Taking time

I haven't been checking my blog, or reading the blogs I follow for a couple weeks. Sorry! I'll catch up with you all soon. Instead I've been obsessed over genealogy. I've been working on families for a niece-in-law, and for a nephew-in-law. 

I finished my niece-in-law's tree. Both her parents didn't know their fathers' genealogies, so that was fun to help them understand where they came from. I'm still obsessed with my nephew-in-law's family tree, and I will be until I've found every bit of documentation I can find going back as far as I possibly can. It's a game. I am so happy when I have a juicy family tree to explore.  

His last name is Newton. Of course, Sir Isaac Newton is a many times removed great uncle. He's likely the great uncle of almost all the Newton's in America. Sir Isaac actually helped me with this tree, pointing out to me which uncle of his (Sir Isaac's) my nephew-in-law descends from. Big help.  

Apparently when Sir Isaac was being knighted, he provided Queen Anne with a handwritten short tree that proved his connection to some Newton who was his relative. Stunning find.  

That race is run.

I recently learned two of my father's first cousins died. We weren't "close." However, we shared an interest in family history and I liked them. I hate "losing people."

They were both generous when asked genealogical questions. I received family stories and photos from each via email and snail mail. They solved a number of genealogical mysteries for me, giving me the low down on family rogues and reasons to be proud of some others.  I liked knowing they were still alive.

Ray was a double first cousin to my father. Ray's father was my paternal grandfather's brother. Ray's mother was my paternal grandmother's sister (i.e., 2 sisters married 2 brothers). He was a gentleman, kind and friendly. If curiosity and enthusiasm can be family traits, then I recognized those shared qualities in him. 

I knew Gary better. His father was another of my paternal grandfather's brothers. Gary was a polyglot who went to South Korea in 1964 to teach English and to study Asian languages. He never married, but he fell in love with South Korea. He stayed there for the rest of his life as a hired word-slinger, translating and editing. He had a passion for Esperanto, always hoping it could become a common language. Eventually he gave up his U.S. citizenship to become a citizen of South Korea. He said he had no axe to grind, being a citizen was just easier.

I wish we had corresponded more. There's so much more I want to know, and they were the only ones alive to tell me. I should have thanked them more profusely, and I would like to have had the opportunity to say goodbye. Now that race is run.

Death is so freakin' permanent. 

Complete Lives

The majority of people seem to marry and produce children. When researching genealogy I wonder if their lives were meaningful or if they were happy? What's usually missing with genealogy records is the backstory.
Vital records don't tell us is who was a cheapskate, who ran off with the milkman, or who left home and never came back. Every once in a while there are stories that fill in the gaps and gives one pause.

I came across a 5th great grandfather who was a Revolutionary War soldier. He was born in Virginia about 1760, and married in 1780. He had 6 children with his wife.

He left his family prior to 1810, to live with another woman. He seems to have beat his mistress "mercilessly" on more than one occasion. Later court testimony claims she finally warned him if he did it again, she would kill him. Unfortunately, she made the mistake of warning him in front of witnesses. He "drowned" not long afterwards, in 1821.

Or maybe not. Upon examination of the body, the authorities discovered a wound "on the left breast about 3/4 of an inch in a circular form. Whatever it was which the deceased had been wounded with supposed had caused his death, passing between the ribs, none of which were fractured."

The mistress was indicted for his murder. Later she was convicted of second degree murder, and sentenced to 12 years in prison.  

His wife lived until 1840, but I found no information about her. I hope she had a good life after the old man left. 

I have no further information about his mistress, either. I feel sorry for her. A woman of her time living outside of marriage with a brutal man didn't likely have many options. And, of course, she warned him.

Women's lives are nearly invisible. It is kind of sad when only the bad guys leave a trail.

This is just an old photo I found online.  It is labelled "The Absolom Davis family".  I am  not related to this family.  I love it though. You don't often find casual old photos like this. It says a lot about these people's lives.

