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Hi. I have been a silent member of Saponitown for about a year. I admittedly do not log in often, but occassionally to read the posts and to see if there is any new information that would help me. I am trying to research the surnames above. I am Indian, that I am sure, but just want to try to figure out why my ancestors moved to the areas that they did. Most of what I know is that my ancestors lived in NC, then went to Virginia, then southern WV. This was occurring a few years before the Removal.
Thanks for any information.
Hi Suncerae,
Welcome to the site. My 4th Great-Grandmother is Mary Wilfong. She was born 1795 in either Culpepper or Pendleton County, (West) Virginia. (I have seen both places listed.) She married Henry Stone and they came to Indiana around 1822. The Stone line (was Stein at one point) was German and I just assumed my Wilfongs were too.
Stacey
Well, Stacey, this certainly is your day for long-lost cousins.
Suncaerae, as to why your ancestors may have moved around the way they did, assuming they were mixed blooded people (or full blooded Indians for that matter) moving out into Appalachia was a way to get out of the way of white (slaveholding) settlers. For one thing, once the slave trade was outlawed, kidnapping of not-quite-white people, esp. children, became a real source of anxiety, (a 19c. version of ‘alien abductions’) plus the mood was getting uglier and uglier as Removal approached. The state motto for West Virginia is
“Montani Semper Liberi,” or “Mountaineers are always free”. It was formed during the Civil War, as that section of what was originally part of Virginia chose not to secede and was anti-slavery.
Squirreling yourself away in some fairly inaccessible hollow does help to guarantee one’s personal freedom or independence. In short, moving into the Appalachian mountains was a route to escape white or let’s say lilly-white encroachment for many Indian blooded families.
My grandfather Ira Washington Wilfong was born in Pendleton County WV. He is from German decent..Johannes Wildfang. My great grand father married into the Shifflett’s who have the relationship with Peachy Self, and my mother’s ancestors also married into Indians…from what I have been told, there are Saponi, Cherokee, Choctaw and Tuscaroran’s in my family tree. It makes sense after reading your post Linda, about the moving around. Mother has told me that her parents raised her “white” because of the prejuidences in this state. Indians could not own land in WV until 1965! We have pretty much always been “mountain folk”. Thank you all for the information. Sometimes I refer to myself as the Tween Tribe….between white and Indian. Not white enough to be white, not Indian enough to please the government or satisfy the rolls, so I’m between, and I happen to choose my Indian side, which I have lived most of my life.
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