Using myself as a starting point, I tried to create a collage that would portray family history and ancestry in a way that might be fun and interesting to look at. Included in the collage are:
my children and siblings
my children’s spouses, spouse’s parents and ancestors
Northen, Schroeder and Ventura ancestors
mailing addresses
written documents
books relating to family history
This has also been made into a jigsaw puzzle so that trying to fit the pieces together in some ways recapitulates the attempt to put together the family history. I hope it incites some curiosity.
There are some instances of Northerns turning up in states that cannot be directly related to our family line, even though they appear to be. One of the most obvious were were the Northerns of Jefferson County, Tennesee where they have been established for many generations. In fact, in her book, Dorothy Gross shows a picture from 1986 of Mill Springs Cemetery on Northern Rd. in Jefferson County that show a number of Northern graves.
The first evidence of the family in Jefferson County came when John Northern bought land there in on September 11, of 1811. In 1814, he was recorded several times as appearing on a jury there. John clearly came from Wilkes County, North Carolina where he is registered as being on the census in 1790. There were also a number of other Northerns living in Wilkes County as well. He appears to have married his long time wife Rhoda Lassiter there as well. Just where John was born is not certain. While some families list his birthplace as North Carolina, most say that he was born in Virginia in 1766. Some families list his father as Edmond, others as John or William. Once even says that this parents were our ancestors George Northen and Margaret Jones, though there is no documentary evidenced of this. It is quite likely, however, that he was connected to our family in some way. John appears to have lived quite a long life. While he may not have lived until 1870 as some families claim (that would have made him 104), he is listed in the 1850 census as being 84, and in 1861 he was on a list of “Free White Males” in Jefferson County. Interestingly, the 1860 census says of both John and Rhoda, “can’t read or write.” Rhoda, however, was reputed to have been a midwife.
Jefferson County, Tennessee has an interesting history that is not commonly known about. Tennessee was admitted to the United States in 1796, just 15 years before John Northern brought his first property there. However, back in 1784, soon after the United States was formed, the people in this area were part of land that was supposed to go to North Carolina. Instead, they broke away and organized their own government and called it the State of Franklin. They established their own government and capital. It applied for admittance to the United States, but Congress never formally accepted its application for admission. As a result, Franklin only lasted for about four years and shortly after became part of the new state of Tennessee. It is one of the rare examples, though, of a state that never became a state.
Another branch of the family that cannot be directly documented to trace back the original John the immigrant is responsible for the Northerns who moved into Arkansas. As mentioned previously mentioned , a John Northen who is likely the son of the immigrant John moved to land near the Great Swamp in Currituck County, North Carolina in 1712. His grandson, also named John was born in Currituck sometime between 1800-1810. Sometime around 1840, he headed out for Mississippi but wound up in Arkansas. Three of his sons served in the Arkansas Infantry for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Though most of the family members appear to have moved on to other places, his youngest son, William Wesley Northern stayed and raised six children there. Interestingly, in the 1880 census for Independence County in Arkansas, he is listed as Wesley Northen.
As the map shows, the migration was to the west. The family never moved further south than mid-Georgia and curiously never into South Carolina. One possible reason is that our family were primarily tobacco planters whereas South Carolina’s main plantation crop was rice. Also, Missouri is not colored in because no one stayed there for more than a generation but it was a place that many families visited for a while or passed through. Much of the migration was fueled by the Civil War and it is interesting to consider that another migration of families was fueled by World War II. That is how the Northen family ended up in California beginning in the 1940’s.
As mentioned in the last post, William Northen, the grandson of the original immigrant John Northen, with many of his children in tow, left Richmond County, Virginia around 1777 to set up a household in Edgemont County, North Carolina, and his son Wiiliam Jr. eventually continued on to various places in Georgia until he reached Jones County where he stayed. Tracing his line a bit further gives a good illustration of how both the Northen family and the U. S. population in south continued migrating. William III had been born in Edgemont, North Carolina but continued south with his father, and also also moved to Jones County, Ga. He was one of the individuals mentioned in the last post who ended up in Crawford County, Ga where the Cherokee land was being lotteried off.
Wiiliam III’s son William Tarpley Northen lived all of his life in Crawford Co. as a planter, but on Sept. 4, 1858 he was killed by a runaway horse 11 miles from his home. His wife Martha Lockett was now, a widow still in 30’s and left with 9 children, one of whom, Anna, was not born until a few weeks after her husband’s death. Managing the plantation was just too much for her. In 1861 as the Civil War approached, she left Georgia and moved to Camp County in northeast, Texas. This is one of the rare instances in the family history when we can see that it was one of the women who was responsible the family’s migration. Texas had only been admitted as a state in 1845, so it was still new territory when Martha moved there. For the previous 15 years it had been the Independent Republic of Texas after settlers there took the land away from Mexico. Part of the reason for the delay in becoming a state was the argument over slavery. Most of those who were coming into Texas, like Martha, were coming from slave holding states. One of Martha’s sons, Edwin Coke Northen enlisted in the Confederate army at age 17, and married a woman named Elizabeth Walker whose father had been a soldier in the war that took Texas away from Mexico, the so-called War for Independence. The family seems to have spread out through the eastern part of Texas, especially in Galveston. It is worth noting that this branch of the family that continued into Texas retained the Northen spelling of the family surname.
