Genealogy - Going South

Grandparent's Camper

One of my favorite things to do with my grandparents was camping.  They loved to camp.  They traveled all over the country both before and after my grandfather retired. For the most part, I would camp with them at Fort Pickens State (and later National) Park. However, a few times we traveled with them to Tennessee and Kentucky.  Along the way we would stay over a night or two in a State or National Park. 

One year we stayed in a campground that was on Duck River in Tennessee. I struggle to remember the name of the park, but with a little research a likely candidate is Henry Horton State Park. While I was staying at this park I went on a nature trail walk with my dad and "Pawpaw". Dad was always the adventurous explorer when it came to the outdoors. He wanted to go down from the trail to the river - but the spur off the trail was steep. He told me to wait - which I did.

Pawpaw began following my dad a bit behind him, then he turned around.  No doubt it was to remind me to stay where I was, but I interpreted it as "come on." And so, I did!  

Flatlander that I was, I was soon racing toward the river at top speed - right past Pawpaw and then right past Dad - through the poison ivy that Dad was investigating and face first onto the rock ledge as the edge of the river. The air was knocked out of me, I may have very briefly lost consciousness, and my tennis ball I was holding went floating down the river. The first thing I said was, "Dad, go get my ball!" Wisely, he refused. He and Pawpaw got me back up the bank to get checked out and cleaned up. Amazingly, I had no itchy consequences of poison ivy.

Only years later did I realize that the trail I tumbled down was part of a much older path that one part of my family had been following for more than two centuries.

The genealogical trail is certain from Duck River to the Gulf shores of Pensacola. The trail to Duck River from the Old World through Maryland is probable - but not fully proven. The remainder of this article will travel that story through a few different surnames.

The story begins with Samuel Lane, who in 1664 two years after he had been ejected as the Vicar of Long Houghton, Northumberland (England) he immigrated to the Maryland Colony paying his own fare. He inherits a place called Brawsley Hall and acquires other properties in what became Anne Arundel County, Maryland and specifically, Harwood. He was "a gentleman, chirurgeon, doctor, doctor of physics, Commissioner of Anne Arundel County, justice of peace, gentlemen of the quorum and military major." In 1682, though, he died in skirmishes associated with Lord Baltimore's Wars.

Samuel's granddaughter, Elizabeth Lane, married David Weems.  David was originally from Wemyss, Fife, Scotland, but immigrated to Mashes Seat in Anne Arundel County, MD in the early 1700s. David was the owner (or part owner) of a Privateer Schooner, Williamanta and a Sloop, Washington. During the American Revolution ships like these would protect coastal plantations from British raids, attack British ships, and disrupt British supply lines in the Chesapeake Bay.

David's grandson, John Weems, is believed to have been born in Mashes Seat but had already moved to Orange County, North Carolina near Hillsborough by the mid-1760s before the Revolution. At the age of twenty-two he purchased nearly four-hundred acres of land, suggesting he had substantial financial resources or backing. In 1790 he sold that property and invested in land on Lick Creek near Bulls Gap in what would become Greene County, TN (36°12'35.67"N,  83° 2'36.77"W). John's son, William, would move to Maury County, TN sometime between 1805 and 1811. This is where we first encounter Duck River as it runs directly through Maury County.

William had four children. One died unmarried. Two went to Chickasaw Territory in Mississippi to encounter misfortune. One was witness to a murder and the other was the wife of the victim.  The third, my ancestor - Catherine Weems Tombs, stayed in Maury County where the family continued farming. There they witnessed the Battle of Columbia and the Reconstruction Era that followed the Civil War. 

With Reconstruction came the expansion of the railway in the American south.  Migration that had followed waterways, like Duck River, were now following the tracks as they were being laid. 

Catherine's grandson was William Ira Goad, Catherine probably influenced her daughter to name after her brother who had seen such misfortune in Mississippi. William tried to farm for a while but gave it up sometime after 1880 and began working as a Railroad laborer.  He followed the railroad south to Repton, AL in the first ten years of the 20th Century. He then settled there and opened and operated a supply store. By 1920 the store was gone and he had moved to live in Childress, TX. 

His daughter, Susie May Goad Huckaby, married a railroad carpenter, A.O. Huckaby, in Wayne, TN. They followed the L&N Railroad with her father to Repton and then on to Pensacola. There they remained.

Their son, Ira, turned around to tell me to stay right where I was - but I, like those before me kept coming.

Genealogy - Native Interactions

 

   

Florida Beach with Tourist & Condos

Florida’s population has grown nearly five‑fold in my lifetime. In a state defined by newcomers, simply saying you’re a Florida native sets you apart. When I consider that my grandmother was a Florida native — born into a Florida that scarcely resembles the one we know today — that lineage places me in a very small circle indeed. I fully qualified for the "FLORIDA NATIVE" bumper sticker!

Now, in Florida we love tourists because they bring in tax revenue — which helps ensure we don’t pay a state income tax. But we’re often annoyed at the traffic they bring, and we certainly feel the loss of those miles and miles of open beaches and free parking we enjoyed before the population exploded.

