Category: Family (Page 3 of 4)

Thousands of immigrants braved the dangerous ocean journey to America. Many of us are descended from people who thought the possibility of a better life was worth the risk of the journey. We’re here because they took the first step.

Author Note (added sometime later than the writing of this entry): I have no actual proof, no DNA matches, no official records…no proof whatsoever that this guy is my actual ancestor. I’m all about the story of these people who braved hardships to come to this country and become what they became, but in the months since this was written it has been pointed out to me there are no “proofs” that this is my guy, so the story is as factual as I can write it from what I’ve found…but he may not be my “immigrant.” He is someone’s immigrant, though, and I honor that.

In genealogy, the first family descendant who left the home country to seek fortune in America is called “the immigrant.”

I’ve finally located the “immigrant” of my Collings branch of the family, the guy who left England and endured the 6 to 14-week ocean journey to make a place for him (and eventually, well…me) in the New World sometime around 1700. His name was Anthony Andrew Collings, and he brought with him his wife, Jane or Jaine.

Anthony was born in Cornwall, England in 1678. Jane has been a little more challenging to track down, and I’m still unsure of her maiden name. It might have been Lancelott, or it might have been Spence. Other reports claim that he was married twice, first to Jane Spence, then to Jane Lancelott. Either scenario leads me down different paths. Because of this uncertainty, I’m not sure what year or where he and Jane were married, but I believe Anthony’s son Zebulon (my ancestor) was born in 1706 in Frederick, Pennsylvania.

In 1712, there are some reports of a daughter Winifred being born in Westmoreland, Virginia. There is also some information about a daughter Elizabeth born in 1712 in Westmoreland, Virginia. That would seem to indicate that Anthony, a twin himself, had twin daughters.

Anthony and Jane at some point moved to Charles County, Maryland where they owned property and lived until their deaths, Anthony in 1754, at age 76.

I don’t know why Anthony came to America, but I have some thoughts and theories (of course I do). There were many reasons people took such a challenging journey, but I think there were probably three main reasons:

1. The primary goal, of course, the one we all heard in history class in school, was freedom of religion. Major religious conflicts raged throughout the countries of Europe and the British Isles during the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries. People were desperate to escape persecution and to be able to worship as they wished.
2.  Another reason was a desire to become landowners and create wealth and security for their family. There were complicated rules for the disbursement of English property upon the death of the owners and titles passed to first sons. Second, third, fourth sons and so on, made do with what they could when fathers died. In America, they could, by hard work and clever trading, become prosperous and successful.
3. For many, though, the allure of the New World was the adventure. These are the immigrants who just could not be satisfied with the limitations they suffered in their homelands. These were the immigrants who traveled to the new world at any cost, then pushed the boundaries of the country westward.

No one can know for sure why any one particular immigrant came, but I’d like to think that I have figured out Anthony Andrew Collings. He was not the first son of Sir Roger and Elizabeth Collings; he was not the second or third son. He and his twin brother, Roger, were the fourth and fifth sons.

I think that young Anthony Collings, sensing there was little future for himself in England, decided to travel to America to build his own legacy.

Anthony started his American adventure in Westmoreland Co. in the Colony of Virginia, then for some reason moved to Charles Co., in the Colony of Maryland where he lived out his life.

Anthony Collings returned to England, probably around 1715 returning to America in 1716 when he is listed as a passenger on a ship arriving from England. It’s possible this trip had something to do with a disputed inheritance concerning his grandmother, which is an interesting side story, but I find no official records to support that.

I did find, however, that in 1717, one Anthony Collings purchased 100 acres of a 320-acre plantation called Partner’s Content, for the price of “2500# tobacco.” I can’t help but wonder if Anthony returned from his trip to England with enough money to buy this land and start his life as a plantation owner and man of some esteem in his community.

In those early days of our country, property was described on deeds and in legal paperwork by the names of the neighboring plantations and their owners. Several pieces of property in early Maryland records are listed as bordering on or bounded by the property of Anthony Collings. He was also listed in various wills as creditor, appraiser and “test.” which I took to mean that he attested to the signatures of the witnesses of those wills, possibly individuals who could only sign their name with a “mark” or X.

I also found records of his paying for land and other goods with various amounts of tobacco, which was the main crop of those early plantations. The Maryland Tax Roll of 1733 lists him as owning 1 taxable property in “Durham Parish, Upper Part.”

I believe Durham Parish was in Maryland at that time, but one of the fun little tricks of genealogy that I have discovered is that our ancestors may not have moved around in America as often as we thought. It was actually the state, county, and other boundaries that were fluid.

The states of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina all disputed boundaries and claimed land that was or was not theirs well into the late 1700s. The same town could one year be in one state, the next year in another. Sometimes these changes would be accompanied by a county name change, or the familiar county name might show up in a different state at a later date.

Interesting sidebar fact: these disputes continued until two men were sent to survey the disputed areas and established a line from which all future claims could be decided. The names of those men were Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, and the property line they surveyed, known as the Mason-Dixon Line, played an essential part in the history of our country for many years.

