True.

Sigh.

It’s my impression that it wasn’t as expensive to litigate as we think. My family in the Ouachitas took their case to SCOTUS 20 some years later (with a former CSA soldier representing them) And they were hill country farmers.

Is your UT email a good one? I’d like to write long form about things. It does look right!

And Black people’s ages were often kept in their enslavers’ records so if they left the area, they wouldn’t know. (By “worried” I meant it wasn’t something they kept track of - they didn’t have to report it regularly.)

As far as fudging: censuses are very sloppy and most folks aren’t that worried about their ages. I tend to believe the earliest census for a person is closest. (A 3 yo vs. a 33 yo, say.) The census taker may ask a neighbor to guess - ages ending in 5 or 10, also suspect.

I made a rough public family tree last night, but I can’t figure out how to link the tree properly - also, Phillips County is where the Elaine Massacre would occur so there’s a lot of historiography. encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/elai...

Which named son “Jas” (probably Jasper) who served in the 45th USCT. They’ve redone Fold3 so I haven’t found him there - at least in Mississippi, men were enlisted under their enslavers’ last names.

and his 1860 census doesn’t have enough enslaved people in it to support the personal property value - their digital version may be jumbled.

I’ve also found that enslaved people only sometimes take their enslavers’ last name. I tend to think of it as analogous to women and marriage. Generally speaking, enslaved people do know who their father was. I’d look to see if Judge Jones’ wife was a Roan/Rhone/etc.

I wouldn’t rule this man out. Edmond and Edward often get misrecorded in census records. And if so, you’ve got testimony from his brother:

www.ancestry.com/sharing/4769...

And always give a lot of slosh to birth dates - censuses are unreliable.

tile.loc.gov/storage-serv...

I’d start with this narrative and work sideways.

www.wikitree.com/wiki/Rhone-178

I’d start with this narrative and work sideways.

www.wikitree.com/wiki/Rhone-178

I am pretty good at it, but I’m better at western Arkansas than eastern (although I’m also pretty good at northern Mississippi). Happy to poke around if you have a few more clues, though.

Ours are strictly free range.