Our Wandering Kinfolk

 

 

Main Lines: Dicken, Graves, Gresham, Jenkins, Redmond, Rothenbuehler, Wakefield, Waite, Welborn, Whitakers, Wrights

 

 

 

Come along with me as I take you on a journey that began in the 1600s as our families wandered first to the colonies and then as they spread out away from each other in this huge country. I am from the south and my husband is from the north, but I have found that our families were living near each other in Virginia over 250 years ago. I do not know if they were friends, but they lived close enough in distance that they must have known of each other. I do know that there were Virginia cousins on the Dicken and the Graves sides that were married to each other. So just as many genealogists find out, our family roots do not spread out very far from the tree and now they have intertwined with each other again to make one big root.

 

Our earliest known family line in this new world began at Jamestown almost 400 years ago with Captain Thomas Graves from England. Within the next 50 years, the Dicken, the Gresham, the Welborn, the Redmond, and the Wayte families had their first representatives in this country, all settling in Colonial Virginia and Maryland. During the early to mid 1700s, the Gresham, the Redmond, and the Welborns moved down into North Carolina.

In the early 1700s, the Jenkins and the Wrights immigrated to Virginia while the Whitakers settled in Pennsylvania near other Quaker families. In the middle part of century, all three of these families joined the Redmond family in the middle settlements of North Carolina. At the end of the 1700s, these families moved to the western regions of North Carolina in Buncombe County where they have lived ever since. The earliest records of that area have many of the families represented by 1800. These families make up the ancestors of my mother.

By the beginning of 1700, the Wayte, the Dicken, and the Graves families were living in the Middlesex area of Virginia. Before 1760, they moved inland to the Culpeper area of Virginia. Then, after the Revolutionary War, a few of the Greshams, Wakefields, and the Welborns families in North Carolina moved down to the Piedmont area of South Carolina, as did some of the Graves and the Wayte families from Culpeper, Virginia. These families make up the ancestors of my father.

The Dicken family moved northward from Culpeper, Virginia into the western part of Pennsylvania during the mid to late 1700s. Then they moved on to Wood County, Ohio in the early 1800s. The Dicken family married with the Feasel, Graham and Stahl families in the 1800s. These families make up the ancestors for line from my father in law. The Swiss immigrant families of Clauser (Glauser), the Jacobs, the Martens, and the Rothenbuehlers moved to Ohio from Europe around 1850. These families make up the ancestors for my mother in law.

 

For over a century, the family groups remained apart living in two different areas of this country. These families would never have come back together if the wandering spirit had died, but that innate sense was always there biding time and when the time was right a chance meeting brought the families together in 1979. I hope that you find your wandering spirit in our families and if you do, then please let me know so that I can add your journeys to our history.

 

 

Genealogy Lines

Dicken Family of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio

Graves Family of Virginia and South Carolina

Gresham Family of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina

Redmond Family of Virginia and North Carolina

Wayte/Waite Family of Virginia and South Carolina

Welborn Family of Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and South Carolina

 

 

 

Other connecting families in South Carolina with the Graves and Wayte lines include Anderson, Cox, Crocker, Golding, Niswanger, Sims, Watson.

 

Individuals Index

 

Contact Information

Amanda Dicken        tdicken@cswnet.com

 

This site is a work in progress so bear in mind that not all families are listed yet. I am beginning with just one family line this year and I hope to have the other major lines by next spring. I am also not listing information later than the 1860s for privacy reasons. If you wish to know more about a particular line, please contact me. Please feel free to use the information given to confirm your own research but I hope that you do not reprint this research without permission. There are many different family researchers with each line and they have the right to be recognized for the hard work that they have done. I do not have the resources to have verified every detail, however it is noted where I have not personally checked the research and on those pages, I have put the name of the researcher. I have indicated where the information is still not confirmed so please do not copy the information to your own files without making sure that your family does indeed tie into it. The group of researchers that helped with this site are more than willing to share, so contact me if you think that you can add to the information. Please let me know when you find a connection so we can continue this journey together.

 

 

If you would like to have professional help with your family research, please contact our firm Ancestral Research Bureau at www.ancestralresearchbureau.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Updated on March 25, 2008