Kearby Family Genealogy

Kearby Family Genealogy

My first Kearby is Sarah Jane Kearby, who was born in Jessamine County, Kentucky, in 1814. She married John Cave. Sarah Jane died in 1891, in Indiana.

Her parents were Richard Leroy Kearby and Nancy Jane Dean. Richard was born in Botetourt County, Virginia, in 1788. Nancy Dean was born in Jessamine County, Kentucky in 1794. Richard and Nancy are both buried on Moore’s Ridge, Orange County, Indiana, Nancy in 1868, Richard in 1877.

Richard’s parents were Hawkins Kearby and Priscilla Ann Campbell. Hawkins was born in 1742, Virginia. Priscilla was born in 1744, Pennsylvania. Hawkins died in 1814, in Jessamine County, Kentucky. Priscilla died in 1836, Orange County, Indiana.

Hawkins’s parents were Francis Kearby and Mary Hawkins. Francis was born in 1704, in Goochland County, Virginia. Mary was born in 1716, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. They are both buried in Albemarle County, Mary having died in 1750, and Francis in 1762.

I have found more about the Kearby Family in recent months. I have been to the gravesites of Richard and Nancy, but did not know where Sarah Jane, John Cave, or Priscilla were buried. Now that I do, I am planning on visiting their graves this summer. I have found nothing on the Kearby Family in Kentucky (or very little) which was very disappointing. When Richard and Nancy were married, a James Dean was the bondsman, as Nancy would have been 17 years old when they married. There was a James Dean family in Jessamine County, but according to James Dean’s will, he did not have a daughter named Nancy. But I do know her name was Dean. Maybe James was her uncle? I plan to go to the Kentucky Archives this summer, and I am hoping to find out more about this line. I have found no information on where Hawkins is buried in that county. I am going to both Botetourt and Albemarle counties in Virginia, and I am hoping to learn something more about both the Kearby and Campbell families.

We’ll see what shakes loose!

If you are related to this family line, drop me a comment, and let’s compare notes.

The Road Ahead

I absolutely love the first day on the road.

Just like starting the first chapter of a new book by a beloved author, pulling out of the drive in the morning and heading on down the trail is an incredible feeling.

Even though we plan out our route well in advance, there’s something special about actually seeing it play out. Besides, no matter how much planning you do in advance, there are always the surprising bits: places that didn’t live up to expectations, or which were unexpectedly closed, or those areas that were even better than you imagined, because you saw more, heard more, or somehow just felt more.

Every trip presents its own set of challenges and hurdles, and this one will be no different. The key is to approach every day with an open mind and a generous heart. If you can do that, then every day will be a treasure, one way or another. I remember each and every trip I’ve ever made, and I am always amazed at the lessons learned, the wonders seen, and the adventures followed on every single one.

I mentioned in an earlier entry that we have been to all these states before…just not to all the same counties, sites, and parks. That’s part of the thrill: going back to a place you’ve been, but seeing it in a completely different light, either because the frame of reference has changed, the place has changed, or I’ve changed.

Bags are packed, truck’s gassed up, trailer’s loaded: let’s go!!

Research for Writing While on the Fly

Traveling to other areas can be an excellent opportunity to do some research on current or future writing projects.

When you are relaxing on the beach, or at the lake, or in your mountain cabin, take some time to jot down some thoughts on what you are experiencing at the moment. Check your five senses: what do you hear, see, smell, feel, taste? Take lots of notes on your location that will help you when recalling the scene, later.

Take pictures with an eye to current or future writing as well. In the past, I have mostly taken pictures of the places and things we came to see: the monuments; the famous buildings; the genealogically important sites. Now I try to also include shots of unusual places, people, and things that will help me develop a storyline. Sometimes after I’m home again, I try to revisit in my mind places I’ve been, but I always have a better memory recall when I can at least see the place I’m thinking of. Of course you cannot use pictures of people without their permission, but if you see folks you’d love to use as characters later, why not take a few photos to remind you?

I’ve also found that browsing in unfamiliar libraries can bring on inspiration, too. Suddenly, there are many more unexplored areas and sources to check out. And if you find materials that you would prefer to take home with you, invest in photocopying all the pertinent pages.

Whether on vacation or for other reasons, travel presents all sorts of wonderful chances to add to your writing portfolio — both now and down the road.

