On a cool March day in 1847 at the courthouse of Marengo County, Alabama, a young farmer named William C. Knight stepped forward to marry the woman he loved.
The clerk dipped his pen into ink and wrote the bride’s name:
Jane McGaw.
Nothing unusual — except the document wasn’t finished yet.
At the bottom of the very same record, the clerk carefully recorded her again:
Miss Mary E. McGaw.
Two names. One bride.
That single sheet of paper complicated the story.
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| Alabama County Marriages, 1711-1992, FamilySearch.org |
Standing beside William was James P. McGaw. In antebellum Alabama, a bondsman was rarely a casual acquaintance. He was usually a father, brother, or close male relative of the bride, legally guaranteeing the marriage. If James signed, the bride belonged to the McGaw household.
Some later wondered whether she might instead have been Mary Elizabeth DeCastro, widow of William McGrew. The initials fit. But the record called the bride Miss — not "Mrs." Courts were exact in such matters, and a widow was never styled “Miss.” With that single word, the alternative quietly faded.
Then the land spoke.
On 31 May 1851, William McGaw and Hannah English executed a formal indenture conveying forty acres in Section 21, Township 13 to William C. Knight for $120.00. The instrument went further — Hannah separately assigned her title of dower in the property for the nominal sum of ten cents, legally releasing her lifetime claim so the land would belong entirely to William.
This was not a casual sale. It was the careful legal transfer families used to establish a married daughter and her husband. The daughter’s name was never written in the deed, but her presence was there all the same.
When census takers came in 1850 and again in 1860, they recorded the woman in William’s home simply as:
Jane E. Knight. Never Mary.
If her full name was Mary Jane Elizabeth McGaw, the record’s contradiction disappears. The clerk wrote her legal identity once — Mary E. — and her everyday name once — Jane. The census preserved both in between: Jane E.
Jane died sometime before 22 October 1864, when William remarried Frances Isabella Pratt. Memory lingered in the land, but proof lay in ink and paper.
On 30 September 1873, William’s three eldest children — Christopher, George, and Mary Knight — sold forty acres in Section 21, Township 13. Not different land. The very same property indentured in 1851 by William and Hannah McGaw. Those three were the eldest children of his first wife, Jane E. McGaw Knight, and their right to convey it followed directly through her.
The record holds firm across the years: the marriage bond, the indenture, the dower release, the census entries, and finally the children’s sale of the same acreage. Together, they trace an unbroken line.
The woman who married William C. Knight was not a widow with a similar name. She was the McGaw daughter whose brother signed her bond, whose parents settled land upon the marriage, and whose children later conveyed that very soil.
She appeared twice in the marriage record because she lived with more than one given name.
Mary Jane E. McGaw — known to her family, neighbors, and history simply as Jane.
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All primary source information referenced was obtained from a variety of published and archival materials, including books, historic newspapers, U.S. census records, vital records, probate files, and land documents. These sources were accessed through leading genealogical platforms such as Newspapers.com, Ancestry, FamilySearch, Find a Grave, as well as through local, state & federal archival repositories, libraries and private collections. Interpretive narrative may also include Carol Anna Meyer Brooks' personal experiences or family stories shared with her throughout her lifetime.
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