Memorial Day

Only one of my grandchildren accompanied me to decorate the cemeteries this year.  Kya is my buddy.  We visited both Woodmere where the Moses group is buried and also Spring Hill where the Hawkins group and ancestors of the Hawkins group are buried.









For my new found cousin, James Lewis, who is interested in the genealogy of the Hawkins family, I took a few extra photos of our mutual 3-gr-grandparent's graves:

Hawkins Map of Kentucky

I did this map many years ago while working on sorting out all of the various Hawkins lines that moved from the Orange/Culpeper/Louisa county area of Virginia.  I am actually just putting it on the blog so that it is easy to find.  I have first put a smaller version in place.  With the larger version, you should be able to shift the map to zero in on various parts.  Many of these Hawkins families belong to Hawkins DNA family group #1.  Others seem to belong to other groups.  Some are still not placed in a DNA group in my own mind.  We all just chip away at figuring everyone out.

Goochland County

I am working on my Colonial Dames papers this weekend and thus I am looking at the Douglas Register  to use in proofs on generations from Louisa County, Virginia back to the Farrar family of Farrars Island.  The Douglas Register was transcribed and edited by W. Mac Jones in 1928.  At the time that he transcribed Rev William Douglas' records, he commented that the actual original book was in a good state of preservation.  His introduction says:

This book is known as the "Douglas Register" for the reason that it not only contains a record of Births, Chirstenings, Marriages, Deaths, and Funerals in St James Northam Parish and the county of Goochland, but in many instances in adjacent counties and others more remote.  The record also is not only for the period he was in charge of St James Northam Parish, but continues after he left that parish, on the 5th of September 1777, and went to live in Louisa County.  In fact he kept up the entries in the Register until 1797, and thus it covers a period of


 ninety-two years.

On the title page it says:  Being a detailed record of Births, Marriages, and Deaths together with other interesting notes, as kept by the Rev. William Douglas from 1750 to 1797.

And just below that it says:  An Index of Goochland Wills.  Notes on the French-Hugeunot Refugees who lived in Manakin-Town.

The reason that I am making notes in the blog while doing this project is that as I started reading, I decided I wanted some maps to help me interpret what I am reading.

And the above map suggests that these settlers came right up the James River just as those in Orange and Culpeper came up the Rappahannock and those in Louisa came up the North and South Anna rivers from the Pamunkey

I am viewing the Douglas Register on Ancestry.

Very early settlement of New Jersey

My Moore group has been chatting about our Cureton ancestors.  James and Rose Moore's son John married Jane Cureton.  It is quite clear that Jane's family came over on the ship the Swan in 1685.  They settled in the Welsh Tract almost immediately.  However, we are not as certain how our Moore ancestors came to these shores.  We find James and Rose Moore in what is now downtown Philly by 1684....just two years after Penn had the city laid out.  Had they moved to these shores before and had been living elsewhere?  Did they move just in time to buy land in the new Philadelphia?  Our group is not sure.  We also are not sure just where they were living before they climbed on board a boat that brought them to our shores.

Very early Hawkins families

Elaine and I were chatting this morning about some of the early Hawkins families.  She mentioned all of the names that are found in the St. Paul's register that includes King George County and Stafford County, Virginia.

I bought that book.  I don't have time to look at it this morning.  I would guess that it is Hawkins' that connect to Thomas of Old Rappahannock County....but don't know for sure.  Here is the name of the book if I want to look at it on my computer at a later date.  It should be on Google Play and is among the bookmarks on my computer.  Oh, wow.....I need to spend some time on looking at my collection of books on Google Play....AMAZING!



The below map shows King George County and one can surmise where Stafford County is very easily.  I won't add another map.  Note that both are close to Fredericksburg which is at the falls of the Rappahannock River.

Jacob and Elizabeth Elliott in Pennsylvania

Ancestry just sent me a link to the copy of an original record that names the first four children of Jacob and Elizabeth Elliott and gives their dates of birth.  The record is said to be from the Menallen Monthly Meeting in Adams Pennsylvania.  I had not had this information before....well that may not be accurate.  If I had this information before, it did not sink in.  So this blog post is about where this Monthly Meeting was located and what it might tell me about proving parents for either Jacob or Elizabeth. [I saved this document to my Ancestry Tree]

Menallen  Monthly Meeting was founded in 1748 as a Preparative Meeting by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and became a Monthly Meeting in 1780. It is an active spiritual community that supports its members and the surrounding community.  In addition to weekly worship, we have a monthly spiritual study group and other activities including community outreach.  Menallen Monthly Meeting (also known as Menallen Friends) follows the tradition of unprogrammed silent worship, and is a member of Warrington Quarter and Baltimore Yearly Meeting.  So it seems that it is still an active meeting.  

