Name that Baby

George Eskridge (1683 – 1732), guardian of Mary Ball

You are a descendant of George Eskridge. George was a well-to-do plantation owner and lawyer in Northern Virginia. “Well-to-do” is an understatement, as he owned 12,000 acres, 20 square miles, about half the size of Manhattan. George Eskridge had an interesting life but that’s a story for another post.

George had many friends, including a neighbor couple named Joseph and Mary (no relation to Jesus). The couple had one young daughter also named Mary. Joseph passed away when young Mary was three and, ten years later, Mary’s mother died. That left young Mary, age 12, an orphan.

Before orphan Mary’s mother died she made arrangements for her neighbor George to be Mary’s guardian. Young Mary split her teen years between George’s house and the house of Mary’s half-sister Elizabeth. It is thought that much of Mary’s education and upbringing took place at George’s house.

George continued as Mary’s guardian for about ten years, until Mary married. Mary’s marriage took place at George’s house. The groom,  a businessman named Augustine, was an acquaintance of George. It is suspected that George played Cupid and encouraged the courtship of Mary and Augustine, as older people sometimes do.

The following year Augustine and Mary had their first child, a son. They named their son George, in honor of Mary’s guardian and Augustine’s friend George.

Fifty-seven years later this first son of Augustine and Mary Washington, known to history as George Washington, was sworn in as the first President of the United States. You probably have his portrait in your wallet.

 

 

 

 

Further reading:

http://www.genealogy.com/ftm/r/i/t/Donna-L-Ritter/GENE51-0001.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ball_Washington

 

 

 

 

 

Who were they ???

Who were our ancestors?

In many ways they were typical and ordinary citizens of their day. A few became minor but interesting footnotes in American history but most were everyday people. Most led normal lives, sometimes falling in love, having broken hearts, succeeding, failing and muddling through. They laughed, cried, struggled, fought, cheered, prayed and sometimes gave up. Some had large families, well over a dozen kids, while others never married. Many, sadly, saw a child die in childhood.

The large majority came from northwest Europe, mainly Britain, leaving their familiar surroundings for a strange but promising new world. They were likely young, under 35, and poor by our standards. Britain in the 1600s was in great turmoil, with wars, religious conflicts and plagues. The new world represented a possibly better life.

Some were pushed from Europe for religious reasons and at least one was a deported political prisoner. Typically, an emigrant paid for his/her cost of passage by agreeing to indentured servitude: most emigrants arrived as servants, legally bound to work for a New World master for five years in return for food.

It is estimated that, prior to the Revolutionary War, 80% of emigrants to America were indentured servants. They were not allowed to vote or marry. Typically fewer than half of indentured servants survived the five years – our ancestors were among the survivors.

 

Most became farmers, whether they were any good at farming or not, as that was about the only work available in their world. Many of the men were soldiers in wars, some as officers. At least three were prisoners of war. Religion played a large role in most of their lives, as it did for most settlers. Church was a large part of their self-identity.

Almost all of our ancestors arrived early in America, most before 1700. Most landed in Virginia while a few entered the continent through New England and Pennsylvania. Almost all moved southwestward as America expanded, first to the Carolinas and Tennessee, then to Mississippi and beyond. Their motivation to move westward was a mix of opportunity (possibly better land for farming) and necessity (the decent land in the East was owned by others).

As America industrialized the men began to move from farming into a broad range of occupations, including doctors, storekeepers, lawyers, machinists, small business owners, teachers and everything in between. Women, as was the custom of the times, built families and shaped the generations to come. A good argument can be made that the womens’ accomplishments as mothers were more important and enduring than the mens’.

Many of your ancestors born before 1800 never went to school but they did learn how to write their names. Some never did, however, and signed things with an “X”.

Despite the differences in circumstances and practices, however, our ancestors were humans like us. In so many ways they were us and we are them, alike in both heads and hearts. To see their images, however faintly, just look in a mirror.

 

Further reading:

http://www.ushistory.org/us/5b.asp

http://www.landofthebrave.info/indentured-servants.htm

 

 

 

Virginia Pioneers – the Haynes

William Haynes (1710-1781) and Elizabeth Milner Haynes (1710-1780)

Virginia, for its first hundred years, was settled only along its coast. Those early settlers struggled to survive and depended heavily on ships from England. With time, though, they learned how to live off the land, how to farm and make essential goods. There were vast amounts of fertile land available inland and so some began to move westward, away from the sea.

Those new migrants cherished independence and self-sufficiency. They sought the chance to better their circumstances, to raise and feed families and to run their lives on their own terms. They were the original American pioneers. Their love of opportunity and self-sufficiency helped give birth to a new nation, to shape its personality and its path through history. 

Among those early Virginia pioneers were Elizabeth and William Haynes, two of your ancestors. Soon after their marriage they began a series of westward moves, finally settling 200 miles inland in a forested area (Bedford County) that was deep inside Indian-held territory. They and their few neighbors did everything from clearing land to delivering babies to making soap to setting broken bones to making clothes. They farmed, raised animals, hunted, gathered fruit and did whatever else it took to survive.

