Stanford Family Ancestry Report
Introduction
The Stanford Ancestors in America
1. Stanford Family Birth/Marriage/Death narrative
2. Why Chester County, Pennsylvania, an American colony?
3. Why Mecklenburg County, North Carolina?
4. Why Kenansville, Duplin County, North Carolina?
5. Why Henry County, Alabama?
6. Why Quitman County, Georgia?
7. Why Ocoee, Orange County, Florida?
8. Why Jacksonville, Duval County, Florida?
Appendix A. The Robert S Red Herring
Appendix B. The Stanford Ancestry Extended
This report was prepared for the benefit of the descendants of Richard
A. Stanford and his brother, David J. Stanford. At mid-2019 I would have
been hard pressed to identify any of my ancestors preceding my great
grandparents. Using the MyHeritage.com search engine that can access the
MyHeritage and other ancestry data bases, it has been possible to trace
several Stanford Family ancestry lines back in time to before the
Common Era (i.e., the BC era). All ancestry records referenced in this
report may be accessed and viewed at the Stanford Family MyHeritage
website:
An ancestry tree and accompanying commentary is a form of story telling.
It is the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves and whence we
came. An ancestry story can be revealing, or it can be told to hide
essential truths. An ancestry story can amuse and entertain, or it can
be terminally boring. It can reveal national heroes or horse thieves
among the relatives. It can surprise, and it may even shock to discover
who is up one’s family tree. Ancestry research educates with respect to
language, culture, history, geography, economics, mathematics, and even
theology. Often it is possible to find more information about an
ancestor by “Googling” the name on-line. Ancestry research is factual,
but it may become fiction if the researcher is tempted to extend the
story beyond what can be confirmed. All of these possibilities surface
in the telling of the Stanford Family ancestry story.
Ancestry of course descends through time which progresses linearly from
earlier dates toward the present, but ancestry research necessarily
"ascends" from the present back in time. An ancestry line search is
conducted record-by-record by identifying a subject's parents and then
checking the information in the parents' records to confirm that the
subject indeed is their child. The parents then become the subjects in
the next step. This process may continue stepwise until a dead-end is
reached, i.e., when neither parent of a subject is identified. When a
dead-end is reached in one subject's ancestry line, it often is possible
to shift to the spouse's ancestry line to continue tracing ancestry.
This is an interim report because it never will be finished. Richard's
and David's descendants are invited to revise, correct, and extend the
contents of this report as new information and vehicles of analysis
become available to them.
Richard A. Stanford, January 21, 2020
The Stanford Ancestors in America
Chart 22 shows the Stanford Family ancestry sequence from Robert Stanford (1675-1765) to Richard Alexander Stanford (1943- ).
The Stanford Family Ancestry Tree shown below exhibits the facts about
dates and places of births, marriages, and deaths as taken from
MyHeritage data-base records and smart matches.
While each of the Stanfords and their spouses may have had more than one child, I have focused on the one in our ancestry line. The ancestry tree lacks circumstantial details and begs many questions about motivations for Stanford family members to emigrate. Regrettably, my ancestors left little written matter to give clues as to their motivations. The historical details in parts 2 through 8 can be verified, but the inferences about motivations are entirely speculative.
1. Stanford Family Birth/Marriage/Death narrative:
Robert Stanford was born around 1675. His son, Samuel C. (possibly Charles) Stanford, was born 1740 in West Caln Township, Chester, Pennsylvania. Robert died in 1765 in Chester.
Samuel C. Stanford moved to Duplin County, North Carolina, and married Margaret Torrens, born in 1777 in Duplin County. Their son, Thomas Jefferson, was born in 1803 in Duplin. Rev. Samuel died in Kenansville, Duplin, North Carolina, in 1833. Margaret died in Kenansville in 1858.
Thomas Jefferson Stanford married Dorothy McGhee, born in 1808 in North Carolina. Their son, Thomas Quincy, was born in 1832 in Kenansville, Duplin County, North Carolina. Thomas Jefferson's family moved to Henry County, Alabama, in 1840. Thomas Jefferson returned to Duplin County, North Carolina, where he died in 1870. Dorothy moved to Edom, Van Zandt County, Texas, where she died in 1893.
Thomas Quincy Stanford married Ann Eliza Guilford, born 1834, Kenansville, Duplin County, North Carolina. Their son, John Quincy Stanford, was born July 1, 1863, in Henry County, Alabama. Thomas joined the Confederate army, 39th Alabama Volunteer Infantry, Company G, and was wounded on December 30, 1862, during the battle at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Thomas died on January 1, 1863. Ann Eliza's death date and place are unknown.
