North Carolina, Estate Files, 1663-1979, Cabarrus County, "M", Means, Margaret M (1864)

So this has been a fascinating journey.  Harriet C Means, daughter of John W Means and his (insane) wife, Margaret McCamey (not spelled like that at ALL in any of the records) Wilson, married John Q Lemmond. I first pieced together this family by working first on the family of Harriet and John's daughter, Margaret C Lemmond McCord.  When I first adopted her profile on WikiTree, she had the middle name Charlotte and her maiden name was spelled "Lemon", which was what got me interested in the beginning.  The profile listed her husband and using that, I was able to find online her death certificate which stated that her father was John Q Lemmond and her mother was (no first name given) Means.

I started an Ancestry.com family tree for the "Lemon Family", naming it Wiki Lemon Family to keep it separate from all my other trees.  First I worked on John M McCord, Margaret's husband.  I found his family and I added the children of John and Margaret, discovering that they had named their son as detailed above.  That was an interesting name and I was sure it was significant, but then again, people name their children strange things all the time, so I could have been wrong.

I found the spouses and children of McCamey and Carolina Brite McCord, John and Margaret's surviving daughter.  Carolina married a man named Amos Philmore Whitley and supposedly committed suicide by blowing a hole in the center of her chest with a shotgun.  Um, what?  How on earth does one do that to oneself??  Haven't found anything other than the death certificate on that one.

Then I started on John "Lemon", Margaret's father.  I thought I'd found him (and I actually HAD) in Union County, but it didn't seem to add up, so I abandoned him, thinking that a Margaret Lemmond I had found living with another male Lemmond in the family of a couple named...oh, I forget now, but they were much older and had different names than this Margaret and the male Lemmond.  I worked on that theory for awhile until I started finding death records for other Lemmond children with the parent's names given as John Q Lemmond and Harriet Means.  That's when everything started to break for me.

I found Harriet and John Q in the census records.  Everything added up except they had a daughter, Catherine, born in 1847.  Harriet and John didn't marry until 1852.  I eventually found this Catherine living with Harriet, John W, Margaret M, and John M W Means in Cabarrus County in 1850.  On all records for this Catherine, whose name ended up being Sarah Ann Catherine Lemmond, her father is given as John Q Lemmond, but I think she was born illegitimately to Harriet before John Q entered the picture.

In the 1850 census, Margaret M Means is listed as "insane".  She's also listed that way in 1860.  I have been unable to find this family in census records after 1860, but that's because Margaret died, leaving a LOT of land and property which became the subject of a dispute between the heirs.  From the records, it looks as if Harriet is not the only one who married a Lemmond.  She had a sister, Mary, who married M. M. Lemmond, who I found when I thought I'd found the breadcrumb trail of Margaret McCord.  John Q and M. M. are brothers.

Margaret Means' estate file is 71 pages long and the images are available on FamilySearch.org.  I can't believe I've been lucky enough to find all this information just by adopting a "Lemon" profile.  They may or may not be my Lemmonds, but either way, they've been fascinating to follow.