Martin
and Hannah Clark Baker of Halifax Co., VA. and Garrard Co., KY. and
their
Descendants
Secondary Names:
Martin
and Hannah Clark Baker of Halifax Co., VA. and Garrard Co., KY. and
their
Descendants
Secondary Names:
Bruner, Cambron, Campbell, Cleveland, Colquitt, Cooksey, Colvin, Corley, Fuqua. Gardner, Gifford, Green, Griffith, Hale, Hamlett, Hanks, Hay, Herron, Hicks, Holtzclaw, House, Hubbard, Huff, Huffman, Hungate, Ison, Kendall, Kilburn, Lambert, Laughlin, Lee, Litterel (al), Lyon, McGhee, McMannis, Moore, Ogg, Peavler, Rice, Robards, Shinn, Shipman, Skaggs, Sneed, Stone, Steele, Sturges, Swango, Taylor, Tandy,Votaw, Warren, WrightThese are some of the names of those women and men who married into this Baker line in the 1700s and 1800s. Recent names are not included.
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Dear
Myrtle's
Genealogy Column
Table of Contents
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that
section
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down
to the section.)
Brief, Early History of This Baker Line
Baker Generations of this line, #1 through # 5
Other Baker Web Pages Listing this Martin/Hannah Baker Line
Links to Other Baker Pages---Those NOT Related to this Baker Line
Baker Specific E-Mail Lists (For posting queries)
Best Genealogical Sources on the Net
Excellent On-Line Genealogy Newsletters
A List of My BAKER "Cousins" with thanks to all of them who have contributed information to my tree
An Early, Baker Family History with Notes from Kentucky's Frontier History
Martin and Ann Hannah(?) Clark Baker lived in Brunswick Co., VA. about 1755. The records for St. Andrew's Parish indicate that he was paid for repairing the glebe's (parsonage) chimney on several occasions. About 1775, Martin moved to Halifax Co. His name appears there many times in the county records. Martin, Ann and their grown children lived along Mirey Creek, a small stream west of the village of South Boston. Mirey Creek was originally the part of Brunswick from which Halifax was formed. Martin and his wife's parents and birth places are still unknown. At least four Martin Bakers fought in the revolution and one in Dunmore's War.
Alexander Marshall Baker (1850-1937) told the family that Martin, his great great-grandfather, was born in 1714, but since records prove that he died about 1820, it is highly unlikely that he lived to be 106 years old!
Marshall also said that Martin was Scottish-Irish. ( a misnomer since this particular group of emigrants were actually Scottish-English from the border between Scotland and England; a better term is "Borderer."*) Certainly, the name, Baker, is a common one throughout England.
An ancestor of Martin's most likely came to the colonies from England; several ships did arrive in the early to mid 1700s from England with passengers named Martin Baker. Ships coming that early, however, listed only names and ages of passengers, so nothing more is known about those Martin Bakers. Since there were at least 7 Martin Bakers in Colonial Virginia (A few were the same man living in different counties). Learning more about Martin is complicated since thirty nine Virginia court houses either were burned by the British in the War of 1812 or burned by accident before 1880. In some a few records were saved. So the court records we seek may no longer exist.
The name Baker, however, is definitely a name associated with the English "Borderers", along with Boone, Johnson, Jackson, Graham, Allen, Bright and many other of the most common American names. They were the tough frontiersmen, often those who moved west as new lands opened up.* They were used to hardship and to fighting the English or the Scottish armies or each other's clans.
Martin's first child, Susannah, was born in 1755 (Source: her application for a widow's Revoluntionary War pension), perhaps some 6-7 years before the next child, James. This could mean that Martin had an earlier wife before Hannah( Perhaps Hannah and Ann Clark were two different women since one or the other names appear in legal documents.), or it could be that there were more children about whom we do not know, perhaps children who died in infancy, as was often the case. Susannah in her will named a brother, John, whom we have not found named anywhere previous to her death. Martin and Hannah raised at least two other children, James and Henrietta Maria, to adulthood in Halifax Co. Another daughter, Elizabeth, died at age 18.
Daughter Henrietta married William Hamlett in Halifax Co. in 1786 and may later have married Samuel Maires/Maines/Mares (sp?) before 1805 according to a neighbor's court deposition some years later. Another source states that she died soon after her marriage, and still another states that it was he who died. No trace of Henrietta has been found in Virginia after about 1802.
