This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Baldwin, Day, Howard, Sands Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/WWC.2ACI/1918.2316.2434.2613.1.1.1 Message Board Post: I am son of Clifton E and Edith Ammons Baldwin (Knoxville, TN), grandson of William H and Mary Day Baldwin (Knox Co, TN), greatgrandson of Thaddeus B and Sarah Howard Baldwin (Claiborne Co, TN), g-g-grson of Nicolas M and Amanda Trent Baldwin (Claiborne Co, TN), g-g-g-grson of William and Mary Day Drinnon Baldwin (Hawkins Co, TN), g-g-g-g-grson of James and Elizabeth Ferrell Baldwin (Ireland). A good place for some quick research would be Roy Barnard's A FEW DESCENDANTS OF JAMES BALDWIN AND ELIZABETH FERRELL. I think I have had my copy for around 15 years or so. You should be able to find it in many major geneaology collections. When/where was Margaret born? I could share some quick info from Barnard that may help. I have been researching my family with varying degrees of earnestness for around twenty years. With James and Elizabeth Baldwin I have consistently hit a deadend. Several years ago my wife and I travelled in County Kilkenny (where James was born). Folks there said Baldwin was not a "popular" name in the county. (Did they mean "common" or was there some reason not to like Baldwins?) Baldwin was a much more common name next door in County Waterford and was also known in County Cork. I began to come across some intruiging possible leads in official collections in Dublin when I ran out of time and had to move on. Most of the Baldwins in the US seem to have come here from England and Wales. With little dispute our ancestor seems to have come from Ireland, where he is persistently said to have been born in Co Kilkenny. He came to the colonies (why and how unknown to my knowledge). His service in the Revolutionary War seems uncontested by DAR folks. (A trip to their collection in DC would also prove helpful.) Baldwin as given and surname is mostly and eventually a Norman name. As a given and surname it also shows up in Luxembourg and Germany (Balduin) and Italy (Baldovino). Except for the Flemish/Norman connection no clear bloodline seems likely. [As a given name there was a Prince Archbishop in Trier, Germany (where once we stayed at Hotel Balduin on Balduinplatz) and a medieval bishop in Cantebury (memorialized in stained glass in the cathedral.] Don't know which war Judith Baldwin referred to, since I did not see the earlier message. If James' ancestry was English or Norman English they could have gone to southeastern Ireland with the forces of Oliver Cromwell OR Henry VIII. If they were more directly Normal they could have come around the time of William the Conqueror, etc. (Of course, at that time few but nobility or other influential persons had family names as such. And if our ancestry were such we would probably be running across that sooner, no? Only recently have I begun to hear of Mary Gore, purported mother of James. Don't have a lot to go on. Hope to learn more. Elizabeth Ferrell is said to have been born near Dublin OR near Londonderry. Ferrell (in its various spellings) was one of the traditional classic Irish names and about as common as Jones or Williams in the US. Some sources claim her father a sea captain and she a sometime passenger on his ship. Others identify her as having come to the colonies as an indentured servant or some such. She and James are said to have been married around 1772 on these shores. He is said to have died and was buried around the turn of the century in Tazewell (southwestern VA); she lived past him and was said to have been buried among family in Sneedville, TN. (Her grandson Nicolas inter alia settled for several generations around Tazewell (eastern TN). Today I know of no Baldwins yet living in Claiborne Co, TN.