Mary, Josephine, Jim, and William in 1870	Yancy, Talitha, and Mary in 1870

Mary's Broad Jump:Narrative History of Mary Adams White (1837-1880)
William White (1844-1907) and
Yancey White (1811-1890)

rev.3- Aug 2025

Yancey White has brought the enemy to us, but he had a mother and a father who possibly gave him the pathogen. That's the way I like to think of it, because that's what it feels like when an urge inside me makes a suggestion; when an urge personally affects me and my White relatives, as it does, with new strength every generation, five generations after Yancey. This is a story about unhappy interactions between genealogy and psychology. Let's start with the genealogy. 

Yancey White was born 1811 and died 1890. He had a sister Mahala White born 1804.  His mother was Elizabeth Martin who lived 1789-1880. They all lived and died in Pendleton District, later known as Anderson, Pickens, and Oconee Counties, South Carolina. Yancey White took his mischief to Floyd County, Georgia, where he infected several families of us before dying there in 1890 .

Yancey's mother Elizabeth was 15 when her first child Mahala was born. The second child, Yancey, born 1811, was of a Mr. White, or White was her maiden name and she was charmed by a man now forgotten. Elizabeth liked to be called Mrs. Martin, and she was known by that name from 1840 to the end of her life, yet there were no Martin children nor a Martin husband. Mr. Martin may have been her husband for a short period of time before 1840.
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I'll start with Yancey White's marriage in Pickens County, S.C., for not long afterward is when his strange behavior started. Then I'll progress through various rapes to the rape of Mary Adams, the ancestor of the White family, and end after finishing up Yancey, then I'll describe the adventures of William White (Mary's protector and possibly not related to Yancey White) and Mary Adams White. Finally I'll describe the present course of the personality trait that seemed to be in Yancey's sperm, which was dispensed generously along with his arrogant entitlement.

In Pickens County, before his Georgia migration, Yancey White married Rebecca Bryce. Mahala White married Thomas Bryce. Two Whites married two Bryce siblings in what was called The Golden Corner of South Carolina. Elizabeth's favorite grandchildren were Mahala's Bryce's and the Cleveland relatives. Yancey's mother was not distant from her son but in his first marriage he had only one child Jane, b. 5 Aug 1833. (Elizabeth was so not distant that at her death in 1880 she contacted Yancey in Georgia and made sure he got part of her estate.)

After Jane White, no more children were produced. Rebecca Bryce died in childbirth or disappeared before 1850, age about 35. The daughter stayed with Yancey.

In 1849 Yancey was a guardian for his sister's child Jas R. G. Bryce in Pickens County. The father Thomas Bryce had just died. James asked for Yancey, his uncle,  to be his guardian ad litem to guide him through the sale of the family home. Yancey did so.

Then Yancey did some wild things. In 1850 Yancey White lived in the Northwestern Division of Anderson County, SC. He had married a 48 year old woman, 9 years his senior, named Margaret ( b. SC 1802) and he lived with her. She took the White name. His daughter Jane stayed with him in the new woman's home. There were three slaves: One woman, 25, black; one girl, 2, black; and 1 male 8 months, black. Yancey had probably married a widow who owned the slaves. IRREGULARITY: Married a woman for money. They parted ways between 1852 and 1860 when Yancey chose another woman to go to Georgia with.

1851 Feb 4. Clerk of Court Office, Pickens, SC. Mary Carver, a single woman states that on 4 Feb. 1851 at the house of Yancey White in Pickens District she was delivered of a female bastard child with deep blue eyes and light colored hair and that Yancey White a farmer did get her with child. That announcement was in the Keowee Courier. He was 41. That was daring behavior at any time. IRREGULARITY: Got a single woman pregnant while in a marriage with Margaret. I did not track the woman Mary Carver and Yancey's baby daughter by her, nor Margaret .

1860. Relocated to Cave Spring, Floyd County, Georgia, between 1852-1860 with wife Elizabeth, or met Elizabeth during his trip or met her in Floyd County. IRREGULARITY: We last saw daughter Jane in the home of new wife Margaret whom Yancey left, along with her enslaved woman, in the 1850s. We know that Jane White stayed in South Carolina and married there.

This Road Led to Rome

A second Elizabeth accompanied Yancey or met up with him in Floyd County. It was not more than a year after arriving that the fellow traveler, 30 year old Mrs. Elizabeth White demanded her own land which she received and paid property taxes and prospered on it for years.

There's no indication why Yancey set a course for Georgia and  settled around Cave Spring when he got there. He may have received a letter from a person already there. Nor is there a record of any association with the Whites of Paulding County. They were also from Pendleton District, SC.

Paulding County's Adolphus, father of William White (Mary Adams' protector), found himself in Van Wert in Polk County when it was split away from Paulding. Adolphus' oldest and youngest, Moses and William, lived in Cedartown in Polk County when the war came, and it may have been there in neighboring Cave Spring where Yancey touched the orbit of the other White family and learned that they all were from Pendlelton District, SC.  Yancey White ended his migration and settled  in the adjacent county – in Livingston district of Floyd county.

