unsubscribe end Terry Lane @ Lane Technical Publishing http://www.bcity.com/ltp Lititz Kidz: computer training services for kids http://www.bcity.com/lane Ask me about the Alaska Book Project!

Just a little note about procedures on the Boards...I should have listed them before, sorry! When you are making a post on ANY of the Boards...i.e.Wills, Deeds,Bibles,etc... in the SURNAME block, list ALL of the different surnames that are mentioned in the post. This will index into alot of other surnames and bring more people to our posts. If these people were in contact with our ancestors, there's a big clue that maybe they might have some yet unknown info on those ancestors. Capitalize ALL of the surnames in your posts. As you all post or read the Boards, note any other comments or suggestions you might have in making them the best possible!! Thanks so much!! And I am so happy to see people taking advantage of them. Make sure, too, that you click the block at the bottom so that you will automatically receive any future postings!! Diana Kinzer Heath Miller Surname Boards Administrator

Thanks, to the perseverience and work of Nel Hatcher, the MILLER Surname Boards are up and running. These Boards are for all of the various spellings of the surname MILLER. THANK YOU, NEL!!! There are 7-Boards that are just waiting for your postings. Joan has already begun the queries and I have responded so they are definately up and running! If you have any problems or questions, feel free to contact me!! Diana Kinzer Heath Miller Boards Administrator To go to each particular Board click the following: Query board: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs.cgi/FamilyAssoc/MillerQuery Biographies: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/FamilyAssoc/MillerBios Wills: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/FamilyAssoc/MillerWill Deeds: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/FamilyAssoc/MillerDeed Bibles: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/FamilyAssoc/MillerBibl Pensions: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/FamilyAssoc/MillerPens Obituaries: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/FamilyAssoc/MillerObits