Jones Family Genealogy, part II

Continued from Jones Family Genealogy, part I

Trying to find family further back than Cyrus was impossible, though, until I plugged “Cyrus Jones” into the DAR website. A Cyrus Jones did come up…but not mine. It was his father! Now I had Cyrus, Cyrus Sr., Cyrus Sr.’s wife, Mary Ladd, and Cyrus’s parents: Elijah Jones and Patience Fisher. Elijah is my Patriot! I did eventually use all this information to join the DAR, but I still had a great deal to prove. Even though someone had joined DAR using Elijah Jones as their patriot, the last one to come in using his information was back in 1900! So, the modern times DAR now requires substantive proof…as they should.

Back to Cyrus and Cyrus, then. Using the familysearch.com site, I was able to find connections and proof linking all three generations to each other, and back to Lewis.

So here’s the summary: Cyrus Jones was born in 1823, In Kennebec County, Maine. He married Sarah McLaughlin in 1846, Old Town, Maine. Cyrus died in Lee County, Illinois, in 1860.

Cyrus’s father, Cyrus Jones, was born in 1796, in Penobscot County, Maine. He married Mary Ladd in 1818 in Penobscot County, and he died in 1842, though I do not know where.

Cyrus Jones, Sr.’s parents were Elijah Jones and Patience Fisher. Elijah was born in Cumberland, Rhode Island in 1756. He married Patience in 1781, in Wrentham, Massachusetts. Elijah died in 1808 in Brewer, Maine.

fold3.com was a wonderful site when it came to finding out more information on Elijah’s service. Apparently, it’s fairly straightforward to find patriots listed on attendance sheets. But what made Elijah’s case unusual was that he had died early enough on that his service wasn’t accepted first time through. So his widow enlisted the help of a lawyer to argue the application. This was great on two particular accounts: one, more evidence was gathered than would normally be required, which meant the interesting information that Elijah had been present when the British officer who had been in cahoots with Benedict Arnold was hanged at West Point. This bit of trivia would have been lost if not for the need to beef up the evidence. The second instance was that the attorney hired by Elijah’s wife had signed a section of the application, H. Hamlin. Which started me thinking. Wasn’t Lincoln’s first vice-president Hannibal Hamlin? And wasn’t he from Maine? After looking him up and satisfying myself that both points were correct, I continued examining each page of the document. And there it was: Hannibal’s full signature!

Now, that was cool.

Jones Family Genealogy, part I

Jones Family Genealogy, part I

This is my family line: my name, my brother’s name, my father’s name, and so forth, straight back to our Revolutionary War Patriot. Whose name also was Jones.

I think it’s pretty cool to be able to have an unbroken line straight back through eight generations to someone through a single name.

But when you consider that the particular family name in question is as common as Jones…well, it makes you think.

There was a time not so long ago that I thought I would never find a hole to see through my genealogical brick wall. But if I’ve learned anything through years of research, it is this: never say never.  With the super speed accessible through the Internet, we can now connect with each other and other researchers faster than ever! Incredible amounts of information are loaded onto the World Wide Web all the time. Now, when I can’t find something or prove something, rather than deciding I never will,  I am more likely to say, I can’t find that or prove that YET.

My stumbling block for years was with my great-great grandfather, Lewis H. Jones. He was born in Old Town, Maine, in 1854. He married Eliza Jane Gilliland in Illinois. After they moved to Iowa, she died, and he remarried. The family decided to move to Curtis, Nebraska, where Lewis worked as a veterinarian, and where Lewis died in 1921. I knew all of this, but could not find my Jones family among the dozens of other Jones families. A fellow researcher located the family in Illinois in 1860, which consisted of Lewis, his brother Henry, and his mother, Sarah. While I was pleased to learn Lewis’s mother’s name, and that he had a brother, I still stayed stuck for years to come. One particular handicap was that I did not have regular access to the census information. Another was that I did not know his mother had remarried, nor that his father had actually come with the family on the move from Maine, but died a few months before the 1860 census would be taken.

This summer I plan to visit several of the counties in Illinois connected with this family (either through birth, marriage, or death) and one in Iowa, as well.

