Ancestral Surnames

A - L

• Adams - From County Antrim in Northern Ireland, some descendants of this family emigrated to Winnsboro, South Carolina, and then to Augusta, Richmond County, Georgia.  According to the book, Roots in Ulster Soil, by Mullins and Mullins:

“John Adams had a farm at Ballyweaney (later called Chequer Hall farm) and he registered the freehold of this farm on 30th October, 1780.  In the 18th century weaving was usually carried on by weavers working in their own houses, but John Adams was before his time in that he erected a weaving shed on his farm.  Here he employed quite a lot of weavers to produce “Chequer” linen, which was woven with blue and white linen thread in the pattern of a chequerboard.  The thread was spun and dyed, as well as woven on the premises.  There was a substantial trade in Chequer both in Great Britain and in the United States of America.  It was particularly popular for the curtains and hangings of four-poster beds of that period.  The Chequer was stamped with a brass stamp bearing an illustration of a spinning wheel and the words ... “Jn. Adams, Loughgeel, Antrim” ... round the outside.  This brass stamp was found some years age in one of the fields at Chequer Hall when it was being ploughed and came into the possession of J.B. Hamilton, solicitor, of Ballymoney.  John Adams died in 1807, and after his death the manufacture at Chequer Hall gradually ceased, and the weaving shed was converted into an ordinary farm building.”

• Almond - Margaret A. Almond was born on May 6, 1833, in Tennessee, according to her grave marker at Tracy City Cemetery in Tracy City, Tennessee, and the 1870 federal census of Grundy County, Tennessee.  She married Milo Robbins, my great-great grandfather.  I have no further information on her ancestry.

• Amory - According to Biographical Directory of the South Carolina House of Representatives, v. II, The Commons House of Assembly 1692-1775, p. 37: “Jonathan Amory (Almery, Amorie, Armory, Emery), son of Ann and Thomas Amory, was born in County Somerset 14 March 1654.  His father was a Bristol merchant and his older brother also were merchants - Thomas in Kerry, Ireland and Robert in the West Indies.  On his father’s death in 1667, Amory went to live with his brother Thomas.  By 1675, he was a merchant in Dublin where on 31 May 1677 he married Mrs. Rebecca Houston, a widow with property. Sometime after 1682, he immigrated with his family first to the West Indies and then to South Carolina.  Rebecca Amory died in the New World and her widower married Martha (?).  The Amorys immigrated to Carolina ca. 1685-1686 but do not appear in any public records until 1691.”  Apparently related to the Hugh Amory family of Somersetshire, England.  See also The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, v. 10, no. 1, January 1856, p. 60.  Related South Carolina families include: Nightingale and Johnson, among others.

• Bean (Beene) - According to William Bean, Pioneer and His Descendants, published in 1973 by Jamie Ault Grady of Knoxville, Tennessee:  “William Bean and Lydia (Russell) were the first permanent settlers in ... Tennessee.  It was here that Russell Bean, first white child of Tennessee, was born.”  Related families include the Bibles, Pattons, Raulstons of Marion County, Tennessee, and many, many others.  See also biographical information on Barbara Beene who married Evander McKeever Raulston, and information on their daughter Mary Ann Raulston, who married Samuel Beene Patton.

• Boisseau - Judith Boisseau was the wife of David Peyre of South Carolina and mother of five children:  (a) Jane, who married James Boisseau,  (b) Elizabeth, who married Paul Bruneau,  (c) Catharine, who married Rene de Richebourg, (d) Samuel, who married Sarah Cantey, and (e) Lydia, who married Theodore Gaillard.

