Blog Some Genealogy

I published “So Obscure A Person”, today 13 March 2007. It is a story of a man who wanted too much, and his Virginia descendants, who were the beneficiaries of his quests. He was ALEXANDER STINSON Senior of Williamsburg and Buckingham County, Virginia and his lifetime spanned almost the entire eighteenth century of Colonial Virginia.He first appeared in the court records of Virginia as a bound servant boy, “a slave without shackles.” The title of this book comes from the reply of the Virginia Council at Williamsburg in May of 1741, when, as an overly ambitious young man, he made an official petition for land to fulfill his dream of becoming a Virginia planter. After years in bondage, his hopes must have seemed shattered when President JAMES BLAIR and the Council denied his plea, explaining that it was “too much land for so obscure a person.”

As his childhood had been passed being owned by tavern keepers along Williamsburg’s Duke of Gloucester Street, young SAWNEY seemed not easily discouraged. He allied himself with some of Virginia’s finest families, and went on to win his Virginia land and much, much more.

Eighteenth century Virginians muddled through life much as we do today. They lived each day, one at a time, the same as do we, but they did so much more during those one hundred years of history. Alexander STINSON moved upcountry from Tidewater Virginia to a place called Willis’s on the branches of Cattail, in what is now the center of Virginia, Buckingham County. He saw the land when it was a wilderness, and he settled it, and built a home for himself and his family. His dream of working the land he had won came true, as he became a Virginia planter. He cleared and built his own roadways, he taught his children, and he helped create a society where there had been no community at all. He and his children rebelled against a tyrannical government, fought a war, and created a brand new nation. While living through it all, he kept intact the faith of his fathers. After having accomplished all that he did, his children moved on to new places to pioneer as he had done.

Photo from Flickr.

“Let the Mystery Be” by Iris Dement

Everybody is a’wonderin’ what
And where they all came from.
Everybody is a’worryin’ ’bout where
They’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done.
But no one knows for certain
And so it’s all the same to me.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.

A NEW RESOURCE FOR FINDING ENGLISH ANCESTORS ONLINE

An interesting new resource is being discussed for finding our English ancestors online. A group of professional genealogists in Salt Lake City, Utah, Price & Associates, Inc., recently released 500+ of its favorite English websites: English Family History and Genealogy.

Their web links are divided into categories such as baptism, marriage, and burial indexes, occupations, religious sources, military records, emigration lists, and more. Most of the links lead to databases useful for genealogists. Those sites that require fees are distinguished by color. You may learn more of Price & Associates at their website: www.pricegen.com. Have fun!

Reverend Edgar Woods’ celebrated history, “Albemarle County of Virginia”, published in 1901, on page 296, mentions the following about the brother of my PEYTON ancestress, Lucy PEYTON.

“Henry PEYTON became the owner of Park Hill, the old Drury Wood place near Stony Point, where he resided until his death. His wife was a sister of William P. Farish, and his sons were William, Benjamin, George L., Dr. E.O., Bernard and Eugene, all of whom exhibited a marked degree of enterprise, some in conducting lines of Stages and some in hotel keeping. They removed for the most part to West Virginia.”

The genealogical lineage and descendants of Henry PEYTON of Park Hill in Albemarle County, Virginia are contained in my genealogy book published in 2004, available at Amazon and Lulu: “PEYTONs Along the Aquia”.

An immigrant couple who came to America from England about 1630, are suspected to be the ancestors of thousands of people living today who have a much higher risk of a hereditary form of colon cancer. US scientists have traced a so-called “founder genetic mutation” inherited by two large families of their descendants who currently live in Utah and New York state. Thousands of other descendants throughout the country may have the same mutation as the couple’s descendants moved westward and onward over the suceeding generations.

“The fact that this mutation can be traced so far back in time suggests it could be carried by many more families in the United States than is currently known,” says Deborah Neklason, who led the study. “In fact, this founder mutation might be related to many colon cancer cases in the United States.”

The Utah branch of the family, numbering about 5000 people today, was first focused on 14 years ago because its members had an unusually high risk of colon cancer, yet the group showed an unusually low rate of smoking, which is one of the known causes of the cancer. Because the family was Mormon, the researchers were able to mine a wealth of genealogical information from detailed church records. The mutation inherited by the Utah and New York families causes a condition called attenuated familial adenomatous polyposis (AFAP), which makes people more prone to developing polyps that can cause colon cancer.

The study did not give the family name(s) of the 17th century ancestors, however it issued this warning:

Without proper treatment, people with this mutation have a greater than two in three risk of developing colon cancer by age 80, compared to about 1 in 24 for the general population. Early treatment, however, can virtually eliminate this risk.

“This study highlights that you need to pay attention to your family history,” Neklason said. “With intervention to remove the polyps, the risk goes to near nothing.” (New Scientist)

The Virginia Room in Fairfax City, Virginia is moving to a new location. The following is an announcement from Suzanne Levy, Virginia Room Librarian, Fairfax City Regional Library, 3915 Chain Bridge Road, Fairfax VA 22030:

Our last day of business is Sunday, November 18. The Virginia Room staff will be packing up Nov. 19-21 and will not be taking calls or responding to email. The rest of the branch will be open through November 25 and closed for packing and moving as of Monday, November 26.

