Covington History

I don't know whether anyone else has a copy of a one-and-a-half page document typed by Ione two years ago outlining what she knew of the Covington family history. The early part of it is sort of bungled up as far as the dates and relationships. I have been wanting to track our exact lineage and to ascertain whether we are related to Brigadier General Leonard Covington, one of the monumental heroes of the War of 1812 and whose home Propinquity is in Natchez, Mississippi.

Today I finally lucked into someone's meticulous documentation of our ancestral line. Although we are tenth generation Haynies in America, we Tillett cousins (Ione's five, Sandra's four, and Dub's two children) are among the eleventh generation in the Covington line. [Ditto for Lynne & Becky Sangster and any Farnum cousins.] The first generation was Nehemiah Covington I, of Covington, Huntingdonshire, England, born in 1628. Mom's information said that he is supposed to have arrived in 1647 during or shortly after Lord Baltimore's arrival. --- It turns out that Covington, England, is still just a picturesque village in the south of England, that area now being part of Cambridgeshire. See www.covington.org.uk for an aerial photo!!

A Google search on "Nehemiah Covington" yields over 600 results, as yet unexplored by me; although there is no article on him or his sons in Wikipedia.org. He was married twice, the first union providing the line of descent for General Leonard Covington (1768-1813). The second marriage, to an Anne Ingram, provides our line of descent. The first five generations of both families remained in Maryland. Excerpts of some of the men's wills are on line, as I bumped into a website about slave genealogy that quotes passages detailing the fate of the slave families upon their owner's death and listing the slaves' first names.

Many of our direct Covington ancestors had large families, sometimes again with two different mothers. Therefore, no doubt we have hundreds of distant relatives! In our line, John Covington, Jr. (1735-1809) moved the family to Richmond County, N.C. Then his son Henry L. Covington (1781-1815) moved to Robertson County, Tennessee, where some of the descendants still live. There is a Covington family cemetery there in a location called Pleasant Grove.

I don't know yet whether the Covingtons fought in the American Revolution. Henry L. Covington served in the War of 1812 as part of the Tennessee Regiment, and I surmise that he may've been either seriously wounded or perhaps contracted an illness during the war, as he died early in 1815 following the conclusion of the fighting. Maybe he fought with Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans! Eventually, I'll look for more on his military service, if there are detailed records.

Brigadier General Leonard Covington, who was several years older than Henry and (I figure to have been) his fourth cousin, moved his plantation and small family from Maryland to Natchez, Ms., around 1810, but he did not get to enjoy his life there for long...There is a website with his complete memoirs and letters, very fascinating stuff, at www.rainbowoman.com. (He had fought in the earlier Indian campaigns of the Midwest and served for a few years in Congress, as well.)...The decision makers in Washington sent him north to fight in the region of Ontario, and he was mounted on his horse when killed by a British sharpshooter in 1813.

The Wikipedia entry on this man has yet to be written, but it does say that all of the towns, counties, and forts named Covington that we have heard of are named after him. So, every time we have visited Covington, Louisiana, and when the Duncans lived there, we were in a town named after our fourth cousin, five times removed!! (Only four times removed, for Sandra.)

Our children are twelfth generation Americans in the Covington line of descent...Leroy Bascom Covington, Mema's father, was evidently #10 of 11 children in the family of Leroy Covington, son of Henry, and Elizabeth Frey Covington of Robertson County, Tn. I have a hunch that the name Leroy was pronounced "La-ROY," not "Lee-roy;" but our great-grandfather may have gone by "Bascom." Don't know exactly why he migrated to Texas; perhaps the land was free for the settlers. Both he and our great-grandmother, Mary Ione Morgan, had children by prior marriages and were widowed twice before marrying each other in or near Callahan County, Tx., and producing four children: Uncle Alto, Uncle Morgan, Emma, and Aunt Marie.