I am forwarding this that I received from one of my other lists. It is long but is well worth the time. It is about our ancestors migration route...the GREAT PA WAGON ROAD... Enjoy! Diana Kinzer Heath Fellow Eastern Tennessee Researchers: Since our ancestors all had to get to TN somehow, I thought you would all be interested in this speech on the Old Wagon Trail that was posted on the Rowan Roots list this morning. I am willing to stand corrected, but I would say a sizeable percentage used this road, except for those hardy souls that landed on the shores or river basins of the Chesapeake bay and traipsed gradually across VA and NC. By Kevin Cherry When the crops were in, they started. Early in the morning-even early for farm people, they'd set out. During the first years, they walked, leading five or six pack animals laden with supplies: tools, seed, fabric. In places, the famous path they trod was only three or four feet wide. The wilderness literally crept right up to their feet and brushed their faces as they walked. In later years they marched alongside oxen as these oversized beasts pulled two-wheeled carts heaped to overflowing, crossing rivers that licked high about their animals' flanks and often soaked every single, individual piece of their worldly possessions. Finally, when the path had been worn clear by thousands and thousands of previous travelers, they rode in wagons that, themselves, grew as the path widened into an honest to goodness road. These Pennsylvania- German-built wagons (Conestogas) at their largest would be twenty-six feet long, eleven feet high and some could bear loads up to ten tons. It took five or six pairs of horses to pull them. These big vehicles, the eighteen wheelers of their day, were called "Liners" and "Tramps." Ships would later gain their nicknames. No matter if they walked or rode, in the mid afternoon, they stopped to take care of the animals, prepare food, and put up the defense for the night. The cries of wolves in the distance and the pop of twigs just outside of the firelight sounded danger. Bands of Indians in the early days, bands of thieves later,, chased away deep sleep-no matter how tiring the day, how bone-weary the traveler. The fastest loaded wagon could go about five miles a day. The trip took a minimum of two months. Wagons broke down, rivers flooded, supplies gave out, and there was sickness but no doctors. Wagons were repaired, floods ceded, the wilderness supplied, and the sick were buried or stumbled on. This is the first great interior migration in our nation's history. It's the story of a road, the Great Pennsylvania Wagon Road. The Road Only a few trails cut through the vast forests, which covered the continent between the northernmost colonies and Georgia, the southern tip. The settlers, as they moved inland, usually followed the paths over which the Indians had hunted and traded. The Indians, in turn, had followed the pre-historical traces of animals. Who knows why the animals wandered where they did, but some of those early travelers on that road, the Scots-Irish Presbyterians, would have assured us it was certainly predetermined. Even so, few paths crossed the Appalachians, which formed a barrier between the Atlantic plateau and the unknown interior. In his 1755 map of the British Colonies, Lewis Evans labeled the Appalachians, "Endless Mountains." And so they must have seemed to the daring few who pierced the heart of the wooded unknown. But through this unknown, even then, there was a road. The Iroquois tribesmen of the North had long used the great warriors' path to come south and trade or make war in Virginia and the Carolinas. This vital link between the native peoples led from the Iroquois Confederacy around the Great Lakes through what later became Lancaster and Bethlehem, Pa through York to Gettysburg and into Western Maryland around what is now Hagerstown. It crossed the Potomac River at Evan Watkins' Ferry, followed the narrow path across the backcountry to Winchester, through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia to Harrisonburg, Staunton, Lexington, and Roanoke. On it went into Salem, NC, and on to Salisbury, where it was joined by the east-west Catawba and Cherokee Indian Trading Path at the Trading Ford across the Yadkin River. On to Charlotte and Rock Hill, SC where it branched to take two routes, one to Augusta and another to Savannah, Georgia. It was some road, but it was just a narrow line through the continuous forest. Virginia's Gov. Col. Alexander Spotswood first discovered this Great Road in 1716 when his "Knights of the Golden Horseshoe," finally crossed the mountains, drank a toast to King George's health and buried a bottle claiming the vast valley for the King of England. His Knights' motto became "Sic Juvat Transcendere Montes, ~ or "Behold, we cross the mountains." In 1744, a treaty between the English colonists and the Indians gave the white men control of the road for the first time. By 1765 the Great Wagon Road was cleared all along it way enough to hold horse drawn vehicles and by 1775, the road stretched 700 miles. Boys and dogs, smelling like barnyards, drove tens of thousands of pigs to market along this road, which grew gradually worse the farther South you went. Inns and ordinaries, which spotted the road undoubtedly taught more than a few of them the ways of the world. But that was all later. The majority of the folks who by the thousands would walk over Spotswood's buried bottle would have probably thought his whole 1716 ceremony a little preposterous and quite a bit pretentious. You see, they were plain folk trying to get away from Latin, from mottoes, and from knights with horseshoes no matter their element of manufacture, lead to gold. They were as different from Spotswood's cavaliers as a golden horseshoe is from an ox's hoof. Who were the Wagon Road's Travelers? For 118 years, the English and Dutch settled the New World, lining the harbors and pointing their cities, their eyes, their hearts to the east, across the Atlantic. They were on the fringes of a vast continent but, for the most part, they forever more turned away from it and toward home. They were certainly colonists, even those stem- faced few who came to these shores for religious reasons, and most of the other settlers, you see, had come to expand the business opportunities of home establishments. Their ties to those establishments were strong. It took a different kind of settler, someone who had cut his ties altogether, someone who didn't really have all that much to lose, to look west at a wilderness and there see something more than raw materials ready for exploitation. It took folks like the Germans and the Scots Irish to put their backs to the ocean and see home in front of them. Escaping devastating wars, religious persecution, economic disasters, and all of those other things that still cause people to come to these shores, the Scots Irish and the Germans had no intention of returning to their native lands. They were here to stay. They didn't look east but to the south and west-toward land. They didn't see wolves and Indians. They saw opportunities. And as different as the Germans and the Scots Irish were, they had what it took to flourish in the backcountry. Not possessions that could