Manlove Origins, Part 9 - Conclusions

About Using The United States Census. I’ve witnessed couples age by the decade, and their children grow up. I’ve seen families become larger, and then shrink as the kids moved on. I’ve noticed the "head of Household" eventually pass to a new one, and the aged parents placed at the end of the family list - behind the new “Head of Household” and that person's children. And in the next census they would be gone. I’ve watched generation after generation fan out in greater numbers, and realize each one of those names - hundreds of them - belonged to a person who once had hopes and dreams similar to my own. And they are all gone. The census tells a lot. They tell me names, when people were born, who and when they married, how many children they had, where they lived, and when they died. They tell me who could read and write, which ones were retarded, who was insane, and what they did for a living. They told me that the Manloves were all farmers.

Manlove was the line I was following - a male line that carried the name through time, but there were other names going all the way back to the 1600’s: Williams, Robins, Browne, Robinson, Dunning, Caldwell, Egler, and Parsons. Eight generations ending with my Great Grandparents. Her name was Nancy Parson, his was John Henry Manlove. He was born in 1858 and she six years later. The worked a farm until their older age. The 1920 Census finds them living in Connersville as “helpers” in a boarding house. She died in 1923. John Henry was renting a room in a private home for $12 a month according to the 1930 census. He died in 1932 at 72 years.

John Henry was the oldest child of James, who was the sixth offspring born to George W. Manlove and Mary Caldwell. John’s second born was my Grandmother, Dorma. She is the only Manlove I ever met, and the photo to the left is a good representation of how I remember her. She married my grandfather, John Harrison Buckingham, in 1906 and gave birth to my father six years later. John Buckingham was a “body finisher” in an auto plant in Connersville, Indiana. His was the first generation whose profession was listed as anything other than “farmer”.

Manlove Origins, Part 8 - Be Fruitful and Fill the Land

William and Jonathon’s children did their part to populate Illinois, Wisconsin and Kansas, but it fell to the offspring of George Manlove to fill the new State of Indiana. George and Rachel (Dunning) had five kids. The oldest, Hannah, married Edward Trotter, and they moved to DeKalb County, Missouri sometime after 1825 - both appeared in the 1850 US Census. George and Rachel's remaining four children were boys and they all settled in the Hoosier State.

William Manlove, the oldest son, first landed in Preble County, Ohio, and then moved on to Fayette County Indiana - probably about 1814. A local history of Fayette County stated that.. “William and Prudence (Cook) Manlove, natives of South Carolina, who, with their two children, took up their residence in what is now Posey township, about 1812. After a short residence …William went to Cincinnati, with a team, for supplies, and while there contracted the cholera, from which he died on the way home. His widow and six children were thus left almost destitute in a new and wild country, but the former managed to keep her family together.” The couple had six kids at William’s death in 1819 - two daughters and four sons.

John probably got to Indiana about the same time as his brother William - maybe a year before. He settled in Henry County and lived to a ripe old age of 96. His wife, Jane Wheeler, and he produced five boys and two girls. They each had a gaggle of their own, and all seemed to have stayed in Henry County.

George W. Manlove was my Third Great Grandfather (G-G-G-Grandfather). He died in 1832 while driving hogs to market in Cincinnati. He had sired eight children (six boys) at his death at 45 years of age. His two eldest sons, John and William, being 19 and 17 years of age were old enough to keep the farm going. His wife, Mary Caldwell lived on the place until her death at 83 years in 1878.

Mark, the youngest, was probably the last to arrive in Indiana. He was in Ohio for more than ten years, but eventually settled in Tippecanoe County by 1840 with his wife (Jane Hodgson) and their seven children (5 boys). It’s a curious coincident that he should have settled in the area in which Tecumseh established Prophetstown, and where the Battle of Tippecanoe was fought in 1811.

I figure nearly 30 grandchildren of George Manlove were seeded across several counties of Indiana - no wonder I had so much trouble in unraveling my line of descent when I first began tracing my ancestors. It seemed like several counties had nothing but Manloves.
GO TO: Part 9

Manlove Origins, Part 4 - The Wilderness Road & Cumberland Gap

The Appalachian Mountain range running from New England south to the middle of Georgia was an impenetrable barrier to early colonial migration. Its complex system of mountains, valleys, ridges, and plateaus thwarted easy passage. People of Scott-Irish descent entered in the north, followed the Great Appalachian Valley south into the remote hinterland and became isolated and forgotten for more than a century. Many “Hillbilly” legends evolved after they were rediscovered in the early 20th Century.

