The 40th annual Kentucky Genealogical Society Seminar on August 1, 2015 will feature John Philip Colletta, Ph.D.
Dr. Colletta is a nationally acclaimed genealogical lecturer and author. He serves on the faculty of the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh, and Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research. Additional information about the presenter is available at GenealogyJohn.com.
A highlight event for many at this year’s Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference 2014 was the Scots-Irish worship conducted by David E. Rencher and Dean J. Hunter.
“Scots-Irish research is not for the faint of heart,” stated Rencher.
The workshop attracted 120 conference attendees and covered, among other relevant topics, Scots-Irish immigration to North America, genealogical collections, Irish civil and religious jurisdictional boundaries, and records of the Presbyterian, Catholic and Church of Ireland religious bodies. Those who attended the two-hour program departed with a bound workshop manual filled with helpful content and resources for additional study.
For those who research Scots-Irish ancestry, 2014 has been quite the year for national conference offerings focused on the Ulster Scots. The National Genealogical Society’s annual conference, held this past May in Richmond, Virginia, offered presentations such as “The Scotch-Irish from Pennsylvania to Virginia and Onward,” and “From Ulster to Virginia and the Carolinas,” as well as other lectures on the subject.
The name Fincastle Ancestry Research has its origins in the history of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
Kentucky was at one time a part of Fincastle County, Virginia. The town of Fincastle in Virginia is the county seat of Botetourt County, out of which Fincastle County was created in 1772. At the time, Botetourt County encompassed much of Virginia southwest of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
With frontiersmen moving beyond the mountains, the Virginia legislature created Fincastle County when it became apparent that the colony’s western country would be settled.
Migration to the west increased in the early 1770’s and the legislature determined that Fincastle County was not adequate to serve those who settled in Kentucky and the other parts of Virginia’s claim to lands west to the Mississippi River. Fincastle County was divided in 1776 into three new counties, one of which was Kentucky County, and the parent county ceased to exist:
WHEREAS, from the great extent of the county of Fincastle, many inconveniences attend the more distant inhabitants thereof, on account of their remote situation from the courthouse of the said county, and many of the said inhabitants have petitioned this present general assembly for a division of the same:
Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly of the commonwealth of Virginia, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same, That from and after the last day of December next ensuing the said county of Fincastle shall be divided into three counties, that is to say: All that part thereof which lies to the south and westward of a line beginning on the Ohio, at the mouth of Great Sandy creek, and running up the same and the main or north easterly branch thereof to the Great Laurel Ridge or Cumberland Mountain, thence south westerly along the said mountain to the line of North Carolina, shall be one distinct county, and called and known by the name of Kentucky; and all that part of the said county of Fincastle included in the lines beginning at the Cumberland Mountain, where the line of Kentucky county intersects the North Carolina line, thence east along the said Carolina line to the top of Iron Mountain thence along the same easterly to the source of the south fork of Holstein river, thence northwardly along the highest part of the high lands, ridges, and mountains, that divide the waters of the Tenessee (sic) from those of the Great Kanawah, to the most easterly source of Clinch river, thence westwardly along the top of the mountains that divide the waters of Clinch river from those of the Great Kanawah (sic) and Sandy creek to the line of Kentucky county, thence along the same to the beginning, shall be one other distinct county, and called and known by the name of Washington; and all the residue of the said county of Fincastle shall be one other distinct county, and shall be called and known by the name of Montgomery.
The Virginia legislature divided Kentucky County into three separate counties in 1780. As a result of further division, there were nine counties in Kentucky when it was admitted to the Union as the fifteenth state on 1 June 1792.
Fincastle Ancestry Research is named to honor my ancestors, many of whom were Virginians who migrated over the Appalachian Mountains to make new lives for themselves and their families in Kentucky.
“Your grandfather would have a fit if he knew you were going to Germany,” my grandmother told me. “He hated the Germans.”
It was the summer of 1989 and I had just completed my senior year of college. I was about to depart alone on my grand adventure to Europe, with visits planned to France, England, Ireland and Scotland. But it was my intention to tour Germany that generated the comments from my grandmother.
“He was shot by a German soldier over there in the war,” she continued.
Undergraduate study of history had sparked my interest in genealogy and I knew that both sets of my grandparents had married in the early 1940’s and spent the first years of their marriages dealing with the strains of World War II. Each of my grandfathers enlisted in wartime military service, but only my paternal grandfather saw combat action.
My father’s parents, William Woosley and Clarine Arnold, both natives of Kentucky, had married there in Bourbon County on 26 July 1941. William was born on 21 October 1920 in Estill County, the oldest child of parents whose families had lived in the Appalachian foothills near the Kentucky River and its tributaries for generations. Clarine was almost eighteen months younger, born on 9 April 1922 in Montgomery County, one of nine children in a farm family whose roots were just as deep in the Licking River watershed of Kentucky.
