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Jaunty

A family story reconstructed through deeds, probate, chancery law, census records, migration, DNA evidence, and the persistence of kinship across slavery and freedom.

Woman gathering cotton in the fieldWomen processing cotton in the farmyardFarmer standing in his cotton field at dusk
Research focus: Jaunty Underwood, born about 1807 in South Carolina, later recorded with her children in Greene County, Alabama. The project traces how people were transferred through family instruments, estates, debt, and law—and how their descendants survived those systems.

Where the story begins

The documented chain begins with a June 24, 1776 deed of gift involving Phyllis and Jean “and increase.” It continues through the Stevens family, Henry Stevens’s 1811 estate, the 1814 chancery case Tucker v. Stevens, later probate proceedings, and the sale of Jaunty in 1823.

What the research recovers

The case does more than identify names in property records. It rebuilds family relationships, follows migration from Union County, South Carolina, to Greene County, Alabama, and places Harriet, Caroline, Reuben, Parthenia, and their mother Jaunty back into a connected human story.

1776
Deed of gift transfers Phyllis and Jean “and increase.”
1811–1814
Henry Stevens’s estate and chancery litigation expose the legal and financial structures surrounding enslaved family members.
1823
Jaunty appears in estate proceedings and is purchased for $450.
1870–1880
Jaunty and her children appear in freedom-era census records in Greene County, Alabama.

Why Jaunty belongs here

This is a model of reparative genealogy: the archive is read not only for ownership, but for kinship, coercion, resistance, survival, and descendant memory. The page now lives under Case Studies and is also featured directly on the homepage.

New — The Research Archive: every document behind Part 1 of the book is now published: 186 original records in 41 sets — the 1811 will and probate inventory, the Tucker v. Stevens chancery petition, the mortgages, the 1858 Shelton division naming "Jant" and her children, Annet Underwood's estate file, the Eatman store ledgers, and the 1865 Freedmen's Bureau contract — each with transcriptions and analysis from the research journal.
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