Elliott family

 Lauren, a fellow Elliot researcher, sent me an e-mail several days ago that has stirred my interest in my Elliott family.  She has done some extra research that I had never looked at.  She showed me a website in which the yDNA of our mutual Elliott family is explored.  WOW!  This opens up an entire new road of research!

Here is the URL if you want to look at if for yourself:

http://freepages.rootsweb.com/%7egallgaedhil/genealogy/haplo_elliotts.htm#U86SN

This looks like the John Elliott that others tell me is the ancestor of my well proven Jacob Elliott who moved his family to what is now Randolph County, NC in 1763.

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

Lauren shared with me the original document that she almost certainly found on Ancestry:

I just realized that this is not the document that my notes tell me that I have in my own collection.  What I meant to put here is the document that the Elliott family would have taken with them from Pennsylvana to their new home in what would have then been Rowan County, NC.  I will look for this document to add on a day when I have more time.  But I won't remove the below as it is excellent in giving dates of births of their children.  My own ancestor, Abraham, has not yet been born.

When I explore the yDNA site more, I find that there is more information that DEFINITELY sounds like my own well documented Elliott line:

I should explain that two Elliot  brothers moved to NC about the same time.  My Ancestor is Jacob Elliot who was definitely married to a woman named Elizabeth.  My data shows her as Elizabeth Moore, but I have no documentation nor proof for maiden name.  Jacob is my ancestor.  His brother is Abraham Elliott married to Priscilla Foulke.   After Priscilla died, Abraham married Sarah Pike who was the widow of William Piggot.  

It is Priscilla who was wife of Abraham when they made the move:

1765, 3, 30 Abraham, & w. Priscilla & ch Stephen, Ruth, John, Samey, Joseph, Abraham, Hester, & Jemima, rocf Warrington MM, Pa. dated 1764, 7, 14 endorsed by Cane Creek MM, NC 1765,1,5

Jacob was a very devout Quaker and his descendants remained Quaker for many generations. They moved with other Quakers into Lost Creek MM, Ohio and Indiana with the huge Quaker exodus out of the south and into the non-slave states of Ohio and Indiana.

One of my favorite genealogy stories can be found on my blog at below URL.  It tells how I know how very devout Jacob was.

http://marshamoses.blogspot.com/2012/08/nc-quaker-family-jacob-and-elizabeth.html

Looking at the above information I would guess that the yDNA participant who is explained in this second green box is from my Jacob and Elizabeth's son, William.  I have not done the research to know this to be true so I am just guessing.

There are at least two more yDNA participants in the chart at this URL who fall into the C haplogroup indicating that likely they are connected to my well proven line back to Jacob and Elizabeth, but I do not recognize them as quickly and am not adding them at this time.  My main goal today was to not lose the URL link for this information and to record my thoughts at this time.

Hickman Hensley

 I bought six yDNA kits at the FTDNA father's day sale this year.  Suzanne Baird found Jeff for me via a facebook chat group.  Jeff's tree connects him to Hickman Hensley.  Why was Jeff's yDNA of interest to me?  

According to Suzanne's tree, Hickman Hensley was the son of Benjamin Hensley and his wife Elizabeth for whom we have no maiden name.  Hickman was born in Halifax County, Virginia in 1759.  At that time Halifax County was a huge county going as far west as the settlers might move.

It was not until 1767 that Pittsylvania County was formed and then Halifax was finite while it was Pittsylvania that stretched to the west.  Then in 1777 Henry was formed out of the western part of Pittsylvania.  In 1785 Franklin was formed from the northern portion of Henry and the southern portion of Botetourt.   And in 1791 Patrick was formed out of the western part of Henry.  Making the Counties the sizes that they are still today.  In 1759, Hickman's parents could have been living in any part of this area.

I got out my Halifax County books and Dodson does not include any Hensley's in his survey books.

My Ancestor, John Hensley who was married to Milly and is said to be the father of Solomon Hensley in Solomon's death records, is shown in the titheable list of Pittsylvania County in 1767:

https://adkinsmetcalffamily.wordpress.com/2009/02/28/the-history-of-pittsylvania-county-virginia/

I have looked at this list many times, but somehow forgot to record in my brain that this was the FIRST titheable list in Pittsylvania County.  That John and Milly could have been living in Halifax County before this date!  That while somehow I have thought that they moved about this time, the truth is that the county line changed about this time. 

I know where in Pittsylvania County John and Milly lived about the time that Solomon was born.  You can read about this at:

http://marshamoses.blogspot.com/2012/10/hensleyfoster-connections.html

So to answer my above question, Hickman Hensley was born in the area of Virginia where my Solomon was born circa 1776.  He is still living in the area in 1779 (according to tree of Suzanne) when his son Larkin was born in Henry County.  Hickman seems to have moved his family to NC just after the birth of this child.  However in the time period in which my Solomon is born, he is still in Henry County.