At some time before the turn of the 20th century, John Quincy Stanford moved to Quitman County, Georgia, where he married Hattie Olla Teel, born 1875 in Georgia. Their son, Alexander Rupert, was born March 10, 1907, in Georgetown, Quitman County, Georgia. Around 1920 John and family moved to Ocoee, Florida. John and Olla both died in Ocoee, John on December 1, 1940, and Olla in 1962.
Alexander Rupert Stanford moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where he married Ruth Lucille Tapley, born February 19, 1910, in Oak Vale, Mississippi. Their sons, Richard Alexander and David Jon, were born in 1943 and 1947, respectively. Rupert died on August 20 , 1993, in Jacksonville, and Lucille died on November 30, 1997, in Greenville, South Carolina.
2. Why Chester County, Pennsylvania, an American colony?
Around 1721, Robert Stanford moved to West Caln Township in Chester County, Pennsylvania, only a few miles west of the port of Philidelphia, where he farmed 162-acres and had it surveyed but never registered a claim.
Chester County is one of Pennsylvania's three original counties. Together with Bucks and Philadelphia counties, Chester County was formed by William Penn in 1682 under a charter granted by King Charles II of England. When the first colonial Assembly convened at Philadelphia in March 1683, its members granted Chester County a seal, highlighted by a rough-hewn farmer's plough, and established a county seat. Attracted by Penn's constitutional provision for religious toleration, English, Irish and Welsh Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Anglicans settled along the county's rivers and gentle rolling hills. German and Swiss immigrants settled in the northern townships; English and Welsh settled in the central and southeastern townships; Scots-Irish inhabited the south and southwest. Settlers grew corn, wheat, barley, oats, rye, buckwheat, and flax. Water power enabled grist and saw milling in most settlements. Rich iron ore deposits and plentiful water power enabled an iron industry to emerge in the county. Located between Philadelphia and the Susquehanna River, Chester became a thriving center of naval shipbuilding. During the American Revolutionary War, the battles of the Brandywine, Paoli, and Valley Forge were fought in this region of Pennsylvania. In the nineteenth century, Chester County became a center of Underground Railroad activity as local Quaker and black abolitionists channeled runaway slaves from the South on to safety in Canada. (https://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-1A)
We know nothing about Robert’s married life other than that he had at
least two children, Ann Stanford and Samuel C. Stanford. Robert died in
Chester on September 7, 1765, at the age of 90. Robert and daughter Ann
are buried in the Upper Octorara Presbyterian Church at Parkersburg,
Pennsylvania.
Samuel C Stanford married Elizabeth Kenan, born 1742 in Scotland. Samuel C and Elizabeth had six children, three born in Chester County, Pennsylvania: Samuel in 1764, Mary in 1765, and Robert in 1766. Subsequently, they moved from Chester County, Pennsylvania, to Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.
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3. Why Mecklenburg County, North Carolina?
In 1771 Samuel C. and Elizabeth moved their family from Chester County, Pennsylvania, to Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.
The motivation for this move remains unknown but it may have been a quest for economic opportunity. It may have been related to American Revolutionary War hostilities that were occurring around this time in Pennsylvania and in the vicinity of Kings Mountain and Cowpens, South Carolina, near Mecklenburg County. This arduous journey was almost certainly taken by horse- or mule-drawn wagon along the Great Wagon Road or Great Valley Road that skirted the Appalachian mountian range and provided a southern gateway to the west.
The route that became the Great Wagon Road was originally a Native American hunting, trade, and war trail called the "Warrior's Path." In the mid-1700s European colonists, many arriving from ships in or near Philadelphia, began traveling south along the trail in search of land for new homes. At first the road was so narrow and rough that only travelers on horseback could use it; the farther south it went (from Pennsylvania into the wilderness), the more impassable it became. But as the settlers made their way along the trail, they cut trees, found suitable fords across rivers, and worked around obstacles until wagons could pass. In time the Great Wagon Road improved, by colonial standards. ....
