William Witcher and family

I started a Colonial Dames application for Sara Jane this weekend and after an entire weekend of trying different lines, I happened on to a line that was REALLY fun.  It appears that Sara Jane has Witcher connections and that William Witcher has already been recognized as a proven ancestor in the Colonial Dames.  I found her connection to be Agnes Witcher (b.1793) who Ancestry trees suggest was the wife of   Stephen Wilson.  I have found their marriage record on the WV archives site.  They were married in Cabell County VA  20 Dec 1810.   At that time Cabell County was a huge county encompassing the entire area that is now southwest WV.  

I have found Daniel Witcher in Cabell County in this time period.  In the land records three Witcher men show up 1810, 1811, 1812....Daniel Witcher Sr, Daniel Witcher Jr., Sanders Witcher.  And in 1815 my ancestor, Solomon Hensley, purchases land on Beech Fork from Daniel Witcher Jr.  It is not surprising that some of these names are found together as I believe that Solomon Hensley is married to Elizabeth Morrison who is the oldest daughter and perhaps the oldest child of William Morrison who is married to Rachel Witcher.  They are living on a beautiful farm on the other side of the Guyan River from Barboursville.  William Morrison is squatting on the land as his son does not buy it for several more years.  

My research indicates that William Witcher (the patriot in Pittsylvania County) had children between the years of 1742 and 1765.  The first four children had mother, Ann Majors: John, Daniel, Ephraim and James.  The second four children had mother Lydia Atkinson: William, Caleb, Rachel and Elizabeth.  I descend from Rachel who married William Morrison.

So my question at this point is who is the father of Agnes Witcher Wilson.  I will do some more research and sorting out and post more.  

Here is the URL for the site that seems to have answers to many of my questions that I received after a post to the Witcher Facebook site:

https://witchergeny.com/daniel-witcher%2C-jr?fbclid=IwY2xjawQKom1leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFCTEdobnVLN0Y5Ym44bk54c3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHg3DXB7Z6kRC_KDUYuLXDZXOAB-a5j8PwrDlcC_E_0InO2g7fEPuHZinGPZ__aem_vFfMir_DXgfUI2QC-2PKag

Immigration of James and Rose/Roose Moore into Philadelphia c.1682

 I have been chatting with Moore descendants and wanted to put a few thoughts down where I could mull and ponder.  Some of what I am looking at today was information that I found in an article written by Joseph Moore and published in the Georgia Genealogical Society Quarterly Volume 4, No 1.  

My first question is where was James Moore living before he moved to Philadelphia?  

Likely came from the area of Shropshire, England according to Joseph Moore.  It is known that they had Moore connections living in neighboring Radnorshire, Wales

James was present in Philadelphia, within two years of the city’s founding by William Penn.  James’s town lot at the City Center, on which he built a house in 1684.  This lot is on  the southwest corner of present Dilworth Plaza.  He was a blacksmith by trade and performed work on Penn’s Mill, for which he was partially paid by a 1692 land grant (which he shortly sold) in Merion township, Philadelphia County, and in 1690 he assembled the leaded glass windows for the Quaker’s Center Meeting House in Philadelphia.

http://marshamoses.blogspot.com/search?q=Philadelphia

http://marshamoses.blogspot.com/2015/02/james-and-rose-moore-in-philadelphia.html

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connections living in neighboring Radnorshire, Wales.

So I looked up information via AI go see if there were Quakers in this area in the 1600s and there were.  I do not believe that James Moore was a Quaker, but it is possible that he migrated with Quaker family and friends.

So it is quite possible that James Moore's move from Shropshire to Philadelphia was influenced by the persecution of the Quakers in the area even though he was not Quaker himself.  

McKinsey Family

I found in 2025 Ruby Mundell Barry's book about the McKinsey family on-line on Ancestry at:

https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/62282/records/4540759566 

Atkinson (were Charity and Littleberry children of Indian Mother?) as well as Shawnee atrocities including Clendenin massacre

I have a Adkins yDNA participant who tested for me several years ago.  Today I upgraded his kit to Big Y as I wanted to be able to look at the big Y block tree and also the time tree.  The man who tested for me descends from Hezekiah Adkins who died in Wayne County in 1842.  I do not descend from Hezekiah.  We both descend from Hezekiah's grandfather, William Atkinson who married Elizabeth Parker in 1710.  My participant descends from William and Elizabeth's son, Parker.  I descend from William and Elizabeth's son, William.  So we share 8-gr-grandfather.  

