The beginning of my Passion for genealogy

A man who is looking at retirement and more active involvement in genealogy sent me a nice e-mail today.  We had been talking about Hawkins DNA results and specifically about a group of Hawkins DNA matches for whom I have very little information. 

 His e-mail said:

Thanks, Marsha.  How long has your journey been in this effort and what got you started?

Rich

My answer:
Nice question.  Probably the incident that set my course was a visit from the only woman who was living at the time who had known my Great-grandmother, Nora Beuhring Hawkins.  The lady was a niece to my gr-grandmother who had died of infection or some sort of complication after the birth of my grandfather Hawkins.  The lady brought me a photo of my Gr-grandmother and the pin that she was wearing in the photo at her collar.  I was hooked.

...... I am getting ready to leave for a trip that includes a stop in Philadelphia where I plan to stand in the spot on land on which my Moore 9-gr-grandfather and his wife, Roose, lived in the 1600s.  I have not done all of the research yet to connect me to this couple, but I am in touch with a couple of men who seem to have their paper trails in order who have helped me to make the connection.  It has been a lot of fun! 

Philadelphia trip February 2015

In preparation for my couple of days in Downtown Philadelphia, that is coming up quickly, I asked several sources for help in getting my ideas together about what I most want to do and see while I am there.  One of the first answers that came back to me was from (a lady in New Zealand...because of the time difference she has not yet given me permission to use her name).  Her answer was:

Some years back I was tracing the BEZER family, sons of Edward BEZER, one of the earliest Quakers in Wiltshire, England.  (As it turns out, my BEZER ancestry is probably from another Edward, contemporary with this one, but not a Quaker.  I haven't been able to go further back to discover whether the two were cousins or otherwise related.)  The three sons all migrated to Pennsylvania in the early years of Penn's colony.  One of them, John BEZER, was one of Penn's land commissioners distributing rural and urban lots.

I found a reference to John's urban lot, and on a Quaker visit to Philadelphia while working in London discovered that it seems to be the very site where the Liberty Bell now stands..... but at least you might feel a Quaker connection there.

Well, her answer caused me to rethink all that I had asked about.  Rather than looking for Quaker sites, I needed to concentrate on the Quaker connections the sites of today have.  It would seem that there are very few actual Quaker sites that still exist from the 1600s, but standing by the Liberty Bell, I will think about Quaker John Bezer who had lived there and been one of  William Penn's land commissioners.

My own MOORE family lived very close to the City Center where the City Hall Building is located today.  I just received information from Joseph Moore that a recent Moore researcher has discovered that James' wife was named Rose and that the couple owned other land in the area that is now Downtown Philly.

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, forms 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

On Sunday I visited the art museum and spent a few hours in the Free Central Library.  Then I walked through Logan Square to Dilworth Plaza and City Hall (City Hall did not exist in the lifetime of James and Roose Moore).  Below are photos that I took of the southwest corner of Dilworth Square.  My research has told me that it would be the corner in the above rendering that is in shadow.

Wikipedia says of the Centre City area:

City Hall is built on the area designated by William Penn as Centre Square. It was a public square from the city's founding in 1682 until the construction of City Hall began upon the site in 1871. It was one of the five original squares laid out on the city grid by Penn. It lay at the geographic heart of the city from 1682 until the Act of Consolidation, 1854 (although it was never the social heart of the city during that long period).

A bit of googling has told me that the lead glass windows that James assembled could no longer be viewed as the location of the Quaker's Center Meeting House changed many times over the years.  

More new information on our mutual Moore family from Joseph Moore this month includes the fact that Steve Moore did land research in Philly including going back through chains of titles to establish that James and Rose Moore also owned land on the Delaware River at Front Street.

Wikipedia says about Front Street:

Front Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is a north-south street running parallel to and near the Delaware River. It was constructed when Philadelphia was laid out by William Penn in 1682.