During the Revolutionary War, the Great Wagon Road was the key supply
line to the American resistance in the western areas of the colonies,
especially in the South. (https://www.ncpedia.org/great-wagon-road)
The first settlers came to the Mecklenburg area in the late 1740s from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware. Increasing numbers of settlers were attracted to the area, and on December 11, 1762, the colonial General Assembly granted a petition to create Mecklenburg County from a portion of Anson County, effective February 1, 1763. Settlers chose the name "Mecklenburg" for their county in hopes of gaining favor with King George III of England whose wife, Queen Charlotte, was born in the German province of that name. By the mid-1770s, strong resentment against government by the English had developed in Mecklenburg. On May 20, 1775, the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, a brief document formally renouncing the county’s ties with England, was signed and proclaimed to the populace from the court house steps--more than a year before the American Declaration of Independence was signed. (https://www.carolana.com/NC/Counties/mecklenburg_county_nc.html) In 1799 a boy named Conrad Reed found a 17-pound stone in a stream north of Charlotte. The Reed family used the glistening stone as a doorstop until a silver smith was able to identify it as gold. By 1803, the first gold rush in America transformed Charlotte and the Mecklenburg area, and the region flourished as miners and merchants settled in the area. (https://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/mecklenburg-county-1762/)
In 1771 Samuel C and Elizabeth moved their family from Pennsylvania to Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, where Rebecca was born in 1777, Anne in 1781, and Moses W in 1784. Elizabeth died in Mecklenburg County in 1793. Samuel C had been in Mecklenburg County for a couple of decades before the early 19th century gold rush there, but he may have engaged in gold mining or mercantile activity that intensified in response to the gold rush. He died in 1822 in Mecklenburg County. Samuel C and Elizabeth had seven children, so we are likely to have cousins in the vicinity of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.
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4. Why Kenansville, Duplin County, North Carolina?
After service as a Revolutionary War soldier, Samuel C Stanford's son Samuel moved from Mecklenburg to Duplin County, North Carolina, where in 1801 he married Margaret Torrens, born 1777 in Jones County, North Carolina.
In 1736, Henry McCulloch acquired a royal allotment of over 70,000 acres in coastal Carolina, and McCulloch opened his tract to Scot-Irish planters and families who squatted on the Cape Fear River and the surrounding tributaries in Duplin. Originally a part of New Hanover County, Duplin County was established on April 7, 1750, by the North Carolina General Assembly. It was named in honor of a 1740s member of the Board of Trade and Plantations, Sir Thomas Hays, Lord Duplin. Founded in 1752, Kenansville, the county seat of Duplin, was named in honor of one of the original founders of the town, James Kenan. (https://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/duplin-county-1750/) Sarecta, a town established by McCulloch, became the first town in Duplin in 1787. Scottish and Swiss immigrants formed some of the early settlements near the Goshen Swamp and Golden Grove, and Kenansville grew out of the original settlement at Golden Grove. Presbyterians formed the first congregation in North Carolina in 1736 at Golden Grove. The naval stores industry was the first economic development in the county. The early tar and pitch industry was sustained by the many pine trees in early Duplin. The Wilmington and Weldon Railroad, constructed in 1840, allowed Duplin to grow in both its population and economy.
Samuel is listed as a Revolutionary War pensioner (http://www.carolyar.com/revwar.htm). In his 1832 application to the State of North Carolina for a pension, he states that in 1779 he was a volunteer because he was too young (14) to be drafted. He entered service in the fall of 1779 and served for two months scouting enemy activity in Mecklenburg and Rowan Counties. He entered service again from May of 1781 to February of 1782 as an enlisted soldier and fought in skirmishes in Orangeburg County, South Carolina, and in the battle of Eutaw Springs, the last major engagement of the war in the Carolinas. He states that "General Green, Colonel Campbell, Colonel Washington, Colonel Lee, & Captain Joseph Rhodes were the regular officers who were with the troops where I served." (http://www.revwarapps.org/w2021.pdf)
From 1782 until 1791 Samuel lived in Mecklenburg, Robeson, and Bladen counties in North Carolina. Bob Epperson, in his book The Stanford Family: A Southern Century, Volume 1, Revolution Era, page 57, describes the process by which Samuel studied to become a Presbyterian minister. In 1795, he became licensed and ordained as a Presbyterian minister and was called to serve Presbyterian churches in Bladen and Sampson counties, North Carolina. In 1800 he assumed the pastorates at the Grove and Goshen Presbyterian churches in Kenansville, Duplin County, where he served until his death in 1833. He married Margaret Torrens in 1801. Samuel and Margaret had eleven children, including Thomas Jefferson Stanford who was born in Kenansville in 1803. In 1853, Margaret filed for a Revolutionary War widow's pension. She died in Duplin County in 1858. We likely have cousins in Duplin and neighboring counties of North Carolina.
During his residence in Kenansville, Samuel may have acquired upwards of 4000 acres in Duplin County that were managed by his older sons as a plantation. He may have owned 20 or more slaves. Their plantation produced cotton, flax, corn, peas, and products from sheep, hogs, and cattle. Their plantation also was engaged in the principal agricultural activity of the region, timber and naval stores (pitch, tar, turpentine). Toward the end of his life, Samuel gifted his surviving sons with various amounts of land and slaves to work the land. Son Thomas Jefferson received 534 acres and acquired additional acreage from Thomas McGee whose daughter Dorothy he married in 1828.
