This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Tompkins, Godsey, Wilborn Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/EBB.2ACE/2585.2 Message Board Post: Busting the Tecumseh Myth: Finally got to the bottom of the myth surrounding Eli being connected somehow to Tecumseh. Someone sent me an article published in a Jamestown, Tennessee paper, February 23, 1949, detailing a story of a quilt that was made by an Elizabeth Tompkins Phillips, touting her as “a granddaughter of Tecumseh.” Elizabeth was the daughter of Joseph Tompkins, who was himself the son of Polly Hampton and J. Benjamin Tompkins, who some researchers believe may be the parents of our Eli. Refer back to the article in the section on Eli’s parents for more on this couple. As far as there being any connection to Tecumseh here, I’m afraid it is false. Have done some research, and sources online are happy to tell us that Tecumseh was actually white, and that he was J. Benjamin Tompkins! This is some kind of family myth that got passed down in the Joseph Tompkins branch of the J. Benjamin line. And clearly this is a tall tale designed and passed down by someone who may have been trying to cover something up, such as being part native, by making the native part look not only quite infamous but white! Whatever the reason for the myth, there is no truth in it. No historian would ever vouch for this story that J. Benjamin and some of his siblings were temporarily raised by the Shawnee tribe and then given back to their white parents, and that Tecumseh was the only way that the tribe members could pronounce Tompkins!