Children of the Shenandoah

What she are and what she ain't:

First of all lets be very clear about one thing. Children of the Shenandoah is not a genealogy! Rather, GEAN, which name includes the software as well as the data, is a prosopography intended as a tool for those individuals with roots in the Great Valley of Virginia who are writing genealogies of their families as well as for those persons who would just like to cruise the "pages," perhaps of families for whom no (recent) genealogy has been published.

It is intended as a reference work, to provide a starting place for those wishing to find their relatives and give them a head start by providing a few clues. Data has been accepted and incorporated without any independent verification as the time required to do this would be prohibitive in the extreme. Therefore, no warranty or claim whatsoever is made as to accuracy or completeness. It is highly recommended that any information presented be independently verified inasmuch as possible. And, of course, I would be interested in any additions or corrections.

Data sources for Children of the Shenandoah range the gamut of availability -- from letters, oral reports, published and unpublished tomes, census and courthouse records, newspaper articles, funeral home "programs," etc. Again, I am in no position to certify their veracity. It is known that there are a number of preserved contradictions. One source of minor errors is, I am positive, that bond dates have been reported as marriage dates. Date of marriage was usually a day or two afterwards. Also, if someone has a tombstone erected in a cemetery, that will be listed as a burial even if there is/are no date(s); meaning the person may still be alive (but is expected to end up there eventually).

Whenever sources are quoted, every effort has been made to preserve the spelling, punctuation, spacing and capitalization. In many, but not all, instances the "[sic]" (Latin thus) has been inserted for added emphasis at obvious typos (in the original) and at errors of spelling, grammar and fact. Often when the original was not available for review, such as an obituary, "as reported" is appended to the source citation.

My Interest

My wife's family traces it's background to the Mayflower which landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 and thence back to England. My mother's family was Scotch and English and has been reasonably well documented by others. My father's family was primarily of German origin and settled in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia some 200+ years ago.

In those days (our) immigrants landed at Port of Philadelphia, migrated westward across Pennsylvania and thence through the Cumberland Gap and into the Great Valley, a geographic fixture some 140 miles long and varying in width between 20 and 40 miles. Settlers in the Valley remained there until they, or some of their descendants, following Horace Greeley's advice, went farther west, into Ohio. While in the Valley they were between two mountain ranges which both protected them and prevented east-west migration.

We tend to forget now in the jet age that, even in the early twentieth century, discounting trains for the moment, travel was either by foot or by horse. As a consequence, when a young man grew up and went to courting, he was limited not only to the east by the Blue Ridge mountains and to the west by the Alleghenies, but even more so by the distance a horse could reasonably travel of an evening. This combination of limited travel distance, geographical isolation and number of settlers resulted in a population which until very recently (since World War II) functioned as a large, extended family. For all practical purposes, this is exactly what it had become. Two people who can each trace their roots to antebellum Shenandoah (i.e. before Mr. Lincoln's unfortunate conflict) can expect a high probability that they share at least one common ancestor and are, therefore, cousins of some sort.

Which brings us to consideration of the question, "What is Children of the Shenandoah?" This breaks into two parts: What is meant by Shenandoah -- the river, the county, the valley? Answer: The valley. And, part two: What are Children? Both these issues are addressed in the following two paragraphs.

THE VALLEY: As noted above, the Great Valley is found between the Blue Ridge Mountains, which lie at the western edge of the Piedmont, and the Allegheny Mountains, which run along the West Virginia border. From Frederick County in the north to Rockbridge County in the south, it is the "Shenandoah Valley." To the south, various other valleys continue the general terrain. For genealogical purposes, the entire area is termed "The Valley." The Shenandoah Valley includes the nine counties of Augusta, Clarke, Frederick, Page, Rockingham, Shenandoah, Warren, Berkeley, and Jefferson, the last two of which lie in present-day West Virginia. Prior to 1738, the entire Shenandoah Valley was part of Orange County; in 1738 it was cut off from Orange County and divided into Frederick and Augusta counties.

THE CHILDREN: Not the trivial question of first glance, COS considers "children" to be any pioneer who settled this area as well as their forebears and their descendants wherever they lived or went. I have heard from several readers who initially thought that they would find only people who had lived in the Shenandoah and were somewhat surprised (hopefully, favorably) to find out that when the information is available we follow descendants to the four corners of the earth.