So......Hickman is clearly a Hensley.  That is what Jeff's yDNA shows.  Solomon Hensley may have had a Hensley mother, but his paternal line is clearly Foster.  Another of my kits this year (Dewayne Hensley has proven that).  Dewayne descends from Solomon's son Alexander.  I had bought a kit many years ago for John Hensley who descends from Solomon's son, Bird.  These two men match each other and they clearly match a well represented Foster line!...

One other person that I want to mention as living in this area is Phebe Hensley.  Phebe is living in Henry County and has children born between the years (according to Marty Grant's website) of before 1784 to probably about 1790 or later since she has six children documented on Marty's site.  Were Phebe and Hickman siblings?  Was the father of Phebe's children a Foster?  

Was my John Hensley related to Phebe?  Hickman?  Hickman's parents?

Did John and Milly have other children besides Solomon?  Was John's paternal line Hensley?  Foster?  Was Solomon adopted?  Wow....I have enough research to keep me busy for years!

But one thing we do know thanks to Jeff Hensley is that Hickman was clearly a Hensley!

Dna match between me and Mike Tillman

I am editing this post in Nov 2022. Mike Tillman had a breakthrough in his research.  He has discovered that on his dad's side there is an adoption which obscured the fact that indeed Mike has ancestor Benjamin Franklin Carey  Mike descends from Ben and his first wife, Mariah Carey, through their daughter, Elizabeth.  I am going to leave the rest of the post alone.  Just remember that the segment that Mike and I share came from either Absalom Carey or Temperance Cooley.  Too most of the post has nothing to do with Mike and my match.

This post is VERY iffy!  So if you are reading this much later than today's date, e-mail me and ask what I found out at the end of the day.  I have a dna match with Mike Tillman that we know is on Chromosome #13 in the place that I match with Barbara Raemer through our mutual ancestor, Benjamin Franklin Carey.

This has been a trip with Mary and family from WV to Boston and last night we ended up in Providence, RI.  And it seems possible that my Carpenter family may have lived here quite early.  So I am exploring the idea that Mike and I share this chromosome segment from the Carpenter/Reynolds family line.

The above image was found at:

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_early_settlers_of_Rhode_Island

You can see that William Carpenter and William Reynolds live quite close together in the Providence RI area in the very early days of Providence.  Could these men be the ancestors that Mike and I share?  I will work on the idea as I have time.  

My group was staying in the Marriott Courtyard that is next door to the mall.  The small kiosk to buy one's ticket which was also the place to get on the bus was directly across the street from our hotel and next door to the Graduate hotel which is in the large building that has Biltmore sign on it.  

Our tour guide was excellent.  We learned about the facts that Roger Williams was the founder of the Providence plantations.  And the important information that made me love this early town:  Roger Williams was a most progressive individual.  I would like to think that my ancestors were like minded and chose to live in his neighborhood because they agreed with him.  Here is a bit of information from Wikipedia about Roger Williams:

The tour guide explained that Roger Williams lived in Salem, Massachusetts.  He was told he had to leave but could stay until the end of the winter if he promised not to preach.  But his followers continued to meet with him in his home in such numbers that the governing fathers decided that he was not abiding by his promise.  They made a plan to put him on a ship bound to England.  However, John Wintrop warned him of the plan and he escaped in the middle of the night.  He lived with the Narragansett Indian tribe until the end of the winter.  That spring he bought land from the Indians and settled in what is now Providence RI.  

Why was he kicked out of Salem?  The tour guide said that it was because he had dangerous ideas:  that he believed in the separation of church and state!  Roger Williams set his new Providence Plantations up so that the governing body was totally separate from the religious entities.  All were welcome to settle there regardless of their religion.  They could worship as they pleased.  

One of the other things that I love the man for is that he wrote a book about the Indian's language and customs.  His thought was that if everyone had a better understanding of the Indian ways, they could live among each other in peace,  

The tour guide agreed to drive by the lots that had belonged to the original settlers.  He explained that while Roger Williams home is no longer standing, there is a marker showing where he lived.  And that the street named Angell Street is approximately where Thomas Angell was living in the time period.  So one can get an idea of where William Carpenter and William Reynolds were living.  Here are a few photos that I took as we drove by.  The all give some idea if one is looking in the right area:

 I  guess that the island mentioned in some of the Carpenter documentation would have been as shown below?  