Jones County, Georgia seems to have been a center from which the Northen family lived for at least a generation before fanning out into other states. Another of William II’s children, Ephraim Northen (the brother of William III), also remained in Georgia. Ephriam was only 12 when his father died and did not live long himself, dying by age 27 in 1829. However, he had married Ann Gafford. Not much is known of Ann but she did remarry twice and eventually died in Texas. Ephraim and Ann had one child, William Stephen Northen, who was 5 when Ephraim died. With his father died, Ephraim was placed as a ward with his uncle Peter Northen. He must have done well enough to become a merchant but his business was not long-lasted and when it failed, he moved to Chamber s Co., Alabama. He, too, died young, probably at age 31 but by that time that time, he had married and had 5 children, all of whom were born in Alabama, thus becoming the nexus of the family in that state. They must have been pretty successful there because several of his grandchildren attended Atlanta Medical College and returned home to become doctors and druggists, and another married the president of Ashland College. While most of them stayed in the area, several of William Stephen Northen’s younger children moved on to Texas, possibly because their grandmother was there.
While many of those born in Jones County left the state, others stayed. The most notable of them was William Jonathan Northen who was the governor of Georgia for four years. He was first elected in 1890 and re-elected in 1892 but retired in 1894.
Not all of the original William Northen’s children followed him down to North Carolina. Peter Northen inherited almost all of his father’s land in Richmond County, Virginia. He served as a captain in the Revolutionary War and, although he died in 1811, he is also rumored to have participated in the early stages of the War of 1812. His son James Northen remained in Richmond as did James’ son William Smith Northen for most of his life. William Smith Northen was a deputy sheriff in the county from 1840-1870. As with other family members, the Civil War brought hard times and after the war he lost all of his land due to debts. He moved with his wife and family to Leavenworth, Kansas and a few years later to Chattanooga, Tennessee. While William Smith moved on, some of his children remained in Kansas. One of those, his sons James Braxton Northen was married to a woman who had been born in Virginia, but when she died, he remarried a woman who was living in Kansas and from then on, most of his children’s families remained there. Dorothy Gross’
book provides the interesting note that James Braxton Northen’s children with his first wife had little education and were scattered when she died as opposed to those with his second wife who all grew up in the area.
Another of Peter Northen’s sons, Jeremiah Northen also made the decision to leave Virginia. Between 1812-1816 he headed for the American frontier, which at that time, meant moving beyond the Appalachian Mountains. It is quite possible that Jeremiah was accompanying his Uncle Reuben Northen (Peter’s brother) who left Virginia. Reuben had enlisted as a Minute Man in Virginia in 1775 and served during the revolutionary war. After the war, he moved west to Frederick, Virginia where he married Lydia Lloyd and then in 1809 lit out for Kentucky following the same basic path that Daniel Boone had taken several decades earlier. He settled in Nelson County, Kentucky. After having been in Kentucky for a while, Jeremiah married and sold the land that he owned back in Virginia. Jeremiah and his wife Susan remained in Nelson County long enough for their first son to be born, but then traveled briefly to Missouri and ended up in Mason County, Illinois, which became his permanent home. This path from Kentucky to Illinois seems to have been a common movement west since it was also the path that Abraham Lincoln took at about the same time.
While Jeremiah lived as a farmer in Illinois and died there, most of his children appeared to have moved on to Kansas around 1860. While there is no indication of why they moved, this was a very turbulent time in American history, the time that is often label “Bleeding Kansas.” Kansas became a state in 1861, entering on the side of the Union. However, there was a huge pro-slavery population in the state and the clash between the two sides resulted in a great deal of violence. Nothing gives us a clue as to whether any of Jeremiah’s children were involved in these fights. Having roots in Virginia, it is likely they were pro slavery, but there is no record of any of them having slaves. Nevertheless, the Northen family definitely was involved in events that were part of the evolving American history.
By the time of the Civil War, the Northens had moved westward, taking a southern route. They established themselves in North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, Illinois and Kansas for at least a generation and Northen descendants are still living in these areas even today.
The simplified chart below may help to follow the above narrative. William actually had 18 children and only four of them are listed here. Many of the other people in the tree had large families as well. I’ve included our ancestor, George just to emphasize that while his branch of the family stayed in Virginia up to the twentieth century, many of the others spread out.
Northen History 