be lost in the fording of a river, not personal contacts and the sponsorship of powerful men, but rough and tumble ability and a heavy streak of stubbornness. They knew slash and bum agriculture, they knew pigs, they could hunt and forage, they knew hard work. They built their cabins the exact same way. And eventually, they traveled together in that same heavy stream southward along the Great Pennsylvania Wagon Road. In 1749, 12,000 Germans reached Pennsylvania. By 1775 , there were I 10,000 people of German birth in that colony, one-third of the population. When Philadelphia was a cluster of Inns and Ordinaries: the Blue Anchor, Pewter Platter, Penny-Pot, Seven Stars, Cross Keys, Hornet and Peacock, Benjamin Franklin, one of that era's most open-minded men asked, "Why should the Palatinate Boors be suffered to swan-n into our settlement and by herding together establish their language and manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us, instead of our Anglicizing them and will never adopt our language or customs any more than they can acquire our complexion." But the Germans kept coming, thinking like their Scots Irish compatriots who are recorded as noting that!, "It was against the law of God and nature that so much land should be idle while so many Christians wanted it to labor on and raise their bread." In short,, Pennsylvania was flooded. Why they Headed South There is probably no more beautiful land anywhere than that part of Pennsylvania now known as the "Amish Country." It must have appeared to those people fresh off of the boat, truly a land flowing with milk and honey. But it filled rapidly. Land became expensive. The most important reason why the Germans and Scots-Irish put what little they owned on their backs and took the southbound road was the cost of land in Pennsylvania. A fifty- acre farm in Lancaster County, PA would have cost 7 pounds 10 shillings in 1750. In the Granville District of North Carolina, which comprised the upper half of the state, five shillings would buy 100 acres. The crossing of an ocean was move enough for most of the early immigrants. The generation, which could still feel the waves beneath their feet when elderly, often stayed in Pennsylvania, but their children repeated their parent's adventure. Often, they cast off their lines, raised whatever anchors they had, and ~'sailed" south right after their patriarchs had gone to their reward. As North Carolina's Secretary of State, William L. Saunders wrote in 1886, "Immigration, in the early days, divested of its glamour and brought down to solid fact, is the history of a continuous search for good bottom land." In their search for bottom land, English colonists encroached onto territories claimed by France. This pressure became one of the reasons the French and Indians went to war against England and her colonists. The Germans and Scots bore the brunt of the war, a cabin burning, wife-kidnapping, farm ambushing, bloody, horrible guerrilla war. For eleven years mayhem reigned on the frontier. In 1756, three years after the war started, George Washington wrote that the Appalachian frontiersmen were "in a general motion towards the southern colonies" and that Virginia's westernmost counties would soon be emptied. Western North Carolina seemed to those escaping the war to be safer because the Cherokee were on the British side-at least at the beginning. To western North Carolina they came. This French and Indian War, which started the year Rowan County was created, joined the quest for more and better land as a major factor in sending those Germans and Scots-Irish down the Wagon Road to safer territory. Not only that but, the peace treaty that ended the war stated that no English settlers would go over the Appalachians. Thus, the best unclaimed land in all of the colonies lay along the Yadkin, Catawba and Savannah Rivers between the years 1763 and 1768. When the war ended in 1764, the western settlements of Pennsylvania had suffered a loss of population. Virginia and North Carolina had grown. What they Found When those Scots Irish and Germans got here "the country of the upper Yadkin teemed with game. Bears were so numerous it was said that a hunter could lay by two or three thousand pounds of bear grease in a season. The tale was told in the forks that nearby Bear Creek took its name from the season Boone killed 99 bears along its waters. The deer were so plentiful that an ordinary hunter could kill four or five a day; the deerskin trade was an important part of the regional economy. In 1753 more than 30,000 skins were exported from North Carolina, and thousands were used within the colony for the manufacture of leggings, breeches and moccasins." In 1755, NC Gov. Arthur Dobbs wrote to England that the "Yadkin is a large beautiful river. Where there is a ferry it is nearly 300 yards over it, [which] was at this time fordable, scarce coming to the horse's bellies." At six miles distant, he said, "I arrived at Salisbury the county seat of Rowan. The town is just laid out, the courthouse built,, and 7 or 8 log houses built." Most of Salisbury's householders ran public houses, letting travelers sup at their table-and drink, too. In 1762, there were 16 public houses. There was also a shoe factory, a prison, a hospital and armory all here before the Revolution. Even so, it was still only an outpost in the wilderness. Salisbury was for twenty-three years the farthest west county seat in the colonies. And through this outpost the wagon road ran, and on that road the immigrants continued to travel even after the area was settled. Governor Tryon wrote to England that more than a thousand wagons passed through Salisbury in the Fall and Winter of 1765. That works out to about six immigrant wagons per day. Summary In the last sixteen years of the colonial era," wrote historian Carl Bridenbaugh, "Southbound traffic along the Great Philadelphia Wagon Rowan was numbered in tens of thousands. It was the most heavily traveled road in all America and must have had more vehicles jolting along its rough and tortuous way than all the other main roads put together." When the British captured Philadelphia, the Continental Congress escaped down the Pennsylvania Wagon Road. Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett traveled it. George Washington knew it as an Indian fighter. John Chisholm knew it as an Indian trader. Countless soldiers-Andrew Jackson, Andrew Pickens, Andrew Lewis, Francis Marion, Lighthorse Harry Lee, Daniel Morgan, and George Rogers Clark, among them-fought over it. Both the North and South would use it during the Civil War. And down this road, this glorified overgrown footpath through the middle of nowhere leading to even greater depths of nowhere, came those people looking for a better life for themselves and their children,, down it came those settlers, those hardworking stubborn Scots Irish and Germans: the preachers, the blacksmiths, and farmers. Down it came the Holshousers and the Barringers, the Alexanders and the Grahams, the Millers and the Earnhardts,, the Catheys and the Knoxes, the Blackwelders and the Halls, and the Cherrys and the Brauns and the Fishers. When the crops were in, on a day like today, they started. Thank you. Kevin Cherry Rowan County Library Historian

