Mourning Winn, the name of both women and men that may or may not be ancestors in our family tree, has perplexed me for some time now.
I had her descended from Edmund Bacon, the notable English nobleman who migrated to the New World in the 17th Century. If the Bacon theory held, it would have taken our tree well into the Middle Ages. Mr. Bacon even has pictures! But this lead turned out to be a false one!
Along comes PJ Sisseck, who I am convinced is our distant blood cousin, also descended from Mourning Winn. Here's what I know . . .
* There is a Mourning Winn in our ancestry. And she is a woman.
* There also are other Mourning Winns, that have found their way into trees that could feasibly link to ours: One born in 1763, also a woman, with a line that goes to Mr. Bacon. But there are male Mourning Winns, and I have dismissed them, and other women, from any of my theories.
* Mourning Winn married a man named either James Glenn, or James Gunn. This lack of clarity also adds to the confusion. We are going with the James Glenn theory.
PJ has done ample research into Mourning Winn. She knows the true info from the false. I consider her our resident Mourning Winn expert. As we progress through this research, we come into contact with many, many others, with lines tracing to someone named Mourning Winn. These two are potential cousins, and my study so far indicates that all of these people represent many different lines processing from Mourning Winn, our Mourning Winn.
This latest, most reliable Mourning Winn theory, courtesy of cousin PJ, makes her the end of the line for us. That is, we know very little about her parents. She was born in Virginia in 1668. Her mother's name was, likely, Catherine. We do not know about her father. Settlers of Accomack County, Virginia, we easily conclude that her family were Scotch immigrants, like so many others in that region - like Mourning's eventual husband, Mr. Glenn, who was himself born in Scotland.
The imagination takes off. Did her father die on the voyage to the New World? Did he die in Scotland, thus prompting Catherine to carry Mourning and other possible siblings to a new life? Was she half native American? Was Catherine Native American?
If Scottish, was Mourning from Stirlingshire, the homeland of the Glenns?
And isn't the name itself, "Mourning Winn," just a little bit tantalizing?
She died in 1750, in Virginia. She and James had four children of which we are aware: James, David, Mourning and Tyree. For most readers of this blog, descendants of Elias Martin, the ancestral line goes as follows:
Mourning Winn, 1668-1750, mother of,
Mourning Glenn, 1702-1775, mother of,
Christopher Harris, 1725-1794, father of,
Sarah Harris, 1747-1796, mother of,
Obediah Martin, 1770-1822, father of,
Elias Martin . . .
. . . and the rest is history.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
The Curious Case of Elias Martin
Elias Martin is my great-great-great-great-grandfather. (Martha-Fern-John-James-John-Elias)
He was born on April 23, 1799, somewhere in Virginia, to Obediah and Ann New Martin. He was the only child on record, of Obediah and Ann. We do not have a death date of his mother, so chances are she died young, maybe even in childbirth, and he never knew her. Somewhere during his formative years, his father and he up and moved to the new state of Kentucky.
In 1822, he married Nancy New, who was 16 at the time, and here is where the story gets interesting.
Nancy, it seems, was an orphan. Her parents, John and Elizabeth Martin New, both died sometime about when she was born, maybe 1806. The record is unclear. Most of what I have found shows them both dying in 1800. But that cannot be, if Nancy was born in 1806. So we will assume that the names of her parents are correct, and the death date must have been at about the time of her birth, 1806. So a theory develops . . .
Perhaps Ann New Martin, and John and Elizabeth Martin New, died at the same time? Maybe there was a tragedy, perhaps an Indian raid, that killed both parents of Nancy New, and the mother of Elias Martin? Maybe an epidemic went through their village. I can envision Obediah Martin taking his son and young Nancy New with him to the west. They settled for a time in Kentucky, perhaps with a group of family members from their former Virginia village.
This next part gets a little hard to follow. Obediah and Nancy New Martin were first cousins. Obediah's mother, Ann New, was the sister to Nancy New's father, John New. Obediah's father, too, was most likely a distant cousin of Nancy's mother, Elizabeth Martin.
This sounds strange to us today - but it was far more common than we realize, in these young, sparsely settled colonies.
So Obediah Martin set out with his son, Elias, and niece, Nancy New, for Kentucky. Apparently, he never married again.
