Sorry for the long post- this one has had me stumped for a while.
In my attempt to bridge a gap in my Livingston family tree (literally cannot find anyone who has information prior to 1850), I have been researching Livingstons in Tennessee and Alabama. I suspect the ancestor I am looking for is Preston Livingston. I can find 5 records of him. None of these records include a spouse's name, children's names, or parent's names. He has no Wikitree ID
Preston first appears in the War of 1812 as part of the East Tennessee Mounted Volunteers under Williams. I believe he was from Blount County, Tennessee (which tracks with my research of Livingstons in Sequatchie, TN). In 1829, there is a land record for him in Marion, TN, and he appears in the 1830 census for Marion, TN. In that census, he is presumably married with children, with a census record indicating 13 white household members of varying ages. He then next appears on page 196 of Alabama Collection Camps, Forts, Emigrating Depots and Travel Routes Used During the Cherokee Removal of 1838-1839, listing him as a Justice of the Peace overseeing an inquiry into a dispute over Fort supplies. From the context surrounding the one mention of him, I assume he was there in January 1839. He also appears in the DeKalb County, AL census in 1840, again with his family (unnamed in census at that time).
After that census record, there is no mention of him anywhere. There is no record of a widow applying for his war pension. The best guess I have is that his wife was Elizabeth (we have no maiden name), who was also born in Tennessee, but lived in Marion County, Arkansas in 1850 with 3 of her children (all of whom were born in Alabama around the time Preston Livingston would have been there). One of those children, Alexander Kelly Livingston, is my direct ancestor. Based on family names she gave to her children, and that her children used for their children, we suspect she was, in some way, shape, or form, part of the Estes or Kelly families (Kelly, Reuben, and Estes are used frequently as middle names throughout her near descendants).
In tracing my DNA using Ancestry, 23andMe, and GEDMatch, my best guess is that my Livingston family goes back through the William Todd Livingston family of Virginia. I show consistent DNA matches with descendants of the William Todd Livingston family as well as the Anthony Head, Jr Family. This would lead me to believe that my ancestral trail would follow the Peter Livingston & Elizabeth Head family, or the Samuel Livingston & Phoebe Head family. Both families had children that moved to the Sequatchie, TN area. Most records from that time and area were lost in courthouse fires. The family bibles we have traced all end with my direct ancestor's family in the 1850s with no records beyond that.
Long story short- does anyone know the ancestors or descendants of Preston Livingston, or potentially have any record of the families I have listed?
(If you look at my ancestors on Wikitree, someone made connections that should never have been made on that Livingston side. There is no proof of who Elizabeth was, nor who she was married to- but we are 100% certain it was not Moses Livingston, as he is in the 1850 census married to an Elizabeth with other children, none of whom are any of our ancesors).
