McCarroll-McKibben

Someone (LM) on Ancestry.com contacted me with information on Margaret McCarroll, my g-g-g-g grandmother. We had thought for many years that her maiden name was Carroll, but another cousin(LL) had information it was really McCarroll or McCarrell. Here is what LM wrote me:

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Jaclyn: I began to research my McCarroll ancestry back in the seventies, knowing only that my GGGrandfather John McCarroll came to Louisiana in the early 1800s from Tennessee and in my search I exchange letters with one Margaret McCarroll-McCarrell of McCarrell Lane Rt. 3, Knoxville Tennessee. She wrote the following:

Finding John Graham's Land 1797

One of my goals this week was to find where John Graham's Spanish Land Grant was. I found the map above at the Genealogical Society with the key below. (Double click to enlarge) His is that block in green across from the island. The other two which I've highlighted belong to the Quicks and Carricos who were friends who witnessed his son's probate. The Missouri River is at the top and the Mississippi to the side.
I was initially surprised that it was on the Mississippi River because I knew from other documents that he lived in the Cold Water/ Spanish Lake area which I associate with the Missouri River. I looked at that island in the water trying to find it on a map, but realized there had been a lot of floods and a major earthquake since John Graham's land grant.

Map shows Lewis and Clark's route going west and coming home. The blue river is today's river bed compared to what they witnessed in white.

If you'll look directly across from Spanish Lake, you'll see that island in the OLD riverbed (white) so that told me the island did not exist today.

Grahams in early St. Louis

Burr-Hamilton Duel

So, how many John Grahams could have lived in St. Louis during the late 1700's and early 1800's? Apparently more than I expected. There were 925 inhabitants in St. Louis in 1798----most of them were French. I'd estimate only about 150 were Americans or "Bostons" as they were called. To see how the communities of Carondelet and Florissant compared, click here. Remember most of these people were French.

And, yet, there seemed to be more Grahams in St. Louis than probably any other Anglo name and a lot of them were associated with duels.

There was James A. Graham---a bright lawyer from Pennsylvania who died in 1811. According to Fred O Wyant in his article "Dueling Masons":

John Graham's Spanish Land Grant

So, if John Graham was in Missouri in 1805 to witness a burial, I wondered how early he could have been there. In Historical Records of St. Ferdinand (p.109) it stated that April 1803 John Graham attended the sale of Hezekiah Land (deceased) property along with Vincent and Denis Carrico. On 13 Sep. 1808 he gave testimony (p. 36):

"John Graham sworn says that Ezekial Land made an improvement on the place claimed in 1797 and began to build a grist mill and saw mill in 1798, cleared a field, raised corn, and finished his mills; that said land has been inhabited and cultivated ever since."

That land in dispute was at Coldwater Creek and Bellefontaine near Fort Bellefontaine.

Col. George Alderson's Family History

In 1860, Col. George Alderson wrote his family history. It was later published in the newspaper and re-typed. I believe the underlined words and names were misspelled, and Allie Millard (a notary public) typed it corrected the mistakes in 1935. Double click on each page to enlarge---use the back arrow to come back. This blog is longer than usual because there didn't seem to be a good place to break the pages.

Early Morgan history in Western Virginia

(Double click above to see where Wolf Pen is)

If you need a more detailed family tree, click here or scroll down the page.

From the Reference Book of Wyoming County p. 422 "the numerous families of Morgan in Wyoming, McDowell and Logan Counties are direct descendants of Abraham Morgan, born in Wales, who married Elizabeth Ealy before he emigrated to Virginia before 1775, landing at Old Point Comfort. They settled in Bedford County, Virginia, where they reared their family, of whom we have the names Jonathan, David, Samuel, Thomas, Polly and Betsey. . .Thomas married Rachel Blankenship in Tazewell County, Virginia, and lived for a short time in Bluestone. About 1804, he settled on Indian Creek. . .he is the progenitor of all of the Morgans in Wyoming County."

"Old Point Comfort" Wikipedia