Our first great grandchild

Our new (and first!) great-grandbaby was born a few days ago. All went well, and she is home now. She lives far from us, in the frozen northlands. However, her mother and grandmother keep us posted with photos and videos. I don't think she could be more beautiful, by the way. We fell in love with her long before she was born.

I'm happy to live in the modern world, where photos and videos are quick and easy to share. This beautiful child is in my husband's genealogical line, so I've been busy the last few days going through old photos of his family as far back as I can find. Most roads lead back to Ireland, the UK, and Germany in my husband's family.

I have to wonder about the ancestors who endured their children moving to the U.S. How hard it must have been to wonder and wait long months for a letter informing one that new grandchildren and great grandchildren arrived. 

Here is an article about her 5th great grandmother,     Teresa (Solomon) Enders.  She was born in Deggendorf, Germany in 1825. Although she died in 1910, this article using her photo was published in 1927. 

Grandma's letter

--This treasure is a letter from my Tennessee grandmother (1905-2000) to my daughter, written in February 1981, for the occasion of my daughter's 9th birthday. My grandmother was a Pentecostal Christian, so there is a good bit of "Jesus" talk in this.  It is simply the way she talked.

Dear (M),

As I never see you to talk to you long enough, I just wanted you to know how we lived when I was a little girl.  I thought it would be nice to send you this for your birthday in February 1981.

I had the sweetest childhood a little girl could have. We were very poor. We didn’t have toys like children have today. We would always get up at 5 o’clock in the morning, because you see, we lived on a farm. I was about five years old when I can really remember. My mother would wake all of us up and we would eat our breakfast. Then there were cows to milk and horses to feed. There were seven of us children. My one little brother (Johnny) died when I was just about three months old or less (note from Colette – he died September 2, 1905, my Grandma was born at the end of May 1905). I can’t remember seeing him, but my mother said he called them to the bed and asked to see me before he died. He was about two years old when he went to be with Jesus. Well now, to get back to our farm and all the work we had to do. I just had the best daddy in the world, I thought, and he was so kind to us.  I never remember him saying an unkind word to us, yet he had a way about him that to look at him you just didn’t want to do anything, only what he told us to do. We would thin the corn out to two stalks in a hill after it was big enough and that I could do.  As I grew older I got a harder job like hoeing corn. In those days we had hand plows and mules or horses to pull the plow. I can remember my grandfather plowing with oxen with a wooden yoke on their necks. Then we had sheep. The little lambs were so sweet. When I think of them now, I think of Jesus with the lambs in his arms and around him. But I think he created all animals and the lamb was a symbol of his love – how he died that we might have eternal life.

We would cut the wool off of the sheep (I helped do that).  One day I was, as we called it, shearing them. I cut his hide till it bled. It went “ba,ba”. I felt so bad about that. Then my mother would send the wool away and get our blankets for the bed that way. Oh yes, she would keep some and she had an old spinning wheel. She’d make the thread to knit our stockings for winter. They were real warm. She taught me to knit. I was making a pair and I told her this was like going around the world and to the North Pole. Ha!

Now I’ll tell you how we played.  We had rocks that green pretty moss grew on and we would play like we were making beds.  And we did, too –real pretty.  We never worked on Sunday and we had friends come to visit us.  I think back about it now, it was really fun.  We had one little china doll – about 5 inches long.  It was handed down from the oldest to the youngest. We never broke it. I wish I had it now to show it to you. We would play ball and sit around a fireplace in the wintertime popping popcorn.  I remember one time my brother Wint and I got to go to town with my father and we got to go to a movie. We didn’t have radios or TV’s then, but my childhood is all sweet memories.  We were just one big happy family. We had a cave close to our house and at the entrance there were shelves my Dad made.  We would keep our milk and butter there –so cold.  We had one cave us kids used to have to crawl in. After we got in it was the most beautiful place, but scary.  We could see skeletons, maybe of animals, I don’t know.  It was so dangerous as I think of it now. Then we had a place we called the “rolly hole.”  You could throw a rock and you could hear it roll down, down, down.  Somehow the rocks would come to top rolled so smooth. It isn’t there anymore, they tell me.  

