Following My Ancestors from 1742 to Today

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One of my on-again off-again hobbies is following my ancestors. It all began 10 years ago, when I was spending a day out by myself touring Washington, D.C., and I stumbled upon a free genealogy conference at the National Archives building. I love saying sentences like that. It makes my life sound so much cooler than it actually has ever been. Ha!

You don’t get far into ancestry research in the age of Google without ending up on the Ancestry.com website. I joined it right up, and I’ve been using it ever since. I went into my research knowing almost zero things about my own heritage. All I knew were my grandparents’ names and that we’d lived in Alabama and Florida for as long as anyone can remember.

The cool thing about ancestry.com is that all you have to know is your parents’ and grandparents’ names to really get started. I made a few calls to my parents to get my facts straight, and away that search engine went.

Over 10 years, I’ve traced quite a few of my different family lines. Today I’m going to share just the one of my own last name. I’m going to start with my dad’s people.

You have to research backwards, but now I get to tell it from the farthest back that I know– Louisa, Virginia, 1742, and forward. I’m going to leave out the actual last name here for privacy reasons.

Louisa, Virginia, 1742

We’ll start with a man named William, 1742, on a farm in Louisa, Virginia. The town of Louisa is located near Charlottesville, Virginia. William was born to Richard, Esq. and Lydia. They had moved the family to Louisa from Boldrup, Virginia, which is now part of present-day Richmond. Richard was a landowner and a planter. I believe the family originally migrated from England, but I’m not sure which if it was Richard’s parents or his grandparents who originally moved the family to Virginia.

Richard and Lydia had at least three children: John, Martha (aka Patty), and William. Probably there were other children, but I was only able to find one page of the book of Historical Southern Families, Volume X. It listed three names, and then that was the end of the page, so I am excited to tell you that I have now ordered that book. When it arrives, I will be able to read the rest!

William’s mother died in 1755, when he was only 13 years old. She was 35. Lydia’s family had been in Virginia since the 1600s. Her parents were born in York, Virginia, which is near Williamsburg.

In 1763, William married Eleanor. Eleanor’s maiden name ended up being carried on down through generations of our family as a middle name. I love it when people do that. It aids a little in research, though of course it can’t stand as proof of relation on its own.

The Revolutionary War

William and Eleanor had 13 children, who all lived to be married and have families of their own, according to the Capt. A.B. Cole Genealogy, page 2527. Both books reported that William and his father were patriots during the Revolutionary War who furnished food to the Revolutionary Army. Many people have used William for their entry into the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) organization.

In 1768, my 5th great-grandfather William, was born to William and Eleanor. Now this is going to get confusing because from here on out it is almost always William, William, William. Everyone named their son William. Spoiler alert: that name continues in the family to this day. Now I feel like such a fool for not naming one of my 4 boys William! Ha!

So we’ll call this one William B.

He was an important ancestor because he’s actually the one who moved our family from Virginia all the way down to Alabama, in the early 1800s, to believe it or not, Tuscaloosa County. Roll Tide!

In 1789, William B. married Sallie when he was 21 years old. They had 11 children. His father William, passed away in 1795, at the age of 53, in Louisa. That same year, their son William, we’ll call him William H., as he is also my ancestor, was born.

Southern Migration: Jefferson, Georgia & Clark Georgia, 1806-1810

In 1806, William B. and Sallie had their son Daniel in Jefferson County, Georgia (near present-day Augusta). Daniel both helped and hurt my ancestry search for a while because he was tied to one of his great-nephews (my great-great-grandfather), as he was living on land Daniel had purchased in Alabama, but I couldn’t find the connection. Finally, things fell into place, so Daniel was a key in my search. Daniel had a large family, and most of them settled around Troy, Alabama before they ended up all heading west to Texas in the mid-1800s.

In 1810, Sallie passed away in Clark County, Georgia, at the age of 47. She may have died from childbirth complications, as I noticed their last baby, Littleton, is recorded as being born the same year her mother died. Clark County is present day Athens.

On the day after Christmas, in 1816, William H. married Mary of Clarke County, Georgia. Later on, William H. and Mary moved west to Alabama along with William H.’s parents and siblings.

William H. and Mary may have moved to Alabama years after William H.’s parents, though, because their son, William of course, is listed as being born in Clarke County, Georgia, in 1826. I’m at a loss for what to call this new William. Let’s call him Alabama William because this ancestor will stay put, even when the rest of the family keeps moving West.

Fayette, Alabama, 1819

An old Bible record, owned by a distant cousin in Birmingham, states that in 1819, the family moved from Clark County, Georgia to Fayette, Alabama. That’s a little less than an hour northwest of Tuscaloosa, and Fayette is still a town today.

According to the Capt. A.B. Cole genealogy, William’s older brother Richard moved with him to Alabama, but then he returned to Louisa and took care of his mother. Of course, Richard was the oldest son, so the farm probably went to him.

