“WE CAME FROM THE WEST”

When you are talking family history, especially with your relatives, there will always be legends, rumors, whispers of old bits of information that no one knows is really true or not.  Some people are emphatic that the story is “real.” Others are certain that it is not.  What do you do?

Well, you file it away in a small storage room you carry with you in your brain.  Don’t throw it out, it may come in handy one day, it may prove a point.  After you have traced all the possibilities with no results, just file it away for a while.

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As I said in my Butterfly Whisperings blog, I do not come from a line of story tellers.  They were not hiding anything, it was just that the people before them didn’t know anything.  Like Sgt. Schultz in the old TV show Hogan’s Heroes, they “knew nothing  . . .nothing!”  When I asked my dad about his HAYWOOD line, the best he could do was “they said we came from the west!”  THE WEST?  WHERE!  Colorado, Nevada, Idaho?  Maybe a little closer: Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky?  At that point in time people were GOING west, not coming FROM the west!

I did my searching.  I followed every path I could find.  There was a whole county named HAYWOOD  over on the North Carolina/-Tennessee Line.  It must be full of Haywoods since they named the county that, and it was to the West.  Maybe that was it.  It turned out that HAYWOOD County, NC (founded in 1808) and also HAYWOOD Co in Tennessee were both named in honor of a retiring Judge John Haywood who had been the Treasurer of NC for 20 years (1787 to 1827).  He came from a large family of HAYWOODs settled around Raleigh and Wake Co, NC.  His ancestor John H. HAYWOOD (1684 – 1758) had sailed from Barbados into New Bern harbor in the mid 1700s and they had settled from Edgecombe County on the coast across the state leaving GREAT MEN in their path to situate at Raleigh.  I call them “The Society Haywoods.”  They were wealthy; doctors, judges, lawyers, and professors, and I can find NO connection between them and my family.  None of them would ever have been found plowing a mule to feed himself and clothe his children.  And it also turned out back then there were hardly any HAYWOODs in Haywood Co. after all, except for the Judge’s family who had moved with him.  So that blew that theory!

Then my attention turned to a clan of HAYWOODs settled in Montgomery Co, NC near Rockingham.  There is a grand restored home there close to Mt. Gilead called HAYWOOD HOUSE which had been the site of a large plantation with a huge number of slaves.  There is a wonderful culture which has grown up around HAYWOOD HOUSE, and many black people today have built their genealogical tree from that point in time and go by the name of HAYWOOD.  But alas, I couldn’t connect to HAYWOOD HOUSE, finding it had been founded by a Byrd HAYWOOD who had come down from coastal Brunswick Virginia in 1778.  And besides, that was to the EAST!

These two HAYWOOD families were the only ones in North Carolina before the early 1830s.  They are the ones showing on the 1790 census.  There were no HAYWOODS in Union, Mecklenburg, Gaston, Lincoln, or Anson Counties before 1830.  So if there were none anywhere for us to come from, where the “heck” did we come from!

As I told in the Whisperings blog, I was working with my Cousin Peggy on her HAYWOOD book.  One day I had the brilliant thought, that Dad was not talking about the HAYWOODs, he must be talking about his great grandmother’s line – the WENTZs.  I told you in Whisperings all about Catherine Wentz (1805 – abt. 1890) who I searched for and finally proved was mine.  Since Josiah HAYWOOD, Catherine’s son had never come home from the Civil War, there wouldn’t have been a lot of HAYWOOD men around telling their stories.  Catherine and her sons Josiah, John Franklin, and James Madison went to church with her family the WENTZs at Morningstar Lutheran in Mecklenburg Co.  They lived close together and would have interacted a lot.  Those were the men these boys would have grown up around.  And the WENTZs were one of my German families who had come down The Great Wagon Road in 1751.  The Wagon Road had left Lancaster Pennsylvania and gone west coming down by the side of the Blue Ridge Mountains until it veered back east towards Salisbury and then Charlotte.  I called Peggy!  It was not their tale the HAYWOODs were telling, I shouted into the phone, but the WENTZ’s story.  She agreed.  So it was settled in my mind and I filed away this bit of information, back into the little storage room in my head and I mostly forgot about it.

I described in Whisperings how Peggy and I traced our lines back to Catherine.  We knew she was the mother.  But we thought the father must have been an older Josiah, and my Josiah was the son, along with John Franklin.  We found some deeds where the HAYWOODs were shuffling land around between themselves (in Mecklenburg County after the 1840’s) and “Josiah” had given some land to John Franklin, so we decided he must have been the father.  Peggy got ready to publish THE BOOK!  It was finally finished.  She was ready to send it to the printers.

I came up to visit my sister in Wilmington for the Christmas holidays, and decided to do a little investigating since I was in North Carolina.  I found what the history library in Wilmington had to offer, then I took off to Monroe to see what I could find in Union (was Mecklenburg) County.  I met my HAYWOOD cousin Sandy (you find all kinds of new cousins when you get into genealogy) who lives right there in the center of our HAYWOODS in Union Co, and she took me all around, finding the old cemeteries, the old homeplace (a piece of land within the larger acreage which was always called The Katy Haywood Homeplace  in all the later records and deeds, preserving her original homeplace.  A HAYWOOD lives on that piece of land to this day!  Sandy had grown up in all of this and knew who was kin to whom and where they all lived.  She was a treasure of knowledge!