We walked 2 miles to go to school. There were no sidewalks, and there were rocks, etc.  We walked barefoot in the summer and when fall came we got new shoes. Like boys wear. We were so proud of them. I’ll tell you about our chickens later.

One day my mother and two oldest sisters went to pick blackberries and blueberries.   They would take a couple of big pails and go up into the mountains and would be gone all day sometimes, as they grew wild in the mountains.  They were delicious, better than what we get now from the grocery store.

Once, I asked my mom what we would eat for dinner. I was only about eleven years old and my brother and two little sisters were there for me to feed. There was no lunch meat like we have now. She said, “Well, you can have chicken if you will kill one and dress it.”  Well, that sounded so good to me.  I told my little brother if he would hold its head and my sister (then about seven) would hold its feet, I’d chop its head off.  We laid it on a block of wood and that poor chicken, I thought, I just can’t do this. But then I thought about dinner so I took an ax and cut its head off. Then we built a fire out of wood and heated a big kettle of water and dipped it in hot water, took all the feathers off, cut it up and washed it good. We fried it on an old-fashioned wood-burning kitchen stove. We did have a good dinner!

We used to have a ball to play with that mother made us out of rags; she rolled over the rags many times with heavy thread. We would play throwing it over the house to each other. We also used to tell riddles we would hear. Maybe your mom can explain that to you. My sister Bertha and I used to saw big trees down. I helped cut corn when in the fall the corn was ready to shuck. We’d cut it and put it in bunches and tie the top. Big bunches of the stalks it grew on and corn, too. Then we’d feed the horses and cows in wintertime. One day my father came to the field where we were working and said, “Ma is sick, you will have to go to Grandma’s house.” So we all went to Grandma Sharp’s house and in the middle of the afternoon Grandma came home. She said, “You have a little baby sister.” Grandma Sharp was the midwife who delivered the baby. You should have seen us run for home! The baby’s name was Neva, my baby sister. She will be 65 years old the 23^rd of May. So you see that has been many years ago.

We had a spring near our house and carried our water by pails full to drink and to wash clothes. It was fun. The water was as clear as crystals. It was pure water that God made; no chemicals of any kind were in it. I went to a little one-room schoolhouse. My Dad took me the 1^st day and I cried to go home with him. I was six years old. The teacher had a watch on a chain around her neck and she took me to one side and showed me the birds on the watch to get me to stop crying.

I just wanted to tell you how different it was when I was a girl your age. Of course that has been over 70 years since I was 5 years old. I wish I could take you and your Mom and Dad to where we used to live. Our house is torn down now, they tell me.

The saddest part I left till last. My father died when he was only 39 years old. He was sick quite a few years and it left my mother with 5 of us to raise. But that didn’t help her as far as missing him. We all worked together and we never went hungry. But that didn’t ease the aches in our hearts for a father. He died in Louisville, Kentucky in hospital in 1919. He never got to see his 1^st grandchild. She was born May 18, 1919.   He died June 1^st, 1919. But you know, someday we will all be together. Jesus went away to prepare a home for us. And then if we live a good life he will see that we all be together someday. I know you are a good girl. You have a good mother, so always listen to what she tells you to do. You also have a good father. I wanted a little girl so much, but God gave me two sons instead. Now I have two daughters (in-law) and oodles of grand daughters and a great grand daughter to love. And I love each of you. And my great grandsons, too. I hope you enjoy just a part of this letter – how we used to live.

Love you,

Great Grandma

Here are some early photos of my grandmother and some of her siblings:

Grandma and her brother, about 1914?

My grandmother is the one in back with the big bow in her hair. Taken about 1918?

