Hello Everyone,

First, I would like to thank James Wright for allowing me the honor of contributing to the July edition of The Adland gazette. I joined Adland September 22, 2006. I was very active until I gave up online marketing and began to do genealogy research and freelance as a ghost writer for several books. I am co author with Dr. Marvin Spouse of the book, “If you can read this, you can sell your book”. The book is sold on Amazon.com. I have been chosen as POTW twice. I have been featured as a guest writer on several forums here at Adland over the years. That is enough about me. I would like to share with you some of my family history. In January of this year, my mother’s eldest sister past away and during the wake I spent some time talking and reminiscing with a couple of cousins. During our talk my cousins’ wife mentioned that she felt our family had very deep roots here in Kentucky. I told her I thought this might be true but I had not done much genealogy work on my grandmother’s side of our family. This started my quest for our McManis, Clark family history. As a young child I lived with my grandmother so I did have some idea of names, places and a few stories she had told me. One story she told me was that we were descendants from Lewis and Clark. The story had never been confirmed so, I thought it was family lore.

Grandmothers father was a Clark and her Mother a McManis. My first venture was to dig around in the court records of Henry, Shelby and Trimble counties. These were places the family lived during the mid 1700’s and still many of them live there even today. The first thing I discovered was these counties at that time was still a part of Virginia and until the early 1790’s Kentucky was not a state at all but an extension of Virginia, and there were only three counties at that time in Kentucky. The maternal side of my family is from Henry County. That county was a part of Jefferson. This is where it gets really fun. None of the existing counties today are remotely the same names as they were before Kentucky became a state. At this point I had to find some gum shoes and learn to be a detective in order to find out where our ancestors lived when the early settlements were forming in Kentucky. The three counties were Jefferson, Fincastle and Louisville. This made my search a bit more interesting because in order to find the very old records, one must search in Virginia achieves. Once this was sorted out I began again to dig around in census records, birth records, church records, marriage records and of course local history books I found at the library.

There are also historical societies you can contact, some are very helpful and some, tell you to come in and dig around for yourself. The upside to this research is its there literally million and millions of documents available for viewing and the down side is you have to have some kind of an idea of what you’re looking for in order to make sense of the documents you find. The local county court house clerks offices holds a great deal of documents and from those you can begin to build an understanding of who your family is , who married who , what they had , their wills , tax list and a lot more. We also have the national achieves and once you learn to use those you can find all kids of treasures about family members. Every family has a very special story to tell. Here are just a few of the things I have learned about my family.

In 1778 The Lewis and Clark expedition was in Kentucky at the time gathering more militia for a battle that was to take place in Illinois, they came upon the falls in the Ohio River . Clark landed his flatboats on Corn Island on May 27, 1778: "I observed the little island of about seven[ty] acres opposite to whare the Town of Lewisville now stands [,] seldom or never was intirely covered by the water, I resolved to take possession and fortify which I did" (George Rogers Clark, spring of 1778, in Yater 1979:2). A blockhouse and cabins were built. Clark intended for the island settlement to be a communications post to support his military campaign, but it is speculated that the name of the island and the nature of the civilian settlement served as a ruse for the military nature of the post Clark chose the island for good reason: "to stop the desertion I knew would ensue on the Troops knowing their Destination[,] I had encamped on a small Island in the middle of the Falls" (Yater 1979:4). With the destination of Kaskaskia unknown to them, the troops began training as a military unit under Clark at Corn Island. When the plan was revealed, some indeed tried to desert, wading across the Ohio at low water to the mainland. They were pursued, and a few recaptured. Some perished in the wilderness. This incident and the wait for recruits, which eventually came, delayed Clark. He remained on the island for one month before departing on his campaign at Kaskaskia June 24, 1778 (Yater 1979:4-5;). Clark left behind a small group of pioneering settlers and 30 militia men. An estimated 13 families of maybe 60 civilians remained in the little fort (Casseday 1852:29; Wikipedia). Among the surviving names of the families are those of Captain James Patton, Richard Chenoweth, John Tuel, William Faith, and John McManus. According to Clark, the settlers "ware of little expense, and with the Invalids would keep possession of this Little post until we should be able to Occupy the Main shore (Yater 1979:4). He most likely referred to some of the militia who were of poor health or possibly considered too old for the campaign to Illinois. The highlighted John McManus is the man of whom I am a direct descendant. I have found his land grant deed , his will and most of the other descendants from this line of whom my great grandmother was his great, great granddaughter. The next dot I wanted to connect was the Lewis and Clark connection .Now it is a know fact that

George Rogers Clark had no children and was never married so I knew the connection could not be there and then I found although not known to me was that he had a brother named William, My great grandfather is a direct descendant from him not George Rogers Clark. The family members became governors and statement, served in the Military and were some of the original settlers of Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri and Virginia. There is a lot more about our family history but time and space will not allow me to continue. I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse into my family history.

I now offer my services as a researcher for family history. I product detailed genealogy reports in either book form or report form, both a wonderful treasure to hand down to your families and also make a great gift. I can be contacted by email at geketa@gmail.com