Dessie Ellen Kimsey was born April 11, 1896 in Platte County, Missouri. In 1900 census, taken on June 22, 1900, her father, Thomas Frankly Kimsey was listed as a widower, so her mother, Sarah Ellen Spencer, died before that date. Dessie was 4 years old. Then in January 1903 her father died, leaving her an orphan at the age of 6. In the 1910 census we find her living with Joseph Wilson, the father of Lewis Wilson who married Dessie’s aunt Melissa Kimsey.
In my genealogy journey I have noticed something about the American history. My maternal ancestors immigrated to Virginia and Pennsylvania. It became clear to me that history was written by New Englanders because the early days in Virginia and the southern Appalachians are not very well documented. After a while I discovered (recognized) my Scotch-Irish ancestors and started reading about them and learned the amazing secret that without the Scotch-Irish the Revolutionary War would probably not have succeeded.
This blog post is about the Scotch-Irish (or Ulster Scots or Scots-Irish) and their significant contribution to America during the Revolutionary War.
Read More »The Scotch Irish and the American RevolutionThis post is about ancestors and relatives of the descendants of Dessie Kimsey Anderson. I’ve been working on understanding their migrations. The Anderson/Kimsey families’ American story begins in Virginia. From there they moved to Georgia or North Carolina or Kentucky or Tennessee. Then they went to Missouri. The early ones went to Howard County, on the Missouri River, about in the middle of the state. Then after the Platte Purchase (1836), to that part of Missouri. Not our ancestors, but many of their relatives moved on to Oregon or California. Our ancestors tended to be on the early wave of such migrations, often traveling and living on the dangerous frontier.
Today I’m focusing on a story about Robert Baber, as told in The History of Clay and Platte Counties, Missouri. Our ancestors John and Delila (Davis) Baber traveled from Kentucky to Platte County, Missouri, between 1830 and 1839, with their three children (at the time) Elizabeth, Martha (our ancestor), and the Robert of this story. I’ve included a part of our family tree, which includes Robert Baber (born around 1766), his son John Baber (born in 1795) and John’s children Robert (of this story) and our Martha. Another child, John, was born in Missouri.
A couple of days ago I decided to see how many of my ancestors had participated in the Revolutionary War and I found 12 ancestors. My guess is there were more, but some of my ancestors I don’t even know their names and in other cases there is very little information about them. The way I found them is by finding which ancestors had been used for joining the DAR is Daughters of the American Revolution or the Sons of the American Revolution. You can join such organizations if you can prove you are descended from a qualifying ancestor. Note, these are all maternal ancestors. My father’s family did not come to America until the early 1840s.
Often with a woman what you don’t know is the maiden name. That as the case with Nancy, wife of George Washington Ratliff, who turned out to be Nancy McGee, a well documented Scotch-Irish family. But sometimes the problem is too many people in a family are named the same! And that is the case here. If one of your progenitors was Jane Vanderbilt, would not every family want to name a daughter Jane? And what that means is just about every tree containing the Van Cleave family has made a mess of the Jane Van Cleaves. The familysearch tree has gone as far as having a Jane Van Cleeve with two husbands during the same period and a bunch of kids in both families! It turns out the family is well documented by a number of different people so if you make a rather complete tree, you can figure out which Jane is which. Also keep reading for the Jane Van Cleave who married a brother of Daniel Boone!
The Van Cleave story starts when Jan Van Cleef immigrated to New Netherland about 1653. The colony of New Netherland was established by the Dutch West India Company in 1624 and grew to encompass all of present-day New York City and parts of Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey. What is now New York City began as New Amsterdam.
Read More »Too Many Janes: Finding Jane Van CleaveYou may have an American Indian ancestor if you are a descendant of my grandmother Dessie Ellen (Kimsey) Anderson. This is a very hot topic among the descendants of Nathaniel Davis (ca 1665-1740), of which there are apparently millions… Some say yes, others say nope.
The story is that Nathaniel Davis (ca. 1655-1740, my 7th great grandfather) married Elizabeth Hughes, who was half American Indian. The story goes that her mother was named Nicketti and her father was an Indian Trader some say was named Hughes.1
I have decided that I think the story is likely true and I’m going to tell you why I think so. Versions of this story have been told by many descendant families of Nathaniel Davis, and published in their family histories. The family of a famous descendant, John Floyd, governor of Virginia, never denied their ancestry. I’m going to quote from two family histories. Some other information from the Floyd family will be noted later in this post.
Read More »Do We Have an American Indian Ancestor?Kerr’s Creek is located between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Allegheny Mountains. It is a beautiful valley, but it was not safe. Kerr’s Creek Massacre is very difficult to describe. The dates, even the years aren’t even known, the names of those settlers killed are not known for sure. What we do know is sort of why…
The Kerrs Creek raids possibly tie with all three wars in the last half of the 1700s – the French and Indian War (1756–1763), the Pontiac Conspiracy (1760–1763) and the American Revolution. Also, it is said that the location of this community was on a crossing of two Indian trails. The Indians, it is agreed, were Shawnee. It is also agreed there were at least two raids on the Kerr’s Creek community, a couple of years apart. Even maybe three: possibly 1759, 1763 and 1764.
Read More »Kerr’s Creek MassacreIn this blog post I want to cover some history of the area that I and my grandparents and great grandparents lived in. First, what was there for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived, who was there just before they arrived, and then a bit about the arrival of Europeans.
Not all of this would be considered genealogy, but it is my history because I wandered around in the Indian mounds, often walked the plowed fields after a rain in search of arrowheads and potshards, and participated in a Shippee dig on the Renner property in 1954 at the age of 13. The photo below is of some of the items I found walking the plowed fields after a rain, mostly arrowheads and potshards. Lower left is the grinding stone used for grinding grain.
My great aunt Carolina (Brenner) Renner encouraged the exploration of the prehistoric site on her property and several excavations were made during her lifetime. Gary Brenner was the driving force behind the creation of The Renner-Brenner Site Park, as is explained on his website here: https://www.rennerbrennersitepark.com/
Read More »Native Americans in the Riverside area“There is no one that wanders but what wants to wander further”
This post is about ancestors and relatives of the descendants of Dessie Kimsey Anderson. I’ve been working on understanding their migrations. Over and over our ancestors moved from one place to another. The Anderson/Kimsey families’ American story begins in Virginia. From there they moved to Georgia or North Carolina or Kentucky or Tennessee. Then they went to Missouri. The early ones went to Howard County, on the Missouri River, about in the middle of the state. Then after the Platte Purchase (1836), to that part of Missouri, or Clay County would have been available for settling before that. Not our ancestors, but many of their relatives moved on to Oregon or California. Our ancestors and their relatives tended to be on the early wave of such migrations, often traveling and living in the dangerous frontier.
We do not have stories about our ancestors making any of these trips, but here is a story about a cousin of an ancestor of ours who migrated to similar places as our ancestors did.
Read More »Migrations
Samuel Crowley (~1741-1774), my fifth great grandfather, was killed in the first battle of the American Revolution at Point Pleasant, now West Virginia, on October 10, 1774. I chose Samuel Crowley for the first post because I read over and over that he was the first casualty of the Revolutonary War. However, after spending a long time trying to find evidence for this, I concluded that this was almost certainly not true (see below).
He was, however, killed on that day and his name is on the monument at the battle site. The battle in question is called Dunmore’s War or the Battle of Point Pleasant.).1.
Read More »Samuel Crowley and the First Battle of the Revolutionary War