Front Street is the origin street of Philadelphia's numbered street grid; there is no First Street, Front Street exists in its place, and numbered streets begin at the next major block with Second Street, approximately one-tenth of a mile to the west.

Detail from "Plan of the City of Philadelphia and its Environs (Showing the Improved Parts)," 1797, John Hill, publisher, showing the downtown area. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/S?ammem/gmd:@FILREQ(@OR(@field(AUTHOR+@od1(Hills,+John++Surveyor++))+@field(OTHER+@od1(Hills,+John++Surveyor++)))+@FIELD(COLLID+citymap))

Soon after I heard from the lady in New Zealand, I received a message from Mark Dixon.  Mark had read my mind, and his answer was perfect!  He sent me the following:

I live in the Philadelphia suburbs, so I know many Quaker sites.  Rather than seeking out specifically Quaker sites, though, the most important thing may be to look at already-famous sites with "Quaker eyes."

Example: Independence Hall was not -- despite its current packaging --  built as Independence Hall.  It was built as the Pennsylvania statehouse by a Quaker-dominated state assembly.  This is the assembly from which Friends resigned during the French & Indian War rather than participate in war making.

The Liberty Bell really has little to do with the Revolution.  It's purpose was to ring when the Assembly was in session.  In the 19th Century, abolitionists made it a PR symbol for their movement.  And, as we know, many Quakers were involved in that movement.  (In one of his books, historian David Hackett Fischer examines the bell as a uniquely Quaker sort of tool. Essentially, his observation was that the bell could be heard by all announcing that the assembly was in session.  Legislatures elsewhere operated more quietly, more "sub rosa," if you will.  Into that, Fischer read a more democratic attitude.)

To say that the Free Quakers were a splinter group of "fighting Quakers" is too simple.  Some of them did fight.  Others had been disowned by various meetings years before the Revolution for a variety of offenses. Betsy Ross married out of meeting.  Timothy Matlack was a slacker of a businessman, and disowned when he didn't pay his bills.  Another (whose name escapes me at the moment) was involved in a counterfeiting scheme.

When visiting the Arch Street meetinghouse (320 Arch Street), remember that it is also a cemetery.  There are no markers because Friends at the time didn't use them, and no record of who is where.  However, many famous Quaker names of the colonial period are there, including Anthony Benezet.

FYI, the Arch Street Meetinghouse dates only to 1804.  At the Hicksite/Orthodox split, Arch Street stayed with the Orthodox, while the Hicksites built a new meetinghouse at 15th & Race.  The latter is now called Friends Center and houses Philadelphia Yearly Meeting offices, as well as the American Friends Service Committee, and other organizations. For really old Quaker meetinghouses, you need to get out into the suburbs.

Perhaps ironically, Philadelphia is full of historic churches of many other denominations.  One is St. Joseph's Catholic Church (http://www.holyexperiment.org/pages/josephs.html) which dates to 1733. How is this relevant?  Again, look at it with "Quaker eyes."  This church is here because Philadelphia's non-Catholics allowed it to be here.  You won't find a Catholic church of similar age in Boston.

Finally, just enjoy the diversity of a big city -- people of all races, religious and backgrounds doing all sorts of things.  That's the world made by the Quakers' decision to allow immigrants of different religions and from countries other than England.  Yes, it is more diverse than they ever imagined and undoubtedly more than they would have desired.  But our current diversity is the result of what they did.  .....

Mark added the following in a later e-mail:

The Philadelphia History Museum is on 7th Street, just south of Market. Used to be called the Atwater Kent Museum.  I did not get around to this museum...another trip.

and

Marsha, the Pusey house is no reconstruction.  It's an original.  The mill is gone, but its weather vane -- with WP's initials -- is now at the Philadelphia History Museum: http://www.bridgemanimages.com/en-GB/asset/204610/american-school/william-penn-weathervane-iron

Mark

Suzanne Dutton added the following comments:

These places are all in what is called Old City, near the Delaware River where most people lived early on. It's the neighborhood east of Center City and City Hall and Dilworth Plaza. ....

