Searching for Lorenzo Childs

 Dear Lorenzo, 

Could you give me a hint as to who your parents are? I've searched and searched and they are sure elusive. In one census you say you were born in Massachusetts. In the next, 1860, you (or someone) say you were born in Vermont. Many in the family claim you were born and raised in Vershire, Vermont.

You (and I, your second great grandson) share DNA with many people with ancestors from Barnstable, Mass. We also share DNA with the descendants of Reliefe Childs, who was born in Vershire in 1798. To date she is the only connection we've found through DNA to Vershire. Her father was Samuel Childs, and her mother is not listed on the birth record in Vershire. In 1806 Samuel gave her to the family of Aaron Aldrich to raise. You then were between 1808 and 1810. That's also unclear. No record so far found in Vermont of your birth.

New York City called and we do find you in city directories for Brooklyn beginning in 1830. That's the first actual record we have. You married Ann Caroline Marshall in 1833. Her father, your business partner, died the same year and by 1840 you were living in Beaver County, Pennsylvania.  You are easy to find in records there.

So Lorenzo, if you or any of your relatives there near you, wish to send a little guiding light, we would sure appreciate it.

Best regards, 

Bob

(written by Genie Holt, intrepid researcher, with Bob's appreciation) 

                                                             "Bob's Blog"
     I've not written here for five years now, at age 91,  I'm back, and with a bit of luck, I'll match Grandfather Holt, who lived to be 96 1/2. With phenomenal luck, I'll match his nephew who lived to be 102, and, with even phenomenally greater luck, match a female cousin, who lived to be 104. She was married to a preacher and, unfortunately, had no children. So, the really long-living gene does exist in my heritage but, do I have it? Only time will tell.😊  😎 You bet.

     How long can I, or, will I, continue writing? that's hard to know. My continuing health alone will determine that. I do intend to write until the end. Is there a life after death? Heaven? Hell? Who knows? I doubt it, but, like everyone else, I hope so. It's hard to accept the finality of death.  
     I hope to be able to continue writing until the very end---whenever that occurs. I've thought of the end, when does it occur? Are there really such places as heaven? or hell?  How do we really know that heaven and hell DO exist? Frankly, I don't think we do really know---We hope---In actuality.   
      I know, I'm a crusty, Ole, hmm,  91 year old ----, well, character, and so, probably, the blog will have you smiling, laughing, growling and/or snickering as we roll along.. So, I hope you hang in there with me, and lets see how it goes. Bob.

      Sorry for being gone so long. My only excuse for this most recent hiatus is that, "ahv bin ah diggin' a dietch."  Not just a ditch, but one 200' long across the front of the house and back along the west side for  a water line to water the plants and trees I very unwisely planted. We live at just over 5200' in the high desert, perched on a small interior ridge, in a small valley surrounded by 7000' to 8000' foot mountains. The line needs to be at least 15" deep to prevent the winter freezing from breaking the plastic pipe I'm using. And since I'll be 86 this coming June 6th, it's proven to be a mite more of a job than I bargained for.
     Speaking of age, I got to wondering about how well we Holt folks fared in this department so I took a look at my genealogy collection. On average, Holt females lived the longest, many well into their eighties.  The longest lived Holt female that I could find was Amanda (Holt) Carse, daughter of William Humphry Holt and Rachael Caroline (Hamilton), who lived to be 104.
     Males didn't fare as well, most cashing in in their mid-fifties to early seventies with just a very limited few reaching eighty. My grandfather, Franklin Raymond Holt, born in 1875, lived to be 96 years, 6 months and 2 days, and up until a few years back, was the longest lived Holt male I could find. As of today I have found that a new star has risen, Donald Leroy Holt, born in 1910, the oldest son of  my grandfather's youngest brother, Clyde and Bertha Matilda (Brenner) Holt, is 102, and whom, as far as I know, is still living, thus making him the longest lived Holt male in the entire line going back to C1400.  Update: Donald died 8 June 2012.