 

My Sweet Grandma

My paternal grandmother was born in 1905 on a farm in Pickett County, Tennessee. She came from a family with roots in Colonial Virginia. They were part of the great migration of settlers who came through the Cumberland Gap into Tennessee and Kentucky in the late 1700's and early 1800's, when that part of the country was first opened to white settlers. When she died, I lost a direct link to a way of life that no longer exists. Grandma was one of the last of her kind: a sweet, simple woman born into a southern mountain culture with roots extending deep into our pioneer past. 

Her later years spent living in a northern industrial city did little to change her essential character, shaped growing up in the hills of Northeastern Tennessee. She had a big heart filled to the brim with love of God and family. She was the archetypal old-fashioned grandmother: kindly, innocent, loving, and accepting.

Grandpa noticed Grandma at a church dance both attended in nearby Wayne County, Kentucky, where my Grandpa lived. One day after that fateful encounter he decided to ride his horse across the state line to where Grandma’s family lived in Northeastern Tennessee. Grandma did not really know my grandfather at the time, and she certainly was not expecting him to visit. When he arrived she was not at home, so her brother rode off to find her. Grandma said she was mortified that he had come to her house, but pleased nonetheless. Not long after that visit, Grandpa talked her into eloping. They escaped on horseback and were married in the middle of the road by the preacher in December 1923. Grandma was a naive and sheltered 18 year old. Grandma’s wedding kiss was her first. She said she had no idea about sex. She got wide eyed and then laughed in her modest, grandma way when she told me that.

Her mother was angry and cried when she found out that Grandma had run off to get married. I would have cried, too.

Next time I will share a letter Grandma wrote to my daughter (her great-granddaughter) in 1981, telling her about what life was like when she (Grandma) was a young girl. 

Here is a photo of my grandparents taken in 1924 when my grandmother was pregnant with my father.

Enduring Love

My maternal grandmother was Veronica, born in Chicago in 1892, and died in Lake Co., Indiana (IN) in 1950. Veronica had 13 children with William, but only 10 lived to adulthood. My aunts said she was very “organized.” What might they have meant with that word? I imagine she would have had to be organized (and strict) to manage all those children. Grandpa was a railroad worker and Grandma supplemented the family income by baking pies for local restaurants. The family lived in a community settled in the mid-19th century by German immigrants. They spoke German in the home until WWI, when Grandma forbade it lest the locals think them unpatriotic. 

Veronica was a carrier of a genetic disease, X-ALD (Adrenaleukodystrophy). I wrote about it a while back if you are interested in weird genetic diseases. 

From what I hear, Veronica was “da boss” in that family. Since her own father drank a bit too much, my grandmother did not allow Grandpa to drink beer in the house. If he wanted a beer he had to go sit on the back porch to drink it. In another story, she was making apple pies in the kitchen and was annoyed by two of her teenage daughters who were loudly arguing in the dining room.  She picked up an apple and threw it at one of my aunts, hitting her in the head. It stopped the fight. I'm sorry. I know that's extreme, but I'm a sucker for physical humor. It makes me laugh.

I can't help but admire her, although I suspect she was feared as much as loved. A woman like that? Well, her life would have been very different if she had been born in 1950 instead of dying in that year. My aunts spoke well of her. Her youngest daughter (#12 of 13, who was only 16 when Veronica died) adored her. My own mother (#8 of 13), never spoke of her. If pushed she would only say, “I loved my mother.” That was it. Perhaps my mother was afraid to talk about her because Veronica's ghost visited my mother one dark night. That will have to wait for another post.

William and Veronica, married 1910

Veronica’s mother was Catherine, born 1869 in Lake Co., IN and died there in 1935. She and Frank had 7 children. Only three lived to marry and have children. Her father died when she was a year old, and her mother died when she was ten. She and her siblings were raised by their stepfather and his second wife. 