The reason for my blog post tonight is to copy and paste a website that is written by a man named Thomas Adkins who is clearly a cousin to me and I thought his website of interest and wanted to note it to look at again.

https://adkins.ws/tree/Adkins.GED

The next site is written by a woman who believes that mitochondrial dna refutes the theory that Charity Adkins was the daughter of an Indian woman (Mary/Bluesky) with whom Parker Atkinson had relationship.

As part of her argument she lists many of the Shawnee atrocities including the See and Clendenin massacres.

https://parkeradkins.wordpress.com/2017/06/02/parker-adkins-blue-sky-was-their-story-possible/

Castle Garden

I received an e-mail this morning from Family Tree Magazine that gave me a link to an article about Castle Garden.  I loved the photo of Castle Garden and wanted to save it for future perusal.  Below is the photo and the link:  

https://familytreemagazine.com/records/immigration/castle-garden-immigration-a-genealogists-guide/?trk_msg=8PJ8T19SJLTKT64QEOE6P3I7QS&trk_contact=STK22DA1HH0VEFQ7OBV4PD2ID4&trk_module=new&trk_sid=DAD50IK567I7GIQEFIE4VEGA00&trk_link=2VEPPJDV3D94PCHI2GAKVEGQRS&utm_source=Listrak&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=https%3a%2f%2ffamilytreemagazine.com%2frecords%2fimmigration%2fcastle-garden-immigration-a-genealogists-guide%2f&utm_campaign=FT+Newsletter 

Before Ellis Island even opened its doors, immigrants arriving in New York City passed through Castle Garden. Now known as Castle Clinton National Monument and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Castle Garden served as the primary gateway for over 8.5 million newcomers between 1855 and 1890.

I have been working on my Hornberger Family a bit this past month and I quickly checked to see when my 2-gr-grandmother and 1-gr-grandfather arrived from Alsace Lorraine.  And the date fell within the dates for Castle Garden.  Barbe Hornberger Unger and her son, Frederic Hornberger, as well as Barbe's second husband, George Unger are said to have arrived about 1880 in Fred's naturalization papers (which I have).

The article is excellent with lots of information to follow up on.  My summer is too busy to spend the hours on this project that I would like to spend....but perhaps this winter?

Trip to Wilmington July 2025

Mary and I have planned a trip to Wilmington NC for this coming week.  We decided to stop in Greensboro, NC Tuesday night.  Hannah and Rachel had suggested that we visit Peggy Shepherd Wednesday afternoon at 2:00.  We were unable to book a room in the inn that Rachel had suggested for Tuesday night.  Rooms were only available Wednesday and Thursday nights.  We believe that we will be able to drive from Greensboro to Peggy's home by 1PM.  

So in talking about what we will do in Greensboro, I think our first picks are Top Golf and Golf Galaxy.  But I hope to find a few minutes to stop at the New Garden Monthly Meeting as well as the adjacent cemetery.  And perhaps the Revolutionary battlefield....Everything is quite close and we don't have to stop at the historical sites for long....but I wanted a few photos to show to the kids.  And a map or two.

Directions from Military Park to New Garden Monthly Meeting

I did not end up using any of the information below, but I am not going to erase it.  Instead I will explain what I had in mind when I chose the photos.  The reformation was started by Martin Luther when he nailed his 95 thesis to the door of the church:

Painting of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Thesis to the Door in October 1517

Then I planned to talk about the fact that as the Revolutionary War loomed in the future of the 13 colonies, the Quakers of Nantucket worried about their safety.  They did not believe in War and did not want to fight.  The Whaling industry was declining.  Many of the Nantucket families decided to move to North Carolina in the area that became Guilford County in 1771.  There were many Quakers living in the area.  Almost certainly the group took a ship from Nantucket to the area of the Albemarle Sound in North Carolina.  There were already Quakers in that area who were part of Perquimans, Little River, and Pasquotank Monthly Meetings.  These Quaker families would have helped the newcomers with the move to Guilford County.  