• Bones - Allied families include: Eve, Holden, Hughes, McGran, Moore, Phinizy, Spencer, and Wright.  Of the Parish of Dunean, County Antrim, Ireland, some of the Bones family emigrated to America.  The grave marker of James Bones at Summerville Cemetery in Augusta, Georgia, tells the story:

  Sacred to the Memory of
  James Bones
  Who departed this life on the
  27th Dec 1841
  in the 75th year of his age

  “He was a native of the County of Antrim, Ireland, and emigrated with his family to the United States in 1810.  He took an active part in the unsuccessful struggle for the independence of his native land in the year 1798.  Persevering through life the character of an honest man, he bade adieu to this world in the confidant hope of a happy immortality.”

  A son of James Bones and his wife Mary Adams, William Bones, married Isabella Spencer on January 4, 1825, at Augusta, Georgia.

• Bonneau - French Huguenots who fled La Rochelle, France for their Protestant religious freedom.  One of the true pioneer families of South Carolina, arriving in Charles Town before February 1691, according to First Settlers of South Carolina, 1670-1700.

• Boone - Abigail Boone, born in 1765 in Canterbury, Connecticut, married Thomas Goddard.  A daughter, Abigail Goddard, married The Rev. David Wright.  Their children married into the following families: Bartlett, Bones, Holcomb, Green, Lloyd-Jones, Potter, and Whittaker.

• Boykin - Ann Bowers married Robert Williams.  Both natives of North Carolina, they moved to Society Hill, South Carolina, where he pastored the Welsh Neck Baptist Church.  A daughter, Celete Ann Williams, married Charles McCall.  Another daughter, Mary, married Arthur Hart, and a son, David, married Ann Rogerson.

• Breidenthal - Descendants of John Henry Breidenthal in Pennsylvania.  My wife, Liz, is descended from his son, David Steele Breidenthal.

• Buffington (Boveington) - From The Buffington Family in America, p. 43, edited by Richard M. Buffington:

  “Richard Boveington, born in 1654, considered himself from Great Marle upon the Thames in Buckinghamshire in Old England.  The family had been established there for some generations, probably at Bovingdon Green, a hamlet only one mile from the center of the town.  Relatives also owned property in Marefield, even closer to the center of what is now Marlow.  Within a day’s walk of Great Marle were all the towns, farms and villages where the Boveingtons, under various spellings of the name, had lived at least since 1300, and probably several centuries earlier.

  Richard Buffington, the Emigrant, in addition to founding the largest segment of the Buffington family in America, made definite historic contributions to the American colonial history.  He was a pioneer settler in West Jersey, and signed the West Jersey Compact (dated March 3, 1676).  He was a settler in Upland, later Chester, prior to Penn’s receiving the Charter for the Province of Pennsylvania.  He assisted in the layout of the public road from Philadelphia to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that became the first unit of America’s earliest trans-continental highway.”

  Related Pennsylvania families include: Baldwin, Collins, Cope, Dean, Eaverson, Harlan, Hickman, Grubb, McArthur, Martin, Palmer, Seed, and Vane ... and later my Hart line.

• Callaway - From England, eventually members of this family emigrated to Wilkes County and later Meriwether County, Georgia.  Many family members have served in the pulpit of the Baptist Church.  Others were successful businessmen.  Callaway Gardens in Harris County was established by this family.  My line includes Pheriby Callaway, who was born January 5, 1787, in Wilkes County, Georgia.  She was a daughter of John Callaway and Bethany Arnold.  On March 29, 1803, in Wilkes County, she married Reuben Strozier.

• Cantey - One of the old families of South Carolina, Teige/Tiege Cantey arrived in the Carolina colony from Barbados before 1672 with his wife Elizabeth, sons William and George, and daughters Mary and Catherine.

  My line includes James Willis Cantey of Kershaw County, South Carolina, who married Camilla Floride Richardson, daughter of John Peter Richardson and Floride Bonneau Peyre.

• Coats - Eliza B. Coats, daughter of Robert Coats of Scotland, married Andrew Young Hampton on December 18, 1828, in Dublin, Laurens County, Georgia.  They had three children: (a) Joseph John Hampton, born September 25, 1829, who married Naomi Ann Cox;  (b) Benjamin Wade Hampton, married Ellen N. Sullivan; and  (c) Laura Clementine Hampton, my great-great-great grandmother, born November 11, 1833, who married John Adrian Davis.

