Archdale author unravels a 150-year-old family mystery

ARCHDALE

When Beth Saunders began investigating the mysterious disappearance of Thomas Maness, her great-great-grandfather, she had no idea where the search might lead her.

If anywhere.

Some three decades later, the Archdale genealogist and former journalist has a story for the ages, having finally uncovered the remarkable truth of what really happened to Maness nearly 150 years ago. She unravels the unlikely tale in her new book, “The Search for Thomas Maness.”

“This guy deserves a book,” Saunders remembers thinking. “Who else is going to tell this story?”

Saunders, an Archdale native and former writer for the Archdale-Trinity News, inherited this mystery back in the 1990s, when she was discussing the family lineage with her grandparents. When they mentioned her great-great-grandfather, Thomas Maness, had gone looking for work around 1875 and never came home, she was understandably intrigued — and, as a genealogist, duly challenged.

“I thought it’d be nice if I could solve this mystery, but I was the fourth generation,” Saunders says.

“When … (Thomas’) son was 20, he went to Virginia looking for him — that’s where he’d gone to find a job — but nobody knew anything. And then … (Thomas’ grandson), my grandfather, carried around a picture of him, and every time he ran into the name Maness, he would show them the picture, but he never found anything. If they hadn’t found anything, was I really going to find anything?”

The story was that Thomas, a skilled lumberjack who apparently moved from town to town, hiring himself out as manual labor, found himself in a community near the Randolph and Guilford county line around 1874. He met a young girl, 14-year-old Pandora Wall, and married her that June. Within a year, Pandora was pregnant, but before she even gave birth, the father-to-be left town.

“Work was scarce, so a lot of men were going to work on the railroads and in the mines,” Saunders explains. “Thomas said he was going to work at the Bertha Zinc Mine in Virginia, but he never came home. They never heard from him again.”

For generations, descendants have puzzled over the young man’s disappearance: Had he died in some type of accident, mining or otherwise? Had he met with foul play? Or had he simply decided to start a new life in a new place?

Saunders joined the succession of searchers in the early 1990s, but with little luck early on. It was if Thomas, though he was clearly dead by then, was teasing his great-great-granddaughter in a genealogical game of hide-and-seek.

“I kept looking on and off as I was looking for other family lines,” Saunders says. “I would look and get really frustrated.”

Finally, an archival clue — a vintage marriage record — led her to Moore County, where an elderly genealogist and historian told her some bodacious tales about his cousin, Swain Maness, a colorful character who was rumored to have five wives scattered across North Carolina.

Saunders began to suspect Swain Maness and Thomas Maness might be the same person. There were other clues, but two in particular caught her attention — Swain Maness was reportedly a tall man and, according to the cousin, was “the best lumberjack around,” attributes that matched Thomas.

Without giving away too much of Saunders’ story, we’ll simply tell you that Saunders conclusively proved Swain and Thomas were one and the same in 2012, thanks to some genealogical detective work and a definitive DNA test. The good news came in an email from FamilyTreeDNA.

“I was all by myself (when the email arrived), but I had to do a dance and whoop whoop,” Saunders says with a chuckle. “I’d finally found him and solved the mystery.”

Not everything Saunders had heard about Thomas/Swain proved to be true, however. For example, he didn’t really have five wives.

He had seven.

“They were all living at the same time, but none of them knew about each other,” Saunders says. “And they were generations apart — he kept marrying younger women and moving around.”

The wives lived in Archdale, Moore County (two lived here), Chatham County, Anson County, Virginia and Alabama.

It wasn’t until a year or two after confirming Thomas and Swain were the same man that Saunders decided to chronicle his compelling story — and her equally compelling search for him — in a book.

“I had to tell his story,” she says. “I just knew I had to tell it.”

Want to go? Author Beth Saunders will sign copies of her book, “The Search for Thomas Maness,” on May 1 at 6 p.m. at Scuppernong Books, 304 S. Elm St., Greensboro. {related_content_uuid}b9ddf53c-be0d-45f0-a2db-ce0513f6354c{/related_content_uuid}