Mount Airy
Home of the Tayloe Family (aka Taylor)
This is Mt. Airy, the plantation home of generations of Taylor family members. My father never knew that his family history included places like this. My father was not aware of George R. Smith, Lydia Jenny Tate, Sarah Armstrong or any one of the Posey community other than Peter Smith of Posey and his beloved Matilda Montgomery.
Somewhere during the life of George Rudolphus or his son Peter Smith of Posey the family history was cut off, silenced perhaps by shame and the dramatic history of a nation torn apart by a Civil War and the culture and economic shock that followed.
When my son was a toddler, I asked a question about the universe to which I did not expect an answer. Rather than saying, “I don’t know,” he twisted his lips in deep thought and said simply, “I can’t know.” It was true. He did not have enough information at his fingertips to provide a correct response. When my father was asked about the generations preceding Peter Smith, he could not know. Nor could his father, Grampa Leb, know the truth. Leb and JD did not knowingly withhold the truth from their children. They simply couldn’t know.
Allow me to introduce the folks my father could not know. The people in the column to the far right of Pedigree Chart 5 lived during the Revolutionary War. Many of these men were soldiers engaged in that war effort. We will meet many of these pioneers in the pages that follow. They converge on Illinois and Indiana by way of Kentucky. The Smiths, Swaffords, Davis and Stilley families were most recently from North Carolina though each had deeper roots in Virginia and/or Maryland. The Simpsons and Tates were coming out of Virginia where they once shared a neighborhood with Smiths and Davis families. The Montgomery, Pullens and Cooks were descending from the Blue Ridge into Kentucky by way of Augusta County VA. The McFarlands were a well-traveled clan. Their pathway led them from Pennsylvania to Tennessee and north again to Kentucky.
Somewhere along the way, perhaps at the time of the Civil War, the family story tellers ‘took a chain saw’ and removed parts of our family tree. Had it not been for the internet, the truth may have been lost forever on the shelves of a Caswell County library, in the piney piedmont of North Carolina, or in a Bible on the mantle of a distant relative in Muhlenburg County, Kentucky.
My own search for the father of Peter Smith of Posey ran smack dab into the proverbial brick wall. I couldn’t find a doorway let alone a doorknob. One morning I awoke to an email that was buried in the daily barrage of spam and junk mail. A genealogist in Virginia was happy to have found the rudimentary elements of my family tree on ancestry.com. I thought my tree was hiding in the forest. She had been looking for someone who would claim Lebanon Smith as an ancestor. She assumed Lebanon was a fictional character added to the internet maze of names by a troll or a fumbling half-wit who had erred in copying a name to their family tree. “Who would name their child ‘Lebanon?’ Lebanon Faris Smith?” she asked. In notes that followed she graciously connected me to several generations and two centuries of Smith family roots in Virginia and North Carolina.
Family histories have been handed down from one generation to the next over the course of centuries. Oral history was the stuff that made campfires interesting at night. Gramps Leb would have been right at home in Ireland among the story tellers who traveled from village to village. A few good stories would earn a vagabond scéalaí a decent meal and a place to sleep. While the medium for story telling has moved from human memory to YouTube video; the concept of a story remains important.
Embellishing a story remains important. I have noticed that my son has my father’s ability to spin incredible stories that cause me to sit on the edge of my seat in wonder. All he needs is a good dog sitting beside him on a hot summer day and he would be the image of my grandfather.
Creating fiction from truth becomes the work of politicians, spin doctors and authors of historical fiction. When researching family history, one must avoid the urge to adopt fiction designed to create a more sensational family tree. One also must learn to discover the skeletons in the closet, the facts that a previous generation wanted to hide forever.
Somewhere in the 18th Century lips were sealed, Biblical records vanished, and closet doors were locked and bolted. The ancestors who built palisades of log and mortar in the hills of Kentucky, and designed stockades to keep the enemy out, were also keeping the truth within. They were effectively concealing family secrets forever or, so they hoped. The lives, the stories of generations of Smith forefathers were buried with their bones in the rubble of the Civil War somewhere in the Piedmont of North Carolina.