Treasures in the 1940's Census

Ahh, spring is finally here. I, like the posies, am tentatively peeping around to see if I can again begin to produce. I don't want to wilt and go away as I did last fall; indeed, as I did earlier this spring. My roots percieved some new fertilizer being sprinkled around today, the 1940 census was released for researching for the first time this morning. It's not indexed yet, but if you know where to go, its treasures are ready and waiting to be found. Good Hunting.
By 1940, the Nazis and Russia had Europe ablaze, and the Japanese were very effectively torching Asia.  Our leaders here in the U.S. were still twittling their thumbs and hoping for a miracle that never came; indeed, never had a chance of coming. In that 1940 census you will be able to find the next to last enumeration for millions of young, male relatives of yours and mine who gave that last, great measure of love, so that we, their descendants and loved ones, could live in peace. Find them and honor them in your family records and with adornments on their graves. 

I keep telling you that I'm back and then disappear for weeks on end: Not good. The problem, as I see it, is I've been suffering through a period of depression. Why am I depressed? I haven't a clue. But depressed I have been and still am. I've decided to fight it every way I know how and preparing and writing this blog is one of the avenues I intend to pursue in that fight.
     To me, knowledge of, and about, our ancestral families helps us understand, not only where we came from, but why we are as we are. It provides clues to the sources of our various strengths and weaknesses. It isn't easy to discover what their individual accompolishments were, but as we trace the succeeding families over time and place them in their historical context, we begin to get clues as to why we, and they, as individuals, are what we are. I find these discoveries about  my ancestors and myself fascinating.
     Now that I've got the gobble de goop out of my system, I'll get my next blog addition written and published here within the next few days. I hope you stay with me.
   

***Gr Grandfather Davis is a Boyd!!!!***

                                                    IMPORTANT  DAVIS FAMILY UPDATE

     As many of you know, especially any of you who have been doing Joseph Davis family genealogical research, no one, up to now, has had any luck determining whom Great Grandfather, Joseph's father was. It was known that his mother, Irish immigrant, Agnus (Agnes) Leman?), was born in Ireland in 1820 and arrived in America before 1841 because that is the year her son, Joseph, was born in Pennsylvania.
     The very earliest record I have been able to find for Agnus  Leman, 30 years old, an Irish immigrant, is in the 1850 Middlesex Twp., Butler County, Pennsylvania census living with  a Samuel Davis 50, Head of household, born in Pennsylvania. Also living with Samuel but not shown as his wife, was a Marguetta Davis 64, born in Ireland. Joseph, Agnus ' son, who would have been 9 or 10 years old, was living with an aunt. Samuel and Agnus were married in 1850. They had children  who were enumerated in the1860 and 1870 censuses. Interestingly, during those two censuses her name is shown as Nancy and Joseph is never shown living with them.
     By the time of the 1880 census they had moved and were living in East Deer Twp. Allegheny County, Pennsylvania and she is again listed as Agnus. Living next door during that census is Joseph Davis, an invalid, with his wife and children which included my grandfather, Herbert, and several of his sisters. In 1884, a two year old child named Rebeca Leman is buried in Samuel Davis's cemetery plot.Two weeks later, a J. L. Leman is buried along side of her. There are no other citing's of either a Joseph Davis or Joseph Leman in the records there. And to complicate matters a bit more, neither my Grandfather or Grandmother  Davis ever mentioned the child Rebeca.
     No researcher, that I'm aware of, ever knew what Joseph's true surname was, up until now. In 2009, my first cousin, Frank Davis, a direct, male, lineal descendant of Joseph's had his DNA done and the name Boyd was a 37 marker exact match to Frank's DNA. And just within the last month or so the niece of the Boyd donner, who is the family researcher, contacted me. Her ancestor was a James Boyd, b15 Aug. 1815, in County Antrim, Ireland. He arrived at the Port of New York in 1840. James and his pregnant wife immediately migrated to Nebraska where there son was born in 1840. This implies that either Agnes immigrated at the same time as James and his pregnant wife did and she and James got together on board a very small, crowded with immigrants, ship. Or, she had a relationship with a very close Boyd relative of James who would have arrived in America earlier. That seems more logical to me. My problem is, I don't know when  or what port Agnes arrived in when she came to America. If any of you out there know when she arrived, I would really appreciate that information. We're getting close. But this is a big step forward.

