Genealogy, Loyalists, and the Power of Shared Research

About 15 minutes after telling a genealogy colleague that I didn't have any known Loyalist ancestors, one(or likely more) unexpectedly emerged. I finally took a closer look at my Combs line beyond my 4th great-grandmother—a branch I had largely ignored while focusing on other ancestors over the years. Though I knew of a detailed Combs family webpage from the late 1990s, I had never fully explored it. Fortunately, that page still exists.

I’ve traced my matrilineal line back to my 4th great-grandmother, Nancy Combs Fleming(1797-1881). I don't have her parents proven but I believe they were Mason Combs (1747–180?) and his wife, Dorothy. While I don’t know much about Dorothy’s identity, I do know that all her matrilineal descendants share an mtDNA haplogroup with a unique backward mutation. A recent update to Mitotree prompted me to dig deeper into her history. Since women from that era are best researched by studying the men in their lives, I turned to FamilySearch’s full-text search and looked up Mason Combs. The results were surprising—I found multiple records mentioning Mason, along with other Combs and Cody men, labeling them as Tories and murderers. Maybe this explained him removing from NC to Hawkins Co. TN. 

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GPGL-9B27

When I couldn’t get back to sleep last night, I decided to browse the Combs site for any information on Combs Loyalists, specifically Mason Combs' family. I found a few interesting details. Court records related to the settlement of William Ridge’s estate—he was the husband of Winnifred Combs, Mason’s sister—revealed that he was a British Loyalist. This was the case that FS's Full-Text Search had returned the previous day.

The Combs site also referenced the work of George Baumbach. Fortunately, I was able to retrieve his page using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

William Ridge Estate Records: Tory Combs &  Allied Families of Surry and Wilkes Co., NC  

Even with 35 years of genealogical research, I still learn something new every day. I'm a lifelong learner and I never want that to change. I’m especially grateful for the dedicated researchers who have shared their findings online, helping to connect family groups and point the way to valuable records. When those resources disappear from the web, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine often comes to the rescue, preserving crucial information that might otherwise be lost.