Virginia

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The Kimbrough Brothers*

“ It takes two men to make one brother.”    – Israel Zangwill

One of the first items of information that we found on the Kimbroughs of Todd County, Kentucky was the will of Meredith Kimbrough, 1794 – 1831. Meredith and his wife, Sarah “Sally” Garth Gaines were married in 1817 in Albemarle County, Virginia soon after the marriage of Thomas Winston Kimbrough and Sally’s sister Susan Garth Gaines. They had no children that survived and Meredith is buried in the Kimbrough Family Cemetery in Hadensville.

Meredith’s will contained some interesting clues to the family of origin of T.W.K., our oldest known ancestor to date.

will crop

Transcription:  <As to my worldly substance I will and positively ordain that all my just debts be paid it is my desire that my beloved wife, Sally Kimbrough, be and remain in quit and peaseble (sic) possession of the whole of my estate personal and real after the pament (sic) of my just debts for her > benefit during her mortal life or widowhood at the death of my wife I will to my brother’s children out of my estate as follows:

To Meredith G. Kimbrough, son of Thos. W. Kimbrough five hundred dollars.

To William L. Kimbrough, son as aforesaid one hundred dollars

To Meredith Kimbrough son of William Kimbrough one hundred dollars

To James Kimbrough, son of Nelson Kimbrough, one hundred dollars

To Thomas Kimbrough, son of James Kimbrough, one hundred dollars

I will that the balance of my estate be equally divided among by Brother Thos. W. Kimbrough’s children. I appoint my brother Thos. W. Kimbrough, my executor and will that what I have left to my Brother’s children remain in the hands of my executor until they become of Lawful age.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal the 25th day of June 1831.

Signed: Meredith D. Kimbrough

<Todd County, KY, Will Book C, pages 182 & 183>

So, this tells us that at the time of the writing of this will, Thomas had at least 4 brothers, two sons, and  three nephews. Brothers generally means sons of the same mother or father or both, but to complicate matters, can mean a close associate. We are going on the assumption that these named brothers are blood relations as we have so few clues.

Meredith Kimbrough Tombstone
Meredith Kimbrough Tombstone sited in the Kimbrough Family Cemetery in Hadensville, Kentucky

Meredith appears to have been quite close to Thomas – they married sisters and Thomas and Susan sold property in Virginia to Meredith for $1. It is believed that Meredith and Sally moved to Kentucky to be near Thomas and Susan, perhaps because he knew he was dying. Sally remarried in 1836 to Anderson Miller. *This post is republished due to computer kerfuffles

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Ancestor Charts

Since it has been a long while since I posted, I thought a quick ancestor summary could be helpful. Here’s a fan chart of Bob (Robert Landon Kimbrough)’s ancestors, in hopes of catching a cousin or two. We continue to research in the background, but despite retirement it always seems we’ve just not quite solved “that” mystery – whatever it might be. rlk-fan

In this blog we have left out Bob’s wife’s family: an equally colorful group of characters soon to be added: a group of immigrant Scandinavians, Danes, and Germans. Despite the appearance of a lack of facts, we have spent nearly as much time on this crew as on the Kimbroughs. With one look at the surnames, however, you will understand some of our problem. Sylvanne’s grandparents were nearly all immigrants. The fortunate part of this family is that they settled in Oregon and Washington, closer to us than Kentucky or Virginia so easier to research. Sadly, the frontier nature of the area has created some record gaps. We’ll just keep looking and create some posts about them as well.

sylvanne-fan-chart

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Bibles and Brick Walls

Does every genealogist have a serious brick wall? One they’ve worked on for years? In case you’ve forgotten, Thomas Winston Kimbrough was born according to a source or two, in Louisa County Virginia in 1796. Born to whom is the unanswered question! He married and subsequently moved to western Kentucky around 1819 where he lived until his death in 1868. In our search for T. W. K.’s parents we have become familiar with a wealth of Kimbrough information.  Through investigating multiple Kimbrough families and trying to reconstruct information from burned counties we have come across large number of descendants. We’re hoping by posting information to help others climb over their walls, someone may have the footholds for ours.

The family of Thomas Winston was large and members lived in several Kentucky counties and some in Tennessee. One of the items is the following Bible Record that was found on PERSI. I carefully reviewed the copies of pages we received and transcribed them, as you will see. If you’d like to have copies of the originals I worked with I’m happy to email them to you – they’re too ugly to post.

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Transcription of copies of Kimbrough Bible 1820

This Bible was undoubtedly from the family of Meridith Garth and Mildred Ann Maria Terry Kimbrough. Meridith was the oldest son of Thomas and is well documented in a variety of ways. No one mentions his grandparents, however.

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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.

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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!

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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.