 

DNA Importance in Genealogical Research

                                                   DNA IN GENEALOGY 
     It would be difficult to over estimate the importance of DNA in confirming and or assisting in one's genealogical research. I make this statement from a positive experience in two of my four primary descendant lines, Holt, my father, and Davis, my mother.
     Ten or twelve years ago,  Mott Holt, from Hawaii, a direct lineal descendant of John Holt, son of Thomas Holt, the only proven direct lineal descendant of the immigrant, Henry Holt, and I compared our  Holt line records research. I descended from Thomas, the youngest son of Thomas Sr. He descended through John, the oldest son of Thomas Holt Sr. We had both, unbeknownst to each other, worked our way back along our individual lines and ended up with Thomas, Henry's son as our common ancestor.
     Five or six years later, we each, again,  unbeknownst to the other, had gotten our individual DNA done. When we again got in contact and compared results, it was a perfect 37 marker match, absolutely confirming our individual record's research.
     For at least 35 years I have been researching my Davis ancestry and for 35 years I have had an absolutely, impregnable stone wall. My great Grandfather, Joseph Davis, seemed to have appeared out of the mist. I knew his mother's name, Agnes Leman, but that is all I knew. I knew she was born in 1820 in Ireland and that Joseph was born in 1840 in Pennsylvania. Who was his father? I had absolutely no clue.
     My cousin, Frank Davis, is a direct line male descendant of Joseph so we had his DNA done. The result floored us both. Joseph's true biological father's surname was Boyd and it was a perfect 37 marker match. No ifs, ands or buts, Joseph's father's surname was Boyd. What Boyd family? We don't know yet but we think he was a member of one of the three or four Boyd families living in Middlesex Twp., Butler Co. Pa. in 1840. We believe Agnes was living there in 1840. Unfortunately, women were only counted and listed in age groups in a family and not named in the 1840 census. We are in touch with the Boyd match person but have not completed our research on his family's whereabouts in 1840.
    

  

I'm back----I think

Finally, for the first time in over a week, I am  able to get back on my blog--I think.  Who the heck ever runs the show on blogs has made changes that an old bird like me has found difficult to impossible to cope with. Why in the h--- they don't just leave things alone is beyond me.  This won't be a long one, I'm just trying to find out how to use this new format.
    
Everything is familiar to me, its just as though I were working on my memoirs in Word which, incidentally, was a big change from my preferred Word Perfect. Why did I change? After fifteen years of using WordPerfect, my last version was the 2005 one, it crashed and I almost lost the 200 page memoir that I've been working on for ten or more years. Aha, now you know, I'm a mite slow in getting things done.  Hmmm, everything looks OK and could make a little difference, maybe. So, I'll give it a try and see if I can publish this thing. I may have to wait until my wife, Genie, gets home so she can lead me through the how to's.
What would we guys do without our women folk?

Very Tough Assignment---Keep the Blog Interesting---Really Tough to do!

I've been blowing it big time lately on keeping the blog interesting and moving along.  At first I published articles on various, older families. Then I awakened to the fact that even if I went back only three generations---in some families I have them back eight to as many as twelve generations---and picked a family to write about, only 1/16th of the visitors to my site would be interested in that particular family. Not a good way to keep readers interested in visiting the blog. As to my genealogy, it is already public and there is a link in this blog to take you to it.
What will I write about? Well, because I have found interesting things about certain individuals in my genealogical lines their stories will be told. But mostly I intend to write about topics other  than family that I find of interest to me that I hope will be of  interest to you. Also, and I want to emphasize this, I would really appreciate in-put from my readers.  

Peripheral Neuropathy---Inherited---I have it---Do any of You?

I was diagnosed with Peripheral Neuropathy in my early seventies. My sister Virginia, who is 14 months younger than I, followed right on time, one year later. There is very strong evidence that ours is the inherited variety. I don't know whether our two younger brothers, Rodney nee Frank, or Lee had it. Both died in their early seventies so it may not have been far enough advanced for them to have noticed it or had it diagnosed.