In 1822, Obediah dies, in Ohio County, Kentucky. He was 52 years old. Elias, then 22, and Nancy, 16, alone in the world, bury Obediah, and then the two cousins marry. They then set off for Morgan, Illinois (between Effingham and Champaign), where their four children: John New, Margaret Ann, Francis Marion, and George Washington, were born. (These would have been the great aunts and uncles of John Dudley Martin - can you see who some of his children may have been named after?)
In 1835, at the age of 29, his cousin, step-sister, and wife, Nancy New, died in Morgan. One year later, he married his second wife, Mary Ann Wheeler. The family moved to Cahokia County, Missouri (Northeastern part of the state), and had two sons, William and Charles.
Elias finished his life in Cahokia, and died in 1886, at 87 years of age. His oldest great-grandson, John Dudley, was ten years old at the time, living in South Texas, and probably never knew him.
So, this Virginia family found its way first to Kentucky, then to central Illinois, and then to northern Missouri. These choices on migration and settlement built a loyalty to the Union states during the Civil War. The decision of Elias's grandson, James Andrew Martin, to join the Northern army would prove to be fateful for the family.
But we are left with a lot of speculation about the childhood of these two cousins, Elias Martin and Nancy New, their marriage, the fate of their parents, and the forces that compelled them West.
He was born on April 23, 1799, somewhere in Virginia, to Obediah and Ann New Martin. He was the only child on record, of Obediah and Ann. We do not have a death date of his mother, so chances are she died young, maybe even in childbirth, and he never knew her. Somewhere during his formative years, his father and he up and moved to the new state of Kentucky.
In 1822, he married Nancy New, who was 16 at the time, and here is where the story gets interesting.
Nancy, it seems, was an orphan. Her parents, John and Elizabeth Martin New, both died sometime about when she was born, maybe 1806. The record is unclear. Most of what I have found shows them both dying in 1800. But that cannot be, if Nancy was born in 1806. So we will assume that the names of her parents are correct, and the death date must have been at about the time of her birth, 1806. So a theory develops . . .
Perhaps Ann New Martin, and John and Elizabeth Martin New, died at the same time? Maybe there was a tragedy, perhaps an Indian raid, that killed both parents of Nancy New, and the mother of Elias Martin? Maybe an epidemic went through their village. I can envision Obediah Martin taking his son and young Nancy New with him to the west. They settled for a time in Kentucky, perhaps with a group of family members from their former Virginia village.
This next part gets a little hard to follow. Obediah and Nancy New Martin were first cousins. Obediah's mother, Ann New, was the sister to Nancy New's father, John New. Obediah's father, too, was most likely a distant cousin of Nancy's mother, Elizabeth Martin.
This sounds strange to us today - but it was far more common than we realize, in these young, sparsely settled colonies.
So Obediah Martin set out with his son, Elias, and niece, Nancy New, for Kentucky. Apparently, he never married again.
In 1822, Obediah dies, in Ohio County, Kentucky. He was 52 years old. Elias, then 22, and Nancy, 16, alone in the world, bury Obediah, and then the two cousins marry. They then set off for Morgan, Illinois (between Effingham and Champaign), where their four children: John New, Margaret Ann, Francis Marion, and George Washington, were born. (These would have been the great aunts and uncles of John Dudley Martin - can you see who some of his children may have been named after?)
In 1835, at the age of 29, his cousin, step-sister, and wife, Nancy New, died in Morgan. One year later, he married his second wife, Mary Ann Wheeler. The family moved to Cahokia County, Missouri (Northeastern part of the state), and had two sons, William and Charles.
Elias finished his life in Cahokia, and died in 1886, at 87 years of age. His oldest great-grandson, John Dudley, was ten years old at the time, living in South Texas, and probably never knew him.
So, this Virginia family found its way first to Kentucky, then to central Illinois, and then to northern Missouri. These choices on migration and settlement built a loyalty to the Union states during the Civil War. The decision of Elias's grandson, James Andrew Martin, to join the Northern army would prove to be fateful for the family.
But we are left with a lot of speculation about the childhood of these two cousins, Elias Martin and Nancy New, their marriage, the fate of their parents, and the forces that compelled them West.
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