• Crooks

• Darsey (Dorsey) - Mary Jane “Polly” Darsey married Andrew Hampton, and were the parents of Andrew Young Hampton.  She was the daughter of Benjamin Darsey (Dorsey) of Washington, Jefferson and Laurens counties in Georgia.

• Davis - The following is taken from A Genealogy of the Davis Family, Henry William Clark, 1905, Harrisburg Publishing Company, p. 1.:

  “Jonathan Davis, who was the founder of the Davis family in the United States of which the following account treats, was born in England about 1730, and came to America when quite young.  We have more than one account of his early history.  Dr. John D. Garrard, late of Birmingham, Ala., who was a great-grandson and who had devoted much time collecting information relating to his ancestry, said:

  ‘Jonathan Davis was born in England about 1730, and died in Wilkes Co., Ga., in Feb. or Mar. 1818.  His father died when he was quite small and left him and a younger brother and perhaps one of two sisters, as well as his mother, who married again.  The step-father treated the boys badly and Jonathan ran away when about twelve years old, and made his way to America.’

  Another story of his early life is that ‘he was captured off the coast of Wales when but a lad and brought to New York on a piratic tramp trading vessel and disposed of upon some term to a New York merchant, who afterwards assisted him in making a start in life.’

  The earliest account we have of Jonathan Davis was about the time of his marriage to Lucy Gibbs, a daughter of a prominent Va. family.  They were married about 1756.  Miss Gibbs was born about 1738 and died in Wilkes Co., Ga. about 1818.

  Mr. Davis bought lands and settled in Orange Co., Va., where his children all grew up and were married before he left Va., and settled in Wilkes Co., about 1803.”

  A son of Jonathan, William M. Davis, married Nancy Easton on February 5, 1789, in Orange County, Virginia.  Their son, Jonathan II, was a prominent pioneer Baptist preacher in Georgia and founded the First Baptist Church of Albany, Georgia.  His son, John Adrian Davis, was my great-great-great grandfather.

• Detwiler

• Dozier - Margaret “Peggy” Dozier was the wife of Peter Strozier of Westphalia, Germany.  According to her Revolutionary War pension application of February 1842, made in the Inferior Court of Meriwether County, Georgia, she was born on September 1, 1740.  She died in 1842 in Meriwether County, and was buried in the Strozier Family Cemetery there.  I also have a handful of distant Dozier cousins in my database from South Carolina.

• Drake - Harriet Drake, daughter of William and Elizabeth Drake, was the wife of Charles Cantey of South Carolina.

• Du Bliss (de Bloys) - Catherine de Bloys (or du Bliss) was married to Huguenot  Anthoine Bonneau, who immigrated to South Carolina about 1690.  She was reportedly born in 1660 in La Rochelle, France.

• Dudley - Louisa Dudley was born in Pitt County, North Carolina, on December 4, 1783.  She emigrated to Georgia about 1818 with her husband, John Fleming, and their children.  Unfortunately, I have nothing further on this Tarheel family.

• Easton - Two Easton women, Nancy and Mary, married into my Davis line.  Nancy Easton, thought to be from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, married The Rev. William M. Davis on February 5, 1789 in Orange County, Virginia.  Mary Easton, probably her sister, married Rev. Davis’s brother, John.

• Elfe - Thomas Elfe, the noted cabinetmaker from London, England, came to Charleston, South Carolina in 1747.  At least two biographies have been written on the man: “Thomas Elfe: Charleston Cabinet-Maker,” by E. Milbry Burton, published originally by the Charleston Museum, in February 1952; and “Thomas Elfe: Cabinetmaker,” by Samuel A. Humphrey, published by Wyrick & Company, in 1995.

