DRAMATIS PERSONAE

The Nobles were of Scots descent: Thomas Noble was born in New Mill, Banffshire, Scotland, in 1704, and studied three years David’s story is an interesting one for many reasons: not the least because he is one of the ancestors who is claimed to be at a seminary in Aberdeen. He emigrated to Maryland and became a tobacco planter in Prince Georges County (as did so many of noble birth, and one of the few who is known to have been born in Ireland, and also that he also lived first, in Culpepper, VA, other Scots) – across the Potomac from Mount Vernon, Lawrence Washington’s home. He returned to Scotland and married Mollie where so many of our ancestors seemed to tarry for a while. He also took time out to serve with Washington at Valley Forge before Gilbert, and brought her back to Maryland, then moved to Virginia to be close to her family, and had four children: George, Nancy, he moved on to Tennessee and finally into Kentucky, where reported for for his last great muster before the Grim Reaper.

Elizabeth, and Thomas Jr, (apparently raising them near the Neaces and the Washingtons on the Old Rappahanock).

Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky share common borders. Prior to 1800, Virginia included Kentucky, and Thomas Sr. died in 1762 at age 58 in Frederick County, VA.Thomas’s son George married Mary Anne Alexander, the daugh-North Carolina included Tennessee. The population of the early colonies was prohibited from settling west of the Appalachians by ter of Gerald Alexander and Mary Dent. Mary was said to be of the same Scots Alexander family which donated the land that the Proclamation of 1763; it was only after the Treaty of Paris in 1783 (which ended the Revolution and ceded Trans-Appalachia was to become Alexandria, Virginia. The couple inherited “Long Marsh,” in Frederick County, Virginia, a large estate which had to the United States) that settlers from the original colonies were officially allowed to settle beyond the mountains. Almost belonged to the Alexanders. Frederick County is the northernmost county in Virginia.

immediately, pioneers flooded through the gaps and river valleys to settle what would become two new states (Kentucky, 1790; The Dents and the Alexanders were very important families; and they married into other important families, who all seem to Tennessee, 1796).

have ended up in Culpeper, VA.George and Mary Anne had five children, one of whom was named John L.W. Noble – who may And so it was that ancestor William Campbell (b. 1765 in North Carolina, son of John Patrick Campbell, born in Ireland in have been named after George Washington’s brother Lawrence Washington. This would be consistent with the Noble family nam-1730) could easily move across the mountains after marrying the daughter of Daniel Boone’s sister, Mary Polly Boone, and die in ing tradition of memorializing the Washington family (There were to be many George Washington (and G.W.) Nobles. Another Kentucky in 1820, age 55; and so it was that Peter McIntosh, born in Scotland, could move to North Carolina to Kentucky. And son was George Noble Jr.

so it was that Nathan Noble, who was born in Culpepper County, Virginia in 1761, married Virginia “Jane” Neace about 1796 in The counties of colonial days may still have the same name as those that remain in existence, but they are much smaller now; or around Culpeper, and also relocate to Kentucky where he lived till age 99 when he died in Breathitt Co. KY in 1858. And so it someone living in Frederick County then might later be living in a county called by another name. People moved around a lot was that our ancestor Edmund Fox Collinsworth, son of the English nobleman who had settled in Ireland, could have been born in those days when farmlands were exhausted after just a few years of tillage, though perhaps not as often as the place names of in Culpepper, VA. in 1750, lived in Tennessee, and died in Kentucky, sometime after 1830.

their residences may appear to indicate.

Move to Kentucky and die there.

In 1748 16 year old George Washington, who was raised near the Nobles between the Potomac and the Rappahannock, was