Anyone researching the family of GARRET(T) GARRETT, Bartholomew Washington Co. about 1800 on the North Fork of the Holston river. -eddie

I would entertain relevent responses to the excerpt below. PLEASE DON'T CLICK THE REPLY AND RESPOND PERSONALLY TO ME. American at 1750 by Richard Hofstadter In 1750 Gottlieb Mittelberger, a simple-organist and music master in the Duchy of Württemberg, was commissioned to bring an organ to a German congregation in New Providence, Pennsylvania, and his journey inspired him to write a memorable account of an Atlantic crossing. From Heilbronn, where he picked up his organ, Mittelberger went the well-traveled route along the Neckar and the Rhine to Rotterdam, whence he sailed to a stopover at Cowes in England, and then to Philadelphia About four hundred passengers were crowded onto the ship, mainly German and Swiss redemptioners, men pledged to work off their passage charges. The trip from his home district to Rotterdam took seven weeks, the voyage from Rotterdam to Philadelphia fifteen weeks, the entire journey from May to October. What moved Mittelberger, no literary man, to write of his experiences was first his indignation against the lies and misrepresentations used by the "newlanders" to lure his fellow Germans to, America, and then the hideous shock of the crossing. The voyage proved excruciating and there is no reason to think it particularly unusual. The long trip down the Rhine, with constant stops at the three dozen customs houses between Heilbronn and Holland, began to consume the limited funds of the travelers, and it was followed by an expensive stop of several weeks in Holland. Then there was the voyage at sea, with the passengers packed like herring and cramped in the standard bedsteads measuring two feet by six, "During the journey," wrote Mittelberger, "the ship is full of pitiful signs of distress-smells, fumes, horrors, vomiting, various kinds of sea sickness, fever, dysentery, headaches, heat, constipation, boils, scurvy, cancer, mouth-rot, and similar afflictions, all of them caused by the age and the highlysalted state of the food, especially of the meat, as well as by the very bad and filthy water, which brings about the miserable destruction and death of many. Add to all that shortage of food, hunger, thirst, frost, beat, dampness, fear, misery, vexation, and lamentation as well as other troubles. Thus, for example, there are so many lice, especially on the sick people, that they have to be scraped off the bodies. All this misery reached its climax when in addition to everything else one must suffer through two or three days and nights of storm, with everyone convinced, that the ship with all aboard is bound to sink. In sad misery all the people on board pray and cry pitifully together." Even those who endured the voyage in good health, Mittelberger reported, fell out of temper and turned on each other with reproaches. They cheated and stole. "But most of ah they cry out against the thieves of human beings! Many groan and exclaim:'Oh! If only I were back at home, even lying in my pig-sty!' Or they call out: 'Ah, dear God, if I only once again had a piece of good bread or a good fresh drop of water.'" It went hardest with women in childbirth and their offspring: "Very few escape with their lives; and mother and child, as soon as they have died, are thrown into the water. On board our ship, on a day on which we had a great storm, a woman about to give birth and unable to deliver under the circumstances, was pushed through one of the portholes into the sea because her corpse was far back in the stern and could not be brought forward to the deck." Children under seven, he thought (though the port records show him wrong here), seldom survived, especially those who had not already had measles and smallpox, and their parents were condemned to watch them die and be tossed overboard. The sick members of families infected the healthy, and in the end all might be lying moribund. He believed disease was so prevalent because warm food was served only three times a week, and of that very little, very bad, very dirty, and supplemented by water that was often "very black, thick with dirt, and full of worms ... towards the end of the voyage we had to eat the ship's biscuit, 4. For the voyage, Mittelberger, Journey to Pennsylvania (edn. 1960), ed. and trans, by Oscar Handlin and John Clive, l0-7. which had already been spoiled for a long time, even though no single piece was there more than the size of a thaler (German coin, dollar) that was not full of red worms and spiders' nests." The first sight of land gave heart to the passengers, who came crawling out of the hatches to get a glimpse of it. But then for many a final disappointment lay in wait: only those who could complete the payment of their fare could disembark. The others were kept on board until they were bought, some of them sickening within sight of land and, as they sickened, losing the chance of being bought on good terms. On landing some families were broken, when despairing parents indentured their children to masters other than their own. Not even passengers of means who paid their way, moved more or less freely about ship, occupied cabins or small dormitories, and had superior rations could take an Atlantic crossing lightly. In addition to the hazards of winds too feeble or too violent, of pirates, shipwrecks, or hostile navies, there were under the best of circumstances the dangers of sickness. Travelers in either direction frequently died of smallpox or other diseases on board or soon after arrival. Anglican colonials often complained of the high mortality rate among their young would-be clergymen crossing to England to be ordained. The Dutch Reformed preacher Theodorus Frelinghuysen lost three of his five sons on their way to be ordained in Amsterdam. The evangelist George Whitefield on his first crossing to the colonies in 1738 saw a majority of the soldiers on board af8icted with fever and spent much of his time "for many days and nights, visiting between twenty and thirty sick persons, crawling between decks upon his knees, administering medicines and cordials" and giving comfort. On this voyage the captain's Negro servant died, was wrapped in a hammock and tossed into the sea. In the end all but a handful of the passengers took the fever, including Whitefield, who survived treatment by bleeding and emetics. The ship on which he returned a few months later was afflicted by a "contrary wind," drifted for over a week to the point at which crew and passengers were uncertain where they were, and took so long to arrive at Ireland that water rations, which had been cut to a pint a day, were just about to run out.