Thomas Jefferson Stanford's sons John Monroe (1829-1912), Thomas Quincy (1832-1863), William Johnathan (1834-1911), and Samuel Mcgee (1838-1902) were born in Kenansville. In 1840, the year that construction of the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad reached Duplin County, North Carolina, Thomas Jefferson, Dorothy, and four sons moved to Henry County, Alabama, where four more children were born, but only one, Margaret Ann (1841-1905), survived to adulthood. William Johnathan earned a medical degree at Nashville University (now Vanderbilt) and Samuel Mcgee completed at law degree at an unspecified school in North Carolina. Monroe and Quince worked the Henry County farm with their father.
In 1862 John Monroe, Thomas Quincy, and William Johnathan joined the 39th Alabama Volunteer Infantry. Son Samuel Mcgee joined the 12th North Carolina Infantry. Thomas Quincy was wounded on December 31, 1862, during the Civil War battle at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Thomas died on January 1, 1863, and we know that his "manservant" collected his body and took it by mule and wagon from Murfreesboro back to Henry County for burial. After Thomas Quincy was killed in the Civil War Battle of Murfreesboro, Thomas Jefferson may have abandoned the Henry County farm and returned to Duplin County, North Carolina. He died in 1870 and was buried in Kenansville. Dorothy and four surviving children remained in Henry County but she and three adult children eventually moved to Texas.
A burning question is why in 1840 did Thomas Jefferson Stanford leave Duplin County, North Carolina, and move his family to Henry County, Alabama.
The context of what was happening in North Carolina during the early 19th century may provide some insight (https://www.cmstory.org/history-timeline). The gold rush begun in 1803 continued and drew both settlers and a variety of related businesses to North Carolina. A boom during the teens was fueled by the on-going gold rush, excessive issue of paper money by unrestrained state-chartered banks, and speculation in public lands. Distrustful of paper money issued by state banks, many North Carolinians hoarded gold and silver coins which were in short supply in the South because all coin was being minted in Philadelphia (a mint wouldn't be established in Charlotte until 1837). The boom culminated in the Panic of 1819 which was the first major peacetime financial crisis in the United States. In North Carolina the banking panic was followed by a general collapse of the economy that persisted through 1821. In addition, epidemics of cholera, malaria, measles, smallpox and typhoid continued to claim the lives of settlers, and many Indians perished from diseases they contracted from white settlers.
In 1830 Congress passed the Indian Removal Act that allowed the U.S. government to force tribes off their lands. In October 1838, President Andrew Jackson approved the removal of the Cherokee Indian tribes from their North and South Carolina homeland. Federal troops forced nearly 20,000 Cherokees to march hundreds of miles to Oklahoma, and thousands of the Native Americans died from disease and winter's bitter cold. Their tragic journey is remembered as "The Trail of Tears."
Abolitionists formed a secret network of farms and families who hid and helped runaway slaves escape from the South to freedom in the North. Slave owners in North Carolina became outraged as hundreds of slaves vanished. On August 21, 1831, plantation slave Nat Turner led an armed revolt of his fellow slaves near North Carolina's border with Virginia. In this uprising, 50 whites and an untold number of blacks died. In 1835, North Carolina's legislature passed a law proclaiming that states, not the federal government, have the right to regulate slavery.
The U.S. economy suffered a major panic in 1837 that precipitated a protracted depression for the next seven years until 1843 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1837). The depression was severe in North Carolina. The roots of the panic and ensuing depression derived from President Andrew Jackson's general opposition to all banks, his 1832 veto of a bill to recharter the (second) Bank of the United States (the federal government's fiscal agent), and his 1836 order that federal government specie (coin and bullion) be removed from it and, along with all future federal revenues, be deposited in selected banks that became known as his "pet banks." While the specie was in transit for several months, it was unavailable to serve as reserves to support bank loans so that the amount of money in circulation contracted. As commercial activity in North Carolina declined, banks collapsed, businesses failed, deflation ensued, and thousands of workers lost jobs. Distrust of paper money and hoarding of coin in the South made economic conditions even worse. In North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, the panic precipitated efforts to diversify crops away from cotton. By 1840, many cotton plantations were no longer in cultivation. With coin in circulation more adequate to needs, the far southern states of Alabama, Georgia, and Florida were less severely affected by the panic and depression.
