Shelton Genealogy

GENEALOGY of the Campbell, Noble, Gorton, Shelton, Gilmour and Byrd Families and numerous other families of prominence in America with whom they have intermarried by MILDRED CAMPBELL WHITAKER (MRS. ALEXANDER EDWARD) Corresponding Secretary DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN COLONISTS in the iTATE OF MISSOURI St. Louis, Mo. 1927 THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. TO THE MEMORY OF HER BELOVED MOTHER Genevieve Shelton Cam\)bel\ AND TO THE Honorable Harry flood B'jrd GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA AND Commander Richard Evelyn Byrd, U. S. N. WHO HAVE RESTORED TO THEIR FORMER PRESTIGE THE BYRDS OF VIRGINIA '' To Whom the Consciousness of Noble .Ancestry is an Inspiration to Noble Living:- Insistent voices call from out the Past, A Noble Race doth well ·its own endow. So pure and fine let all your actions be, None can deny of royal race art thou." '' Of Sceptred Race'' by Annah Robinson Watson. ORGANIZATIONS IN WHICH MEMBERS OF THESE FAMILIES ARE ENTITLED TO MEMBERSHIP The lineage in this book entitles those. of the blood to membership in the following organizations, and probably other organizations with whose names the author is not familiar: Barons of Runnymede ; Order of the Cavaliers; Mayflower Descendants; Huguenot Society; Order of the Crown ; Knights of the Golden Horseshoe; Colonial Dames ; Daughters of American Colonists ; First Families of Virginia. Founders and Patriots ; Descendants of Colonial Governors; Sons of Colonial Wars ; Daughters of the Seventeenth Century; Daughters of the American Revolution; Sons of the American Revolution; Daughters of 1812 ; Spanish-American War Veterans and Auxiliaries; Sons of Confederate Veterans; United Daughters of the Confederacy; Sons of the G. A. R. Veterans and Auxiliari~s; American Legion Veterans of the World War. ANCESTRY COUNTS We inherit more than we ourselves can add. It means much to be born of a race with centuries of civilization back of it. Blood, if it be good, inspires one to great effort. If it be bad, it paralyzes ambition and fixes the boundaries to one's possibilities. I am speaking of the rule, not of the rare exceptions. :Many have become degenerate in spite of inheriting the stimulus to better things, and a few have, to a degree, overcome handicaps of their life and early environment. If one is tempted to boast that he is self-made, a few questions will puncture his pride. Let him analyze himself, separate all that has come to him into three factors: one representing that which has come to him by inheritance, another representing that which has entered his life through environment, and the third representing what he can fairly credit to himself-that which is not based upou either inheritance or environment. The third £actor will not be large enough to flatter his vanity. From "vVILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 1'1EMOIRS." CONTENTS. Page Campbell Genealogy . • . 21 Noble Genealogy . 37 Gorton Genealogy . 45 Shelton Genealogy . 49 Gilmour Genealogy . 83 Byrd Genealogy . 86 Warriner, Loomis, Higley and Edson Families. 39 John Alden and Priscilla. 40 The Molyneux and Standish Families .......... .41 and 42 The Pomeroy, Bagge and Chapin Families ....... 42 and 43 The Tillinghast Family .. .. .. .. .. 48 The Ball Family ............ : . 85 The Carter Family ................................ 111 The Armistead Family . 117 The Southall Family . 120 The FitzGerald Family . 121 The McKnight Family . 125 The Brevard Family . 128 The Scotch-Irish ....................... .'.......... 36 Governor John Miller of Missouri. 106 The Westover Estate............................... 158 Governor Harry Flood Byrd of Virginia............. 176 Commander Richard Evelyn Byrd, U. S. N. 190 King Louis the IX of France. 208 History of Centenary M. E. S. Ch., St. Louis, Mo.... 140 Colonel John and Colonel Lawrence Smith........... 221 Generals Jonathan Clark, George Rogers Clark and William Clark . 102 Descent of Families in and near St. Louis from these lines . 