Showing posts with label First Families of Virginia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label First Families of Virginia. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Another Rabbit Hole-Goodnight John Boy!

So I have a friend, my first childhood friend named Marsha.  We visited her and her DH, Parker, in Tennessee where they live back in 2014.

Here is Marsha back when we were little.............


Marsha is the one shoving cake in her mouth, I am the one mugging for the camera at my 2nd birthday party.

Anyway on that trip I got to talking about genealogy(duh!)and Parker pulled out some of his paperwork to compare notes.
He told me he was related to Martha Washington through his Dandridge line(She was born a Dandridge, married a Parke and then a Washington, and is his 1st cousin 7 x removed)and Patrick Henry who married secondly Dorothea Dandridge(who his 5th Great Aunt).
He also said he was related somehow to Earl Hamner, the writer who is known as the creator of the epic tv series "The Waltons".

                                       Earl Hamner, Jr.

I fairly quickly years ago found all his Daindridge related ancestors.  Then I found that Parker and I are 9th cousins 1 x removed through our common ancestor Robert "Potato Hole" Woodson(he's my 9th Great Grandfather and Parker's 7th Great Grandfather).


Parker's Martha Dandridge shows as more distant for me-the wife of my 11th cousin 8 x removed(Geo. Washington)and Martha's cousin, Dorothea Dandridge shows as the mother in-law of my 3rd cousin 6 x removed-her son Patrick Henry Jr. married Elvira Ann Cabell, who is my 3rd cousin 6 x removed).
                     Dorothea Spotswood Dandridge, the second wife of Patrick Henry

Incidentally I found years ago that my direct ancestors, John Mason III and his wife were neighbors of Patrick Henry and wife Dorothea Dandridge Henry, and they sold 400 acres of land to Patrick Henry's widow(Henry died before the actual transaction happened)for 80 pounds in July of 1799.

Parker and I also share Payne and Cole cousins on these same allied lines.

But I digress......back to the Hamners.

A photo of Earl Hamner with Richard Thomas the actor, who portrayed the character base on Earl.

I just couldn't seem to find the exact link from Parker's Hamner line to Earl Hamner's line.  When I get stuck like this I'll usually start another tree for the person I am trying to link to, in this case Earl Hamner.
So I start going back and once I hit Earl's Great Grandparents I find Andrew J Mann(born in Campbell County, died in Charlotte County VA)and wife, Tabitha Holt(born in Prince Edward County, married in Campbell County and not sure where she died abt. 1832, probably in Charlotte as Andrew remarried in Charlotte County).

Holt, I have a lot of Holt ancestors!  So I search MY Holts.
Tabitha's father was Josiah Holt who was my 5 x GGrand John Francis Holt which makes her my 1 st cousin 6 x removed.
So this  means Earl Hamner Jr. was my 5th cousin 2 x removed through his maternal grandmother's side.



Everybody of my generation knows what a phenomenon "The Waltons" tv show was, running from 1972 to 1981.  There were specials and tv movies after that into the 1990's too.
You can go read all about the career of Hamner HERE if interested.
Earl Hamner Jr. based The TV show on his childhood living during the Great Depression in Nelson County in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
Earl Hamner wrote a novel in the early 1960's that was turned into a major motion picture called "Spencer's Mountain" in 1963, starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O'Hara.(It's a good old movie if you are looking for something to watch too.)  Even though they moved the setting in that film to Wyoming from Virginia, it was the genesis for the TV show, "The Waltons".
Hamner wrote another novel, "The Homecoming: a novel about Spencer's Mountain".

Spencer by the way was Earl Hamner Jr.'s paternal grandmother's maiden name, Susan Henry Spencer, the part played by Ellen Corby in the series. And Susan's mother's name was Olivia, the name given to John Boy's mother in the TV series too.

That "The Homecoming" novel was turned into a tv special called "The Homecoming"(starring Patricia Neal, Richard Thomas, Ellen Corby and a few of the same kids from the tv series)and further gelled "The Waltons" tv show concept.

Something else I found interesting while rooting around in Earl Hamner's mother's family.  His mother was born Doris Marion Giannini.  A surname like that makes your ears perk up in rural early 20th century Virginia!
Seems her Gianninis go back in America to the 1700's.
To Giovanni Antonio Giannini(or Gianniny as it was written back then)and Maria Modena Giannini from Lucca, in the Tuscany region of Italy.  They arrived in 1773 on the "Triumph" into a port on the James River along with Fillippo Mazzei, and Italian entrepreneur, who hoped to establish a wine, olive oil and silk business in the Virginia Colony.
Antonio Giannini was one of the ten Vignerons(or vineyard cultivators)who traveled with Mazzei and his family.
Mazzei's plan was to set up in Western Virginia but after sending his workers to scout out conditions in the west, Mazzei stopped over at Monticello to see Thomas Jefferson and Jefferson, so taken with European culture and that lifestyle(he was ambassador to France for years you know)and Jefferson wanting to help get wine making going as an ecomony in the Virginia Colony(and my guess is Jefferson though having a neighbor who made wine could only be a good thing too!), sold Mazzei land nearby Monticello to set up his operation.  Mazzei called his plantation "Colle".  And that is how Doris Giannini, Earl Hamner, Jr.'s mother's 3 x Great Grandparents came to the Albemarle region of Virginia.
And Earl Hamner didn't let this Italian winemaking heritage go to waste as it was the basis of his writing of the TV series "Falcon Crest" about a family of California winemakers. lol
Go HERE to learn about the Giannini Family in Virginia and their Thomas Jefferson connection.

