Back to the Bacon

So let me ask.....did I have you at "Bacon"?!?
I thought that would get some of you to open up this post. lolz

More genealogy today, but just a quickie.

You may want to go read this old post from 2012 first, located HERE.
In it I talked about my Snead/Sneed ancestor.....the first one to come to Virginia, Samuel Sneed and his son, Henry Sneed who is my 9th great grandfather.
Henry got caught up in the infamous Bacon's Rebellion in 1676.

You can go read up on what this was HERE.
It was one of the first revolts in the Virginia colony that foreshadowed the fight for independence from British rule 100 years later.

See?  I am not going on and on regurgitating history lessons this time and am trying to get to the pertinent meat of things.

Bacon?
Meat?
See what I did there? ;-)

I find that I have yet another ancestor who took part in that Rebellion.

Through my maternal grandfather's mother, I have a 9 x great grandfather named William Hunt.
Some say he was born in France about 1599.
Yes, another Huguenot ancestor fleeing to the British colony in Virginia?
Perhaps.
We do know he was living in England at the time of his immigration to America, arriving in Virginia aboard the Abraham in either 1635 or 1638....there is some disagreement on the year.

Well it seems from what I've read that old Bill aided and abetted Nathaniel Bacon and was known to be a "Baconite".

Though he was elderly by those day's standards(in 1676 he would have bee close to 77 years), he sided with those that opposed the Royal Governor of Virginia, William Berkley.

Not sure what kind of "help" he lent but he was a planter and a merchant, shipping goods from England to sell to fellow colonists in Virginia.

For his trouble backing Bacon's allies, he was thrown into jail and died there in November of 1676 before they got around to bringing him to trial and hanging him for his crimes against the British crown.

After William died, his widow, Anne filed a grievance before the King of England, Charles II, for the return of her husband's property.  Seems property that was still onboard a ship from England when William was thrown into the pokey was seized.  Since he was never convicted of a crime, thus he was not actually a criminal, Anne put forth that it's appropriation was illegal and petitioned for it's return to her, the owner's widow.

Taken from Samuel Wiseman's Book of Record: The Official Account of Bacon's Rebellion--here is the actual wording of the petition put forth to the Assembly in 1677......

"By petition of Anne Hunt widow and relict of William Hunt of Charles City County, deceased on behalfe of herselfe and two children.

Complaining that the honorable Governor, being falsely informed that the said Hunt the Petitioners husband had bin actually in the late rebellion did after his death and without any indictment, tryall or conviction seize the estate of the Petitioner and her children, which had bin getting 25 yeares by the onest pains & hard labbour of the decedent and the aged petition and the same removed and caryed to green Springe.

That the Better to Color the said doeings the Governor hath caused a Bill of Attainder to pass the last grand Assembly, whereby the Petitioners Estate without soe much as having the Petitioner or any other for her is adjudged forfeited to his Majestie.

Now for as much as the said William Hunt was never in armes against his Majestie or authority nor ever encourgage, aided or abeted the same; and ever a peaceable and good Subject of his Majestie.

And for that by the laws of England a man slaine or otherwise dyinge in open Rebellion before attainder forfeits noe part of his Estate: And the Petitioner beinge informed that this plantation of Virginia cannot or ought not to make any laws repugnant to those of his Majesties Realme of England.

The Poor Petitioner humbly Implores his Majestie would be pleased to putt a stop to or cause the said act of attainder to be taken of as to your Petitioners said Estate, and that his Majestie in his Royall Mercy will be gratiously please to permit her and her children to enjoye the same for their Support and Maintenance and without which they are most Miserable."

Goods William Hunt had brought to Virginia to sell were aboard Nicholas Prynee's ship the Richard and Elizabeth,, at the time of William's death.  Prynne also petitioned that Assembly that the goods in question be returned to Prynne....possibly because they weren't paid for?

The "Grand Assembly",  referred to above in February 1677, that attainted Nathaniel Bacon specifically identified William Hunt as a "principal ayder and abetter of the said Nathaniel Bacon" who, like the rebel, "dyed alsoe before the reblls were reduced to their allegiance to his majestie by which said meanes the sand Nathaniell Bacon, junr...and William Hunt have escaped their due and just demerits for their wicked and unheard of treasons and rebellions."

Then Nicholas Prynne petitioned to keep the goods.....

