About the Abernathy Legacy Project

Publishing began 27 April, 2006.  The publication has been assembled from recollections of family members, family records and pictures, books, church documents, cemetery records and head stones, government and commercial records, newspaper accounts and manifests. The data collected is substantial, exhautive enough to tentatively publish an account of the Abernathy Legacy.

The reader is invited to point out any errors or ommissions. Whenever further information can be corroborated with appropriate source references, when gathered, revised editions will be published in these pages.

This publication is a small project that became enormous in scope. The initial plan had been to trace direct ancestors as far back as possible -  a pedigree chart starting with living Abernathys. It soon became apparent that no one save Ms. Pat and Ms. Margaret could discuss the lives involved in meaningful ways without paying attention to all the children that could be found, and that the children and other relatives interacted with each other, generation after succeeding generation. It has also been nearly impossible to hunt all the information available about individuals without looking for mention of them in the records of other family members. Then, having found many collateral relatives and facts about them, it seemed difficult not to include what had been discovered in as complete a form as possible. A Legacy is a vast undertaking when conscientiously done.

Lines have been carefully drawn: The central foci are the immigrant families - Abernathys, Ralphs and Rays. This publication includes as complete a listing as possible of all the lines of descendants of those first immigrant families, with a description of what happened to them, down to the present. No doubt newborns are on their way, rendering this Legacy compilation out-of-date, howsoever relevant. With hundreds listed here, and nearly all lines reasonably complete (although varying in the amount of detail) for up to fourteen generations since the known inception of each line, it should be possible for any interested party facinated by the Abernathy Legacy to use this publication as a point of departure to update any portion.

Gazing backward in time from the earliest known ancestors, there is also information here, most of it in the Abernathy paternal line, going back to the 15th century. We have few particulars about what these individuals' lives were like, but records exist as to dates of major events and some occupations and migrations. Regional and general accounts have been consulted and sometimes quoted to offer a sense of the world in which these ancestors lived. Each account attempts to help relate their existence to their times, places and circumstances.

For understanding relations of kinship, nothing rivals a good genealogical chart, the familiar family tree. Unfortunately, to show this entire family a single chart would have to be drafted on the side of a barn, and not in big letters even then. As a compromise, key portions of the family chart are included to clarify the relationships of early ancestors and some of their close descendants.

This Legacy account does not undertake to provide a thorough history of any single time or place. To establish a Legacy, some relevant history, key interactions and geography are provided, often in the words of contemporaneous or other early writers, often sourced from locally published memoirs and newspaper accounts. The samplings included here provide a rich historical menu from which some readers may delve into parts and parcels as interest and time allows. The notes and source bibliography provide leads for furthering enjoyment or study.

The information in this publication has been collected from February, 2006 to date, in intervals when the author's professional obligations yielded blocks of time. Most portions present up-to-date data and information, while others may miss an as-yet sourced family relationship, a death or birth notice, or another link which has yet to be either discoverd, source cited or recorded. In a large family, keeping data entirely current would prove such a great task (would that it were even possible) that a published version of the Abernathy Legacy would never make a finished edition. After 2007, the author will supply Abernathy Company, the commissioner of this project, copies of all source materials so anyone who is inspired to make subsequent updates on one or all branches of the family tree may proceed with confidence.

The end notes for each section includes downloaded and scanned documents which serve as both source materials and as documentation of sufficient interest to make available in full. Source citations are also made available to anyone who may wish to conduct further study and new research from generally searchable and less accessible source guides. These source listings, including secondary sources, are cited in this publication for their scholarship and value as information of interest to those who wish to link members of the Abernathy Legacy to events and places back to the 15th century.

Original copies of all bible records, wills, probate records, government record facsimilies, etc., are in the possession of Ms. Pat Abernathy or Mssrs. Ric and Ray Abernathy. All translations were commissioned by the 7 Arts Foundation on behalf of the Abernathy family. Unless otherwise noted, all interviews were conducted by the author, often with contemporaneous memoranda prepared by foundation staff and interns. Source references as to county records, unless otherwise indicated, are to be found in courthouses or archival records of the respective counties in the offices of the registrar of deeds, county clerk, or clerk of the court.

Assembling this material has proved a massive, albeit fascinating, task. The interrelationships and intermarriages of these families, not to mention their penchant for moving long distances under difficult and sometimes perilous conditions, are complex. And, tracing some of the more adventurous members has been an ongoing challenge. The challenge was all the greater because the Abernathy Legacy has almost no surviving personal or official documents from the Nineteenth Century or earlier. No doubt there are letters and postcards, bibles and memory books, transcripts, records and recipts -- I know of a repository of Abernathy Company records which I have yet to review completely. Many personal records appear to be gone. Few photographs or other images survived of the older generations. Such images as exist are being supplied directly by the immediate family, as time and effort permit.

