Four family lines move through early America—from England and Ulster traditions to the Cowpasture, Tazewell, Maryland and beyond.
Every claim is labeled: documented, probable, or an open research lead.
A firsthand family history written by my grandfather—part memoir, part local history, and part record of the Gillespie generations rooted in Tazewell County.
The new digital edition is fully typed, searchable HTML with a table of contents, adjustable text, night reading, and the original family photographs.
The manuscript is now complete. New photographs replace printed pages 2, 4, and 30 in the archival scan and the typed edition.
Begin with Randy Myers, then move through parents, children, siblings, spouses, and the wider family one generation at a time. The viewer combines Grandad’s memoir with Randy’s maternal Ancestry tree while keeping imported claims visibly marked for verification.
The honest version of a family story is often more interesting than the polished legend. These are the earliest arrivals currently supportable from records, with uncertainty left visible.
A Virginia patent placed William on 400 acres near Timber Neck Creek by 1642. A later Maryland lawsuit described a bond made in England about twenty years before 1652/53, making an English connection strong even though his parish of origin remains unknown.
Documented in Virginia English origin probable sourcesMaryland transportation rights record William, wife Grace, children Thomas, Richard, Elizabeth, Ann and Alice, Grace’s daughter Elizabeth Wood, and others moving from Virginia about 1646. Thomas’s biological mother remains unresolved.
Documented migration sourcesWilliam Batten, brother of Joan Batten Smoot, transported a household to Maryland in 1651. William Barton, grandfather of Captain Thomas Smoot’s wife Elizabeth, was in Maryland by 1654; a later family will points toward Bartons in Warwickshire, but not to a proved birthplace for the immigrant.
Origins probable sourceWilliam and Mary were present in the lower Cowpasture community by the 1750s, and William’s 320-acre tract was patented in 1761. A 1721 baptism in County Armagh is a serious hypothesis—not yet a proved identity. The link from William to Thomas Gillespie of Tazewell is likewise probable, not documentary proof.
Cowpasture proved Armagh probable sourcesThese are the people at whom each direct maternal branch currently stops. They are arranged by reported birth year—not by certainty. A reviewed endpoint may extend beyond Randy’s current Ancestry tree when published evidence supports it; every such extension is labeled by confidence.
The Ancestry audit was completed on 16 August 2026. Hints remain on many profiles, but none is treated as a parent–child relationship until the underlying record and identity agree. Reviewed Baldwin and Rader–Gannaway placements extend or correct the imported tree and carry explicit confidence labels.
This reconstruction places Randy’s direct ancestor John Baldwin Sr. at home lot 13. His son John Jr.—only about five years old in 1646—later carried this Baldwin line from Milford to Newark, New Jersey.
Lot 13 today — reconstructed, not surveyed: the town record puts a highway on its east edge, John Fletcher’s lot 12 to the north, Francis Bolt’s lot 14 to the south, and other lots to the west. Aligned with the Wepawaug and the old Town House, this places it on the west side of today’s West River Street, approximately between the civic-center grounds and West Main Street. The Google Maps link opens at the middle of that likely area; it is not a claim about a present parcel boundary.
The nearby historic house: the Eells–Stow House at 34 High Street is about half a mile south. It is geographically close, but it was built later on Wharf Lane property and is not John Baldwin’s house or part of lot 13. A later owner, Freelove Baldwin Stow, gives it a genuine Baldwin association whose precise relationship to this direct line still needs to be traced.
Other Baldwin households nearby—Richard, Nathaniel, Timothy and Joseph—show a substantial family community, but their precise relationship to this John remains open.
How to read this: “Supported” marks a reviewed placement; “Ancestry endpoint—verify” marks an imported relationship that still needs independent records. Unknown birth years appear last. This ledger will move backward as evidence earns each new generation.
Most dots mark reported or approximate birthplaces; the Baldwin layer also follows the family’s two major southward steps—from Milford to Newark in 1666, then from New Jersey to Winchester just after the Revolution. WFG and JRM mark friendship locations along the Cowpasture. Lines show migration, generational movement, or geographic connections. Click any dot or line for context.
The family data is inside this file, but Leaflet and OpenStreetMap tiles load online.