You can visit the Arch Street Meeting House at 320 Arch Street. This building is still a worship space for Quakers with knowledgable Quaker docents.

Not far away at 500 Arch Street is the Free Quaker Meeting House, built by what we refer to as the "fighting Quakers," those who decided to fight in the Revolutionary War. It is operated by the National Park Service. ......

In Fairmount Park on the western part of the city is Cedar Grove, a lovely old Quaker farm. 

Alan Crossman added to my information:

The first place of Quaker interest is the Arch Street Friends Meeting House at 4th and Arch Streets, built in 1804.  The Monthly Meeting of Friends of Philadelphia which meets here was founded in 1683 with the founding of Philadelphia.  The building is open from 10 AM to 4 PM, Tuesday to Saturday.  There is worship on Sunday Morning and Wednesday evening.  Information about the building is at  http://www.pym.org/arch-street-meeting-house/the-building/ and the worship group is at http://www.archstreetfriends.org.  The building is a National Historic Landmark.  The original meetinghouse at Center Square was torn down after only a few years, as it was viewed as being too far west of the population center along the river to have any appeal. .....  The ground on which the Arch St MH sits was given to Friends by William Penn in 1701 and used for the first 100 years as a burial ground.  Some of the graves there pre-date the Penn deed.  Very few of the graves are marked, as was the early Quaker practice, and the building and parking lot sit on top of the graveyard.

The second place of interest to Friends in the downtown area is Friends Center at 15th and Race Streets.  This is the place of worship for Central Philadephia Friends Meeting and the business headquarters for the American Friends Service Committee, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Friends World Committee (American Section) and several other Quaker organizations.  There is a statue of Mary Dyer out in front, a copy of the one that sits on Boston Common where she was hung as one of the early Quaker martyrs. The meetinghouse that is attached to this modern building was built after 1827 when Philadelphia Quakers had a separation on theological disputes. (Philadelphia friends reunited in 1955)

I did visit this site and took below photos, but this was not nearly as interesting as the Arch Street Meeting House as there was no one to show you around or tell you the stories like Jim at Arch Street.

The original 12th St Meetinghouse, built in 1812 was  located between Market and Chestnut Sts, usually referred to as “Western District” in the old records, was torn down in 1975 and moved to the George School campus and reconstructed there.  The materials for this building came from tearing down the previous “Great Meetinghouse at 2nd and Market” which was built in 1755.  The location of the Great Meetinghouse is now the open grass area along Market St next the Christ Church, as the Quakers specified it should stay open space when they sold it to the Episcopalians.

I have served as one of the guides at the Arch St meetinghouse from time to time an would be happy to try and answer other questions.

Most of the early Quaker records for the Delaware Valley are stored at either Haverford College or Swathmore College.  On-line catalog is available through their shared catalog at tripod.brynmawr.edu.  Most of these files have been microfilmed and are in the process of being made available through Ancestry, but it is fun to visit the two archives to learn more about the original records and the librarians at both are helpful in pointing you towards resources.  Both colleges have easy access by SEPTA train lines from center city.  In addition, Gilbert Cope extracted many of those records in the late 1800’s.  His extractions are available at the Pennsylvania Historical Society on Locust St. Worth a visit to their library.  The other center for help with genealogy in Philadelphia is the PA Genealogical Society.  Their reading room and library is just around the corner from the Historical Society. 

.....

While doing the research above, I found the following site that is very helpful:

http://www.oldcitydistrict.org/directory?tags=historic+attraction

It is an overview of historic sites with maps to go with each site.  

Here is the information for the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania:
GSP office hours: 10 AM - 4:30 PM, Tuesday - Friday
The Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania is located at 2207 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103

And the Historical Society hours:
Library Hours

Monday: Closed
Tuesday: 12:30 - 5:30 p.m.
Wednesday: 12:30 - 8:30 p.m.
Thursday: 12:30 - 5:30 p.m.
Friday: 10 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.