"Settinge forth that Alderman Booth of London and Company beinge owners of the said ship, consigned to one William Hunt their factor in Virginia a cargoe of goods to the value of 265lb sterling to make sale and returne of for their proper account; for which goods the Petitioner Mr. Prynne gave bill of lading and is thereby accountable for the same.

Prayes restitution of the goods and Redress of the wrong and damage."

Nathaniel Bacon died of the Bloody Flux and Lousey Disease(aka typhus, dysentery and body lice)in October 1676 yet the rebellion continued even after his demise.

Before this incident was all over, Jamestown had been burnt to the ground and Governor Berkley had been recalled to England, where he died in 1677.
William Hunt lived a month past Bacon but neither lived long enough to hang for their part in the revolt as 23 other men had.

See?  Just more and more agitators and rebels in my family!

William Hunt was buried at Bachelor's Point on the banks of the James River in Charles Citie County Va near where the Kennon Creek empties into the James.  Today this area lies between Sherwood Forest Plantation and the Chickahominy Wilderness Management Area, off of State Route 5(also known as the John Tyler Memorial Highway).

William Hunt's granddaughter is my 7th Great Grandmother, Mary Hunt Minge Allen Jefferson.
She's the one who was the second wife of Thomas Jefferson's Uncle, Field Jefferson, that I've mentioned before.

I've got lots more notables connected with my Hunt and Allen lines to write about, all in the due course time.


Sluggy

Genealogical Mind Games

This is the kind of crap I spend HOURS doing.......pouring over census data, other people's genealogy research and anything else I can get my hands on via online.
I am SUCH an Uber Nerd, aren't I?lol

A lady left a comment a few weeks ago on a post from 2011 I wrote for my public blog.  It had to do with the history of the area of rural South Central Virginia where my mother's folks come from.
Among the stuff I rambled on about was the plantation called Roxabel in Charlotte Court House, Virginia.
Here's a photo of the house I found online.
The cousins who bought it together, are using it to host weddings/receptions, etc.
Please excuse the bride in the photo.
She is my 1st cousin once removed evidently, yet I have never met her.  Even worse, I am old enough to be her mother. 8-(

At some point after the turn of the 20th century my maternal great grandparents acquired this place.
Of course, it wasn't a plantation anymore at that point, just an old large brick home and a huge piece of land.
Anyway, this commenter said she was descended from slaves who had lived there(and thusly, been owned by the man who owned the plantation).  She had information about the original owner of the plantation, which was something I had never felt the need to look up before.  After all, my kin bought the place well after the slavery days, so they weren't any relation to the wealthy planter class.

And that's when I started wondering if some how, some where way back in the blood lines if my family actually had a connection to the Family who had owned that plantation.
Could I use my skills at "Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon" to find a pathway from me to the Landed Gentry of Charlotte County, Virgina.

So I started excavating......
And today I found a link......albeit a WEAK one, but it's there. ;-)

Let's begin with a man named John Wilkins Marshall I.
He was born in 1714 in England and came to America before 1739, as that is the date he married a woman in Lancaster, PA.
They eventually settled in what was then the Lunenburg County area of VA and grew their family.  They were some of theearly settlers in this area. This county is also adjacent to Campbell and Charlotte County VA and this family line settled in this general 3 county area.

Here's a map.
I've circled the 3 counties I'm talking about in red.

So John Wilkins Marshall I has 2 sons.....he had more but these 2 are the ones I need to talk about....

William Marshall 
John Wilkins Marshall II

And each of these 2 sons had a son....
John Marshall
David Marshall

And each of these 2 sons had a son.....
Hunter Holmes Marshall
Charles Richard Marshall

Hunter H. Marshall is the man who owned Roxabel Plantation.  He was a lawyer and a judge as well as a plantation owner.  He was much better at lawyering than planting though and he ended up moving away to Richmond in his older years after the Civil War.   The plantation was located in Charlotte County, just outside of Charlotte CourtHouse proper.

His oldest son was killed at the tail end of the war and 2 of his other sons fled the state, due to their being implicated in the murder of a newly freed black man(their father's butler)during a political speech.  From what I gather, the eldest daughter of the judge married in 1868 and lived with her family in the house and the land was farmed out and her Husband ran the operation.
This daughter moved away sometime around the turn of the 20th century and we find her living in NYC.

So to continue down the 2 bloodlines of Hunter Holmes and Chas. Richard Marshall--each had a daughter....
Mary Ann Marshall (Gaines)
Addie Marshall (Holt)
 

So here is the diagram I made to show the twisty/turny line that links my kin to that of the Marshalls.