There were only a few ways to get by the Appalachians: direct passage in the north via the Hudson and Mohawk valleys; the roundabout way by skirting their southern terminus in Georgia; or through gaps in the range made by rivers that had cut through mountains. The Manlove family made the crossing to the other side via the Cumberland Gap.

George W. Manlove, the fourth child of George and Rachel (Dunning) Manlove, made his appearance in 1786, three years after his parents immigrated from Delaware to North Carolina. He grew up in the Deep River area of Guilford County, but left for Indiana just before he turned 24. We know the specific time and place because this is the way he started his travel journal. “North Carolina Guildford County Deep River, the 17th of the 9th month, 1810. We, Edward Bond and Joseph Bond their wives and my self George Manlove, this day began our journey for the Indiany Territory about four in the afternoon, went a few miles and camped on a friend’s yard.“

He added a sentence or two nearly every night. They camped in Salem the next night, and three miles from Shallow Ford on the Yadkin River the third. Mostly the comments concerned the weather, places they camped, landmarks, or the condition of the road. They stayed several nights at relatives of his traveling companions - John, Elwood, Edward, and Joshua Bond’s places were mentioned. I tried to follow their route but found I could only identify a few points. They crossed the Yadkin several times, the last one being at Rockford. After that their exact route became vague. Rivers were crossed at named fords, but I was unable to identify any other than Shallow Ford. The crossings and mountain ranges proved to be the only way I could follow the party’s early progress. The journal mentioned the New, Solston, Holstine, Powell, Clinch, and Cumberland Rivers - much in that order; the Clinch and Powell Mountains were named just before the party came to the Cumberland Gap. The group eventually entered on Daniel Boone’s Wilderness Road, and their travel became easier to follow.

GO TO: Part 5

Manlove Origins, Part 2 - The Chesapeake Bay

Pocomoke lies on the peninsula that forms the Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay. It is shaped like a hand in profile with the index finger pointing toward Virginia Beach and Norfolk. The peninsula is divided among three states -Virginia occupies the southern tip (Accomack and Northampton Counties), while Maryland and Delaware share the northern part.
The Chesapeake Bay was a center of early Colonial development. Jamestown, considered the first permanent English settlement (1607), lay just south of Williamsburg and west of Yorktown. The three made up what is called the Historic Triangle. Washington D.C. and Mount Vernon, George Washington’s estate, are on the Potomac River which flows into the bay.

Jamestown was established as a business adventure not forty years before Mark Manlove moved onto the Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay. The Virginia Company financed the passage of 144 men and boys to the New World. The area was hostile wilderness, and the settlement nearly failed during its first years. Forty died on the voyage and many more from starvation and disease that winter. More colonists were brought in each year, but life was tough, and the colony’s survival was tenuous for several years. They were on the verge of abandoning the settlement in 1610 when supply ships saved it.

I find it curious that Mark Manlove would bring his whole family over. He was definitely not alone. Migration had been heavy in the years since Jamestown, and the population had grown. He no doubt came over with associates, a group that could share the work. Like most, he was most certainly a farmer. The group probably built small shelters that first year. They cleared fields and planted crops - hoping to survive till the following spring.
Marks’s sons, William and Thomas, moved 90 miles north, settling in Kent County Delaware, near present day Dover. William died there in 1694. The next three generations of Manlove’s were born and died in Kent County. The family was there for nearly a hundred years, and then William L. Manlove, of the 6th generation, and his adult son, George, left sometime after 1782.

They made the move after Cornwallis surrendered to Washington at Yorktown in October of 1781. That was the decisive event of the American Revolution, and hostilities ended by the spring of 1783. George Manlove was 29 years old at the end of the war so he might very well have participated in the Revolution. He was listed as having served in the War of 1812, so he very likely fought in the Revolution too. I’m guessing they left Delaware in the summer of 1783.

I don’t know why they left a place that had been home so long. There seemed to have been only one male child to survive in each of the preceding generations, so George was going to inherit the farm - if they had one. But, for what ever reason, they pulled up stakes and headed south. William L Manlove’s wife, Hannah (Robinson), had died fifteen years before, so there were only five in the family group: William L, his son George, George’s wife Rachel (Dunning), their daughter Hannah (2 or 3 years) and son William (1 or 2 years). It is likely that other families accompanied them. That was common practice in those days - extended families and neighbors migrated together.
GO TO: Part 3