"Here is a collection of genealogical records from 581 Southern family Bibles, providing data on more than 15,000 individuals. The Bible records have been reassembled here and integrated into a single alphabetical sequence under the names of the principal families."--Amazon.
Explore the lives of two orphaned brothers caught up in the maelstrom of the American Civil War. Thomas and Otho McManus both rose through the ranks and fought in numerous battles and skirmishes. One survived; the other was killed leading a battle charge seven days before the truce at Appomattox. The survivor married his brother’s widow. This study also traces their roots, explores the lives of their siblings and cousins, and follows five generations of their descendants. Otho McManus wrote more than one hundred wartime letters. Excerpts from those letters provide profound insights into family ties and battle experiences. The story of the brothers’ forebears is a window into American families in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The brothers’ parents, aunts, and uncles joined a great westward migration to the new states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Interesting sidelights include the last slave in Pennsylvania and an inheritance interrupted by the battle of Gettysburg. This study draws on forty years of the author’s personal research and more than a century of cumulative research by others. Family Bibles, letters, wills, censuses, obituaries, grave inscriptions, military records, and county histories are some of the sources consulted. Topics include such diverse areas as migration patterns, military experiences, occupations, patterns of child-bearing, and the historical setting of each generation.
James Hillhouse was born in 1687/88 at Free Hall in Ulster, Ireland, the son of John and Rachel Hillhouse. He studied theology at Glasgow University, then returned to Ulster where he was ordained by the Reverend Presytery of Londonderry. He was living at Boston, Massachusetts, by 1720 and accepted a position at New London, Connecticut, in 1722. He married May Fitch, daughter of Captain Daniel and Mary Sherwood Fitch, in 1726. They had four children, 1726-1735. He died in 1740. Descendants lived in Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Nebraska, Missouri, and elsewhere.