Henrietta was a witness at the marriage of Susannah Baker and Ransome Colquitt in 1785 in Halifax Co., VA. The couple then moved to Rockingham County, N.C., a county that borders Halifax, where they raised at least 8 children. Later records show that Ransome, a Revolutionary War veteran, a dragoon in the First VA. Regiment, was the bondsman in the 1815 marriage in Garrard Co., KY. of Cassandra Cabot Colquitt to James' son, Martin. Kentucky law at the time required a father or brother to sign for the bride since females were not allowed to sign legal documents. Though she is not listed as a daughter of Ransome's in N.C., a letter, ca. 1930, from Martin Baker Stone written from Chili, S.A., states that "Martin married his cousin, Miss Cassandra Colquitt." So with these two pieces of information, we can conclude that cousin married cousin, not an uncommon practice at that time.
In December, 1820, Cassandra died of complications from the birth of her son, John E.; altogether she had four children. In addition to John, there were William Henry, Manerva (Taylor), and Susan. Martin then married Eliza Rice, sister of his brother's wife (Thomas and Clarisa Rice) and moved to Missouri in a covered wagon, near Trenton, where he had more children, and where he died in 1875. He, Eliza and one of their sons are buried in a small, overgrown farm cemetery, Brooks Cemetery. This Martin Baker served in the War of 1812; Eliza received a military pension after his death.
About 1778, his grandfather, Martin and wife, Hannah Ann, moved again with son, James, and his wife, Elizabeth Fuqua, originally of Charlotte Co., VA., to Garrard Co., KY. Before leaving VA., Martin sold two slaves, Charlotte and son, Lewis, and their household belongings to daughter, Henrietta, and son-in-law, William, so they obviously were unable to take much with them.
This, plus the fact that Halifax Co. is on the N.C. border, indicates that their route was The Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap and then along the Cumberland Trace that ran from the Gap to Fort Harrod. That early it was still a rough foot trail, not wide enough for a wagon. They would have had to walk much of the way, able to ride horseback only over the less rugged parts.
At that time, this was the only land route into Kentucky. The Ohio River route was too far to the north to be feasible for them. They most likely traveled with a group because attacks by bands of rogue Indians still occurred. In 1795, Chief Doublehead captured five Virginians in Edmonson County, killed them, and boiled their bodies! Gangs of white bandits also preyed on travelers through out the narrow gap long after the Indians were gone.
None of KY. was safe,
however,
from Indian attacks at the time the Baker family moved there. In March,
1789, Indians killed one man and wounded another on the road to
Lexington.
The same day Indians took a prisoner and many horses near Limestone. In
June of the same year, two men and three boys fishing on Salt Creek
were
attacked. The men were killed and the boys taken prisoner. Kentucky was
known as "The Bloody Land."
Looking down at Cumberland Gap today as viewed from the mountain above, (from about a 4,000 ft. elevation) the only way at that time through the Central Appalachians. The highway was recently torn out and the trail restored so that visitors may "walk the Gap" as did their ancestors. For cars, there is now a tunnel and expressway through the mountain! Today the gap region is a national park with an attractive visitors center.
The map below shows the route
that the early settlers had to take from Virginia through the
Cumberland
Gap (The solid red line). The Great Valley Road went south through
Virginia,
and in 1796, at some still uncertain point, became known as the
Wilderness
Road. The trail went south and then west into the northern
edge of Tennessee and back up into Kentucky. More than 70,000
settlers
had trudged through the gap before Kentucky became a state in 1792.
I have placed a small
square
to mark Halifax Co. on the North Carolina border. Martin and his
family would have traveled north and west to connect with the trail.
Though
West Virginia is marked on this map, it was part of Virginia at this
time.
It did not become a separate state until the onset of the Civil War.
West
Virginia split off from Virginia over the slavery issue. Virginia was a
slave state; West Virginia was anti-slavery.
Martin and family may have traveled with a group of Baptists since the influx of settlers during this period in Garrard Co. were nearly all Virginia Baptists who left Virginia for religious reasons. They resented having to pay taxes to the state church of Virginia (The Church of England and later, the Episcopal Church) when they were not members. Most of the Scot-English were originally Presbyterians, and then once here in the Colonies, many became Baptists. Most were quite hostile toward The Church of England. Records show that Martin's grandson, also named Martin, was a Baptist in Garrard Co.