Fort Sumter was attacked on April 12, 1861, and William and Moses joined the confederate army on May 1, 1861.

Yancey, with the liberty given by time-honored Southern  custom, took 16-year-old William out for a celebration on the previous night, a Tuesday. The woman chosen for sex by Yancey lived only a mile and a half away from him. She was a light-skinned slave named Mary, then age 24,  a house servant of Burwell and Josephine Harbour on the Coosa River at State Line, Georgia.  It was "a big house" Mary later told her son Jim, and word got to present-day Barbara Little Dugan who told curious relatives what she remembered of the oral White history.

A trustworthy report has Mary telling the census taker that her son James was born 1862.

Taking a woman against her will was what Yancey did in life. What an inexperienced 16 year old did was let slavery and segregation and sex and all that Sunday School talk about brotherhood and all that after-school talk about slaves not our equals work through his mind until he ended up with tender and protective feelings for the woman he might have got pregnant – feelings that he put into effect not long ater he was discharged the last time. He returned before 1865 to find Mary freed and still living on the Harbour property serving her mistress Josephine– but she and the children were under constant threat from Yancey, working in his fields just upriver.

William married Lucinda C. Brazile from Van Wert, Polk County, on 15 July 1866, yet he was so indicisive that by 1870, Lucinda found herself unceremoniously abandoned. In 1870 Lucinda occupied a boarding house in Gadsden. William needed room to think what to do with Mary and Jim.  

In September 1867 Yancey killed a former slave woman, Kathrine Matthews, in Floyd County. He had raped her and got her with child. She then went to the new Freedman's Bureau and accused him of bastardy. Around that time, and certainly before 1870, William as a farm hand for the Harbours moved into the cabin of Mary Adams on the Harbour property. I don't know how to interpret that as anything but protective – protective against Yancey White murdering Mary or James. A white man Mary's junior had stepped into a dramatic, unique, and historical situation with intentions of lightening the burden of a recently freed slave woman.

In 1870 William and Mary were both in her cabin working without a script. How many times in his life or in any imaginable life  could he express kindness to a freed slave who was nearly white with both surrounded by a sea of racists?  Mary wanted to pass as white. William wanted to show his concern for Mary and Jim which he could not do because association between the races was forbidden by custom. And yet she was ... white.

Before 1875 William moved Mary and son James to a far place that he knew of from experience in the Army – Dalton in Whitfield County – and stayed with them until April 1875. That when the 13-year-old James Adams, now White, and keeper of the family history, said that his father-figure William went out one night for a stick of firewood and never returned. Unbeknown to Mary and Jim, he had arranged to meet and marry Sally Taylor in Chatsworth, Murray County, Georgia – someone he could legally marry in the South. I like to imagine Mary being eventually taken in by her daughter Josephine. But I don't know what happened to optimistic Mary, and a very good family historian herself.

Mary's oldest daughter Josephine, whom Mary named for her mistress, married and left home between 1770 and 1775. And it was during that period that William moved Mary and James to Dalton. It was a decisive action that gave them a new life in a strange place and allowed them to pass as white in that new place. To add authenticity, William adopted Jim, Connor White said. It was done informally, by simply telling people that the boy's name was Jim White. The census taker in 1870 and 1880 saw Mary and Jim as white.

James White had a hump back as an adult. My mother says "he was dropped as a baby" but no other detail. Was the hump back due to an attack by Yancey? That is only speculation. It is a good place to end the chapter wherein Yancey injects some strange personality traits, tragic because of their everlastingness, with the seed he planted into Mary White – pathological traits that appear with new strength with each new generation. It's also a good time to remind ourselves that narcissism is a cluster of personality traits and influencers: Yancey influenced William a few months before the rape of Mary; William influenced James 1770 to 1775. I speak of it as a pathogen to simplify and focus it. I also suggest a pathogen is what our White family's version of narcissism feels like to some of us: something that lives inside me but is not part of me. .

Return to the timeline of Yancey White in Floyd County

Three days after being taken into custody for murder Yancey married Talitha Murray, age 30, on Aug 31, 1867. His home in 1867, according to the news clipping, was Thomas' Mills on Big Cedar Creek. Talitha Murray's children in 1870 were Mary Elizabeth White, 2, and Alice Watters White, 5 months (born December 1869). DISPOSITION: Mother and children not found. No gap in Yancey's womanizing record 1871-1875, he being  with Talitha while secretly married to Mary Murray.

1875. Yancey next married Mary Murray, probably the next youngest sister of Talitha. There were two licenses issued, the first in Dallas County, Alabama on 9 Feb 1871. On 10 Jan 1875, Yancey White married Mary Murray in Floyd County. She was 21 according to the 1870 census. The marriage was long term and they had Mahala (b. 1876), Martha (born 1878 and called Mattie), and Yancey, Jr. (Born late 1879).  Sep. 4, 1876 is the birth date given on Martha's (Mattie's) Atlanta death certificate by an Erwin son.

1873-1875. Mrs. E. White farmed 400 acres alone but lost the land in 1875. Elizabeth retained the White name but lived apart. Meanwhile Yancey married younger women. During 1874 and 1875 Yancey was taxed on 200 acres in Livingston District.