Bourbon County, on the eve of the United State’s entry into the war, was predominantly an agricultural community with a population of about 18,000 people. It was a major tobacco producing county, and much of its gently rolling hills and pastures were home to thoroughbred horse farms. It’s county seat, Paris, was situated on Stoner Creek, in the Bluegrass region of Central Kentucky, at the junction of federal highways and along a railroad that transported commerce and passengers. It was there that my grandparents married and began a family.
The young couple were parents of a five months old son, their first child, when my grandfather enlisted in the army on 13 October 1942. At the time, William was working as a farm hand. He entered into active military service two weeks later in Cincinnati, Ohio, about seventy-five miles from his home and family.
William’s military service extended nearly three years until his honorable discharge at Thayer General Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee on 22 September 1945. In the span of those years, my grandfather and the men of his combat unit trained together stateside and then for two months in England and Wales before joining the battle in Northern France in June 1944. Across battlefields in France, Luxembourg, Germany and Belgium he fought as an infantryman before being shot during the “Battle of the Bulge” in the Ardennes Forest.
My grandfather survived his military experience but rarely spoke of it for the rest of his life. He died on 30 September 1976, when I was nine years old. William’s life ended too early for me to understand and appreciate his military service. Known to me as “Papaw Woosley,” and seemingly just “Bill” to everyone else, he was a hero, a decorated soldier in the army division remembered as the “Thunderbolt.” He also was a man, however, who returned from war deeply affected by the violence and destruction he experienced in combat.
It was in June twenty-five years ago that I departed from my own native Kentucky to travel in Europe. Like my grandfather prior to the war, I had never been far from the state of my birth. My travels took me the hedgerows of Normandy, where William Woosley fought for his life and country. I experienced indescribable emotion as I stood on the bluffs overlooking Omaha Beach and the English Channel, thinking that my grandfather was almost the same age when he waited there offshore on a naval vessel, staring at France and the war ahead of him.
Seventy years after the Allied invasion of France to expel Adolf Hitler’s German soldiers, I am still drawn to the story of my grandfather’s participation in the war and his contribution to the liberation of Europe. Over the next fifteen months, I will explore that story and attempt to connect him to the recorded history of his military unit’s training and service in the war. I will seek more fully to understand the context of my grandmother’s comments and to appreciate the service of my grandfather, and the sacrifices of his family.
The Memorial Day remembrances of this past week reminded me of my visit to the Chattanooga National Cemetery, where many soldiers of the Civil War are buried. The cemetery was created in commemoration of the Battle of Chattanooga. Almost 13,000 interments were complete by 1870, including among the burials men who fell at Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain. Some soldiers who lost their lives during the war in other battles are also laid to rest there. Thousands of those buried in the cemetery are unidentified.
I have ancestors who fought in service of their country in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican War, Civil War and World War II. All survived their military service, but I think of them when I walk across preserved battlefields and look across the fields of national cemeteries where their friends and neighbors found their final resting place.
I thought of William Woosley, my ancestor, when I stood where he once survived a harsh winter at Valley Forge and fought for independence at Yorktown. I experienced indescribable emotional feelings when I stood on the beach at Normandy and thought of another William Woosley, my grandfather, who was there with so many other American heroes in June 1944.
I enjoy genealogy because my discoveries connect me to a time and place where the story of my ancestral past is preserved, perhaps in records but often in the silent voices I hear in places such as battlefields and national cemeteries. My ancestors, who are known to me, all came home from war. Left behind on those commemorated and consecrated grounds, however, are important parts of their stories.
I search for their stories. I seek to preserve and record and remember.
“It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.”
-Abraham Lincoln
The Kentucky Genealogical Society will hold its Annual Seminar on Saturday, August 2, at the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History in Frankfort. Registration for the seminar is now open. Additional information is available on the society website.
The presenter will be J. Mark, Lowe, CG, FUGA, a professional researcher and lecturer. He is a Tennessee resident with deep roots in Kentucky. Mr. Lowe is a frequent lecturer to audiences across the country.
J. Mark Lowe is a former president of the Association of Professional Genealogists, and former vice president of the Federation of Genealogical Societies. He is an instructor for the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research (IGHR), Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG), Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburg (GRIP), and the Regional In-depth Genealogical Studies Alliance.
Aunt Barbara made the sweetest tea I ever tasted.
I thought of her this past week when I visited family and friends in Kentucky. It is always good to return home to my native state, but I especially enjoy being there in the springtime when the dogwood trees bloom and the horses race.
Horse racing is a Kentucky tradition and this weekend swift and majestic three year old thoroughbreds will compete for the blanket of roses in the annual running of the Kentucky Derby in Louisville at Churchill Downs.
I hold close to my heart many cherished memories of afternoons spent at a race track with Aunt Barbara. She loved to find a bench along the rail near the finish line so that she could see the horses thunder down the stretch. I feel connected to her still today, years after her death, when I spend a day at the races with my children.