I think that I am a member of either this organization or of the Pennsylvania Historical Society.  I joined at one of the bigger .....perhaps NGS annual event?  I need to look this up and double check.

It looks as if both are easy to access from where I will be staying:

Janet Palo-Jackson sent me a reminder that I should visit the Arch Street Meeting House.  And that she believed that the Pusey mill was the mill that was referred to as Penn's Mill in my information.  She is a Pusey Descendent.  Her ancestor was brought by William Penn from England to oversee the mill.  She is also a Matlack descendent.  Janet sent a very interesting link to her Matlack ancestor:

http://www.mcfarlandbooks.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-7443-1

Mark Dixon agreed with Janet's suggestion that Penn's Mill might have been the Mill associated with Caleb Pusey's mill:

Thinking more about the "Penn mill" you're seeking.  Unless you have strong evidence to the contrary, I wonder if this wasn't the mill at Upland, near Chester: http://home.comcast.net/~calebpuseyhouse/site/.  I know that Penn and miller Caleb Pusey were partners in this venture.  The still-standing Caleb Pusey House there is the only extant structure visited by Penn. (Closed for the winter, unfortunately.)

I am waiting for permission from a couple of more people to add their information to my site.  I'll update as I have time and permissions.

Sammons in the Civil War

Kellie Oxley asked me a great question the other day.  To paraphrase her question;   in the Sammons family were there brothers who fought against each other during the Civil War and did it cause the name spelling to change from Salmons to Sammons on our line.  I have never really done this research in full.  However, I have a LOT of various clues to follow up on.  So I will put my clues down here and perhaps Kellie and PJ will help me make a more full report on this question.

Lucinda Hensley and Roland (Bud) Salmons were married in Lawrence County, Kentucky in either 29 Oct 1854.  My old data base had said 9 Oct 1854 in Louisa Kentucky.  I am not sure if I have a copy of their marriage certificate.  If I stop to follow up on that, I'll never get this post written.  I'll try to add that information later.  If you are reading this on down the road, e-mail and ask me!

It is said that the other Sammons brothers joined the army on the Union side.  But Bud was perhaps influenced by his wife and his wife's family to join on the Confederate side.  I am pretty sure that Ruth Salmons Nassar has a story about this in her book that I will share with you that speaks to this.  But for now here is what I have in my own notes:

.... in my notebook is a faded copy of proof that Roland Salmons enlistment in the Confederate ARmy from June 18 to June 30 1862 as a private in Capt. William Straton’s CO of Cavalry.  He is a Pvt.  He must have reenlisted July 1 to Nov 30, 1862 in another group.  Perhaps 1 Batt’n Va. Mtd Rifles.  In both times the place of enlistment is Logan Co. Wv.  At the bottom of the second note is a handwritten note :  “Name appears in column of names present as Roland Sammons.  So he must have changed the spelling of his name sometime during the year of 1862.

And about William Hensley's Confederate service:

William B.Hensley  joined the Confederate ARmy.  Military papers describe him as being 5'3", dark complexioned, blue eyes, dark hair, age 22 in 1863.  Perhaps he had some military training, because he was elected Captain of Company F, 45th Infantry Batalion, Virginia in October 1863 (Later his was designated Company H, same batallion).  He enlisted a namesake, William B. Hensley, into Company H late 1863 or 1864 as private.  I theorize that this was his uncle William, son of Solomon, who was 20 years older than Lucinda's brother William.  The elder Hensley appears as a prisoner of war held by the Union Army at Camp Chase, Ohio, after being captured January 18, 1865.  The older Hensley was described as being 5'10", dark complexion, grey eyes, brown hair, farmer by profession from Wayne County, Virginia (now WV).

