The Ancestors of Nancy Florence Clark Broyles

My second great grandmother, Nancy Florence Clark, is seated on the left next to her husband, CC Broyles. Their children are standing, including my great grandmother Eva Broyles Smith (far left).

68.75% confirmed or likely to be English

18.75 Scotch-Irish

12.5% Irish

*ancestral makeup of the parents who raised Nancy Florence Clark Broyles, who may or may not have adopted her 

Nancy Florence Clark Broyles is referred to as “Florence Broyles” in her father’s will, so it seems safe to assume she usually went by her middle name. To my grandma and her siblings, Florence was known as “Ma Broyles”, and as an old woman, she moved into the house where my maternal grandmother grew up. My grandma was in her early adolescence at the time and had to share a bed with Ma Broyles for a while.

Nancy Florence Clark Broyles and granddaughter Eva Lorene “Reenie” Smith Dial (my grandma Graddy’s older sister)

Ma Broyles died just a couple of years before her granddaughter married my grandpa Graddy. But since the death of my grandma Graddy, my grandpa has told me that Ma Broyles was extremely intelligent and that her family, the Clarks, raced horses. He also told me he believes Florence was adopted by the Clark family as a child.

If that’s true, the biological ancestry of Ma Broyles will likely never be known. I will add, though, that the mother listed for Florence on the Mormon genealogy website died the same month she was born. So it’s very possible that what my grandpa meant was that Florence’s biological mother died of birth complications, and she was adopted by her stepmother, Sarah Foster Clark, whom Florence’s father married later that year.

Of my sixteen second great grandparents, Ma Broyles definitely has the cloudiest ancestry. Her daughter, who is my great grandma Smith, kept a detailed family history in her bible with the dates and details of important family events, as well as her husband’s ancestors going back to all of his grandparents and some of his great grandparents. On her own side of the family tree, she had both of her parents’ names filled in, and both of her grandfathers’. Grandma Smith never met any of her grandparents and apparently never even knew her grandmothers’ names. On top of that, there are some records of Ma Broyles’ ancestry online that seem to make a lot of sense, while others leave you scratching your head a bit.

Orange County, North Carolina

All available sources, including my great grandmother’s bible, indicate that Ma Broyles’ father was a man named James Henderson Clark who is buried in Akin, Illinois near the Hamilton/Franklin county line. If the details on ancestry.com and the Mormon genealogy website are accurate, his Clark ancestors came to Jamestown, Virginia from England in the 1650’s. Generations later, there was definitely a man named William Clark born in 1746 in Virginia who ended up moving to Orange County, North Carolina. That man’s first cousin is Jonathan Clark, the father of explorer William Clark of the Lewis & Clark expedition.

Here’s William Clark of the Lewis & Clark expedition, a man who may or may not be James Henderson Clark’s second cousin once removed. James Henderson Clark is Nancy Florence Clark Broyles’ (possibly adoptive) father.

According to both major genealogy sites, the William Clark born in 1746 had a son by the same name after moving to North Carolina. No one seems to know the son’s birth year, but all sources say he died in 1814. Ancestry and the Mormon genealogy site say this mysterious Wililam Clark is the father of Ma Broyles’ father, James Henderson Clark. There are eleven total children attributed to this same William Clark and his wife. So, I do think they were a real couple. But two of the other children listed are way too young to be William’s if he died in 1814.

James was definitely born in North Carolina, and he’s definitely the man who raised Nancy Florence Clark. But his year of birth is hard to pin down as well. Looking at old Illinois censuses, my guess is that James Henderson Clark himself didn’t know - either that or he lied about his age. One census indicates he was born in 1815, another one in 1817, and yet another in 1820.

If James was really born in 1815, the Wililam Clark who died in 1814 could very well be his true father. That would mean the explorer William Clark is James’s second cousin once removed. And while I think there’s probably some kind of blood relation between these two, I honestly don’t know whether or not I believe James Henderson Clark’s father is the man the genealogy sites say it is.

The man in question, William Clark, married a woman named Rachel Carson in Orange County, North Carolina in 1795. About eighty years earlier, her great grandfather John Carson left County Tyrone, Northern Ireland with son Moses and wife Eleanor. It appears they landed in Pennsylvania before the next two generations of Carsons moved south to Virginia and then North Carolina, where Rachel Carson married the mysterious William Clark in 1795. William died at age 35 in 1814, a few months before the birth of his supposed son James Henderson Clark.

County Tyrone, Northern Ireland

Florence’s father James was married three times. The first time was to a woman named Nancy Allison back in North Carolina. The two of them had several children before Nancy died in 1858. Then, the following year, James married a woman named Martha J. Richardson in Hamilton County, Illinois. Martha’s mother descends from the Jenkins family of Tennessee, who was previously in Buncombe County, North Carolina. It was in that state that Martha’s grandfather, John Jacob Jenkins, served in the Revolutionary War.

James and Martha had four children together, the youngest being Nancy Florence Clark, who was born in 1868. Martha died three weeks later, possibly from childbirth complications.

Nancy Florence Clark Broyles is middle right. This is the wedding of her granddaughter Eva Lorene “Reenie” Smith and William “Jill” Dial.