Families with surnames BANNER/BONER, CAVENDER, COMFORT, HARTWELL, HAWKINS, LANGSTON, MULKY/MULKEY, PEARSON/PERSON, PEYTON, PLEASANT, REECE/REECE/REES, SPENCER appear in early records (prior 1850), all of which, from time to time, have been utilized by early BRUMIT (All Spelling Variants) as given names for children. This suggests possible relationships yet to be identified. Seeking any information that might assist in establishing such relationships. Good Hunting. Joe Brumit

World Family Tree, Vol. 7, #2102 has a family tree for a James Brummett, b. 26 June 1749 Stamford Connecticut and died 6 July 1831, St. Clair Bottom, VA. Efforts to contact the originator of this tree have been unsuccessful. The precise birth and death assertions suggest the existence of Bible, church or cemetery records. Have a serious question as to the accuracy of this data, but would like to make every effort to search all possible sources. Would welcome any suggestions/recomendations as to possible available sources, especially cemetery records. Happy New Year. Joe Brumit

This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0163_01BE3842.7D4F5260 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This was on another of my lists and I felt it was very important to this one too. Diana Kinzer Heath Transcripts and an index of Archibald Thompson's Diary are now posted at Doug Moore's web site at http://www.public.asu.edu/~moore. The Diary records events and records for the Thompson and allied families of the New River Valley of Virginia and south-central Kentucky from abt. 1720 until very early in the 1800s. I am interested in exchanging information about these families, which includes the Skaggs, Lorton, Elswick, Akers and others. Thanks, Jemima Gee Morse http://www.public.asu.edu/~moore ------=_NextPart_000_0163_01BE3842.7D4F5260 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: THOMPSON DIARY VA/KY 1720-1800 Content-Disposition: attachment Received: from virtualmaster1-int.prodigy.net ([127.0.0.1]) by virtualmaster1.prodigy.net-wfldad with ESMTP; Mon, 4 Jan 1999 12:06:22 -0500 Received: from bl-30.rootsweb.com (bl-30.rootsweb.com [207.113.245.30]) by virtualmaster1-int.prodigy.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA18630; Mon, 4 Jan 1999 12:01:37 -0500 Received: (from slist@localhost) by bl-30.rootsweb.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA21583; Mon, 4 Jan 1999 08:56:41 -0800 (PST) Resent-Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 08:56:41 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <00fc01be3803$7a08b180$72326fcc@morse.shentel.net> From: "Jemima Gee Morse" <morse@shentel.net> Old-To: <VAMONTGO-L@rootsweb.com> Subject: THOMPSON DIARY VA/KY 1720-1800 Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 11:58:06 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-Msmail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.2110.0 X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.2106.4 Resent-Message-Id: <"kHn7XB.A.7QF.ILPk2"@bl-30.rootsweb.com> To: VAMONTGO-L@rootsweb.com Resent-From: VAMONTGO-L@rootsweb.com X-Mailing-List: <VAMONTGO-L@rootsweb.com> archive/latest/559 X-Loop: VAMONTGO-L@rootsweb.com Precedence: list Resent-Sender: VAMONTGO-L-request@rootsweb.com Transcripts and an index of Archibald Thompson's Diary are now posted at Doug Moore's web site at http://www.public.asu.edu/~moore. The Diary records events and records for the Thompson and allied families of the New River Valley of Virginia and south-central Kentucky from abt. 1720 until very early in the 1800s. I am interested in exchanging information about these families, which includes the Skaggs, Lorton, Elswick, Akers and others. Thanks, Jemima Gee Morse http://www.public.asu.edu/~moore ==== VAMONTGO Mailing List ==== Planning a Family Reunion? Post your schedule at URL: http://members.aol.com/camorrison/vareunio/reunion.htm ------=_NextPart_000_0163_01BE3842.7D4F5260--

