Master reference for all chapters of Volume III; living document; updated as sources surface. v1, 21 July 2026 — consolidated at the close of the Volume III v3.0 draft (Chapters 1 through 9). Drawn from the per-chapter Notes on Sources and reconciled to the project's research findings (the slave-schedule reads, the probate and deed sweeps, the death-certificate zoom, the 1870 record-first census work). Where the earlier working drafts and the finished manuscript disagree, the manuscript governs and the discrepancy is logged in section XII. The pre-13-July "consolidated" master draft is void as a source; see XII.
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This document is the consolidated working bibliography for I Am Coming, Volume III — She Held the Line: The Dirt Stayed, the World Moved, 1832 to 1920. It is organized by source category, not by chapter. Each source is listed once, even where it bears on several chapters; the bracketed chapter references at the end of each entry show where it is used. The reader-facing Bibliography at the back of the published book will be drawn from this list and styled to publication standard at manuscript-assembly stage. Until then, this is a working file kept current as research proceeds.
Every entry carries a tier mark on the convention used throughout the project's Sources Memos. P — a primary document of the period, contemporary or near-contemporary to the event. S — a secondary source compiling or analyzing primary records at one remove. R — a standard reference work used for period, place, or practice. T — a family-line oral or written tradition. Where a fact rests on more than one instrument the entry says so; where it rests on a single soft estimate the entry says that too. Two disciplines govern the whole: genealogy first, story second, and the blank does not stay blank; neither does the negative — a negative finding counts only when the pages have actually been read, not when an index came back empty. The open research items are gathered at the end, in section XII.
I. The family Bibles and the keeping-records
The Rorie family Bible (P). The book the volume turns on: the worn black-calf Bible Mary Polly Hubbard Rorie kept for more than thirty years and carried, a widow, into her son's house in her own lap. Its register pages are the family's primary self-record. The births-and-marriages leaf enters the heroine, on the day she was born, under the unsettled name *"Milbry or Mity Jane" (21 November 1832); it carries the marriages of the two elder daughters — Elizabeth (1834) and Louisa Adeline to Alexander Houston (1838) — but no line for Mary Jane's own 1867 marriage, the founding of the line, which was never entered. The deaths page, in Mary Polly's careful round hand, records her husband Reuben (August 1862) and her son Ezekiah, "killed July 22nd 1864 in Atlanta, Georgia"* — her last entry there; the column stops at the war and holds no death after, including her own. Transcriptions of the register pages are held in the workbook (XI). A photographic inspection of the surviving leaves is an open item (XII). [Ch 1 §Seventeen; Ch 3; Ch 4; Ch 5; Ch 6 §The unwritten line; Ch 9]
The Hubbard family Bible (P/S). Mary Polly's own people's book, "brought down out of North Carolina before any of them were born," set on the parlor shelf beside the Rorie Bible. The Johnson-to-Hubbard descent that carries the line back into Volume II's world; principally a genealogical anchor, named in the prose to keep the two books distinct. [Ch 9]
Aaron Searcy's working Bible (T/P). The smaller leather Bible in the old satchel — "the little satchel the old man had carried his keeping in" — Freeman's father's book, kept on the same shelf and handed to Robert Edwin at the last. Family-tradition object; its contents are not transcribed in hand. [Ch 9]
II. Federal population census schedules — Tishomingo, then Alcorn County, Mississippi