Lucinda's brother, Capt. William B. Hensley, evidently served bravely and was seriously wounded and hospitalized near Fisherville, VA. in 1864 and was removed to a hospital at Staunton, Va where he may have remained until the war's end.

I think that I have also researched Byrd Hensley Jr.'s service but it is not close at hand.  

Next the name idea:  Salmons to Sammons:

  I am looking at the marriage certificate between Henry C. Salmonds and Sarah Wooten in 2005 while working on mom’s and my application to the Colonial Dames.  Several things are interesting.  One that Lucinda’s name appears as the person in whose presence the marriage takes place.  She is named as Mrs. Sarah Small (?) Lucinda Salmonds.  This blows up the theory of the change in spelling taking place during the Civll War.  It also adds some names to Lucinda’s list of names.

Lucinda was from Barboursville in what is now WV but was then Virginia.  The story in the family has been that she was the person who believed that the correct way to spell the name was Sammons.

 In a letter from 1431 West Sears Street, Denison, Texas 75020 dated April 26, 1967, there is mention that although Lucinda’s husband could neither read nor write, she was a schoolteacher.  And that she maintained that the correct way to write Salmons was Sammons.

I believe that Lucinda's name was spelled Sammons on her death certificate.  The information at that time was given by her son, William, with whom she was living when she died.

This is a start to the answer to the question that Kellie asked.  Perhaps we can all work on this some more.  

New Yorker Article

My daughter, Mary, sent me a link for an article that appeared in the New Yorker.  I want to share it with all of the world!  But I want to share it particularly with the genealogy world!  You can read it for yourself at:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/cobweb?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits

The article is by Jill Lepore.  I own three of her books.  More information about the author can be found at:  http://scholar.harvard.edu/jlepore/home

The article is a great argument for continuing to write those books that sit on library shelves.  For those of us who mainly blog, I am rethinking what I should spending my time on.  One quote:

The footnote, a landmark in the history of civilization, took centuries to invent and to spread. It has taken mere years nearly to destroy. A footnote used to say, “Here is how I know this and where I found it.” A footnote that’s a link says, “Here is what I used to know and where I once found it, but chances are it’s not there anymore.” It doesn’t matter whether footnotes are your stock-in-trade. Everybody’s in a pinch. Citing a Web page as the source for something you know—using a URL as evidence—is ubiquitous. Many people find themselves doing it three or four times before breakfast and five times more before lunch. What happens when your evidence vanishes by dinnertime?

However, later in the article there is information about the permalink which is a solution to this problem.  Well at least there are people working on this.

But the quote that captured my attention is:

Vine Cerf was quoted:  " I worry that the twenty-first century will become an informational black hole"

Read this article for yourself!  I have just made a few notes to remind myself of what I have read!  The article will open your eyes!

Jewish ancestry

In chatting with Lynda Davis-Logan today, Lynda shared the information that her Blankenship DNA participant had a very interesting match with a man in Alabama who is 90 with last name Ward.  Her story is fascinating in that this man is not Jewish.  However, he had had many occasions in his life when others had mistaken him for being Jewish.  His testing indicates that indeed his heritage is Jewish as he falls into the haplogroup J-M172.  Linda's Blankenship DNA participant is a match for this man as well as two men who tested (one is my participant) for the Wooten Surname project.  They also share the J-M172 haplogroup type.

I wanted to put down the story that this 90 year old man told Lynda is the probable beginnings of these Ward families.  He said that these men were Syrian Jews.  They moved into the border area between Scotland and England with the Roman conquest.  They lived there for many generations and because they were Jews they were given the less glamorous jobs of being the guards.  These men were left to protect the Roman interests when the Romans pulled out.  When surnames were put into place (After 1066, the Norman barons introduced surnames into England, and the practice gradually spread.)  these men were given or took the name of Ward or Warden.  These families  lived in the borders area of Great Britain for many generations.  

I wanted to write this down so I don't loose the thought.

