Family stories, artifacts and connections
Lowell Sedgwick Brown was born 29 October 1896 in Morris County, New Jersey. His sister, Mazie Tremaine Brown Bryan, was my husband’s great-grandmother. I have not heard any family stories about Lowell, so what is pieced together here is only from government and personal documents. He died in the Second Battle of the Marne in France on 18 July 1918. He lived a short 21 ½ years.
Ama Elizabeth Parker was born 01 December 1882 in Arkansas (probably Logan County), and likely named after two of her father’s sisters, Ama and Elizabeth. William “Billy” James Parker was a physician who had moved from his native Tennessee with his wife California “Callie” Garton. Ama was their first child. Continue reading “Sister Ama”
Thomas Willis Farley was born 26 January 1841 in Buckingham County, Virginia. His father was James Henry Farley. His mother was Catherine F. Roberts, who fell over dead of a heart attack across Thomas’s crib when he was six months old.
Thomas grew up in Buckingham, and attended Hampden-Sydney College, and served with the Confederate Army during the Civil War. He married Nancy “Nannie” Montgomery Rigg and they had 10 children.
One of the first records I found for Nannie (and Thomas) is the 1900 U. S. Federal Census for Kanawha County, WV, on which Thomas does not appear at all, and shows his wife Nannie as widowed. I had his date of death noted as “bef 1900” for many years. Then over the last few years I stumbled across several sources which jointly establish his date of death as 26 July 1903. Continue reading “Death Date for Thomas Willis Farley”
Catherine Lewis (1759-?) and Michael Keeney (1761-1790) were married on 11 January 1781 in Greenbrier County, Virginia (now WV). They are my 5th great-grandparents. This article about their cabin appeared in the Beckley Post-Herald on 09 October 1956. It tells a great story not only about the cabin but also about the lives of Michael (who died at a young age) and Catherine and their four children.
I just discovered some great information by Central Appalachian Timbers on this cabin; a brief blurb and photo and then much more detailed info, photos and update on 25 August 2015. There is some question about whether this is actually the Keeney cabin, or one belonging to the Lewis family; the study of the wood cores will help determine the answer.
*Note – the newspaper article had to be scanned at a very high resolution for readability, so this page may load slowly. There’s not an online version that I can find. I intend to to transcribe the article and post here.
Grace Lavenia Campbell married Carl DeWitt Hopkins on 25 July 1904 in Galipolis, Ohio. Grace and Carl were my great-grandparents, and my mother remembers them well.
Grace was born in 1883, the daughter of Samuel Henry (S. H.) Campbell and Nancy Jane Meadows. She was 21 at the time of her marriage to Carl. They had two sons (Keith Campbell Hopkins, my grandfather, and Henry Frederick Hopkins), and a daughter who did not live past infancy. Continue reading “Wedding Book of Grace Campbell”