1850 U.S. Census, Seventh Census (P). Tishomingo Co., 4th District, Northern Division; assistant marshal Wm. Scruggs; enumerated 31 October 1850. Dwelling 751: Reuben Rora, 51, millwright, N.C., real estate $2,000; Mary [Polly], recorded 40 (about 46); the children, among them Mary [Jane], 17; Nancy, 15; with the married daughter Louisa Adeline next door (752) and Wm. H. Rora, 21, Student (754). Nine dwellings on, 760: the Aaron Searcy household — Aaron, 53, farmer, N.C.; Martha; and Freeman, 20 — real estate read at $400 (author-certified). The one census that recorded Mary Jane's age truthfully. [Ch 1]
1860 U.S. Census, Eighth Census (P). Tishomingo Co.; assistant marshal Porter Walker; Jacinto post office; the household enumerated in the late summer. Dwelling 1542: the head recorded *"William Roria," 60 — the documented mis-recording of Reuben Rorie, wrong in both name-halves; Mary [Polly] 55 (correct); Mary J. written 25 against her true 27; Nancy A. 22 against ~24 — both unmarried daughters shaved two years while both parents stand correct; Reuben's worth ~$5,000. Dwelling 1543: W. H. Rorie's household. In the same continuous run, dwelling 1505: Freeman Searcy, 30, day-labourer, no estate, boarding in his brother William B. Searcy's house — one door past dwelling 1504, Alexander Houston and Louisa Adeline Rorie*, Mary Jane's married sister. [Ch 3; Ch 5]
1870 U.S. Census, Ninth Census (P). Alcorn Co., Township 2 Range 8, post office Corinth; enumerated 2 September 1870; NARA M593. The white anchor: Wm. Rorie (indexed "Mn Rorie"), 42, Tennessee, page 25, dwelling 16, FamilySearch image 266 of 277 (film 004273773). Freeman Searcy at page 26, dwelling 25 — Freeman 38 (b. Alabama), Mary 37, a son ~3, Robert 4/12 (Robert Edwin, born January 1870), and Rebecca 9. Read at image level, 21 July 2026: dwellings 11–26 across pages 24–26 all read White — no Black household of the freed Rorie people on the old ground. [Ch 5; Ch 7; and the freedpeople findings, VIII]
1880 U.S. Census, Tenth Census (P). Alcorn Co., Third District; enumerated 5 June 1880 (enumerator J. M. Bynum). Mary Jane's household at page 5, dwelling 2, indexed "Cearcy F. J." (Mary Jane misindexed "H. J."); Mary Polly six pages away, page 11, enumerated as *"mother,"* age 75, inside the W. J. Hamlin household — already given up her own farm. (The old "two doors apart" reading is refuted; see `Vol_III_Two_Doors_RESOLVED_v1_0.md`.) [Ch 8]
1900 / 1910 / 1920 U.S. Censuses, Twelfth–Fourteenth (P). The three post-1900 counts, each carrying Mary Jane's birthplace as Tennessee: 1900 at the wife-line near Rienzi; 1910 (Milam beat) with Mary Jane enumerated in Robert Edwin's household, Relationship to head: Mother, age 77; 1920 (Beat 3, ED 6; enumerated 17 January 1920, Frank D. Oaks) with Mary Jane "mother, age 87" — her own household giving 87 nine months before her death, against Robert Edwin's 50 and Hattie's 43. Digital images: `Milam_Mary Rorie Searcy wife of Freeman_1910AlcornMS.pdf`, `..._1920AlcornMS.pdf`. [Ch 7; Ch 8; Ch 9]
III. Federal slave schedules — Schedule 2, Slave Inhabitants
1850 Slave Schedule, Tishomingo County (P). FamilySearch IGN 004200553 (Seventh Census, Slave Inhabitants, Mississippi, Vol. 7). Read at image level, both divisions, 13 July 2026: Reuben Rorie held no one; Aaron Searcy held no one; no Rorie or Searcy of any spelling appears. Scruggs certified his own eleven filled pages (image 18); Lewallen's Southern Division closed at the county boundary (image 32 = Tunica) and by the volume's table-of-contents arithmetic. A total certified negative — the strongest kind, because the marshal who wrote Reuben into the free schedule (Scruggs) wrote nothing for him on this one. The consequence is the spine of the rebuild: the three people counted in 1860 arrived across the 1850s, so Mary Jane watched slavery arrive on the place between seventeen and twenty-seven; and a slave house was raised in the yard in that window. Also logged: Porter Walker himself held two people in 1850 (Southern Division, image 31); two Hubbard slaveholders in the county (Thomas Hubbard, img. 20; Thomas B. Hubbard, img. 31). [Ch 2 §The house in the yard; Ch 3 §3.1–3.2; Ch 5 §5.3]
