Revisit Those Previously Visited Repositories Part 2

In a previous post, I mentioned finding two new items related to my Womble research.  I’ve covered the first item and now I’ll write about the book I found. 

The DAR library has a new book about the Womble family titled, Albermarle ancestors, Tidewater ties:  genealogies of four northeastern North Carolina families:  Womble, Shoulard, Martin, and Elliott compiled by Frank Womble.  Even though the Womble line I’m researching never lived in Albermarle County, NC, I decided to look at it anyway.  My thought is typically that you never know what you might find.  After looking through the book, I found that it had nothing worthwhile to connect my line to this Womble line.  There were some interesting similarities, though.  One of these was a story about the progenitor of the Womble line.  This person according to the book was named Thomas Wombwell and was a sea captain from England.  In the book, it states that Thomas Wombwell came from England and settled in Isle of Wright County, VA. 

I had heard a similar story from a couple of different relatives about how my Womble ancestors came to this country.  What I had heard was that the father of John Womble (~1755-Oct.1821) had been a sea captain from Germany.  Also, that his father captained sailing vessels that transported people from Germany to the colonies.  I have no idea if this story is even true or how I would go about investigating it, but it was an interesting find for me to read a similar story in Frank Womble’s book. 

I even went so far as to try to see if my John Womble might fit into this family somehow.  Unfortunately, I was unable to come up with anyone who might have the potential to be my ancestor’s father.  Yet it still makes me wonder, is there a connection between these families and if so what is it?

Paul Heinegg’s, Free African Americans of North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina from the Colonial Period to about 1820, has a section about my John Womble on pg. 958.  I have yet to really look into the race issue of this line and verify if the family really was of African decent.  I did contact the author via email and asked him about it.  He said that he based his theory about John Womble’s heritage on census records, which stated that he was ‘free colored’ in Edgecombe County, NC.  If in fact he was ‘free colored,’ were my Womble line ancestors once owned by the Womble family from Albermarle County, NC?  This would explain the similar sea captain story and lead to the possibility that the Albermarle County Womble men had children with their female slaves, if they even owned slaves.

The Wombles and their descendants that I knew sometimes had what I consider dark complexions; even though, all had blue eyes.  Growing up I never gave this much thought, but after reading about John Womble in Paul Heinegg’s book I’m beginning to wonder if those people were of African American heritage.  Race doesn’t matter much to me, but if it turns out that this is true shouldn’t I be aware of their history and what they experienced? 

Revisit Those Previously Visited Repositories Part 1

    Genealogy Tip: If you visited a repository once before and got whatever information you could from them, please if it's been over a year since you were there last, take the time to look into their collection again. They may have added to their collection since your last visit.

    This happened to me recently. I had visited the DAR library years ago when I was making the rounds of every genealogical 'hot spot' here in the DC metro area. At the DAR library I didn't find too much more information that really aided my research. I felt that their collection at least in regards to the Womble line I'm researching pretty much was covered by my visit to the Library of Congress. Recently while I was searching their online catalog for a work related question, I decided to search Womble and came up with two new entries that I hadn't noticed before. I visited the DAR library again to look at these two items. The first one was John Womble's file that's at the DAR library. In it was one sheet of paper written by a Maude Cudworth. I had seen this name before, but thought that it was Audworth-now I know differently. To those who are regular readers of my blog, this name appears on Virginia Womble's delayed birth certificate.

The information that Ms. Cudworth provides in her one page document about John Womble is interesting, but of course she didn't provide any citations to her statements. According to the John Womble 'file', Maude Cudworth was John Womble's granddaughter. Her parents were John W. Womble and Rhoda Caroline Richardson. It is noted that she would know her own parents. I did double-check the statement she makes about her mother's first name being omitted from her marriage license. This is correct, but there are a few other items that I'm skeptical about.

1. Her siblings' birth dates don't match information I've accumulated. She is right about the days that all of her siblings are born on, but the years just don't match up. Is she just the forgetful sister of the bunch? 
2. She mentions war wounds on John Womble's body, yet there's no way that she would be speaking from first hand knowledge about her grandfather because he died in about 1820 or 1821.
3. A child named Josephine is mentioned as being John Womble's child. She mentions that both John Womble's eldest son, Warren and Josephine aren't listed in some list, but isn't specific about what she's making reference too. I can assume that she's referring to John Womble's Revolutionary War pension file that's in the National Archives. Going with this assumption, I can agree that Warren Womble is John Womble's son. This same person is listed as being John Womble's child on my uncle's SAR application. However, I've found nothing to support Ms. Cudworth's assertion that Josephine is also John Womble's child. Any information that I've discovered about a person named Josephine has indicated that she is Warren's daughter.

    There are other interesting nuggets in Ms. Cudworth's statements. She mentions the family Bible and says that it was lost during a tornado. I had heard a similar story from my uncle when I first approached him about my research into this family line. His version of the story was that the Bible was lost or destroyed in a flood. In some family papers I had found a few pieces of paper that listed children of Albert and Mattie Womble. These papers gave at times detailed information as to the births and deaths of their children. When I later tried to analyze the handwriting it all seemed to be almost the same person, but possibly at different times because some of the notations were with different implements. I had thought that these sheets where made after one of the floods in Paducah, KY where Albert Womble lived. When I revisited this scenario, I decided that my previous thinking wasn't logical. I've since become convinced that Albert's family didn't record this information in a Bible and that they kept this information on pieces of paper that were folded and placed in a book. It's possible that it was their Bible, but I'm not sure. I do know that the family seems to be the sort to keep important things folded up in books because that's where I've found the family's most interesting and obscure documents and clippings.
    Now here is another interesting tidbit into Maude Cudworth. I said earlier that her name appears on Virginia Womble's birth certificate.

    This is true, so I assumed that she because her affidavit was used for Virginia's delayed birth certificate in the 1950's that she must have been present at her birth and lived in Paducah. I did some research on Ms. Cudworth and never found any evidence to support that she ever lived in Paducah, KY. She got married around the late 1880's in Nashville, TN and from what I can tell never left the city. While it is possible that she might have been present at the births of the children that Albert and Mattie had when they lived in Nashville, I find it unrealistic she would've traveled to Paducah for the birth of one of their children in a place so far away. It's just not probable to me.