Wedding Certificate of Adolphus Peirce and Etta Bailey
Recently I learned through DNA testing that I have a match named Raymond Pierce. Raymond and I are both descendants of my maternal great grandparents, Adolphus Elliott Peirce (1868-1910) and Etta Pearl Bailey (1873-1952), and thus we are second cousins.
Raymond was kind enough to send me a digital image of the wedding certificate for Adolphus and Etta, which I had never seen before. It’s dated August 31, 1890, and it has three signatures at the bottom: W.G. Breland, C.B. Pierce and C.H. Bailey. It appears to me that the two first two signed as witnesses while the third signed as the minister or celebrant.
I believe that the first signature was from William G. Breland (1839-1890), who was a 3rd great uncle to me. His father, John Robertson Breland (1794-1875), was my 3rd great grandfather, and he was also the grandfather of Etta Bailey, whose mother was Martha Ann Breland. William G. Breland was appointed U.S. Postmaster for Breland, Louisiana, on September 6, 1890, about a week after the date on this wedding certificate. He died a few months later, in December 1890. Adolphus’ stepmother, Salissa Painter Peirce (1858-1940), was then appointed postmaster for Breland on March 28, 1891. Adolphus Peirce was later appointed as U.S. Postmaster for Breland, Louisiana, on August 5, 1904.
The next signature, I think, was from Charles Buchanan Pierce (1866-1938), who was an uncle of Adolphus. (Some members of this line spell the last name as “Peirce” and some spell it as “Pierce.” This continues to be the case now; both spellings are represented among my DNA matches from this line.)
The third signature, I think, was from Caldwell Houston Bailey (Abt. 1854-Abt. 1919, who was appointed U.S. Postmaster for Bailey, Louisiana on October 18, 1890. I haven’t been able to determine if he was related to Etta Bailey or not. However, I am related to him through the line of his mother, Melissa Bankston Bailey (1819-Abt. 1915).
1899 Horse-Detacher Patent of John Tichnor Peirce, of Breland, Louisiana
On May 23, 1899, the U.S. Patent Office issued Patent No. 625,695, for a horse-detacher device invented by my great-great grandfather, John Tichnor Peirce (1846-1912), who at that time lived in the community of Breland, in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana. (He would later move from Breland to Warnerton, about 20 miles to the east.)
Also named in the patent was Adolphus E. Peirce, who was John’s son and my great grandfather. The first child of Adolphus and his wife, Etta Pearl Bailey, was Cora Peirce Breland, who was my maternal grandmother.
This patent is of interest to me for a couple of reasons.
First, his last name is spelled as “Peirce” throughout the document, and on the first page of the patent his name is written as “J.T. Peirce.” My mother has in her possession a handwritten letter that he wrote in 1891, and he signed that letter, “JT Peirce.” For me, these two documents present strong evidence that “Peirce” is the spelling that he preferred.
Some of his descendants have since chosen to spell the name as “Pierce,” while others have chosen to retain the “Peirce” spelling. For example, Adolphus spelled his last name as “Peirce,” and so did five of his six children. Adolphus had two sons. His first-born son, Richard Moore Peirce, retained the “Peirce” spelling all his life. Adolphus’ second-born son, Carl E. Pierce, chose to use “Pierce” instead, and Carl’s descendants use the “Pierce” spelling.
In my family, the “Peirce” spelling has been retained in the middle name of my late uncle, Robert Peirce Breland, and in the middle names given to some of my relatives who were born in the generations after Uncle Robert. Interestingly, my DNA matches include one match from this Peirce/Pierce line who was given the “Peirce” spelling at birth, and another who was given the “Pierce” spelling at birth.
Second, I love the fact that the patent document says John Tichnor Peirce “resided at Breland, in the parish of Tangipahoa, State of Louisiana.” As best as I can tell, Breland, Louisiana, no longer exists. But in the 1890s, there was a U.S. Post Office for Breland, Louisiana, and according to the 1891 letter from JT Peirce, “that office is at my house.”
His second wife, Salissa Peirce, was appointed as U.S. Postmaster for Breland about a month before that letter was written. Then Adolphus was appointed postmaster for Breland on August 5, 1904. My mother’s aunt, Florence Peirce Peck, wrote that “my mother (Etta Bailey Peirce) and my sister Cora took care of the mail” until the family moved from Breland to Sunny Hill, Louisiana, about 1908.
After the move to Sunny Hill, Cora was a student at Sunny Hill School at the same time as my maternal grandfather, Robert Milton Breland. They became high school sweethearts, and later got married in Baton Rouge, in 1910.
En invitasjon for Brelands i Norge
Dette kartet fra 1900 viser hvor Breland, Louisiana, pleide å være. Den ble oppkalt etter min mors forfedre.
