I’m flying to Tucson, Arizona, today to attend the memorial service for my Aunt Mary, who died last spring. Her memorial service was delayed because of COVID, but it is now scheduled for Saturday, March 19. It’s particularly appropriate that I’m heading to Tucson today; Aunt Mary’s birthday was March 17, and she always loved a good birthday party. So I’ll raise a glass to Aunt Mary later today.
I am struck by the fact that I’ll be flying over land where some of my ancestors lived two hundred years ago. (That’s the way genealogists think.) I want to tell you about them as I fly 30,000 above their heads. They would not understand this sentence at all.
This flight goes over three sets of my ancestors: My Walton family lived in central Virginia, southwest of Richmond. My Roberts Family lived in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. My Hunt family lived in Greenville County, South Carolina. The Roberts and Hunt families are in the Workman family line, so they are Aunt Mary’s ancestors.
The Walton Family of Amelia and Cumberland Counties, Virginia
I want to talk to you first about my Walton family in South-Central Virginia. As you can see on the pedigree chart on the next page, this part of my family tree is lousy with Waltons. My 3rd great-grandmother Tabitha Allen Walton is descended from Waltons on both her maternal and paternal sides. John and Mary Sims Walton were her paternal great-grandparents AND her maternal 2nd great-grandparents. Her paternal grandfather married his 1st cousin 1x removed. This is called pedigree collapse. We should not worry too much about this.
It is not clear who the first Walton in Virginia was; there were at least eight men named John Walton in the colony in its early years, and other men named George and Robert Walton. No one has been able to prove who the earliest of my line of Waltons in America was – but recently, a historian named Wilmer L. Kerns has made a valiant effort to prove this line. In 2005, he published a book called Waltons of Old Virginia: and Sketches of Families in Central Virginia, in which he seeks to provide sources for the information floating around about the Walton family in Virginia. I am indebted to him for much of the following information on the Walton family.
My proven Walton line goes back to my 7th great-grandfather Edward Walton, Jr. (1672-1720) in New Kent County. Edward was married to a woman named Elizabeth, but I don’t know her last name. Edward and his family were members of St. Peter’s Church in New Kent County.
The Walton family moved westward in 1731 as land became available in the new frontier areas. Robert Walton (1749-1837), the oldest son of Edward and Elizabeth, inherited his father’s land and stayed in New Kent County. Two other sons – William and Thomas – moved to the area of Goochland County that would become Cumberland County. The youngest son of Edward and Elizabeth – my 6th great-grandfather John Walton, Sr. (1709-1772) – married Mary Sims (1718-1804) and moved to Louisa County, Virginia. John owned two plantations in Louisa County, where he also owned many slaves. He became wealthy from his land, but tradition says that he was also a botanical herb doctor, a pharmacist who created prescriptions from plants.
John and Mary had at least 12 children, including my 5th great-grandfather John Walton, Jr. (1738-1793). (As an aside, this means we DO get a John-Boy Walton out of all of this.) John was their second-oldest son. And just to make things more confusing, I am also descended from their fourth-oldest son, Simeon Walton (1741-1798). Simeon, however, is my 6th great-grandfather, because of the speed with which the different family lines move. Here’s what these two lines look like:
The confusing part is in the generations after John Walton Sr. His grandson, William Walton (1784-1862), married his great-granddaughter, Barbara Allen Walton (1784-1840). William was the youngest of 13 children born to John Jr. 1738, and Barbara was the oldest child born to John Walton 1765. William and Barbara were 1st cousins once removed; Barbara’s father John Walton 1765 was the nephew of William’s father John Jr. 1738.
This took me a while to figure out and I’m still not sure I have it right. To many John Waltons for my taste, that’s all I’m saying.
Back to my story – which breaks into two parts for the next generations.
Let’s first go down the chart on the left.
John Walton Jr., married Mary Baker (1739-1813) in Louisa County in 1757. During the American Revolution, John served in Captain James Scott’s Company of Virginia Troops. John and Mary had a 332-acre farm and a home called Glen Beau in Louisa County.
.John and Mary had 13 children, including my 4th great-grandfather William Walton (1784-1862), who was their last child. William married Barbara Allen Walton (1788-1840) in Kentucky in 1805.
We need to trace the other line (the right side of the chart you saw a bit ago) to find Barbara. John Walton, Jr. (William’s father) had a brother named Simeon Walton (1741-1798). Simeon married Agnes Hester (1746-1821) in Amelia County, where he served as a Baptist Minister.
Here’s what an 1810 book (A History of the Rise and Progress of Baptists in Virginia, by Robert Baylor Semple) had to say about Simeon:
He was a man of note, in his day and generation. In point of education he had opportunities above many of his companions in the ministry. Having a relish for literary pursuits, he improved his mind above what might have been looked for from his school learning. Being a good mathematician, he was appointed to discharge the duties of county surveyor, in Amelia the place of his residence, for a length of time. Being a ready scribe, he was clerk to the Middle District Association, for many years. There was a considerable intimacy between him and elder John Williams. They were kindred spirits. As a preacher, he was thought to be above mediocrity; though in this character, he did not shine as brightly as might have been expected, considering his cleverness in other points. He resided in Nottoway church, as pastor, for many years. But in 1795, he moved to Kentucky; where, in March 1798, God took him to himself. He was a good and faithful servant.
