Is anyone into genealogy? I'm looking to update a family genealogy book that has been kept in the family for centuies, recently updated in 1983, (was typed out on a typewrite and this thing is 1" thick! It was updated from a manuscript at that time). It seems that a couple hundred years ago, before Al Gore invented the internet...this has been a past time of my relatives, to keep maticulous records of our family tree and document them.
I'm finding this very interesting and I want to continue the tradition of updating this with my immediate families information.
On my Dad's side, in the 1800's the family came over from Stockholm, Sweden, on my Mom's side, from England around 1680.
Our family tree on my mothers side is traced back to 1457, of a man named John Fynlay (quoting the booklet "there were many spellings of "Fynley", the original name was spelled Finleigh. It has also been spelled Finley, Findley. The first communion of the Church of Scotland was held at the Finley's town house and the family drinking cups were used for the occasion. )
More recently, William Thompson, born 1755 and died in 1797, served as a captain in Cuberland Company Militia, in 1776. He was with Washingtons army during the cold winter of 1777-1778 and was at White Plain and Valley Forge. He was in the battle of Brandywine and escaped without harm.
All this information was maticulously kept by my relatives over the centuries, and references to archieves back up the claims (Such as reference to " See pages 4,6,27,40,630, 641 in Volume 6, Fifty Series, Pennsylvania Archieves.)
I found a very sombering section of how my ancestors lived in this particular section of our history, as quoted by Rachel A. Craig Brown, who was born in 1841, and captured this Sketch of family history from 1803 to 1925. Here are just some highlites, I won't bore you with all the details:
In the year 1802, when this part of Ohio was considered safe from indian depredations, four men of Washington Company, Penn.--William and Robert Moore, and John and William Craig (Lineage from the Craig family tree dating back to 1693) came into the Ohio wilderness, a distance of forty or fifty miles, to buy land for future homes (This made no mention of whom they were buying the land from) They came afoot, during the administration of Thomas Jefferson, and bought a section of land, in one body, and each took one quarter. I remember seeing the deed, yellow by age, signed by Thomas Jefferson, and that same deed could be easily found now, in the transfers of one hundred and twenty three years.
John Craig, after building a log home, returned to retrieve his wife (my grandfather and grandmother). My grandparents came horseback, carrying their year old little daughter (my mother) on their knees, to make home in the dense forest. There were no roads except as the settlers marked them out by cutting chips from the big trees along the trail. They called it "Blazing a trail". The had no wagons, for wheeled vehicles could not pass between the tall close-set trees. The Ohio Rivers boats were the only method of transportation, and the river was twenty miles from the farm.
They brought with them, three cows and a man to help drive the, also some horese to pack bedding, provisions and a few necessary cooking utensils, not forgetting the all important axe!. There was no door to the cabin, when grandmother came. The fireplace extended almost across the length of one end of the room. A fire, once kindled by friction, indian fashion, was not supposed to ever go out. Everyone did not possess the skill to make fire in this way, and woe to the luckless wife who let the house fire to cease burn, for the she had to borrow coals from a neighbor, perhaps a mile or two away, carrying the coals in iron kettle, covered in ashes. There were no matches in those days and no cookstoves. All the cooking for the big families was done in those huge fireplaces.
They had no mills, no bridges, no town, no school, no church, nothing nearer than the river, excpet a few scattered pioneers like themselves.
When flour or meal ran scarce, they ground corn for "mush" in little hand mills or coffee mills.The cattle ate the tender growth of young trees and bushes and what grass they could grow among the trees. The pigs fattened on acorns from the oak trees. The maples furnished them with sugar. Nature opened up here storehouses to the, and with health, courage and indomiatable industry they lived and each year gone by saw them more comfortable. Whe a little land was cleared of timber and brush, they raised their corn and a ptach of flax, which women made into linen clothing and bedding.
Every man was a rail-splitter. The axes were heavy and kept sharp. The axe handles were made of the hardest and firmest dry wood, and by constant use became smooth as glass, and were known at times to slip out of the hands and cause accidents. To avoid this, the woodmens had a remedy, they spat on their hands.
These are just snippets! This thing is a book! Very interesting read.