I finally located Lewis’s parents’ marriage record through a site online that I did not write down, and so have since been unable to find again. It was a site through the state of Maine that allowed research of marriage records, specifically. Through this site, I was able to find and identify Lewis’s parents based on location and time frame: Cyrus Jones and Sarah McLaughlin. I was even able to locate the Cyrus Jones family on the Old Town census for 1850, which listed Cyrus, Sarah, and…George, the older brother of Lewis that I did not know existed! No wonder I couldn’t find them: the family unit changed from Cyrus, Sarah, and George to Sarah, Lewis, and Henry within the span of ten years. What a difference a decade makes. After sharing this information with a cousin of my dad’s, but not being able to supply the website where I had found the information, the cousin found the same information on the second marriage record when Lewis remarried after his first wife’s death.

Continued in Jones Family Genealogy, part II

Preparing for the Road, part VI

I am a huge fan of checklists. Even before I entered this stage of life where I sometimes cannot remember why I walked into a room in the first place, let alone what I was planning to do next, I would write out lists.

Lists of goals. Lists of chores. Wish lists. Song lists. Book lists. I almost needed a list of all the lists, and had I thought of the need for such an index, no doubt I would have created one.

When planning to leave for a trip, particularly a long one, I am soon off and running with my many lists, once again.

For example, I have a list for the things we still need to complete before leaving, such as dealing with the mail, shopping for a few little items for the trailer, last minute dentist and doctor visits, and coming to some sort of agreement with the cable company, among other things.

I have a list of all the places we are stopping, whether for genealogy or for historic interest.

I have a list of all the folks we are hoping to connect with, either friends or family.

And then I have a list of all the things we need to do despite being on the road: sending cards or making calls for anniversaries and birthdays; keeping up with bill payments; sending postcards as events warrant; keeping current with what’s happening at home, even as we travel.

Lastly, I have lists of collections. I collect shot glasses, and Travel Buddy collects spoons. We have hundreds of each, from previous traversings of countries and states, but we are also missing some. Though we have previously visited all 50 states at one time or another, I am missing shot glasses from Illinois, Indiana, and Nebraska. I have them from the other 47. We are not going to Nebraska, but as we travel through the other two, I will keep a look out for a couple of good ones to add to my collection.

I guess it’s fairly extreme to keep so many lists. All I know is it sure keeps me organized!

Chilean Stew

My family has a connection to Chile through my grandfather. Although of Dutch ancestry, he (and several of his siblings) were born in Chile, and grew up there with a mixture of experiences, both good and bad.

One thing that has come down in the family (on his side, at least) is the recipe for Chilean stew. This stew is not remarkable. It’s very basic, easy to make, and is fairly cheap in terms of ingredients.

But it has remained a staple and a very warm memory from our collective childhoods (those of the children and grandchildren).

Chilean Stew

2 pounds of stew meat.
Three potatoes.
One stalk of celery.
One yellow onion.
Cumin powder, salt, and pepper.

Cook the meat, first. If you do this while chopping up the vegetables, the timing will be about right.

Chop the vegetables into about one inch pieces. The stew meat should be in one inch pieces, also.

Use the seasonings on the meat as it is cooking.

The stew works best if cooked as slow as possible. If you have a slow cooker, that would be ideal.

If not, toss it all in a dutch oven and let it sit over a very low setting.

When the onions have cooked clear and the potatoes are soft, it’s done.

Again, this is not a gourmet meal. But when it is done, you will have a filling, inexpensive, reasonably healthy repast.

Enjoy!

Hatfield Family Genealogy

Hatfield Family Genealogy

My Hatfields are not the infamous ones from the Hatfield and McCoy days. Well, at least my direct Hatfield ancestors never were in West Virginia, even just in passing. I did find it amusing to realize that Anderson “Devil Anse” Hatfield IS a distant relative, however. His great-grandfather and my sixth great-grandfather were brothers. So it’s kind of neat to connect with history through family…even if this particular family is mostly known for never letting go of a grudge.

At any rate, the connection is so far back, I doubt my family would have claimed kinship with the West Virginia Hatfields, except through some distant relative.

My most recent Hatfield (closest to me in ancestry) is Nancy Ann Hatfield, who was born in 1834 in Mulberry Gap, Tennessee. Doesn’t Mulberry Gap just sound adorable? A gap is literally a gap in the mountains that allows easier travel through the pass. Probably the most famous gap in America, which allowed frontier settlers from Virginia to stream through into Tennessee, Kentucky, and onwards in search of more land and better crops, is the Cumberland Gap, cleared originally for the purposes of through traffic by Daniel Boone.

