Genealogy can be fun, challenging, annoying, aggravating, and just plain interesting all at the same time. There are no shortages of ancestry-type sites where you can join and pay (buy credits) and find out all you can possibly find out about one or all of your people. I did this recently, of course choosing my dad's side of the family first since I am a Stringfellow and he is a Stringfellow, I wanted to chase those people down first. YES, I was hoping to find that they traced back to Scotland, my favorite place in the world, but I did find that they not only are from Scotland, but that the line stops there - and there is no more information about where the Robert Stringfellow from Scotland (1615) was from other than the general area that is called Midlothian, and is generally in the vicinity of Edinburgh. (If that Stringfellow is anything like the rest of us, he'd be on the outskirts and not in the city proper. It's who we are.)
Here's the lineup and how I get there. I used Ancestry.com, Wikitree, and Google to find the various Stringfellows that line up with who I KNEW was a relative, a guy named James Stringfellow who married Margaret Cambell in or around 1657 (when he was around the ripe old age of 15); WHAT? True love, I guess. They had a bunch of babies and moved to the new world the same year that they married, so it's my thought and dream that he was in love with her, couldn't bear the thought of moving to the new world without her, so they got married and ran away -- makes sense, could make a good movie. Whatever the reason these two kids were minors and they married; settling in the Virginia Commonwealth area and he was a tradesman.
I was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1961. My daddy was Reuben Wayne Stringfellow, born in Horatio (Frog Level) Arkansas, on April 22, 1932. His daddy Reuben Jefferson Stringfellow Jr. was born January 8, 1909, in Arkansas, probably around the same area as my dad. His father was Reuben Jefferson Stringfellow, Sr. born in 1847 in Mississippi (interesting fact, some records have him at Rueben Jefferson and Rueben Jeffrey) makes me wonder if he was running from the law or people just weren't that great at keeping records. His daddy was William Robert Stringfellow, born in either South Carolina or Georgia, the mark in the Bible was hard to read, it was in either 1814 or 1815. I hate that there are discrepancies about that, but we can't change the way things were back in the day. His daddy was John Reuben Stringfellow Sr., and where he had a son named John Reuben Stringfellow, Jr., he also had William Robert, and that's the one we came from. John Reuben Stringfellow Sr., was born in 1780 and was the son of Richard (possibly Richard Reuben) Stringfellow, born in 1760; so he was a young man, and out of Virginia. Richard's daddy was William Jr, born in 1729, and he is the son of another William who was born in 1687 in Virginia and he was the first Stringfellow in the family to be born in what would become the United States. His father James had other kids, but William is the one my family is out of - - James was 42 when William was born. James was born in Scotland, around the Edinburgh area to Robert Stringfellow - - who was born in 1615 according to vague records; no other information is known about him other than he was married to Catherine Rodgers Stringfellow, they had four kids and he packed them all up in 1660 and came to the new world.
When I traced the wives of the various Stringfellow sons, I came up a lot of different surnames obviously, but they were mostly English and Scottish. Their names are Campbell, Shipp, McTyre, Brookes, Ashton, Elkins, Bullington, Rudolf, Bryant, Roberts, Rodgers, and Moore. Mostly English for sure. I bet when the DNA comes back it will reflect that as well. I don't know how in-depth those things really are. I know my grandmother on my dad's side had German blood (Rudolf) and I'm sure we'll find quite a few trace elements of other European families to boot. Because the father of James Stringfellow (who is Robert, brother to a Reuben) was the patriarch of the family at the time of his marriage, James, who was only 15-16 years old in 1657, would have been encouraged to marry before moving to the new world. He did marry a young lass by the name of Margaret Campbell, so I'm trying to hunt down her family now, as Campbell is in fact an older Scottish name. Good luck!
Now for the fun part: I'll try to trace mom's side too, and/or my dad's mother's side to see who the other people are. I'm taking a DNA test from My Heritage soon, and I'll post the results. I am hoping to find more than 13% Scottish blood in these veins. Who knows? Well, God knows. We'll find out soon. Here's a photo of my Great Grandfather Reuben Jefferson Stringfellow, Sr., my Grandpa Reuben Jefferson Jr. (with dad and Uncle Bill), and my daddy. (There are very few photos of my actual grandfather, he died in 1967 before people really used cameras on a regular basis.)
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