After a bit of deliberation, I decided the thing that would be of most interest to our group would be to visit New Garden Monthly Meeting and the cemetery that adjoins the church and our small group agreed to the plan.  I have a map of early Guilford County that shows land ownership, but I am away from home this week and can not pull it out to describe how close to the New Garden Monthly Meeting Francis Worth lived.  He is not listed as having been buried in the New garden cemetery, but I feel sure he is.  Early Quakers did not believe in headstones as they felt they were vain.  However, many of the Nantucket Quakers did indeed have stones, so it is hard to say for absolute certainty.  But here are some of the photos that we took:

This stone would have been placed later than Francis' death.  You can tell that the stone below is much older than the Worth stone.

Francis Worth's wife was a Gardner,  I believe she may have died before the move to North Carolina but the John Gardner on the above stone probably shared an ancestor with Mary Gardner Worth.  And in the below photo Rachel was likely a Nantucket descendant as she married a man with Starbuck surname.  Again Mary the wife of Francis Worth had a Starbuck grandmother.

But I was quite excited to find the below stone:

William Hunt's son, John is likely the man who was the next door neighbor to Francis Worth (across the road) and accompanied Silas Wooten to   William Hunt was born in 1733.....Francis Worth was born in 1735.  If the John Hunt who was a neighbor to Francis Worth was indeed the son of William Hunt, he may have inherited his land from his father....I need to look at the map.

http://marshamoses.blogspot.com/2014/01/silas-wooten-john-hunt-isaac-williamson.html

The lady that I talked to in the church explained that the original church is no longer standing.  However you can see the outline of the foundation of the original church and there are stones marking the corners.  There is also a marker showing where the school house would have been:  

Photo of my grandsons, Galileo and Jack standing beside the marker for the church.

However the big event for the boys that day was dinner at Top Golf!  Oh, wow.....it never occurred to us that we would need a reservation ahead of time.  This place is rocking!  But we filled in the time until it was our time to hit with dinner.  And the food was actually quite good.  I would recommend this to any family traveling to the beach.  Greensboro is slightly closer to the beach than to Huntington so it is a good distance to drive the first day.  On the way back we drove the entire distance home so we stopped for lunch instead of dinner.  And it was good to get out of the car for two hours and hit golf  balls....and we had learned from the first visit to have lunch delivered to our table on the tee.....so we ate and hit balls for more than an hour.  And best of all Top Golf is absolutely at the exit on I-40  

                                                                                  

     

The place that Rachel had chosen turned out to be a good fit for this trip.  It might be too far south for another visit as it was close to Peggy's house....not Hannah's house.  But Kure beach was very nice as everything was in walking distance....just a limited number of places to eat....they were within walking distance, but the Italian place was very mediocre and the other all three restaurants had waiting lines.  The inn was called the Light House and below is the view from Mary's room's balcony.  You would want to get rooms upstairs to have a balcony.  My room was nice, but no balcony to sit on.

 

Hornberger ancestors of my Grandmother (Clara Margaret Hornberger Sammons)

As I try to sort out the clues to the photograph in my last post I decided that it would be good to make that post less complicated by starting a new post.

Alsace Lorraine consists of 3 departments:

Haut-Rhin (68 – Colmar) – Bas-Rhin ( 67 – Strasbourg) and Territoire de Belfort (90 – Belfort).

Its capital, Strasbourg, holds prominence as the seat of the Council of Europe, European Parliament, and European Court of Human Rights. Strasbourg’s city center sprawls along the left bank of the Rhine River, encompassing iconic landmarks like the Notre-Dame Cathedral and the UNESCO-listed Petite France district.

In 1354, Alsace was organized into the Decapolis, a confederation of ten free cities within the Holy Roman Empire, which enjoyed economic and military unity until 1679. Alsace’s strategic location between German emperors and French kings led to frequent conflicts and incursions until the 17th century when parts of Alsace were integrated into the Kingdom of France.

Alsace was annexed by Germany following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.

The region returned to French control in 1919 with the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, only to be annexed once again during the Nazi occupation from 1940 to 1944.

Its rich history has contributed to its unique cultural identity, characterized by a blend of French and German influences. While French is the official language, Alsatian, a Germanic dialect, remains spoken in many households.

First thing that I want to add are a few maps.  First is the map of Obersteinbach  a commune in the Bas-Rhin department in Grand Est in north-eastern France. 

Second is the map of  Baden-Wurttemberg.  It is about 40 miles from Obersteinbach to Karlsruhe in Baden-Wurttemberg.

Next is a map of the Bas-Rhin department in France.  

Belfort is approximately 132 miles from Obersteinbach.  Belfort is due south of Obersteinbach.