Peripheral Neuropathy? What is it? I don't know whether it is a disease or an affliction but it has to do with the ends or periphery of your nerves literally dying. You lose a great deal of the physical ability to feel things with the surface of your body. In my case, my feet became numb which  in turn caused me to lose my balance. At first you don't notice it because you compensate with your vision. Your balance is a combination of feeling--sensing through your feet--and seeing. As long as there is a light source somewhere within your vision you're okay. But if it's very dark and there isn't a light source, even a tiny one, you will quickly lose your balance. There is no known cure or even a modestly effective treatment for it yet.  Research is in high gear to find both but as of now, nothing.

I don't know which family line it came down through. That is why I'm asking all of you related to me whether you or any member of your family, past or present, may have, or do have it. My personal knowledge of the affliction came when I was diagnosed with it fifteen years ago. I'd never heard of it before.  

Your response would be greatly appreciated. I will pass along to you the results of this request just in case it might be of some help to you or a member of your family.

ECOFF--.A Long Line of Distinguished Warriors

A few  years back, 2007 I believe, after I had started work on my memoir, I got in touch with one of my relatives who had served as a pilot  in WW ll, David W. Ecoff. Dave had a twin brother, Daniel, who had also served in WW ll  and was also a pilot but in the Navy. I finally reached Dave and had a wonderful old-home-week conversation with him. Dave and Dan born July 10, 1920, which made them almost exactly six years older than I so I didn't really know them at all.

Dave was sworn in as an aviation cadet on the 25 of February, 1942 and soloed on June 19th of that same year. and was discharged October15, 1945. That same year, he enlisted in the Air force reserve and served until 1980 when, at age 60, he received an honorable discharge.

In 2007 I contacted Dave to help me with the genealogy of that side of the family. During our conversation I became aware of the long line of Ecoff men and relatives who had served our Country from the war of 1812, actually the Revolution, through WW ll. He had collected copies of pictures of  most of them including pictures of  the12  Ecoffs who served in WW ll, one of whom was an Olaf G. Beestrum, who I believe was the husband of an Ecoff female.  He very kindly sent me a copy of his collection of Ecoff warriors and several years later, a copy of a book covering his years in WWll which will be the subject of an upcoming blog. For now, though, I want to show you his colledtion of the Ecoff Warriors: 

Politics, Keep out of the Blog ? Hmmmnnnn

Ohh my, the temptation is so great for me to launch into current politics on my blog.  But, good sense (my good wife, Genie) is sitting on my shoulder counseling me to keep my politics to myself. When I'm thinking rationally, I know she is right. But when politics get really dicey, as they are now, it takes all the will power I possess to keep my big mouth shut. Holt males, at least all of the ones I have known over the many years of my life, are vested with a very active and very vocal political gene.  It causes their faces to get red, their eyes to snap and sparkle,  their arms to wave wildly with a finger pointing menacingly at whom ever they are lecturing on the topic at hand---political topic that is. And they are right by d---.  Ohh, it's bad, bad bad.
  
So, good common sense tells me to keep on the straight and narrow environs of our familial past and pass along to you what I know or have found out about our collective ancestors. Believe it or not, some of our ancestors were very active politically, especially the Holt folks. And  many many of our ancestor males participated in our countries wars that occurred in their life times. I'm very proud of our ancestor  participants in the nations battles over the centuries. We've had them in every war since the French and Indian war of 1755/58 right down, I suspect though I don't know of any, to the current mess in the middle east. We lost at least one Davis cousin, Ronald, during the Battle of the Bulge in WWll. He was a dispatch currier whose Jeep was blown up. There were probably others in those many wars and I would like to know who they were so we could honor them. If you know of any, please send me the information and I will compose a blog naming them.

My Davis Family Surname Quandry Solved at Last

I've been battling my Davis surname quandary for at least thirty-five years, ever since I started doing genealogy. Davis?, What quandary? I could never find the paternal line for Joseph Davis, born 1840/41 in Pennsylvania. I finally met a cousin and fellow researcher, Ethel Daley, who had an old, Kennedy family bible that gave Joseph's name as Leeman--bible spelling--when he married Sarah Ann Kennedy in 1869 in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.