Index of Children

The index of names in Children of the Shenandoah has been placed online and may be examined. Names are in Last, First Middle alphabetical order. They are preceeded by dates of birth and death, if known, to make selection between identical names less difficult.

Presentation:

The basis of data presentation in GEAN is the concept of a "family page," or, harking back to the days when it was all kept on paper, the "family sheet." This simply means that for a given individual, the top line is for him, the next his father, the third his mother, followed by each spouse, and then the children. If available and if requested, various remarks, bibliographic data, references to other sources, etc. are also given.

Available, too, is a family tree chart of ancestors for any individual. The degree of detail will depend upon how well the interrelations between the various families in Children have been documented. Presentation is tabular rather than graphic. see "Explanation" at bottom of ancestor list.

Surnames:

Some published works give up in despair at the different spellings in use for a particular name. e.g. FATELY, FADELY, FADLEY, FADELEY, etc. That is, unless you ask each individual in person, you will undoubtedly get a great many names wrong. It appears to be standard practice to publish your work with a single spelling and document this in a front note, thus warning the reader.

GEAN has attempted on the basis of available information to use the correct or at least a reasonable guess (you spell it the same as your father) surname version. However, realizing that a great many such names will still be wrong, where thought necessary in the index, a reference is made at the top of a family to other spellings of that name. e.g. "KAUFMAN see also COFFMAN, KAUFFMAN, KUFFMAN"

These cross references are made not only for various spellings of the same name, but also for names which sound similar or which are spelled similarly enough that transcription errors may have landed someone in the wrong camp. It is the sincere desire of the author that all such errors, indeed all errors of commission or omission of whatever nature, be reported to him that future editions may be corrected.

Abbreviations:

There are few abbreviations used that are not necessarily apparent. Some abbreviations in use are

atnd = attend(ed)
Cem = Cemetery
Ch = Church
mbr = member
nmn = no middle name
Shen = Shenandoah
US11 = US route 11, a.k.a. The Valley Pike. Main north/south road through the valley until Interstate-81 was built.

Most abbreviations in COS are not followed by periods. Two exceptions are

ca. = about/around (Latin circa)
n. = near

While not, strictly speaking, an abbreviation but, rather, more of a place holder, the double hyphen (--) is used whereever a first, last (or both) names are unknown.

State abbreviations generally follow the "Old" convention in use before the Post Office foisted two letter designations on us; when one didn't have to think about whether AR was ARizona or ARkansas or AL was ALaska or ALabama. Furthermore, state abbreviations are fully capitalized except for WVa (West Virginia).

Compass points are the expected N, E, S, W, NE, ESE, NNW etc.

City and State names are not separated by a comma. County (parish) names are so separated, as are city and county names. Hence: "City STATE"; "City, County, STATE"; and "County, STATE".

Occupation:

Where known, the individual's occupation(s) is listed. A word of apology should probably be offered here. I well know that farming is a cooperative effort between husband and wife and that, together, they are "farmers." However, in a effort to reduce typing and save some disk space, the male is listed as "farmer" and his wife usually has no occupation listed unless it was something else entirely. This was certainly not intended to slight anyone nor downplay the tremendous effort and sacrifice of these noble women.

Addresses:

Occasionally, dates are given along with the addresses. These dates are simply dates when the various persons (or their surviving families) were believed to be at that address. No inference should be attempted as to this being a "move in" or "last at" time. These dates come from directories, personal letters (addressee and return address), addresses furnished the compiler by others, etc.

References in the Remarks:

Various sources are cited in Children and are identified by (generally) three character identifiers which were convienent to use, with appropriate page number(s). Listed below are some of these triads and the works which they cite. In a number of cases a review of the work is included.

DLBorden -- Tombstone Inscriptions, Toms Brook and Vicinity, Shenandoah County, Virginia Compiled by Duane Lyle Borden of Denver, Colorado and published in 1981 by Yates Publishing Company, Ozark, Missouri. This book of over 300 pages covers seventeen cemeteries in the region, some large such as Toms Brook Cemetery and the Valley Pike Brethren Cemetery, and some small family plots with but a few individuals laid to rest therein.

