Christopher Houston (c1743-1837)/Notes

From: Bill Willis Subject: Houston matters Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 21:44:22 -0400 Source: Rootsweb Houston Archives

I started this email almost a year ago, and let it lie dormant for lack of progress on certain key questions. Those questions still lie fallow, but I thought it might be useful to give my views here...sort of a trial run. Mostly, given the way things go, if I don't post what I have, I may never pass this on. So consider the following a work in progress.

Also, when I refer to "Our Houston line" I'm referring to the line of Ann Houston who married John Walker III. I'm fully aware that we have another Houston lineage in Rockbridge County that is usually assumed to belong to the Gen. Sam Houston line. I've nothing to add at this time concerning that connection. My focus here is strickly on the Houstons of the John III lineage.

Some time ago Cousin Jerry Penley of the Wigton Walker list, posted concerning his finding with regard to the Houston's in SW Va and NW NC. Jerry's post was helpful for a number of reasons. One use to which his infortmation could be put was to help identify which Houston records were for family members related to Ann Houston=John Walker III---and perhaps point toward additional information on Ann Houston's family, their movements, and perhaps pointing back toward information on her father Christopher.

Of particular interest was the quote that Jerry provided from another researcher....

> The following paragraph is from a letter of Christopher > 2nd to is son Placebo in NC,: "Patience just now had a son, her > twelfth child. He is promising and his name agreed on. so that James > Houston, son of James, son of Christopher, son of Robert, son of > Christopher, born May 17, 1821, 10 O'clock.

Sorting that out a little bit, we have

1. James Houston, son of 2. James, son of 3. Christopher, son of 4. Robert, son of 5. Christopher.

Entry 3 above is clearly the Christopher Houston who settled on Hunting Creek, NC c. 1755-1760, and who late in life moved to TN with most of his family.

The interesting question, which I believe Jerry left unstated, was whether entry 5 above, is Christopher Houston d. 1726 in Mill Creek Hundred, and father of our Ann Houston=John Walker III. At least superfiscially, there's good reason to think so. In addition to the fact that Ann's father is known to have been Christopher, we also know that she had a brother Robert, who had a son Christopher, based on the will of her brother Samuel.

There is, however, a fly in this particular ointment. Namely, despite the letter above, most genealogists identify the father of Christopher of Hunting Creek as John Robert, or simply John....Ancestry family tree, for example, identifies about 45 lineages for this Christopher Houston. Of those about 25 give his father's name as "John Robert", 10 as "John" and 10 as "Robert". There are also a scattering of lineages that give his father's name as "John (?) Robert" or variations on the theme that indicate some puzzlement over what his name really was.

A rather confused state. Makes one wonder what these lineages are based on. What I suspect is happening here is that folks are trying to reconcile conflicting information. I think the core of the data (letters in the Southern Historical Collection at Chapel Hill, specifically the Mary Cecilia Dixon Papers, of which the letter cited above is an example) would probably show that the Hunting Creek Houston's thought their grandsire was Robert Houston. Others, however, have presented him as John Houston---for reasons that I suspect made perfect sense to them. A case in point is a 1933 article by William Sharp in the "Landmark", a newspaper from Statesville NC, dated 6 Oct 1933.

> "John Houston, 'Scotch-Irish' emigrated from Dublin 1730 and settled > in the valley of Virginia. He had tarried in Pennsylvania long enough > for his son and two daughters to marry....There were two branches of > the Houston family settled in Iredell County. One branch near the > vicinity of Mount Mourne, and the other on Hunting Creek. They each > claim descent from a common ancestor in John Houston and Martha Worke, > who died at the age of 1797 in Rockbridge County Virginia"

In this particular presentation The ancestor of the Hunting Creek Houston's has become "John Houston=Martha Worke", not Robert Houston. I don't explicitly know why Smart has the grandsire as John Houston, instead of Robert. (I also don't know where he's getting the Martha Worke, but that's another question). But it would be a good guess that he's basing this on a family tradition, alluded to in the newspaper article, that the Hunting Creek Houston's were related the line of Gen. Sam Houston. The reasoning being that the grandsire of this line is supposed to be a John Houston who arrived in America ca. 1735, and then settled in Rockbridge County. Indeed, it appears that one of the Hunting Creek Houston's actually met Sam Houston in Washington. As the story goes, they compared notes and decided that they were 'cousins' though they couldn't say exactly how they were connected. I've been told that this incident is mentioned in the MCD papers, but that is the ONLY basis for the idea that the family is related to Gen. Sam Houston.

