LibGuides: Shelton Family Settlement at Possum Trot: Origins

Hardy and Mary Shelton

Hardy Shelton was born enslaved in 1815 or 1818 in North Carolina and was brought to Rome, Georgia as an enslaved person. Mary Bearden Shelton was born enslaved in Coweta County, Georgia in about 1832. It is believed that Mary and Hardy met and married while enslaved.

Mary’s ethnic identity was a focal point in her life. In testimony before the Eastern Cherokee Court of Claims in 1908, Mary Shelton stated that her mother, Lucy Bierdan, had been enslaved in Virginia, brought to Georgia and then sold. Mary testified that Lucy's father was an enslaved half-Cherokee man. Mary Shelton was denied Eastern Cherokee status by the commission as it believed her grandfather was not a part of any treaty agreements due to his enslavement status.[2]

[2] Ancestry.com. U.S. Records Related to Enrollment of Eastern Cherokee by Guion Miller, 1908-1910 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.

Cherokee Enslavement and Claims

Cherokee Enslavement

For an exploration of the enslavement of Cherokee people, see Tiya Miles's 2008 article "The Narrative of Nancy, a Cherokee Woman"

Tiya Miles, The Narrative of Nancy, a Cherokee Woman, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies , 2008, Vol. 29, No. 2/3, Intermarriage and North American Indians (2008), pp. 59-80.

Ties That Bind : the story of an Afro-Cherokee family in slavery and freedom by Tiya Miles
Call Number: Ebook & Print at E99.C5 M553 2015
This beautifully written book, now in its second edition, tells the haunting saga of a quintessentially American family. In the late 1790s, Shoe Boots, a famed Cherokee warrior and successful farmer, acquired an African slave named Doll. Over the next thirty years, Shoe Boots and Doll lived together as master and slave and also as lifelong partners who, with their children and grandchildren, experienced key events in American history--including slavery, the Creek War, the founding of the Cherokee Nation and subsequent removal of Native Americans along the Trail of Tears, and the Civil War. This is the gripping story of their lives, in slavery and in freedom. Meticulously crafted from historical and literary sources, Ties That Bind vividly portrays the members of the Shoeboots family. Doll emerges as an especially poignant character, whose life is mostly known through the records of things done to her--her purchase, her marriage, the loss of her children--but also through her moving petition to the federal government for the pension owed to her as Shoe Boots's widow. A sensitive rendition of the hard realities of black slavery within Native American nations, the book provides the fullest picture we have of the myriad complexities, ironies, and tensions among African Americans, Native Americans, and whites in the first half of the nineteenth century. Updated with a new preface and an appendix of key primary sources, this remains an essential book for students of Native American history, African American history, and the history of race and ethnicity in the United States.

Eastern Cherokee Court of Claims

The U.S. Court of Claims ruled in favor of the Eastern Cherokee Tribe's claim against the U.S. on May 18, 1905. This resulted in the appropriation of $1 million to the Tribe’s eligible individuals and families. Interior Department employee Guion Miller created a list using several rolls and applications to verify tribal enrollment for the distribution of funds.The applications received documented over 125,000 individuals; the court approved more than 30,000 individuals to share in the funds.

Guion Miller Roll, 1906 - 1911, "Eastern Cherokee Court of Claims," U.S. National Archives
The National Archives provides a free online name index to the applications submitted for the Guion Miller Roll. The Guion Miller Roll and associated information are available at subscription-based websites Fold3.com (database titled Guion Miller Roll) and Ancestry.com (database titled U.S., Records Related to Enrollment of Eastern Cherokee by Guion Miller, 1908-1910).