The following is an excerpt from the book, _Alex Stewart, . . Pioneer_ . The subject is stories of witches and witchcraft. We can discuss it within the limits of the List mission. i.e. The history, culture and traditions of our SW VA ancestors. Any discussion of the truthfulness of the story should be limited and narrow. I think like stories with origin in 18th century SW VA would be o.k. Anything involving ancestors would be good if it promotes the List mission. It is a great story and sounds like what might be told on a cold winter night in a log cabin the SW VA hills while the family is gathered around the fireplace trying to stay warm. PLEASE don't click REPLY and write a reply to me. It ain't my job to hold private debates with each member. If in doubt go back and read the List welcome statement and policy. Again, I recommend this book. It is great and has told me more about pioneer SW VA & E. TN. than any I of have read. I am 3/4 finished and will be posting more brief excerpt later. NO COMMENTS FROM HUSBANDS WHO HAVE LIKE "suspicioned" . WITCHES OF SW VA I don't know whether or not witches ever existed, but after hearing Alex tell about them, I'm certain of one thing. If they ever did exist, they did so on Newman's Ridge in and around Grandpap Stewart's place. You told me a story once about an old man who ran a corn mill whose wife turned out to be a witch. How did that go? "That was old Spot Collins. He lived about four or five miles from here over on Blackwater and he put up the first gristmill that was ever in this community. Back then they didn't understand gearing them up to where the stones would turn fast. They went awful slow and it would take two or three hours to grind a turn of corn. They had to run night and day to do any good. "Old man Spot Collins had four girls: Doshia, Laurie, Keary, and Cary. They run the mill during the day and he had a feller to come in about bedtime to run the mill all night. "Spot went down there one morning early to take the miller his breakfast and he was dead. There wasn't much said about it except that he died there, suddenly. After a while Spot hired another feller to run the mill of a night, and it wasn't long before they found him dead too. After that Spot suspicioned something. "About that time there was an old circuit riding Methodist preacher that come by and held a meeting at Spot's house. They wasn't no churches back then and they would just meet in people's houses. Well that old preacher, he wore a long scissortail coat. He stayed there several days and preached of a night. "Spot got to telling him about what had happened and that he couldn't get anybody to run the mill at night. Everybody was afraid. People was needing their corn ground to make bread, and so that old preacher agreed to run the mill a few nights till Spot could find somebody. "He went down there the first night and started the mill up. It was powered by one of them old wooden waterwheels. He poured the hopper full of corn and set down on an old wooden bench to read his Bible while the corn ground. I've set on that bench a thousand times, I guess, waiting for my turn of corn to be ground. He set there a few minutes reading his Bible and here come a cat. He had the mill locked so tight that a rat couldn't get in and he didn't know how it got in. The cat come up and rubbed around his leg and meowed, and he spoke to it, and asked it to have a seat. It jumped up on the bench and laid down with the old preacher. He went on reading his Bible and in a little while, here come another cat and done the same way. Laid down beside him. "The preacher carried a great big hunting knife all the time, and he had it laying beside him. He'd heard the tales about the other two men dying and he didn't know what might happen. All of a sudden them two cats made a lunge at his throat and he grabbed that knife and struck at one and cut its foot off and it fell to the floor. He looked down at it and it was a woman's hand with a gold ring on one of the fingers. "The next morning Spot got up early and told his wife to get up and get them some breakfast while he went down to get the preacher. She said she'd get up in a minute and he went on down to the mill. He asked the preacher how he got along and he said: 'All right. I just had one little racket. Two cats jumped on me and I struck and cut off a foot from one of them. That's it laying over there.' "Spot went over and looked and he said, 'That's my wife's hand. That's the ring I bought for her when we got married. "They shut the mill down and went on up to the house to get breakfast. Spot's wife was still in bed. He told her again to get up and she said, 'I feel bad. I'll get up directly.' He said, 'Yah, you low-down bitch you.' Said, 'I've been thinking you was a witch for a long time, and now I know it.' He said, 'Here's your hand. You get out of here and never come back.' Made her leave before breakfast. "A lot of people say that it don't look like it could be true. But Grandpap Stewart said it was the truth." -eddie