This is such a surprise to me as I had thought that the Elliott family had been located in the environs of Philly.  Instead the map below shows the location of Menallen MM:

From the website:  http://www.menallenfriends.org

In 1691, William Penn (a member of the Religious Society of Friends) founded a government and a society that welcomed all people and all religions. This tolerance attracted immigrants of varied religions and backgrounds, including many Quakers.  By the 1730’s some of these families moved to York and Adams Counties in Pennsylvania. The percentage of Friends (Quakers)was significant.  To support these new communities new Quaker Meetings were established, notably, Newberry (Redlands) Meeting in 1739, Warrington in 1745, Menallen Meeting in 1748 and Huntington Meeting  in 1750.

And from: http://www.dworley.com/collections/quakers/menallen.html

At the time that Jacob and Elizabeth's children were born, Menallen was a preparatory meeting:

to hold regular meetings and for several years to come all members of Menallen Meeting were members of Sadsbury Monthly Meeting.  However, upon establishment of Warrington Monthly Meeting in 1747, all Friends west of the Susquehanna River became members of the new Monthly Meeting.  There is a description of where the original and also the newer meeting houses were built at this same site. 

And from: http://thegenproject.com/quakers/meeting-info/baltimore-yearly/warrington-quarterly/menallen-monthly  

Menallen Prep

Menallen Preparative was set up as in 1748 by Sadsbury Monthly, having been an Indulged Meeting since 1733. In 1748, the meeting became part of Warrington Monthly Meeting, the registers of which show that the first marriage to be conducted at Menallen in 1751. Menallen's earliest meeting house was a log structure, which they tore down in 1838, and rebuilt on a new property in Flora Dale, about a mile south of Bendersville. About 1890, that structure was replaced by the red brick building currently in use.

Records of Menallen Monthly Meeting, 1733-1993. Includes men's and joint minutes 1780-1963, women's minutes 1780-1891, vital records 1733-1991, Ministers and Elders minutes 1884-1911, and miscellaneous 1851-1993. So it does not look as if there would be more information available during the time that Jacob and Elizabeth were in PA.  By 1763 they had moved to North Carolina.  Which brings me to the reason that I had assumed that they were from Warrington MM.

1763, 11, 26.  Jacob (Ellott) & W& ch, Jacob, Elizabeth, Hannah, Israel & William rocf Warrington MM, Pa, dated 1763, 9, 20 (I have a copy of the original MM records for this) This is found in the records of New Garden MM in what is now Guilford County, NC.  It would have been Rowan County in 1763

They would have taken a certificate from Warrington MM because at the time Menallen was not yet a MM.  It was still just a preparative meeting.

County Donegal and the Morrison family

Donegal County in Northern Ireland and Morrison

I have been working a bit on the Morrison family lines that we find in Cabell and Wayne Counties in WV.  I have recently found a participant to do DNA testing who is a part of these family lines.  He has matched with the H2 Morrison family members that I have been chatting with for the past few years.  When I got the news that he was an H2 match, you probably heard my WOO HOO from WV while you sat at your computer.  I am very excited.  My 4-gr-grandmother on Mom's side was Elizabeth Hensley.  All of the old time researchers in our area assume that Elizabeth was a Morrison .....including Ruth Sammons Nassar.   I have found very few wrong assumptions among Ruth's  research writings.  My gut feeling is that this is a correct assumption....but I just can't prove it.  I will add my ideas on proving Elizabeth's connection as I have time.  But today I want to jot down some ideas that I was thinking about while I drove to knitting today.

The first is that the folklore in the WV Morrison family group is that James and Rachel Morrison came from County Donegal  in Northern Ireland.  All of this statement is iffy.  First, since I wrote this blog post back in Feb 2017, I have proved to my satisfaction that Rachel's husband was named William  NOT James.  My theory is that an early researcher called this man James and that the researchers who came after her/him continued the mistake.  When Rachel's father died he left the land on which William Morrison now lives to the couple in his will

Second we now know that William Morrison who married Rachel Witcher was not the original immigrant.  He is found in his father's home in Pittsylvania County in the tax list of 1773.  I am quite certain that Patrick Morrison of Pittsylvania County is the father of William.  It is not totally clear that Patrick did not come with parents or at least brothers.