I claim to be a native of Florida because my family has been here since the 1880s. Similarly, I claim to be a native American (with a lowercase "n") because a good portion of my family has been here since the founding of Jamestown and Plymouth. But, of course, there were natives here before that who were capitalizing, lamenting, and resisting our arrival.

Growth and change always create resistance and friction. The winners see the change coming and capitalize on it. The survivors adjust to it. The losers resist it. The same dynamic played out as the United States evolved from a vast open hunting reserve into a 21st‑century, multi‑cultural society of roughly 340 million people.

The Native Americans' first encounters with pesky tourists and interlopers came in the 1500s — beginning with Ponce de León in 1513, followed by Tristán de Luna y Arellano near Pensacola in 1559, and Pedro Menéndez de Avilés at St. Augustine in 1565. From that moment the encounters and friction increased.  As an American with long genealogical roots into its history, I have several ancestors that were both affected by the friction and contributors to that friction.

One of the earliest was Peter Montague. Peter arrived in Virginia in 1621, just months before the GoodFriday (1622) Powhatan Massacre, led by Opechancanough of the Powhatan Confederacy, and he survived that colony‑shaking attack as a young servant at the newly established plantations along the James River. His later life as a planter, burgess, and landowner unfolded in the long shadow of that event, which shaped the colony’s defensive posture, settlement patterns, and attitudes toward Native peoples for decades.

My earliest ancestor in the colonies with my surname, Francis McCown, was present at the 1742 Massacre of Balcony Downs, (aka Battle of Galudoghson) one of the earliest settler‑Indian confrontations on the Shenandoah–Augusta frontier. As an early settler of the Borden Tract, he experienced the tense early decades where Scotch‑Irish pioneers lived amid recurring conflict with Native groups.

Francis' son and my fourth great-grandfather, Malcolm McCown, was so affected by those events and especially the Kerr's Creek Massacre that he spent much of his energy in his early years fighting against Native Americans. In one such event he was one of the presumed perpetrators of the murder of Shawnee Chief Cornstalk.

A seventh great grandfather, James Caudy, was a frontiersman of the Cacapon Valley whose local legend centers on the Caudy’s Castle incident, where he is said to have fought off Native attackers by pushing them from a narrow ledge above the river. 

James Ward, who is thought to be one of my sixth great grandfathers, died at the Battle of Point Pleasant, where a clash between Native Americans and Virginia Militia erupted at the forks of the Kanawha and Ohio Rivers. Tragically, James' son, John had been captured by the Shawnee as a toddler and raised among them - so that day, he fought against his father, neither of them knowing this.

Other great grandfathers participated in actions against native populations as part of a State militia or US military.  A couple of these include Andrew Walker who engaged in actions against the Cherokee and Ephraim Bates who was engaged in the 1778 Brodhead-McIntosh expedition into Deleware Territory.

Our Nation handled the friction with the Native populations badly overall. The problems were fueled by ignorance, greed, and bad personal experiences on both sides of the battle lines. I suppose that can be said of any clash of cultures throughout history. 

 

Genealogy - A Crooked Crew

Crooked Little House built in 1395 

Lavenham, Suffolk, England

There was a crooked man, and he went a crooked mile,

He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;

He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,

And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

That little nursery rhyme was told to me as a child. The true origin of it is unknown, but at least one of the possible sources comes from the town of Lavenham, England.

I visited there once in the middle 1990s while in England on a work-related trip. The photos don't really capture the extent or prevalence of the leaning buildings - but there are several of them. So, how did they get that way?

It turns out they were in a hurry to build, because the town was growing very fast with a booming wool trade. Th economy took off in the region in the 14th and 15th Centuries. They used oak timbers for the structures. They filled between timbers using daub (clay, sand, straw, dung, and water). The timbers were green.  So, as everything dried over time, the entire structure bent and warped creating a comically crooked community.

I stumbled upon a memory of this event while reviewing some genealogy. 

I limit my personal genealogy work and research to the U.S. or the American Colonies after about 1700 - because I know how to navigate Court and Census Records with reasonable confidence. However, I have connected my researched ancestors to people others have researched and put on Wikitree. This has resulted in what I like to call "deep genealogy."

(It is important to note, though, the deeper in genealogy you go, the less confidence you have. Clerical errors, researchers' assumptions, and ancestral infidelity takes a toll on the accuracy.)

Nonetheless, because of this deep genealogy - I have discovered four ancestors that were living in Lavenham in the sixteenth century.  They would have seen the same leaning houses I was tilting my head.

Their names were: John Fuller and his wife, Elizabeth Cole.  John and Elizabeth came to Middlesex, Massachusetts before 1647 when their second child was born. 

John came to own over a thousand acres in the region of Newton, Massachusetts growing crops as well as supplying malt for the production of beer.

John and Elizabeth are theoretically my 8th Great Grandparents. They share that spot with 1,022 other 8th Great Grandparents. A few of whom are identified, but most of whom are a complete mystery to me. Others, like Catherine Brew (whose name also suggests some connection to Malt or Hops) appears as my 8th Great Grandparent twice. 

Knowing who these possible ancestors were, how and where they lived, and what they may have done can be fun. Experiencing a place they would have known gives the experience of the place some personal connection - even if the way I experience it is completely different than their experiences.

For more on John Fuller see:  https://johnfullerofnewton.com/