Carl (Jim) Roach: Yancey White is said to have died 26 Mar 1890 and is buried in an unmarked grave at Cedar Creek Baptist Church cemetery.

Speculation on narcissism in Yancey White

Yancey White lived a life unlike anybody else and pursued young women like few others. The question is, was he affected by narcissism? And was it passed on to the children of James White?

Symptoms of narcissism include:
Acts arrogantly
Lacks empathy
Needs constant attention and admiration
Has an inflated sense of self.

Motivations are hard to know. But with a catalog of needs like we see above, and when we review their past actions, narcissists can be open books. It's safe enough to say Yancey probably felt a sense of entitlement; that he took advantage of others to achieve his own ends; and that he lacked the empathy to recognize the feelings and needs of others. That short list could put him in the narcissist column.

Yancey injects some strange personality traits, tragic because of their everlastingness, with the seed he planted into Mary White – pathological traits that appear with new strength with each new generation.

 When he cast off his wives for new ones (usually with no attempt to hide one from the other) was it because he was feeling grandiose? I think so.  There was a period of eight years after Rebecca died in childbirth or from another reason he remarried Margaret, a widow with a 25 year-old slave woman and took his daughter Jane for her to raise. He had an affair with a young single woman Mary Carver and got her pregnant with a girl that had dark blue eyes and light hair like Yancey; and he left for Floyd County, Georgia with a 30-year-old woman named Elizabeth.

After he settled in Livingston District of Floyd County there was a period of 14 years during which:
Yancey, by time-honored custom, took his 16 year old relative out for sex before the boy went to war on May 1, 1861. The woman chosen by Yancey was a light-skinned slave named Mary, then age 24,  a house servant. One of the men were going to be the father of Mary's son James White born in 1862.

On 28 Aug 1867 Katherine Matthews, a former slave woman, went before the Freedman's Bureau to accuse Yancey of bastardy. The federal authority took Yancey in and he was freed on $1000 bond. Three days after being accused by Katherine Matthews, Yancey married Talitha Murray, age 30, on Aug 31, 1867. In September 1867 Yancey killed Kathrine Matthews in Floyd County or in Alabama, and again he was taken in by the federal military authority in Rome, Captain De la Mesa, and delivered to the civil authorities who did not punish him.

His home in 1867, according to the news clipping, was Thomas' Mills on Big Cedar Creek. Talitha Murray's children in 1870 were Mary Elizabeth White, 2, and Alice Watters White, 5 months (born December 1869).

On 9 February 1871, while still married to Talitha, Yancey White secretly took out a license in Dallas County, Alabama to marry Mary Murray, the sister of Talitha. A second license was taken out in Floyd County on 10 Jan 1875 for the marriage of Yancey White, then 65, and Mary Murray, then 21.

In one violent summary of the previous 14 years: Elizabeth was forced out for young Talitha. Talitha and her two girls were abandoned for Mary Murray, her younger sister. Mary the house servant was raped. Katherine Matthews was raped then killed, and her child was killed or left an orphan. Yancey escaped punishment.

Elizabeth remained in the district, operating her own farm. Young Talitha is unaccounted for. Mary the house servant was protected in her cabin by William White and he removed Mary to distant Dalton, Georgia. Yancey remained with Mary Murray until his death in 1890.
 
Did Yancey feel a grandiose sense of self-importance from possessing then dismissing four women during that 14 years, one by killing her? Was being married to two sisters at once daring to him? Was being taken in to a court for bastardy, and 3 days later marrying the sister of his wife a grandiose feeling of excitement? Of course it was. Some narcissists, possibly Yancey, had a pattern of "love-bombing" a woman: payed her extraordinary attention, later controlled her, and finally dismissed her – an overt narcissistic pattern of behavior.

This Yancey White information is included to allow you to study whether, in your opinion, Yancey White carried  narcissism like a heritable disease. The next question is, "When Yancey get the servant Mary pregnant was the heritable condition called narcissism inherited by her son James? Did James become the first carrier (speaking loosely) to establish the disorder of narcissism in the White family he now headed? We can look around at our White relatives today, in the 4th, 5th  and 6th generations and see and experience signs of narcissism everywhere in people who resemble their White ancestors. The question answers itself. Narcisssism seems to be a heritable condition in this White family of ours. Due to the seed Yancey White planted within Mary White, the James White family (her son) carries strange personality traits:  strong pathological traits that with each new generation appear with new strength. They're tragic because they seem so far to be never ending, unremitting, and everlasting. It skips some. But those who are most like their White ancestors are rarely skipped. The trait includes intelligence and seems dominant.

Left undone for younger generations: Confirm the father of James White: YDNA from a direct male descendant of Yancey White (b. 1811) and another from a direct male descendant of William White (b. 1833). A YDNA test may reveal paternity. Look for indications of narcissism in either family. Share with relatives. Genealogy is a cooperative activity.

My White genealogy with Yancey White material is at
http://williamwhite.family/white-y/index.htm
travlane@intelec.us