Life History

Notes

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  Gregorys and Fews in Migration Patterns
  
  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 or Baltimore through Fredericksburg 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.  Records for Richard Gregory are fround in Culpeper County and Fauquier County, Virginia, on this westward path south of the Pennsylvania border.
  
  Dates and locations match a line of movement from the residence of his likely grandfather Benjamin Gregory of Pennsylvania, in eastern Virginia across the Potomac from Washington, DC.  This westward line of migration connects with the great Shanandoah Valley running southwestward along the eastern edge of the Appalachian Mountains in what is now West Virginia.
  
  This matches the pattern I refer to 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, or 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 form  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.
  
  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.
  
  The Fews in NC apparently followed the westerly route over the Smokies into Tennessee into Jefferson 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.  Great migrations northward occurred int eh 1920s and later because of extensive floods along the Mississippi, destroying much of the Delta South.  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.
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  Kentucky, County Marriages, 1783-1965
  Benjamin Few
  Susan Richardson, Father Wm Richardson
  License issued 17 June 1826
  Marriage 18 June 1826 Jefferson, Kentucky, USA by Gid Blackburn
  Jefferson County Marriage Book, p 173
  
  1840 Federal Census, Floyd County, Indiana, New Albany, p 255
  Benjamin Fu [Benjamin Few]
  1 Free White Male 5 thru 9
  2 Free White Males  30 thru 39
  1 Free White Male  40 thru 49
  2 Free White Females  Under 5
  2 Free White Females  5 thru 9
  1 Free White Female  30 thru 39
  3 Persons Employed in Manufacture and Trade
  5 Free White Persons - Under 20
  4 Free White Persons - 20 thru 49
  9 Total Free White Persons
  No Slaves
  
  Benjamin died before the 1850 census.  In 1850 Susannah was reported as a widow and was head of the household.  From the ages of the Few children in the home, Ben would have died after 1844, when Minerva was born.
  
  1850 Federal Census, Harrison County, Indiana, 25 September, District 45, p 679, Hse/Fam #811
  Susannah Few 47 F Widow $1000 Real Estate b KY [b abt 1803]
  Isaiah S Few 16 M Farmer b IN [b abt 1834]
  Margaret S Few 14 F b IN [b abt 1836]
  Emeline Few 11 F b IN [b abt 1839]
  Benjamin Few 9 M b IN [b abt 1841]
  Minerva E Few 6 F b IN [b abt 1844]
  William Loveless 38 M b IN [b abt 1812]
  Elizabeth Loveless 13 F b IN [b abt 1837]
  Wm Loveless 9 M b IN [b abt 1841]
  Nancy Loveless 4 F b IN [b abt 1856]
  
  U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995
  Louisville, Kentucky, City Directory, 1861, p 86
  Few Susanna, wid Benjamin, h 509 W Market
  Few Isaiah, Blacksmith, h 509 W Market

Sources

• 1. Kentucky, Death Records, 1852-1964
• 2. Kentucky, County Marriages, 1783-1965
• 3. Find a Grave Memorial Registry
• 4. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995
  • Louisville, Kentucky, City Directory, 1861, p 86
• 5. 1840 Federal Census, Floyd County, Indiana
  • New Albany, p 255
• 6. 1850 Federal Census, Harrison County, Indiana
  • 25 September, District 45, p 679, Hse/Fam #811
• 7. 1860 Federal Census, Jefferson County, Kentucky
  • 9 August, Louisville Ward 6, PO Louisville, page 74, Hse #281, Fam #282