Elfe, whose apparent sympathies with his homeland cost his family dearly during the Revolutionary War, married twice.  On June 7, 1748, he married Mary Hancock ... she apparently died that same year.  He then married Rachel Prioleau (or Prideau), and they had at least seven children, including my great-great-great-great grandmother, Hannah Elfe, who married Francis Bonneau on January 21, 1779.

• Farley - My wife’s line.  Her grandmother, Annabel Kay Farley, was born in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, daughter of Lehman George Farley and Maude Lucille Fritz.

• Fleming - Where were my Flemings before 1777 when David Fleming first appears in the deed records of Pitt County, North Carolina?  That remains a mystery ... for now.  Some of David’s descendants remained behind and some - including my branch - emigrated to Georgia.  David Green Fleming, my great-great grandfather, served as Ordinance Sergeant for Company G, 8th Regiment, Georgia Volunteer Infantry of the Army of Northern Virginia (“The Pulaski Volunteers”) and upon his return was elected Treasurer for Pulaski County, Georgia.  His son, James Thomas Fleming, served as Clerk of the Dougherty County Commission for almost 30 years.

• Florence - John Flourence and his wife Jenny/Jane Lashbrook died in Lincoln County, Georgia in 1812 and 1820 respectively.  A daughter, Frances Florence, born April 30, 1783, married Willis Jones on February 10, 1800, possibly in Lincoln County.  Mary Florence, apparently her sister, married Moses Jones, Willis’s brother.

• Francies
• Fritz

• Gibbs - Lucy Gibbs was the wife of Jonathan Davis, the emigrant from England and progenitor of my Davis line. Henry William Clark, in his book A Genealogy of the Davis Family, published in 1905 by Harrisburg Publishing Company, says that she was born about 1738.  She died in Wilkes County, Georgia about 1818.  Presently, I have no additional information on the Gibbs family.

• Goddard - Abigail Goddard, daughter of Thomas Goddard and Abigail Boone, was born on August 14, 1796, according to Ecclesiastical and Other Sketches of Southington, Conn., by Rev. Heman R. Timlow, Case, Lockwood, and Brainard Co., 1875, Hartford, CT, p. 322.  She married The Rev. David Wright, also of Connecticut, on April 21, 1814.

• Goza - Frances “Fannie” Goza, probably a daughter of a William Goza and possibly of French lineage, married Reece Johnson, son of William Johnson, on February 28, 1810, in Warren County, Georgia.  At least 710 descendants can trace their lineage to her.  She died on March 13, 1876, in Warren County. Presently, I have no further information on the Goza family.

• Grubb - Genealogists have traced the Grubb family of colonial Pennsylvania back to Thomas Grubb, who - according to Colonial Families of Philadelphia, v. 2, p. 1231 - was born in 1581 in Potterne, Devizes, Wiltshire, England.  Of Thomas, a son John was born.  He married Helen Vivian, and they had a son, also named John.  John II, who emigrated to America, married Frances Vane ... their daughter, Phoebe Grubb, married Richard Buffington of Upland (later Chester), Pennsylvania.

• Guerard - Jane Guerard was the wife of James Sinkler (or Sinclair).  They had three children of which I have record:  (a) Peter Sinkler, born 1725 in South Carolina, who married four times ... to Elizabeth Mouzon, Ms. Boisseau, Catherine Palmer, and lastly Elizabeth Cantey;  (b) Dorothea Sinkler married Brigadier Gen. Richard Richardson; and (c) James Sinkler who married Sarah and Elizabeth Cantey, both daughter of Charles Cantey.

• Hampton - Perhaps from South Carolina before moving to Jefferson County, Georgia, and then Laurens County, Georgia. Andrew Hampton, son of Joseph and Elizabeth Hampton, apparently moved from Jefferson to Laurens County before 1806.  He married Mary Jane “Polly” Darsey (Dorsey), daughter of Benjamin and Leodicey Darsey.

