Notes on Our Genealogy

 Elizabeth Sarah Shelton was the last Shelton ancestor of mine to actually carry that name. She was the daughter of a Baptist minister, born in Kentucky about 1808. When she was a young girl her older sister Magdalene married John C. Hearn, and a few years later Elizabeth married John’s brother William. They lived their lives as a farming family in Kentucky, and they were my fourth great-grandparents. What’s going on? What was happening as Elizabeth and William began their adult lives in around 1830? The town of Chicago was organized, population 200. Saa-lute ! Joseph Smith published The Book of Mormon , then got tarred and feathered in Ohio. Zerobabel Gay died in Tennessee, only about 70 miles away from Elizabeth and William. Nat Turner was arrested and executed in Virginia. Joseph Greenock retired from the British Army and was making shoes. England ramped up opium sales in China . Charles Darwin sailed on the Beagle. Newlyweds George and Maria Trier, my third great-grandpare...

 Asher Shelton was born near present-day Stuart, Virginia on the eve of the Revolutionary War. He died 80 years later with the Civil War looming. What’s Happening? What’s going on as Asher and Mary began their adult life around 1800? John Adams. the second President, had just passed the anti-immigrant Alien and Sedition Acts . We are approaching “ Your Obedient Servant ”. The Second Great Awakening swept across the American frontier. Napoleon menaced Europe, and Joseph Greenock joined the British Army to oppose him. Muddy River Asher was the oldest of Jeremiah and Mary Asher Shelton ’s children. He was born in 1772, near what is now Stuart, Virginia in Patrick County, but neither of them existed at that point. When Asher was about 25, he and the rest of his large family moved to Logan County, Kentucky. There’s a story that his father led a wagon train, and that must be true because there were 15 people in the family, so they were a train all by themselves. But other Sheltons, cou...

Jeremiah Shelton was probably born around 1745, when his peripatetic family lived in Amelia County, Virginia. Around 1768, when he and his family were living near what is now Stuart, Virginia , he married Nancy Asher . Her last name is uncertain, as it is with so many of these marriages. What's Happening? What's going on when Jeremiah and Nancy start their family around 1770? The Boston Massacre enflamed tensions between colonists and Great Britain. The Treaty of Lochaber opened up what is now West Virginia and Kentucky to settlement. Daniel Boone was exploring Kentucky , and fighting with practically everyone. Zerobabel Gay was entering adulthood, and his future wife Selah was still 10 years from being born. Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations. The American Revolution Jeremiah's older brothers James and Eliphaz both had distinguished Revolutionary War careers as Captains in Colonel Abram Penn 's militia regiment, the only body of troops raised in Henry or ...

While Ralph Shelton Senior lived his whole life in Middlesex County, Ralph Shelton Junior was constantly on the move. He was born in Middlesex County, Virginia , next to the Atlantic, and died in Patrick County, Virginia , further west and down on the border with North Carolina. I don’t know what drove that relentless movement, but it passed down into subsequent generations. It seems to me that if you had a comfortable life you wouldn’t keep moving, so the going may have been tough for this line of Sheltons, constantly seeking better prospects. What’s Happening? What was going on when Ralph and Mary Shelton started their adult life around 1730? War broke out between Maryland and Pennsylvania . Philadelphia was found to be in Maryland, leading to much embarrassment and ultimately the Mason-Dixon survey. Benjamin Franklin co-founded Library Company of Philadelphia (in Maryland, I guess) Robert Walpole became the first real Prime Minister of Great Britain. James Bradley calculated the...

 A man named Ralph Shelton showed up in the Virginia Colony around 1700. He had a lot of kids, and those kids had a lot of kids, and now 10 generations later untold thousands of modern Americans descend from ol’ Ralph. And that includes me; Ralph Shelton is my 8th great-grandfather. The descendents of Ralph Shelton were deeply entwined in colonial life, the American Revolution, and the westward expansion of the United States. Writing a history of the Sheltons in America would be the work of a proper historian, not me. This sketch is intended to help me organize my own understanding of this line of my ancestors, and where possible to provide some links to more complete and definitive information. Tracing the history of colonial and early Americans is a tedious business of piecing together property sales, spotty church records, handwritten wills and assorted other sources in hopes of making some semblance of sense of it all. One of the benefits of Ralph Shelton’s huge progeny is that...

The earliest mention we have of Ralph Shelton in Virginia was when one Thomas Meriwether was awarded a headright grant of land as a reward for bringing seven new settlers to Virginia, including Ralph. Recorded in the Essex County Order Book October 10, 1702: Certificate according to Act of Assembly is granted to Tho. Meriwether for the importation of seven persons into this colony by name Sarah Eaton, Richd Cullen, Ralph Sheldon, (name illegible), Mary Millner, Isaac Bayly, Edw Cartwright. To attract settlers the colonies offered headright grants to new arrivals. If you couldn’t afford the trip, you could arrange with someone to pay your passage; typically they would get the land grant and you would enter a period of indentured servitude to pay off the debt. But there’s no record of Ralph being indentured, or being released from indenture. In fact, he appears to have had a close relationship with Meriwether, because when the latter drew up his will in 1708 Ralph Shelton was not only a...

My grandmother’s grandfather’s grandfather (or my 4th great-grandfather) was a Scottish man named Joseph Greenock. Joseph Greenock (1790-) and Elizabeth Callendar (1791-) had a son, John Greenock (1819-1893), who with Rebecca Durie (1816-1876) had a son, Robert Greenock (1844-1906), who with Jane Redpath (1848-1947) had a son, John Greenock (1870-1947), who with Flora Rebman (1877-1958) had a daughter Helen Greenock Jackson (1903-1990), who was my grandmother. Birth and Parents There is no record of Joseph's birth, except that he was consistent in listing his birthplace as Linlithgow, and his birthdate as approximately 1790. Linlithgow was and still is a small town between Glasgow and Edinburgh, about 30 miles from Glasgow and 20 miles from Edinburgh. Its High Street runs along Linlithgow Loch, and the primary feature of the town is Linlithgow Palace , the birthplace of James V and Mary Queen of Scots. Linlithgow was the seat of the historic county it resides in, now called West L...