Here’s another column on family history and genealogy that my dad, Clyde Roy, published a while back in The Paintsville Herald.
When I was a kid in Muddy Branch, I didn’t think of myself as Southern, exactly. I don’t think I thought of myself as much of anything, really, but I sure didn’t picture myself as a Yankee.
It turns out, though, that I am Yankee, at least a little bit.
Several years ago, my son, Todd, became the family genealogist. Sometimes, when people do genealogy, they just copy other family trees they find online and call it a day. Todd doesn’t do that. He’s looked on Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org, but he’s also spent hours and hours in libraries and courthouses and state archives to find the birth and death certificates, marriage licenses and lawsuits, deeds, and wills that, when you put them all together, reveal our family’s history.
I already knew a little about the Pack family line. I knew, for example, that my granddaddy’s granddaddy and granny were Berry and Rebecca Pack. I knew they lived in Lawrence County and died about 60 years before I was born.
I didn’t know anything, though, about Rebecca’s parents, my third great-grandparents.
I didn’t know that Rebecca’s dad was a Revolutionary War soldier named Silas P. Wooten. He enlisted in Virginia and fought in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse down in North Carolina. He was discharged soon after, but instead of going back to Virginia, he stayed in Guilford County. We don’t know why, but I suspect it was because he’d met a girl from Nantucket.
Her name was Phebe Worth. Her parents were Quaker, and it turns out the Quakers kept great records.
We know, for example, that Phebe’s parents left Nantucket and joined a Quaker community in Guilford County in 1772 when Phebe was 12 years old. And we know that Phebe’s great-great-grandfather was a man named Thomas Gardner.
Thomas – my 8th great-grandfather – arrived in Massachusetts in 1624. He was hired to oversee a fishing village on Cape Ann but moved his family to Salem a couple of years later. Thomas’ son, Richard, was one of the first English settlers on Nantucket.
Thomas’s descendants – and, therefore, my blood relatives, and maybe yours, too – include Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., who was Richard Nixon’s running mate in the 1960 presidential race; R.H. Macy, whose department store I’ve been to many times at the Huntington Mall; and J.A. Folger, whose coffee may be the best part of waking up.
I was skeptical about all this at first – it all happened so long ago – but it checks out. There’s a paper trail, and Todd went so far as to join several genealogical societies just so people who know about this stuff could check his work. He’s now a member of Sons of the American Revolution, the Hereditary Order of the First Families of Massachusetts, and the National Society of Sons and Daughters of the Pilgrims.
Of course, knowing about this branch of the family tree has no practical benefits. Macy’s won’t give me a family discount, and Food City makes me pay full price for a can of Folger’s.
Still, I catch myself thinking sometimes about my great-great-great-grandmother Phebe. She was born on Nantucket, a crescent-shaped island 30 miles out in the Atlantic, and died up a hollow in Lawrence County. I can’t help but wonder if she ever missed the ocean or the sea breeze and being able to see to the horizon.
All I know is that, without her, I wouldn’t be here today.
Todd Pack 