A Black Sheep – 52 Ancestors # 26

When I first read the theme for week 26, Black Sheep, I thought I knew who I would write about and why.  Then I started thinking about the meaning of a black sheep.  I saw in my mind’s eye an image of a flock of sheep with one black one in the middle somewhere.  Or a page filled with white rabbits with one black one.  Noticeable but not necessarily a bad thing.  As wikipedia notes in English it means an odd or disreputable member of a group.  It came from raising sheep, who have a recessive gene that occasionally results in a black sheep being born rather than the usual white color.  These not only stand out in a flock of white sheep, but the wool was traditionally held to be less valuable.

The term has come, often, to carry the connotation of more than odd or disreputable but also behaving badly or even illegally.  Like a horse-thief or a cattle-rustler, or a riverboat gambler.  Unlikely and even unable to behave in line with the rest of the community in a negative way.  The ancestor I thought of is the closest I have yet found to a black sheep in my family lines, however, his bad behavior was seemingly limited to a single episode.

John Salts or Salt was born in about 1783 in Virginia to my emigrant Salt ancestors.  The family migrated to Kentucky in about 1790-1793, and John’s older sisters started marrying soon thereafter.  John and his brother Edward were younger and didn’t marry until 1809 or after.  The interesting part of John’s tale involves his carrying on a relationship with two young women at about the same time and having been called before the law by the one he didn’t marry.

John may have spent some of his younger days as a school teacher before turning to farming and this may have been how he came to spend time with more than one young woman.  At any rate, the only hard evidence is comprised of two documents filed in the Bracken County, Kentucky court and duly recorded.  The first, dated 4 Jan 1810 by John Salts acknowledges that for “near two years” he addressed Miss Nancy Wiley that they were engaged and then he used the engagement to persuade her to yield to his embraces.  He goes on to say she is a girl of virtue and putting it in writing before the court is the only reparation he can then make for the injury he did her.

The next day, 5 Jan 1810, Nancy Wiley released, acquitted, and discharged John Salts from all actions or causes of action arising to her from a breach of a marriage contract.  She said that he had satisfied her as far as it remained in his power to do so.  And that seems to have been that.

The interesting detail is that John Salt reportedly had a marriage bond to marry Nancy Donovan dated 25 Nov 1809 (says a Salt cousin and researcher, although I do not have a copy of it myself).  And by September 1810 they had a baby girl.  So obviously John did not intend to marry Nancy Wiley after November 1809, and had to make this as right as he could soon after he married the other Nancy.

A book¹ about the town in Kentucky where John lived at the time detailed the situation this way:  “There were, as it turned out, procreative acts being performed without the sanction of either church or society.  On at least one occasion, a Bracken County male made a public apology for seducing a young lady under false pretenses.”  “Now that Salts had decided not to marry Nancy, he wanted the community to know that he nonetheless regarded her as a virtuous young lady.”  The author goes on to opine that it was not at all unusual for sexual relations to occur outside marriage and that there was apparently little social stigma associated with such behavior.  Apparently the proportion of brides marrying after becoming pregnant increased during the late colonial period and early days of the new country.

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