Witherspoon Family

Gary,

By an odd coincidence geni released today a new module called projects. You can't quite read about it yet but it has been started here:

http://www.geni.com/projects

We have a right called "collaborator" that gives you "curator" rights to all those associated Master Profiles.

As a curator I would be more than happy to be your project sponsor and get it started, although it takes a team effort to build out Master Profiles correctly. :)

I am declaring victory for the Wetherspun Family Project. The object of this project was to create a clean tree of the descendants of Alexander Wetherspun. All known descendants with the surname Witherspoon, their spouses, and children have been sourced and annotated for 11 generations, with some excursions up to 14 generations (where the Witherspoons enter my extended family tree). To my knowledge, there are no longer duplicate profiles of these people in the Big Tree.

There are a few places where the links do not correspond to my primary source information (see original post). In general, they have been left in place with an annotation. A number of clear errors were corrected, and in one case a link was broken where there was overwhelming evidence that it was incorrect.

Two notables are John Knox Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and President of Princeton University (11th generation) and John C. Breckinridge, a Vice-President of the United States (14th generation). Also John Knox, the founder of Presbyterianism, was given honorary membership in the project since one of his granddaughters married an 8th generation descendant.

Congrats Gary well done..

That is fantastic!

Congratulations, Gary.

Now we have to hock Geni for the ability to *close* a project. :)

Best
Erica

Noah Tutak

Calling your attention to this discussion.

Proof that the Project -- and collaboration -- work.

Congrats! That is fantastic, Gary. This is the sort of thing many of us envision for Geni. Research, collaboration and unified branches on the tree.

For fun I checked the connection between Alexander Witherspun and myself.

Our common ancestor is:

Dame Mariote Douglas, Countess of Glencairn

Erica, this is probably a long shot, but there was one Cunningham who married a Witherspoon. Check out Ida Grigg Cunningham.

Good work. I doubt any of our common relatives fits into this project though.

Good work. I doubt any of our common relatives fits into this project though.

YAY!
Congratulations!!!

Mazel tov!

Gary,

Miss Ida Ida Grigg Cunningham has opened quite the Cunningham can of worms for me.

I haven't finished inputting the "500 Cunninghams of Virginia" she belongs to or gotten my exact relationship nailed down (we are definitely of the same clan), but I did discover this fascinating common relation:

Phebe Cunningham

Freed's famous citizen is Phebe (sometimes spelled Phebe) Tucker Cunningham.

"Historian Norma Knotts Shaffer says more people than you can imagine have used their heritage to Cunningham to become Daughters of the American Revolution, with a Grantsville chapter named after Phebe.

The account of the life of Thomas and Phebe Tucker Cunningham is well-chronicled in Alexander Scott Withers' history "Chronicles of Border Warfare," first published in 1895.

In 1785 six Indians [n.b. from another source: Shawnee] came to their cabin along the West Fork River (Harrison County) and entered Cunningham's cabin while he was away.

Phebe tried to protect her four children, but one of the Indians "raised his tomahawk and sunk it deep into the brains of one of the children (two-year-old Walter), throwing the body into the backyard, ordering Phebe to follow after them." Phebe then expected to he slain with her infant, but the Indians took them. After three years of captivity she was ransomed by Simon Girty and managed to make her way home to recall her tragic story and describe her anguish and grief.

Thomas and Phebe were reunited, but did not return to their farm. They had seven more children. ..."

http://www.hurherald.com/cgi-bin/db_scripts/articles?Action=user_vi...

James Cunningham became a Mormon Bishop and took his family to Salt Lake City in a harrowing journey, as recalled by his son George:

http://lds.org/churchhistory/library/source/1,18016,4976-7431,00.html

The Cunninghams are descended from Lord Boyd. I mention Lord Boyd whenever possible because I believe he's a Charlemagne and everyone has him in their tree.

Robert Boyd, 1st Lord Boyd of Kilmarnock