Wyatt Family, Panola & Rusk County, Texas
Recently my brother contributed DNA to familytreedna.com to try to truly determine our Wyatt lineage. Elijah Wyatt (1792-????) is our paternal g-g-g- grandfather. We wanted to see if this would be useful in continuing our family tree and stop our continual questioning the validity of the old standby which many of our family still use The Amazing Wyatts. We never could see the guesswork past Elijah Wyatt being a true researched project to find parentage for Elijah Wyatt. To us, it was just someone's guess based on what was available at that time. We wanted a more conclusive idea of where to begin research with the use of dna to guide us.
Anyway, the DNA analysis was extremely helpful and gave us several very good/if not perfect matches. We were found to be linked to matches with other Wyatts related to Moses Wyatt, Edward Wyatt, William Wyatt, and Thomas T. Wyatt. We are genetically linked to Moses Wyatt by 111 markers. Moses, as it turns out, was Elijah's brother, and their parents were Edward Wyatt and Sarah Smith (daughter of Samuel Smith 1726-1785) according to researchers of Moses. We no longer have to guess about parents for Elijah.
Elijah and Moses are both found on census docs. 1820, 1830 in Rhea Co., Tenn. with parents Edward and Sarah, as well as property documentation for Elijah near a Martin Atchley who was the father-in-law of Moses Wyatt who married a Martha Atchley. Moses and Martha kept a wonderful family Bible with lots of information, too. This was also in Rhea Co., Tenn. later known as Meigs County. Elijah also appears as a son of Edward Wyatt in court minutes 1831 in Anderson Co., Tennessee. Edward Wyatt (67 markers matched), Elijah's father applied for his Revolutionary War Pension in 1832 after serving 2 enlistments, one under Darby Dorony, the other under John Anderson. He had enlisted in Shenandoa Co., Va. Edward Wyatt was born in Bucks Co., Pennsylvania, so he migrated to Tennessee from there.
Many researchers believe Edward Wyatt, Elijah's father, was the son of Thomas T. Wyatt and Margaret Hanks. Our DNA matches show Thomas as a match to us by his descendants. He is also within 4-8 generations of my brother as a direct ancestor, so that is correct. He would be our g-g-g-g-g grandfather. Thomas T. Wyatt is supposedly the son of a John Wyatt. We will continue to research all of this, but thought people in Panola County who are descendants of Elijah Wyatt as we are will find this all fascinating and enlightening. I hope to hear from you about what you possibly think of this new information all provided by the DNA results and matches to other Wyatts who also contributed to the Wyatt surname research.
Regards, Molly