Catherine was a sweet, kindly woman with a gregarious husband. Her oldest son’s wife died leaving him with three daughters to raise. Great Uncle Harry moved back in with his parents so his mother, Catherine, could raise those girls. I met one of the girls (my mother’s first cousin, Dorothy). She told me how loving her Grandmother Catherine was. Dorothy said firmly and with great pride: “It couldn’t have been easy to take on three children at her age, but she did!” I was proud of Great Grandma then, too, and awed by the strength of her love. She also said that when Grandpa (Frank) was being demanding, Grandma (Catherine) would whisper to Dorothy “He thinks he’s the crowned head!” 

Frank and Catherine, married 1887

Catherine’s mother was Susanna, born 1848 at Lake Co., IN. Susanna had three children with first husband, Anton, a German immigrant and school teacher. They married in 1866. He died in 1870 from the adult variant of X-ALD. She had 4 more children with her second husband, Peter, and died in childbirth at age 31 in 1879. Peter raised all her children. He remarried and had 10 more children with his second wife.

I have a soft spot for Susanna. She died young, suffered the loss of her first husband, and left so many young, dependent children when she died. She is buried in the same cemetery as her second husband, not the same as her first. That kind of bothers me, especially since the second husband is buried next to his second wife, not her. Intellectually I understand, but it still bothers me. She is mine. I like to imagine Anton was the love of her life and they are separated unfairly for eternity. This is how family rumors start. 

I was told the following photo is of Susanna, although this woman looks older than 31. However, she also looks exactly like my mother. Let's believe it really is her, okay?

Susanna (1848-1879)

Susanna’s mother was Catharina, born in a small village in the Saarland region of Germany in 1814. The Saarland was batted back and forth between France and Germany for centuries, and it seems to have been part of France in 1814 when Catharina was born. However, she spoke and identified as German when she arrived in the U.S. in 1843. She and Johann had 10 children, and she died in Lake Co., Indiana in 1886.

Catharina’s mother was Angelique (Angela), born 1784 in Germany. She arrived in the U.S. in 1843, and she died in 1859 in Lake Co., Indiana. Angela and Mathias had 6 children.

Angela’s mother was Margaretha, born 1763 in Germany, died there in 1804. She had 11 children with Michael. Four died in childhood, four immigrated to Indiana.

Margaretha’s mother was Maria, born about 1730 in Germany where she died in 1768. She married Lukas. 

I wish I knew all their stories. Thank you Sabine, for encouraging me to "bring it on." Obviously this is inspired by your recent post about your grandmother.

Remember the ladies

Yesterday I considered staying in bed all day with the covers pulled over my head. Considering the mood I was in, it probably would have been for the best. However, life is meant to be lived, adversity overcome, and these damn moods really MUST be tamed! This is the stuff of life. Who am I to surrender?

Instead, I will follow the the directive of Abigail Adams. In her March 31, 1776 letter to her husband, John Adams she asked him to "remember the ladies" when helping to build a code of laws for what what they hoped would become a new, independent nation dedicated to liberty and justice for all.

Today I remember the ladies on just one branch of my family. This is not my distaff line, although I could do that. Instead, I am thinking of my paternal grandpa's mother. Let us consider the lives of women in her line as a long, multi-generational Women's March for equality and respect. In honoring them, I also honor all the brave women marching on Washington, D.C. and other cities.

Here is my great grandmother, Emma Frost. She was born in Wayne Co., Kentucky in 1881, and died there in 1963. She and her husband (her second cousin) were tobacco farmers who also operated a small grocery store in their house. Emma and her husband had 12 children.

Emma

Emma's mother was Ellen Ramsey (1857-1938), also from Wayne Co., Kentucky. Ellen was a farm woman who outlived two husbands, had 5 children with the first and 6 children with the second. Ellen Ramsey looked like this:

Ellen

  
Ellen's mother was Sarah "Sally" Rector (1814-1905). Another farm woman! Sally is my 3rd great grandmother through Emma's side, but she is also my 3rd great aunt through Emma's husband's side. Ha! I need a chart to figure these things out. Sally and her husband had 10 children.

