These times they are a changing.
Last edited Sun May 20, 2012, 07:42 PM - Edit history (3)
My great great grandfather was born 1779, my great grandfather was born in 1810, my grandfather was born in 1860, my father was born in 1900 and I was born in 1963.
With the recent death of my mother I have been reflecting on my families history and comparing it to the History of our nation and how different generations coped with the times.
My great great grandfather (Woodard) was born during the American Revolution (present day North Carolina). Although a baby during the revolution his generation would become a generation to help shape our new Country in it's infancy. As a young man he followed in Daniel Boone's footsteps by crossing the Cumberland Gap into the rich fertile lands of Kentucky. Kentucky got it's Statehood in 1792, he claimed his land in Knox County (present day Harlan County) and became a farmer. Was laid to rest in 1830.
My great grandfather (Alva-Byrd) expanded my great great grandfathers farm to start selling commercially to the residents of the town of Harlan. Also with the close ties between our family & the Cherokee nation, during the trail of tears he went to assist with helping the move of the Cherokee's to the west. While on this trip he met and eventually married my great grandmother Hialeah. They started a family back in Kentucky and their farm prospered. In 1862 he enlisted in the Union army and was killed at the the Battle Of the Wilderness in 1864.
My Grandfather (Felix) was born in 1860 and had a hard childhood with the premature death of his father that left his mother with young children to care for a large farm. Times were tough for the family during these years. His mother died on his 19th birthday and all land holdings went to him. He sold all the land in the valley Fertile farm land now known as present day Dressin) kept the land in King holler & surrounding mountain area & started a tree farming business. He met the love of his life my Grandmother (Lou-anna) & she bore him 14 children. They spent the remainder of their lives building the family business & supplying the local community with materials to build with. My Grandmother was laid to rest in 1932 and my Grandfather was laid to rest in 1938.
My father (Charlie) was born in 1900 to a large family and was the black sheep of the family he didn't fit in with the ways my grandfather wanted him to be. AT the age of 13 he ran away from home & never looked back or went back till after his parents death. During prohibition he ran moonshine from Harlan County to Detroit for many years. After prohibition & during the depression he worked in the factories in Detroit to send money back to Kentucky to help take care of his sisters in their families during these hard times. After WWII he quit working in the factories & took advantage of the post war boom and ran a gambling joint in Detroit. After meeting the woman of his dreams my Mother (Sharron) (she was many many years his younger)the only way she would marry him was he had to leave his private enterprise (gambling) settle down & start a family. They were wed in 1955 in her 20th year of life. They settled down in Middlesboro Kentucky to raise their family 6 Kids), after awhile they moved to Marco Island Florida. My father was laid to rest in 1982 and my mother was laid to rest this year 2012.
Just the ramblings of a Gay man and how the generations in my family helped shape America. If this is well received I will also write a piece on my life and how I hope my actions helped in a small way to help shape America for future generations of the LGBT community. It's nice to know where one's family tree has been & how it has branched out and to understand where it is going.
Thanks for reading
Bill
= new reply since forum marked as read
claim Norwegian. It surprised the heck out of me to find Norwegian settlers in NC. Even moreso that there's a direct line.
Hail, fellow Vikings! Uff da!!
I have long family ties into Black Mountain (you, me, and Roberta Flack, no? ) My gg-grandfather moved with some of his brothers from Mitchell County. Those are Glenns. My g-grandfather, Bob Glenn, built most of the houses around there; owned a huge chunk of land until the Depression. My lines there include Glenn, Golightly, and Swann. My g-ma lived there until the 1990s. I still have tons of cousins in Black Mountain.
(Yes, indeed, I am descended from an honest-to-dog Golightly from Mitchell County.)
No doubt our paths have crossed.
My parents had six kids, my grandparents had 14. It's been the norm up to this generation to have very large families.
I have several cousins that have made it their life's work doing genealogy, I have done a lot of research myself. We compare notes & keep records for our families future.
I am sad to say tho my mothers family tree is pretty much dead, she was born in Germany and her parents were anti Hitler and they fled to America when she a infant and from what we can gather during WWII her families history seemed to have been erased. I would love to be able to get any information on her family, but years of trying have had no results. 
on both sides, none kin to the other. Williams is the second-most common Welsh name after Jones. We know who the original Quaker dude was who immigrated to NC in the late-late 1600s. His land grant stretched from about where Seagrove is today to the Pee Dee River. He had 13 kids and his two eldest sons had 13 kids apiece. There remains a question whether our particular line springs from the eldest or next-eldest son. Needless to say, nearly every Williams in the Sandhills is out of one of those lines. Good luck untangling that tree, though.
The Glens are even trickier. When the original John Glen came over from Antrim in 1751, the surname only had one "n" as it had for centuries. He eventually settled around Lincolnton and had a pile of kids. Three wives, the third one finally wore him out at age 112. Some of those kids kept the original 1-n spelling while most adopted the 2-n spelling of the Glenns who settled from Lincolnton to York, SC. There are three separate clans of 2-n Glenns, none directly related to the other. Then just to piss off future genealogists, they intermarried.
My Glens are still unimaginative at first names. John, James, David, and Robert have been passed down -- as near as we can tell -- since the time of Robert the Bruce (who started our line by having a fling with a Jane Glen). Six generations of Irish (Scot) ancestors in Antrim and they went John, James, John, James, John, Ninian, John.
Whoa, back up.
Who TF thought up Ninian? Not another one for a thousand years. Well, it was a peg in the ground. He was the last of that line who stayed in Ireland, so I measure that line in BN and AN (Before Ninian and After Ninian )
I like to never got those dudes in a row. Then it went Robert, Stanhope (Stanhope???), William, Robert, then my paternal g-ma. We still don't go by first names much because you can throw a stick in Black Mountain and hit a Robert, David, or James Glenn. (All the Glenns in Black Mountain are kin to me.)
It goes back to her and and she only had one name, no last name. She was part Tuscarora, from the part of the tribe that stayed in eastern NC with Chief Blount. The official Tuscarora Nation rejects anyone who has ancestors who stayed in NC when they moved to NY, because they see Chief Blount as a traitor to the nation, or something like that. I do know that somewhere in there, one of my great great great (I have no clue how far back) grandmothers was black.
So, that's all of my history that I know on my mother's side. My mother said it was matrilineal (I have no clue how to spell it) DNA or something like that that she traced. It is only the females in the family that she traced back.
It is interesting how many of us here have ties to NC or are from NC. Mine are mostly in central NC and what they call "down east" NC, which is really just the southeastern part of NC.
My grandfather's side of the family was much easier to trace. That side of the family goes back to Somerset, England. Apparently, some members of my family were knights and actually had a coat of arms.
I haven't a clue who my father was. My mother gave me at least 2 different stories and names and his name isn't on my birth certificate. She refuses to tell me anything other than he was an alcoholic and drug addict. Not his favorite color or anything like that, just that he had addiction troubles.
If my mother decides she doesn't want to tell you something, you won't get it out of her...except I stole her meatloaf recipe when she wasn't paying attention by watching her cook one. 
She would not give me the recipe. I had begged for it for years. Finally, I got her talking while she was cooking a meatloaf and memorized what she did. Now, I can make a good meatloaf too.