Thomas Jefferson Stanford may have wanted to escape the turmoil brought
about by gold fever, depression, epidemics, the Indian removal process,
slave unrest, and banking panics. The more immediate matter was that
during the 1837-43 depression, his Duplin County farm failed and he
could no longer support his family there. Son Samuel Mcgee says that his
father was
well educated and a great talker, fond of books and perhaps would have made his mark as a professional man, but he married young and having inherited a large tract of land, turned his attention to farming, but the land being poor and with more love for books than crops a failure was the result, never like most men, laying all the blame on the land when I the 4th child and son was about 7 years old [actually, 2 years old in 1840] sold out and came to Ala. to engage in cotton growing, he bought a large tract of land on Chocktaw Creek in Henry County and began to open up a large farm...." (Bob Epperson, The Stanford Family: A Southern Century, Volume 2, Civil war era, p. 182)
Bob Epperson adds the following assessment of Thomas Jefferson Stanford:
In reading through the estate of Thomas Jefferson Stanford, our great
great grandfather, I discovered that he was a very organized business
man with multiple pieces of equipment and spare parts to deal with
repairs as they came up during the growing and harvest season to avoid
lost time. He was certainly not the man who preferred books over
managing his affairs as his son Samuel McGee Stanford portrayed him. I
believe rather that the land gave out prompting him to move to
Alabama. (extracted from a private letter from Bob Epperson to Richard
Stanford on February 12, 2020)
We have no information on how the family accomplished the move from Duplin County to Henry County. They may have taken the new railroad from Kenansville south to Wilmington. From there they could have taken a coastal ship south around the Florida peninsula to the port of Apalachicola, then north on the Apalachicola and Chattahoochee rivers to Henry County. They may have traveled by horse- or mule-drawn wagon overland the entire distance from Kenansville to Henry County, or they may have gone from Kenansville or Wilmington to the vicinity of present-day Columbus, Georgia, where the Chattahoochee river becomes navigable below the fall line. From there they could have gone by barge or ferry south to Henry County. It was an arduous journey for the family, no matter the route.
But, still, why to Henry County, Alabama?
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5. Why Henry County, Alabama?
After Great Britain defeated France in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), the area that is now Henry County was under the jurisdiction of the colony of British West Florida that comprised parts of the modern U.S. states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. British control ended in 1781 when Spain captured Pensacola. The territory subsequently became a colony of Spain, parts of which were gradually annexed piecemeal by the United States beginning in 1810.
On August 30, 1813, a faction of the Creek Indian Nation called the Red Sticks under Red Eagle killed nearly 250 Alabama settlers. In response, President Jefferson called out two 2,500 man forces, one under General Andrew Jackson, to punish and stop the Indians. In his brutal military campaigns against Indians, Jackson ordered that troops systematically kill Indian women and children after massacres in order to complete the extermination. The Creek Nation, only a fraction of which had been in rebellion, was forced to cede three fifths of the present state of Alabama and one fifth of Georgia. (http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/biographies/andrew-jackson/the-creek-war-1813-1814.php) The area ceded by the Creek Nation included the wiregrass region of southeastern Alabama. In 1818, Jackson's forces sparked war with the Seminole Indians when it invaded Spanish Florida with the nominal intent of chasing fugitive slaves who had escaped. In 1830, a year after he became president, Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act which legalized ethnic cleansing. Within seven years 46,000 indigenous people were removed from their homelands east of the Mississippi. Their removal cleared 25 million acres of land for white settlement and slavery. (https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/indian-killer-andrew-jackson-deserves-top-spot-on-list-of-worst-us-presidents-q-Qg-O3lJUCE1bdhzyeS-A/)
Henry County, established on December 13, 1819, by the Alabama Territorial Legislature before Alabama was organized as a state, was named for Patrick Henry, the famous statesman and orator from Virginia. When formed, Henry County encompassed a vast land area that included the southeast Alabama wiregrass region. As population increased in the region, areas of Henry County were split off between 1821 and 1903 to organize eight other counties, after which Henry County was the smallest of the successor counties.
