LOVE AND MARRIAGE

Around Culpeper, our other male ancestors fared better in their parings. Perhaps the luckiest was George Noble who married Mary Jane Alexander of the Virginia Alexanders, thank you – another Scot. Mary’s father had extensive land holdings on the shores of the Potomac, including the area that is now the Reagan International Airport. George apparently seized his 15 minutes of fortune and moved in with Mom and Dad Alexander, and the family tradition was carried into the mountains that the Nobles were – well – mountain “nobility.”

Other male ancestors were often called upon to service three wives during the courses of their existence. Their other wives III

presumably died in childbirth, and this exacerbated the shortage of women.There were rarely divorces (some wags would have it that life was so short, there was no time to get sick of each another) although in this record there is only one divorce recorded

– from spousal abuse.

On the other hand, the men died too; and there are women in this record who had two or three husbands.

Whether it was because of their isolated locations, the carry over of Irish and Scots clan structures, or simple necessity and familiarity, matches and reconfigurations after death or divorce led to a pattern of remarriages that appear from the record to “keep it in the family.” Sisters of one family married brothers from another, and if one brother from one family died, and a brother-in-Love and Marriage

law from the other family found himself a widower, then a match between the two survivors seemed inevitable - if not exactly made in heaven.

Too often, however, “clan structures” have been seen as creations and continuations of the primitive Celtic tribes, but most of the early ancestors seem to have been English in origin, and of the “noble” classes. It was difficult reprinting all the ancestors who were “Keepers of the Queen’s Keys” without wondering whether they were really so important in the Old Country, or if – like Most of the family trees I have worked with here have focused on the male founders who led their wives and children from the my great great grandfather Greenstein (whom family history reports was “Watchmaker to the Czar”) they were really low level ports and into the forests, then down the wagon roads and to areas of new settlement. It is common to see even carefully wrought servants who slept in the stables until they were used as needed – and then discarded.

family histories being full of details about the husband, and then to see: “Marriage: Elizabeth ?”

The history books tell us that marriage on the frontier was a casual and temporary affair – and generally more opportunistic. I In this book there was an equal effort to trace the female lineages as well because they were our grandmothers, Inez and I don’t know if I really believe this, although stories of men swapping young wives for a sturdy horse or mule abound in American have daughters, not sons, and I think gender identification will be useful to my daughters, and because – materially and not just folklore, and the apparent subordinate position of the Southern woman may have helped to grease the wheels of agreement to any spiritually – the women were at least as necessary in settling, defending, and bringing up families on the American frontier.

feasible match – and, by the way, to help create the “ideal” of the beautiful but emotionally delicate Southern Belle whose affec-I am struck by this small section from “A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett” concerning his joining the militia to fight tions could be won by any fellow with dash and valor, or just a suitable horse with which to abduct her.

in the Indian wars:

But this seemed to happen to most of our ancestors two or three generations removed from the family plantation: the how and

In a few days a general meeting of the militia was called for the purpose of raising volunteers; and when the day arrived

why of this “decline” has yet to be determined.

for that meeting, my wife, who had heard me say I meant to go to war, began to beg me not to turn out. She said she was a

It probably was true that marriages were more casual in terms of the formalities; the least that can be said was that ordained

stranger in the parts where we lived, had no connexions living near her, and that she and our little children would be left in a

ministers were rarely encountered the farther into the interior you went. This was different from in the North where a Congregational

lonesome and unhappy situation if I went away. It was mighty hard to go against such arguments as these; but my countrymen

church was the spiritual center of every New England village, and preachers fresh out of Yale or Harvard could be found by the

had been murdered, and I knew that the next thing would be, that the Indians would be scalping the women and children all

slew.

about there, if we didn’t put a stop to it. I reasoned the case with her as well as I could, and told her, that if every man would

In the rural South, some couples simply “jumped over the broom,” or the women were carried across a threshold, and waited–

wait till his wife got willing for him to go to war, there would be no fighting done, until we would all be killed in our own

sometimes forever – for the proper religious authorities to make their rounds. On the other hand, with the clan structure all around,

houses; that I was able to go as any man in the world; and that I believed it was a duty I owed to my country. Whether she was

when a promise was made, certainly the woman’s family would make certain the promises were fulfilled. It was never a lawless

satisfied with this reasoning or not, she did not tell me; but seeing I was bent on it, all she did was to cry a little, and turn about

society, despite the stereotypes; violent – certainly.

to her work. The truth is, my dander was up, and nothing but war could bring it right again.

As the 18th century progressed, the records refer to more and more “Indian marriages” - for the same men who were also in Old Dan’l did go off to war and he stayed away for over a year, except for short intervals: this was not the first, and certainly

“lawful” and proper English marriages to presumably lawful and proper English (or Welsh, or French, or German, of Scottish, or not the last time he would leave his wife and family for extended periods.

Irish) women. This led to future generations who were “part Cherokee,” or “related to Pocahontas) and to their descendants mak-It is very important to note that the women who came to Ganderbill, Lost Creek, Kentucky were strong, tough, and prolific, ing proud mention of their childrens’ high cheekbones and straight as an arrow hair to reference their Native American ancestry.

and often as competent in dealing with hardships as their men were, because he women in this “manly” culture, were responsible I haven’t decided yet whether there was one Cherokee who left a lot of descendants, or there were as many Cherokees as were for almost everything - from tending the garden to defending the families, by force, if necessary.

claimed to be “married in.” More on this phenomenon later, when we get around to genetics testing, but it is more than curious And they suffered.

that the birthplace for many ancestors was described simply as : Cherokee Nation.

From the outset, women were important to the settlement of the colonies. Many of our ancestors originally settled in

History says that people were reluctant to admit being called a “half breed” or a “mulatto,” but the record does not seem to Jamestown, which was notoriously short of them. In 1622, three years after both the blacks and our ancestor John Combs arrived, support this – at least when it comes to Native American heritage. Of course, with the rise of the Indian casinos in the last two King James sent “57 young maids” to Jamestown where most “were well married before the coming away of the ships.” These decades, especially in the Smoky Mountains, and the benefits that have accrued from proving Indian heritage, any prejudice there

“King’s Daughters” – and the men who snapped them up -had to settle for what was available; but as soon had these couples had might have been seems to have disappeared. Being part Cherokee has now become fashionable; even so, something like “Black settled down, the Indians went on a rampage in 1622 and slaughtered at least 400 – including another ancestor, John Rolfe, the Irish” might have been more expected – Italian, even (the Taliaferros of Jamestown were from Italy). But I don’t see the evidence.

husband of Pocahontas.

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