23 August 2008

Revolutionary War Ancestors

This is a list of direct ancestors of ours, that we know of so far, who served in the Revolutionary War (1775-1783) and/or earlier conflicts of the 17th and 18th centuries, e.g. the French and Indian War. [All except the two Haynies are on Ione's side of the family.]
Soldiers:
Spencer Haynie, Jr. (1758-1825)
Peter Wyche (1748-1803)
Officers:
Lieutenant William Evans (1756- after 1816)
Captain John Haynie (1624-1697)*
Colonel Haynes Morgan (Abt.1742-1795)
Major Vincent Shelton
Colonel Maurice Smith
Colonel William Thompson III (Abt.1724-1780)
*Since Capt. John Haynie, Sr., is said to have transported 46 persons to the Virginia colony for settlement, I take it that his title indicates that he was a sea captain, if not a military naval officer. The Haynie book asserts that he served as "Commander" in the Susquehanna War of 1678.
On another historical note, I thought that the Oath of Allegiance to the Commonwealth, mentioned in the description of Nehemiah Covington's colonial life, referred to the Commonwealth of Virginia, which to this day is the official name of that state. However, the Haynie book describes this as swearing allegiance to "The Commonwealth of England as it is now established without King or House of Lords." This was the period of the English Civil Wars, when there were several power struggles between the monarchy and Parliament, as well as between Protestant and Catholic religious factions. Haynie took the loyalty oath one year after our Covington ancestor did, though in a different coastal county.

22 August 2008

Post script: First Generation Covingtons

I found an item about Nehemiah Covington which states that he emigrated to the New World in 1643; if this is correct, he was 15 years old at the time. He may have been following older brothers who arrived during the 1630's. Online entries by various descendants provided these additional details:
Nehemiah was a stonemason, a grist mill stonecutter and builder of grist mills, blacksmith, furrier, and tobacco planter. He lived in Virginia for a number of years, where he signed an Oath to the Commonwealth in 1651, Northampton County, and registered his Owl's Head trademark in the town of Eastville.
Nehemiah Covington I is said to have been a "prominent Quaker." The Quakers apparently encountered religious discrimination in Virginia, whereas the Maryland colony was established with the specific intent of providing religious tolerance. Our ancestor moved his large family (back?) to Maryland about 1662, and the following year acquired a 300-acre tract in Somerset County next to Great Monie Creek that he named Covington's Vineyard. During the 1660's and 1670's he reportedly served twice as county constable, which was probably the equivalent of sheriff.
In 1667, after his first wife died, he married our ancestor Anne Ingram. They had four children together including Thomas Covington, our 7th great-grandfather. Nehemiah died around 1681, outliving Anne Covington by three years, and was buried at Covington's Vineyard.

12 August 2008

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.

10 August 2008

Description of Granny




On May 5, 2007, I wrote to Gloria, Dad's first cousin, saying in part that when I had e-mailed Dad the previous year to ask what role Granny played in their family life, he said something to the effect that she just sat in her rocking chair, knitting. I felt sure that there was more to her than that. So I wrote that I was certainly interested in Granny's journal, as well as in any pictures that she might have.


Note that the vital statistics we have for Granny, Ava Lucerne Campbell Hill, from various sources, are: Born in Tuskegee, Alabama, October 3, 1858. A recent e-mail from Dad says that he believes Granny rode the Texas & Pacific RR to the end of the line, which was the "tent city" of Abilene, in 1881 to visit her brother and met her future husband. Married David Graham Hill in Tuskegee, December 12, 1884, and then the couple departed for Abilene, Texas.


Granny became a widow when she was about 70. Dad has confirmed that she lived for a while in Memphis, being sort of a substitute mother for two of Dad & Gloria's cousins (Florence and Hank), as our great Uncle Henry Hill had become a single parent. Then, when Dad was between 8 and 12, Granny returned to Abilene and lived with the Haynies for the rest of her life, or approximately ten to fifteen years. She died August 7, 1949, at age 90.


Here is a transcription of Gloria's reply, dated July 13, 2007:




Dear Sandi,


I'm sorry to take so long to answer your nice letter. I have been very busy and I can't say exactly why. If time flies I certainly don't and that is one problem. I can't tell you how many times I have started and mentally composed a letter to you about Granny, but I never completed my thoughts well enough to present them to you.


I did not know Granny like Hi did because we always lived in another city and saw her only on visits to Abilene. She was pretty in the face with sparkling brown eyes, that run in the Hill-Campbell family. My daughter Judy and son George luckily have those big soft brown eyes like my Daddy, your [great] Uncle Dege (short for D.G.). Granny laughed a lot when I saw her and had a nice soft tinkley kind of laugh. She was gentle but I feel she had a very strong personality. From her memories she was a bit mischievous when she was young. She was raised in a strict Baptist family. She did not like the restrictions imposed by the Baptist religion. For instance she loved to dance (so do I, still), when she went to Abilene to visit her brother who went there after the war and opened a Bank like his father, Grandfather Campbell (G.W.) had the first registered Bank in Alabama. There she met Grandfather Hill who was raised on a large homesteaded ranch in Texas and educated in Galveston.


Granny came to N.O. when all the family lived in the Pontalba Bldg. in the Fr. Quarter. She did not stay long. The dampness was bad for her arthritis. She had come to stay with Auntie Mace and Uncle Roy McCullough, your great aunt, the twins' mother. I'm sure Granny was very spunky and brave for a young woman raised in a very protected home with a loving mother, and slave servants watching over her. When she was very old and airplanes were first beginning to fly Granny flew to New York and visited the McCulloughs up there. She had six children without much help as Abilene was such a new, small town at the time. Her father, went out to visit her and took a black maid, former slave, to work for her and help with the children and Granny sent her back to Tuskegee as she said she was more trouble than she was worth.


Granny went back to Tuskegee for the birth of her first three children and went through N.O. staying at the old St. Charles Hotel. Daddy remembered going with her.


Much love. I've run out of space -

Gloria


Granny went to college, stayed in dormitory there -

05 August 2008

Welcome

This is the first post on Haynie Family Blog. This site was created to be a forum where members of the family can email information on family or family history directly to the blog to serve as a record for future generations. Enjoy!