Joseph Furnas (1763-1812)

Joseph Furnas was born 20 Feb 1763 as son of John Furnas and Mary Wilkinson. It is supposed he was born on the ship that brought his parents from England to South Carolina, after they had docked in Charleston. He is my son-in-law’s 5th great-granduncle.

His twin uncles supposedly also came  to North Carolina, but it unknown on which ship they traveled, and they don’t seem to have left any progeny. I can’t find online access to Genealogy of the Furnas Family, by Tanzy R. Furnas to confirm whether or not it is true. One thing I noticed is that immigrants frequently seem to come as three brothers. It makes for a nice number.

Joseph’s parents were Quakers, and they were married in Standing Stone, England in a Quaker Meeting. They joined Bush River Congregation, where Joseph married Sarah Pearson in 1790. Sarah’s parents did not belong to the Quakers, but she must have joined, as there was no objection to the marriage, and Joseph was not cast out. Pearson’s genealogy gave me most of my data.⁽¹⁾ The other source was South Carolina Marriages 1688-1799, by Brent Holcomb, compiler (Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1980-1981).

Joseph and Sarah have at least one son, who married into the Jenkins Family, another large contributor to my son-in-law’s family.  The Jenkins, Furnas, and Pearson families frequently intermarry; two sons of Joseph’s sister Esther, who married Sarah’s half-brother Benjamin Pearson, married also Jenkinses. I have 13 instances in the database of marriages between these three families between 1790 and 1836. This is of course, not really surprising: it is a relatively small, religious and socio-economic homogeneous community, and they tend to marry each other. And it makes for confusing genealogy, as they all have children with the same names.

(1). Geo. M Pearson, Benjamin and Esther (Furnas) Pearson; Their Ancestors and Descendants (Los Angelos: Times-Mirror Printing & Binding, 1941). Online at https://archive.org/details/benjaminestherfu00pear. OpenLibrary.org.