There are a great many errors of fact in this book but certainly most of them are attributable to the extreme difficulty in deciphering old tombstone inscriptions. Look alike symbols are certainly responsible for most. When weathered, stained or lichen covered, it is often not possible to differentiate between worn engravings of characters such as 3-8, E-F-L, C-G-O-Q, etc, Mr. Borden deserves much credit for the work he did in personally rendering the information on these grave markers as well as he has considering the difficulties he was laboring under. I, myself, have often given up in frustration trying to read engravings in old cemeteries. And, of course, the stones themselves may be inscribed with inaccurate data. My own maternal grandmother was born in late December 1879 but her monument gives only the year and that as 1880. Someone used her age and "computed" the year incorrectly.

GCH -- History of the Descendants of Jacob Gochenour. By Robert Lee Evans of Arlington, VA. Published 1977 by Carr Publ. Co., Inc. in Boyce, VA 22620.

HHH -- Haller-Hollar-Holler Genealogy. Compiled by Amelia Cleland Gilreath of Nokesville, VA. Published Sept. 1981.

HH2 -- The Huber=Hoover Family History. By Harry M Hoover of Lancaster, PA. Mennonite Publishing House in Scottdale, PA 1928

HKF -- History of the Descendants of John Hottel. By Rev. W D Huddle and published posthumously by his widow. Published in 1930 by Shenandoah Publishing House, Inc., Strasburg, VA. This was a massive undertaking for one man and took him many years of hard work. Unfortunately it is known to have numerous errors in it. It seems more than likely that in the process of posthumous publication, the proof sheets did not receive the attention they so desperately needed. In fact, some time ago an ERRATA was published for it giving several hundred corrections. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of other errors have gone unnoticed or at least unreported.

These errors occur as bad names, mix-up of dates between individuals. Reporting marriage date as death date. Wrong dates. These can involve dropping a digit so that 13 becomes 3, for example. Transposing digits. Even the internal ID numbers are printed wrong on many occasions. I personally have found HKF to be valuable in pointing me in the right general direction. But, as a rule, if information from another source conflicts with HKF, unless confronted with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I go with the other source. A deliberate omission by its compiler was the decision to not give the parents of spouses, thus rendering cross ties between families much more difficult.

It is only fair to point out that this book is in the process of major revision with the inclusion of another sixty years of history. All known errors will be corrected at that time, but unless they have been reported, the new editions (the book has grown to where it will be published in multiple volumes) will, not knowing otherwise, simply perpetuate the unreported errors. It is the understanding of this writer that the parents-of-spouses omission policy is also to be reversed. To be published by and available from the Hottel-Keller Memorial, Inc.

NVD - Northern Virginia Daily newspaper published six days a week in Strasburg, Va. When the printed source was used, the reference "NVD" is used. When the material was taken from the World Wide Web, then the abbreviation "NVD www" is used. For approximately two years, Shenandoah.com republished the obituaries of NVD on a daily basis. In early 2000, for reasons not known to this author, NVD requested that this service be no longer provided. While a disheartening loss to the on-line community, it is doubtful this action increased the paper's circulation by forcing purchase just to read the obituaries. In 2003 NVD began publishing the obituaries on its own website, a week's worth at a time for the preceeding Friday-Thursday week.

This paper is notorious for reporting deaths by day of the week only and not providing the date. This often leads to confusion because one never knows for sure when that day is press day whether the death occurred hours ago prior to press time or the prior week, especially so in the case of a report of someone out of town (retired to Florida, for example). One example of this is John Ritenour.

ShenHer - The Shenandoah Herald a weekly newpaper published in Woodstock on Thursdays. Established 24 Dec 1817 (first issue) by Messrs. Bogan and Williams as the Woodstock Herald. Shortly thereafter the name was changed to The Shenandoah Herald. Successive owners tried other names calling it Sentinel of The Valley, Tenth Legion, etc. At the beginning of the War its editor, Capt. John Gatewood, put aside pen and joined the CSA Army. After the War, Captains Gatewood and Trout continuted the paper as The Shenandoah Herald. In April of 1957 it was merged with the The Valley Gazette of the Elkton-Shenandoah area which had been published on Fridays. The combined paper is now called The Shenandoah Valley-Herald.

