Merging Margarets (Margaret J. Ramey Osborne Wheatley)

It's been a while since I have had a chance to work on genealogy, but I hope to ramp up my old pastime this year and get a new website online. I've added quite a few tidbits here and there during the years since my last major update and I think it's time to get the new stuff out there.

This week, though, I had a pressing genealogical matter to attend to. Oddly enough, while Tom and I were in Italy earlier this month, we met a couple with the surname of Wheatley (this was an American couple, not an Italian couple). I mentioned that my great-great grandmother's sister, Margaret J. Ramey, had married a Wheatley, and since this couple was from Maryland, I wondered if there was a connection. Mr. Wheatley said he guessed probably not since he was originally from Wise County, Virginia.

Well faint, and fall over dead. Small world, indeed.

Although he wasn't familiar with my GGG Aunt's husband, John W. Wheatley, the Wheatleys are a relatively small family, so I thought I'd have another look at GGG Aunt Margaret's file and see if I could find out more.

A lot of new information has come online since the last time I worked on her documents, so imagine my surprise when I discovered that she was not the "late bloomer" I had assumed when she married John Wheatley at 38 - she was a widow with four children! And just to make the story even better, I had unknowingly duplicated her in my database. She was the Margaret Ramey ("parents unknown") who married my GG-grandfather Jonathan Corder's double-first cousin, Hiram Osborne, in 1854. How is that for a tangled web?

So in other words, double first cousins (Hiram Osborne and Jonathan Corder) married sisters (Margaret J. Ramey and Emily A. Ramey, daughters of Henry Ramey and Prudence Robinette Ramey).

Hello! "Merge documents!"

Hiram Osborne died in the fall of 1865. Although he was a confederate soldier, it is unclear to me whether his death was war-related since it came several months after the end of the war. Relatively little is known of their four children, Andrew J., Emaline, Winfield and Savannah. Savannah was living with her Ramey grandparents in Gladeville in 1880, and later she married Patrick Wells and had one daughter that I can find. Other than that, I have very little on these double-and-triple cousins of mine. If any of their descendants see this post, please provide what information you can.

The upshot of the pressing genealogical matter was that I got distracted from my original Wheatley mission, but I learned that my GGG Aunt Margaret was left a widow with three small children and an infant during the year the unpleasantness between the states came to a close. She remained a widow for nearly 10 years before remarrying to John W. Wheatley on 19 January 1875 in Wise County.

I will be updating a combined Person Sheet for Margaret J. Ramey Osborne Wheatley with additional details this year.

Ruth Henderson m. David Ramey 1700 Frederick County VA. Or not.

Since I am a Henderson (on my father's side, obviously), I am intrigued by the possibility that I might descend from Hendersons through my maternal line as well.  Years ago I came across a post online that named the wife of David Ramey (s/o James and Elizabeth Ramey) as "Ruth Henderson."  Since much of the other information the poster provided on the Ramey line seemed generally correct, I went with it, making a note to verify the name and connection.  Easier said than done.

The Ruth Henderson in question was supposedly born in about 1750, and married David Ramey in "1770, Frederick County, VA."  I'm reasonably familiar with the inhabitants of 18th century Frederick County, VA and Henderson is not a name that shows up to any great degree, but still, I made a trip to the library to put my hands on a copy of Frederick County, Virginia Marriages 1771-1825 by Eliza Timberlake Davis.  I realize that my method is Old School since you can search and browse the book online using Google, but I'm in a tactile mood.  I realize too that we're looking for a marriage that happened in 1770, but if Hendersons were in Frederick County getting married in 1770, then they were probably still there, getting married in 1771 and years following so I might get some idea of the family group they belong to.

The results weren't encouraging.  Only one entry - 27th May 1788, Mary Henderson to Henry Louder (possibly Souder).  No additional details.  This couple may have died childless because no one seems to be looking for them, and there is almost nothing about them online.  Well, at least there was a Henderson living in Frederick County 18 years after our target date.  Can't rule the Hendersons entirely out of Frederick.

