My Trails into the Past

This is my fourth year working on this year-long 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. When one reads these old county histories that were very popular around the time of the centennial of our country, elaborate biographies were written by the families who paid to have them printed. My children’s 4x-great-grandfather, David Shotts has one of these bios, published in several different books. He died in 1825, so these books written after 1876 are going to be stories passed down in the family and not told by people who were there. From two of such books, we find stories about David: “David Shots was a Revolutionary hero, who came to Huntington township in 1809. He was also in service during the suppression of the Whiskey insurrection.” [1] “David Shotts entered Huntington in...