Here’s a very long document with a variety of information – nearly all sourced – for the Kimbroughs (and others) in Virginia and Tennessee primarily. It’s been compiled as a result of our search. Hope it’s helpful to other Kimbrough researchers!
Genealogy research
Yes, we’re still here!
Ok, I know we said we’d be back to you later…didn’t really mean a LOT later, but life intervened. We have just moved into a new residence and coupled with our travels genealogy did take a back seat. I’m sorry to say that we haven’t yet dismantled our brick wall. We believed we had isolated our search in Virginia but North Carolina (full of Kimbroughs) keeps popping up. We’ve not done much research there, either on site or long distance. So far we have gathered so much Kimbrough information it’s overwhelming! I will post some Bible pages.
These Bible pages are from the family of William Landon Kimbrough of Hadensville, Todd, Kentucky and show members including Landon’s grandfather Keith.
Meanwhile I’ve tried to do some work on my lines. Most of my forebears landed in America in the late 1800s so are a problem of another type – clearing the palate, so to speak. Eventually I’ll blog about that, too. Both Landon and I have lines that go back to pre-Revolutionary War and also have 19th century immigrants. Typical Americans.
Courthouses and Historical Societies
After our trip to Washington DC we spent a busy two days visiting the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society as well as their courthouse and a return to Louisa county and the courthouse there. Both courthouses had the records very available, which was nice, but I missed that wonderful woman from Logan County Genealogical Society who helped soooo much at that courthouse! Landon performed yeoman service in copying lots of very difficult to copy record pages as well as photographing lots of other items and documents. It was more difficult in Louisa as photographs weren’t allowed for some reason. No copies of indexes, either, which made it difficult to pull all of the items we wanted in the limited time we had. His family <that’s who we’re researching, after all> would be proud of his effort! Now we’re feeling like we have lots of information but no concrete ideas or trails to follow. We’ve decided to focus on the William Kimbroughs and see where that gets us. Taking time to sort and timeline some of the new information and review what we already have will be helpful, I trust.
During our time in Charlottesville at the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society we found a great deal on the Garth family, that is prominent there. The librarian, Margaret O’Bryant, was incredibly helpful and really knows the area! We keep running into various documents by Rosalie Edith Davis who wrote The Garth Family, a very comprehensive book. We will order one when we get home.
We moved off the Kimbrough theme a bit as we looked for more information about Richard Gaines and Thomas Garth in Albemarle County. Richard Gaines married Ann Garth, daughter of Thomas and they were the parents of Susan Gaines, wife of “our” Thomas Winston Kimbrough. Susan’s sister married Meredith Kimbrough, Thomas’ brother. Richard Gaines was a carpenter and did a lot of work for Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Garth served as Jefferson’s business manager and may have fulfilled some other offices for him while Jefferson was away from Monticello. We made a point to visit Monticello for that reason and have found several references to Garth and Gaines in the Jefferson papers and other historical documents. Helps history come alive!
Continuing to travel and gather information makes it difficult to post, but as we travel back to the west I hope to update both my information and this blog. We will stop in Salt Lake City, with an eye to clarifying some findings and perhaps gaining even more information, as we ran out of time at the Albemarle Courthouse.
Virginia is for genealogists!
28 May 2012
While sitting in the library in Hanover Courthouse, VA, week before last paging through books, a man came in to talk to the librarians and I overheard him say: “You ladies have been so helpful to me but I STILL can’t find my 6th great-grandfather William Kimbrough in the cemetery!” <WHAT?!!> Needless to say, I struck up a conversation with this fellow and we exchanged information. Not sure if there is a connection, but what a coincidence…anybody read the book Psychic Roots? Hanover County has a large number of Kimbroughs, as does its neighbor, Louisa. Both were the same county in early history so keeping track of dates and locations is important.
We spent time with Elaine Taylor, Museum Director of the Sargent Museum and Jim Artz, Mayor of Louisa, in the Louisa County Historical Society http://www.louisacountyhistoricalsociety.org/ – a great place with very helpful people and lots of resources – and found some interesting will information.