1860 Slave Schedule, Tishomingo County (P). FamilySearch IGN 005170183, ark 3:1:33S7-9BSH-PKG, image 386 of 636. Page 42, right column, entered *"Reubin Roria," enumerated 22 September 1860 by Porter Walker, between Andrew Cathey and Josiah Vanderford — three enslaved people: a woman aged 65, a man aged 36, a girl aged 7; and, in column 9, one slave house. Confirmed at zoom by the author, 13 July 2026 (the man's age corrected from a first-pass 30 to 36). The whole schedule (66 pages) read; no Searcy anywhere; the one enslaved name in all 66 pages is Charlotte*, aged 100, on Mary Watson's line (not of this place). Part of the ~$5,000 personal worth was therefore the appraised value of three human beings — a figure the book will not describe as capital alone. [Ch 2; Ch 3 §3.1–3.2; Ch 5 §5.3]
IV. Vital records
Mississippi marriage record — F. J. Searcy and "Miss M. J. Rorie" (P). 10 January 1867; indexed under Alcorn County, though the county was still Tishomingo on that date (Alcorn created 15 April 1870). Ages: Mary Jane 34 (b. 21 Nov 1832), Freeman 36 (b. ~1830). The clerk's *"Miss"* — an unmarried woman of thirty-four marrying under her maiden name, out of a dead father's house — is the load-bearing word; the marriage was never entered in the family Bible. A licence-or-bond behind the index line is an open item (XII). [Ch 6]
Mississippi State Certificate of Death #20-18119 — Mary Jane Searcy (P). The single strongest instrument of the closing chapter; read at full zoom by the author, 21 July 2026, correcting several earlier transcription errors. Certified facts: name field "Mary Jane Searcy" (given name whole for the first time in the record; her maiden Rorie survives only on the father's line); date of death 11 October 1920, 4:30 a.m.; cause "paralysis" — a lay report, because the medical section carries no physician's signature ("No Doctor," and "What test confirmed diagnosis? — No"); father Reuben Rorie, mother Mary Hubbard, birthplace Tennessee (three Tennessee attestations, closing the long birthplace question in favor of the Tennessee side); undertaker line: "no undertaker — homemade coffin" (correcting a prior misreading of the field as an undertaker named "Conrad Coffin" — there was none); place of burial Pine Grove; date of burial 12 October; informant R. E. Searcy (son), age 50; filed 16 October by the local registrar. The state's age figure, 87 years, 10 months, 6 days, is fourteen days short of the household's true count (87 years, 10 months, 20 days), the "state said six, household said twenty, household was right" beat. [Ch 9]
V. Land, deeds, and the estate partition (PLSS: township / range / section)
Commissioner's deed — Freeman Searcy buys part of Reuben Rorie's homestead (P). At the heirs' partition sale, 18 January 1867, "at the late residence of the said R. Rorie deceased," eight days after the wedding: F. J. Searcy the high bidder for part of Section 18, Township 3 Range 8 East (the E½ NE¼ and NE¼ of SE¼) for $265; commissioner's deed executed 19 April 1867. Documents where the couple settled — the old Rorie ground — and anchors the volume's Governing Frame (buys the land 1867, the county line moves 1870, the family stays). `Vol_III_Deed_Findings_Freeman_buys_Rorie_land_v1_0.md`. Load-bearing digits ($265; Sec 18, T3 R8 E; the dates) await final certification at the image zoom (XII); the substance is confirmed. [Ch 6 §The ground; Ch 7; Ch 9]