After the direct lines down, then we need to Do-See-Do a few times to the side.

Addie Marshall marries Olifia Wooding Holt.

Olifia Wooding Holt is the son of Charles Calvin Holt, so we go over and back up one generation.
Chas. Calvin Holt is the brother of Elizabeth Frances Holt.
Elizabeth Frances Holt marries John Harper.
John Harper is the brother of James M. Harper.
So we have made 3 lateral moves.

James M. Harper has a son named Robert W. Harper. (down another generation)
Robert W. Harper has a son named Wirt Ross Harper. (down another generation)
Wirt Ross Harper has a daughter who is my mother. (down another generation)
My mother has....me! 8-) (down another generation)

See!
I told you it was a twisty and turvy.
So through marriage I can link to the Marshall clan and the original owner of Roxabel.

But you know what the funny thing is here?
This side of my family that has this tenuous link?
It's NOT the side the bought the house and farm back in the early 1900's!
That was my mother's mother's family, not her father's family.

I know I know.....this is about as exciting as watching paint dry.  What can I say.....I am weird.

Sluggy

My Virginia Ancestors Part I

My Virginia Ancestors  Part I

My mother was born in 1934 in rural Virginia.  She was an only child.  If I could go back in time and ask my grandparents why they only had only 1 child, I would do that in a heart beat because that question haunts me.

I know that my grandmother was 1 of 12 siblings, 6 boys and 6 girls.  She was #5 in the birth order, the fourth of the six girls.  She was born the year World War I broke out in Europe, though I feel that the war had very little affect on her life as a child in the rural hills of Virginia.  None of her siblings were called to war(being toddlers)and I have yet to unearth any extended family that enlisted, though I have found registration cards filed for some of  her Uncles on her mother's side.  Living a rural, agrarian life as they did, food restrictions implemented during the Great War had little effect on my Virginia ancestors.  They lived a life where they grew their own food and didn't rely on stores and money to buy groceries. 

When my grandmother, Lillian Grace, was 10, her mother, Lucy Ellen, my great grandmother, had delivered her 9th baby at home.
There was  a baby born when my grandmother was 2.5, another at 5.5  and again when she was 7.5 years old.  After the 9th sibling born when grandmother was 10, yet another baby followed when my grandmother was 11.5, and again another 6 days before grandmother's 14th birthday.  The last child my great grandmother had was born the same year my grandmother, a married woman, had her first and only child, my mother.
This was 3 months AFTER my grandmother had my mother.  This made my mom older than her youngest Uncle.

Living in rural Virginia at the end of the 1800's and the beginning of the 1900's was a harsh life. 
Most folks were farmers.  Many hands were needed to get the work done.
The 'work' was to feed and clothe your family.  If you could also make a few extra dollars to make your lives easier(by purchasing appliances or better wagons or fancy yard goods, etc. or by putting currency aside for your old age)that was a bonus.  But most work involved just keeping your family whole and out of poverty.
The more children you had the larger your work force.  Childhood was short and very different from today's idea of that time in life.  You were raised up to pull your own weight in a family and you often began doing chores before you could string a few words together.
Schooling was only for the basics of reading and writing and arithmetic so you could function as an adult.  As soon as you learned enough....around 4th grade or so.....you left school and started working around the farm.
The work you did on the farm was mostly dictated by your sex.  Boys and girls had very different jobs on the farm and mostly you didn't do the other sexes chores unless there was a grave need to.

The boys learned the Manly jobs of plowing and planting, weather prognostication, running the machinery, carpentry and caring for and/or butchering the animals.  There was often a side job that brought in money, such as milling lumber if you had forested land, or selling wooden items if your carpentry skills were good enough to allow you to make salable goods to the town folk, etc.  And there was also bootlegging if you were so inclined.

The girls learned the Womanly jobs of food prep and preservation, cooking, cleaning, kitchen gardening, laundry, sewing(and weaving often times) and small time doctoring.  Along with all these jobs women were also wholly responsible for giving birth to the workforce and childcare.

I feel that given my grandmother's birth order and the ages of her sibling, she was called upon to care for all those younger siblings her parents had.
She was sort of a mother's helper as it were.
My grandmother's 3 older sisters where probably involved in the harder housework like cooking, laundry, cleaning, due to their older ages.  The 1 older boy was probably out learning how to run the family farm with his father and the hired help.

