Isabella Godbehere (née? Taylor, c.1787 – 1860-07?) was my 4th-great-grandmother, being the mother of Rebecca, wife of Henderson Fisher, by her husband Thomas Godbehere. She was referred to by a number of nicknames, particularly Sabella. Isabella’s origins are mysterious, and she is often said to be of part Cherokee ancestry, although so far the DNA evidence has not borne this out.
Although her name was Isabella, the shorter Sabella/Sabilla was commonly used. For instance, the name Sabilla was reported on the 1850 census. This variant also attached to some descendants, such as her daughter Sara Sabilla. Her husband Thomas’s will refers to her as “my wife Sebbeller” and similar variants.
The records cited below indicate that she was around 32 when she married Thomas. This raises the possibility that she may have had a previous marriage, and that Taylor is not her maiden name. So far as I know, no other researcher has considered this possibility.
There are only two government records I am aware of of Isabella: her marriage to Thomas in Rhea County, TN on 1818-06-15⟮1⟯, and her residence in Rhea County in the 1850 census, called Sabilla (or Sebilla?) and living with her son Richard. The latter is significant as it gives her age as 63, placing her birth (if accurate) in 1786×7, the only information dating her. A county history says 1787, but that may be based only on the census.
There are a number of quotes about Sabella (and her husband) that can be found online and look like they have been copied and pasted from all over and whose ultimate source is unclear.⟮2⟯ Example:
Sabella was red-headed. She dropped dead in her cow lot, rumored to be daughter of Cherokee Jennie Walker.
A county history says that Sabella died July 1860, but it may only be known that she died before that date. She does not appear in the 1860 federal census.
She is frequently claimed to be part-Cherokee. A more ambitious claim has her a matrilineal great-granddaughter of the famous Nancy Ward.
Here’s another common copied-and-pasted quote:
Researcher Oscar C. Torbett says that Sabilla Taylor was definitely at least half cherokee. She was most likely a daughter of Charley Fox Taylor and Jenny Walker of McMinn County, Tennessee. But she may have been a daughter of Charley’s brother Richard Taylor. Seth Tallent (local historian) told me in 1980 that he thought Sabilla was most likely a daughter of Charley Fox Taylor.
Seth Tallent (
Charley and Jenny supposedly were each half-Cherokee on their mothers’ sides.
DNA evidence can bear on the question of Isabella’s matrilineal line. Since mitochondrial DNA is passed from a mother to children, it provides an unrecombined window into matrilineal ancestry.
In 2019, I reached out to the family of a female-line descendant of Isabella who got a mitochondrial test. Here is the line to the testee’s mother, which goes through my ancestor Rebecca Godbehere:
The testee, a son of Geneva, has a haplogroup of H1a1. This is distinctly European, which pretty much disproves any claim that Isabella’s female-line could go to a Cherokee. For comparison, a documented female-line descendant of Nancy Ward is in haplogroup C1c⟮4⟯⟮5⟯, which is identifiably American Indian.
This does not prove Isabella has no Cherokee ancestry, but it undermines one of her major claims to it. It is possible that she had none at all.
Her children are listed under her husband.