Because of the isolation of the wiregrass region and its relatively poor soil, the area was sparsely settled until after the Civil War. What farming occurred before the war was mostly subsistence, and timber and naval stores were still fledgling industries. After the war, the timber industry boomed as lumbering interests rushed in to take advantage of the yellow pine trees that covered the county. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_County,_Alabama, http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1331) Abbeville, near the center of Henry County, became the county seat in 1834. This portion of the county, with fresh and fertile land, became more thickly settled. The southern wiregrass portion was sparsely settled except along the Chattahoochee River where there was a continuous line of large and rich farms. (http://genealogytrails.com/ala/henry/history1.html)
So why did Thomas Jefferson Stanford move his family in 1840 to Henry County, Alabama? The poor soil and subsistence farming in the region would not seem to have provided an attraction. However, the fledgling timber and naval stores industry and the more fertile land in the vicinity of Abbeville and along the Chattahoochee River may have attracted him to Henry County. But son Samuel Mcgee says that his father acquired a large tract of land along the Choctaw Creek. A modern map of Henry County shows that the Choctawhatchee Creek flows SSW in the northwestern part of Henry County, well away from the Chattahoochee River and west of Abbeville. Since Thomas Jefferson's tract lay in the subsistence farming area of Henry County, its cotton production may not have provided an adequate living for his family.
Thomas Jefferson died in 1870, possibly in Henry County, but he may have abandoned the Henry County farm and returned to Duplin County, North Carolina, where he is buried in Kenansville. Wife Dorothy continued on in Alabama with her young grandson John Quincy and her other children (all then adults), John Monroe, William Jonathan, Samuel Mcgee, and Margaret Ann. At some time between 1869 and 1875, all but Samuel Mcgee and John Quincy immigrated to Van Zandt County, Texas, where Dorothy died in 1893.
John Monroe and wife Eleanor Richards (1827-1898) had seven children, the first four of whom were born in Henry County. By 1858 the had moved to adjacent Barbour County where their last three were born. William Jonathan and wife Martha Jane Guilford (1836-1886) had fifteen children, all but one born in Alabama. By 1869 they too had moved from Henry County to Barbour County. Their last child was born in Van Zandt County, Texas, in 1875. Margaret Ann and husband J. Fern Williams (1849-1915) had one child who was born in Texas in 1891. Samuel Mcgee and wife Mary Frances Battle (1846-1918) moved to Eufaula in Barbour County and had nine children. They did not immigrate to Texas with the rest of the family.
We likely have cousins in the vicinities of Henry and Barbour counties in Alabama, and in Van Zandt and neighboring counties in Texas.
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6. Why Quitman County, Georgia?
At some unspecified time around the turn of the 20th century, John Quincy Stanford moved from Henry County, Alabama, to Quitman County, Georgia.
European explorers first entered the south-Georgia region in the seventeenth century. James Oglethorpe settled Georgia in 1733. Oglethorpe originally envisioned Georgia as a haven for formerly-imprisoned debtors. Georgia became one of the original thirteen colonies, but it was largely uninvolved with the Revolutionary War. It became a state in 1788. After it seceded from the Union in 1861, several Civil War battles took place within its borders. After the war, Georgia was allowed to rejoin the Union in 1870, the last Southern state to rejoin. Georgia regained status as a functional state during Reconstruction (1863-1877). (https://georgia.gov/georgia-history)
Following the passage by Congress of the Indian Removal Act in 1830, the Creek Indian population was forcibly removed from the area by 1837, and towns began to emerge along the Chattahoochee River. Quitman County, established by an act of the Georgia legislature in 1858, became Georgia's 128th county. It was named for John A. Quitman, governor of Mississippi, who spoke persuasively in defense of states' rights and was instrumental in shaping Georgia's decision to secede from the Union. Georgetown, the county's only incorporated town, is the county seat. Morris, a former incorporated town whose municipal charter was repealed in 1995 by the Georgia legislature, is now a part of Georgetown.
The introduction of the steamboat in the mid-nineteenth century encouraged rapid growth along the Chattahoochee and the river became the major waterway for the cotton trade. By the Civil War (1861-65), the river's centrality to southern commerce led the Confederacy to try to protect the Chattahoochee from Union forces. After the Civil War, Georgetown attained an unsavory reputation as a center for gambling and prostitution. (https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/counties-cities-neighborhoods/quitman-county)
During Reconstruction (1863-1877), former slaves attained political power in Alabama and Georgia counties and the state legislatures. After Reconstruction, whites regained power in the state legislatures and passed Jim Crow laws. They also used intimidation and violence to control the African-American population. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_era) Between 1877 and 1950, seventeen African-Americans were lynched in Henry County, Alabama. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_County,_Alabama)
Even so, there seems to be little in Quitman County, Georgia, that might have attracted John Quincy Stanford to leave Henry County, Alabama. Today, Quitman County is one of the smallest and poorest counties in Georgia with per capaita income in year 2000 around $14,000 (https://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/topics/counties/quitman; more recent data not available; website no longer maintained). Its population decreased from 4700 in 1900 to around 2500 in 2000, and it was contracting at the rate of about 3 percent per annum. Quitman County, sharing many of the agricultural characteristics of Henry County, remained predominantly rural. Harvests of the principal crops, corn and peanuts, dropped precipitously: corn from 41,650 bushels in 1997 to 1,700 bushels in 2002; peanuts from 2.2 million bushels in 1997 to a negligible amount in 2002. (https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/counties-cities-neighborhoods/quitman-county)
At some time around 1900, John Quincy Stanford moved from Henry County across the Chattahoochee River to Quitman County, Georgia. The move to Morris Station, a short distance to the southeast of Georgetown, may have been an effort to escape the racial tension in Henry County. John Quincy may have found work in Morris Station with Alexander Hamilton Teel whose daughter, Hattie Olla, he subsequently married. A fanciful possibility is that John Quincy may have moved to Georgetown to court Olla. In any case, the motivation to make this move remains elusive. John and Olla had three children in Morris Station: John Quincy Jr (1906-ca1980), Alexander Rupert (1907-1993), and Olla Miriam (1912-2001).