  Nine children have been recorded of this union: (a) Rachel Ann Hampton who married Samuel Way then Thomas Hardy Griffin;  (b) Andrew Young Hampton, my great-great-great-great grandfather, born October 29, 1806, who married Eliza B. Coats;  (c) James Darcey Hampton who married Wylanta Dorsey and Sarah Ann Hall; (d) Benjamin Wade Hampton who married Clementine O’Neal in 1824;  (e) John Milledge Hampton who married Ann J. Thomas;  (f) Evalina Hampton who married John F. Spicer; (g) Mary Ann Hampton who married Martin Green O’Neal; (h) William L. Hampton who married Louisa Horne; and (i) Laura Ann Hampton who married Charles Washington Horne.

• Hand - Joseph Hand, who died January 1724/25 according to The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, v. LVIII, January, 1904, p. 40, married Jane Wright, daughter of Benjamin Wright and Jane Woulf of Connecticut.  A daughter of Joseph Hand, Elizabeth, married Benjamin Wright, also a grandchild of Benjamin and Jane (Woulf) Wright.

• Hart - Traced to colonial Pennsylvania and in the line of the noted Quaker minister John Hart of Warminster, this Hart line emigrated to North Carolina before settling in Warren County, Georgia.  Samuel Hart, a grandson of The Rev. Hart, is found in early deeds of Columbia County, Georgia. Reportedly he died there on June 4, 1787.  A son of Samuel and his wife Esther Lowe, Isaac, married Sarah Buffington on May 10, 1796 in Warren County.  For more than 100 years, descendants of Isaac Hart have lived in Warren County.  The lineage of my grandmother, Ruby Allen Hart, is described herein.

• Haywood - Sarah Jane Haywood was born about 1707 and died on August 16, 1783.  On October 29, 1731, she married John Johnson at the Dutch Refomed Church, New York City, New York.

  The following is taken from the William Henry Johnson manuscript on the Johnson family:

  “The Copeland Stiles records, etc., says that Jane Haywood had two brothers, farmers in New York state, but finding the climate too severe settled on the Tar River (in) North Carolina.  From the Biographical History of North Carolina from Colonial Times to the Present (Ashe), vol. III, pp. 164-167 (inclusive) and William Haywood, p. 168 to 171 (inclusive) by Marshall de Lancey Haywood:

  “John Haywood, 1st of his name in North Carolina, resided at the mouth of Conoconarie Creek, in a part of the colonial county of Edgecombe, but now embrassed (sic) within the limits of Halifax County.  Enfield being the then county seat ... for about 20 years, more or less, he was the surveyor on the vast domain of the Earle of Granville ... the only one of the Lords Proprietors of North Carolina who retained his landed holdings in the colony when the other proprietors sold their interests to the crown in 1729.  Many of the old land grants issued by Lord Granville to the colonists still exist and are usually countersigned by Mr. Haywood as Surveyor.”

• Horton
• Hubbard

• Johnson (Jansen) - From New York City to Charleston, South Carolina, this prominent family includes an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, a leader of Revolutionary War sentiment in colonial Carolina, and a number of distinquished physicians and Episcopalian ministers, including:  The Rev. John Johnson, who was also author of The Defense of Charleston Harbor, a first-hand account of the Civil War battle of Fort Sumter ... his father, Dr. Joseph Johnson, author of Traditions of the American Revolution ... and his grandfather, William Johnson, the South Carolina blacksmith who helped lead the Liberty Tree’s fight for American independence.

• Johnson (Warren County, Georgia) - According to a story in The Warrenton Clipper, on June 17, 1932, by Mrs. W.F. Wilhoit, Warren County historian:

  “In the spring of 1792 two brothers, Willis and William Johnson, came from South Hampton County, Virginia, to settle land claims (in Warren County, Georgia) granted them for Revolutionary services.  With them came Soloman and Peter Newsome.”