If this is the case-that my grandmother helped raise up the siblings that came after her until she married and left home, then I don't doubt it was a conscious effort, this having only one child.  Nature and her God may have had something to do with it too, but I feel she had had enough of raising babies and wanted something else out of life besides changing diapers and feeding babies.

And this whole having your first child 3 MONTHS BEFORE your own mother gives birth to her last child is just awkward to me with my modern sensibilities.  I guess back in the day of large families it was not unusual for 2 generations to be "in the family way" around the same time, in the same years.

Another reason why my grandmother may have only wanted one child was because of who she fell in love with and married.
Fram what I saw of their relationship as a young child, having my grandfather was very much like having another child for my grandmother.
I see their family as being composed of 1 adult and 2 children.  My grandmother was the adult and my grandfather and my mother were her "children".  If you have a spouse who is more like your child than your husband, it would be a very big incentive to me at least, NOT to have more children.

To Be Continued......

Sluggy

You Is Kind, You Is Smart, You Is Important....

A few weeks ago I rented the movie "The Help" and viewed it.  I pretty much got emotionally involved with the characters in that movie and found myself balling like a baby while watching it.  I watched it again and had the same reaction.
At first I thought the story line dealing with racism was what was behind my reaction.
But with time, I discounted that theory.

Now, if you KNOW me, you know that I am not an emotional person.  That is to say, that I don't wear my heart on my sleeve and I don't break down into tears at the sight of puppies or the thought of sad or troubling situations, like the characters in The Help were involved in.

I grew up a white daughter of a middle class family in Southern Virginia in the 1960's and 1970's.  So I am well aware of what society was like during the time period that The Help takes place in.
But my strong reaction wasn't due to the racial tolerance/acceptance issues explored in the film.
It was something else.

And I finally figured out why I had the reaction I did to the film.
It's because of this throw-away, minor character......
The little girl, Mae Mobley Leefolt.





Yes, I figured it out.....I AM Mae Mobley!

************************

Here is an excerpt for the book, THE HELP,  by Kathryn Stockett.......

 

"August 1962
Mae Mobley was born on a early Sunday morning in August, 1960. A church baby we like to call it. Taking care a white babies, that's what I do, along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the morning.

But I ain't never seen a baby yell like Mae Mobley Leefolt. First day I walk in the door, there she be, red-hot and hollering with the colic, fighting that bottle like it's a rotten turnip. Miss Leefolt, she look terrified a her own child. "What am I doing wrong? Why can't I stop it?"
It? That was my first hint: something is wrong with this situation.
So I took that pink, screaming baby in my arms. Bounced her on my hip to get the gas moving and it didn't take two minutes fore Baby Girl stopped her crying, got to smiling up at me like she do. But Miss Leefolt, she don't pick up her own baby for the rest a the day. I seen plenty a womens get the baby blues after they done birthing. I reckon I thought that's what it was.
Here's something about Miss Leefolt: she not just frowning all the time, she skinny. Her legs is so spindly, she look like she done growed em last week. Twenty-three years old and she lanky as a fourteen-year-old boy. Even her hair is thin, brown, see-through. She try to tease it up, but it only make it look thinner. Her face be the same shape as that red devil on the redhot candy box, pointy chin and all. Fact, her whole body be so full a sharp knobs and corners, it's no wonder she can't soothe that baby. Babies like fat. Like to bury they face up in you armpit and go to sleep. They like big fat legs too. That I know.
By the time she a year old, Mae Mobley following me around everwhere I go. Five o'clock would come round and she'd be hanging on my Dr. Scholl shoe, dragging over the floor, crying like I weren't never coming back. Miss Leefolt, she'd narrow up her eyes at me like I done something wrong, unhitch that crying baby off my foot. I reckon that's the risk you run, letting somebody else raise you chilluns.
Mae Mobley two years old now. She got big brown eyes and honey-color curls. But the bald spot in the back of her hair kind a throw things off. She get the same wrinkle between her eyebrows when she worried, like her mama. They kind a favor except Mae Mobley so fat. She ain't gone be no beauty queen. I think it bother Miss Leefolt, but Mae Mobley my special baby."

**********************************

My family wasn't "society" white people and we didn't have a maid to clean, cook and raise our family's children like the folks explored in The Help.  (It might have been better for me psychologically, in a way, if we had had a maid.)

We were lower middle class white people and my father was a social climber. He pulled himself and our family up from the echelons of the working class into the lower fringe of society in a large metropolitan city in Virginia by his sheer will and business acumen before a divorce and my parent's personal lives tore it all apart.

