Motorcycle Forum / General / Motorcycles / September 2008

My grandmother's oldest known relative was a Sephardic Jew who fled
persecution during the Spanish Inquisition. His sons became Huguenots
in France, and they escaped to England during the Religious Wars.

Huguenots were under the protection of the Church of England and their
lace weaving skills were valued.

But the sons indentured themselves to a land developer and were
transported to Maryland to work out their indentures. They became free
men and received 50 acres of land. They bought more land and began
farming tobacco.

Their descendants married Ulster Scots before migrating from the
Piedmont into the New River Valley, just across the Appalachians.

My great great great great grandfather was born in Virginia in 1767
and died on 23 Oct 1857 in Grayson County, VA. His wife died in 1854.

There are records of him marrying pioneer couples at the frontier
settlement in the New River Valley in 1805, and the county tax records
show that he owned two horses and two slaves.

The horses were taxed at $0.36 each and the slaves were taxed at
$0.18.

There wasn't much point in owning a lot of slaves on the west side of
the Appalachians, it was too cold to grow cotton or tobacco. The
pioneers grew corn and made whiskey and raised hogs.

Some members of grandma's family headed for better farmlands in the
rich soils Indiana and Illinois when the US Army finally tracked down
the last hostile, Chief Black Hawk, around 1838 or so.

Then my wandering great grandfather, his brother and his widowed
mother pioneered in Iowa, the Dakota Territory, Montana, Kansas, and
Colorado, before his final move to California. He was still working
when he was 80 years old.

Don't worry your head. Somebody else is already doing it. There's a
family database with 300,000 names, and we have pictures of the town
where my English ancestors lived before sailing to America and we have
pictures of the church where their christenings, baptisms, and
marriages were recorded.

BTW, somebody just added Brigham Young to the database, and he was
Joseph Smith's sixth cousin...

Brigham Young's ancestor married a Bartlett girl, so that connects
Brigham to
the Mayflower lot and me.

I'm expecting somebody to add Warren Jeffs, the "prophet" of the
Mormon polygamist sect to our family database any day now.

Don't bother.  His imaginary family tree is the only one with any
branches.  His real one is more of a family tree trunk...