  William Johnson married Lucy Rosanna(h) Reese in 1793, and they had at least twelve children:

  (1) Randolph , b. April 26, 1779, Virginia; d. February 1, 1854; (2) Amos, b. 1781, Virginia;  (3) Lewis, b. October 16, 1783, South Hampton County, Virginia; d. January 5, 1859; (4) Aaron, b. January 15, 1785, Virginia; d. March 15, 1870, Georgia;  (5) James, b. June 11, 1787, Virginia; d. May 27, 1853; (6) Sara, b. 1789, probably in Virginia; (7) Mary, b. November 11, 1790; d. November 11, 1859; (8) Reece, b. 1792, probably in Virginia; d. October 28, 1836, near Warrenton, Warren County, Georgia; (9) Seaborn, b. 1794; (10) William, Jr., b. 1798, probably in Warren County, Georgia; d. October 7, 1846;  (11) Rebecca; and (12) Martha Elizabeth.

• Jones - Two Jones lines ... Aaron Jones and his descendants from Virginia to Meriwether County, Georgia, and Reuben H. Jones of Calhoun, Gordon County, Georgia and his son Stephen McCall Jones, later of Hawkinsville, Pulaski County, Georgia, and their descendants.

• Jordan - My Jordans were evidentially in Columbia and Jefferson counties, Georgia, in the early 1800s.

  Joshua T. Jordan, believed to be the father of my great-great grandfather, William Moses Jordan, was apparently born in Columbia County, in 1824.  Joshua Jordan married Rebecca Jane Brinson on February 3, 1848.  Of this union, there were apparently at least seven children: (i) Milledge Jordan, a daughter who died young; (ii) William Moses Jordan, born July 1, 1851; (iii) Philip Jordan, born 1853; (iv) Mary T. Jordan, born 1854; (v) Lila A. Jordan, born 1856;  (vi) Elizabeth Jordan, born 1859; and  (vii) Sarah Jordan, born 1861.

  William Moses Jordan (pictured with his wife at left), educated at Penfield College, later Mercer, married November 8, 1877 in Augusta, Isabella Spencer Wright.  They had five children, all born in Augusta: (a) Margaret Louisa Jordan, my great grandmother, born November 7, 1878, who married Henry Martyn Johnson, of Charleston, South Carolina; (b) David Wright Jordan, January 12, 1881, died young;  (c) Marie Emily Jordan, January 5, 1883, married George Winthrop Dwelle; (d) Isabella Coskery Jordan, born August 2, 1884, married John Barry Whitney; and (e) Thomas Russell Wright Jordan, born June 29, 1889, died young.

• Lanier - Elda Lanier (born June 28, 1811, in Marion County, Georgia) married Duncan Lemmon Fleming on June 23, 1831, in Pulaski County, Georgia.  She died on May 3, 1849, eleven days before her husband.

  Eight children were left orphaned by their passing, the oldest not yet having turned 17.  Several of the children are found in the 1850 census with Philip Lanier (possibly her brother) and with Henry Waddell (possibly her brother-in-law, husband of Pensa Ann Lanier)

  Elda was believed to be a daughter of John Lanier.  The relationship between Elda Lanier and John Lanier is suggested by the following from Lanier: A Genealogy of the family who came to Virginia and their French ancestors in London, by Louise Ingersoll, p. 434-5:

  “John Lanier ... had a son and a daughter born before 1810; they disappeared before 1820, evidently going to Georgia, to Dooly County, where the Court House was burned, and all early records are lost ...

  Philip Lanier (a son of the aforementioned John), b. Apr 21 1808 is in the 1830 census of Dooly County, Ga., with another male of his age, and two girls, one about eighteen, the other about fifteen.  The tradition is that Philip had no brothers, but had several sisters, one married in Ga. a Mr. Waddill, another married Mr. Fleming in Georgia and they all went to Texas at the same time about 1856.”

• Lowe

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