We hope to be open in our new location at 10360 North Street (at the corner of Old Lee Highway) on January 23 with a grand opening scheduled for Saturday, January 26. (And if we are on your mailing lists you might want to take this opportunity to change our address (or do so right after we close).

Details will be passed on as they become available.

We cannot promise assistance to the public during the time we are closed. Staff computers will be unavailable for a good deal of the time we are closed. There will be informational messages on our phones, but there will be a period of time during the move when phones and computers may be totally unavailable as well.

So if you have specific research needs for the next few months please plan to come by before November 19. From this point on Interlibrary loan requests will have to be ordered from other branches where your materials can be held for you. If you are ordering microfilm you are limited to ordering them through Sherwood, Tysons Pimmit, Chantilly and Reston Regionals. If you have need of assistance with the photographic archive please call ahead for an appointment. With the retirement of Anita Ramos on October 12, there are two full time positions vacant and demands on my time for the move are increasing daily and I won’t always be available to help.

We are quite excited about our expanded new space and beautiful new building and hope to welcome all of you early in the new year. I might point out that there are 200 parking spaces under the building and access will be from either southbound Old Lee Highway or University Drive between North and Whitehead.

Suzanne Levy
Virginia Room Librarian
Fairfax City Regional Library
3915 Chain Bridge Rd.
Fairfax VA 22030
www.fairfaxcounty

Can there be such a thing as “too much” genealogical sleuthing? Apparently so from what I have been reading at CNN and Chicago’s Suntimes.com.

It has now been discovered that Barack Obama and George “W” Bush are 11th cousins. That is because, notwithstanding the incredible differences between their names, the two share the same great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents — Samuel Hinckley and Sarah Soole Hinckley of 17th century Massachusetts. Perhaps you do too. I do not, as none of my people ever set foot in Massachusetts, but I cannot say the same for my husband. Perhaps I will find that my children are relatives too. And believe it or not, Barack Obama is even kin to the first President Bush, the George Herbert Walker Bush.

However, it gets even more fantastic than those Busheys and Obama cousins. Mrs. Vice President, Lynn Cheney, is writing a book that covers the genealogy of her husband’s Cheney family and low and behold she discovered that Barack Obama is a cousin of her husband too. That is Vice President Dick Cheney and Obama are both descended from a Maryland Huguenot named Mareen Duvall, a 17th century immigrant from France.

Who knew that those two were French? All this time we’ve been thinking that Obama was African-American and Cheney a Cowboy-American. You know what that means all you Duvalls back there in Maryland? You’re related to them both; you cannot take sides.

Mareen and Susannah Duvall’s son married the granddaughter of another immigrant, Richard Cheney, who arrived in Maryland from England in the 1650s. The vice president, Richard B. Cheney, is a namesake of that long ago immigrant. Barack Obama is not, even though both men are direct descendants of the same Richard Cheney. Barack Obama himself was totally nonplussed when told of his newly found kinfolk on the other side of the political spectrum. “Every family has a black sheep,” said a spokesman for Obama, without explaining exactly what he meant.

And yes, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are also cousins, albeit from a totally different ancestor. This demonstrates what can happen when a person discovers all the ancestors that he had no idea were his forebears. They are others’ forebears too, and there is nothing one can do to change that.

There is an interesting feature in The Wall Street Journal Online, 12 October 2007, about Maureen Taylor, who is a kind of forensic genealogist. She is known as the “photo detective.” Here is the link: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119214969916756801.html
Thanks Kathy!

The eight children of Valentine PEYTON (1749-1831) were enumerated in his will, extant in Lincoln County, Kentucky, and also in a bounty land claim. They seem to be Randolph PEYTON, Buford PEYTON, Lucy PEYTON (married William HILL), Simeon PEYTON, Delila PEYTON, Vincent PEYTON, and Rhoda PEYTON (married Fleming GOODE). More than a few of his children married into the SPEED family. Many grandchildren are also mentioned in these documents, which are a wealth of information for genealogists. Valentine PEYTON and his lineage is on pages 130-132 of “PEYTONs Along the Aquia.”

When I wrote the genealogy book in 2004, “Peytons Along the Aquia”, I published the ancestry (page 71) but not the descendants of the William PEYTON, born 1753, who married Mary ROSS on 22 February 1796. William PEYTON had removed to Hartford County, Kentucky, sometime before 1780.

Under “Shelby County TN Biographies” are the details and stories of the illustrious descendants from his son Craven PEYTON: Presley Ross PEYTON, Dr. William Peyton (born 1817), Dr. Craven Peyton (born 1821), and Dr. Thomas Fleming Peyton (10 May 1823 Mount Vernon, Kentucky - 14 February 1878 Shelby County, Tennessee).

William PEYTON served as a private during the American Revolution in the 5th Virginia Regiment on the Continental Line. Although I have found no pension for him, William PEYTON has been proven as a DAR patriot by descendants of his son Samuel Oldham PEYTON. Samuel was born on 8 January 1804, at Bullitt County, Kentucky and died at Hartford, Ohio County Kentucky on 18 January 1870. On 12 November 1829, he married Mary Worthington KINCHELOE who was born in 1810, at Muhlenberg County, Kentucky and who died in Kentucky in 1888.

All women who descend from William PEYTON through his son Craven PEYTON are also eligible for membership in the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution.