Over the weekend, I was catching up on some genealogy stuff and came across an interesting item. I have been able to trace my ancestry on my dad's side of the family back to Epaphroditus Howle, born in 1685. This ancestor of mine lived in St. Peter's Parish of New Kent County, Virginia. He had a son named Thomas who had at least three sons: Thomas, Epaphroditus, and James. (These three names were very common for the Howle men in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. My great-great grandfather Thomas Epaphroditus Howle was a hero of the Civil War--on the Confederate side.) The grandson Epaphroditus lived in the same area and is almost certainly the person who signed a receipt in 1758 given to Mrs. Martha Dandridge Custis, a widow who employed Epaphroditus Howle as overseer of her plantation. (She had married Daniel P. Custis who was twenty years her senior and had two children by him before he died in 1757.) The following year (1759), Martha married, in St. Peter's Church, a young surveyor who had just resigned from military service--George Washington.
Now I do not know that my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather's brother attended the wedding, but he lived there and worked for Martha before she married the future first president of the United States. Seems reasonable, don't you think?
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8 comments:
Sounds totally reasonable to me! You are the closest to famous that I will ever get.
WAIT! That is not true. I once met (for reals) Phylis George's daddy in K-Mart in Denton, Texas.
Oh, yeah, well how about this: I was on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour in two different groups on the same episode. Didn't win anything but bragging rights.
eeerrrmmmm.....who is Ted Mack?
Oh yeah ... well, there are a lot of famous people with my last name: Tom, Richard, Kyle, Lori ..... so there.
Well, Mindy, you are just too young. The Ted Mack Amateur Hour was a TV show in the sixties that featured amateur acts from around the US. It was kind of like "American Idol" only in black and white and not nearly so glitzy. The performances were live. The only record of the show that we had was an audio recording that my dad made using a tape recorder. I sang in a folk group and also played in a handbell choir. The producers didn't realize that four of us were in both groups, so they had to rearrange the program to allow for costume changes. The show was broadcast from Dallas the week we were on.
laughing :)
family trees are interesting. I find the geneologies in the Bible hard though - but then my missionary friends who are working on Bible translation in PNG said that one old man read the genelogy of Jesus that they'd translated - and he started to cry - it is true He was the son of God - and to think I'd have skipped that bit (blush)
be blessed!
I'm glad you are hooked up with THIS President George.
I offered Steve Martin a marshmallow once. Does that count?
Hi, little Dave, I was just googling Epaphroditus Howle, researching the family tree, and your blog was the first entry. So I just had to look! In regards to your other blog comment, you must be important. You're family! So hello, 'cousin'! I'm from the Thomas T. Howle line. And like you, have travelled around a bit since a child (dad military) and living Down Under for the past 8 years.
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