I want to briefly return to the above three reasons immigrants chose to come to America. Strangely, while these immigrants were firm in their determination, second-generation Americans seemed to gravitate to the third category…adventurers.

The newly minted citizens who came seeking religious freedom did establish communities dedicated to their religious beliefs, but many of their children became dissatisfied with the rules and regulations…and began pushing the boundaries of our country westward.

Those men who came to America to obtain land or become merchants and shop owners, ambitions that were never available to them in the Old Country, were often successful and became influential citizens. Their children, though, were reluctant to be tied down by the responsibilities of those same plantations and shops…so they traveled westward to seek their own fortunes.

And the children of the adventurers who simply came to the New World to see what they could see? They kept looking and they, too, pushed west.

My family was no different. That second generation, the children of Anthony Andrew and Jane Collings moved west.

The story continues.

Early map of the 1700s.

In 1768, after tough negotiations, the Cherokee Indians and the British government finalized the Treaty of Hard Labor to establish a western boundary beyond which the Indians had full rights and the American settlers had none.

The Treaty of Hard Labor relinquished the rights of the Cherokee to most of the territory we now know as West Virginia. The Indians would own the land west of the Ohio River and white settlers (and land speculators) would be able to claim, sell and improve the wilderness in nearly the entire area we now know as West Virginia.

A month later a different set of British negotiators met with the Iroquois and finalized the Treaty of Fort Stanwix which set a different boundary pushing the Indian lands farther west, leaving them the areas that later became Kentucky and Tennessee as their “forever hunting grounds.”

While these treaties opened vast areas of new territory for settlement, government officials had actually given to the Indians territory that early land speculators such as Jacob Hite thought they had already purchased from individual Indian tribes.

You will remember that Jacob Hite, upon learning that his land purchase was voided faced losing everything he owned to settle his debts. He responded by packing up his household goods, slaves and livestock and fleeing to the disputed land he felt he owned.

The British treaties that set these boundaries also set the stage for legal battles with men whose names have become synonymous with Revolutionary patriotism. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, in particular, had been seeking to purchase land in the area now ceded to the Cherokee Indians. And of course, Jacob Hite was nearly destroyed financially by the treaties and the British insistence that settlers abide by the new boundaries.

The British had their motives. If they could establish certain boundaries to the satisfaction of the Indians, settlers could safely and legally move into new lands and the British would not be called upon to protect those settlers from the Indians who would happily hunt and live in the land further west.

That was the plan, anyway. There were two problems with that plan: 1) no words on paper could stem the flow of those early pioneers who were hungry to claim land of their own, and 2) the entrepreneurs seeking to claim and then sell the land had no intention of letting the British thwart their dreams of wealth.

Jefferson, Washington and every member of the Virginia House of Burgesses felt that the British were imposing impossible limits on the economic growth of their state and, more importantly, on their wealthy citizens. They petitioned the British to revoke the treaties and to allow the state (or colony) of Virginia to annex the areas further west including what we now call Kentucky.

The friction between Indians and settlers, and between British and Americans truly began to smolder towards an explosive situation with the signing of these two treaties.

Freedom from British oppression was something every citizen could get behind, but make no mistake, controlling the land and thus the economy was the spark that triggered the American Revolution.

So, knowing all this, why did my ancestors move from their homes in western Pennsylvania to the Indians beloved hunting grounds in Kentucky?

Because they could. Following the Revolutionary War, the British treaties were no longer valid and American speculators could now officially seek ownership of the Indian land. Individual settlers in small groups could begin to claim the land a few hundred acres at a time. They could move from the smothering rules and regulations that told them what they could and could not do and into the wilderness where they were their own law and government.

Last week when I wrote about the legal problems of Jacob Hite, I thought I was just trying to set the stage for you to understand some of the economic struggles leading up to the Revolutionary War.

This week, I found that Jacob Hite’s story directly relates to my own story. I keep forgetting what a small world that world was!

Hite’s sister, Elizabeth, married a man named John Paul Froman of New Jersey and sometime before 1780, the Froman family moved to that rugged Kentucky territory that Jacob Hite wished to claim. The Froman family established a “station” or small community near Cox’s Creek in the area of the salt licks south of present-day Louisville.

This was the area that Jacob Hite had purchased from the Cherokee.
This was the area where Jacob Hite fled to avoid authorities in Virginia who had attempted to seize his personal property.

And in 1778, George Crist, writing in the Crist family journal, wrote “Me and Nicholas and Henry want to explore the land in Kaintuck that Daniel Boone keeps talking of. He says there is thousands of acres of land waiting to be claimed. Plenty of wild game and wild horses and that the land will grow anything. The Indians are worse there but we think with enough men it will be safe enough.”

We know that Henry did travel to Kentucky several times and experienced at least one adventure as his group was attacked by Indians, an attack he barely survived.

Based on the stories Henry brought back about the rich lands of Kentucky, and the stories of Danial Boone who was actively encouraging settlers, George finally wrote in 1783: “Me, Henry, Nicholas and William and our families and Besy’s parents and their families along with many more it’s about three hundred in all are going to leave in two days to go to Kaintuck.”