Marriage of Spencer and Betsy Marshall in Culpeper County, Virginia

In the book Culpeper County, Virginia Marriages, 1780-1853 by John Vogt and T. William Kethley, Jr.  on page 86:

Pinckard, Spencer and Betsy Marshall   30 Aug 1799;  min--William Mason (Baptist)

I believe it very likely that this is my 4-gr-grandparents.  Here are the reasons:

My Dollarhide book tells me that the census records for all counties in Virginia are lost for 1790.  The only counties in Virginia that have extant census records for 1800 are Accommack and Louisa.     In the census of 1810 on Ancestry Spencer Pinckard is found living in Culpeper with a household of 13 people.  Five of them are slaves.  The two adults are both between the ages of 26 and 44.  There are five males under the age of 10 and one female under the age of 10.  These are perfect ages for a marriage in 1799.

By 1820 Spencer has already died as I find Elizabeth listed as head of the household.  She still has the five slaves.  She is still between the ages of 26 and 44. She has 3 male children under 10 and 2 male children 16 thru 25.  She has 2 female children under 10 and 1 female 16-25.  That adds up to 8 children still in the home.

Also in the 1820 census are two more Pinckard males:  Marshall Pinckard with 15 persons in his household.  5 are slaves.  There is one white male 26-44 and 1 white female 26-44,  4 males under 10, 1 male 10-15, 1 male 16-18,  2 females under 10, 1 female 16-25.  The only way that this can be Marshall Pinckard who is the son of Spencer and Elizabeth is if some of his siblings are living with him  hmmmm....the only way that this can make any sense for this to be the son of Elizabeth and Spencer is Somehow Elizabeth did not count Marshall but Marshall reported himself to be the head of the household in which  his mother and siblings lived.

However, the fact that Spencer and Elizabeth named a son Marshall is the second reason that I give in the argument that the marriage above is that of my 4-gr-grandparents.

In 1830 Census on ancestry there is a very large household headed by Charles Pinckard (A Charles had been in Fauquier County in 1820)  this household is not children nor grandchildren of Spencer and Elizabeth judging by the wealth and ages of the people who live there.  Elizabeth is still the head of a household.  She is now 40-49 with 4 children still in the house and 6 slaves.  The other two males in Culpeper are Jas and Jno neither of which are children of Elizabeth and Spencer (perhaps they belong to Charles).  My best guess is that Robert, Thomas and Edward and perhaps one more son have moved to TN.  The three girls have married and moved away.  There are 3 males in the home

The 1840 census find Chs, Eliz, Jas and Jno Pinckard in Culpeper.  Elizabeth is still not 50.  She now has 2 females and two males younger than 20 in her home.

In 1850 Charles Pinckard is still in Culpeper with wife Sarah and children Sarah, Catherine and Alfred.
Elizabeth is now 72 and only has one daughter living with her:  Mary who is now 32.

In the 1860 census Elizabeth is 87 and she and Mary are still living together.  Mary's age is hard to read.  However one big surprise:  Elizabeth says she was born in Albemarle while Mary says she is born in Culpeper.  Elizabeth died before 1866 so we do not expect to find her in any further censuses.

Spencer was still alive in 1815.  Checking the 1815 Directory of Virginia Landowners Culpeper County by Roger G. Ward (extracted from Land Tax Records in the Library of Virginia), we find Spencer's land to be 5 miles south of the Courthouse.  This would put him in the area shown below:

Gotta learn how to use my scanner this week!