See my blog of about the Davis quandary.
Frank Davis, a direct, lineal, male descendant of Joseph's, had his DNA done and low and behold, it provided a 37 out of 37 marker match to the family name of  Hamilton. I immediately emailed Mr. Hamilton and learned that his birth name was indeed Boyd and that he had been adopted at the age of 2 by a Hamilton family. So, Joseph's father was a Boyd.  Unfortunately, women are only counted in the 1840 census and not named,  so I'm not aware of the families living close to her or, indeed, where she was living in 1840.  My suspicions are she was living in Middlesex Twp., Butler County, Pa. since that is where she shows up in the 1850 census living in the Samuel Davis household. They married that year.  But that doesn't give me Joseph's father. I need to find her living either with or near a Boyd family in 1839/40 and I suspect it was in Middlesex Twp., Butler County, Pennsylvania.  The search is on.  Join me, I need the help.
   

Excuses from the old Gas bag

Just  a line or two to let you know I'm still among the living. Cranky as all get out, but still here. Genie, my wonderful wife, is about to sweep me out the door to get me moving. I'm in a terrible slump and grouchy. Summers are suppose to be spent in such wonderful---and cool--places as Yellowstone Park, or thereabouts, where sneaky trout are hiding in wonderfully cool and inviting streams.  Or maybe wandering around in some weedy, long ago abandoned grave yard looking for an ancestor whose name I have just found in some moldy old records. You know, exciting things like that.
   
 Even my Memoir writing has been suffering from neglect. Speaking of my memoir, I've decided to break it up into two and maybe three items, it's right at 170 pages now. Gassy old bugger--but slow. I've been working on it, off and on, for the last fifteen years.  You read that correctly, fifteen years. You weren't aware that my middle name is Procrastination were you? Well you are now.

 

Wanted Posters errr!!!!! Pictures of the old folks

 My own collection of old family pictures has many, many holes that I would like to fill. I'm talking about pictures of our nineteenth and twentieth century ancestors as well as their children, siblings and homes. What I would like to do is amass a photo gallery of as many of our collective ancestors, both sides, right down the line from as old as we can get right up to today and make them available to their descendants--you.

I would want to restrict their availability to only family. Disseminating the pictures widely within the individual families would help preserve absolutely irreplaceable images of our familial past. I'm sure, many many, wonderful images of our families historical past have already been lost.

I have been able to acquire a  few pictures of several of my nineteenth century ancestors and relatives and a bit more of my twentieth century close relatives. My father, John Holt, left  a wonderful legacy to his children. He was always taking pictures of family and friends, unfortunately, there are not as many pictures of him as I would like. But I have lots and lots of  pictures of family and friends he took over the years that I am forever thankful to him for.

I Would Like Stories and Pictures of the "Oldtimers" that we can share

Visitors to the blog have declined precipitously over the summer primarily, I believe, because of my absence and it is understandable. I hope to make up for the absence in the coming months. Genie and I traveled many, many miles in the five weeks we were gone. We visited many family sites on the trip, her's and mine.

Genealogy is a marvelous hobby but it does require a lot of work and travel. Some folks try to do it all on the Internet but that's really not possible. There is so much more data and information available on site where your ancestors lived and died than can ever be accessed on just Internet sources. And sometimes, in your actual visits to family sites, you can even see and touch things they saw and touched. There is really no comparison. Both, working on the records and visiting, are valuable and necessary. Pictures can help to some extent and in many cases are all we have. So I would like all of us, through this blog, to share that part of our families that we each own, records and above all, family stories and pictures.

Rod and Johnny the Pig

The stories need not be great histories, just stories of family incidents that have been preserved within your family. Stories can be tales of hardships, tragedies, moves, family members participating in wars, or as mundane as one that I put in my memoir about one of my brothers, Rodney, raising a 4-H pig. He named it Johnny and fed it all spring, summer and fall. It was in the family orchard and Rod moved its pen all over the orchard so it could get fresh feed and dropped apples. In the late fall when it came time to butcher the pig, no one could kill it. We're talking about a farm family that over the years had raised and killed and butchered dozens of pigs for family use. Finally a neighbor did the deed and helped butcher it. But no one in the family could eat Johnny. So the meat was given away that Thanksgiving and Christmas to needy folks in the community.

