Tag: Rowe

Surname Saturday: Oy Vey

Posted on by Kathleen

Today, is Surname Saturday over at GeneaBloggers. I wasn’t even going to post again until Monday or Tuesday. Then I watched the newest episode of Who Do You Think You Are? That show is so great to give me motivation to get off my duff and get back to work on my family file. I really do want to clean it up and get it in order. The right way this time. So here I am, spending my Saturday going through census records on Ancestry.com and citing my sources correctly on my website and in my programs. Yes I said programs. I’m a long time Family Tree Maker user but I’m checking out RootsMagic Essentials.

Five out of seven families on this page alone are in my family file. This is what happens when I research my mother’s family. The Whitt, Mays, Adkins, Click, Rowe families of Kentucky all belong to me in some way. They all inter-married at different sections of the tree too. So if I am adding new information in from a record and spy a maiden name of Adkins or Whitt, I know it’s only a matter of time before the tree winds around again. It’s quite interesting and I can’t help but wish I knew the stories behind all these marriages!

Mays

The Mays family that I currently have documented originate from Virginia. There is some talk about a connection to Mays’ that ended up in Texas or other points west, but I haven’t been able to find any proof of that yet. It’s hard enough finding information for what I currently have! The first know Mays relative I have is William Mays, he was born around 1777 in Pittsylvania County, VA. As the family grew, they also moved around. I have Mays family members being born in Floyd County, VA. The family that I have found eventually made their way to Kentucky. I have them living all over, Mason County, Elliott County, Bracken County, Pendleton County, Morgan County. Just about everywhere.

Adkins

The Adkins family first entered my tree when Frances Adkins married my first Mays member, William Mays. I have noted her father’s name as maybe being Moses Adkins, but I have no solid evidence of that yet. Hopefully as I work up my chain, I will finally be able to find a birth or death record for Frances. That isn’t the only place the Adkins turn up in my tree. In fact I have 39 people in my file with the surname of Adkins. All of them are spouses or children of people in my main line. That is without me even trying to research the Adkins family yet. Most of my Adkins people are from Virginia and Kentucky. Where the Mays family is, the Adkins family follows… or vice versa.

Whitt/Rowe/Click

The other families I mentioned are really along the same lines of the Adkins family. They turn up often as spouses of my main families, or each other. I have 12 Rowes, 27 Whitts, and 15 Clicks in my family file. All originating from the same places as the other families.

In Conclusion

Sometimes I think maybe these families came over to America together and just stayed together. I don’t know if that’s the truth as I haven’t found the exact origins of these families yet. It’s comforting that I have a big pool of these families brought together, but it can be so exhausting trying to determine where everyone fits in together. It’s mainly why I let my mother handle this side of the family for so long. So that’s why I say Oy Vey!

Surname Saturday is a Daily Blogging Topic that I got from GeneaBloggers. To participate in Surname Saturday, simply create a post in which you discuss a surname and mention its origins, its geographical location(s) and how it fits into your genealogy research.

Mrs. Rowe’s Cookbook

Posted on by Kathleen

Since the last post was about Dad’s side of the family, this one will be about Moms. A few years back, my Mom was getting cookbooks from one of those mail order book clubs. This one was exclusively for cookbooks. This gem came in the mail at some point. I didn’t think anything of it at first. Then a light bulb went off in my head. Hey, the family name of Rowe!

To know the significance of the name Rowe, you have to be familiar with my family tree. Which you probably aren’t. That’s okay, I’ve done my research and I know my stuff! My mother’s family line is made up 90% of the surname Mays. They liked to have children and they didn’t stop at two or three. One thing I realized when I started trying to research the Mays’ was that they are very difficult to research. The surname can be construed as many different things, and it depends on who was spelling it. They were also spread out over a ton of country. They started in Virginia from what I can find, and they spread eventually to Kentucky. When I say Virginia and Kentucky I mean the whole state. So if your name is Mays and you live in Virginia or Kentucky… Hi, I just might be your cousin!

Back to the point. One of the things I realized was that the Mays family had lots of children, but those children married into the same families. So my Mays ancestors married many people from the Rowe, Whitt, Click, and Slusher. That’s just what I’ve proven. Who knows what else! Not to mention those I’m aware of but haven’t found proof of yet.

So when I sat down one day looking through cookbooks, I finally took a good look at what this one contained.

Do you notice that little nugget? The sister of Mildred Craft-Rowe? Bertha Mays. I have to be up front with you. I do not believe in coincidences. Everything happens for a reason and if something eerie happens, then that means listen up it’s important. So my little mind has been agonizing over this ever since. Not only does the cookbook show that the sisters married into both the Rowe and Mays families, it tells me that they are from an area of Virginia that my Mays line was very prevalent.

Even if I didn’t have a maybe family connection to this cookbook, I would still love this cookbook. It not only has lots of stories and photos from the family, it has great down home recipes. I’m going to try some of them very soon!

Visit Mrs. Rowe’s Restaurant Website

Get your own cookbook at Amazon.com!

I’ll let you guys know if I ever connect the dots on this mystery. 😉