The oral history that was handed down to my father and my father’s father ignored two centuries of southern plantation life. Someone had diverted our attention to a fictional account of a Peter Smith at Waterloo in England. My great great grandfather Peter of Posey had been nowhere near Waterloo. My father and my grandfather had been sheltered from the truth. By whom? I do not know. Someone thought the secret should and could be contained and that we would all be better as a result. We had been Afflecked.
Editor’s Note: I think you need to explain your use of ‘been Afflecked.’ You have younger readers who won’t know the name and others who won’t even know what you are talking about.
Author Response: Ben Affleck is an American actor. He was a guest on the television show, Finding Your Roots. The producer of the show uncovered slaveholders in the movie star’s past. Ben Affleck asked the producer to hide that information from the viewing audience.
The internet has changed everything. Transparency is all the rage. Our ancestors are using the internet as a conduit for both travel and communication. Their names are surfacing as 17th century paperwork is digitized and archived in online libraries accessible from an iPad at 38,000 feet over Sioux Falls or a summer home in Sedbergh, England. James Smith (1708-1749) of Bull Run, Peter Smith (1723-1797) of Round Hill NC, and George Rudolphus Smith, all of whom had faded family history have forged their way from Virginia into southern Indiana. Their trail is now apparent. The migration is complete, on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.
The Loss of Family Wealth
How does a family history, culture and wealth move from a 17th Century Virginia plantation to a humble shanty in the pine barrens of north central Wisconsin circa 1930? How does this happen? Over the millennia in Britain, plantations and manors were most often handed down to the oldest surviving son by way of the Last Will and Testament. The author of a will assured the family that he or she is of sound mind and that it is the body that is on the fritz. They render their soul to God and their estate to the oldest male among the kids. The son will have to cover his father’s debts and put up with the widow until she too dies. It is the law of primogeniture.
That practice continued to some extent in the colonies. With each generation new wrinkles began to appear in family procedures related to wills and land ownership. Dowries followed a daughter and enticed young suitors of Smith women. Each dowry would whittle some acreage away from the family stockpile of land. A practice of subdividing the land equally among children chipped away at previously large family estates. The plantation home would still go to the oldest son if he was willing to house the widowed mother. Acreage scattered over the parts of several counties would be parceled out as per the instruction of the Last Will and Testament. We can find numerous family wills online. It is amazing to read the last thoughts and intent of an ancestor facing the end of his or her life’s work. I have included several in the appendix of this volume.
As tobacco burned a hole in the earth of the Tidewater Region our grandparents walked away from Virginia history into the Carolinas. Failing tobacco fields, civil unrest, uncertain markets and the lure of greater freedom lured our ancestors away from the coastal plains along the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers. The Piedmont offered fresh soil and created new opportunities. Beyond the Piedmont and Blue Ridge Mountains a wilderness was calling and required a new lifestyle, new skills, less bling and more sweat equity than ever. The mansion scene was less relevant. In fact, a cabin within a stockade offered a better chance for survival, but not always.
Author’s note: Before I go much further on this journey, I need some waffles, bacon, eggs and some good coffee.
Editor’s note: You’re on your own there. I need to get into town.
Author’s note: I am struggling with how to include the allied families of the many amazing women in our tree. They each bring in a family line that is incredible. Matilda Montgomery, Lydia Jenny Tate are just two examples. We have Jemima Simpson coming up….
Editor’s note: I agree. They need to be included. They and their extended families have some great stories that should be shared. If you don’t include the women you are just another chauvinistic old fart continuing an age-old problem on this planet.
Author’s note: Ouch! I guess I need a plan. I am really temped to launch into each matrilineal branch as I go from generation to generation…. but I am afraid I will confuse the reader.
Editor’s note: Stay with Smith men back to 1650. Then go to the matrilineal lines, the allied families. And keep using the Pedigree Charts. Those really help me understand who goes where and I have a hair appointment. I must head out the door. Do you need anything from town?
Author’s note: I think we are running low on toothpaste and toilet paper.