The logic here seems to be

1. We know we share a common ancestor with Gen. Sam Houston 2. We know he is descended from an immigrant John Houston who arrived here about 1735 (usual Sam Houston Lineage as given on the web) 3. Therefore we must be descended from John Houston the 1735 immigrant as well.

All well and good, only this conflicts with the Christopher Houston letter identifying his father as 'Robert'.

Some authors have apparently tried to resolve the conflict between John Houston as the grandsire, (as demanded by the need to connect to the Gen Sam Houston lineage), and Robert Houston, as documented in the Christopher Houston letter.

I believe this was done by assuming that the grandsire's name was simply "John Robert"---that way you can have both the tradition that the family is connected to Gen Sam Houston AND the data that their grandsire was Robert Houston.

This solution seems to have been accepted by a researcher Gertrude Dixon Enfield (GED) who worked extensively with the MCD papers, and has published several works on the Hunting Creek lineage. She identifies the grandsire of the Hunting Creek Houstons as "John Robert", as cited by Cleburne Houston (1968:147) "John Robert and his brother Placebo took ship for Boston in the year 1734...took the stage southward to Philadelphia, and settled with relatives in Lancaster County...He had married Martha Worke of a prominant Philadelphia family...[son] Christopher had departed the family home in Pennsylvania in...1765...settling on the Catawba River. Later he moved his family to Hunter Creek."

[And this is about where I ended the email as I had originally set it up. With the exception of the above paragraph, the foregoing is I think fairly well worked out. I'm reasonably satisfied that reasonable basis for everything above except for the last para. The rest of this is more problematic.]

The quote from GED appears to combine a number of independent traditions of several different lines of Houstons, all based on the assumption that they are related to General Sam Houston. That includes, in addition to the General Sam Houston line, information from the Hunting Creek Houstons, and from the line of John Houston=Martha Worke.

Some of what's in the GED paragraph (a very little something) is probably related to our line. I'm reasonably convinced that the Hunting Creek Houstons are indeed descended from Christopher, father of Robert Houston as listed above. Ann Houston, wife of John III being Roberts sister. I believe that the John Robert Houston who is supposed to have married Martha Worke in Philadelphia is in reality John Houston who is mentioned in Lancaster PA County Records as married to a Martha. This John Houston is sometimes said to have relocated to Rockbridge County, but I believe those researching this line feel he died there in Lancaster County. They also feel that there is no substance to the statement that there's a relation between their line and the general Sam Houston line---though they do believe that some of their family did also end up in Rockbridge county. (In that regard I've noted previously that there seemed to be more Houston's in Rockbridge than could be accounted for in gen. Sam Houston's line.)

I haven't really gone into any detail about the John Houston=Martha Worke line. We can probably do that if there's a real need. For purposes of the Wigton Walkers, I think we can be reasonably comfortable that the Hunting Creek Houstons are indeed our family as Jerry intimated. I am also convinced that there's absolutely no connection to the General Samuel Houston line, or to the line of John Houston=Martha Worke---despite GED views to the contrary. My reasoning here is probably a bit convoluted, but the simplest element is the fact that we know our Houston line (the line of John III) was in Delaware prior to the appearance of the Wigton Walkers in 1726. That being the case, it would be hard to reconcile that observation with the idea that " "John Robert and his brother Placebo took ship for Boston in the year 1734...took the stage southward to Philadelphia, and settled with relatives in Lancaster County." That stroy is probably sound in some respects, but its also probably a mixture of stories about different families. At anyrate, if it were exactly true, than it can not apply to our line of Houstons who we know were here well before 1734. If its true, then we would not be related to the Hunting Creek Houston's which were the basis for Jerry's discussion.

I come down on the side that Jerry was right that we are related to the Hungting Creek Houstons, and that the story about John Houston who married Martha Worke, has nothing to do with us.

Bill