We finally made our way to the Morningstar Lutheran Church near Providence Road.  Johann Andreas Wentz who had arrived in 1751 was a founder of that church, providing the lumber to build the original old wooden church building.  This is where Catherine had gone to church with her children all those years.  And they had kept such good records.  They had a great ledger, one of the big ones, every page had been laminated to protect it, and it went back to the beginning.  All the births and baptisms, all the church business, who had transgressed and then repented, all the minutes of the meetings they had on a regular basis, and who had attended.  It was beyond value!

I saw where Josiah and John Franklin had been present as children along with Catherine, and then later as men had taken part in the proceedings.  It always listed Catherine as present, but nothing about her husband.

I turned page by page, scanning for familiar names.  I found all sorts of interesting information which I will tell you about in future blogs.  I got back to earlier and earlier times.  And then I turned the page, looked down the left hand side, and my eyes fell on the following words:  Benton Haywood and his wife Catherine brought his sons John Franklin and James Madison to be baptized.  It gave their birth dates and the baptism date!

BENTON!  Who was Benton?  But there he was as Catherine’s husband!  I rushed back to my motel and called Peggy.  STOP THE PRESSES!  DON’T GIVE THE BOOK TO THE PRINTERS I shouted into the phone.  And I then told her what I had found.  She was astounded!  We made arrangements for me to stop with her in South Carolina on my way back to Florida, and we spent a day at her house working on the book, changing every time “Josiah” was mentioned as the father to  “BENTON!”  And that was a lot of times!

So we had found Catherine’s husband.  When I could look him up – there he was – as plain as day in the 1830 census, in LINCOLN COUNTY, NC.  (How he, being in Lincoln Co, and Catherine, being in Union Co, would have gotten together is another story)  He had the right number of boys within the right age groups for Josiah and John F., and he had a wife whose age fitted Catherine.  They had moved to Mecklenburg Co. (near the WENTZs) by 1832 when James Madison was born.  And they founded all the many HAYWOODS ever after in Mecklenburg/Union Counties.

And where was Lincoln County you ask?  Well, right across the Catawba River on the WEST side of what is now Charlotte!  THEY HAD COME FROM THE WEST!  Granted it wasn’t far – all they had to do is cross the river and come less than 15 miles across Mecklenburg County to what is now the Stallings vicinity, near Monroe.  The WENTZs lived at nearby Hemby Bridge, which is near the Providence Road area in eastern Mecklenburg County.

My dad would have loved to know that he had been right.  THEY HAD COME FROM THE WEST!  So never throw away those little bits of information; keep them for the future, safely store them away.  They may come handy someday.

Happy Hunting

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Exciting things always happening in my little Genealogy world.  I restarted my blog to straighten out some kinks.  Everything seems to be working smoothly now.  You will find all  postings listed in the "archive" section above.  In future writings I will ponder the mysteries we all pursue in research, meander through my mind where whispers of long passed relatives reach out to me, and get down to the "nitty-gritty" hard work involved in this endeavor called GENEALOGY.  Hope you find it interesting and come back to me if you have comments on these subjects or find some connection in my family lines.  See My Family Lines tab at the top.

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We have a genealogy forum every Tuesday in Belmont, NC.  If you live nearby, come join us from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., at the J.Paul Ford Recreation Center at 37 E. Woodrow Ave.  Each week we explore a different aspect of genealogy research including storage possibilities, story telling/sharing, genealogy technology, brick wall help, etc. You can find us at: http://belmontgenealogyclub.blogspot.com/.    Of course, when a member in the group needs help, or if someone new comes along with a problem, a "brickwall" or such, we drop what we are doing and all jump in  to explore with them.  Lots of fun.

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There is also a Genealogy Group formed in Gastonia, NC.  They meet the first Thursday of the month in the NC History Room, second floor, at the main Gaston Public Library on Garrison Street in Gastonia.  Meeting time 7:00 - 8:30.   Linda Klocker who has had previous groups in Belmont and in Mountain Island Lake will be leading this new venture.  Whether you are a beginner or an experienced searcher, come meet the group.

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Robert Carpenter’s annual class for Beginning Genealogy at Gaston College in Dallas.   Starts Thursday Sept. 19 through Nov. 21, 2013 (10 sessions) from 7 - 9 p.m. on Thursday nights.  WHO SHOULD SIGN UP?  Any person interested in learning about genealogical research regardless of your level of experience.  Emphasis will involve research strategies, introducing students to various sources, deciphering documents, and will conclude with a trip to the State Archives in Raleigh.  Anyone with questions about signing up should contact Robert  by email at  rcarpenter2@charter.net.  As one who has been there, I can tell you this is a marvelous class for beginners and intermediates.   Robert is considered to be one of the foremost historians for Lincoln and Gaston Counties, and his head is full of wonderful genealogical "stuff!"  He is currently a professor of history at Belmont Abbey College.

SIGN UP by contacting Gaston College at 704-922-6251 or 704-922-6353 or Email Beth Hollars at hollars.beth@gaston.edu.  They are busy running all over the school so be persistent in calling.  If you leave your number, they will come back to you.

Robert has an Advanced Genealogy Class for 10 sessions starting late in January each year.  This class is so popular that previous students state that "they have failed the class" so that they can return each year, and there is a bunch who return each season to  experience the class again.  Take if from one who has "failed" over and over in order to take the class again.  And I’ll be there again in January 2014!