So Nancy was born in 1834, and married Oliver H. Stanley. She died in Pilot Rock, Oregon, in 1875.

Nancy’s parents were Moses Hatfield and Rebecca Warrick. Moses was born in 1811 in Lee County, Virginia. He and Rebecca married in Tennessee. After Rebecca died, he packed up the kids and moved to Decatur County, Iowa, where he met and married his second wife. They then moved on to Schuyler County, Missouri, where Moses died in 1901.

Moses’s parents were Abner Hatfield and Mary “Polly” Yeary. Abner was born in 1781 in Washington County, Virginia. He and Mary married about 1801 in Lee County, Virginia. They moved to Mulberry Gap, Tennessee, where Mary died. Abner fought in the War of 1812, and later died in 1866, Mulberry Gap.

Abner’s parents were George Goff Hatfield, Jr. and Sarah Ann. Sarah does not have a proven maiden name at this time. George was born in 1752 in Lee County, Virginia. He and Sarah married about 1772. George died in 1810 in Lee County, Virginia.

George’s parents were George Goff Hatfield, Sr. and Margaret Winas. George was born in 1715, Virginia. I do not have death dates for George or his wife. George Goff Hatfield senior is the common ancestor I have with the Hatfield family that fought in the long-running feud with the McCoy family.

I do enjoy stating that my relatives were Hatfields. When people say, really? I respond with, yes, I’m not a real McCoy. Ha!

Preparing for the Road, V

One of the most important categories when planning for any sort of excursion, short or long, is reading material.

I usually take advantage of the extra relaxation time to catch up on magazines. Yep, magazines. I subscribe to several, and the numbers regularly get away from me. I take a writing zine, a few aimed at historical coverage, and some that are very focused on a particular topic. This allows me to do some writing research while on a mostly genealogical road trip. The best part is that as we go along, I can toss them out as read. So even though I give up space on the front end, I gain it back over time. Of course, this vanquishing of the stacks is strictly temporary…when I return, I’ll have a fresh stack waiting for me with the mail. Sigh.

I also bring along a huge stack of books. Way more than I can possibly read during the trip. But this not only gives me a wide selection in choice, but I also always end up reading far more books than I think Is likely.

Guthrie Family Genealogy

Guthrie Family Genealogy

Jane’s mother was a Guthrie, descended through Thomas Lee Guthrie from William Franklin Guthrie.

William Franklin Guthrie was born in 1841 in Georgia. We believed he was born in Coweta County, Georgia for a long time, but as we cannot find his parents’ marriage in that county, it is possible he was born elsewhere. But wherever “elsewhere” turns out to be, William was born in Georgia. He married Mary (Molly) Mullis in Williamson County, Texas. He died in Brownwood, Texas in 1915.

William’s parents were James Martin Guthrie and Belinda Bishop. James was born in Edgefield, South Carolina in 1802. Belinda was born in South Carolina in 1816. They married in 1834, Georgia, but we have not located where, just yet. We are hoping to track this marriage down this summer. James and Belinda moved to Texas in 1846, first living in Upshur County, then moving to Williamson County. James was killed in a dispute with a neighbor over a cow in 1854. Belinda died many years later in 1882. They were both buried in what is now a planted field.   Belinda’s headstone is broken, and James’s is gone, but you can still see the pieces of Belinda’s and other, apparently more recent, stones. It is on private land (which is always a hamper to genealogy research!) but we were lucky to climb through the brambles on this isle of vegetation within this planted field.

James’s parents were William P. Guthrie and Elisabeth Sheppard. At least, the conventional research indicates this is true. So far, no proof has tied James either to William, or to his father, Garrett, but the jury is still out, mainly because no other likely candidate has been discovered. James IS, however, a proven descendent of John Guthrie and Mary Shea. John and Mary were both born in 1689, Middlesex County, Virginia, married in 1722, Middlesex County, Virginia, and died in Middlesex County, Virginia, John in 1733, Mary in 1743. DNA evidence through research has linked James to his great-grandfather John. It’s just the two generations in between that are in dispute. William and Elisabeth married in Caswell County, North Carolina. It is not known at this time who Garrett Guthrie/Guthrey married.

If this is your line, drop me a comment, and I will get you in touch with Jane.