A Finley Family History

This book is the result of research I have done to trace my Finley ancestors. Many have helped along the way. In the early days, Dr. Carmen J. Finley and James Finley were valuable correspondents. Among many things, Carmen first called my attention to a power of attorney document in Madison County, Kentucky deeds that proved eventually to be the key to understanding the first couple of generations of my ancestors. Virginia Hunt provided information of Georgia Indian Depredation Records that showed that our Greene County, Georgia Finleys were the sons of George Finley I. Until I received those records, I had thought that they were the sons of James Finley of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Many others have contributed facts helping understand family relationships.

The line as presented in this book is based on facts discovered in research. Unfortunately, is some cases the facts are sketchy and several times I have had to change relationships as new facts became available. Reconstructing the family line is similar to working a puzzle in which many of the pieces of the puzzle are missing. There is one linkage I have not been able to support as well as desired. I spent several years’ effort on nothing else but compiling as much information as I could find on William Finley I (c1783-1840) and George Finley II (c1755-1835). I feel certain George was the father of William, but I have not been able to prove it without a trace of doubt. George owned little property during his lifetime and thus few records are available. The only record I could find about his death was an item in Newton County, Georgia records that Zachariah Finley was appointed the administrator of his estate in January, 1836. There is no record of the names of his children and so it is impossible to prove he even had a son named William. Censuses of Georgia from 1790 to 1820 had been destroyed by the English when they sacked Washington in the War of 1812, so we do not even have an indication of how many children George II had or their approximate ages. Even so, there is much circumstantial evidence that George II was the father of William I. Despairing of ever proving it, I have decided to present this as a fact. I certainly welcome anyone sending me information they may have found that either proves or disproves the relationship. The same applies for any other relationship as presented in this book. One thing that a genealogist learns is that facts sometime appear from unsuspected sources that change one’s opinions.

This difficulty connecting William Finley to George Finley II made it necessary to search for all the information I could find on all the Finleys living near William in Georgia. In most cases, I could rule out most of them as William’s father. I came to possess information on many other Finleys not related to my line. I have recorded this information in Chapter 13, entitled “Finleys of Early Piedmont, Georgia.” Hopefully, this information will assist others to trace their own ancestry.

I can see only three possibilities as to the father of William Finley I. One is that he was the son of George II as presented in this book. The other is that there was another Finley family in which the father died shortly after moving to Georgia before buying land and thus leaving no record of his presence. I believe this is unlikely. The third possibility is Amon Finley of Greene County, Georgia (# 18 in Chapter 13). He had two draws in the 1805 Land Lottery, so he had at least one child in 1803. Unfortunately, I have no other information on him. There is no reason to believe William I is his son.  I also believe it is unlikely that William was the son of a Finley of a nearby state, such as South or North Carolina. If I am right that Nicholas Finley, Samuel Finley, and Thomas Finley II of early Clarke County, Georgia were his brothers, then there is no Finley family in either of those states in the 1790 or 1800 censuses who had enough sons to qualify as possible candidates as the ancestors of these Clarke County brothers.

It was common practice in early days for a man to name his first son after his wife’s father, the second son for his father, and succeeding sons for each of his brothers. This led to many Finleys with the same given names. In this book, I have arbitrarily given Finleys with the same first name Roman Numerals after their names to differentiate them from each other. I have not given designations of senior or junior in this book, even though father and son may have the same name. This use of the terms is of rather modern invention. In early days, the terms were used to differentiate any two men living in the same community having the same names. They could have been father-son, uncle-nephew, or not related in any way. This means that George Finley II might have been known as George Finley Jr. while his father was alive, but as George Finley Sr. when his son became grown.

Most of the names in early documents were spelled phonetically. Most of the documents were also written by someone else, not the person himself. Thus the same man’s name was often spelled differently in different documents. Sometimes it was even spelled differently in different places in the same document. Thus the name Finley was variously spelled Findley, Finlay, Findlay and many other variants. Some descendants of the a family spelled the name differently from other descendants of the same family. When people became better educated, the spelling became more consistent, but not so in early times. The spelling in this book is generally Finley, since that is the way my own family spells it.

Our Finley ancestors appear to prove the statement that has been made about the Scotch-Irish in general - that they were restless and frequently moved about. George Finley I moved the farthest, from Scotland to this country. He probably lived first in Pennsylvania before he moved to Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He then moved again to Greene County, Georgia shortly before his death. Succeeding generations lived in several different counties in Georgia and Alabama. Some of their siblings moved even farther, mostly to the