Tag: Frame

Boonesborough

Boonesborough

by Justin Durand ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I’m using my COVID lockdown time to organize some of the genealogical projects I’ve had on the back burner. One of those is joining the Society of Boonesborough, a lineage society for descendants of early settlers at Daniel Boone’s Fort Boonesborough.

My ancestor James Kenney was an early settler at Boonesborough. As James Kenny he signed an agreement there in 1779 with the other men in the settlement.

The application process should be relatively painless. My mother and sister are members of Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) through our descent from this same James Kenney.

Settlement of Boonesborough

In 1775 the Transylvania Company hired Daniel Boone to cut a trail from what is now Kingsport (Tennessee) through Cumberland Gap to a spot in the middle of what is now Kentucky. The Company had recently organized with the idea of establishing a new colony to be named Transylvania on land purchased by Richard Henderson from the Cherokees—all of the land bounded by the Kentucky, Cumberland, and Ohio rivers. The trail became known as Boone Trace and the fort they erected was Fort Boonesborough.

Ft. Boonesborough, 1778 (Source: Wikipedia)

The idea was that the fort would be the capital of the newly opened west, and Boone Trace would open the way for settlers.

It didn’t work out that way. In the Proclamation of 1763 the British crown had prohibited settlement west of the Appalachians. Moreover, private land purchases from the Indians were also prohibited. Virginia assumed control in 1776 and turned the Transylvania colony into its Kentucky county.

Siege of Boonesborough

The settlement also had problems with the Shawnees and Cherokees, who objected to Anglo incursion. In February 1778 the Shawnees under Blackfish captured Daniel Boone and a party of settlers who were collecting salt some distance from the fort. They took the captives to the Shawnee town at Chillicothe but, long story short, Boone escaped and raced back to Boonesborough. An Indian coalition under Blackfish and the Detroit militia under Antoine Dagneaux de Quindre laid siege to the fort in September 1778 but were eventually defeated.

The Siege of Boonesborough has become an iconic episode in American history. The story is reenacted yearly at Fort Boonesborough State Park.

Aftermath of the Siege

We don’t know whether our ancestor James Kenney was present at Boonesborough during the siege, but he was there the following spring. In April the men of the area set up a system of keeping watch for Indians as part of their precautions for protecting their corn crop that year. James Kenney was one of the signers. Kenney was an early settler of Kentucky, but as far I’ve been able to discover this is the only evidence we have he was at Boonesborough.

Association of the Settlers of Boonesborough in 1779 for making a crop of corn

Wheras, we the subscribers being willing and desirous of making a crop of corn at the station of Boonesborough, on the Kentucky, do think it essentially necessary for our own safety and the public good, to enter into rules that may be obligatory on each subscriber, and are as follows:

1st. That three men (towit) Nathaniel Hart, George Madden, and Robert Cartwright, be and herby appointed as overseers or directors to said company

2nd That ever subscriber shall immediately enrole his name on a list prepared for that purpose, and shall every morning appear at the beat of a drum or some other notice given, and receive such order as the overseers or directors shall think convenient to give.

3rd That if any man refuse or neglect to perform such tours of duty as shall be assigned him by the overseers or directors he shall be erased out of the list, shall forfeit all pretensions to any claim in such crop.

4th That every morning two or more men be sent out as spies, to range round the grounds and fields to be cultivated by us, and that such number be thought necessary be stationed as a guard, the whole day, or to be relieved by others as occasion requires.

5th That no man be allowed to absent himself from the company on any pretense whatsoever, either hunting horses or provisions, or any other occasion, without leave of the overseers first had.

6th That the managers and overseers shall have full powers and authority to determine all unforseen disputes whatever, and that the subscribers shall be obliged to abide thereby. In testimony whereof, we have hereunto set our hands this 15th of April, 1779.

  • “Association of the Settlers of Boonesborough in 1779 for making a crop of corn” in Lyman C. Draper Manuscript Collection, Kentucky Series 29 CC 59, State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

More Information

Frame

Frame

by Justin Durand

I am descended matrilinearly from Mrs. Margaret Frame (about 1725-after 1797), of Augusta County, Virginia. The surname Frame was first recorded in Lanarkshire in the 15th century.

