Decoration Day is coming up at Hayne’s Cemetery, and my old friend Joe Hedrick has a family connection to the place, as do I. About this time of year, we generally have a conversation about Haynes and our ancestors who are buried there.
He told me today that, when he was a kid, he’d heard his grandmother Ada Mai Roberts speak often and glowingly of my grandparents Bob and Hattie White.
“Are we kin?” he asked.
I said I didn’t know; but, I would do a little research.
I found that Ada Mai, before she married James E. Roberts in 1913, was an Andrews — the great-granddaughter of John Andrews (1763-1831) who brought his family from Virginia to Maury County around 1820.
Her Andrews line can be traced all the way back to Lt. Colonel William Andrews of Cambridge, England who sailed from Gravesend for America on the “Treasurer,” commanded by Captain Samuel Argall. He arrived May 25, 1617 and proceeded to Jamestown with 50 shares of the Virginia Company bequeathed him by his late father, Dr. John Andrews. As such, he was classified as an “ancient planter” (or an original plantation owner of the colony). He came to own at least 300 acres, was named to the House of Burgesses, and appointed an officer in the Virginia Militia. He also survived the “Jamestown Massacre” of 1622, in which Powhatan warriors killed 347 colonists, or one quarter of the Jamestown population.
In addition to his other civic responsibilities, Colonel Andrews was a Justice of the Northampton County Court from 1640-1655. During his tenure, some of the cases he presided over obviously tried his temper. In 1642, he was ordered to pay a fine of “…Thirty pounds of tobacco for sweareing a blasphemous Oath in the face of the open Court.”
When Colonel Andrews’ descendants came to Maury County, they established a homestead on land that adjoins the present site of the Philadelphia Church of Christ. In the early 1900s, George Washington Andrews, Ada’s uncle, still lived on 78 acres of the original farm (“Century Review: 1805-1905, Maury County, Tennessee”).
Incidentally, Philadelphia also used to be known as “Lickskillet,” and there once was a schoolhouse there where a young Ada Mai was a teacher.
Down the hill from Lickskillet, the Whites eventually built a home on Silver Creek, after arriving in the county in the 1820s. So, the Andrews and Whites have known one another for a long time.
In fact, Ada’s second cousin, Henry Melvin Andrews had a son, Ralph, who married Bob and Hattie White’s niece Louise White. Additionally, Ada had another second cousin, Marvin Andrews, who married Lucille Pinkston who was the daughter of Algie and Sulah White Pinkston. Sulah was my grandfather Bob White’s sister.
Yet, after all my research, I found that Joe Hedrick’s grandparents and mine, although they had many connections, were not blood-related.
HOWEVER, Ada’s grandmother was Martha “Patsy” Chunn. Accordingly, Ada’s great-great grandfather was the Revolutionary War soldier Sylvester Chunn, who happens to be my 5th-great-grandfather on my mother’s side of the family – which makes Joe Hedrick and me fourth cousins, once removed.
So…, if your family has been in Maury County since 1820, there’s a really good chance you’re related to everybody.