Their first stop in KY., in all likelihood, was Fort Logan (now Stanford), the closest fort to their destination. (This fort no longer exists.) Martin had received a land grant in Kentucky of 1,200 acres that was to have been in Anderson Co. But instead, they lived on Sugar Creek, in Lincoln Co. (Later Garrard Co.) a few miles from Lancaster, where Martin ran a gristmill. Both Martin and Hannah are thought to be buried in Garrard Co., but their grave sites are unknown.
By 1843, son, James, was in Anderson Co.; he deeded land there to son, Beverly, and his wife, Isabel Sneed. Beverly and Isabel are thought to be buried in Washington Co. James also owned land in Mercer Co. He died in 1845 and is likely buried in Mercer or Washington Counties, though neither a burial site nor last will and testament has been found for him.
James had at least eight children, possibly more ( For a list of them and further descendants, click on the link below for the five generation tree). James and Elizabeth may have split up after many years and many children. It is thought that perhaps he married Jenny Jamison late in life, and Elizabeth moved to N.C. and remarried there, though no divorce papers have been found for either of them.
Thus far, more than 3,500 descendants of Martin's have been located in many states---from KY. to CA., and even in Chile, and Argentina, South America. (Martin Baker Stone and his brother, James Tully Stone, both born in KY., moved to Chile before 1900 to build bridges for the government. James later moved to Argintina.)
Currently there are at least twenty descendants researching the family. As yet, no descendants have been located for Henrietta. We know the names of most of Susannah B. Colquitt's children, but we have yet to find descendants of those other than Cassandra. Susannah died in Kanawha Co., VA. (later W. VA.) in the spring of 1845, where she had been receiving a Revolutionary War Widow's pension. Her will is posted on the Kanawha County RootsWeb site.
Not all generations of the family are listed here; generations # 6, 7, 8, and 9 are not included in order to omit the living. (You may contact me if you wish me to send you those generations privately.)
Though we Baker descendants are always careful to seek documentation, there still can be no guarantee that all of the information contained herein is correct. Different records often show conflicting information, as well as variations in the spelling of names. No sources of data have been included here in order to save space You may contact me or one of the other descendants for this information. We do not list infomation unless we have the documentation.
E. A. Kaspar
*An excellent book that describes the lives and subculture of the "Borderers" from Great Britain, as well as other group of early English settlers, is ALBION'S SEED: FOUR BRITISH FOLKWAYS IN AMERICA by David Hackett Fischer, Oxford University Press, 1989, available in paperback or hard cover.
For further information
regarding
early American Migration routes, see William Dollarhide's book, MAP
GUIDE
TO AMERICAN MIGRATION ROUTES 1735-1815. Published by Heritage Quest in
Bountiful, Utah, 1997, in paperback.
In genealogical research, no fact is ever an absolute!
If you have any additional information regarding this Baker line, or if you wish further information please contact:
E. A. Kaspar
C. Birchell Coslow
June Stone
Genealogy---it's only an obsession, after all!
Click here:Baker
Generations
#
1 through # 5
The Genealogist's Lament: I should have asked them BEFORE they died!
Other Baker Web Pages Listing this
Martin/Hannah Baker Line
A new cousin a day keeps boredom away!
C. Birchell Coslow's line via James, Beverly, Lewis and Margaret Jane B. Warren
Susan Seale's line via James, Martin2, John and Martha B. Swango
Scott William's line via James, Beverly, and James M.Sandi Partin's line via James, Beverly and Charles
Warning: there are no lifeguards in this gene pool!
Baker is such a common name that there are probably many more than a hundred unrelated Baker lines in the U.S. (There were at least 6 Martin Bakers just in Colonial Virginia and several others in MD. and PA.!) Continued research may someday connect some of the lines, but most were never related.
After all, since bread has
always
been the staff of life, there were many bread bakers all
over
Europe whose occupations eventually became their surnames.
I cannot guarantee that all of these addresses still work. Web sites seem to last about as long as an ice cream cone on an August afternoon!
http://members.tripod.com/~DutchR/index.html
Baker_resources.hthttp://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/8056/bml
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/9201
http://www.gengateway.com/listings/sites/2267.html
http://www.koan.com/~twosocks/genealogy.html
http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/5273/baker.htm
http://www.novia.net/~cletus/baker.html
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Ridge/5974/baker.htm
http://www.mosquitonet.com/~luht/BAKER.HTM
http://burgoyne.com/pages/adgedge/
http://web2.airmail.net/ldystang/genealog.html
http://hometown.aol.com/clarkweb/index.htm
http://www.ptsi.net/user/umschab/chart270.htm
http://www.microweb.com/nature/herron.html
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7281/baker.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/8685/bake0001.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/8056/sbryan.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/8056/bakerb.htm
Capt. John T. Baker & the Saga of the 1857 Mountain Meadows Indian Massacre
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Fields/6653/baker.htm
http://www.familytreemaker.com/users/w/i/l/Audrey-B-Willburn/index.html
http://www.uftree.com This site requires that you go first to the entry page for all trees. then to "Lineage", and type Baker.