Thanks to Elaine we found evidence that William Kimbrough (ca 1765 – ca 1851) of Louisa freed all of his slaves upon his death and decreed in his will that they were transported to non-slave states. An unusual act in these times, I imagine. I believe that this is the same William who is shown in the 1850 Louisa County census as living with Celia Cosby, a mulatto woman and her child. He is 85 at the time of the census. There are numerous Kimbroughs and Winstons in Louisa County and we plan a trip to the courthouse and the public library as soon as we can manage. This likely means a return to VA after we visit Washington, DC.
Other than ruling out a number of folks and getting a bit more information, the trip to the Library of Virginia was inconclusive. I did find out about some databases they have online that I can access with my LVA library card.
So far, I’m feeling frustrated. Wish me luck!
Kentucky and Tennessee
The last few days have been quite busy! We have been staying in Clarksville, TN, county seat of Montgomery County. Todd, Christian and Logan counties in Kentucky are very close to Clarksville and the library has a lot of resources for those counties. I’ve now crossed the state line about 10 times and have researched in all the above mentioned except Christian- oh, wait a minute, I think I did look at a couple of Christian county books.
I am no closer to the ultimate goal of finding Thomas Winston Kimbrough’s parents, as far as I can see at the moment, but have found some information that helps to fill out the tree and hopefully additional information and resources for down line relatives.
Soon after we arrived we found that my husband’s last surviving aunt had suffered a major auto accident earlier this week and is in the hospital with a fair prognosis. Landon went to see her at the hospital and visited with his cousin, John, who is the person that maintains the old family cemetery in Hadensville. He and his wife were very helpful when the efforts to restore and document the cemetery took place a few years ago. Landon’s late father Robert, and his cousin Ben Kimbrough of Clarksville financed the restoration. It’s a great gift to the descendants of Thomas Winston and Susan Gaines Kimbrough.
Speaking of cemeteries, one of the items I wanted to find was an obituary and burial place for Parthenia Kimbrough Mimms, TW and Susan’s firstborn. I wasn’t able to do that yet, but found an immense amount of Mimms information which also includes a bit about the Gaines and Garth connections. There is a book about their grandson, Gaines Meredith Mimms. Perhaps the most fun was finding some vertical files in the Elkton, Ky library that contained a number of genealogists’ correspondence regarding these families. I even found some that I believe is from Jeanette <now> Humphries about T. Gaines Kimbrough. Wondering if all 6 of his children have been accounted for?
A great resource that I found thanks to a couple of librarians was the Logan County Archives that are maintained by the Logan County Genealogical Society.
http://www.logangenealogy.com/
These women were awesome, especially Lee and Judy! Lee took me through to the court offices with all the deed books – helped me find the deeds and then copied them for me! Wow! I now have a number of deeds that are connected with various Kimbroughs during the 1800s and also a lawsuit where W.L. Kimbrough sues a Thomas R. Kimbrough over a land transaction. I believe that Thomas R. is the same “Tom Bob” who is the son of Meredith and Mildred Kimbrough – W.L.’s nephew. I’ll be more forthcoming about this when I have time to read the whole file and confirm the relationships.
Next stop: Virginia
Furthering the search
For a number of years we have been working on our brick wall in the Kimbrough line. Who is the father of Thomas Winston Kimbrough – born 1796 in Virginia, died 1868 in Kentucky. This has been a longstanding family mystery and better genealogists than I have tried to solve the puzzle. I have hope ONLY because I have access to so many more resources now, thanks to the internet and the fact that we can and will travel to Virginia this spring.
In preparation for this trip I have begun to search every repository I can find: Library of Virginia, FHL, ancestry, etc. etc. to try to make some inroads and develop a hypothesis or two about who, when and where. I have the when and a couple ideas about where. It’s frustrating to run into records gaps – there are many – from colonial times, but there are also a lot of folks who have documented various records. It’s tempting to believe many of the “trees” that I have reviewed, but I have found so much misinformation that I’m skeptical. When I solve this I want my evidence to be as solid as possible. I’m learning a lot as I work this problem and am grateful to so many for their time and help.
As a “give back” I plan to post all of the research on www.kimbroughgenealogy.com – whether it applies to this particular family or not. I’ve already amassed scores of references to many Kimbroughs, Kembros, Kimbros, and a few other surnames that may be of help to others. The copies of the Kimbro-Kimbrough Quarterlies that we have will be posted there. Stay tuned if you’re interested. I’ll post on our trip, beginning in May, and share what I’m learning.
Kimbrough Genealogy 