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7. Why Ocoee, Orange County, Florida?
Racial relations and farming conditions in Georgetown, Georgia, may have been little better than in Henry County, Alabama. By 1920, John Quincy Stanford decided to move his family to central Florida to try their luck in the citrus business.
Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon, who led the first European expedition to Florida in 1513, named the state in tribute to Spain’s Easter celebration known as “Pascua Florida,” or Feast of Flowers. Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilés established the first permanent European settlement in the United States at St. Augustine in 1565. During the first half of the 1800s, U.S. troops were tasked with suppressing and eliminating the Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole Indian populations from North Carolina south to Alabama and Georgia. General Andrew Jackson led an invasion of Seminole Indians in Spanish-controlled Florida in 1817. After Florida became a U.S. Territory in 1821, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams appointed Jackson its territorial governor. Florida joined the union as the 27th state in 1845. During the Civil War, Florida was the third state to secede from the Union. Fort Zachary Taylor in Key West was controlled by Federal forces during the Civil War and used to deter supply ships from provisioning Confederate ports in the Gulf of Mexico. (https://www.history.com/topics/us-states/florida) While Union forces occupied many coastal towns and forts, the interior of the state remained in Confederate hands. During the late 19th and early 20th century, commercial agriculture developed in central Florida with cattle ranches, citrus groves, and vegetable farms. (https://dos.myflorida.com/florida-facts/florida-history/a-brief-history/)
In the mid-1800s the township of Ocoee was established adjacent to Starke Lake, southeast of Lake Apopka, as a small agricultural settlement supported by local citrus and vegetable farming. Immigrants from Tennesseee named Ocoee for a river in Tennessee which means "apricot vine" or passion flower in the Cherokee language. The Town of Ocoee was recognized as a municipality by the Florida legislature in 1923 and became the City of Ocoee in May 1925. (https://www.ocoee.org/728/City-History)
In 1920 my father, fourteen-year-old Alexander Rupert Stanford, drove the family's Model T Ford from Morris Station, Georgia, to Ocoee, Orange County, Florida, carrying the family and its entire household goods. Why they chose Ocoee, about 10 miles west of Orlando, is unclear, but this may have been where they could buy cheap land suitable for citrus groves [by the late twentieth century, Disney made it very valuable land]. They operated a small dairy business in Ocoee until their newly-planted orange, lemon, grapefruit, and tangerine trees could mature and produce marketable fruit. Older brother, John Q Stanford Jr (1906-ca1980), left the family to go to Jacksonville to jobs in banking and insurance, but eventually he returned to the citrus business in Winter Haven, Florida, where he attained the rank of 32nd Degree Mason. John Q Sr and Rupert carried the family citrus business until Rupert in his late teens took a job with a local hardware merchant in Ocoee. John Q continued in the citrus business until his death in 1940.