Sally

 


Sally's mother was Rutha Simpson. Rutha was born in Pendleton Co., South Carolina in 1790. Her family moved to Rowan Co., North Carolina when she was young, but by 1806 they were living in Wayne Co., Kentucky. Rutha's father was an officer in the Royalist army during the War for Independence, so they had to keep moving after the British lost. They were not welcome in most communities. Rutha, however, married a son of a Revolutionary War soldier who fought at the battle of Yorktown, when General Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington. That must have made for interesting dinner conversations around the farmhouse table after all the chores were done. Rutha and her husband had nine children.

Rutha (from a painting on a commemorative plate)

Rutha's mother was Sarah Sherrill (b. 1746, Virginia; d. 1826 Kentucky). The Sherrill's are historical figures and old settlers. Her grandfather, William Sherrill, was born about 1670 in Devon, England. He arrived in Maryland about 1686 as a bonded passenger. In time, he became a fur trader and a well known Indian guide in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He is also sometimes referred to as "The Conestoga Fur Trader." Sarah was a year old when she and her family left Augusta, Virginia to become the first Europeans to settle on the west side of the Catawba River in North Carolina. Sarah and her husband had as many as 13 children.

Sarah's mother was Agnes White. Agnes was born in Virginia in 1726 and was part of the pioneer North Carolina family referenced above. She died at Sherrill's Ford, North Carolina in 1795. Agnes White and William Sherrill had as many as 14 children, many dying young.

Agnes' mother was likely Mary "Polly" Campbell, born in Ulster, Ireland in 1686.  She married Duncan White, and she died in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1728. 

Polly's mother was possibly Mary McCoy, born in Scotland about 1650, married Moses White, and died in Ulster, Ireland about 1689. 

I honor these women today, with all my heart. They are only one branch of women who came before me. In the wheel of life that represents ancestry, there are so many others. 

4th of July

I meant to write a funny post.  Then I got sick last Friday just before the long 4th of July weekend.  While convalescing I read a lot of books, one of which took place during the Revolutionary War.  That put me in a 4th of July frame of mind.

My mind wandered as we drove through Tennessee and Kentucky last month on vacation.  I thought of my direct paternal ancestors who arrived in Virginia in 1714 as indentured servants.  They later migrated from Fauquier County in the Virginia Piedmont down to Rowan County, North Carolina and then to Grayson County, Virginia in the 1790’s before moving on to Southeastern Kentucky in 1807.  I tried to imagine the land as they might have seen it. I wondered why they moved so often?  I wondered what my female ancestors were thinking as they left family they would likely never see again?  I wondered how long it took those strangers to feel like they belonged somewhere?

I guess I share their wanderlust.  I am also reminded that, although I identify as a Northerner, I have a long and storied Southern heritage.  My father’s people did not move to Northern Indiana until 1925, and then only because the Southeastern Kentucky farmland was used up, making it hard to continue to support a family farm. Along with a number of their friends and family, my grandparents headed north to work in the automobile factories soon after they were married.  They may have found work, but they did not find a lot of respect.  All too often Southerners are deemed stupid by Northerners, and if they are rural Southerners, well - they are called hillbillies.  That's a bad word, by the way.  Nobody likes to be called that.  Please don't use it.

Harriette Simpson Arnow, the Kentucky-born author of The Dollmaker, was a distant cousin of mine (to say the least).  Our closest kinship is through her paternal grandmother wherein we are 2nd cousins, 3 time removed via the Shearer family. Her grandmother, Louise Shearer, and my 3rd great-grandmother, Margaret Ann Shearer, were sisters.  I just happen to have a picture of the two of them with their other sister, Rebecca.  My 3rd great-grandma (Margaret Ann Shearer Huffaker) is in the middle and Harriette's grandma (Louise Shearer Simpson) is at the right.  They look kind of stern, don't they?
It turns out I am also Harriette's 4th cousin, 2 times removed through her maternal Foster line.

And finally, I wonder if she is also related to me through a man named Reuben Simpson on her father's side?  There were unrelated Simpson families in Wayne County back then, so I am not sure.  The problem with proving these old families is that the U.S. Federal Census did not start listing all the names and ages of people at a residence until 1850. 