Hi all, I will be traveling through Smyth County on January 7-8, and I have both days completely open for tracking down ancestors! I have a couple of specific things to do, like finding the burial locations of Davis W. HATFIELD and Nancy (CRABTREE) HATFIELD. However, I would just like to check out census data, grantor/grantee books in the courthouse, etc., for my CRABTREE, HATFIELD and WHITEAKER lines. Does anyone have suggestions regarding particular record groups or anything else that might be worthwhile to do, genealogically speaking? Right now, I plan to visit the courthouse and the Smyth-Bland Regional Library, both in Marion. Thanks in advance. Mike Curtis

>From a conversation with Larry Fleenor: "Cherokee justice was awarded by the tribal council, but the wronged person or his relatives were expected to execute it. To fail to do it was a failure of justice, and nothing is more basic to society than justice. In Ridge Runner culture, the moderating effect of the initial tribal counsil decision has been lost due to the fact that there is no more tribal counsil, so justice is individually decided upon, and in an individual duty, and to not do it is to be a coward and a social dysfunctionate (I just made that last word up)." "The main practical problem is the differing common law understandings of property rights. The Celts, because of their strong Scandanavian heritage, believe that open land (think mountains) is shared to some extent by all. Everyone can hunt on it, everyone can tresspass on it, everyone can run their cattle on it; even though the property owner has the special privilege of more intense economic exploitation. When I was a boy, everyone in Rich Valley could hunt on every one elses land with out asking, you just knew how close to their house you could come. There was an invisible boundry. That’s Viking Common Law, and it is gone. The English Common Law has won out in Washington Co, but the conflict continues in the Back Counties. The Ridge Runner believes that the English common Law that is derived from the Roman, is an affront. The posted signs etc. are an English Common Law reality intruding into the psychological Viking common law whereby the mountains belong to everyone. I have read a book by a PhD who ascribes much of the Hatfield-McCoy feud to this. "

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As far as I know...it came from The Wizard of OZ, in the scene where they go into the Emerald City and everyone gets a makeover....they all get into a cart/buggy pulled by the horse of a different color which they say is the only one of his sort. I don't know if Frank Baum made it up, or if he borrowed an expression more commonly known. jfmcs@geocities.com ________________________________________________________ NetZero - We believe in a FREE Internet. Shouldn't you? Get your FREE Internet Access and Email at http://www.netzero.net/download.html