There were one million American colonists in 1750 to welcome the Nobles to Maryland, and two million by the time the last sent by Lord Fairfax on a surveying expedition into the Shenandoah Valley. James Clell Neace believes that he took George Noble of Inez’s ancestors – William Campbell – took up residence in the Carolinas during the 1770s – in time for our first civil war: Sr. along with him, as well as some Neaces, whom he may have met along the trail. (Actually, so many of our ancestors claim to aka, the American Revolution. As Campbell appears to have been of just a few ancestors to have come from the Carolinas, he have gone with George on his surveying expedition, that his exploration party must have consisted of hundreds – and many of their becomes the prime candidate for confirming another family oral tradition, told to me in 1971 by Rob Fugate, “family historian” of descendants trace their families to George Washingtons’ ancestors) History records that Washington surveyed the future town of Ganderbill Branch, Breathitt County, KY. Rob said the first Fugate ancestor he knew of was “Scottish” and came to the Carolinas, Culpepper, part of what was soon to become Fairfax County. This would be a fascinating story in its own right, as the Nobles had where he led a line of immigrants onto the shore, and stepped right into a bee’s nest. I asked Rob if that was all he knew about the already intermarried with Neaces, and would soon be related to the Washingtons, and his descendants would eventually be related first ancestor, and he added, “And the bees got all over him” - and that was the end of that.

to the Randolphs, the Harrisons, the Rolfe’s, Pocahontas, and much of the rest of the First Families of Virginia.

In the game of “telephone” that can operate in one family over centuries, we can see that Rob probably got some of this right: George Noble eventually settled around Culpeper – as did so many of our other ancestors – and it was in Culpeper where but the ancestor was probably a Campbell and not a Fugate – or maybe a McIntosh. Even so, it is the kind of historical remnant he most probably met his wife, Virginia “Jane” Neace, one of the “Deutch” originally from Pennsylvania. (Note: Even at this that rings true through the ages.

early time the grandmother of Virginia “Jane” Neace was a full blooded Cherokee named Mary Plunkett.)The Scots followed By the time the Fugates, the Neaces, the Nobles, the Campbells, the Collinsworths, and the McIntosh’s and the descen-the English out of Great Britain, and by the early 18th century, and were heading for the colonies for the usual reasons and also dants of all their wives’ kinfolk made their removes into Kentucky, the population of the United States had increased to five in response to other incentives: the Jacobite Uprising of 1725, the Clearances that resulted, and the failure of the Highlanders to million – less than one percent of the U.S. population today. Even at this early point in our American heritage, we can see win at the Battle of Culloden in 1746.

that our ancestors were drawn from at least six nationalities: Irish, Welsh, French, English, Scottish, German, and American Whether by design or de roll of de dice, the Scots (and Scots-Irish, an American term of reference) served as “buffers” on the Indian. There were also Danish, Italians, and Vikings – and maybe ancient Hebrews or Portuguese, as we shall see.We also see frontier between English settlement along the coast and the Indians of the interior. And whether by nature or nurture, the Scots that – and this is supported by the information that follows – that, with the exception of some exceptions, there were five original and the Scots-Irish became known as fierce Indian fighters and were gladly used by the established English colonists as “canaries points of entry:

in the mines” - an early warning system against “Indian depredations” along the frontier.

1) Philadelphia

It used to be said that if you were a suburban Philadelphian and you saw the pioneer families fleeing past your house in 2) The Potomac River

the direction of the City, you should get the picture that the Indians were on the warpath, and you should follow them as soon 3) St. Mary’s City, Maryland

as possible.The forced emigration of the Scots was continued right up until the American Revolution, when our Peter McIntosh 4) Jamestown

(born near Glascow in 1747) set out from Greenock, Scotland on the good ship Monima, bound for North Carolina (or Georgia 5) The Upper Chesapeake (Baltimore)

– debated), and to be bound by indenture to William Turner (his passage was paid by Turner with 100 pounds of tobacco), and eventually to be bound in marriage to the Boss’s Daughter, Margaret Turner, daughter of William Turner. One of their children, All of this happened within the first 150 years of settlement. The next 150 years of the family’s history would toss other Tabitha McIntosh (b. 1797), married Henley Fugate, and they were early settlers of Eastern Kentucky.

ethnicities into our American stew.

So it was that just before the American Revolution, in 1760, David Edward Collinsworth (b. 1720, Ireland, d. 1785 Age 65) emigrated to America. He was identified as an “English nobleman,” which would not be contradicted by his birth in Ireland – but would more likely make him considered one of the “Scotch-Irish” (the American label again) who arrived with a great many others just before immigration shut down with the outbreak of the Revolution.

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