Friday, October 8, 2010

Day 109

Today was sunny and bright. I was off to Goochland County and its Historical Society. The place was hopping but the volunteers bent over backwards to help the several of us doing research. The best news of the day was a volunteer who came in specially to talk about photographing graves at Howard's Neck. This individual has taken on the challenge of photographing every grave stone in the county. However, he has never had a valid reason (e.g. a relative like me) to request permission from the owners. His wife went to school with the daughter of the owners (Hobsons). Both Hobsons have passed away. The daughter (who must be in her late 60s) lives in Goochland and her brother live at Howard's Neck. The wife will call the friend who will call the brother and the Matt the volunteer will photograph the graves and then - he will email me copies of the photos! Yea!

I didn't find anything new in the surname files. They don't even have one for the Letchers. However, the Historical Society did have parish records (everyone was Church of England) from the minister who served the county's 3 churches. I found the marriage record for Stephen G. Letcher and Elizabeth Perkins - 22 Jan. 1767. I also found birth and baptism records for some of their children - Benjamin - 22 Nov 1767; John (who became governor of VA) - 19 Dec 1769; Hannah - 5 Nov 1771; Stephen Giles - 26 Jan. 1774; Mary - 23 April 1776. All these dates are new information for our records. FYI - Hannah and Mary must have died as young children because they don't show up in later records with the 12 living children. Also another son (Robert P. Letcher) became the governor of KY - amazing!

From the same source I found death records for Constantine and Stephen Perkins (6 G and 5 G grandfathers) and the marriage record for Stephen Giles Letcher's sister Sarah. Now if I could just find some record of their parents, Giles Letcher and Hannah Hughes.

In a separate set of publications I found the marriage registration for John Holloway Jr. and Anne Starling in Mecklenburg County with the permission by her father William Starling. I also found some tantalizing references to Rebecca Ballard's family (5G grandmother and mother of John Holloway Jr. It may be that Rebecca was born here rather than England! I found various references to a William and John Ballard as early area settlers (by 1750) with 700-1400 acres each. - More looking.

I was back to Richmond by 5 but spent another 2 hours setting up research for tomorrow, my last day in VA.

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