Just the most interesting stuff you dig up when you discover your family roots!
Now I'm honing in on Parker's direct connection to the this Hamner line.

Sluggy








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Saturday, June 23, 2018

April Trip to Fredericksburg VA....Part Two

The next stop on our museum tour was The Rising Sun Tavern.



This museum is touted as having been owned by George Washington's younger brother, Charles Washington(also my 11th cousin 8 x removed).

Charles had this house built in 1760 but sold it and had moved away long before it became a tavern/lodging house in 1792.
Intersting tidbit--Charles Town, West Virginia was named by and for Geo. little brother Charles Washington.  That was in 1787 so it was Charles Town, Virginia, not West Virginia.

Interesting information given by the docents here about traveling in the Colonial era but no photos were allowed to be taken inside.  Let's just say that travel, even short distances, was arduous and uncomfortable and you had to be careful which lodging house you frequented.

When we left the building I spied this A. Smith Bowman whiskey barrel.......


We toured the nearby A. Smith Bowman distillery a couple of times(once with Hubs in August 2015 and once with the two oldest kids in July 2016).


A Bowman visiting a Bowman's distillery.
My direct line of Bowman's are in America by way of Ireland(and before that, England).
The distillery Bowmans line was orginally from Germany.


But it turns out as I dig deeper into my genealogy I am related to Abraham Smith Bowman Jr.(pictured above with his father, A Smith Bowman Sr.).

Abraham Smith Bowman Jr. married Mary Walker Lee, who it turns out is my 10th cousin 4 x removed, through my mother's FOSTER line(I also have a paternal Foster line but that one is Irish/English.)


And yes, this LEE family is That  FFV or "First Families of Virginia" Lee family.

 It's funny that my brother remembers that our father had fantasized out loud about being of German descent when we were younger and he was still alive.  This was long before any of us were into genealogy or DNA testing and had done any research.
But I digress.......


So it was off to our third stop of the day........

George's mom's house.
Mary Ball Washington(the wife of my 10th cousin 9 x removed)lived at "Ferry Farm"(called this after the fact)across the Rappahannock River from F'burg, which was only accessible to town at that time by a ferry.
After her husband Augustine Washington died in 1743, George tried to get Mary to move into town but she refused until the winter of 1771 when she became seriously ill and her daughter, Betty Washington Lewis, who lived in town had just given birth and couldn't travel to the farm to nurse her mother.  Mary moved into the town home George bought her the Spring of 1772.


"Bettie" Washington,Mary Ball Washington's daughter, married Fielding Lewis(of the Warner Hall Plantation Lewis')and he is also my 11th cousin 8 x removed


 Mary Ball Washington was, as Little Edie Beale would say a "staunch character".............


Mary Ball Washington died 25 Aug 1789 in her bed in Fredericksburg Virginia after a long battle with breast cancer.


Hubs and I pose in Mary's garden which she dearly loved, by her sundial.  Mary brought the sundial over from Ferry Farm when she moved into town.


There is one surviving outbuilding at Mary Washington's house, that of the kitchen.



In most Southern homes the kitchen was a separate building next to the main house.  Cooking back then was dirty and hot work and the last place you'd want to have a kitchen was in your main living area, especially in the Summer.


Even in areas of the country where it wasn't so hot for a good piece of the year, homes would often have a "Summer" kitchen.  These were either in a basement of a home or a separate building on the property.  My in-laws had a "Summer" kitchen of sorts in the lower level of their split level home in NJ.

We checked out the gift shop in the back of Mary Ball Washington's home and I did buy a couple of postcards.....

Eldest was getting hungry and tired of waiting on us out in the car(he had already toured these little museums)so we didn't get to "Kenmore"(Bettie Washington and Fldieing Lewis' home 2 blocks away)this trip.  Perhaps another time.


We passed this monument over on the next street across from "Kenmore" and darned if it's not Hugh Mercer again!  I had to get a photo.


This was a nice looking house near the monument with a mansard roof feature.  Notice the horse tie off and the stone block for stepping down from your mount or from a carriage on the street.


We grabbed a cheap and quick lunch at Hardee's then it was a stop at the nearby Ollie's and a grocery store to pick up a birthday cake since it was Hubs' birthday and then back to the apartment to hang out for awhile.

As soon as Eldest's GF arrived from work and changed we were off for a late dinner.......

Of course, to a brew pub, Spencer Devon Brewing.

A round of drinks and then the trivia started..
We had to decide on a team name and went with "The Carpetbaggers".
It should have been "1 Scalawag and 3 Carpetbaggers" since the 3 of my dining/drinking companion are all Yankees. ;-)

So we ate a bit(the Red Goat burger was great!)and drank a big(well Eldest and Hubs did most of the drinking)and we played some bar trivia.  Between our varied interests, sexes and ages we pretty much covered every category of trivia and we ended up coming in second place for the night!


Then it was back to the apartment and time for cake..........
But Eldest didn't have any candles to blow out so we improvized using the Candle app on the GF's phone........lol........



Hubs and I left the next morning to come home.  It was a quick but fun little trip to see our son and soak in some local history.


Sluggy
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