Blog Some Genealogy

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.