Ancestry Saturday: My Kids' Revolutionary War Patriots Bloodline Update

The plague on the south wall of the Highland County Courthouse in Hillsboro, Ohio has the names of two of my ancestors who were Revolutionary War patriots.  This is a source of pride, but those two are just a sampling of the full list.  With each passing generation of my family, the list will grow and grow.

My research, as of December 2013, showed 27 patriots in the direct blood line of my kids.  The list is now at 35 as of January 1, 2015.

Here's the updated list.

The 22 patriots from their Dad's side:

William Altman
Thomas Fleming Bernard
Charles Beaven Blandford
Elijah Charles
Joseph Conway
George Daubenspeck
John Jacob Daubenspeck
John Downing
Garrett Fiscus
William Fleming
Henry Guthrie
James Gutridge
Robert Jameson
Adam Crain Jones
John Foster Leaverton
John Jacob Muhleisen
Michael Reitenauer
Jeremiah Shontz
Daniel Smith
James Ebenezer Smith
Samuel Woodmansee
James Wygant


The 13 patriots from their Mom's side:

Thomas Adkins
Charles Booth
Zadock Bosworth
Ebenezer Cole, Jr.
Ebenezer Cole, Sr.
Samuel Ferguson
Ebenezer Gage
Charles Gatliff
James Felix McGuire
John Nay
Joshua Quance
Moses Searle
Daniel Walton

I've given my kids a head start.  I bet they can find more some day.

Ancestry Saturday: Award in Hand

This is the First Families of Ohio award and the 1803 pin for pre-Statehood status. Both are from the Ohio Genealogical Society lineage society to remember my ancestors who were proven to have come to Ohio before 1820 and, in some cases, before 1803.

Ancestry Saturday: Up The Hill Again

Downing Cemetery in Magnolia, Ohio is an interesting little place.  It got my attention again.

Last fall, I visited to try to find a great grand uncle who was a Revolutionary War patriot and an early settler of Stark County, my home county.  I found his stone in disarray.

I later found an early 1970's photo that showed what the stone used to look like.  It was a lesson in why to keep looking.  It also gave me a reason to want to go back.  So, I did.

My kids and I made a trek back when we were running early to a family gathering.

This trek back found that his daughter Drusilla's stone is, indeed, intact. 

I photographed the entire cemetery (it took less than 10 minutes) and loaded it up to Findagrave.com.  There are several unreadable stones, but all but three of the 25 stones in an earlier transcription have been photographically documented now.

Ancestry Saturday: A Lesson In Keep-On-Lookingness

 

I ventured up a big hill and on to private property to find a walled cemetery.  The gravestone for my fifth great grand uncle was to be there in Magnolia, Ohio in Stark County, yet no photo was online. 

 

Stark County is my native home county, and I was intrigued to find if a stone still existed for my relative for whom a predecessor town to Magnolia got its name in 1836--Downingville.

 

 

What I quickly found, though, was that the 191 years since the stone was placed had not served it well.  I could tell the death year was 1822. I could read 72 years as his age.  Nothing else of note was still there, including his name.

 

James Downing and his brother, John, my fifth great grandfather, served in the Revolutionary War.  If it weren't for the metal star commemorating his war service, I would not have been able to believe, with any certainty, that it was his grave I was photographing. 

 

Nonetheless, I was the first person to post a photo of his stone on FindaGrave.com to share it with the World.  I couldn't find a stone for his wife, Sarah Laughlin Downing despite a listing saying she was there.

 

As I would find out two months later, I wasn't the first person to take a photo, though.  Forty years earlier, in May 1972, researcher Edna Conrad snapped a couple of black and white photos and got them developed.  A relative of hers kindly put copies of the photos in an application for the First Families of Ohio lineage society of the Ohio Genealogical Society.

 

That's where I made a find I'll credit to keep-on-lookingness.  I found that member file, numbered 35 out of list that now stands over 4,000, during a recent visit to the OGS library. 

 

 

Albiet quite damaged, a much-more readable, and mostly-intact gravestone for James Downing was the find in the 1972 photo. 

Also in that 1972 photo was a stone for Sarah Laughlin Downing.  There in the back is the tall monument stone for their son James and his wife, Nancy too. 

The 1972 photo captured a portion of the stone for Drusilla Miller, the Downing's daughter and wife of the founder of Downingville.  Her stone isn't standing anymore so this might be the last such photo, portion or not.

Credit keep-on-lookingness again.

Ancestry Saturday: On a Flatboat Down The Ohio River

I'm not sure I'll ever know for sure, but the wharf at Wellsburg, West Virginia was a highly likely place where my ancestors got on a flat boat that brought them down the Ohio River.

My fourth great grandfather James McConnell, the ancestor for whom our family gained pre-Ohio-Statehood First Families of Ohio status, was one of them.  This would have been the closest place to get on the mighty Ohio from his home in Washington County, Pennsylvania.

Friend Cox, my sixth great grandfather, was one of the early settlers of this part of Virginia when he came here and built a fort, Fort Cox, in 1771.  The wharf likely brought his grandson and my fourth great grandfather, Isaac Newton Cox, down the river too.

The Downing, Gutridge, and Naylor families all could have gotten on the path that brought them to Southwest Ohio right here at this wharf.

I'm glad they did that.  I'm glad my kids can still visit the place.

My Kids Have Revolutionary War Patriots' Blood

Today is Veteran's Day 2013.  It has me thinking of my ancestors.

Two names are on the plaque at the Highland County, Ohio courthouse to commemorate Revolutionary War patriots buried there who were blood relatives in my family tree.  There should have been three.

Thomas F. Bernard, John Foster Leaverton, and Samuel Woodmansee are the three who boasted service in the Revolutionary War and who are now buried in Highland County.

When I added it up recently, I found a confirmed list of 21 Revolutionary War patriots in my kids' pedigree.

Here's the complete list, at least as of November 2013, of my kids' patriots' blood.

The eleven confirmed patriots from their Dad's side:

Robert Jameson
George Daubenspeck
James Ebenezer Smith
Michael Reitenauer
James Wygant
James Gutridge
John Foster Leaverton
Thomas Fleming Bernard
John Downing
Joseph Conway
Samuel Woodmansee

The ten patriots from their Mom's side:

Joshua Quance
Ebenezer Cole, Sr.
Ebenezer Cole, Jr.
Zadock Bosworth
Daniel Walton
Thomas Adkins
John Nay
Charles Gatliff
Charles Booth
Samuel Ferguson

There's still some potential more to show up as my research efforts continue.  Stay tuned kids.

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UPDATE December 2013: Add Jeremiah Shontz, Daniel Smith, and Henry Guthrie to the Dad's side of the list.  Add Moses Searle, James Felix McGuire, and Ebenezer Gage to the Mom's side.  Now, that's 27.  But, I still bet I find more.