In Which I Am Not Related to My Husband

The research into my horse thief ancestor has gotten really crazy. I know I have bored all my friends with the minutiae of this story at every opportunity, but I swear, every new document turns up more drama and bizarre stuff. Now I’m dragging other people into it – and not just people I’m related to by blood.

See, about 35 years ago, I married this guy called Skip, and since we have a kid together, I’ve spent quality research time on his family, too. Some of our friends may remember that after Skip and Matt’s mom died, Matt and I were cleaning out the books and found a missing family bible with genealogy info in it. The Bible originally belonged to a childless woman named Averilla Hollis Franck. Back before the Bible went missing, I had copied the genealogy pages and was stumped by them. The bible recorded the births, deaths, and marriages of several families. Their names were Hollis, Franck, Humlong, Luckes, and Smith.

Here’s the twist: the Smiths, who had inherited the Bible, weren’t related by blood or marriage to any of the other people listed in it. I researched them all, though, and knew the Hollises came to Kentucky from Baltimore County, Maryland.

Actually, Matt and I found THREE family Bibles that day. One of them was a Bible belonging to Fanny Gash, their 3rd great-grandmother, who was the wife of the earliest Smith listed in that previously missing Bible. Fanny’s Bible cleared up a big mystery and confirmed her maiden surname (her full maiden name was Frances Ann Gilbert Gash) and identified her parents (Bernard Preston Gash and Isabella Barr), but I hadn’t gotten any further, and I still hadn’t figured out what connected her to the rest of the people in the big bible. Gash is a relatively rare surname; besides a couple in Virginia, I found none in her grandparents’ generation. I couldn’t find her family before they reached Kentucky. I set Fanny aside and started chasing other rabbits.

My horse thief, Elisha Perkins, was born in Baltimore County, Maryland in 1697. As I dug through the St. George’s Parish records of births, deaths, and marriages in 17th and early 18th-century Baltimore County, I kept coming across the names Hollis and Osborne. I had researched the Hollis family and knew they were connected to the Osbornes by marriage a century later.

Then I noticed that some Gilberts lived along the same small stream as my Perkins ancestors right about 1700. Huh. That was interesting. Gilbert was one of Fanny Gash’s middle names. And then I found a Gilbert-Osborne marriage in the early 1700s. I wondered if that might explain Fanny Gash’s connection to the Hollis-Osbornes a century later. If I could just find her people!

Now, you may think you see where this is heading. Or, maybe you’ve leaped to a conclusion. (Don’t. Leaping to conclusions is dangerous and you can get hurt.)

It took me a while because I’m dense and was distracted by a horse thief, but I finally decided to broaden my search to see what sorts of interactions there might have been between the Perkins and Gilbert families since they lived so close together. (And just for the merry hell of it, I included the Hollises and Osbornes, because I really ought to have fleshed that out better back when I was chasing Fanny Gash.)

I’ll be damned if I didn’t find a Gilbert-Gash wedding. And then another.

In the court records, I found a guardianship case. Thomas Gash died in 1703 leaving an orphaned toddler son also named Thomas Gash. His neighbor, Richard Perkins, was made administrator of Thomas Gash’s estate, and was therefore responsible for little Thomas Gash’s inheritance. Richard Perkins was my horse thief Elisha’s father. Then Richard died, and the horse thief’s widowed mother, Mary Perkins, became the new administratrix of Thomas Gash’s estate. Young Thomas Gash and the horse thief Elisha Perkins knew each other very well as children.

I traced the Gash family, this time in the other direction. I found young Thomas’s wedding to Johannah Ashford, and then found their son Thomas who married Elizabeth Gilbert and moved to Kentucky right after the Revolution, and then found their son Bernard, who was – you guessed it – Fanny Gash’s father.

I hadn’t initially found the Gashes in Baltimore County because they were in Virginia. Yes – I had found them several years ago and not realized it.

Young Thomas’s family and some other Baltimore County people, including Elizabeth Gilbert’s family and Elisha Perkins, had gone there after Elisha’s conviction for horse thievery. Thomas (III) and Elizabeth married there and later returned to Baltimore County. I would have found them years ago if I had broadened my Baltimore County search by a generation. Elisha died in Virginia, but his son ended up in North Carolina, where he bred horses, and the Gashes went to Kentucky.

I still can’t figure out why Fanny Gash’s son ended up with Averilla Hollis’s Bible, except that Fanny lived with Averilla’s spinster sister Martha all of her adult life – at least, after her husband left her shortly after their son, Henry Bernard/Barnet/Bernet Smith was born. Martha Hollis willed her entire estate to Henry Bernard Smith.

So, no, Skip and I aren’t related, but my 8th great-grandparents cared for Skip and Matt’s orphaned 6th great-grandfather.

Last Updated on January 16, 2024 by Anne