William in that passage would be William Elston Collings and the “others” would be his parents and brothers and their families, and that’s how my ancestors began their journey west, settling first in the area of Kentucky known as Froman’s Creek or Froman’s Station near the land of Jacob Hite.

Later, I’ll tell you what it took to make that journey.

Cover on both shores made for dangerous travel.

A couple of weeks ago I told you about Henry Crist, one of the early pioneers of the Kentucky Territory and a sort of left handed relative of mine. From the age of around 15, Henry, along with members of his family and mine, made several trips into the Kentucky Territory. At a very early age Henry began working with a man named Jacob Myers, locating and laying claim to large tracts in the wilderness.

The most valuable commodity in this new land, besides the game, was the land itself…and salt. Salt deposits near the streams drew herds of deer and buffalo which drew hunters. The hunters required large quantities of salt to preserve their meat. But salt was expensive and difficult to transport over the mountains from the east.

The discovery that the area contained salt laden clay which leached into the waters, made this a prime area for the first industry in Kentucky…salt making.

Entrepreneurs found they could produce large quantities of salt by boiling away the water in huge kettles over a trench of fire.

In 1788, Henry Crist, with a friend named Solomon Spears, obtained interest in a production site called Long Lick. In the spring of that year, the two men purchased a quantity of large kettles in Louisville and hired a flatboat with crew to transport them by river to their claim.

Crew and passengers, totaling twelve men and one woman, boarded the boat to travel along the Ohio to the Salt River, then up that river to a place called Mud Garrison, located near where modern-day Shepherdsville, Kentucky now stands.

You need to understand that in the late 1700’s, rivers were the interstates the pioneers used to move goods. On the map, the area of the salt licks was almost directly south of Louisville and not that far by land, but to move the heavy cargo of huge 100-pound kettles, the river was the route of choice.

The spring levels of the Ohio and Salt rivers made the journey somewhat easier. The water flowed above the sand banks and by May, the current was fairly slow and dependable. The broad Ohio was safe and easy. Traveling down the center of the river, boats and their passengers were out of reach of any sudden attacks from the ever-present Indians on shore, but upon entering the much narrower Salt River, the boats were in range of rifles and arrows from both shores. For this reason, the men sent out scouts on foot to watch for danger.

On the evening of their first day on the Salt River, Henry and a man named Floyd went ashore as scouts. While they did see some sort of trail, they found no recent evidence of Indians. Early in the morning they returned and around eight o’clock the crew took the boat ashore to cook and eat breakfast.

As they chained their boat to a tree, the party could hear what sounded like the gobbling of many turkeys and two of the crew, anxious to acquire fresh game, headed into the brush with their rifles. As they disappeared over the riverbank, gunfire and yelling erupted.

Horrified, the men on the boat watched as the two hunters reappeared, running for their lives, pursued by several Indians.

Henry Crist was standing in the bow of the boat with his rifle and he was able to fire at the pursuers causing them to drop back and seek cover. As the two hunters reached the water’s edge and climbed into the boat, others were able to retrieve their rifles and return fire. One of the would-be hunters was hit by a bullet which broke his arm, but he managed to get into the river and around to the back side of the boat to be hauled in by his companions.

The huge salt kettles had been loaded in rows down either side of the boat forming a long corridor in the center. Unfortunately, the boat, chained to a tree, was bow to the shore, allowing the Indians to shoot down the length of the boat, providing no cover for the defenders.

Desperate to loosen the chain that bound them to shore, the men needed to free the boat to gain cover and some mobility. Fossett, the injured hunter, could no longer use his rifle, so he grabbed a pole and with covering fire from the others began trying to dislodge the hook on the chain. Eventually, he was able to loosen the chain and the boat began drifting into the river, slowly turning so that the sides faced the bank, finally giving some cover from the Indians’ rifle fire.

With this short respite, the survivors took inventory of the damage. Five men lay dead. Spears, Floyd, Fossett and Boyce were injured, Spears so seriously that it was evident he would not survive. Only three men, Crepps, Moore and Henry Crist were uninjured.

Spears as he lay dying, urged the men to run the boat up on the opposite shore and run for their lives leaving him to his fate, but his companions refused to abandon him.

Ahead of the boat, the men could see a group of Indians crossing the river. They were now under fire from either side making a river escape impossible. As Spears breathed his last, the others saw they must do as he had advised: run the boat aground, separate and hide in the woods.

As the men clambered out of the boat, Crepps and Crist reached out to help the woman disembark, but she was frozen with fear and refused to move. No amount of coaxing would get her to budge and finally, the men had to use their rifles to cover their own escape into the woods.

Hopeless and desperate, the men charged the Indians that attempted to block their escape and managed to get past them, but as they slipped into the covering brush, the Indians fired a last volley. One shot ricocheted off a rock and struck Crepps in the side. Another bullet struck Crist in the heel, breaking several bones in his foot.

Looking back from their cover, the men saw the Indians turn and converge on the boat to take their woman companion captive. While the Indians were thus distracted, Crepps and Crist escaped into the woods where they became separated.

Next week, I’ll tell you of Crist’s desperate fight for survival.