Welcome to this blog dedicated to the history of my paternal line, the family of David White, Sr. of Ohio Township, Clermont County, Ohio.
I began doing genealogical research in 1976, the year I earned my Genealogy merit badge. Then, I was lucky enough to have my great-aunt Anna Mae write me long letters about what she, the family historian, knew of our family. It was a lot: besides the information she had about her grandparents, who had come by covered wagon from Indiana to Missouri after the Civil War, she told me of her own childhood in rural southwest Missouri.
Since then, I've been fortunate to receive the help of many people, many of whom are now gone, also interested in the history of our family. I feel that I owe a debt to all the people who have been so generous to me with their time and family documents as I've tried to piece together our family story. I hope that publishing this blog goes some small way toward repaying that debt. The point of research is to share it with those who are interested in the subject; my own research has been kept in storage for too long. It's long past time to get it out there.
Of course, as with any family, the story isn't singular: it is made up of many, many stories. I hope that this blog can serve as a place where those stories can be told, information and questions shared, maybe even genealogical mysteries solved.
Even though I started in 1976, I have to admit that I still haven't been able to trace my paternal family further back than my 4g-grandparents, David White, Sr. (ca. 1777-1851) and Nancy (Cummings) White (d. 1818) of Ohio Township, Clermont County, Ohio. (My maternal line is the subject of another blog.) David White migrated to northern Kentucky or southwest Ohio around 1796, probably from somewhere in Pennsylvania, perhaps the area claimed by both Pennsylvania and Virginia after the Revolutionary War. He became a prominent farmer and Justice of the Peace in Ohio Township. Nancy Cummings came with her family to what is now Highland County, Ohio, around the same time - maybe from Loudoun County, Virginia. I don't know for sure. After Nancy White died in 1818, David White married Jane Shaw (1799-1858), a native of Kentucky.
There are many interesting questions in this history of this family remaining to be solved. The one that occupies me the most is: who were David White Sr.'s parents? Traditional naming patterns may offer a clue, but the commonality of the surname White in the Revolutionary War era still makes the task daunting. Research in the past ten years has located an 1814 Highland County, Ohio will which suggests that Nancy White may have been the daughter of James Cummins (d. 1821) of Brush Creek Township, Highland County, Ohio. But much more work must be done to establish that relationship.
Many of the children and grandchildren of David White and his first and second wives moved west with the growing nation. Descendants today live in Ohio, Texas, Colorado, California, Idaho, Indiana, Nebraska, Washington State, Florida, Arizona, Iowa, Oklahoma. My own branch of the family took a path from Ohio to Fountain County, Indiana, and after the Civil War first to Cherokee County, Kansas and then to Newton County, Missouri, where my grandfather was born in 1909. He and his family moved in the 1920s to Pueblo, Colorado, where there was work in the CF&I steel mill.
I warmly welcome anyone with a connection to this family to contribute, and to make it a place where our family history lives on the web.