The 1761 patent ran northward through four straight calls—222, 168, 254 and 60 poles—then returned “down the various courses” of the Cowpasture. The calls imply a narrow tract roughly two miles long, with the river as its closing boundary. The shape shown here is schematic; the clickable map polygon is an approximate placement near Griffith Knob, not a modern boundary survey.
Title trail: William and Mary Gillespie → Aaron Hughes (1780) → apparently Alexander Simpson (1787). The second transfer should be compared with the original Botetourt deed before the chain is called proved.
The earlier generated PNG was not available in this workspace, so this file includes an original embedded SVG reconstruction instead.Not fame for fame’s sake, but people whose lives illuminate the family’s place in a larger American story.
Physician Charles Taylor Pepper (1830–1903) practiced in southwest Virginia and served as a Confederate surgeon. His daughter Ruth McDowell Pepper married Tazewell lawyer Barnes Gillespie; their son was Charles Pepper Gillespie.
The family link is real. The familiar claim that Dr. Pepper invented—or definitively named—the soda is not. The Dr Pepper Museum credits Waco pharmacist Charles Alderton with creating the drink in 1885 and says the name’s origin remains unclear.
Born in Tazewell in 1903, he carried both family names. Contemporary alumni notices place him at Washington and Lee and later practicing law in Tazewell; the Virginia Museum of History & Culture lists a portrait file for him (1903–1954).
A page preserved with the Wiseman history tells a remarkable family tradition. It says John Wiseman and a young woman were captives among Native people, were released, and married in 1765. The story then identifies two sons the woman supposedly bore while captive as the celebrated Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa, the Prophet.
The tradition is not supported by documented Shawnee history. Tecumseh was born about 1768 and Tenskwatawa about 1775, so they were not twins. Historical accounts identify their parents as the Shawnee warrior Puckeshinwa and Methoataske. The story belongs on Rivers Remember as evidence of what the Wiseman family remembered—not as proof of Native ancestry.
Born into an established Charles County family around 1660, the younger Thomas married Elizabeth Barton and became sheriff of Charles County in 1703. He should not be confused with his father, Thomas Sr., who died about 1668—or treated as a 1687 immigrant.
Research identifies Isaac Wiseman (1738–1818) as a Pennsylvania militia private on the American side. A 1788 Rockingham record names Isaac, son Samuel and Isaac Jr.; the date is postwar and should not itself be described as a Revolutionary muster.
A later lawsuit looks back to an English bond from about this time.
William’s Virginia patent anchors the family in the colony.
Transportation claims later name the family members.
William Gillespie’s 320 acres sit opposite the Griffith Knob landscape.
Thomas and Margaret Bowen’s descendants become a major Tazewell family.
Ruth McDowell Pepper marries Barnes Gillespie.
This is a research snapshot, not a frozen family tree. The labels below are intentionally conservative.
William and Mary Gillespie’s Cowpasture presence and land; William Smoot’s Virginia and Maryland record trail; the Thomas Sr.–William relationship; the Pepper–Gillespie marriage path; Captain Thomas Smoot’s Maryland career; Nathaniel Baldwin’s £20 testamentary gift to Rev. Aaron Burr Sr.
William Gillespie as father of Thomas who married Margaret Bowen; William’s connection to County Armagh; an English origin for William Smoot; Warwickshire association for the Maryland Barton family.
The captivity and marriage episodes in the Wiseman tradition; the claimed connection to Aaron Burr Jr.; the English parents of John Baldwin Sr. of Milford; William Smoot’s parish and first wife; Mary Gillespie’s surname; original deeds proving the 1787 Cowpasture transfer; a modern parcel-level boundary reconstruction.
Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa as twin sons of a Wiseman-associated captive; a land sale from Nathaniel Baldwin to Rev. Aaron Burr; a proved direct line from the Newark–Milford Baldwins to Richard Baldwin of Aston Clinton; 1687 as Thomas Smoot’s immigration date; a precise Dutch origin for William Smoot without evidence; a proven modern boundary for the 320 acres; certainty that Charles Pepper named the soda.
Prepared 15 August 2026. Geographic coordinates are approximate and are not legal descriptions. OpenStreetMap contributors supply the base map.