My friends - I am dropping by today to pass along the solution to our latest Puzzler. We only had 16 folks out of 586 subscribers(as of this moment) who sent their thoughts to me on this one. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 representing the most difficult, this one was probably a "9". It is a bit out of the ordinary. You will recall that our task was to try to determine whether NC or TN (or neither of them) was the most probable birth state of Josiah Jackson, for whom there were conflicting states of birth given in the census records, local bios, an old document which the family had preserved, and even within the family descendants themselves. Several of those who responded gave what would usually be the most likely answer - that TN was not a state when Josiah was born, and therefore, he was born in NC, in a county that later became TN. But this case is not as simple as that, because, if we look at a county map of NC, we find Wayne County away over on the east side of the State, and it was created some years before Josiah was born, was never a part of TN, and is still there today. So what gives? In order to determine what is the most likely birth "state" for Josiah, we have to know a little about the history of NC/TN. There was, for a few short years in the 1780's, an attempt by disgruntled citizens of the western part of NC to set up their own state. We have come to know it as "The Lost State of Franklin", as it is called in a work devoted to that subject and published years ago. Franklin had a county within it bearing the name Wayne. The State of Franklin was never formally recognized by either the federal government or North Carolina, and, by 1788, the attempt to create another state was abandoned. There are not many extant records concerning the State of Franklin, but there are petitions both for and against creating the new state that have been preserved. On one of those petitions which was against the formation of the new state, we find the name of Josiah's father, Benedict. That being the case, we can deduce with a fair degree of certainty that Josiah was born in the unrecognized State of Franklin in 1786, in Wayne County, which later became a part of Johnson County, TN, formed years later. Since Benedict Jackson was opposed to forming a new state, and if we assume that perhaps Benedict was responsible for that piece of paper with Wayne Co., NC given as Josiah's place of birth(Benedict died in 1828), it is not a great leap to see that he gave the county, but attributed it to NC, rather than Franklin, as he did not believe that Franklin did, or should, exist. He may well have not known that there was another Wayne County in NC. This family consistently appeared in records in the Carter/Sulliven/Johnson county TN area for many years into the 19th century, so there is little doubt that this is the area in which Benedict Jackson and lived and in which his family was born. This tends to explain to some degree why there was all of the conflicting information in later years. Benedict may have started that ball rolling by saying that one or more of his children were born in Wayne Co., NC, but later, Josiah and perhaps others in the family may have simply taken the approach that they were in an area that ultimately became TN, so, as far as they were concerned, that was their birth state. Obviously, this is all based on reasonable deduction, as determined from the existing circumstances at the time of Josiah's birth. But, from the standpoint of what we know, Josiah was born in the State of Franklin, even though it was not then, and was never, recognized. Sometimes a bit of historical research is necessary to more clearly see where some of these items originated. -B ============================================================