The Kentucky Derby tradition is renewed each year on the first Saturday in May. The race is often called “The Fastest Two Minutes in Sports” and has been held every year since 1875.
This weekend in Colorado, I will celebrate the race and Kentucky’s moment in the national spotlight at a Derby Party with friends. I will introduce them to mint juleps and bread pudding. There will be ladies in hats and no shortage of Kentucky bourbon.
The race and associated celebration will connect me as a Kentuckian with my heritage. I will sing “My Old Kentucky Home” with a tear in my eye and remember the many times I watched the race on television with my family. And no doubt I will sip on some sweet tea and think of Aunt Barbara.
Perhaps no other geographic feature impacted early settlement of Kentucky more than the Appalachian Mountains. Whether the mountains were home to the backcountry settlements from which they began their migration, or the barrier over which they had to cross, all paths into early Kentucky for my ancestors and most migrants passed over the mountains.
The Appalachians were formidable obstacles and to pass over them involved a commitment to a changed life. How must it have been to bid farewell forever to family and friends and head across mountains and rivers to new lives on the American frontier? My earliest identified ancestors came to the shore of Virginia three hundred years ago, and their descendants’ willingness to confront new challenges, face uncertainty, and leave behind their families led them from the seashore to the foothills and across the mountains.
My people made their way to Kentucky from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. Some arrived in the 1780’s and the others followed over the next few decades. Almost certainly they migrated there through the Cumberland Gap or down the Ohio River, which flows out of the valleys within the mountain range.
I have followed their migratory paths along the waterways and over the mountains which they traveled, and have felt connected to them and their journeys. The scenic beauty of this American land captures my spirit and imagination, and always makes me think of my ancestors taking in the splendor of the mountain vistas, the hardwood forests filled with chestnut and oak trees, and the woods populated with elk and mountain streams filled with abundant fish.
Perhaps the sensory rewards of the journey helped them cope with substantial hardship and struggles when they ascended and climbed over the mountains.
Once in Kentucky, my ancestors made homes for themselves in the Appalachian foothills, where they settled on the hillsides, in the hollows and along the tributaries that emptied into the rivers that flowed out of eastern Kentucky. They were forever connected to those mountains and passed on to me respect and appreciation for the tremendous environmental treasure that they are still today.
The mission of Fincastle Ancestry Research is to make Kentucky accessible to family historians who are climbing the tall mountains of genealogical research.
There is nothing quite like a drive down a Kentucky highway.
The experiences of my life have placed me at the foot of soaring snow capped mountains and along ocean wave pounded coasts. I have walked among towering redwood trees and over sun baked deserts. My heart has leaped at the sight of river eroded canyons and determined waterfalls. Endless breadbasket wheat fields and tall grass prairies have carried my mind westward to orange sunsets.
And yet, I find them all, despite their grandeur, lacking the sensory pleasure of a journey with the windows down as I traverse along a Kentucky back road. The best is off the beaten path, down a two lane paved course through the rolling fields of the Bluegrass or over the deciduous tree covered mountains.
Something is mystical about a late afternoon drive, when sunlight bows to the coming night and twilight shadows dance on fields of freshly cut grass. Crickets and katydids in unison serenade the setting sun. The evening perfume of summer honeysuckle delights the senses on a moonlit night, with fireflies flickering in the distance. It can only be made better by the scent of a recent rain still lingering in the air.
But then there is the summer day. I have never known beauty, other than the faces of my children, more pronounced than sunrise over a field of thoroughbreds corralled by century old stone fences. Spirited foals run through the pastures while burley and corn crops stretch to the glorious sun. Brooks of clean fresh water stream along the roadsides while singing robins wing their way over the verdant meadows.
The goldenrod growing next to the highway, as common to the roadside as the limestone under the fertile soil, has always waved me on to the next hill or around the next curve in the road. The summer gold banner has never failed to give way to the canvas of autumn, dressing the hardwoods of the eastern mountains with their painted best before a winter sleep. But spring always has come, a time when the mountain laurel of the forests and the roadside dogwoods pair up for a waltz, all to the sound of music made by magnificent equine creatures thundering down a stretch of Kentucky soil.
I am awed when I drive along Kentucky’s highways and feel connected to the past, knowing that the natural beauty was here long before I was witness to its truth. It makes me wonder what the emotional experience of my ancestors was when they traveled through the state of my birth.
Whether they came over the Appalachian Mountains or traveled down the Ohio River to enter paradise, it was the roadway that took my ancestors to their home places and on which their lives journeyed. Many who passed through Kentucky found roadways which led them away from the state and on to the Midwest or further westward into the expanding nation. For whatever reason, perhaps it was a transcendent experience I share with them, my people made the state their permanent home and the blood of at least seven generations of forever-after Kentuckians runs through my veins.
