Map of origins

This map shows the regions of what is now the United States where some of our ancestors lived. Our earliest ancestors on the Howard and Wells side were from Maryland. Captain Cornelius Howard (1630/43-1680), our generation's 9th great-grandfather, represented Anne Arundel County in the Maryland General Assembly in St. Mary's City, the first capital of Maryland under the proprietorship of the Lords Baltimore, who founded the colony in 1634. Anne Arundel (1615/16-1649) was married to Cecil Calvert (1605-1675), the 2nd Lord Baltimore. They are my wife's 8th great-grandparents. During our honeymoon, we visited St. Mary's City, mostly because of her forebears' connection with the place, little realizing at the time that one of my own ancestors had spent time there as well. As mentioned in an earlier post, Howard County was named for our Howard ancestors.

Big Stone Gap is in the far western part of Virginia in Wise County. It is best known as the home of John Fox, Jr., author of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. My wife and I attended a play based on the book during our visit to the city on our honeymoon. Big Stone Gap was the title of a 2014 film set in that city. Given our family connections to the place, my wife and I really wanted to like the film, but it successfully resisted our efforts. My grandmother, Frances Marie Hyder, was born here in 1904. All of her siblings except the last two were born here.

Their father Nelson was born in 1875 in Mitchell County, North Carolina. His mother was born Mary Hyder in Carter County, Tennessee, just across the border. We do not know who his father was, although when Nelson married Lucy Jane on 22 January 1896, their marriage licence indicated that his parents were John and Kate Hyder, whose names he may have made up on the spot. I will return to the Hyder line, which originated in Germany and includes someone who fought in the War for Independence.

The Bentleys also lived in Big Stone Gap. Lucy Jane's parents Ben and Elizabeth Bentley were buried in the Riverside Cemetery in East Stone Gap, which my wife and I visited on our honeymoon. I took photographs of the grave stones and will post them here at some point. There were also Bentleys in Letcher County, just over the state line in Kentucky. Lucy Jane's grandfather, Benjamin H. Bentley (1814-after 1850), lived in Alexander, North Carolina, and was married to Mary Davis Bentley (c 1815-?). Around 1850 Mary's parents, Jeremiah and Nancy, moved with most of their children to Cave-in-Rock, Illinois, just over the Ohio River from Kentucky. Because Mary was an adult by this time, she remained behind in North Carolina. Around a decade after the move, the Civil War broke out, and all of Jeremiah and Nancy's sons fought for the Union, despite having two married sisters in one of the states of the Confederacy. I have been unable to find a record of where Jeremiah and Nancy are buried, but I assume it must be somewhere in Hardin County, Illinois, or nearby.