There is supposedly another book that covers 1738-1850 (Frederick County Marriages 1738-1850 by Vogt and Kethley), but the library doesn't seem to have the more comprehensive volume and I can't find it online.  I should go up to the Handley Library in Frederick County, but I don't have time today so I try the next best thing - Ancestry.com.

I try searching for any Ruth Henderson marrying anywhere in Virginia in 1770.  Nothing.  Absolutely nada in Virginia.  I try any Henderson marriage in Virginia in 1770 looking for contemporary Hendersons - bound to find something - and I do.  James Henderson m. Mary Booker in 1767.  These are the Amelia County VA Hendersons.  Gut says "no."  The Genealogists Gut Instinct (GGI) is a powerful -- and frequently fallible-- thing.  I have learned to distrust mine, but still, I move on.


A Mary Henderson m. James Finley in Virginia in 1778, but no county is given.  I do a little more poking around and find that Mary and James were from Augusta County.  That's about as precise as saying they were from "Virginia."  Perhaps less so.  The boundaries of Augusta originally stretched from the Blue Ridge to the Great Lakes to the Mississippi, so it doesn't help us nail much down, but Augusta and Frederick counties were both formed from Orange County in 1738, and part of Augusta later was combined with Frederick, so again, we can't rule out this Augusta County family of Hendersons.  I find a Finley genealogy online and it seems that these Finleys mixed  with Hendersons down through the generations. Capt. James Finley's 1800 will, made in Wythe County VA (where he received land for his revolutionary war service) mentions a nephew, Jonathan Henderson.  Hmmm...this family is moving in the same geographical direction the Rameys (and most of the rest of the colony) moved.  I'll keep them in the hopper and do some more looking.


The internet connection at the library is slow so I decide to go home and keep looking from the comfort of the sofa.  I have Genealogical Attention Deficit Disorder (GADD!) and tend to get easily distracted, heading off on ancestral tangents.  This time I'm going to try to stick to the mystery of Ruth Henderson Ramey until I either solve it or disprove it...Oh look!  There's a squirrel!  I wonder who it's ancestors were...?

Combing Shenandoah Valley Settlement Records for Clues

I continue to pick my way painstakingly through various records of the settlement of the northern Shenandoah Valley looking for clues that might shed light on the arrival in this area of our oldest known Corder ancestor, Edward Sr. I keep hoping to find some name, some place, some event that might begin to illuminate a path between Edward's arrival in Annapolis MD (1722) to his eventual settlement in northern Virginia (1738).

After his arrest and transport to the colonies (arriving in Annapolis MD in July 1722), he is missing in action until he shows up in then Orange County VA in 1738 as a petitioner for a road to Jost Hite's mill near present-day Winchester. This absence from official records is not wholly unexpected during the period of approximately 1722-1727, as an indentured servant is unlikely to appear in court unless for some misdeed. On the other hand, given Edward's history, perhaps it is surprising that he managed to remain out of sight... But I digress.

Edward is called one of seven original "adventurers" to have settled on the property that Lord Fairfax would eventually (1745) designate as the manor of Greenway Court. Apparently Edward was a good judge of dirt since Fairfax subsequently decided to settle on the property himself, which was of course perfectly within his rights as proprietor. As an interesting aside, Lord Fairfax was the only titled member of the peerage to make his permanent home in the colonies.

Fairfax let Edward stay on the property for a token rent and the promise to make and maintain improvements to the property (which leads me to wonder whether Edward had made none prior to the lease). The rent for the tract of land was one fat Christmas turkey annually, resulting in the property being referred to as "The Turkey Tract." [Photo] According to the terms of the lease, which ran for Edward's lifetime, if the turkey, when delivered, was not sufficiently fat...game over.