Hei!
Tilgi min dårlig norsk. Jeg brukte Google Translate til å skrive denne meldingen.
Min mors etternavn før hun giftet seg var Breland. Vi er etterkommere av Abraham Breland, som bodde i South Carolina på slutten av 1700-tallet og begynnelsen av 1800-tallet.
Vi ønsker å finne ut om vi er knyttet til Brelands i Norge.
Jeg har startet Breland DNA-prosjektet for å få svar på det spørsmålet, og Brelands i Norge er invitert til å delta. Her er en link til prosjektets hjemmeside:
https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/breland/about/background
IJeg har også startet en Facebook-side for etterkommere av Abraham Breland, og du er invitert til å delta i vår Facebook-gruppe:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/descendantsofabrahambreland/
Vennligst vurdere dette din personlige invitasjon fra meg til å bli med Breland DNA-prosjektet og vår Breland Facebook-side! Hvis du har spørsmål, kan du gjerne email meg på: tahughesnc@gmail.com
If your name is Breland, there’s a good chance we’re related
About a month ago, my wife and I drove from North Carolina to St. Augustine, Florida. Our route via I-95 took us through the town of Walterboro, South Carolina, where I decided to take a little detour.
Why? So we could visit the Breland Cemetery, which is in the rural countryside several miles outside of Walterboro. It’s a small cemetery that contains about 45 graves and is surrounded by a chain link fence on a plot of ground located between a farmer’s field and the surrounding woods. One of the trees closest to the cemetery has what appears to be a deer hunter’s tree stand attached to it.
My mother’s maiden name is Gloria Dell Breland, and I knew that she was descended from a man named John Robertson Breland, who was born in that part of South Carolina in 1794 but had settled in Louisiana before the War of 1812 began. I knew this thanks to a book, The Breland Families of the Southern States, 1755-1875, that was written by my mother’s older brother, Charles Gregory Breland. Uncle Greg self-published the book in manuscript form in 1987. After Uncle Greg died in 1994, my mother’s younger brother, Hunter M. Breland, arranged for a memorial edition, which he edited, to be published as a hard back.
This is Breland Cemetery in Colleton County, South Carolina.
So I figured there was a good chance I was related to the Brelands who are buried at Breland Cemetery. Once we got back home from that trip, I started looking into it, and found that I was indeed related to everyone in that cemetery who was born with the Breland surname. I can’t say that for the wives of men named Breland who are buried there.
If you trace John Robertson Breland back to his earliest confirmed Breland ancestor, you get to his grandfather, a man named Abraham Breland, whose surname was recorded at various times as Breler, Brelar, Breelo and Breland. Abraham was born about 1725 (some researchers say he was born in Pitt County, North Carolina; others say he was born in what later became Germany) and died about 1805 in Estill, South Carolina. The Breland Cemetery outside Walterboro is about 33 miles from Estill.
Abraham was the father of William Breland (1753-1825) who is one of eight Brelands buried at the Breland family gravesite at Rivers Bridge State Park at Ehrhardt, South Carolina, in Bamberg County. That gravesite is about 19 miles from the Breland Cemetery outside Walterboro. The names of the eight people named Breland are inscribed on one side of the headstone at Rivers Bridge State Park. The inscription on the other side reads:
BRELAND
CAME HERE
FROM BAVARIA GY. 1776
As I continued to research the Brelands buried in South Carolina, I learned that many of them trace their ancestry back to the same Abraham Breland as my mother. And, thanks to Uncle Greg’s book, I knew that many of the Breland families in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are descended from Brelands who moved west from South Carolina in the early 1800s.
There are only 2,663 people named Breland listed worldwide on the Find A Grave website. The overwhelming majority of these, more than 2,500, are in the Southeastern U.S. Based on this information, it seems plausible to me that I may actually be related to most if not all of the Brelands in the South. That is certainly not the case for the surname I inherited from my father, which is Hughes. There are more than 100,000 people named Hughes in the U.S. listed on Find A Grave, and I know from my involvement in the Hughes DNA Project that there are many people named Hughes that I am not related to.
As a pilot test for my theory about the Brelands, I decided to research the Brelands who are buried at Mobile Memorial Gardens in my hometown, Mobile, Alabama. One of my mother’s brothers, Lyman Breland, is buried there. But there are several other Brelands buried there that my mother told me she had never heard of, including the Rev. Murphy B. Breland (1910-1997). After researching his Breland line, I came to the conclusion that he is my 4th cousin, twice removed.
So, is your name Breland? Want to find out if we are related or not? If so, then I’d love to hear from you. Email me at tahughesnc@gmail.com.
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