Spencer and Elizabeth Pinkard of Culpeper County, Virginia

You may have already heard my Woo Hoo!  from WV where ever you are tonight!  I have a really good buddy who has a Hawkins line that is shown by DNA testing to connect with my Hawkins ancestors.  She is the registrar for a DAR chapter in Tennessee.  Last night she sent me a link for a chancery case that she had found while she was trying to help a gentleman who was working on his daughter's DAR supplementary.  I had never seen this chancery case.  Makes me think about the fact that I have LOTS to look at to solve all of these mysteries of my ancestors.  Here is the link:

http://www.lva.virginia.gov/chancery/case_detail.asp?CFN=047-1868-001

On page 6 of this chancery case, there is clear explanation that MY 3-gr-grandmother, Matilda Pinkard Hawkins, was the daughter of Spencer and Elizabeth Pinkard!  Woo Hoo!  All of Spencer and Elizabeth's children are named. And they are:

Thomas Pinkard (decd)
Mary A. Pinkard
Marshall P. Pinkard
Edward W. Pinkard
William Pinkard
Richard Pinkard
Martha Pinkard
H??? Pinkard (Penny Alby believes this is Hiram)
Matilda Pinkard
Robert Pinkard

The Chancery Case seems to have been in progress from 1866 to 1868.  It is titled Robert Pinkard vs Thomas Pinkard +c.  It was heard in the Circuit Court in Culpeper County, Virginia.  I believe that it may have been a friendly case to get everyone's permission to divide up the Dower Land of Elizabeth Pinckard.

I believe that the first four paragraphs basically say that Spencer Pinckard died intestate in Culpeper County.  His wife, Elizabeth, received 63 acres and the home that sat on the acres as her dower land.  Elizabeth has now died.  Robert wants the land and home to be sold and for the proceeds from that sale to be split into tenths.  He believes that he is entitled to receive two tenths because his brother, Thomas, devised the land to him in his will in Tennessee.


Ok....I skipped some pages and will try Edward P. Hawkins' answer:
This answer of Edward P. Hawkins to a Bill of Complaint exhibited against him and others by Robert Pinckard in the Circuit Court of Culpeper.

This respondent making the usual reservation  for answering to said Bill or so much thereof as he is advised it is ???? for him to answer , answering ???? that he believes the statements therein contained to be true.  The small tract of land of Sixty three acres is incapable of division among the heirs of the said Pinckard.  The enclosures and ????have all been destroyed and nothing remains but a small dwelling house.  It might be made a comfortable home for one family but a division would render all portions almost ???? This respondent concludes in the prayer of the Bill for a sale of the land and distribution of the proceeds.  Having fully answered pray to be dis????? with reasonable courtesy.  Edward P. Hawkins

It seems to me that all of the respondents  answer that the land is incapable of division.  They all seem to agree that the land should be sold and the proceeds divided....seven sign such an answer on  page 22 of the case.  and it looks as if these are actual signatures of the seven people.

On page 26 of the suit one can find the will of Thomas Pinkard.  It is a very nice will written 9 May 1846 in State of Tennessee and County of Davidson.  In it Thomas says that he bequeaths all of his interest in his mother's estate to his brother, Robert Pinkard for his kindness and expense in his last illness.

It looks as if the money is split up on page 51.

On page 93 Sheriff of Nelson County commanded to summon H? M Pinckard....he is not living in Culpeper in 1866.

On page 110 Thomas R. Hawkins writes that he is entitled to a life estate  but gives all of his proceeds to his four children.  His signature is very pretty.  Not a lot of information in the 124 pages after the WONDERFUL identification of the children  and grandchildren of Spencer and Elizabeth Pinckard.



In August 2019, Linda Hutcherson Simmons from Missouri sent me a message via Ancestry that she had read my blog post about the Pinkard family.  She shared information that she had about this family that we share.  Her ancestor is Marshall Pinkard who first married Agnes in Culpeper County, Virginia in 1823.  The couple was married by a Baptist Preacher with surname Mason.  Marshall Pinkard is next found in the 1830  Tennessee census with 3 young children and no wife.  In 1831 Marshall Pinkard married Elizabeth Johnson/Johnston.  Linda said she found more about this family line when reading  a TN Supreme Court Case finalized (she thinks) in 1842, after his death.

If you have information about any of the other of these children, I would love to add more to this post.  Contact me at mosesm@earthlink.net