The partition proceeding — Probate Court of Tishomingo County (P). November 1866 term: petition of W. H. Rorie and the heirs of R. Rorie deceased to sell their father's land for division; B. B. Boone appointed special commissioner; the land sold 18 January 1867. A partition of real property — not an administration of the personal estate — and, being post-emancipation, it names no enslaved people. The precise finding: Reuben's personal estate was never administered; his land was partitioned and sold by court order on the heirs' petition, four years after his death. Companion partition buyers: Wm. Walker and W. H. Rorie. [Ch 5; Ch 6]
Reuben Rorie's mill-building deeds, ~1838–1861 (P). The record of the grist-and-saw works assembled deed by deed on the creek — the trade that made the $2,000 of 1850 and part of the worth of 1860. Optional Chapter 1 texture. [Ch 1]
Freeman Searcy's later Rorie purchase — Section 17, 1888 (P). 47 acres, $50, out of W. H. Rorie's foreclosure (split with W. F. Jobe). Freeman consolidating the old Rorie ground; flagged as Volume IV texture, noted here for completeness. [—]
VI. Probate and estate records
Tishomingo County Inventories & Appraisements, 1858–1869 (P). FamilySearch IGN 005815305 (261 images). Full-text and structural read, 14 July 2026: there is no estate of Reuben Rorie in the book (a strong index-class negative — the search that found "Reuben Rorie decd" buried mid-line in a debtor column would have found an estate heading). He appears once, as a debt owed to a dead man: *Neal Morrison's inventory, p. 292, "Reuben Rorie decd 1862,"* sworn 9 August 1864. Mary Polly filed nothing** — no widow's year's-support, no dower, no administration. This is the finding on which Chapter 5's moral spine rests: the estate was never administered, so no inventory ever named the three enslaved people; the same competence that let a widow carry the farm without the court is why their names are lost. `Vol_III_Probate_Findings_v1_0.md`. [Ch 5 §5.2–5.3]
Estate of Ezekiah B. Rorie ("E. B. Rorie") (P). Opened 1865 for his minor children (Mary A. and Robert E.). The surviving inventory is of money and debts: gold on hand $20; silver; old-issue money; a claim on J. F. W. Rorie (settled in cotton money), $50; an account with W. H. Rorie (to be paid in Confederate money); and a probated account against the estate of Mary Morrison. The line that is the truest thing the war wrote about the brothers — both surviving brothers owed the dead one, in currencies that died with the country. The property appraisement of Ezekiah's $2,000 farm is still to be found (same volume). [Ch 4 §The one who did not come back]
The Will Book — old Tishomingo & Alcorn, 1854–1921 (P). One film spanning Reuben, Mary Polly, and Freeman; the last realistic instrument that could name the three enslaved people by devise. Search under R (Rorie / Rora / Roria / Roary / Rorey) and the given name Reuben. Status: unsearched in this cycle. Companion decisive test: the Probate Court Minute Books (was administration ever granted on Reuben's estate?) — indexed by term, does not ride on OCR. Both are open (XII). [Ch 5; open]
VII. Military and Civil War records
Confederate enlistment and death — Ezekiah B. Rorie (P/S). Enlisted at Kossuth, March 1862, about thirty-one, a married man with ~$2,000 in land and small children; killed near Atlanta, 22 July 1864 — the date of the Battle of Atlanta, fought on the east side of the city. The death rests on the Rorie Bible (I) and the estate (VI); "east of Atlanta" is the historical identification of that battle laid over the Bible's plainer "Atlanta, Georgia." His regiment is not separately pinned. [Ch 4]
Confederate service — William Hubbard Rorie (S/T). Survived and returned; named sons for the Confederate generals Joseph E. Johnston (Jas. E. J.) and Robert E. Lee (Robt. E. L.) — the documented evidence of his allegiance and service. His specific regiment is unconfirmed (the 26th Mississippi question) and is deliberately not asserted in the prose (see D-1, XII); the pre-collapse draft's "central Virginia, June 1865" return is void and not used. [Ch 4; open]
