A Trip to Madison County

I must apologize for my long absence this summer from my blog. I was given the wrong dosage of medicine from the local pharmacy for my thyroid, and I was basically suffering from an extreme case of hypothyroidism all summer long. I am happy to report, though, that the proper dosage has finally kicked my levels back up to normal. I should be posting on a more regular basis and getting back to posting on Jeremiah Crews' family.

This week, I am going to share a post from cousin Mary LaRue. She went to Descendant Weekend at Ft. Boonesborough, Kentucky this past summer. Many of you who follow this blog are descendants of David Crews and Annie Magee. I would like to thank Mary for sharing her trip and pics with us, and I need to apologize for being so long in getting her words put up here.

Recently, I had the chance to travel to the Richmond, Kentucky area in Madison County, Kentucky, home to David Crews and Annie (nee McGee) Crews, my Maternal 6^th Great Grandparents. Their home still stands, although it is completely enveloped by the present-day house shown here.

No part of their original house can be seen from the outside, but the land they lived on is still green and shady with large trees, the way I imagine it must have been when they lived there. Their daughter Mary, and her husband Abraham Newland, my 5^th Great Grandparents, are buried just a few miles down the road from David and Annie’s home site, on land David granted to them. David, and presumably Annie, were originally buried at the home site, but David’s granddaughter, China, had David moved into the Richmond Cemetery in the 1930s.  A photograph of his grave is below, showing the old slab China had made, and the beautiful new marker put up by some of David’s descendants a few years ago. If you go to visit the grave, it is near the front entrance, close to the office. As far as I know, Annie was left behind when David was moved, so she is still a part of their home site, although the location of her grave is unknown to us now.
 

I was also able to visit both the original site and the current reproduction site of Fort Boonesborough, near Richmond. David and Annie, Mary and Abraham, and my other set of 6^th Great Grandparents, William and Sarah (nee Callaway) Hoy, were some of the first pioneers at Boonesborough, and they are all  listed on the monument just outside the reproduction fort.
 

The original fort is long gone, but the site was marked by the D.A.R. 99 years ago with a monument. As you can see from the photograph below, David Crews’ name is inscribed upon the monument that sits inside the area which was once enclosed by the original fort. This site was also where the first Christian church service in Kentucky was held, and also where the first Legislative Session ever held in Kentucky occurred.
 

The reproduction fort is a wonderful place to visit, and I hope you are able to go see it someday. Take a few minutes to look at the website of the Fort Boonesborough Foundation, they have a lot more historical information and photographs than I could include here. (www.fortboonesboroughlivinghistory.org)

If anyone would like to post stories or pics of their ancestors on our family tree, feel free to contact me at donnahechlerporterbooks.wordpress.com. 

x

Mary F. Newland and John Graves

One of the frustrating things about publishing a genealogy book, especially one the size of Metes & Bounds II: David Crews, Ancestors & Descendants, is the fact that new information is being discovered all the time, and cousins are always around the next corner. These new cousins almost always know something I don't. I will likely never get to doing a 3^rd edition of the Crews book, but I will be posting information on this blog that “updates” the Crews family.

Graves of John E. Graves and Mary F. (Newland) Graves
Donnelton Cemetery, Hunt Co., TX
courtesy of Mary La Rue, El Paso, TX 2015

I received an email this week from Mary La Rue of El Paso, Texas. Mary is a descendant of David Crews and Annie Magee through their daughter Mary Crews Newland. She informed me that Mary F. Newland, daughter of William W. Newland and Arthusa Bascom Randall, married John E. Graves. On page 179 of my 2^nd edition, I indicate the last name of Mary’s husband to be “Graves,” but I had no record regarding his first name. Mary F. Newland was the great-great-great granddaughter of David Crews & Annie Magee.

William and Arthusa (Randall) came to Texas not in 1848, as I stated in my 2^nd edition, but sometime between 1850 and 1860. In 1850, they are in the Jessamine County, Kentucky, census, but by 1860 they were in the Kaufman County, Texas census. 

Grave of Sarah Elizabeth "Lizzie" Newland - Smith
courtesy of Mary L Rue 2015

Mary F. Newland was born in 1843 while the family was still in Kentucky. She would have been a little girl when her parents moved from Kentucky to Texas. She died in 1924. John was born in 1833 in Georgia and died in 1901. They are both buried in the Donnelton Cemetery in Hunt County, Texas. John and Mary were married on August 9, 1859 in Henderson County, Texas. 

John and Mary (Newland) Graves’ daughter, Sarah Elizabeth “Lizzie” Graves, was the maternal great-grandmother of Mary La Rue. Mrs. La Rue is also a descendant of William Hoy and Sarah Callaway, early settlers of Boonesborough, Kentucky, and contemporaries of both the Crews and McQueen families. In fact, Hoy’s Station was 400 yards southwest of David Crews Station on the dividing line between Otter and Tates Creeks in Madison County.

Lizzie was born in 1866, at the very end of the Civil War, and died in 1901. She married John R. Smith. John was born in 1862 and died in 1942. Lizzie and J.R. married on April 10, 1882 in Hunt County, Texas. The picture below is of Lizzie and J.R. and their family and Mrs. La Rue believes it was taken in or near Brownwood, Texas around 1897, not long before Lizzie's death. 

Family of John R. "J. R." and Sarah Elizabeth "Lizzie" (Graves) Smith about 1897.
Children pictured are Lula, Behula, Thomas, William, and Legal  who is on Lizzie's lap.
(Legal was Mary La Rue's grandmother.) 

NOTE: All information and pictures used with permission of Mary La Rue in an email dated to blog owner February 2015.