And so, here I sit at the library once again, sifting through moldy tomes in the local history room. Brittle pages, smelling faintly of something I can only identify as age, yield a tidbit here, a snippet there. I add them to the timeline, trying to piece together a picture from all of the various oddly-shaped puzzle pieces. You are welcome to download the Excel spreadsheet from Box.net to refer to my notes. Please do NOT redistribute the document -- leave it to others to download the most updated version from Box when interest warrants.

Read more about Lord Fairfax's manors (including the Manors of Leeds and Gooney Run), and learn how the wily old fox protected his hereditary property rights in the event of such acts of God as, oh, say...revolution.

Hunting for Fauquier Corders in Stafford County VA

This past Friday (June 10, 2011) I drove down to Spotyslvania County, VA to meet with Bob Corder, founder of the National Corder Family Association and long-time researcher of the Corder line that traces back to William Corder b. ca. 1702. Having over the years exhausted all of the low-hanging Corder records, Bob and I decided it was time to drag out the ladders and begin shaking the limbs higher up (or further back, in this case).

My Edward Corder is first found in Virginia in an Orange County petition dated February 22, 1738. Orange County was formed from Spotsylvania in 1734 so I had hoped that a careful search of Spotsylvania records might yield something new for the Greenway Court line.

Bob and I strategized at the Spotyslvania Courthouse Cafe and realized that he was unlikely to find anything relevant to the Fauquier line in Spotsylvania, since Fauquier was formed in 1759 from Prince William (formed in turn from Stafford in 1731). We decided to press north about 15 miles to Stafford and seek our fortune there.

Stafford's records begin in the last decade of the 17th century. It's a sensational thing to hold in one's hand papers that last felt the scratch of a pen in the year 1699. I pulled out the oldest Will Book I could find (1699-1709) while Bob settled in with the oldest Deed Book. A cursory search of the county's digitized indices had yielded nothing, but a cross-reference of names from the first few pages of these older books revealed that there were many, many names mentioned in the deeds, wills and inventories which did not appear in the county's computerized data. This was very good news indeed. There were literally thousands of pages of possibility stacked on the shelves in front of us - all we had to do was start reading.

We quickly accustomed ourselves to the spidery script, and while Bob stayed on task, rapidly skimming the pages in search of the Corder name, I began to familiarize myself with the residents of Stafford County, Virginia in the year 1699. Prominent among them were George Mason, grandfather of the revolutionary patriot of the same name, John Washington, son of emigrant Lawrence, and William Fitzhugh, who represented Stafford in the house of Burgesses. Common surnames at the turn of that century were Withers, Newton, Burkner, Thompson, Waugh, Massey, Wright, and Downing. For several hours I snooped through the worldly goods of these old Virginians and by the end of the day Bob was nearing the 300th page of his book while I finished a far second on page 132 of mine.

While neither of us hit the mother lode -- this time -- I did find one entry with a familiar name: John Ashby (probably formerly of Lancaster County VA). In the same record was a name that looked like it could be either John Condon, Cordon, Cordor or Condor. We know that the Ashby's were one of the earliest settlers of the area that would later be home to both (apparently unrelated) lines of the Corder family, so it's a name I always watch for.

Bob and I will re-group in the winter and return to Stafford to carry on a line-by-line search of the records in which Bob will, no doubt, outdistance me again as I tarry in centuries past.

Jonathan O. Corder, CSA, a Man of Many Battalions

Let's skip ahead more than 100 years and talk for a minute about Edward Corder Sr.'s great-great-grandson, Jonathan O. Corder of Scott County, VA, and his service during the American Civil War. Why? Because I am a non-linear researcher.

I have tried to untangle Jonathan's web of transfers and battalion splits which, when combined with the lack of accurate rosters from some of his units, were complex enough to cause even the pension office to challenge his claims of service. Add to this the fact that the Virginia Regimental Series mis-transcribed Jonathan's name as "Corden" (an easy mistake in days when spidery script made an "r" looked like an "n", and one that possibly appeared on the original documents), and all of that makes Jonathan a hard feller to foller. But here's what I've been able to make out...