My highest regard goes to Ms. Pat, Ric and Ray Abernathy for giving me the privilege of satisfying their need to rescue many good people from an oblivion they never deserved. Such devotion to family in the Twenty-first Century can be reward itself. I only hope to help these, my distant relatives and treasured colleagues, solve the few remaining puzzles in the Legacy, to complete and improve what can be done, to detect what the record will unfold in its entirety.

To that end, the work is not completed. More study and research is possible in many directions. However, it seems to me that the time has come to write down what has been accumulated so the intended readers may learn from a great Legacy, may come to better enjoy a living Legacy and may come to expand it.

INTRODUCTION

This volume is about families who lived in the Scottish Isles and the old Prussian-Hesse Empire who met in the American east and mid-west, and who followed a nearly parallel migration south. With few exceptions, they much preferred good farmland and hunting grounds to cities and cosmopolitan life.

The account told in this legacy is three books combined into one publication. The first centers on the Abernathy migrations, the second traces the Ralphs post-immigration migration within America. And, the third follows the Lenharts from Hesse-Prussia and Bavaria and how they migrated in near-parallel formation with the Rays* east-to-west-to-south.

*   Also spelled RHEAS in some source citations. See Family Names, this page.

The origins of family names:

Family names, or what we refer to as surnames, were seldom used in Europe until about the Twelfth Century. Until then, individuals often bore a single name, perhaps then attached with a personalized identifying description in order to distinguish their identity from another local person. When surnames became necessary - i.e., names passed down without change from parent to offspring - in Germany and the Scottish, Irish Isles, they took on four types of names to follow a given or Christian name.

Locational names: One who worked at the mouth of a river might be called Abernathy, a surname acquired from a locality or a geographic feature in or near where one worked and lived.

Occupational names: One who worked as a ... might be called John the Ralph. His son would likely become a ... to follow in his father's work. At some point in the generations of Ralphs, subsequent offspring would keep the name "Ralph' even if they followed other labours.

Patronymics: In some regions, particularly Scandinavia and parts of Eastern Europe, a son of daughter was called by the name of the father. Hence, Richard, the son of William, would be called Williamson. If Richard had a son, the latter would be named Richarson. At some point in time the practice of changing names with each generation was abandoned or forgotten, such that William Lenhart's son Obadiah was not called Obadiah Wilson, but Obadiah Lenhart.

Personal characteristics: People were also known for their identifying personal characteristics, such as Ray, Short or Strong.

Christian names: One may notice that a handful of given names recur in these families, sometimes a combination of names being used more than once in the same group of siblings. The names William, Oscar, Mary, James, Philip and Robert, for example, appear among the Abernathys generation after generation (they were popular names with their neighbors in Scotland and Virginia as well). The Ray and Ralph descendants tend to favour some of the same ones as familial identifiers and perhaps, out of sentiment and honour for their forebearers. Diminutives, solitary or repeated, can cause confusion. In Hesse, Prussia and Bavaria, diminutives tend often to drop the first syllables of a name rather than, as is more customary in English, the last; thus Hans rather than John for Johannes, Mine or Minnie for Wilhelmine, and so forth.

Emigration complicated names further, because given names were often adjusted for an English-language environment in post- Revolutionary War America. Spellings became variable among immigrants whose lives were often to become bilingual to some degree. For example, the terminal 'e' in German is voiced; womens' names that in English end in 'a' often end in the German names in 'e,' voiced approximately the same. Following immigration, such names often were spelled indiscriminately, some ending in 'e', others in 'a.' Anne, for example, became Anna or Ann or Hannah or Hanna. Americans born before the Twentieth Century were not required to be registered with civil authorities, so civil birth certificates seldom exist; the more reliable records are found in church wedding, death and baptism entires. Children born in predominantly German-speaking areas of America most often were baptized with German language names that appear as such in the written German records of churches and civil societies; throughout their lives most German-named people used instead the English equivalents, e.g., John or Johnny instead of their officially recognized Johann or Johannes. One version as much as the other could be considered the persons 'real' name. Often in this publication the church record name found in bibles and church records is noted, while reference more often is to the Anglicized version by which the person usually was known.

The origins of some of the principal names appearing in this book follow: