Pedigree Paths to Virginia

It would seem reasonable to assume, given a long-standing southern family, that roots would eventually reach back to Virginia. In several cases in my family tree, that does, indeed, prove true. While my Florida McClellans seem to be stuck in Georgia, and my Tisons reach back no farther than North Carolina, almost all the rest of my maternal grandmother's roots do find their way back to Virginia. We'll start today to take a bird's eye view of that cast of Virginian ancestors.

Since we've lately been examining the line of the Broyles family, that is as good a place to start as any. Ozey Broyles, father of the heart-throb Robert Broyles pined over in that book I've been reading, A Faithful Heart, descended from a line of Broyles men who originally settled in Virginia. Ozey's father left Culpeper, Virginia, to settle in South Carolina.

Ozey Broyles' wife, too, came from a line of Virginians. The former Sarah Taliaferro descended from a line of numerous Taliaferro men, who settled in various counties, all within Virginia. And Sarah's father's brother, Warren Taliaferro, was ancestor to another of my family's Virginian lines, linking me to yet more Virginia surnames: Gilmer, Lewis, and Meriwether. Even Thomas Firth Rainey, the man who married Warren Taliaferro's daughter—and then died before his own daughter (my direct ancestor, the orphan who married Ozey Broyles' son Thomas) was old enough to show up in a census record in the same household—hailed from Virginia.

That is just on my maternal grandmother's side. As for my maternal grandfather, a southern man himself, he could claim Virginia roots, as well. It's those lines, in fact, that have me stumped—my main impetus for signing up for the Virginia research course at SLIG 2020. Those messy Virginia ties, we'll review tomorrow.