James Frederick Winters ("Fred") Rorie (S/T). The youngest son ("J. F. W. Rorie" of the estate papers); survived, settled two beats over, raised ~seven children, named one E. B. for the brother who did not come home. [Ch 4]
Campaign context, the Shiloh–Corinth–Atlanta theater (R). The war at the family's door, thirteen miles north: the Battle of Shiloh (6–7 April 1862, heard from the ridge as sustained artillery); Corinth as a wartime hospital/charnel town; the Siege of Corinth (advance April – evacuation 29–30 May 1862); the Battle of Corinth (3–4 October 1862); and the Atlanta Campaign / Battle of Atlanta (22 July 1864). Standard published campaign histories; rendered as heard/known from the ridge, not witnessed. [Ch 4]
VIII. Slavery, the freedpeople, and the emancipation-era record
The three enslaved people held by Reuben Rorie (P, via III). A woman (b. ~1795), a man (b. ~1824), and a girl (b. ~1853), on the place from the 1850s, with one slave house; freed off that ground in 1865. The 1850–1860 schedules fix their arrival and holding; no instrument ever set their names down, because the estate was never administered (VI). Record-first trace, 21 July 2026 (`Vol_III_Ch5_Freedpeople_Record_First_Findings_v1_0.md`): the surname-blind 1870 index does not hold them under Rorie or Searcy, and the households on the old ground read White — so they did not remain as the family's neighbors; the earliest their names could exist is 1870, and the reachable record does not keep them. They are owed their own accounting, in their own right, and are not made anyone's metaphor (the standing rule, adopted 13 July 2026). [Ch 5 §5.3; and Ch 2, Ch 3]
Corinth Contraband Camp (S/R). National Park Service; Corinth: The Story of a Contraband Camp. Formed east of Corinth after the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation (22 September 1862) under Brig. Gen. Grenville M. Dodge and Chaplain James M. Alexander; at its peak over 6,000 freedpeople, with a church, hospital, a street grid of numbered houses, ~400 acres worked for wages, and an American Missionary Association school; residents removed by rail to camps near Memphis, January 1864. Thirteen miles from the Rorie place; rendered strictly as regional setting, with no claim that any of the three went there. [Ch 5 §5.3]
Freedmen's Bureau and Freedmen's Bank, Mississippi (P) — open. Labor contracts, marriage and ration registers, bank records for Alcorn / Tishomingo / Corinth, 1865–72; the freedom-side records that might name people the census surname-blinds. Not yet pulled (XII). [open]
IX. Cemetery and burial
Pine Grove — place of burial per the 1920 death certificate (P). The certificate (IV), in the son's own information, gives Pine Grove as the place of burial, 12 October 1920. This is the primary, contemporaneous authority for where the family laid her. [Ch 9]
Hargrove Cemetery and the headstone (S/T) — in conflict, open. The workbook and a 1987 replacement headstone place Mary Jane (and Freeman, d. 1908) at Hargrove Cemetery. The primary certificate says Pine Grove; the marker says Hargrove. The discrepancy — same ground under two names, a later reinterment, or a marker error — is unreconciled and belongs to the genealogy side (XII). (A separate 1860-slave-schedule figure, "William Hargrave," once anchored an editorial note about ground named for a slaveholder; with the burial reading Pine Grove, that note is retired.) [Ch 9; open]
X. Reference works, and period / place context
The Public Land Survey System (R). Township / range / section descriptions; the frame within which the Rorie and Searcy parcels (Sec 18, Sec 17, T2/T3 R8) are located. Distinguish deed (title) from census (residence). [Land entries; Ch 6, Ch 7]
