Up a Tree

I mentioned the Battle of Honey Springs in the last post in connection with an African-American Union infantry unit that formed and fought in the Civil War before the more famous unit depicted in the movie Glory.  In addition, we learned that Native American troops fought on both sides during the war.  I don't remember hearing about these units before in my social studies curricula, though I have seen representations of Native Americans being used as Union scouts in movies and TV shows. This is hardly surprising, given my memory these days, but I suspect that were I to go back to my school-days history books, I wouldn't find much. This is, again, not particularly surprising as these texts had a lot to cover and tended to hit the highlights. I shall refrain from suggesting any others reasons for any lack of information in my schooling. In the early days of the war, the union pulled a large part of its troops in the west to aid in the efforts to the east and south. Because more ...

While foraging in the family tree for a story to begin my third year of exploring history through looking at our family's ancestors, I happened across a note attached to Sharon's second great-grandmother, Amanda Ligion Womble. Amanda led what I would call a hard life, though it was probably not that unusual a life for the times and areas in which she lived. She was born somewhere in Arkansas in 1837; her genealogical entry does not say where. She would end up in Bosque, Texas, where she died at the age of 66.  The little I know about her life is contained in the note attached to her entry on Family Search, written by one of her relatives. She married Thomas Womble when she was 15 and bore 14 children, five of whom did not survive to adulthood. Her first child was born the year after her marriage, and her last when she was 44. Three of her children, apparently triplets, were born and died in the same year as their birth. Another died at age 4 and the last child she bore died at ...

I mentioned last time that I had been unable to find information on Col. Thomas Prather Jr.'s service during the French and Indian War. I dug around a little more and found a the Prather Genealogy website, which has a listing for Thomas. It states that Thomas served as a 2nd Lt. in Capt. A. Beals Co. from 1757-58 and as a 1st Lt. in Capt. Ware's company in 1759. The listing also mentions that Thomas commanded the militia of Frederick County, Md. during the French and Indian War, though it lists no dates.  No citations are given as the source of this information, and a limited search of the Maryland State Archives online turned no extra information. I may not have looked in the proper place, though.  An interesting note in his listing states that he received several letters from George Washington that are archived in the Library of Congress genealogy department. I note that some material is available online, and I'll try to see if I can find anything. One other note: I menti...

Before I start in on a new topic, I want to add a small bit of information to the last post. I mentioned that none of the documents I had seen relating to the Prather family mentioned how many slaves the family owned, but after looking around a bit more, I found a listing of the "goods and chattel" of Thomas McKay Prather, Jonathan Smith's father. This list shows five "Negro" people -- one adult man, two adult women, and two children, a four-year-old girl and a two-year old. The man was valued at 28 pounds, the two women at 48 pounds, and the children at 6 pounds and 4 pounds respectively. Depending on what online resource you use, the value of a pound in the year Thomas McKay's will is dated would equate to about $2,100 to $2,200. At the lower end of this scale, I calculate the total "value" of those five people at about $172,000, a not inconsiderable sum. Of course we're talking about human beings here, so it seems a bit ridiculous to putting...

I figured that at some point in the exploration of the histories of our family I'd run into slavery. Some of the people on both sides of the family who immigrated here came as indentured servants, people who agreed to work for a richer immigrant in exchange for the money to pay for their passage to America.  Their term of servitude was limited, and when their time was up, they were free to go about their lives and make their way as best they could. Most of our ancestors completed their terms and went on to become land owners and farmers, with some taking up trades to earn enough money to provide a home and a decent living for their families.  In some of the colonies, the richer immigrant benefitted from more than the labor of the servants they brought. By bringing people with them they would receive a headright benefit -- grants of land for every person they brought over. Servants might bargain with their masters to pay for their relatives back in Great Britain to come to Amer...

I grew up listening to music that pretty much none of my peers did. This is what happens when you have a parent from New York City with a penchant for country music. Among the songs I heard a lot, or was subjected to, depending on your particular musical tastes, was a little ditty called "The Battle of New Orleans" by Johnny Horton. This was one of the battles in the War of 1812. It had a catchy melody based on an American fiddle tune called "The 8th of January" and told a version of the battle written by a school principal in Arkansas who hoped to stimulate an interest in history in his students.  The part I remember best is the chorus: "Well, we fired our guns, and the British kept a-comin' There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago. We fired once more and they began to runnin' On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico." Perhaps the most colorful verse describes an unusual -- and fictional -- fighting technique: "We fired our...

I found this curious bit about my possible multi-great grandfather William Newman in the history of Stamford, Conn., I've referred to in the last couple of posts: "In 1659, complaints having been made to the court in New Haven respecting the 'sizes of shoes,' the court hearing that William Newman had an instrument which he had brought from England which 'was thought to be right to determine this question, did that the said instrument should be procured and sent to New Haven, to be made a 'Standard' which shall be the rule between buyer and sell, to which it required that all sizes be conformed." We've all been there at some point. We needed shoes but our feet had grown and we needed to know what size to get. If you're old enough, you may remember a device that looked like a ruler that had a fixed block at one end where you put your heel. The other end had a block that slid down to your big toe. Then you'd take your foot out and read the siz...