Nancy May Her Surname Finally Documented

Axsom Association of America Aug-Dec 1999

The earliest genealogy documets concerning Joseph H. Axsom and his family listed Joseph's wife's name as Nancy. Some documents had the characters "(MAY)" after her name. Thisis a standard notation to indicate the maiden name. A marriage record for Joseph H. and Nancy has never been located. We could not be sure of the real maiden name of Joseph's wife without locating some contemporary document where her maiden name has been officially recorded.

For the past several months Norma Zanetti of Eden, NC has been concentrating much of her research on the Indiana Axsoms. Her email correspondence with the editor has told of books ordered, Social Security records requested, Indiana researchers contacted, marriage records requested, etc. These are a part of Norma's quest to accurately document our Axsom heritage.

On Sept. 24 1999 Norma wrote: "I am so excited. A lady in Bloomington IN agreed to get a copy of Samuel David's marriage record to Anne/Anna Hedrick on her next trip to Nashville, IN. She went this week and I received the copies today.

full name of bride: Anne Wilkerson

maiden name, if a widow: Anne Hedrick

place of residence: Brown Co, IN

age: 27 (lots of discrepancies with her age.)

race & color: white

place of birth: Brown Co IN

father Joseph Hedrick

mother Sarah A. Mullis

when & where married: Brown Co IN Nov 6 1884, Asa Reeves, minister

full name of groom: Samuel Axsom, resides Brown Co IN, age 80 years, white, born NC, father Joseph Axsom, mother's maiden name: Nancy MAY, no. of grooms marriages: second (should've been three)

we can finally remove that "(May)*unknown* from our databases."

There it is! Samuel David Axsom-on the occasion of his third marriage, put into the written record the maiden name of his by then deceased mother! Norma's letter continues:

"Now, there is a family tradition among one line of Axsoms that Nancy's father was William May, a maker of spinning wheels. There were some Williams around, but they seemed to float around and I haven't found one who I think could've been Nancy's father. Since Nancy seemed to be so close to Frederick May, I think Frederick was probably her brother-although he was supposedly born in 1783, too-maybe they were twins. Frederick's father was Martin May. I don't know if I'll ever be able to prove that Martin was Nancy's father-no will, and his estate records did not name his children. But, if I ever do, I will have a pretty good start on that May family. I have built a database of over 1500 May descendants. A recent find suggests that Frederick May was German.