Military Service - CSA
On the 21st of March 1862, at about the age of twenty, Jonathan O. Corder enlisted in the 1st. Battalion Kentucky Mounted Rifles in Dungannon, Virginia, near his home in Osborne's Ford (Scott County). His original pension application dates the beginning of his service as May1862 and adds that he enlisted in General Marshall [illegible] Regiment, Company E. His immediate superior officers were “Major Bradley” and “Captain Bob Stoner.” He mentions fellow comrades in arms Nathan Dickenson and cousin Stephen J. Osborne, who, when his pension application was challenged in 1916, later swore oaths that Jonathan did indeed serve with them during the course of the war. The challenge arose due to the lack of complete rosters for some of the units in which Jonathan served.

Jonathan was transferred November 20, 1862 from the Kentucky Mounted Rifles to Vinson A. Witcher's 34th Battalion Virginia Cavalry. The 34th cavalry performed more in the capacity of mounted infantry, riding in, dismounting and firing at an advancing line. The Virginia Regimental Series notes that:

“Early in the war, Witcher and the 1st Battalion Virginia Mounted Rifles (precursor to the 34th) developed a dual reputation. One Confederate officer commented that Witcher could not pass up a farm that had a fine horse in the field. Most disparaging remarks, however were initiated by the bitter John B. Floyd, a political general and past governor of Virginia. Merited or not, Floyd's use of polemics helped to establish a tainted reputation for the unit, that was perpetuated by Yankee officers. Witcher and the 34th Battalion were greatly appreciated by other Confederate officers though. The immortal J.E.B. Stuart and Robert E. Lee, each highly praised the unit, and Stuart wrote an enviable commendation for Witcher.”

The company of Captain Caldwell (including Jonathan) was withdrawn from Witcher’s battalion and divided between Captain Caldwell and Captain McFarlane. Jonathan was assigned to Captain McFarlane's Company of Virginia Cavalry, which was then split into Jesse's Battalion of Kentucky Mounted Riflemen, and the 6th Battalion Confederate Cavalry.

Some sources say that Jesse's Battalion of Kentucky Mounted Riflemen became the 6th Battalion Cavalry of the Confederate States. (Jonathan's gravestone bears an inscription attesting to his service in Company E of this battalion.) In May of 1864 Jesse's Mounted Riflemen and the 6th Confederate Cavalry became companies H, and I of Witcher's 34th Virginia Cavalry. Jonathan Corder's Company H, was commanded by Capt. Robert C. Boyd, formerly a second lieutenant in McFarlane's Company.

When asked on his pension application when and why he left the service, Jonathan replied “at the surrender, at home in Scott County, VA [illegible]” but when questioned later he responded that he was “unable to tell where I was in April ‘64.” He adds that he was in the Cavalry during his whole time in service, having joined under Major Bradley of Kentucky, with whom he served for twelve months before being transferred to a Virginia Battalion under Captain McFarlane. He then recounts that the battalion was divided, and he ended up under Captain Boyd. He ends “later, and for the rest of the War, I was under Col. Witcher. I do not now remember the number of this Battalion, but it was a Virginia Company.”

If you'd like to take a look at Jonathan's pension application and his subsequent correspondence with the pension office, you can download a PDF here from the Edward Corder Memorial Library. If you can make out the words better than I have, please correct my information in comments below.

Edward Corder I > Edward Corder II > Elijah Corder I > Elijah Corder II > Jonathan O. Corder

Pinning Down Edward's Arrival in the Shenandoah Valley

I recently came across an interesting article by Mitchell Farish, an employee of the library at the University of Virginia. The first part of his article is of great interest in helping us understand the early settlement of this area of the northern Shenandoah Valley. We should take parts of his information into consideration when we try to pin down Edward Corder's date of arrival here.

