David, May 14, 1996.
My Blackwell line begins with a Rev. John Blackwell who first turns up (to my knowledge) in Surry County, NC about 1775. It appears that he was working for a Tyree Glenn, who had lived in Goochland County, VA in 1763. (note: Van and his 6th? cousin Bill are now in email contact, DCB ed.)
John was born circa 1754, and married a Glenn daughter, Susan, circa 1775.
In 1777 John Blackwell was appointed guardian of Susan's 4 younger siblings, after Tyree Glenn died. In 1785 John and Susan bought property in what was then Rutherford County, NC (now Polk County), and raised a family of 13 children. They were charter members of the Green Creek Baptist Church, which John served as minister for may years.
A flurry of land sales around 1833-34 seems to indicate that John and Susan left Rutherford County about that time to live with their son, Thomas, in Walker County, GA. He died circa 1840.
I have a (hopefully) complete list of their children, but little birth and death information, except for my own great-great grandfather, Jeremiah Glenn Blackwell. I have pretty good information about the descendants of Jeremiah Glenn Blackwell down through my line, with some birth-death data missing.
I am a very amateur genealogist, but I do have a computer program (Brother's Keeper), and have input what I know about the Blackwell clan down through my line. I will be glad to send you what I have in printed form, or attempt to put the data in a form that you can use, and send it to you on a disk.
I very much appreciate what you are doing. I had about given up ever learning who John's parents were. The Civil War caused much destruction of courthouse records in Virginia, where I suspect John was born. Maybe, with many other Blackwell descendants looking at the data, there is a chance that someone will have the key. Thanks for all the effort!
(note: Van and his 6th? cousin Bill are now in email contact, DCB ed.May 14,1996)
William Allen (Bill) Blackwell blackwel@vt.edu
403 Lucas Drive
Blacksburg, VA 24060-3622
540-552-4043
At 05:07 PM 5/15/96 EDT, you wrote:
>Hello Bill,
>I've forwarded your email to Robert V. "Van" Blackwell who is more
>knowledgeable on VA, NC, SC, GA Blackwells, than I. His email is:
>71460.3606@compuserve.com .......Dave, ... etc.
------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for the quick reply! My ancestor, Jeremiah Glenn Blackwell, was indeed born in 1803, so "Van" Blackwell is a distant cousin of mine. I sent him a short note to make contact, and I will scan his information on your homepage the next time I do some web browsing.
Brother's Keeper is a shareware program, but I have found it to be pretty well done. I would be glad to send you a copy of the program and my data files, if that would be useful. The data files are not in ASCI format, so there may be a problem in attaching them to an e-mail message. Anyhow, I don't see how they could make any sense without the program. What I probably need to do is fix up an ASCI document that contains the essential information and send that to you by e-mail - if that would be most convenient for you. By the way, there is now a W95 version of Brother's Keeper, but it apparently does not yet have all the capability of the DOS version. I am using an IBM-compatible computer and a Netscape browser.
I'll be in touch. Bill Blackwell
I have downloaded your "The Blackwell Ancestors of Robert Van Blackwell," and printed out a hard copy. I was very pleased to see five generations revealed prior to my great-great-great grandfather, Rev. John Blackwell (VI a.), who was the first one of my line that I had been able to trace beyond doubt.
Your data for Rev. John's family agrees with mine, and most of mine was obtained from handwritten notes on two sheets of paper, folded and left in the old family bible by my grandfather, Dr. William Montezuma Blackwell in Wood Co., Texas.
Some years ago I read through "THE OLD FREE STATE: A History of Lunenburg County and Southside Virginia," (by Landon C. Bell) looking for a link between Rev. John and the Blackwells of that area, but I never found it. I visited the courthouses of Surry Co. and Polk Co., NC, and copied all the records that seemed pertinent. I also visited the libraries of the College of William and Mary, the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech, and the Virginia State Library. It appeared very likely that John and Joel (and perhaps James) were brothers, but I was never completely sure. When I saw your material, it certainly seemed reasonable that James (V) was the father of James, John and Joel. I had a strong hunch that they came through Lunenburg County, VA. I don't remember that I ever conjectured that either David or Zachariah were likely brothers of the others.
Apparently, you found the link that eluded me. I am curious about how you became convinced that Rev. John was the son of James (V), and brother of James, David, Zachariah and Joel. To me it is almost too good to be true. If it's only back one generation, it's a major breakthrough!
I note that you say that James (V) is "probably" a son of James Glenn Blackwell (IV). What is the link that convinced you that this is more than a "reasonable" conjecture? I am pulling for it to be true, but I can't help but be skeptical.
I have my family data back to Rev. John fixed up with html tags, so it reads o.k. with my Netscape web browser. I know that David Blackwell is out of web editing for the summer, but I will ship it to him anyhow, in hopes he does read his e-mail during his Maine sojourn. (I work full time and am in Maine only on weekends, I've been working on these web pages at home on weekends, thus little will be done during the summer. DCB ed.)
Best wishes. This Blackwell genealogy web site is going to be fun!
-- Bill
P.S. I now also have read your commissioned report on Robert Blackwell.