And third the TN Morrison group who are DNA matches have folklore saying that four Morrison brothers arrived on these shores from Scotland  not from Ireland.  All of these groups of people are almost certainly from the same original immigrants!

But nonetheless, Here are my thoughts on Donegal.  First of all.  The original Morrisons of Scotland are said to have lived on the island that is marked below with the big red marker.

There is little in the way of historical information on the origins of Clan Morrison. It is generally accepted that the hereditary judges, or brieves, of the Isle of Lewis were chiefs of the clan until that office disappeared in the early 1600's. The seat of the brieves was at Habost in Ness, near the Butt of Lewis. One tradition is that this line of brieves were descended from a Morrison heiress of the original line and a Macdonald of Ardnamurchan who married her in the 1300's. The Morrisons of Harris claim to be of the original line.

The Isle of Lewis is marked with the big red marker below.

Donegal is the pink area on the map of Ireland in the below map:

I think it is quite obvious how easy it might have been for some Morrisons to have moved from that far northern island to Donegal if they were fishermen or had access to boats.

I have to point out that while Donegal County is in the northern part of the Island of Ireland, it is NOT a part of Northern Ireland.  Does that mean that it was not settled by the British during the period of the Scotch-Irish?  

I asked on the Scotch-Irish list for input on understanding County Donegal in the context of the Scotch-Irish.  John Polk was kind enough to send me the below with permission to add it to my post:

Donegal may not be part of what is now Northern Ireland but it is one of the nine counties of Ulster and was very much part of the Ulster Plantation beginning in 1609. I just checked the Donegal Hearth Rolls for 1665 and found 8 Morisons (sic) listed at that time. 

Ulster Scots came to America and became what we call Scotch-Irish from Donegal just as from the other counties of Ulster. In fact the first recognizable Scotch-Irish community in America came mainly from the Area of Lifford in Donegal, following the lead of Rev. Francis Makemie (of Ramelton), to Somerset County Maryland in 1683. To see my article on this topic from The Journal of Scotch-Irish studies please go to  http://www.mdgenweb.org/somerset/history/scotch-irish.htm 

The main wave of Scotch-Irish to America began about 1715 and continued unabated up to the Revolutionary War, particularly into Pennsylvania and on down the Appalachians into Virginia and the Carolinas.  If you want to see a list of names, the mother lode of Scotch-Irish settlers in Pennsylvania in the mid-18th century is here - http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/bah/dam/rg/di/r17-88WarrantRegisters/r17-88AllCountiesInterface.htm  Just pick a county, particularly Chester, Lancaster, Cumberland, York, and start looking at the names on all the warrants that were issued at that time. I am sure you will find some Morrisons.

I expect there is at least a 90% chance that your ancestors were Scotch-Irish if they came through MD, PA, VA and/or WV in the 1700's. They emigrated for economic and religious reasons. Their situation was very different in Ulster than it was in Scotland and greatly incentivized them to get out and head for the colonies if they could get there. Once they got started they kept encouraging the ones back home to follow on and move on to the next unsettled area of the frontier. And so they kept hopscotching one over the other to follow the great road southward. My own ancestors ended up as among the first settlers of what is now Charlotte NC. That is where President Polk was born, or at least very nearby, in a log cabin just like Abraham Lincoln. Andrew Jackson very nearby, a few years earlier. These people didn't want any part of British rule and were the backbone of the American Revolution. In May 1775 the citizens of Mecklenburg County (Charlotte) declared their independence, a year before the colonies as a whole.

The situation in Scotland in the 1700s was wholly different and more comfortable than it was in Ulster in both religious and economic terms. They had far less reason to emigrate although there were still many supporters of the Stewarts and Bonnie Prince Charlie who wanted to rebel against British rule. That met a sorry end at Culloden in 1746 after which a lot them were exiled to very parts of the empire. A large contingent of them settled in the coastal areas of North and South Carolina, but they had nothing to do with their Scotch-Irish cousins in the piedmont and Appalachian areas.


There is a really good book about them which I highly recommend as a general background - "The Scotch-Irish, A Social History" by James G. Leyburn. Perhaps you already have it. 

The next crazy thoughts that I have are about my mother's Family Finder matches.  I wrote a blog post several years ago about a man who contacted me about one of my mother's matches.  This man asked me if we had McDonald connections.  You can read it here:

http://marshamoses.blogspot.com/2013/11/family-finder-matches-for-sara-ann.html

It looks as if the Morrison Clan and the McDonald Clan shared home lands. 

http://www.clandonald-heritage.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=38&Itemid=57