Farish writes of the partnership between Jost Hite (a German speculator) and Robert McKay (a Scots Quaker) as they attempted to secure a massive land grant in northern Virginia through the headright settlement system. Their ambitious plan to claim 100,000 acres of land (by "seed[ing] the land with one hundred Pennsylvania families they said were ready to make homes on Virginia's frontier") was harder to realize than they guessed. The headright settlement system allowed a thousand acres of land per family, but by 1735 the pair had only managed to convince 54 heads of household to relocate to the valley, so things weren't going as well as they'd hoped.

Of very great interest to us is Farish's statement that "Before 1732 the Shenandoah Valley had been virtually empty of humans except for wandering Indian hunters and a few Germans on the South Fork." We know that Edward was here by 1738 (when he petitioned for a road to Jost Hite's mill). We know also that he has been called "one of the seven original adventurers" in this area. In the past we have speculated and wondered whether he was part of Hite's settlement, but since Corder was not German, and is called one of seven "original" adventurers, could he have actually have arrived here prior to Hite and McKay's headright settlers? On the other hand, might Edward have been married - possibly to a German woman - and been somehow related to those "few Germans on the South Fork?"

I estimate that Edward's indenture probably expired around 1728. I am guessing that he served his time in Maryland, or possibly Virginia. Pennsylvania seems less likely, but is not out of the question. We have absolutely no idea where he was or what he was doing between 1728 and 1732, but it's possible that he was indeed one of seven very early settlers to arrive on or around that latter date (I would really love to know who the other six were!). I doubt Edward knew (or cared) that the land he was settling on was part of Lord Fairfax's proprietorship, and so it may have come as a surprise when Fairfax arrived from England demanding rents from those who were "squatting" on his land. (Lest I give the wrong impression, Fairfax was by all accounts a very well-liked landlord, and the settlers probably didn't much care whether they paid their quit rents to Williamsburg or Fairfax.)

To be safe, we can estimate Edward's arrival here during a 10-year span (between 1728-1738), or possibly narrow it per the Farish article to a 6-year span (1732-1738). I would imagine (again, relying on the "original seven adventurers" reference, and assuming he pre-dated the arrival of Hite's settlers) to be on the earlier side, more like 1728-1735.

Don't Miss the "Young Virginian" Exhibit at Mount Vernon

The last of the Blizzard of 2010 has been washed away by several days of rain and we have had some almighty flooding here in the northern Shenandoah Valley. Several main roads are closed, so I had to take the long way around to get up to Long Branch last night to hear Jim Rees, curator of Mount Vernon, speak about George Washington. His engaging presentation covered diverse facets of Washington's life as well as updates on the fabulous new additions to the Mount Vernon estate. Mr. Rees' talk was accompanied by a slide show of beautiful paintings and illustrations of Washington, both familiar and obscure.

Descendants of Edward Corder Sr. will want to make a special effort to visit Mount Vernon to see the new visitor's center and museum. This is top-shelf stuff, I'll tell you, but in addition to being a delight to explore in general terms, the museum contains an exhibit of particular interest to our family.

In The Mary Morton Parsons Foundation Gallery one will find the "Young Virginian" exhibit which includes a life-size model of Washington as a 19-year-old surveyor. From their web site: "Forest sounds and moving animals set the stage for 18th-century western Virginia, where visitors see Washington’s original surveying tools and learn how to conduct a survey themselves." Notice that the exhibit contains Washington's original surveying tools! Are these the same measuring chains our ancestor carried with John Lonem when laying out the town of Little Washington? We know that Edward was with Washington on at least 11 surveys, so it seems probable that he would have carried these very chains at some point (since he is unlikely to have owned his own).

This new exhibit lets us look on the face of Washington as Edward Corder saw him, and since we can't look on the face of Edward, this will just have to be the next best thing.