J. Nathan Deal, to be inaugurated Monday as governor of Georgia, comes from families deeply rooted in Middle Georgia.
Deal's relatives for more than two centuries have lived in Bulloch County and nearby Bryan, Effingham, Emanuel and Liberty counties. The earliest Deal in Georgia, Simon, came from Tennessee by the 1820s and died in 1837 in Emanuel County.
Nathan Deal's mother, Mary Mallard, was the daughter of Ben "Cap" Mallard, who was the sheriff of Bulloch County from 1914 to 1916 and during the 1920s. The Mallard family still has reunions in that area.
Deal was born in Millen and grew up in Sandersville, where his parents were teachers. His mother lived to be 99, only one of his many ancestors whose long lives lead to documentation in modern vital records.
A number of Deal's ancestors married their first cousins, narrowing the number of different individuals to document. Most of his ancestors were farmers and Baptists. One, William A. Deal, married in 1833 to Harriet Proctor, whose roots appear in "The Proctor Family" (1981, 1989) by James Randolph Proctor, which can be found at the Georgia Archives. Deal's grandmothers, both Smiths, descended from Israel Smith and Adeline Carter, also first cousins, with the Smith line going back to Godhilp/Gotthilf Smith (earlier Schmidt), who died in 1820 in Bryan County. This ancestor, born c. 1754, had earlier lived amongst the German-based Salzburger community at Ebenezer in Effingham County. Godhilp's wife, Christiana Kieffer, was from another German family who lived there in Colonial times.
Other names well known to people from that region are the Brannens, as Deal descends from Hampton Brannen (1831-1863) and Nancy Ann Riggs (1839-1926), the daughter of Dempsey B. Riggs and Frances Neville. The Nevilles are also the subject of a book found at the Georgia Archives, "The Neville Family of Bulloch Co., Georgia" (1980) by Hugh Floyd. Other interesting names include Woodcock and Woodrum.
The future first lady, nee Emilie Sandra Dunagan, a native of Gainesville, has part of her ancestry featured on a website hosted by her brother at www.dunaganfamilyhistory.blogspot.com.
Topic: Ancestry on the Web
One might ask how do you compile the ancestry of a future governor without interviewing anyone related to him?
I began at the Georgia Archives with his 1983 biographical questionnaire from his days in the state Legislature, which listed his grandparents. Using the wealth of published genealogical data on Bulloch County, I quickly found census records and other information from just after the Civil War. Then online sources were used, being careful to verify and evaluate the information with original sources. The leads to Effingham County and the Salzburger community led to assistance from the Georgia Salzburger Society. Essentially, the basic chart was filled out in about three hours.
Later, I contacted people I learned were distant Deal cousins who then provided their own charts, which pretty well matched what I had assembled.
Most genealogy research is not done this quickly, but Deal's ancestry, being heavily concentrated in one area, made it much easier to trace.
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