William and Elizabeth had married at 24. By age 44 they’d had at least eight children, including your grandfather Henry Haynes. The total number of children born might have been higher than eight as the eight names that are known were the ones who made it to adulthood. Infant and chideaths were common in those times.

Indian raids were also common on the early Virginia frontier. William served as a local militiaman for about 20 years, occasionally fighting off Indian raids. Some of William and Elizabeth’s neighbors died in the raids, as did Indians.

Their farm was about 400 acres which was a modest size considering the era’s poor crop yields. It likely provided only a subsistence living. The main food crop was corn, supplemented  with sorghum (molasses) and vegetables. The cotton for clothes was produced locally. Hunting plus a few cattle and hogs provided meat.

William and Elizabeth supported the American Revolution. William was an officer in the Continental Army though, given his age (65), he probably was not a front-line fighter. William and his son Henry (your ancestor) provided beef to the struggling Continental Army. They were committed.

Elizabeth’s and William’s lives on the Virginia frontier took great willpower. Neighbors and church provided moral and limited material support for each other in times of crisis but their resources were meager. It took resourcefulness and determination and n ability to shrug off discouragement. The pioneers as a group were tough folk.

One final note on William Haynes – his last will and testament. He had his will prepared at age 70 – perhaps he was sick, perhaps he simply believed in preparation. My guess is that he was sick, as he died later that year.  He could not read or write and so his signature was simply a “W”.

The usual practice in this 1700s was to have a son as executor (an executor is the person in charge of the will) and to leave the bulk of his property to his oldest son. Oldest sons were important in those days. William Haynes broke those traditions in many ways.

First, he named his two sons-in-law, not his sons, as co-executors of the will. That was highly unusual. Second, he gave the farm and the bulk of his meager possessions to one son-in-law, not to his biological children. Had there been a family fight  that strained William’s relationships with some of his children?

Perhaps geography played a role (several sons had moved westward) or maybe there were bad feelings in the family, or maybe the motives were neither of those reasons. We’ll never know.

As a writeup (linked below) on William Haynes notes, even if he left his children no possessions, he did leave to them the pioneer spirit and the ability to live on the frontier, which they did. We can be grateful to him for that.

Further reading:

Haynes Website

 

 

 

A Preacher and a Poet

Guy Smith (c1660-1720)

Guy Smith was the first Smith in our family to emigrate to America. He appears to have been a very poor but bright child in England, bright enough to be admitted to Cambridge University around 1683.

Cambridge was an interesting place to be while Guy attended the school, as its professors included Issac Newton. Guy was a  “sizar” at Cambridge, which is basically a student servant. In exchange for doing menial work at the college he received one meal a day and a free education. He was educated in religion, as was common in those days, and became Reverend Guy Smith.

In his 30s Guy Smith boarded a ship and emigrated to Virginia. Why? We’ll never know for sure but there are several possible motives. England was in turmoil in that era and there were few opportunities for poor people. America, on the other hand, offered opportunities and was free of bubonic plague, a disease that killed about a quarter of England around Guy’s birth. Also, pastors were in short supply in the New World and that shortage created problems, as Englishmen were required by law to attend church. The English authorities offered pastors free passage to America if they agreed to minister in America. It’s believed that Guy was one of those volunteers.

Reverend Smith served in eastern Virginia, near the Atlantic Ocean, from 1702 to his death around 1719. This was an important area in early Virginia, both for its tobacco as well as the presence of many families who played important roles in the American Revolution and later provided Presidents  for the US. Pocohontas and her descendants lived in Gloucester.

Reverend Smith, a multi-talented man, served as a trustee of the nearby first college in the South, William & Mary.

He also wrote poetry, one of which survives to today. The poem is called “The Great Speckled Bird”, a religious poem . Two hundred years after Guy Smith’s death his poem was put to music by Roy Acuff and Johnny Cash, famous county/gospel singers. Their songs can be found on YouTube.

Finally, what happened to Guy Smith’s children and grandchildren? Well, most moved westward with the frontier, as new land became available for settlers. They moved into western Virginia and then our branch moved to Tennessee and then Mississippi. Below is the path of some of Stuart Smith’s ancestors. John is Guy’s son, Thomas is John’s son and Henry is Thomas’ son:

 

A Few Words about the Blog

At the top of a post you’ll see a name in blue. You are a descendant of that person.

The person in blue might be a great-grandparent or a great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent or anywhere in between. I choose to not try to list the number of “greats” – just know that the person was a direct ancestor of yours.

What I record here is based on the tireless work of many people over many years. Those amateur genealogists have done great detective work using clues like census records, wills, family bibles, gravestone inscriptions, old newspapers and so forth. My role is simply to summarize small parts of their work. I also hope to organize the detailed research for anyone interested in a “deep dive” into their ancestry.

A number of the posts tell stories of your ancestor’s brush with a famous person or event. That’s because such people and events are known and there’s a good bit of information available on those. Details on everyday people who lived years ago, which describes the large majority of our ancestors, are much harder to find and largely don’t exist. In those cases I’ll try to offer glimpses of their world, as revealed by historians. My goal is to give a sense of the people and their times and to do so in ways worth reading.