http://www.familytreemaker.com/users/b/a/k/Dale-E-Baker/index.html
http://www.mgarza.specent.com/ancest1.htm
http://members.tripod.com/~jehodges/index-B.htm
http://home.inreach.com/sevdaze
http://www.execpc.com/~drg/Bakerfamily.html
http://home.att.net/~caljan/home.htm
http://www.kramerskorners.com/va/ancst.htm
http://members.aol.com/bdhamey/2/kgs/kgssem99.htm
http://www.rivera-genealogy.com/
http://wwwmembers.tripod.com/~Crystal_J/Baker.html
If you have a Baker Web page that you would like to have listed here, please let me know. E.A.K.
Baker-L@rootsweb.com
Best
Genealogical Sources on the Net
RootsWeb Genealogy ProjectAmerican Plantations and Colonies
Beginning Genealogy Lessons from the U. of Kansas
Cyndi's List of Genealogical Sites---more than 140,000 Links
Everton's Root Cellar
Genealogical Connections and ResourcesGenealogy Room of The Allen Co. Library in Ft. Wayne, IN.
Genealogy Search Engine: I Found It, etc.
Gentech for People Interested in Genealogy and Technology
Genealogy on the Web from the U. of WI/EC
Great, Long List of Genealogy Bookstores On-Line
Introduction to LDS Family History Centers
IRC Genealogy Chat Room: open 24 hours a Day, 7 Days a Week
Numbering Systems in Genealogy
Source List for Genealogy Research from the U. of Kansas
Twenty Ways to Avoid Genealogical Grief
Library of Virginia (Excellent source for VA.genealogy records online)
Virginia Colonial Records Project
Whoever said, "Seek and ye shall find" was NOT a genealogist!
Excellent On-Line Genealogical Newsletters
Ancestry Daily News
Missing Links, a weekly by Julia Case & Myra V. GormleyRoots Web Review by Julia Case and Myra V. Gormley
Keep in mind that undocumented genealogy is mythology! This Web Page is dedicated to the memory of Edith Baker Kaspar, Martin and Hannah's G4granddaughter, who spent much of her life searching for his origins and his descendants.
Thank you, Cousins
I wish to express my thanks to all of my Baker cousins around the U.S. who have contributed genealogical information for my file. Many of them I have met only on the Net and hope soon to meet in person. All of the following are descended from Martin and Hannah's son, James.
Those who have a genealogy home page are starred.
Donald Baker CA.
Dr. Kirby Baker CA.
Joyce Berns CA.
Birchell Coslow * WY.
Lavon Crutchfield KY.
Jo Anne Ernst Deceased
Scott Gardner KY.
Sandi Baker Partin * KY.
Elaine Elliott CA.
Janet Goodnite IL.
John F. Gepford OK.
Patsy Herrell KY.
William R. Horine FL.
Ernest Irwin CA.
Melinda Swango Johnson FL.
Gary Lambert IL.
Cele Baker Liebelt WI.
Miriam Mason KY.
Robin Moulton CA.
Mary Baker McGee IL.
Niki Paddock AZ.
Carole Peterson WI.
Amalie Preston (Baker dau. in law) KY.
Mary Anne Baker Reynolds KY.
Steve & Susan McCracken Seale* AL.
Jane Seitz IL.
Drs. John & Andrea Skaggs KY.
Judy Baker Stiefel
Ruth Hubbard Strake IN.
June Stone OR.
Lynn Stone CA.
Barbara Terhune
William Tocher CA.
Kate Baker (Husband) IN.
Judy Baker Stiefel IN.
Barbara Bonham (Husband) S.C.
Dr. Clint & Martha Baker AL.
(who gave me the autobiography
of my Great Aunt, Julia Baker)
Scott Williams * IL.
Iris Baker Wilson OH.
I firmly believe that many of my ancestors must have been in the Witness Protection Program!
For this Web page, my thanks to
Copyright 1998, E. A. Kaspar, all rights reserved
I used to have a life, then I started doing genealogy!
