Carolina Backcountry Family Studies

The Project

After several years of research, the results of this project have begun to take form as books. A list of titles follows this description of process and scope.

During the researching, I have applied the perspectives and methodologies of textual studies and library science to records from ancestry.com and Find-a-Grave and other sources.

The prime research territories are the Aiken County region of South Carolina, the Stanly County region of North Carolina, and a swath across Ohio-Indiana. Each of these regions has a different feel, even though two of them are only about 150 miles apart.

Over time, my strategy has developed into working comprehensively at the level of one family – one particular set of siblings. The parents and offspring of the siblings are treated at a similar level of detail. Where possible, parents of parents are outlined. The hundreds of grandchildren of a sibling set usually receive mention only (name / sex / year of birth).

This approach reflects reaction against verticalizers who seem to say, "How far back can I run, and how fast can I do that?" Not to mention reaction against the inclinations to propriety that too often try to disappear certain family members.

The core of the research result is a structured but extensible record that synthesizes the discovered information. To my way of thinking, this undertaking amounts more to local-level social history than to genealogy as such. One set of siblings is put into context. When something interesting comes into the pattern, the stories are sketched.

Matters that receive systematic attention include employment, education, extended family household, interstate move, marriage, offspring, loss of spouse, marriage failure, large spouse age spread, early age at marriage, close-relative marriage, twins, long life, death in childbearing, early death, military and legal involvements, and cemeteries.

I anticipate issuing a series of "family studies" that could run to a few dozen volumes. Most of these studies will interlink.

Titles in the Series

Note: Span of years is range of sibling births

Published

2021
Patterns in the Culture of the John Johnson & Margaret Howell Family of Aiken County South Carolina
1822-1851   91 pages

Eighty-four surnames:
Altman  •  Asbill  •  Bates  •  Baughman  •  Bell  •  Bomar  •  Bonnett  •  Bristow  •  Brown  •  Burgess  •  Burkhalter  •  Busbee  •  Cofer  •  Colburn  •  Cook  •  Corbitt  •  Courtney  •  Dious  •  East  •  Fanning  •  Foley  •  Forsyth  •  Fulmer  •  Garvin  •  Goss  •  Grandy  •  Gunter  •  Haynes  •  Herron  •  Hodges  •  Howell  •  Huckabee  •  Hutto  •  Istre  •  Johnson  •  Jones  •  Joyner  •  Keel  •  Koenber  •  Liberty  •  Livingston  •  McGill  •  McLain  •  Mabus  •  Millsap  •  Mitchell  •  Mundy  •  Ott  •  Page  •  Peart  •  Piper  •  Poole  •  Porter  •  Posey  •  Randall  •  Ready  •  Redd  •  Reynolds  •  Robison  •  Romero  •  Rorie  •  Sadler  •  Scott  •  Seigler  •  Sharp  •  Shellhouse  •  Simpson  •  Spradley  •  Stone  •  Toney  •  Toole  •  Turner  •  Tyler  •  Waddell  •  Wade  •  Webb  •  William  •  Williams  •  Williamson  •  Windsor  •  Wittel  •  Wood  •  Woodward  •  Young

2021
Patterns in the Culture of the Carson Howell & Nancy Ellen Cook Family of Aiken County South Carolina
1804-1820   79 pages

Thirty-six surnames:
Able  •  Altman  •  Amaker  •  Brogden  •  Cackroft  •  Cofer  •  Cook  •  Courtney  •  Creed  •  Fox  •  Gantt  •  Garvin  •  Goss  •  Howell  •  Huckabee  •  Hutto  •  Jeffcoat  •  Jenkins  •  Johnson  •  Keel  •  Kennedy  •  Koon  •  Livingston  •  Mixon  •  Rawls  •  Ready  •  Rorie  •  Scott  •  Seigler  •  Smyly  •  Steadman  •  Toney  •  Whitney  •  Williams  •  Williamson  •  Woodward

Selected Reading List

Bruce E Stewart
Redemption from tyranny : Herman Husband's American revolution
Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2020
xii, 227 pages

Kenneth E Lewis
The Carolina Backcountry venture: tradition, capital, and circumstance in the development of Camden and the Wateree Valley, 1740-1810
Columbia : University of South Carolina Press, 2017
456 pages

Carole Watterson Troxler
Farming dissenters : the Regulator movement in Piedmont North Carolina
Raleigh, N.C. : Office of Archives and History, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 2011
xiii, 221 pages

Peter N Moore
World of toil and strife : community transformation in backcountry South Carolina, 1750-1805
Columbia : University of South Carolina Press, 2007
xii, 175 pages

Marjoleine Kars
Breaking loose together : the Regulator Rebellion in pre-revolutionary North Carolina
Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2002
x, 286 pages

George Lloyd Johnson
The frontier in the colonial South : South Carolina backcountry, 1736-1800
Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 1997
XVI-200 pages

Charles Woodmason, approximately 1720-approximately 1776
The Carolina Backcountry on the eve of the Revolution : the Journal and other writings of Charles Woodmason, Anglican itinerant
Chapel Hill : published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Va., by the University of North Carolina Press, 1953
xxxix, 305 pages

For contact information see Joseph Jones

Created November 2021
 
Last updated 26 November 2021
 
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