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 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.
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