But in the society class or middle class, among white people in the South of this time, there was not only racism toward non-whites as a group, but there was a large festering sore called sexism toward their white women and girls.

In the South of that time, a woman was only worth her physical beauty. Meaning, women, in order to be of any value to their white society, needed to be pretty. This indoctrination started pretty much from birth.  You see this in the Skeeter character.  She voices that she is a disappointment to her mother for not being a pretty "society girl" and for going to college and working, instead of marrying, staying home, playing bridge and popping out babies.

Being smart was a bonus, but if you weren't a pretty girl, you could just forget going anywhere in live. Your place in society started with how well you married and an ugly woman was lucky to find a husband at all unless her family had a LOT of money and power. 

Women were not encouraged to work but to stay home, look pretty and give her husband children and assure his standing in the community.
The only women who worked were those with a very strong will(who were also still married and worked as a "hobby" and didn't need the money), and those who were divorced or widowed or who's husband's for some reason couldn't/didn't support their family......and usually in that situation, these women would go home to their parents and let the grandparents support the children and the abandoned wife.

Though technically women in the South had had the vote since the 19th Amendment in 1917, could own land and even leave their father's home without having to be married first by 1963, a woman with no physical charms was a disappointment to her parents and a burden to unload.
And these girls who didn't measure up were told in so many ways, both directly and indirectly through the ways in which they were treated, that they were a cross to bear.

Like this Mae Mobley character was treated......she "aint gone be no beauty queen.  I think it bother Miss Leefolt."  Mae is the kind of Southern daughter I was.

I identify with her so completely, that it took my breath away and the parts of the movie she was in just made me ball.

I'll explore more how I relate to the Mae Mobley character as a young white woman growing up in the South  of the 1960's in another post at another time.

Sluggy

And Thus It Begins

Ok.....deep breath.....
I don't know why I am nervous because frankly anybody reading this is someone I've invited here, which means I trust you.

I just celebrated my 53rd Birthday a short while ago.
I am 53 years old.
Still trying to wrap my head around that one!

I am 53 years old and I haven't accomplished a whole hell of a lot in this world.
I am 53 years old, parts of my life and psyche are a mess and I have issues. I know everyone has issues. And my issues may not be anywhere near as bad/big/demoralizing/crushing as the ones some other folks have, but they are real to me and they are seemingly insurmountable at least in my own head.

I feel I am the victim of bad parents.
I have always felt disconnected from my family because of my age and how I was raised.
I have often felt I was not loved growing up, at least in that unconditional "we love you no matter what" way parents are suppose to love their kids.  Now I am not saying that this is how my parents felt or were toward me.  It's just the impression I had as a child and it's how I view my life in regard to my parents and immediate family.

Add in that one side of my family kept many things hidden away.....those skeletons in the closet one hears about.
Yes, we've got skeletons.....not as big as some people's skeletons but skeletons nonetheless. Keeping secrets has divided generations of people. Maybe that's why I have always felt alone in my life?
I have always felt that there is more to where I came from but little information was every given to me about about some of the people I came from.

I have always loved history and puzzles.
Then 2 things happened to goad me to finally take this step.

First my oldest brother died. He had a stroke in January of 2009 and fell into a coma, eventually dying in June of 2010, never having regained consciousness. When he had the stroke he had just turned 58.
Our immediate family has never communicated well and now it was down to just me and my other brother left. There was so much family history I could not get back the time to find out about.

Back a couple of years ago a show came on tv called "Who Do You Think You Are?".
It is/was about celebrities having their ancestors traced to discover who they were and how they got to where they are.
I found it fascinating! At that point in my life I knew a few of the family stories but hadn't really done much to put the genealogy pieces together and collect the side stories of our family's history.

Now at 53, I feel my time on this Earth is running low and I'd better get busy on this project to discover who I am and where I came from.
Besides leaving something behind for my children for when they finally decide to take a look at where they came from, I want to get my thoughts and feelings out into the open on my own psychological issues. Not that anyone cares or wants to hear this crap but I think typing it out here will serve some therapeutic need in me and help me to one day heal the very real as well as imagined wounds I feel.

To this end, I have finally broken down and paid for a subscription to Ancestry.com.
If you know how spending money on stuff pains me, you know how important to me paying for the honor of poking through old documents to find the missing pieces of my family on that site is.

So let the flinging of the closet doors open and the whining about my miserable life begin!

Sluggy