There is some documentation on Lynda McGinnis' Ancestry site for my own Carpenter family:

https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/52414114/person/13350448271/facts

And in the book on her site called 

†his book is available on Hathitrust

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t4qj81z5b&view=1up&seq=11

\

This does not show up well.  I'll zero in on the neighborhood in which the early settlers lived below:

Main Street on the modern map its the second street from the river on which the RISD Museum is located.  You can see Angell Street clearly.  According to the book about the Carpenter family that is explained in the cover page shown above, there was a highway between the land of Robert Coles and William Carpenter.  This road is now called Meeting Street because the Friends Meeting house was built on William Carpenter's lot.

Also on page 26 of the book is the following:

Pautuxet is shown with red marker in above map.

There is a description of an Indian attack on the home of William Carpenter on pages 26-27 during King Philip's war in January 1676.

Ok.  I quit for the night.  It seems that Lynda McGinnis does not believe that the William Carpenter who I have presented in this blog post belongs to our tree.  I will work on another post first chance that I get on the Carpenter family to which we belong.

Fourth of July 2021

 It has been a crazy year.  Covid has caused a lot of "funny stuff"

But it is the 4th of July. And I am so lucky that much of my family still celebrates this holiday.  My daughter who lives in Lima, Peru has flown in from Lima to celebrate with the rest of the family.  I am not convinced that any of them remember what we celebrate.

But I feel the need to comment on many things,  I would start with my mother's Morrison family.  The three Morrison brothers left Pittsylvania County to  fight,  These three brothers were lucky enough to have come home together,  But they fought in all of the big battles...,they crossed the Delaware with George Washington,  I will do better tomorrow.  But I wanted to start.

Phebe Hensley

 I have been working on my Hensley family this past weekend. I was reading through some of the information on Marty Grant's website and wanted to put a few pieces of information into the blog post so that I don't loose them.  The page on Marty Grant's website that this information comes from is:

http://www.martygrant.com/genealogy/hensley/hensley-phebe-henry-va.htm

Here is what is said on the site:

I was reading more on Marty Grant's site several months later after I wrote this post.  I misinterpreted the information about Phebe.  It seems that when Marty Grant said she was a single mother he meant that she was a widow who had lost her husband while her children were young.  So while you read the rest of this, be aware of my misinformation.  OH WAIT!  I remember that Phebe's son Lewis died during the war of 1812 and leaves an inheritance to his siblings in which he states they are illegitimate and that his mother is dead.

Phebe Hensley was a single mother with several Hensley children when she married her 2nd husband Kinney McKinney in 1797. In his will dated 1802 (Henry Co, VA) he named 4 of her children: Jean, Lewis, John, and Patsy. Of these, Jean, John and Patsy all married in the 1805-1813 timeframe. Lewis Hensley died in the War of 1812, and his siblings were listed as his heirs, those same documents refer to them as being illegitimate children, with their mother dead. Since she named one of her children Lewis, that may indicate that she is related to the older Lewis Hensley (c1740/50) of Henry Co, VA. He could be her father, or older brother. I'd guess he was her father, but no proof so far. 

Lewis Hensley (son of Phebe) died in the War of 1812. John Hensley remained in Henry Co, VA until the 1830's when he moved to Barren Co, KY. He was listed in 1840 and 1850 Barren Co, KY census. In 1860 he was listed in Metcalfe Co, KY which was formed that same year from part of Barren County. 

John Hensley son of Phebe, married Nancy Salmon in 1812 in Henry Co, VA. They were listed on the 1820 and 1830 Henry Co, VA census. By 1840 they had moved to Barren Co, KY. They were listed there in 1840 and 1850 census. They apparently lived in the eastern part of Barren County, that became Metcalf Co, KY in 1860. They were listed in Metcalf Co, KY census in 1860. I don't have absolute proof that John and Nancy of Henry Co, VA are the same people as John and Nancy of Barren / Metcalf Co, KY but they are a perfect fit, and I'm confident they are the same. By the time of the 1850 census, several of John's sons were married already or living in other households. Edmund (c1817) and John W. (c1820) were already married, and Burwell (c1828) was single, but with another family. I'm sure all three are sons of John and Nancy, since they were all born in VA and lived nearby. I have no absolute proof though that they are his sons.

End of copied information.  Following are my comments as I read this today.

Phebe is likely to have been of the same generation as my John Hensley who was living in Pittsylvania County with wife Milly.  John and Milly's son, Solomon, was born c. 1776.  But it is interesting to note that Solomon married in the same time period as Phebe's other children..

The Cramer puzzle

 I have been working overtime the last few years on my Morrison line that is found in Pittsylvania County, Virginia during the Revolution.  The main reason that I spend extra time on this line is that I have found a very enthusiastic and hardworking Morrison group that was already working together before I joined the group. 

