(An edited repost from 2015)
Crab Orchard, KY was near the beginning of the Logan Trace of the Wilderness Road and was an early pioneer station. There are several mineral springs in the area and from 1827 until 1922 taverns and hotels were located at Crab Orchard Springs.
Richard Frederick Williams was born in Crab Orchard, Kentucky in 1782. (see map below)
Wilderness?
The Wilderness Road was the principal route used by settlers for more than fifty years to reach Kentucky from the East. In 1775, Daniel Boone "blazed" a trail for the Transylvania Company from Fort Chiswell in Virginia through the Cumberland Gap into central Kentucky. It was later lengthened, following Native American trails, to reach the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville. The Wilderness Road was steep, rough, narrow, and it could only be traversed on foot or horseback. Despite the adverse conditions, thousands of people used it.
In 1792, the new Kentucky legislature provided money to upgrade the road. In 1796, an improved all-weather road was opened for wagon and carriage travel. The road was abandoned around 1840, although modern highways follow much of its route.
The Logan Trace was a wilderness trail through central Kentucky, a branch of Daniel Boone's Wilderness Road. It was named after its originator, Colonel Benjamin Logan. Logan came over the mountains with Boone in 1775, but went west toward Buffalo Spring instead of north. Its terminus was northwest of present-day Stanford, Kentucky, where Logan built a fort known as Logan's Station or St. Asaph. Stanford eventually emerged from Logan's original settlement.
Richard Williams' son William T. Williams, Sr. was born Dec. 16, 1824 in Pulaski County, KY (I posted here last year a bit about his life)
William Sr. moved to Missouri probably in 1832 and with various siblings, and uncles and aunts settled there, and began farming. William T. Williams, Sr. at 38 joined the US army for part of the Civil War, and then moved much of his family to Texas by 1877, when his daughter Annie Elizabeth (born in 1862) married Leary (L. F.) Francis Webb, my great grandfather. There was a son of William T. Williams by the same name, which is why I've added the "Sr." to the father's name. The son, William Jr. remained in Missouri.
These people kept on moving, and I keep feeling amazed at their spirit of exploration. Texas was pretty wild still in the 1870s, though the Wild West was still to become glamorized in fictionalized paper back books.
The Webbs had been in Texas for a while, since Leary (L. F.) was born (1857) in Clinton County, to parents from Maryland and New York. He married and settled in DeWitt County Texas, where they raised their 8 children (losing one as a child). The family prospered by running a feed and general store.
But by 1910 the family was living in the metropolis of San Antonio. Here was a city environment, where L. F. lived out his years, dying in 1921. His wife Annie lived until 1942. But my grandfather Bud Webb who died young was buried in the Masonic Cemetery in 1919.
I can only explain my desire to move about the country as the same urge that probably spurred these ancestors to travel to new horizons. But it sure is a lot easier for me to do so than it was for them.
The Williams came from Missouri to Texas, and had already come from Kentucky to Missouri
"Liberty Williams" was one of the elder brothers to William T. Williams, my great grandmom's dad. Great times 3 Uncle Liberty. Liberty and William T were born in Pulaski County, Kentucky.
And their parents were born in the same area as well, both Richard Frederick Williams and his wife Nancy Hansford Williams. Richard Frederick Williams was born in 1792 in Crab Orchard, Lincoln County, Kentucky,
Richard's father, Frederick Williams probably came from South Carolina, while his mother Cassandra Elizabeth, "Cassiah" Tate Williams came from North Carolina. They were the pioneers who moved to Kentucky by 1792 when Richard was born. Their first child had been born in South Carolina in 1787.
And the Frederick and Cassiah Williams family may have moved to Kentucky for a while, but they died in Tennessee, while Richard F. as well as Liberty Williams (and other Williams) moved to Missouri. And then sometime between the time William T. was 38 and 56 (by 1863) he moved from Missouri to Texas, leaving Liberty in Missouri with all his family!
Farmers all. They had such a job ahead of them when moving to new territory.
It wasn't just go look at the land, put up a cabin, and sew some seeds right away. Clear timber. Find fresh water nearby. Plow the land. Bring along some livestock as well, and maybe take a few trips back to sources of seeds, nails, the rest of needed livestock, and hope that everyone stays healthy while each of the people help build whatever buildings were first needed. Put in a garden, or at least go pick those berries and nuts. And while waiting for any kind of food to grow, what do you eat? The hunters were out getting deer, squirrel, rabbits, birds and whatever could be shot or trapped for food. Mum would have been taking these carcases and skinning them, or plucking, and cooking over a campfire.
Campfires were not much different than cooking in a fireplace. Hauling some iron pots and pans were very important in order to make meals. Someone was bringing water from a creek or river...every night! And someone was chopping some logs while the littlest someones just picked up sticks for kindling.
Yes a life that was out in nature. Sounds idyllic, right? Not when you think of snakes, cold, rain and many bugs and even heat at other times.
It must have made these very hardy folks, cause William T. lived to be 72. And his wife, Dorcas White Williams, mother of 8, (6 of whom lived to adulthood) lived to 74 years of age.
I'm so glad I was born when I was. I get the benefit of medical care and social security rather than an adult child who will care for me in my old age. AND I get the internet. I don't know how many of the people in the 1800's could read and write, and certainly it was far fewer in the 1700s. Those folks were too busy killing their food and cooking it, or growing it and eating and sleeping to bother to write anything, let alone teach the kids how. Schools were obviously a real boon when towns were formed. But that's a topic for another day.
Sharing this with Sepia Saturday this week! The prompt theme has a young man cooking outdoors. I've been talking about many women (mainly) who cooked on the trails as the families relocated.
This post belongs to the Barbara Booth Rogers Family Tree. Photo shows Mataley Mozelle Rogers, and her mother Mozelle Booth Miller, and my sister Mary Beth Rogers.
PS. Traces of Texas on Facebook:
More Williams families...(unknown if they are related to my Williams family)
"TOT reader Al McAnespy graciously shared this portrait of his ancestors. It was taken in 1889 in Oakalla, TX. Bothers and sister, all Texas born, these are the five youngest of the nine children of Jonathan "Jack" and Narcissus Williams, who settled in the Burnet area soon after statehood in 1845. Al's Great Great Grandfather, Jonathan "Babe" Williams, is seated on the left:
