Life History

Notes

• Lewis Greogry
  Death 1833 Grant County, Kentucky, USA
  All online family trees I have found say he died April 1823. But he is clearly alive and well in 1830.  I cannot find a record of his death, I place him in 1833 assuming Cholera.
  --  Gregory reseacher Nathan Gregory, https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/7554069/person/5059292096/facts
  
  Some sources claim Lewis Gregory was born in Augusta County, Virginia, though the records we have of his supposed father Benjamin are in Prince William County, on the Potomac River, across form Maryland aat the place where Washington, DC, was later located.  If Lewis was not born in Augusta Coiunty, it is likely he moved that direction after his father;s death.  Later records for a Lewis Gregory match Ben's son in a movement southwestwards along common migration and settlement routes.
  
  The current county of Augusta is in the Shenandoah Valley.  This valley was a common route of migration to the southwest from older areas of settlement in Virginia and Pennsylvania.  The original area of Augusta County included the whole of what became Kentucky and most of Virginia that became West Virginia.
  
  "Augusta County was formed in 1738 from Orange County, although, because few people lived there, the county government was not organized until 1745. It was named for Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, Princess of Wales and mother of the future King George III of the United Kingdom.  Originally, Augusta County was a vast territory with an indefinite western boundary. Most of what is now West Virginia as well as the whole of Kentucky were formed from it, and it also claimed the territory north and west of those areas, theoretically all the way to the Pacific Ocean."
  --  "Augusta County, Virginia," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusta_County,_Virginia
  
  Records for a Lewis Gregory in areas now part of Kentucky may be this Lewis Gregory.  Gregorys are found along this route and in Jefferson County, Tennessee, farther south down the valley, and on in that direction to Cherokee County, Alabama, and from these locations to points farther west.  Gregorys also became established in Louisville or the surrounding area of Jefferson County, Kentucky, a part of the old Augusta County, Virginia, on the Ohio River across from present-day Indiana.
  
  No record of birth has been found for Lewis. Lewis was a witness of his father's will in Prince William County, Virginia, on the lower Potamac border with Maryland, in June 1798.  A Lewis Gregory was born in Augusta, Virginia, in 1774, and later records match this individual.  Augusta County was just south of the original large Frederick County, Virginia, where what appears to be his father Benjamin, and two of Benjamin's brothers, John and Richard, were mentioned in records in the 1740s to 1770s..
  
  Pendleton County, Kentucky, is on the Ohio River in Jefferson County, one of the three original coutnies of the new territory of Kentucky, cut out of Virginia,  It is west of current Augusta County, Virginia.
  
  1810 Federal Census, Pendleton County, Kentucky
  Lewis Gregory
  1 Free White Male - Under 10
  1 Free White Male - 26 thru 44
  2 Free White Females - Under 10
  1 Free White Female - 16 thru 25
  3 Household Members Under 16
  1 Household Member Over 25
  5 Household Members
  
  A Lewis Gregory was also reported in the 1820 census in a nearby county along the Ohio River named Grant County.  Grant County, Kentucky, was established from territory in Pendleton County, Kentucky, in 1820.  So this Lewis Gregory was reported in the first census of Grant County.  Current Grant County borders current Pendleton County on the west.  So Lewis Gregory was probably in the same place in both the 1810 and 1820 censuses.
  
  1820 Federal Census, Grant County, Kentucky, August 7, 1820
  Lewis Gregory
  1 Free White Male - Under 10
  1 Free White Male - 10 thru 15
  1 Free White Male - 26 thru 44
  2 Free White Females - Under 10
  2 Free White Females - 10 thru 15
  1 Free White Female - 26 thru 44
  1 Person - Engaged in Agriculture
  1 Person - Engaged in Manufactures
  2 Free White Persons - Under 16
  2 Free White Persons - Over 25
  8 Total Free White Persons
  
  1830 United States Federal Census, Grant County, p 271
  Lewis Gregory
  1 Free White Male - 5 thru 9
  1 Free White Males - 15 thru 19
  1 Free White Male - 20 thru 29
  1 Free White Male - 50 thru 59
  1 Free White Female - 10 thru 14
  1 Free White Female - 15 thru 19
  1 Free White Female - 20 thru 29
  1 Free White Female - 40 thru 49
  4 Free White Persons - Under 20
  3 Free White Persons - 20 thru 49
  8 Total Free White Persons
  
  These records match reports that Lewis Greogry died in Grant County, Kentucky, in 1833
  
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  Gregorys and Fews in Migration Patterns from the 1700s
  By Orville Boyd Jenkins
  Posted on Ancestry.com 16 October 2017
  
  One factor in reconstructing a family lineage are patterns of movement and migration.  These migration paths are helpful in finding and evaluating records in our Gregory and related Few line.  We see Gregory records in a generational pattern along the migration streams along the tidewater area or valleys southwards and westward.
  
  Westward
  Records are being discovered in the westward line from Philadelphia through Frederick and Hagerstown, Maryland, through what is now West Virginia, still part of Virginia in the era we are looking at, and on to Ohio and Indiana.  Brothers John, Richard and Benjamin Gregory, thought to be sons of Isaac Gregory of Pennsylvania, are mentioned several times in lists of residents of old Frederick County, Virginia, a large area at the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley, also on a common east-west migration route.
  
  Records for a younger Richard Gregory are found in Culpeper County and Fauquier County, Virginia, on this westward path south of the Pennsylvania border.  These two counties were established in 1749, cut out of Orange County, the original huge area from which Frederick County was originally established in 1743.  These counties bordered Frederick County on the east.
  
  Dates and locations of various records match a line of movement from the residence of Richard's likely grandfather Benjamin Gregory of Pennsylvania, into Frederick County, and later back to eastern Virginia in Prince William County, across the Potomac from Washington, DC.  This westward line of migration connects with the great Shenandoah Valley running southwestward along the eastern edge of the Appalachian Mountains in what is now West Virginia.
  
  Records for a Lewis Gregory, who appears to be a son of Benjamin, son of Isaac, are found along this Shenadoah Valley route then across into the part of Virginia that later became Kentucky, one of the areas where Fews and Gregorys come into contact.  This matches the pattern of residence and Gregory-Few marriages in some of these areas along this southward line of migration.  Details are found in individual notes for the Fews and Gregorys.  Gregorys from this lineage moved westward a bit to the part of Virginia that is now northern Kentucky.
  
  Southward
  Gregorys are found along the Shenandoah Valley which runs southwestward from Hagerstown to Bristol, Virginia/Tennessee, on the border, on through Jefferson and Cocke County, which were all one area of North Carolina, then East Tennessee (current I-81 to I-40 to Knoxville) in the 1700s and early 1800s and on toward Cherokee and contiguous counties in Alabama.
  
  We find Gregorys that appear to be from two different lineages who followed the Shenandoah or similar route from Philadelphia-Baltimore through Virginia into Tennessee, our line through the easterly route of the named east Tennessee counties, the other a bit more westerly, with members of both lines in Kentucky.
  
  These two lines seem to be connected to the same line from Pennsylvania and northern Virginia.  But there are indication of one or two separate migration streams in the same areas.  Early sources are not clear on these lines, and similar names in what may be different lineages seem to have been confused in some genealogies.
  
  I have been through all these areas and explored these lines of migration so have these in mind as I read through records and watch for connections and clues.
  
  Westward Ho
  Gregorys in the line of James Henry Gregory and Rachel Lewis are found in those counties of Tennessee from Jefferson-Cocke on to Knox, McMinn (where we find both these Gregorys, with apparently no crossover), Franklin, etc, in the westward migration route.  Gregorys of our lineage also seem to have moved northwestward through the mountain passes toward Louisville.
  
  Fews and Gregorys are connected in the states of Virginia, Kentucky (which was originally part of Virginia colony), North Carolina and Tennessee (which was originally part of North Carolina Colony) in several generations.  The Fews in North Carolina apparently followed the westerly route over the Smokies into Tennessee into Jefferson County, Tennessee, and surrounding counties where they connected again with the Gregory lineage.  We find them in the family of Francis Marion Few from North Carolina Jefferson County, Tennessee, where his daughter Letha married Andrew Jackson Gregory, my great great grandfather's brother.
  
  Crossflow
  Traffic went both ways along those Midwestern routes over a period of two centuries.  Fews moved into the Louisville, Kentucky, area from Indiana (across the Ohio River.  Gregorys and Fews also moved from eastern Tennessee into Kentucky.
  
  Great migrations northward occurred in the 1920s and later because of extensive floods along the Mississippi, destroying much of the Delta South.  The depression added to this exodus northward.  Midwestern droughts accelerated movement to California.  Further industrialization in the next two decades and after WWII accelerated this migration northward and westward.
  
  The geographical indicators are not only contiguous counties, but similarly in the counties along these common natural migration routes, which also reveal patterns of the same family decade to decade and generation to generation.  These patterns match the same kinds of patterns we find in ethnic investigations all over the world.
  ----------------------

Sources

• 1. 1810 Federal Census, Pendleton County, Kentucky
• 2. 1820 Federal Census, Grant County, Kentucky
  • August 7, 1820
• 3. 1830 Federal Census, Grant County, Kentucky
  • Grant County, Kentucky, p 271
• 4. Ancestry Comments