Any story that has been passed down through your family is also my family history. I want t hear it, so do all those who are related to you. So lets have the stories and pictures of the folks, your folks, their places and their time here on this old planet. I want this to be "our family blog."

Need Help finding Harold N. Davis/ Jock A Davis Missing since 1924

          Harold Newton Davis, son of Albert Hooker Davis and his wife, Jessie Virginia Thornhill, my Grandparents, was born in January of 1900 in New Brighton, Beaver County, Pennsylvania. He lived there until he ran off from home in 1917 after a shouting match between him and his mother. Sadly, he never returned. He did write letters home occasionally and always maintained that he was coming home soon. Several letters are said to have been from Wichita Falls, Texas but  the last two that I have which are the last known letters written by him to his parents, are from Okemah and Three Sands, Oklahoma. In both letters he signed his name as Jock A. Davis. The Okemah, Oklahoma letter is dated April 26, 1924. Okemah is 40-some miles due east of Oklahoma City. The last letter ever received fom him was ten days later from Three Sands, Oklahoma, dated May 6, 1924. Three Sands is 30 or 40 miles due north of Oklahoma City and is located between present day Tonkawa and Blackwell. According to the Tulsa, OK marriage certificate that I have, Harold N. Davis 21, of Rochester, Beaver County, Pennsylvania married Emma Sherrill, 19, of Heavener, LeForte County, Oklahoma on October 19, 1920. 

     Three Sands, Oklahoma, from all I can find, was a wild and woolly oil boom town in 1924 with a population of some 8,000 intrepid, fortune-hunting souls. It was cited on top of what is known today as one of the largest oil pools in continental United States.  Unfortunately, Three Sands must have been too wild and woolly for it no longer exists, having made its last gasp of life in 1957.

      Harold's letter of May 6, 1924 was the last my grandparents ever heard from him or his family. His wife, Emma, never contacted the family either before or after he died. His death, I believe, would have occurred sometime within two years of the date from his last letter home on May 6, 1924. By then he had been gone from home over seven years.  However, he always wrote home even if a little sporadically.  It's not known whether they had any children.  If they did they would now be in their late eighties or early nineties.  Their children's children would now be in their sixties or seventies. If you think you might be related, I would be delighted to communicate with you. Any and all help in this search will be greatly appreciated.

Gonzales, Texas--Honoring the Alamo Defenders

     One of the places Genie and I visited on our holiday last month was Gonzales, Texas, the town from which many of the Alamo defenders marched from to help  in that defense. From the little information I have it appears that both William Dearduff and James George, one a Thornhill descendant and the other the spouse of a Thornhill were part of that rescue effort. (see blog post July 1, 2010)

  

   Many years ago the community of Gonzales erected a large museum and commemorative honoring those 32 brave men led by Major Williamson of their town who marched past the huge invading force of over 7,000 Mexican soldiers led by Mexican General Santa Ana to join the roughly 150 defenders already in the Alamo. There is very little question in my mind that those brave men knew, as they marched by Santa Ana's huge force, that they were marching to their death. Such courage is almost unimaginable.

     Here are several photographs of the museum and commemorative plaques.

                                                           

Idea Time--I need your help

  The number of hits on my blog has dropped dramatically the last few months, with good reason; I haven't been as diligent as I should have been in keeping new things posted. I've discovered that it isn't as easy as it seems to keep cranking out family historical items that interest a large spectrum of readers. For instance, the people in my father's line couldn't care less about the folks in my mother's line and vice versa.