  1. Margaret (about 1725-after 1797), married before 1741 John Frame, of Augusta County, Virginia. She might have been Margaret Hogshead, daughter of John Hogshead and Nancy Wallace, but the identification is controversial.
  2. Mary “Polly” Frame (1742-1796); married about 1771 (Capt.) James Kenney (1752-1814), of Stonerside Farm, North Middletown, Kentucky. They were early settlers at Boonesborough, Kentucky.
  3. Mary (Polly) Kenney (1779-after 1850); married 1801 William Hildreth (c1776-1816), of Bourbon County, Kentucky. She told her children that she remembered riding in front of her father on horseback when the family moved from Virginia to Kentucky. After her husband’s death in 1816, she became one of the pioneers of Vermilion County, Illinois.
  4. Angeline Hildreth (1806-1860); married (2) 1842 John Mallory (about 1793-before 1880), of Champaign, Illinois. She and her first husband George Howe were pioneers in Vermilion Co., Illinois. When her husband was killed in the Black Hawk War in 1835, she took her three small children back to her mother’s home in Kentucky. In 1838 she returned to Illinois, settling first in Vermilion Co., where she married John Mallory. She died in 1860 while the family was in the process of moving to Iowa.
  5. Elizabeth Ann Mallory (1846-1860); married 1877 John C. Wilson (1832-1883), a blacksmith and farmer at Tuscola, Illinois. His early death left her in straitened circumstances.
  6. Esseneth Wilson (1878-1927); married 1898 Wilford Woodruff Luce (1864-1948), a rancher at Big Piney, Wyoming.
  7. Vivian Luce (1901-1979); married 1927 Harry William Swanström (1903-1957), a rancher at Farson, Wyoming.

Frame Tartan
Frame Tartan
(No. 1777, Dgn Archie Frame, Ayrshire)

Frame DNA Project

The question of Mrs. Margaret Frame’s ancestry might one day be answered by the Frame mtDNA Project.

Frame mtDNA

Frame mtDNA

by Justin Durand

Limits of Paper Genealogy

From doing paper genealogy, I know that my female line (mother to daughter) goes back to Margaret, wife of John Frame. Margaret’s maiden name is unknown. She was probably born about 1725, but there is no record of her until 1742, when she and her husband were living in Augusta County, Virginia. She died sometime after 1797, probably at Birch River in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. She might have been Margaret Hogshead, daughter of John Hogshead and Nancy Wallace, of Augusta County, but the identification is controversial.

That’s about all I will ever know about Margaret. The records that might link her to earlier generations don’t exist. I can make a few educated guesses, however. For the sake of simplicity, I omit some of the variables about what could have happened and focus on the most likely scenario.

Margaret belonged to a well-defined ethnic group, the so-called Scotch-Irish. The different ethnic groups in colonial America rarely married outside the group, so I can guess that her parents and grandparents were also Scotch-Irish and probably came to Pennsylvania from northern Ireland sometime between 1680 and 1740, the period of heaviest Scotch-Irish immigration.

Knowing the history of the Scotch-Irish, I can guess that Margaret’s ancestors came to Ireland from the lowlands of Scotland sometime after 1608 as part of the Ulster Plantation. The Ulster Plantation was an English project to subdue the rebellious Catholics in northern Ireland by taking their land and giving it to Protestant Scots. A generation later the English raised the taxes. When the Scots couldn’t pay, the English took the Scot’s farms, forcing thousands of them to go to America, where they became the Scotch-Irish. Northern Ireland is still suffering from these short-sighted policies of 300 years ago.

So, Margaret’s female-line ancestors were probably living in the Scottish lowlands in the late 1500s. Using paper genealogy, the trail ends there. Margaret’s ancestors could have been Picts, Scots, Norse, Saxons or any of a half-dozen other ethnic groups that combined to create modern Britain. However, using genetics, I know a quite a bit more about Margaret Frame’s very distant ancestry.

Similar Families

If I find someone with the same variations from the reference series, I will know that we share the same deep female-line ancestry — say, within the last 12,000 years. I haven’t yet discovered any specific information about my haplotype, but it seems clear it must lie in Ireland or Scotland, perhaps in the Hebrides — that is, somewhere in the islands off the western coast of Scotland. I also haven’t yet found anyone else with the same mtDNA test result. When I do, the match could be genealogically useful. If, for example, another female line descendant of Nancy Wallace had the same mtDNA result, that fact would tend to prove that Mrs. Margaret Frame was the daughter of Nancy (Wallace) Hogshead, resolving an old question. Genealogists can enter and compare mtDNA test results at Mitosearch.org. (Note: Family Tree DNA shut down both Mitosearch and Ysearch in May 2018.)

I find the following near matches:

  • (Mrs.) Margaret Frame (1725-1797) Scotland (ABY52). 16270T 16292A 16298C HVR2 Not Tested. Confirmed Haplogroup V.
  • Phoebe Hendricks (1809-1854) Virginia (FNCX4). 16270T 16298C 072C 195C 263G 309.1C 309.2C 315.1C. Haplogroup Unknown.
  • Nancy Norris (1817-1876) Ireland (WWY5A). 16270T 16298C HVR2 Not Tested. Haplogroup Unknown.
  • Annie Gordon Fox (1825-?) Ireland (MU34H). 16270T 16298C. HVR2 Not Tested. Confirmed Haplogroup V.
  • Mary Kenney (1826-1872) Ireland (55RJT). 16270T 16298C HVR2 Not Tested. Confirmed Haplogroup V. She was not one of the Kenney descendants of Mrs. Margaret Frame.
  • Unknown (KP6U7). 16270T 16298C HVR2 Not Tested. Confirmed Haplogroup V.

Revised to remove broken link.