Like I said, no hillbilly jokes.  These particular families were educated, upstanding, and separate families.  Please don't challenge me to prove it, because I can and it would bore you to tears.  I have a 22,000 member family tree and I know how to use it.

The Dollmaker was published in 1954.  It describes the hardships rural Kentucky hill people endured when moving from Wayne County, Kentucky to the industrial North during WWII.  In 1984 that book was made into an ABC TV movie starring Jane Fonda.  Fonda won an Emmy for her performance.  The Dollmaker is actually the third novel in a trilogy Arnow wrote about Southeastern Kentucky hill people.  The first was Mountain Path; the second book in the trilogy is Hunter’s Horn.  Joyce Carol Oates was a huge fan of Arnow's and I have often wondered if Oates' great novel, Them, was influenced by The Dollmaker.

The most recent common Simpson ancestor we "might" share is a North Carolina man named Reuben Simpson.  He was a Loyalist who fought on the wrong side of the Revolutionary War.  Apparently his father-in-law, Capt. William Sherrill, and his own brother, William Simpson, were on the right side.  Author and genealogist Nona Williams states:  

"When William learned that Reuben had joined the Tories at Ramsour's Mill, William rode his horse into the ground in a futile attempt to reach the battlefield in time to kill his brother."

If true, it was a failed attempt - Our Reuben enlisted, fought, and lived to tell the tale.  I will admit I was not thrilled to find him in my family tree.  But as my brother, Big D, keeps telling anyone who will listen, "You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family."

On second thought, he probably did not tell the tale very often.  Loyalists were hated by the general populace after the War and were often forced to leave the community.  In 1798, he traveled through the Cumberland Gap to Wayne County, Kentucky with his family to start over. 

Harriette Simpson Arnow published her novel about a Revolutionary War soldier in 1974.  Her protagonist was a Patriot and an Overmountain Man who was traveling through the Kentucky backwoods looking for his family after the Battle of King's Mountain in South Carolina.  The book is called The Kentucky Trace.  I quite liked it.

Cousin Harriette had a gift for understanding everyday life and people living in the late 18th century.  She was also interested in all sorts of obscure, obsolete practices, like how to make saltpeter in the backwoods in order to make gunpowder, or the logistics of loading a Kentucky Long Rifle during an Indian attack on a forted farm.  I have limited interest in these things, but certainly enough curiosity to keep me reading in awe of her extensive knowledge.  She also wrote two nonfiction books of social history about 18th century Kentucky and Tennessee; however, her personal opinions are dated and she romanticizes the Scotch Irish a bit too much for me.  I like her novels better.

My Southern ancestors fought on both sides in the Revolutionary War and they did the same in the Civil War. I cannot claim a moral purity or even a political consistency in my genealogy.  I wish I could.  I wish they were all heroes; however, the world does not work like that.  Some of my people were brave, some were kind, and some of them were mean-spirited jerks.  The only thing they all seem to have had in common is that none of them were rich.  Like so many other Old Settler families, my father’s line includes many interesting characters.

My direct, paternal 6^th great grandfather, Jesse, is buried somewhere in Lawrence County, Indiana, just south of where the wedding we went to last month was held.  He has been on my mind ever since we were up there.  His wife (aka "Unknown") is the reason I took up genealogy years ago.  It bothers me that nobody knows her name.  I have been trying to find her for years.  Still looking. 

Old Jesse was a Revolutionary War Patriot who fought at the Battle of Yorktown and was present when the British General Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington. 

In 1807, his son Samuel left Grayson County, Virginia to go to Wayne County, Kentucky and marry his childhood sweetheart, Rutha Simpson.  Rutha was the daughter of the aforementioned North Carolina Loyalist, Reuben Simpson.  The night before Samuel left for Kentucky, old Jesse Rector made his son swear on a family bible that he would remain faithful to the United States.  I kind of love that story.