I recently perused the various blogs I have written over the year or so I've been publishing and it started me to thinking about how to make it not only more interesting, but how to make it interesting to everyone who visits the blog. Going down family lines as I have done in the past is okay, if the particular blog happens to be your family line. If it isn't, bye bye, and justifiably so. After a few such visits, you won’t bother coming back and I understand. I don't want that to happen, I want you to find something interesting in each and every new post I make. But how to do that and still be exploring and writing about family history is a real challenge. After all, going back just three generations produces sixteen different family lines. It makes you realize your related to a huge chunk of the world’s population but that there is an even more enormous group out there that couldn't care less about half of those ancestors you are writing about.

I don't know whether I can keep it up but I have decided to try and write and publish two blogs a week, one on each family line. Unfortunately, I'm going to be out of circulation for the next month. Genie and I are heading back across the country to visit family on both sides and to collect as much family history as we can by visiting areas we know where long ago family members lived. I am dedicated to finding and recording as much family history as I can in the time I have remaining. Genie's computer is portable so I'll try to publish a bit now and then as we go along. So, I hope you will stay with me on the journey through our families past.

As an aside, I'm writing about my own life's happenings and find it very difficult not only to keep it on track but to make it interesting reading. Very difficult indeed. So far, I've written 175 pages single spaced. One week ago the program I was using, an old version of Word Perfect, crashed and I thought for sure all was lost. I've been working on the project on and off for eight or nine years. Talk about devastated, I could have crawled under a snake’s belly wearing with a tall silk hat. My wonderful wife, Genie, came to my rescue and has been able to salvage most of that work. For that I will be forever grateful.

 
 

Thornhills at the Battle of the "Cowpens."

The American Revolutionary War was hotly contested from the first battle in 1776 until its final major engagement at Yorktown in 1781 when British General Lord Cornwallis was defeated by General Washington. The conflict, in the late stage of the war, was being fought mostly in the south. American General Horatio Gates attacked the British Army that was ravaging the southern landscape led by General Cornwallis at Camden, South Carolina and was soundly defeated. Gates was relieved of command and replaced by General Nathanael Greene, nicknamed the "Carolina Swamp Fox." At this same time, a ragged band of American militia trapped and defeated a small contingent of Tories at Kings Mountain. The war had now dragged on for over five years but was still being fought with vigor in the South. The British, though, were growing weary of both the fight and the expense. To make matters worse, the French had openly begun assisting the rebellious Colonists and had an Army coming to the aid of General Greene's forces in the South.

On his march south to engage Cornwallis, Greene recruited fighting men wherever he could find them. It was while going through southern Virginia that William Thornhill and his oldest son William joined Green's forces. William Sr. must have impressed General Greene, for he soon advanced him to the rank of Ensign and then Lieutenant. William Jr., after a few months, was promoted to the officer's rank of Ensign.

General Greene soon moved his forces south from Virgina into South Carolina. He purposely avoided any major head-on confrontation with the much larger and better trained British force. He divided his forces  between himself and General Daniel Morgan and the two contingents raided independently   throughout the countryside as they advanced. It must be remembered that much of the South was loyal to the British so Generals Greene and Morgan had their jobs cut out for them.

The Thornhills served under General Morgan and on January 17, 1781, in South Carolina, General Morgan's troops fought and won a significant battle against a large contingent of General Cornwallis's forces. That battle comes down to us in history as the battle of  the "Cowpens"  because it was fought, literally, in a large clearing made for livestock grazing, with an extensive set of cow holding pens.

Serving with the British force was a Colonel Banistre Tarleton, one of Cornwallis's best fighting officers. In an earlier engagement, which Tarleton's forces had won, 120 Continental soldiers had been captured and disarmed. When asked what should be done with the prisoners, Tarleton ordered that they be shot on the spot. No wonder those serving in the American armies hated the British. Unfortunately, Colonel Tarleton was treated much more humanely by General Morgan and survived the Revolution and was able to return to his family in England when the war was over.

The two William Thornhills served on for a few more months under Generals Greene and Morgan. After their agreed upon term of service was  completed they returned home much to the great delight of their families I am sure. William Sr. lived another seven years, dying in September of 1788. William Jr., easily the longest lived Thornhill I can find, indeed the longest lived male in my entire genealogy, lived to the amazing age of 98.  He died in Breckenridge County, Kentucky on December 3, 1855.