I MUST admit it when I am wrong...

From the U.S. Federal Census for Clarke County, MS, the following information is known about Martha, wife of James Franklin Bolton:

1850 (Name | Age | Gender | POB)
Martha | 20 | F | AL

1870 (Name | Age | Gender | Race | POB)
Martha | 40 | F | W | AL

1880 (Name | Age | Gender | Race | POB | FPOB | MPOB)
Martha A | 49 | F | W | AL | TN | AL

James Franklin Bolton, Jr. (son of James Franklin and Martha A Bolton) died on 22 Nov 1954. James' youngest son, Girard Frank Bolton, provided the information for James' death certificate. In that death certificate, Girard reported that James' mother was Margaret Risher.

Isabella Belle Bolton-Hinson (daughter of James Franklin and Martha A Bolton) died on 28 Mar 1942. Isabella's eldest daughter, Mattie Martha Hinson-McKinney, provided the information for Isabella's death certificate. In that death certificate, Mattie reported that Isabella's mother was Martha Smith.

In June 2012, I, Roy Dalton Pope, Jr. (grandson of Girard Frank Bolton), submitted a DNA sample to Ancestry.com for testing and genealogy matching. Now in receipt of my DNA results, I can clearly see that no DNA matches were returned from descendants of James Risher, Jr. and Lucy Malone (the parents of Margaret Risher), or from descendants of their ancestors. There are, however, a lot of matches returned with descendants of the Smith line.

It is difficult for a person such as myself to accept that my grandfather, a man who touted the necessity for remembering where we came from, gave an incorrect name for his own grandmother on his father's death certificate. Looking at the consistency in the use of the name Martha (as opposed to Margaret) in the census, Mattie's account of her grandmother's name on her own mother's death certificate, and the results returned in my own DNA test, it is now more than obvious to me that my grandfather (Girard Frank Bolton) made an error in the information that he provided and that his grandmother's name was Martha A Smith.