Gusher, Jetstream or Waterfall?

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Hilltop family cemetery still in use


Gusher, Jetstream or Waterfall?

Preparation

I appreciated group guidance recently about preparing for a genealogy trip. I am going to a marvelous Appalachian region where a half dozen of my ancestral families settled. Their times in the mountains were exciting to me as they were part of the westward push in the wake of the Revolutionary War. They included patriot warriors, some guarding local lead mines against loyalists, several in the militia warding off raiding Shawnees, and one who was a Continental survivor of the siege of Fort Laurens.

So much to explore!

Four of these families landed in Philadelphia in 1738, coming from Bavaria and Prussia. They spent some time in Lancaster, where German was as common as English. Were they working off indentures for their passage? Then the Great Road called, and they travelled down the Shenandoah to the New River Valley. I had visited southwest Virginia before, finding archival treasures about these intertwined kin. Today’s Virginians love their history, and preserve enough records for endless exploration. This time, though, I am turning to another family branch who settled in the same area but were fourth- generation Americans even before the Revolution. Their roots were in tobacco-growing families along Chesapeake waterways.

The pre-trip advice I took to heart was “Yours sounds like a shotgun approach. Be a sniper.”

Focus

I chose my 5th-great-grandmother Malinda Cecil as the focus of my study. She was born in Maryland, then lived among those Virginians who fled to local palisaded “forts” when neighbors were kidnapped or tomahawked, and later converted fertile Ohio forest to farmland. She grew old on her husband’s Revolutionary pension.

  • Fun fact: Thomas Jefferson’s preference for an agricultural society came in part as reaction to a bias against it. The big tobacco growers lived right on waterways, and didn’t need towns to manage their shipping. Reacting to condescension from distant cities that valued urban culture, the Southern elites assumed and preached virtues of rural self-sufficiencies.
  • Fun fact: Malinda’s widowed, paternal grandmother named 10 enslaved workers in her will, parsing them out among her offspring and apparently keeping two children together with their enslaved mother.
  • Fun fact: Virginia frontier pioneers, including at least two of my uncles, joined Lord Dunmore in his 1774 attack on natives at Point Pleasant on the Ohio River, ending perpetual fear among the western settlers since Braddock’s 1755 defeat early in the French and Indian War.

Oops. Those enticing rabbit trails. It’s hard to turn away from the shotgun approach to focus like a sniper. But wait, didn’t the movement from a slave culture to the free state of Ohio play an important role, part of the family story reflecting American history? I started to reassess my ploy.



At least 10 of Malinda’s 16 great-great-grandparents (yes, we’re talking 1600s) lived in Maryland counties that fronted the Patuxent or Potomac rivers. At least three great-grandparents, and all four of her grandparents, eventually lived in southwest Virginia’s New River Valley. (The county names changed repeatedly as the population expanded during their years there.) Her dozen children were born in Virginia, and ten of them moved or started their families in western Ohio, where Malinda and her husband are buried.


Unversed in weaponry, I shifted to my own metaphor. Needing to abandon the gusher was obvious. Sticking to a narrow stream, that neglects the descriptive atmosphere and anecdotes, just isn’t fun. What I really wanted was the flow, the progress, the beauty—the waterfall! Thus, I gave myself permission to follow the generations, include the tobacco culture and the war and the Indians and the intergenerational homesteading, entirely in relation to the Malinda Cecil who was a stranger before this all started. I was getting acquainted with the many facets of Malinda and her changing times.

This signals some personal progress. My first serious genealogy was during the pandemic. I learned about the ancestral Ohioans while focused on the impacts of the War of 1812, the Mexican American War, and especially the Civil War. Wherever these people came from remained a mysterious cloud. Then came my southwest Virginia trip and the Revolutionary patriots. And the New River Valley history lovers with their marvelous, small-town archives. And the DAR cemetery restorations. I even joined a surname association that includes me in monthly Zooms even though I’m a 6th or 7th cousin. (They chimed, “You’re a cousin!”)

In another new pursuit during the pandemic, I joined the startup Poor Richard’s Book Club,* an online group of self-proclaimed history nerds who have learned reams about our colonial roots and founding, such as the Revolution and its heroes, the impacts on “common folk,” uniting the disparate colonies, the tobacco culture, privateering, international intrigue, and native nations. Now, I also have reached back ancestry-wise to where the pre-Revolutionary generations came from. So, thanks to my intertwined ancestors, my passions are intermingling— tales of early America blended into the family stories. The streams are joining, flowing together in a lovely waterfall.

(I have yet to tie in wildflowers, but who knows?)

by Marcia Ford

*See the Facebook group. Join free to participate and/or see recorded discussions. Nearly all playlists include an hour’s interaction with the historian author.

Editors' note:  Thank you Marcia for sharing your joy in researching your family!

Readers, do you have a story or thoughts to share?  Send them to m.strickland@skcgs.org

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Send your stories to m.strickland@skcgs.org





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