The Bible record I mentioned before also contained a clipping of William B.’s obituary from the time. My source only had part of the obituary, but this is what it said:

“William B., a Father in Israel, has gone to his reward. He was born in Louisa Co., Va., May 2nd 1768. He embraced religion, and joined the M.E. Church in his 20th year, of which he was a shining light for over 68 years. He removed from Virginia to Clarke County, Georgia, and thence to Alabama in 1819. As he grew in years, he grew in grace, and after a brief illness of two days, he fell asleep in Jesus,”

Family Bible

It is my favorite thing in research when you find details like those!!

William H.’s family grew in size and wealth while they lived in Fayette, but by 1850 he had buried his wife, Mary, and moved west with many other members of the family to Cherokee County, Texas, which is near the Louisiana border, southeast of Dallas. Once in Texas, he married a second wife, named Martha. William H. died in Texas in 1857, at the age of 62.

Alabama William, 1850

I have no idea how Alabama William ended up so far south, but the 1850 U.S. census finds him living way down in Pike county, Alabama, which is southeast of Montgomery, quite far from Fayette. The county lines kept changing in those days, too so that also made this research fun. This 1850 census finds him living on or near his Uncle Daniel’s land there, so that makes sense, as his uncle has moved west to Texas with most of the rest of the family. It turns out I’m just as likely to be related to someone with my last name in Texas as someone with my last name in Alabama, unless they were born in the last two generations.

In 1850, Alabama William is listed as a grown member of his father’s household there in Pike County. Perhaps they all moved from Fayette to Troy right before they made their covered wagon train and crossed the Mississippi!

1861-1865 The Civil War

I am not sure if Alabama William served in the Civil War or how severely he was impacted by it. He was 40 at the onset of the war, and his sons were too young to fight.

I do know that in 1870, the picture is completely different than it was in 1850. By this point, Alabama William is 50 years old, married, and has six children at home. He is listed as a farm laborer, along with his two eldest sons, Jackson and James, who were 19 and 17. Mary is listed as 44 years old and her occupation was keeping house. In those days, that was the occupation of most women. The 17 and 15-year-old sons are listed as able to read but not able to write. I found that odd. How can one not write if he can read?

1880 Post-Family-Disaster

I have been unable to discover what disaster befell William and Mary, but for the 1880 census, behold the children who are still at home listed, but no parents. In fact, the youngest son of William and Mary, Joseph (phew! Finally, a different name!), is living down the street with another family, listed as a “bound boy.” My best guess is that the parents died, and the older children stayed at home to take care of themselves. In 1880, the ages of the siblings living together without parents were 26, 24, 17, 15, and 10. Joseph was 12. Now why he was living with another family while the 10-year-old stayed with his siblings, I do not know. Either Joseph was of good use for farm work for the other family as the man he lived with was nearing 70, or Joseph was too much trouble for his brothers to handle. Ha! The world will never know.

What’s neat about this situation is that Joseph is listed only 2 lines above his siblings, so they were very nearby, but what is more interesting is that the guardian he is living with is none other than a man named Micajah. Only Micajah, his wife, and Joseph were living at that residence. Micajah is the very same man who originally purchased this land they are all living on with Daniel, many years prior, so he is probably related. Also, believe it or not, Micajah is not the only Micajah I have found researching my tree. It was a more common name back then than it is now, I guess.

1900 Oaky Streak, Alabama

Joseph married a lady named Lula, and they had 4 children, mostly girls, but the youngest, my ancestor, was a male.

Here’s another sad story. In the 1900 census, Joseph and Lula are living south of Montgomery, Alabama, with their 3 children, but in the 1910 census, the wife and children, with one additional child, are living with a man named Lewis. Joseph is no more, and I cannot find any information as to what happened.

Lula had a fourth son in 1902, and sometime between 1902 and 1910, Joseph died, and Lula remarried. I know that the 4th child was Joseph’s though and not Lewis’ because there is a note on the census about that. Listing the girls with Lewis’ last name did not matter, as they would change their names at marriage, but the boy’s name had to remain the same as his father’s, and so it was.

I will stop there. Joseph and Lula’s son was my great-grandfather, Ausborn, who I met briefly as a baby. He died in 1983. He was a good, easy-going man, tall and slender as all of the men in Dad’s family are. Ausborn was not a farmer but a laborer. I’m not sure if he ever owned a car. My dad said that he always walked to work. Dad says his wife was a wonderful cook, most famous for her biscuits.

The photo below is Ausburn, his wife Mattie Lou, and their only child, my grandfather, who died when I was 17, in 1997. He was also a very good man. Once I started talking about dating boys, he spoke up, “April, now I’m not going to give you a lot of advice on who you date. But whatever you do, don’t even go out with a man who doesn’t work. If he doesn’t have a job, you don’t want him.” I think that sums up the family etiquette. No lazy bums need apply. Thank you.

I throughly enjoy following each of these family lines, just to see where they lead. Each line tells a similar but different story. Every family has some kind of great tragedy or triumph to be found, and the best sources are the people who left a paper trail, in a family Bible, or old war letters, or things like that. If you want to learn more about your own family, ancestry.com is where I would recommend starting, that and talking to your parents.

What things have you found researching your family tree? I’d love to hear about your own discoveries in the comments section.

Sources:

ancestry.com : census records, land records, and book clippings

Historical Southern Families, Volume X