Re: Jordans of Elbert

My thinking on the Jordan family has evolved somewhat since the time I posted the earlier message in this thread. However, dealing with your own questions specifically, I myself know of only one Fountain Jordan in South Carolina. He was listed in the 1790 census of Orangeburg District, as were two other Jordans by the name of Isham and George. I have assumed that that was the same man who would later move to Elbert County, Georgia.

I am familiar with the Fountain Jordan who was born in 1824 and lived in Hart County. However, I do not believe he was the son or grandson of the older Fountain, though it is certainly a possiblity. I have simply never been able to find good evidence to support the idea. (His older sons would have been the right age to have the younger Fountain. Isaac married in 1821 in Elbert, for example, but his 1830 census lists only a daughter and no sons.) Instead, I think there is a good chance that the younger Fountain Jordan (born 1824) was the son of James Jordan and Rosanne Terrell.

In the 1850 census of Franklin County, Fountain is found living next door to that couple, who might have had him as one of their last children. He was born at about the time that Rose/Rosanne was forty years old, and a little over twenty years since the probable date of her marriage to James. The known sons of James & Rosanne all married too late to have been the parents Fountain, and so I have placed him as a probable son, rather than grandson, of the couple. (There is the possibility that a daughter had him out of wedlock at a very young age. James's daughter Margaret seems to have had a daughter out of wedlock, but her own age is in doubt. She's a possible parent, but that's all I can say in favor of the idea.)

I think that there is a strong possibility that the Jordans in or near Elbert had the following family structure:

River Jordan & wife Jane (lived on Coldwater Creek)
possible parents of:
James Jordan & Rosanne Terrell (Pickens Creek)
John Jordan & wife Rachel (Pickens Creek)
Over River Jordan & wife Mary (moved to Indiana)
Fountain Jordan & unknown wife (moved to Troup Co)
(Other possible sons: Edmond, Isham, George, and Abner)

Of those above, Over Jordan moved to Indiana when the Fountain would have been very young. The elder Fountain Jordan moved to Troup County when the younger Fountain would have been young, and he named all of his minor children in his pension application in 1819 and had no other sons after that time (based on 1830 census info). John Jordan died before 1816 -- too early to be the younger Fountain's father.

That leaves James Jordan & Rosanne Terrell, and Fountain was living next door to them in 1850. The name Fountain itself would not necessarily mean that the boy had to be the son of the older man with the same name, but would suggest a close family relation. The younger Fountain could have been named for a man who was his uncle, for example.

I have ignored several other men named Jordan in the county at the time since, at least according to my own caculations, they are not strongly associated with the family group above.

I am certainly open to alternate suggestions about any of the people I have mentioned, but based on the documents I've found, this is a likely family configuration.


By the way, I do not know the parents of River Jordan, the proposed patriarch of the family, but DNA testing shows that at least one of his likely sons (Over Jordan) was a descendant of Richard Jordan & Elizabeth Reynolds of Isle of Wight County, Virginia. The connection has not been made through documents, however, and the exact descent will probably never be know.