Allen Johnson's Library Lines this week is about genealogy. For me, it's a well-timed piece because I did some family history research this month with my mom, Rene White, and cousin, Sherry Tompkins.

We were guided through the White family's past in Highland County, Virginia, by local historian Roger Orndorff, a Pocahontas County native.

I've been searching for the land our great-great-grandfather Henry White left to come to Pocahontas, stymied by lack of time and a lack of interest from some of the older people in my family.

Our family's oral history is this:

Johann Weiss was a Hessian soldier in the Revolutionary War who either deserted or was captured and chose to stay in America, taking the Oath of Allegiance, settling near Fort Seybert in Pendleton County and eventually buying land in Highland County near Bluegrass.

His name was Anglicized and he became John White, marrying a Native American woman whose name we never knew. They had three sons, John, George and Henry.

John married Susanna Stone and their son, Henry, was the great-great-grandfather whose home was burned by Yankee soldiers in 1863. His son, Henry Lee, was born in the springhouse on January 31, 1864. The family moved to Pocahontas County 10 years later when Henry purchased Benjamin Herold's farm on Douthards Creek.

The expanse of land was eventually broken up between his children and some of it remains in the family today.


We had several gaps, like where the Highland County land was, what had happened to the other Whites there and why wasn't there any correspondence with them.

Over the years, some things have fallen in my lap.

Henry White built a house on Douthards Creek and that is where he and his wife, Sabina Rexrode White died.

When Rachel Tompkins began the move home to that house, she gave us boxes of letters and documents that filled in some of our lost history. If gold had been in that old wooden box I don't think I would have been any happier.


The reams of papers document a sale of cattle to the Confederate Army just weeks before Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses Grant at Appomatox, Henry White's own Oath of Allegiance to the United States signed in July, 1865, letter after letter detailing illnesses, crops and one regretful letter from David Rexrode that advised his Uncle Henry that he had to leave the mountainland (on Middle Mountain now mostly in the George Washington National Forest) because the winter was so hard.

"I am starving to death and I can read the Lord's Prayer through my horse," he wrote. "You will have to find someone else to take care of this place."

And one letter from Henry's niece, Amanda Jane, complained that she didn't know why her uncle was upset with her father, Jacob, because he hadn't had anything to do with Grandfather's will. There it was. One of the missing pieces, at least. The answer to why so much correspondence with the Rexrodes and essentially none with the Whites. A later letter from their brother, Solomon, noted how happy he was that his brothers had made peace with each other.

But still no letters from his family or any reference to them at all.

We found one more little clue‚ a classified advertisement clipped from the Staunton Newsleader offering to sell the land with directions, including the mileage from the mill at New Hampden.

Nearly every trip I take to Franklin I make a pass through the Bluegrass Valley. Not only is it one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in every season, but I was searching for other clues. I've gone to every cemetery I could find, searched the cornerstones of every church, hoping one of them would have been a Lutheran Church in the distant past. Nothing.

And one day in June Roger Orndorff walked into The Pocahontas Times for some reason I can't remember. I did remember his name because he's a member of the Historical Society in Highland County and I'd heard he was interested in genealogy there.

So I pitched the family history I knew and told him I'd be there someday to check it out.

He first emailed me a family tree that was pretty impressive and then a chronology of land ownership from 1785 until 1878. One of those land transactions mentioned the first John's wife, Mary; we don't know if she was the mother of his children or a subsequent wife, but we do have a name.

August 14 was the day. No more waiting, no other priorities.

He warned us not to be too optimistic, but I couldn't help it. He'd at least found land where the Whites had lived, so there might be, could be a clue.

He took us first to the mountainland, or what we could see of it from the road. We have heard, as has he, that there is a chimney somewhere on that property, but it isn't visible. As we came down Lantz Mountain, he stopped so we could see the western facing slope of Monterey Mountain and he pointed out where we were headed‚ a beautiful mountainside field where we could see the rusty roof of a rather large barn.

With permission from the current landowner, we wound our way to the homestead, or where we believe it was. Roger Orndorff, in true historian fashion, refuses to speculate about anything that is not concretely provable. Mom, Sherry and I, however, engaged in musing about the rocks and the spring and the very little evidence of a structure near it, where our great-grandfather could have been born on a cold January day. Here was the orchard mentioned in the classified ad, a lilac bush that must be more than a century old and a cellar built much like the one at Henry's Pocahontas County home.

After all these years of searching and wondering, we'd found it. If it is not the homeplace, then we at least know our forefathers walked this land, made some of those piles and piles of rocks to clear the fields, drank from these streams and went to church at Union Chapel, a place I've stood dozens of times, thinking the land had to be close by, wondering whose bones were in those unmarked graves.

I'd been looking at it all along. It is likely, although not verifiable, that Henry's parents, John and Susanna, and his oldest daughter, Louisa Caroline, who died before the fire, lie there in that hallowed ground. Perhaps even the Hessian soldier is there, as well, but I may never know.

For now, what I do know is enough. The homeplace land is not visible from the road and I hope the kindness of the landowner will be extended again, because others in my family want to go, at least once. I did take enough pictures, which I'll gladly share, but there's nothing like being there. Nothing at all.

We’ve found out about some cousins, descendants of Jacob White, and although we haven’t met
them yet, we aren’t going to delay much longer. Roger says they have some of the same stories and I can’t wait to compare notes.

Roger wouldn't accept any compensation for the trip in spite of the fact he used his own gas and made bunches of copies of records and maps for us. All he wants in return is more information and
copies of some of the documents and letters that we have. I couldn't have paid him if I'd wanted to. There's not enough money in my coffers to equal the value of that trip for me.

My search is not over, not yet. I'd still like to know when that Hessian soldier died, but even more than that I'd like to know where he was born and what his father did. And that will mean a trip to Germany.

Someday.

So here's what I think—if you're in your own search for ancestors or their land, take heart. I've been asking questions and searching for mine since I was about 17 years old. I think the lack of information may have been the impetus for continuing the search. It certainly made finding each piece of the puzzle a little sweeter. Don't give up, whatever you do. In fact, make time to talk to people while they are still around, go places while some shred of evidence still exists, don't put it off any longer.