52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – Week 42: Adventure: Traveling from North Carolina to Mississippi Territory in 1811

This is my second year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails Into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

In 1811, John Core [Coor] of Sampson County, North Carolina, obtained a passport to travel through “Indian Nations to the Western Country.” He was with his mother, his four sisters and two small children – negroes. Also receiving passports at the same, and thus may have been traveling with John were Mr. John Keayhey [Kethley] with his wife, seven children, and three negroes from Richmond County, North Carolina, and William and Henry Toler, from Cumberland.[1]

Here is the image from the book. This is a transcript of course, not the actual passport.[2] During the 1930s, the passports as a project of the WPA, were transcribed/abstracted by two members of the Samuel Sorrel Chapter in Houston of the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution under the direction of Mrs. J. E. Hays, the state historian of the Georgia Department of Archives and History.[3]



These passports were obtained from the Governor of Georgia to travel through the Creek Nation. Their ending goal was Mississippi territory. Often people traveled together for safety. However, these three families were from different places.

John Coor was already living in Mississippi before he obtained this passport. He was enumerated 1810 in Franklin County as a single male over twenty-one.[4] Perhaps he returned home to bring his mother and sisters out to the territory he had previous scoped.

How did they get from Sampson County, North Carolina to Lawrence County, Mississippi?  Possible trail is the Federal Road.

  • The Federal Road, started in 1805. The Creek allowed a development of a “horse path” through their lands in order for a more efficient method of delivering mail from Washington City to New Orleans. It started at Fort Wilkinson (near Milledgeville, Georgia) and ended at Fort Stoddert (near Mobile, Alabama). It was widen in 1811.[5]

Did the passport give them safety to travel across the Indian Lands? Perhaps. They did arrive in Lawrence County and John ended up marrying Ann, the daughter of John Kethley.



[1] Passports of Southeastern Pioneers 1770–1823, Indian, Spanish and other Land Passports for Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Mississippi, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Dorothy Williams Potter, Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., p. 294. This book can be viewed at FamilySearch, digital film 7900778.
[2] I am attempting to find the original passports so I can get an image of this one. Waiting to hear back from the archivist at the Georgia Archives.
[3] “Introduction,” Passports Issued by Governors of Georgia, 1785-1820.
[4] “Mississippi State and Territorial Censuses, 1792-1866,” digital images, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com : 18 Oct 2019), 1810, Franklin Co, p 4, line 9, John Coor, citing Microfilm V229, 3 rolls, Heritage Quest.
[5] “Federal Road (Creek Lands),” Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Road_(Creek_lands).


Copyright © 2019 by Lisa S. Gorrell, Mam-ma's Southern Family, All rights reserved.

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