Leora McMinns' Ancestry

Genealogy Family Trees: Bandy , Blankenship ,Conner , Etherton ,Hix , Hull , Hutchings , McMinn , Rice , Stockstill,
Locations: Illinois, Tennessee, South and North Carolina, Alabama, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia

The ancestry of my mother Leora Alice McMinn Williams includes the genealogy family trees of her four grandparents: McMinn, Blankenship, Rice, and Etherton. Read her biography and listen to some of her wonderful stories.

Tidewater Virginia and Maryland

If New England was the cradle of the first settlement of the northern US, the tidewaiter of Virginia and Maryland was the cradle of the first settlement of the southern US. Unlike many areas along both of our coasts, much of the first major settlement in the tidewater area was further inland due to the rivers and waterways and not right along the water. I have ancestors of each of my 4 maternal great-grandparents that obtained land grants south of Richmond Virginia along the James River. Although I have grants scattered in other counties in Virginia and Maryland, a majority are along hte James River in todat's Henrico and Chesterfield counties Virginia..

The following map was created using the program DeedMapper (available for purchase). The land grant "Patent" abstracts were placed by Tom Bannister for all the grants in the specified county and are also available from DeedMapper for free for non-commercial use. They are all land grants ( "Patent") which were obtained by my ancestors from a sovereign entity and not land they purchased from orfinary people. Tey eventually purchased and sold lots of tracts of land beyoond this. It starts with Christopher Branch and his wife who arrived in Virginia in 1620 a few months before the Mayflower landed in Plymouth. The story of these grants is the story of indentured servants. The land was mainly obtained as a reward for paying passage for people coming from England. The government wanted settlers. But I assumed that these indentured servants would be basically poor the rest of their life. Not true. Many of the indentured servants after they worked off their passage, saved money to pay passage for others and obtained land for that. Then as the land got claimed and the land deteriated, they moved to the Peidmont area and spread to North Carolina, Tennesee, and many other states throughtout the south. Details on the families and the movement of their generations are found in the 4 family web pages - one for each of my four great-grantparents Blankenship Tree | Etherton Tree | McMinn Tree | Rice Tree

Henrico VA