Hugh Lambert + Nancy Raper Bailis E. Turner + Elizabeth "Betsy" Darnell | | Andrew Jackson "Jack" Lambert + Sarah Jane Turner 1844 - 1886 abt 1868 1842 - after 1879 NC Swain Co NC NC | Roscoe R. Turner, 1869 - after 1879 (In 1869 Swetland Roll of Cherokee Indians, child is listed in household of grandparents Hugh Lambert and Nancy Raper Lambert.) Cordelia Turner (James Willis Abercrombie), 1870 - 1903
John Edwards + Huldah [?] Samuel Reece + Lucinda Church | | J. Samuel Edwards + Louisa Jane (Jennie) Lambert 1842 - bef 1917 4/19/1890 1853 - 1930 | Wilson Cornelius Edwards, 1891 - 1967 Cora M. Edwards, Jun 1894 - ? Eddie Edwards (dtr), Sep 1897 - ? Alpha O. Edwards (dtr), Oct 1899 - 1986?
Source: US Census Records 1880, 1900, Oconalufty Swain County; Social Security Death Index; World War I draft registration for Wilson C. Edwards (June 5, 1917).
*Resolving the identity of Bertha Elizabeth's father is an unfinished task. Andrew Jackson Lambert was, at least, her step-father, and he may have been her father.
Childers family tradition says Bertha's father was Joseph Franklin, but thus far Jane Reece's marriages to Jack Lambert and to J. Samuel Edwards are better documented. As Darcus and Claude are well documented as the children of Jack Lambert and Jane Reece, and as Bertha is older and claimed to be a Lambert in her own Bible record and in her marriage license, we are showing her as the daughter of Jack Lambert. While the official Buncombe County record for the Lambert-Reece marriage is dated 23 May 1884, Darcus Lambert dated her parents' marriage to 1877 in her 1924 application for enrollment to Baker Roll #1901 (Eastern Band of Cherokees). On the other hand, at the time of the 1880 census, Andrew J. Lambert was counted with his second wife, Lucy Ann (Voils), in Oconaluftee, as well as with the family of Burton Reece, son of William Reece (Louisa Jane's first cousin), in the Pigeon Forks area of Haywood County. (Perhaps this second listing was a temporary "boarding" arrangement related to his mining excursions.) The Samuel Reece family, including Louisa Jane, were in this same Pigeon Forks area of Haywood in 1870, but thus far we have not found Louisa Jane Reece, her parents, or her daughter Bertha in the 1880 count, anywhere. If anyone knows where they were in 1880, please contact us.
In any case, Bertha would have been a child of 8 when Andrew Jackson Lambert was hanged in 1886.
Marriage Record for Thomas Childers, Jr., and Bertha Elizabeth Lambert: * "Childers, Thomas, 21, son of T. C. and Emilie Childers, to Bertie Lambert, 15, d/o Jennie Lambert, on Jan. 29, 1893. Performed by J. H. Queen. Ocona Lufty. Wit. J. S. Edwards and William Hensley." - Elise Jones Bryson, Marriages of Swain County 1871 - 1905, Swain County Geneological Society, Bryson City, NC. 2002.
Francis David Childers, speaking during a 1976 interview, recorded and transcribed by Dwight Childers: Audio "Now this grandmother on my mother's side was a Reece before she married anybody. She was a great woman of her time, Buddy. I saw her, I was with her. I went there to see her. I'd rather go there 'as anywhere in the world. She was about six feet tall nearly. Same size as our mother almost. Jane, Jane Reece. Now she married Jack Lambert, the first one. . . ."
"This Franklin feller, the next 'n' she married, I don't know anything about him. That's my mother's father, Franklin."
"My mother and Claude Lambert now was from Jack Lambert. My mother was from Franklin. She married this Edwards, Sam Edwards, and they had four from him."
"Franklin was a fiddler. Fiddled all his life, and made'em an sold'em and lived that way. Greatest fiddler 't had ever been they said. That means he was a skilled mechanic, to do that. (All them fiddlers that goes to dances and things are really ramblin' men; they don't settle much. I know that by my own experience.) Joe, Joe Franklin."
In the 1900 census, J. S. and Louisa Jane Edwards were listed #11 at the house before #12, the Thomas and Bertha Childers family.
Sources: U. S. Census 1880, 1900; Peggy Lambert; Native American Census, Selected Tribes, 1894 - 1913, North Carolina, Yellow Hill, 1897, Darco Lambert age 15, via Ancestry.com; Darco Lambert's 1926 application for enrollment with Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, via Ancestry.com; Buncombe County Marriage Register; Lynda Fitch, emails April 2011; Ancestry.com's OneWorldTree; Ancestry.com's Edwards Family Tree (kadak1).