I believe that my 4-gr-grandparents were Solomon and Elizabeth Hensley who moved to what is now Cabell County WV in early 1800.  Both of them died in this area where I still live today.  All of the old time researchers say that Elizabeth's maiden name was Morrison.  I can not find proof of that fact.  However, I do believe it to be true.  One of the main reasons I believe it to be true is that I have two dna matches to Ronald Bridges' mother and aunt and two dna matches to Valerie Morrison and her aunt and the grandmother of Melissa Smythe:  Willodean Marshall Smythe.  All of these matches almost certainly have to be connections to the h2 Morrison family.  I can find no other sensible connection.

But a second dna puzzle of interest has shown up that I am going to talk about on this blog.  I have tested probably 6 Hensley participants in the last 10 years.  The first one was Denny Hensley.  Both Denny and I were disappointed when his test came back with no match to any Hensley participants.  So I continued to test other Hensley men in our area.  And all of them matched Denny.  And all of them descend from the oldest child found in  Solomon and Elizabeth's home:  Samuel Hensley.  So I began to look for another participant.  And with the help of Mary Gordon Smith, I found a male who was willing to test who descends from the second oldest child found in the home of Solomon and Elizabeth:  Bird Hensley.  Bird is my ancestor.  And this kit results came back.  The results do not match those of the descendants of Samuel Hensley, but they also do not match any other Hensley results.

Solomon and Elizabeth Hensley were living in Pittsylvania County, Virginia when my ancestor, Bird Hensley was born c. 1810.  I know this because Bird enlisted in the army for 24 hours before they threw him out for being underage.  However, the records remained.  Bird knew where he was born.  I am certain that he gave correct information.  Solomon's parents are found living in Pittsylvania County on Potter Creek in the time period as well.....quite close to where the Morrison family are proven to be living in 1809.    

So several years later and a lot more research, I believe that Samuel Hensley was not the son of Solomon.  And I believe that Solomon was not a Hensley in spite of the fact that I have found parents for Solomon of John Hensley and his wife, Milly. who lived in Pittsylvania County during the Revolutionary War.  Somewhere in Solomon's ancestry there is a birth incident with a Foster Male and a Hensley female.  The Hensley and Foster families are found to be interconnected for many generations.  I find them together in Louisa County, Virginia in 1757.  I made this note on another blot (clear at the bottom of the page)

http://marshamoses.blogspot.com/2012/10/hensleyfoster-connections.html 

However, I would say that the majority of Hensley's in Cabell/Wayne Counties in WV descend from Samuel.  And now that I have looked for many years, I see that Samuel was about six years older than the rest of the children.  And I have found information in the Marshall Special Collections that Samuel was the half brother of Bird.  And in another place in the Marshall Special Collections that Samuel was the son of Solomon's first wife by another man.  I can not make either of these ideas work.  But I am working on this puzzle at this time.  

So first, the men who have done yDNA testing for me who descend from Samuel, match a small number of miscellaneous surnames....none make sense.  Second, The Marshall special collections suggest that Samuel was actually Samuel Cramer who was adopted by Solomon, raised in Solomon's home, and given the Hensley surname. 

Samuel's was not Solomon's son.  

One of the Hensley men who did yDNA and family finder testing for me is Jack Hensley.  Jack is a descendant of Samuel.  Jack's family finder shows clear connections to the Morrison family with matches to several Morrison participants.  Jack also matches me and my mother.  However, this is not clear indication that he might be Elizabeth Morrison Hensley's child as he has another Morrison connection in his tree.  But Jack's family folklore says that his however many gr grandfather's was a Morrison adopted by a Hensley.  So I have looked at the possibility that Samuel (Cramer?) Hensley might have been Elizabeth's child that she brought into the home when she married Solomon.  Samuel does not seem to have a male Cramer's yDNA. 

Nothing seems to work perfectly.  This past week  I began looking at possible Cramer connections.  I pulled up Trees on Ancestry that had Cramer/Kramer in their branches.  And one tree stood out.  It is owned by Brandon Joyner.  I have sent him a message.  Much to my amazement, Brandon shows the following in his tree:

The Kramer/Cramer family were right there as well according to Brandon's tree.  I became quite excited about the fact that Johann Christian's son, Samuel was almost certainly living there before his move to Georgia where he married Jenny Brown in 1806.  Samuel (Cramer?) Hensley was born almost certainly in Pittsylvania County in 1804.  I am quite puzzled at this point.  My descendants from Samuel (Cramer?) Hensley do not seem to have a yDNA match to a Kramer/Cramer male.  So my next step is to look to see if there are Kramer/Cramer yDNA results for this family line.

And that is my puzzle.  If you have any ideas for me, e-mail me at mosesm@earthlink.net

The Clendenin Massacre

 While working on another project, I found a great account of the Clendenin massacre with wonderful photos:

https://scavengeology.com/the-site-of-the-clendenin-massacre-on-the-big-levels-of-greenbrier-county-1763/