216 11 INTRODUCTION And Some Corrections of What Have Seemed to Be Well Established Historical Facts. From my earliest recollection I have been interested in every thing about the family and my kin. It has been a standing joke for years with all of my family circle that if one wanted to know anything about who anyone's grand mother was to "ask Mildred." My father's parents died before my mother's marriage to him, but my Virginia grand mother Shelton lived to be eighty-four, and nothing gave me more pleasure as a child than to sit and listen to her and my mother telling incidents that had happened in some branch of the family. Grandmother came to St. Louis when a young girl and lmew intimately everybody who was any body in the old days. She called everyone by their first name, and to this day when I hear families mentioned I think at once, "Oh, yes! she was Sallie so-and-so's daughter and married so-and-so.'' My father was very proud of being an Argyle Campbell a lineal descendant of Sir Colin Campbell-and how I thrilled to the tales of the Clan that he delighted to tell. He had a wonderful gift of language, was a poet himself, and was especially fond of Tom Moore, Burns, ·w alter Scott, and of Thomas Campbell, who was of his own blood and for whom my only brother was named. I never hear even now any reference to "Marmion and Douglass" without a return of the same childhood thrill. About ten years ago I was in doubt as to what to give my sisters for Christmas. One of them said, '' you can write up the family tree. If you were to die to-morrow we would not know who our grandmother was," which was practically true. I thought no more about it until I came across a sentence in a life of Patrick Henry that made my blood boil. The words were: "Henry's first marriage was unfortunate. He married a girl of low origin, (13) 14 INTRODUCTION daughter of a poor farmer, John Shelton, who afterwards kept a tavern in Hanover County, Virginia.'' I never lmew my grandfather; he died before my mother's marriage, but his family idolized him, and I had talked to many of the older St. Louisans who had been intimate i;uests in his home; one of whom was the late Richard M. Scruggs, Founder and President of Scruggs, Vandervoort and Barney, who had been a neighbor of the Burds and Sheltons in Virginia. Everyone who mentioned him spoke of him as a "magnificent gentleman'' and I knew that there was not a drop of com mon blood in his veins. He was a kinsman of Robert E. Lee, and an intimate friend. They looked like twins and were born in the same county in Virginia. There was only four years difference in their ages. When Lee was in St. Louis before the Civil War, having been sent by the Government to supervise the levee work, he and grandfather were con stantly being taken for each other. It does not seem to be a fact of general knowledge in St. Louis, that it was General Robert E. Lee who saved the Mississippi frontage for the city by the engineering he planned and executed. After reading the article above referred to I went to the library and found out that almost every reference to Sarah Shelton, Patrick Henry's wife, was in the same vein. I then and there decided to ferret out the facts and I think my readers will concede that ''Sarah'' has come into her own. In compiling these records I found that very little credence could be placed on published data-there was so very much that was wrong or incomplete. I found several branches of my own family hanging on the Skelton tree, where they had been for generations owing to a poorly written record of the first Susannah Skelton, who married Thomas Meriwether. The wife of Thomas Jefferson has been published repeatedly as Martha Skelton, whereas she was the widow of Bathurst Skelton, as is correctly stated in ''Clark's Colonial Churches of the Original Colony of Virginia,'' published in Richmond in 1907 and 1908, by the Southern Churchman. MacKenzie in his "Colonial Families in America," states that the son of Sir William Skipwith, Henry, married Bathurst Shelton's widow. This is an error on the face of it. It was Ann INTRODUCTION 15 Wales, also a daughter of John of '' The Forest,'' and a sister of Mrs. Jefferson, whom Henry Skipwith married. Judge L. H. Jones, of Winchester, Ky., in his book pub lished in 1891, "Capt. Roger Jones of London and Virginia," has the following: '' As early as the year 1735 there was living in the Colony of Virginia a Mr. James Skelton, a gentleman of great wealth and high social standing. Some years previous to this he had married Jane Meriwether. '' . There is no evi dence that this family had any connections of their name in Virginia, and it appears that there is no posterity bearing their name. The family bible is s·upposed to be in the pos session of Roger Jones, uncle of the author of this book. "Meriwether Skelton lived at 'Spring Garden,' near New castle, in Hanover County. It is presumed he never married as he bequeathed 'Spring Garden' to his sister Sally, wife of Col. Thos. Jones. " It is not surprising that Judge Jones could not find any antecedents or ·posterity for James. He and his, were hanging on the Shelton tree, where they belonged. James Shelton was a prominent l\f. D. and Surgeon of his day. I had always heard of the bible· which some branch of our family was supposed to have, but find from Judge Jones' book that it is with the Jones' archives.

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