From: "Karen T.Ledford" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] ============================================================ A result of your requested PML search. To refine or cancel this search, please visit http://pml.rootsweb.com/ ============================================================ Source: [email protected] Subject: Migration of the Thompsons of Va. to Elbert Co., Ga. Dear List: I have been a study of the Thompson family for over 10 years and while it has led me a merry chase I believe I have it pretty well documented now. It seems that a Ga. Statesman who was later Gov. of Ga. General George Matthews made a trip into Va. and N.C. to secure settlers for the Savannah River Valley Area in Then Wilkes/Elbert Co., Ga. about 1773. He brought with him NUMEROUS families that today can still be found having descendents living in N.E. Ga. area. I am one of them and am descended from many of these old line families. ONe of which is the Thompson family. ONE name pacificially mentioned in the migration of families into the this Savannah River Valley area was ISHAM THOMPSON (this is the son of Robert Thompson of Chesterfield Co., Ga., he was also a Rev. Soldier, and I am unsure of what his military records state). I am also descended from the Allen Family, the Teasley Family, The Rucker Family, The Wood Family, the Brown Family and the Richard Tyner Family (who is a well known figure in Elbert Co. history due to the massacre of his family by the Creek Indians and his daughters being taken captives). Soooo. The Thompson family came in at least in the early 1770's and they intermarried with the other prominent Va. Families those being the Watkins and the Olivers. Isham Thompson mentioned above married Mary Ann Oliver the sister of Dionysius Oliver the founder of Old Petersburg, a thriving town there in Elbert Co. where the most prominent families lived and did business. Isham Thompson was the BROTHER of JOHN FARLEY THOMPSON. I have never found a service record in the Rev. for John Farley but I believe he must have served. Most of these Thompson brothers and their sisters and their husbands caught the "WESTERN" fever and moved onto Alabama. John Farley died before March 1793 and left wills both in OLD Pendleton, S.C. and in Elbert Co., Ga. His son Isham Thompson (not to be confused now with is UNCLE) married Elizabeth Williams. They were the parents of the famous General Wyley Thompson who married Elizabeth Ellington. This union bore no children. But Wyley was an INdian Agent, an Veteran of the WAr of 1812. During his years as Indian Agent he was sent into Florida to try and settle the Indian Wars there. To make a long story short he got involved with an Indian Princess there. She bore him a son. He had given a set of pearl handled pistols to the Indian chief and he was later killed with them for his indiscretion with the daughter. HIS BROTHER was my GGG Grandfather GAINES THOMPSON. The Gaines family also being one of the 1st families into the area with Gen. Matthews, I am uncertan how my GGG GRandfather came to be named GAINES but I am certain there was either some association or kinmanship with the family. Gaines Thompson married SARAH RICE in Alabama. I am sure he went over with the wave of Thompson kinsmen who were migrating at the time. I believe Sarah was the daughter of Leonard Rice, one of the first settlers brought in with Matthews and also a Rev. Soldier buried at Holly Springs Baptist church in Elbert Co. My Andrew Brown is also buried there. I might add here that these names or not all on one side of the house so to speak. The Thompson is of course my fathers side and the Tyners, and the Higginbothams, The Allens, Browns, Teasley's and Ruckers, and Alexanders are all on my mother's side. Gaines and Sarah Rice Thompson moved back to Elbert Co. There they reared a large family one of which was my GG Grandfather ISHAM THOMPSon. He married into the old Higginbotham family to Sarah Ann Higginbotham daughter of William Higginbotham and Eliza TYNER whose Grandfather was Richard Tyner. Proving how intermarried the families are. The HIgginbotham line is from Va. also and a very prominent family there. These families while pocessing large land holdings were hard workers and not of the plantation gentility that we see in MOVIE FICTION. Their homes were not like gone with the wind so don't get that idea. The Va. families of these lines that stayed in Va. did have such homes and possessions. Especially the Higginbothams. I am also a Cobb descendent and that is another old Va. family whose line came to Hart/Elbert Co. and there were farmers. As I said the families who stayed in Va. were much more sophisticated in their living styles. YOu must realize this was a WILDERNESS in that time with ravaging Indians. These men became backwoodsmen as the time demanded. They were hunters and farmers, diggin g out a living from the earth. Good stock is what I call it. My GG Grandfather Isham Thompson and his wife Sally as she was called came to live in FRANKLIN County, Ga. right above Elbert as Sally's Aunt Nancy Tyner Crump married John Crump. He died leaving her a widow with a large plantation around Red Hill, Ga. Isham and sally and her parents, (her father had remarried her aunt Elizabeth Tyner and her uncle Benj. Higginbotham) went to live on Nancy's place and help her work the land. While there the WAR came upon them. Isham was conscripted into the 34th Ga. Inf. at Carnesville, Ga. in March 1862. He was dead in Vicksburg by 1863 and Sally never knew his fate. He never returned. I had to find the answer to that over 130 years later. She remarried, times were HARD and they were left poor sharecropper on another person's land. Nancy Crump was still living. She took into her home her great nephew and her great niece, Wiley and Eliza Thompson. wiley was 12 years of age and listed as a farmhand. on the same place living was William and Elizabeth Higginbotham and they had little Louisa and little Isham Thompson in the home with them, (their grandchildren). I do not know where Sally and her new husband Benjamin Bennett had gone. They had one child James Bennett and his desc. are living today in S.C. My Great Grandfather William Wiley Thompson married first to Margaret Broome, daughter of Thomas and Mary Dennington Broome of Pickens Co., S.C. who their children after their deaths folloed their older brothers to Franklin Co., Ga. AFter Margaret died with Typhoid leaving him with a 6 mos. old son he married her SISTER, EMMA ISABELL BROOME. They had 10 children, 8 of whom lived. ONe of these was my Granfather Willie Otto Thompson. He married MARinda Lois CABE her people being the MCCABES of Western North Carolina. My father LAWRENCE HUGH THOMPSON 1919-1994 was their first born child. He married BLANCHE WOOD, daughter of Lee Anderson Wood and Martha Alta Brown (desc. of all the Brown's, Teasley's, Allens, Alexanders, Ruckers, Cobb's and McConnell's of HArt/Elbert Co., Ga.) I am their third and final child: Karen Ann Thompson, married in 1972 to Kenneth Lamar Ledford (also a desc. of the WEstern North Carolina families, Ledford, Allisons, Allens, Reids, Howards, McClures, Nix, Hood, Standridges of whom moved into Habersham/White Co., Ga. in 1822). We have one daughter Ashley Ann Ledford born in 1980 who is a Soph. at the Univ. of Ga. majoring in Political Science with Law School ahead of her. And THAT's ALL FOLKS (GRIN). Hope this is informative and lets you know who I am. I've been on this list for a good long while and have really had nothing to contribute till now. Karen Thompson Ledford/Toccoa, GA. Author of THESE MEN WORE GREY "http://www.hartcolm.