Lewis and Kindred Families
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GENEALOGIES OF THE LEWIS AND KINDRED FAMILIES EDITED BY JOHN MERIWETHER McALLIST.ER Atlanta, Georgia AND LURA BOULTON TANDY Columbia, Missouri PRINTED BY E. W. STEPHENS PUBLISHING COMPANY (;ofumSfo,, @issouri 1906 Copyright 1906 By LURA BOULTON TANDY LEWIS AND KINDRED FAMILIES <i'tbication THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED TO OUR BELOVED CHILDREN. THEIR DESCENDANTS AND KINDRED. May it be the means of increasing the love of funily, of stimulating a pride in remote anccstty and of awakening an appreciation of the value of perpetuating family history through years to come. Remembering that "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches," and "How much better it is to get wisdom than gold;,' may it strengthen within them the desire to leave upon the pages of history an esteemed and honored name, is the prayer of its AUTHORS. EXPLANATION. The full-size :figures preceding a name in dicate the number of the generation ; the small :figures indicate the number in the fam ily. This plan could not be followed out uniformly for ]ack of data, but its value will be apparent to those interested in family history. INTRODUCTION. In the preparation of this work the authors have had the assistance of so many friends who take a generai interest in ge nealogy that they could not undertake in the space allotted to them to mention the names of a tithe of them. Conspicuous among those, however, to whom their sincere thanks are due, are l\fr. Thomas l\f. Green, of Danville, Kentucky, the late Henry Howell Lewis, of Baltimore, Dr. Edmond J. Lee of Philadel phia, Dr. James A. Dibrell, of Little Rock, Arkansas, l\!r. Rob ert S. Hatcher, Lafayette, Indiana, the late Mrs. Ma"i'y Starling Payne, of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and Mrs. Sarah T. L. Ander son of Ivy Depot, Virginia, aL,c- her brother R. L. Scott of Texas. In making up the genealogies of the different families whose names appear in this volume, completeness has been the main object in· view. It has not, of course, been possible to entirely accomplish this object, but enough has been given to enable any one interested to supply the missing links and thus connect the different parts which may become apparent in any broken chain. At the outset it was the design of the authors to prepare a his tory exclusively for their children, but as usual in such cases the work has far outgrown tl1e original design. While it is true that no name has been included in this volume, the bearers of which are not related in some degree of consanguinity to the children of the authors, it has been found necessary to include even the very remote, in order to even approximate the completeness which was desired in the general scope of the work. ,\nile it may be 7 GENEALOGIES. OF THE- charged that in this the writers were actuated by selfish motives, it may also be replied that it was a selfishness prompted not by pecuniary gain, ~ut a pardonable pride, in which every descend ant of every name contained in the book is entitled to a full share. This is strictly a work of genealogy, and is in no sense in tended to trench on the neld properly belonging to the biogra pher. Where sketches of individuals appear, the author's aim has been to connect the person alluded to with contemporaneous his tory. In a few instances more extended notices have been given of individuals whose lives have been intimately associated with the upbuilding of the country and whose deeds have contributed to her greatness. It is not to be supposed that in the preparation of a fam ily history embracing many names, extending through several hundred years and covering from seven to eleven generations, the writers claim to set forth an unb-roken line .,f h~roes, statesmen, saints and sages, superior to any families that have existed in this or any other country. On fae contrary, all that is claimed for this volume is that some of those whom it mentions have left their impress upon the times in which they lived. Others, disregarding tradition, end failing to avail the~elves of ances tral advantages, have illustrated the irrevocable law of cause and effect and passed out of view. Every source h.as been exhausted to obtain all available in formation. Llbraries hnve been ransacked, rec.:ords have been overhauled; deeds, marriage ce!ti:6.cates, church registers and tombstones, grown gray with centuries of age, all have been brought into requisition. It may be proper to add that this has been a labor of love, 8 LE:WIS .A.l~D KINDRE,D FAMILIES. both for the work itself and for those who will be benefited by it. Having spent years of labor and much money., and having traveled hundreds of miles in sea1C'h of information., we bequeath our work, incomplete as it is, to posterity with a hope that some other lover of genealogy may take it up where we have left off, remedy our errors and complete what we n::lve left undone. The American people have neglected noth:ing so much as family history, and it is only after one hundred years of national existence that we have waked up to a realization of a failure to retain our identity. With the close of the Revolution which resulted in our independence, this great boon having been ob tained at the cost of evervw conceivable sacrifice., we were nat- nrally carried away with the idea of freedom. The victory to our arms had not been achieved by any one class, nor had ques tions of ancestral precedence pln.yed any part in the struggle. All classes and conditions in whose veins coursed patriotic blood had stood shoulder to shoulder against a common foe, and these old heroes, seeking no distinctio:a. the one over the other, allowed their family histories to be swallowed up for the time in the national glory. This feeling, very natural and proper under the circumstances which gave rise to it., would not, however, have predominated had not other causes arisen which conspired to cast odium upon American heraldry. A very considerable Tory element remai,ned in the country after the war was over, while there were others who did not rise to the standard of the Tories, having taken no part in the politics of the country or ex posed themselves to the dangers and hardships of war. Still another and lower class, who had neither ancestral nor individ ual standing, had prospered and become prominent under the liberal opportunities a:ff orded by the new government. These 9 GENE.A.LOGIES OF THE three classes made up a large pr0portion of the population and had no sentiments in common with the patriot element, and by the time the second generation had come upon the 5tage of action, the term ":first families" had become one of reproach instead of distinction, and any attempt to trace an ancestry or erect a family tree was held up to derision and laughed to scorn. The fact that one family chooses, for reasons satisfactory to it.self, not to write its history, or that another family has no history to write, is no reason why family history should not be written. Families make up nations and a history is as im portant to one as the other. A nation of families who have no histories is without material for a national history. It is not national history that makes great names. But names who have performed great deeds_ and thus est.ablished historic families make a nation great and give it a history. The names which go to make up this history are so closely interwoven with the his tory of the country that it is impossible to trace their genealogy without interspersing many historical events of n&tional interest. Several of the families date back to a very early period in English history, and some were quite well established in France before coming to England, but only such reference will be made to these families prior to their coming to America as will be necessary to trace their line of descent. The Rev. ~fr: Hayden, in hls "Virginia Genealogies/' ar gues in his articlP on descent that the most prominent Virginia families are not able to trace their descent beyond the :fifteenth century, and asserts that neither George W ashi.agton nor Gen eral Robert E. Lee knew anything, save by tradition, of the immediate line of their English descent. 10 LE"WIS A~"'D KINDRED F Al\'IILIES. It is known that the name of Lee was interwoven with the history of England since the days of "\Villiam the Conqueror, 1066, although Dr. Edmond J. Lee, in his "Lee of Virginia," ignoring current and authentic history and recognizing nothing but the public records, does not bring the name down from that period. It is well known that the :first Richard Lee of Ame~i can history brought his lineage with him when he came to Amer ica. That many lost sight of the lineage in the lapse of gen erations is not denied, but the history was preserved neverth~ less. While there are very few families who can trace their de scent with equal certainty from so remote a period as that of Lee, yet there are others who have no trouble in tracing their lineage much further back than that of the :fifteenth century. The Bruce family of Virginia, and other American names ·de scending from and connected with them, trace their Scotch de• scent from the eleventh eentury, and the same may be said of some of the families of this volume.