STR -- Forerunners - Genealogy of the Strickler Families by Harry M. Strickler, Harrisonburg. Printed by The Ruebush-Kieffer Co., Dayton, Va. 1925. This work is particularly difficult for this reader to follow. In part because it frequently inserts families randomly, seemingly unrelated to the paragraphs around it. But also because the individuals for whom families are shown are not sequentially presented and their ID numbers are not in the order in which the families are shown. Finally, the index is woefullly lacking; it lists surnames only, followed by a list of page numbers on which that surname may be located. This means wading through many pages scanning for the indivual for whom you are searching; frequently finding the name on the next page, probably because the index was created from proof sheets and some insertions were made before publication, throwing the page numbers off. There is an axiom ignored here which states that half of the value of any book lies in its index.

SVH -- The Shenandoah Valley-Herald newspaper. If from online version: SVH www. See ShenHer above.

SYK -- Someone You Knew, A Necrology. Obituaries from the Northern Virginia Daily, Strasburg VA. Compiled 1988 by Judy Coffman Stickley. A most useful and usually accurate compendium. However, it suffers from the local newspaper's practice of reporting that "John Doe died Tuesday," rather than "John Doe died Tuesday the 18th." (q.v. NVD, above) At times this can lead to a date that is one week off when the reader attempts to compute the date of death based on the date of the paper and day of week. Even worse is reporting that someone died "yesterday." That might, and probably does most times, mean yesterday. But what if the writer missed the deadline and the obituary is delayed a day in printing. In this case "yesterday" really means "the day before yesterday." At times there is reason to believe that the publishing of the obituary was delayed a week or more after the death.

Although, like most books used by genealogists, SYK suffers from more errors than we would like to see in reference works (to be discussed below); it has been extremely useful as a gauge to measure population penetration by Children. That is, since SYK is a complete, or nearly complete, list of obituaries in the NVD from 1903 to 1981, representing the entire population of its area of coverage and not some particular family, which area coincides with the greatest emphasis of Children, it is reasonable to judge how much of the overall population is included in Children by the proportion of SYK entries recognizable in Children of the Shenandoah.

In that regard, entries of some family names in SYK are almost 100% represented in Children. "Stoneburner" is such a case (I wonder why?) Others only half or less; and a few, none at all. Using this percentage method of measurement, overall I'm well pleased with the GEAN database and am certain you will be too.

There are also the inevitable typing errors that creep into everything ever printed. This reviewer suspects from examination of the printed opus that at some point an oral rendering was made. That is, someone probably read the obituary aloud while another took notes on index cards, or the like. This postulation is based on the types of errors observed, usually rhyming. Please note this disclaimer -- I did not compare the SYK text to the original obituaries, I simply observe that the number of errors about to be explained exceed those expected in the newspaper version. For example, on p.247 the father of Virginia Hockman is given as Henry Hugh when, in fact, it was Henry Q. (Quinton). Also, initials are often wrong and are of rhyming value; 'D' for 'E' or 'G' for example. Likewise, similar sounding names are substituted on occasion. And, of course, there is the ever popular transposition of characters and numerals.

On those ocassions when this text is cited in the remarks in the GEAN system, it is referenced as "SYK page#:" followed by a direct quotation. As always, every attempt has been made to quote precisely. Any perceived misspellings, wrong dates or names, punctuation, spaces, etc. have been preserved, usually without comment. Instead, the quotation is left to stand on its own merit. It is up to the reader to decide in case of conflict what is correct. Those few editorial notes added are enclosed in square brackets [ ].

All in all, this is an excellent reference work whose single-spaced, multi-names-per-line index alone runs some 295 pages. If you are working in the Northern Shenandoah area, you need this book in your library.

It is my understanding that a revised edition is to be published which will include a greater time span and also include more detailed entries as gleened from each obituary.

TES -- The Edinburg Sentinel newspaper of Edinburg, VA.

TFP -- The Free Press newspaper of Woodstock, VA.

TVB -- The Valley Banner newspaper. If from online version: TVB www

TWS -- The Winchester Star newspaper. If from online version: TWS www