Agnes and Simeon also had 13 children, including my 5th great-grandfather John Walton (1765-1840), who was their second child. As the note about Simeon (above) indicates, in 1795 Agnes and Simeon moved to Kentucky with many of their family members (including John), shortly after Kentucky became a state. John married Susanna Anderson (1768-1817) in Amelia County in 1787, and Barbara was born before they moved to Kentucky.
The Roberts Family of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina
Now I want to tell you about my Roberts family of North Carolina and Tennessee.
It’s pretty easy to write about my Roberts family, because I don’t know very much about them. As you can see on the family tree above, Carolyn Roberts is my link to North Carolina. Carolyn is my maternal 2nd great-grandmother; she married George Thomas in Illinois in 1859 and gave birth to my great-grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Thomas, before George died. Mary Elizabeth married Thomas Calvin Workman, Sr., my great-grandfather.
I know just a little about Carolyn’s father, Wiley Roberts. I have names for his mother and father, but I don’t know anything else about them. These might not even be their names. Wiley was born in North Carolina, where he married Nancy Markham in 1812 and also served in a militia unit during the War of 1812. By 1827, however, they were living in Overton County, Tennessee, where they had several children, including my 2nd great-grandmother Carolyn Roberts (1832-1904). Wily moved his family to Morgan County, Illinois, sometime before 1850.
The Hunt Family of South Carolina
This chart shows my ancestors in Greenville, South Carolina My 5th great-grandfather, Christopher Hunt (1728-1781) was born in Virginia and married Catherine Blasingame (1735-1781) in Virginia in 1755. He and Catherine moved to North Carolina by 1757, when their first child, John Hunt (1757-1821) was born. John was my 4th great-grandfather.
Several other members of the Hunt family moved to North Carolina at about the same time as Christopher. Christopher had married Catherine Blasingame (1735-1781) (also known as Caty) in 1755. I don’t know much about Caty’s family, other than that they had been in Virginia for at least two generations before Caty’s birth. John Hunt (my 4th great-grandfather, remember) was born in Granville, NC, near the Virginia border, as were several of his siblings.
This is as good a time as any to acknowledge the benefit of having ancestors who are connected to someone famous. John had a lot of children between 1790 and 1810 – more on that later – but one of them was my 4th great-uncle Jefferson Hunt (1804-1879), who was to become an important figure in the Mormon settlement in Nauvoo, Illinois, and later when the Mormons moved to Salt Lake City. (I wrote about him last Thursday) The Mormons have written extensively about Jefferson Hunt, and John gets a lot of attention in. these narratives. This is one reason I have this image, which is a hand-drawn map of the early life of John Hunt in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. It is the frontispiece of a 1958 book Captain Jefferson Hunt of the Mormon Battalion by Pauline Udall Smith. I retrieved this book from the HathiTrust website.
This is the right side of the frontispiece, which shows John’s early life in Virginia and North Carolina, which is what I’ve been talking about so far. You can see that the author points out several places where the Jenkins family lived, and you might be asking yourself “Why do I care about the Jenkins family?” It’s important because he married Martha Jenkins (1760-1850) in 1781. Martha’s 2nd great-grandfather (and my 8th great-grandfather) Edward Jenkins (1618-1699) came to Massachusetts as part of the Puritan Great Migration in the 1630s. His grandson, Thomas Jenkins (1700-1775) was born in Massachusetts but then moved first to Pennsylvania and then to North Carolina. The family were probably Quakers – their names appear in areas in the parts of both Pennsylvania and North Carolina where Quakers settled.
The marriage between John and Martha was delayed for a few years because of the American Revolution; John was in the 1st Spartan regiment of the South Carolina militia during the Revolution, and he participated in the defense of the siege of Charleston, a British victory. Some members of John’s unit were captured during this siege, but I haven’t been able to determine exactly what happened to John. Other elements of his unit went on to fight at the 1780 Battle of Kings Mountain in South Carolina, but I haven’t been able to verify that John was there either.
John married Martha in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, in 1781. The left side of the frontispiece map picks up this story.
After Martha and John married, they moved to Union County, South Carolina, where they had three children. They soon moved again, and John served as sheriff of Greenville County (formed from the northernmost part of District 96) from its formation in 1785 until 1794. That’s when he moved his family (which had grown to include four more children) to Kentucky. He bought 246 acres of land in Bracken County, where he was appointed captain of militia and inspector of tobacco. In Kentucky he and Martha had ten more children (for a total of 17 children), including my 3rd great-grandmother, Elizabeth “Betsy” Hunt (1801-1850). Jefferson Hunt, about whom I wrote earlier, was Betsy’s younger brother.
Once again, I want to thank the Mormons for putting this information together for me. It is extremely helpful.
I love Louisa County. But you don’t have anyone from Nelson County? Lots of Waltons in your family. Great piece. Have a satisfying family experience. Be safe. Good night, Karen.