilla’s sons, in the History of Clay Co, IN by William Travis, I discovered that Aquilla’s first wife’s name was Martha Hughes, not Becky.  Maybe Becky was a nickname.  At any rate, I would suspect that George’s biological mother was Martha who had him out of wedlock at the age of 15 or 16.  Since that was a big no-no in 1836, she gave the baby to her older sister Rebecca to raise.

Lewis Field’s biography also mentions that Martha was born in Ohio, but documentation states that Rebecca was born in Kentucky.  Not a total stretch by any means, especially if they lived down along the Ohio River.  Also, some of the correspondence in legacykwst‘s possession mentions that the Field kids are cousins.  This helps to confirm that Martha and Rebecca were siblings.  Their father was John Hughes, who was a pioneer in Honey Creek Township in Vigo County.

So, with all that said, I think it is safe to say that Rebecca is Zeresh’s mother and her maiden name is Hughes.  She was born in 1800 in Kentucky.  She married Elihu Puckett and they lived in Shelby County, Illinois until 1836 when they relocated to Clay County.  They had three children–Jamima, Zeresh, and Lewis.  They also helped to raise a nephew, George Hughes, and other orphans in the area.  Rebecca died in 1862.