County formation and geography (R). Alcorn County created 15 April 1870 from Tishomingo and Tippah — the ground that did not move while the county's name did (the Governing Frame). Corinth established 1853 where the Mobile & Ohio crossed the Memphis & Charleston (first "Cross City," renamed for the ancient Greek crossroads); Rienzi and Beat 3 as the family's post-1870 locality; Kossuth and Jacinto as the near towns of the muster and the 1860 post office. Published county and railroad histories. [Ch 2; Ch 4; frame]
XI. Family tradition and the workbook
The Searcy Family Ancestral Workbook (T/master). `Searcy_Family_Ancestral_Workbook_v7_11.xlsx` — DeWayne Lee Searcy's compiled family canon: the thirty-plus sheets of dates, relationships, transcriptions, and prior conclusions against which every documentary finding in this volume is reconciled. The source of record for the Bible transcriptions (I) and the canonical dates, and the place where discrepancies (the Pine Grove / Hargrove question; the shaved-ages certification; the deed digits) are logged for closure. [all chapters]
Family tradition (T). The oral and written line: the Rorie descent off the Yadkin in North Carolina and down through Tennessee; the birthplace "on the Tennessee side"; and the governing refrain the volume takes its shape from — the dirt is the dirt; it was the world that moved. Rendered as tradition where it is not on a document, and never in place of one. [frame; Ch 6; Ch 9]
XII. Open research items
Carried in the numbered / lettered form they hold in the project's continuity memo (`vol3_state_memo.md`, §C/§D). The volume is drafted end to end; these are certification and extension items, not gates.
1. D-1 — William Hubbard Rorie's Confederate regiment (the 26th Mississippi question). Chapter 4 was drafted around it (service present, no unit asserted); fold the regiment in with a one-pass edit if it resolves. [Ch 4]
2. D-4 — Mary Polly Hubbard Rorie's death year, 1890 or 1892. The hinge of Chapter 8; Alcorn land-tax rolls 1889–1892 (assessed while alive, gone after) are the likely closer.
3. The Pine Grove ↔︎ Hargrove burial reconciliation (Mary Jane and Freeman): certificate vs. headstone. [Ch 9]
4. The freedpeople, past 1870 (§VIII): the full Township 2 Range 8 district color-column read; the 1880 census on the same ground; the Freedmen's Bureau and Freedmen's Bank; and, separately, the non-white Searcy count in 1870 Mississippi mapped against 1860 Searcy slaveholders statewide.
5. Deed and estate digits to certify at the image: the 1867 commissioner's deed ($265; Sec 18, T3 R8 E; dates) and the 1870 estate figure (~$1,050); Ezekiah's property appraisement.
6. The Will Book and the Probate Court Minute Books (§VI): the last instruments that could name the three enslaved people, and the decisive yes/no on whether administration was ever granted on Reuben's estate.
7. Reuben's estate inventory, August 1862 — confirmed not to exist in the Inventory Book; the Minute-Books test would seal the negative permanently.
8. Aaron Searcy's death year (enumerated alive 1850, gone by 1860 — left undated in Chapter 2); the possible seventh Searcy child ("E D, 1850"); the Aaron #32 parentage / which-Aaron War-of-1812 question (contested — NARA register-reverse and Chatham estate pending; the three-war echo is left unspelled until it resolves).
9. Nancy Ann Rorie — did the second unmarried daughter ever marry?
10. The 1867 marriage licence or bond behind the index line (§IV).
11. Photographic inspection of the Rorie Bible leaves (§I).
12. `Vol_III_consolidated.md` is VOID — the pre-13-July-2026 master draft, built on the founding frame the records voided (the Corinth-residence death; the invented figures "Mary E. / Lucinda / Patsy"; the "Dr. Reed" attendance and "Conrad Coffin" undertaker of the misread certificate; Hargrove burial). It is superseded entirely by Architecture v2.0 and the v3.0 chapters and is not to be drafted or cited from.