My mother lived in a house in Draper Virginia in the late 1930's/early 1940's that had been built from other houses from the area. The door that led to my mother's bedroom was from another room in another house where a woman and her two children had been locked in and they supposedly starved to death. The door could be locked, but would unlock itself and open a few inches. She says that you could HEAR it unlock but you couldn't WATCH it. All the members of my mothers family went outside and left the door locked inside...theya ll went in together and the door was unlocked. Strangely enough they weren't afraid, but just learned to leave the door unlocked. Anybody else got any ghost stories--so that I don't feel so silly??? :-) ________________________________________________________ NetZero - We believe in a FREE Internet. Shouldn't you? Get your FREE Internet Access and Email at http://www.netzero.net/download.html

There were many many dunkards in the Claytor Lake area in Pulaski County, and as Pulaski coounty borders with Montgomery county, I'm sure there were many there as well....I also know there were several Dunkards (My Cox line for instance) in Floyd COunty..... Later, Charleen

I am new to this list but have many family members in that area. The GOBBLE, LINDER, CAYLOR (Kaylor), Willis INGLE family and John WOOD family. Some are in Lee Co., VA but MOST are in Washington Co., VA. My ggg grandmother was Martha GOBBLE CAYLOR PRICE, the daughter of John and Jemima LINDER GOBBLE. In the 1st and 2nd editions of James S. Gobble's "GOBBLE Family History" he had written that the daughter of John and Jemima married Robert McKNIGHT. After showing him our proof he realized that he had erred and that the Martha who married Robert McKNIGHT was the niece of John and Jemima GOBBLE. He sent a correction of his book (both editions) to the Washington Co., VA Historical Society and was in the process of writing his 3rd addition with correction when sadly he died. We miss his letters and wonderful comments. We have the deed showing George CAYLOR purchased land from John and Jemima GOBBLE, deed where Martha CAYLOR, widow of George sold it, the deed where John CAYLOR and John GOBBLE purchased land for their grandchildren, Michael and Matilda in Wa. Co., VA and the 2nd marriage license for Martha GOBBLE CAYLOR to John PRICE in Wayne Co., VA showing her to be born in Washington Co., VA and the daughter of John and Gemima (Jemima) GOBBLE. In the Families of Washington Co., VA and Smyth Co., VA (on-line) the Martha is correct in the Descendants of Hans Jacob GABEL (GOBBLE) but not in the Anthony LINDER family. Michael CAYLOR married Mary INGLE, daughter of Willis INGLE, preacher. They were my gg grandparents and are buried in the Wood cemetery near Cabool, Texas Co., MO. Their daughter, Matilda CAYLOR married John Henry WOOD, Washington Co., VA, son of William WOOD and grandson of John WOOD of Washington Co, VA. I have enjoyed the list very much! Zelda "Marguerette" House Powell zmpowell@horizon.hit.net

I have transcribed and typed some of the early deeds of Wash. Co. for Nicholas FLEENOR from Cornelius CARMACK, Carmack & Deck, Fulkerson & Thomas Gasper Fleenor & Henderson Michael Fleenor & Anthony LINDER ZION & Gobble Nicholas Fleenor & Moor I would be happy to provide a copy of what I have. -eddie

JOHN HARRIS was born ca 1755, parents unknown, as is county of birth. He md. ca 1774 in VA, died in 1831 in Harlan Co., KY on Clover Fork of the Cumberland River. John may have lived in Louisa Co., VA in 1777 (deed) but came to, then, Knox Co., KY in 1807 from Russell Co., VA. By 1810 census, that portion of the county was Harlan Co. His wife was LUCY____, possibly SEARS, born before 1764 who predeceased her husband in Harlan Co., KY. My immediate needs are to trace back on this JOHN HARRIS, his parents' names, his wife's surname and her parents' names. I do need your help! Mildred

Anyone know of Fincastle Land survey records. Those of Washington Co. prior to its formation in 1776. Fincastle was a county for four years and the court was at the Lead Mines on Cripple creek in present Wythe Co. Are they online?? Are they at the Mont. Co. courthouse?? Would they be at Abingdon? Lost?? -eddie