Some Venables of England and America And Brief Accounts of Families Into Which Certain Venables Married Henrietta Brady Brown Kinderton Press Cincinnati, Ohio 1961 Copyright 1961 by Henrietta Brady Brown All rights reserved Kinderton Press. 636 Dixie Terminal Building, Cincinnati, Ohio Note on this digital edition: In the process of scanning the original printed text the original pagination has been lost. While this makes the original Table of Contents and Index less useful, it makes the book suitable for electronic text search. At this time, this scan has not been fully proof-read or polished for format. Digital Edition © 2008 by Wallace Venable To all those whose graciously-given help has made this genealogical collection possible, but especially to Dorothy Venable Thompson and Emerson Venable FOREWORD In the spring of 1954, I visited my uncle, Mayo Venable, in Pittsburgh. Conversations with him and with my cousin, Emerson Venable, aroused my interest in family history; and resulted in the publication at Christmas time of that year of The Ancestors and Descendants of William Henry Venable, a collection of biographical and autobiographical sketches of William Henry Venable and Mary Vater Venable, and of their children and grandchildren. The book was written particularly for members of this family; that it has interested others is a gratifying, if unforeseen, by-product. The brief chapters on the ancestors of William Henry Venable were based almost entirely on data collected in the early 1900's by my uncle, Colonel Russell V. Venable, and the later genealogical investigations of Emerson Venable. The following year, intending only to correct some errors, I began a little genealogical investigation on my own. Never having done anything of the kind, I had to learn by trial and error. One authority referred to others, one correspondent suggested someone else who might have the requested data, one problem resolved left others unsolved. Soon I was engaged in full- scale genealogical research. It has been a fascinating and satisfying adventure, following where documented facts led, whether (or not!) to a general or to a bondsman, to a Norman baron or to a political idealist who sailed away from the land of his birth just ahead of the royal police. Naturally, I was most interested in establishing the descent of Venables of my own branch of the family. After the chapters in this book on "The Venables of Normandy and England" and "The Venables in the New World," the intensive research was on those families of that branch in the direct line of descent from Thomas Venable of New Jersey, who married Sarah Wallis in 1729. Their son, Thomas Venable, married Esther Borradail; their grandson, William Venable, married Rachel Croshaw; their great-grandson, William Venable, married Hannah Baird; and their great-great-grandson and my grandfather, William Henry Venable, married Mary Vater. Also considered in more or less detail are the families into which these Venables married: the Wallises, the Borradails, the Croshaws, the Bairds, and the Vaters. I soon became aware that if I waited until all the evidence was in I should be hopelessly confused; so I began to write as facts were found, and then wrote and rewrote seemingly endlessly as additional facts were added. This method will be evident in the format of the chapters. In the course of these investigations there was accumulated from many sources a great deal of information on Venables and allied families other than that which applied to the particular families with which this book is concerned. This information has been transcribed and is presented in the appendices in the hope and conviction that it will be of value to other genealogists. Too many amateur family histories are carelessly or not at all documented. In the text of Some Venables of England and America quotations are in-dented, and the source of each is identified. When a conclusion is reached which is not proved, it is so stated. In spite of countless checkings and re-checkings of sources and of the manuscript, and careful proof reading of the printed pages, I cannot be sure that slips have not occurred. If they have, I can only hope that the error is a bad one and so obvious that it will be immediately noticed and checked by the reader. But for certain actual and apparent errors I am not responsible. All quoted material from whatever source is given as printed, typed, or written. There are not only many variations in spelling, but disagreements in recorded facts and dates. My mother, Harriet Venable Brady, after reading the account of the Venable family which her brother Mayo was preparing for his children and grand-children, wrote him in 1940: "I do think that whenever there is anything picturesque to record about anyone, the inclusion of such anecdotes makes far more interesting reading than just a record of names and dates." Her point of view is one with which I heartily agree. Our ancestors were living people, not just names and dates. Whenever I have found, or been told, something about a person which helps to make him or her an individual, I have included the reference. It may be unorthodox genealogy, but it certainly "makes far more interesting reading," and I permit myself to hope that this genealogy may be read as well as consulted. Early in my work I read the essay on "English Pedigrees" by Mr. L. G. Pine which prefaces the 1952 edition of Burke's Landed Gentry. Mr. Pine observed: "Genealogy is the study of family history, and family history is by the nature of things a part of national and racial history. For the history of nations sets the conditions for the history of the family." This stimulated me to review certain periods of English and American history, for the chronicles of the Venables span nine hundred years. Also, I had to acquire at least a superficial knowledge of geography and maps, mediaeval taxes and land measures, derivations and definitions of words, and heraldic and legal terminology to understand and interpret references of whose meaning I was completely ignorant. I am aware that much of the general explanatory background material which I have included is a twice-told tale to experienced genealogists. I make no apologies, for perhaps there will be those among my readers who are as innocent as was I of the many paths down which one is led in a genealogical study. Genealogy as a leisure-time pursuit has been both exciting and frustrating. It is exciting suddenly to realize that you are the present, living representative of all the countless past generations, and a small part of the unfinished tapestry of life; exciting to learn new things and to make the acquaintance of kinspeople, alive and dead, you never knew you had; exciting to follow a slight clue to the solution of a complex relationship. It is frustrating to realize that no amount of research will ever resolve all the problems; frustrating to be sure that there will always be, somewhere, one other place you might have searched, or one other authority you might have consulted; frustrating because irretrievably lost documents and records, dimming memories for past events, and ignored letters leave always unanswered questions. Exciting and frustrating, maddening and exhilarating, there is no puzzle more engrossing than genealogy. —o — My requests for information and assistance have been numerous and insistent. In the appropriate sections of the text I have named all the many people who so kindly shared information with me, and I thank them all. Colonel Russell V. Venable presented his genealogical material to his daughter, Florence Venable Weiffenbach, who allowed me to study the original manuscripts. Letters in the collection led to correspondence with other branches of the Venable family. Emerson Venable placed at my disposal all the data on Venables he had collected. He has answered my questions and discussed by letter and in conversation various points which came up, and, with Dorothy Venable Thompson, read certain chapters before publication. Collaboration with Dorothy Venable Thompson has been particularly fortunate and rewarding. She has devoted weeks to extensive research among old records in county court houses, churches, and libraries in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Her many contributions of source material, her acute analysis of obscure points, and her accurate interpretation of complex relationships add immeasurably, to the genealogical value of this book. Though we cannot work out the degree of our double cousinship, we have established a firm friendship. Miss Marie Dickore, member of the National Genealogical Society, set me right on a number of genealogical points, as well as passing on to me Venable references she came upon in her own professional research. Mrs. Mabel Richter Schell of the History and Literature Department of the Public Library of Cincinnati advised me on the indexing of the book in accordance with accepted practice. Mrs. Alice Palo Hook made available to me the resources of the library of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, and answered perplexing questions. Mrs. Hazel Spencer Phillips, under whose direction the Warren County Historical Society has accumulated invaluable data on the early history and residents of the county, supplemented this material in long and informative personal conversations. Several years ago my friend, Helen Abigail Stanley, read and criticized the first rough draft of the manuscript. Thanks to her advice and suggestions, the organization and form was much improved. It was her observation that people do not live their lives in a vacuum, untouched by world events, which prompted me to include the brief historical backgrounds of times and places. And it was she who urged a summation of the Venables; perhaps she regretted her insistence after reading a number of abortive attempts before "1086 — 1960" passed her critical standards.