But Ocoee, Florida, also has an unsavory history:
The Ocoee massacre was a white mob attack on African-American residents in northern Ocoee, Florida, which occurred on November 2, 1920, the day of the U.S. presidential election. The town is in Orange County near Orlando. As many as 60 or 70 African Americans may have been killed during the riot, and most African-American-owned buildings and residences in northern Ocoee were burned to the ground. Other African Americans living in southern Ocoee were later killed or driven out on threat of more violence. Ocoee essentially became an all-white town. The riot has been described as the "single bloodiest day in modern American political history." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocoee_massacre)
The 1920 United States Federal Census for Quitman County, Georgia (Series T625, sheet 69, dated June 10-12, 1920), indicates that the family of John Q Stanford still was living in Quitman on that date. It is possible that the John Q Stanford family completed its move from Morris Station, Georgia, to Ocoee, Florida, between June and November, 1920, and thus could have been present in Ocoee to participate in the Ocoee Massacre. This would not be surprising to me. Although I never knew my paternal grandfather and his socio-cultural orientation, I did know his elder son, my uncle John Q Stanford, Jr. Although John Q Jr's brother (my father) occasionally referred to the "darkies" working in the warehouse at his company, I don't recall him ever indulging in overtly racist language. But John Q Jr's speech pattern was laced with racist language, often including the N-word. This leaves open the possibility that bitterness over the wartime death of Thomas Quincy in 1863, obsession with "the lost cause" of the Confederacy, angst about black ascendancy during Reconstruction, and a Jim Crow orientation after Reconstruction may have infected the 19th and early 20th century family history. If so, this orientation may have been a factor in motivating moves from Duplin County, North Carolina, to Henry County, Alabama, then to Quitman County, Georgia, and then to Ocoee, Florida. <>
8. Why Jacksonville, Duval County, Florida?
Before 1822, Jacksonville, Florida, was known as Cowford because the St. Johns river there was shallow enough for cattle to be driven across it. In 1822, two settlers donated land on the north bank of the St. Johns River at Cowford to establish a “proper town," and the site was renamed Jacksonville in honor of the territory’s first governor, Andrew Jackson, who in 1829 became the seventh U.S. President. During the American Civil War, Jacksonville was a key supply point for hogs and cattle leaving Florida and aiding the Confederate cause. Throughout most of the war, the US Navy maintained a blockade around Florida's ports, including those on the St. Johns River. In October 1862 Union forces captured a Confederate battery in the Battle of St. Johns Bluff and occupied Jacksonville. On February 20, 1864, Union soldiers marched inland from Jacksonville and confronted the Confederate Army at the Battle of Olustee. The battle was a devastating loss for the Union and a decisive victory for the Confederacy. The Union losses caused Northern authorities to question the necessity of further Union involvement in the militarily insignificant region of northern Florida. Jacksonville enjoyed a growth spurt in the late nineteenth century when it became a winter vacation destination for tourists from the North and Midwest. Its development was slowed by the Great Fire of 1901 and the Florida Land Bust of the 1920s. Since 1940, Jacksonville has been a major port for the United States Navy. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Jacksonville,_Florida) Strategically located in the northeast corner of Florida, Jacksonville emerged as a major commercial distribution center serving both the panhandle of Florida to the west and the peninsula of Florida to the south.
In the early 1920s, Alexander Rupert Stanford took a job with a local hardware store in Ocoee, Florida, then with Sears Roebuck in Orlando selling hardware items. He accepted a transfer to a Sears store in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but he opted to transfer back to Florida as soon as a position became available, this time to a Sears store in Jacksonville, Duval County, Florida.
There he met another Sears employee, Ruth Lucille Tapley, born February 19, 1910, in Oak Vale, Mississippi. Both were working at Sears Roebuck in Jacksonville when they married in 1934, but since Sears had a rule against both members of a married couple working at Sears, "Stan" left Sears to take a job in sales at Florida Hardware Company, a wholesale hardware distributor in Jacksonville, where he eventually became vice president and worked until his retirement in 1983. Their sons, Richard Alexander and David Jon, were born in 1943 and 1947, respectively. Stan died on August 20, 1993, in Jacksonville. Around 1994, Lucille suffered a stroke and was moved to Greenville, South Carolina, to be in the care of her sons. Lucille died on November 30, 1997, in Greenville.
Appendix A. The Robert S Red Herring
MyHeritage ancestry records identify two Robert Stanfords who may have died in 1765 in West Caln Township, Chester, Pennsylvania. One is Robert S Stanford (1694-1765) whose father was Robert Stanford Jr (1654-1694); the other is Robert Stanford (1699-1765) whose father was Robert Stanford (1644-1709). It is unclear which Robert (if either) is buried in the Upper Octorara Presbyterian Church at Parkersburg, Pennsylvania.
On the basis of documentary evidence that he has compiled, my third cousin Bob Epperson believes that the father of Samuel C Stanford (1740-1922) is not the Robert S Stanford who is reputed in MyHeritage ancestry records to have been born on Barbados in 1694 and died in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1765. Rather, the documentary evidence indicates that the father of Samuel C Stanford is a Robert Stanford (call him Robert III) who immigrated to Pennsylvania from Ireland. Here is a statement abstracted from an email message from Bob to me:
Even so, the Robert S ancestry has long distracted Stanford family ancestry researchers who are attempting the identify the father of Samuel C Stanford (1740-1822). Barbadian records indicate that there were Stanfords on Barbados in the 17th century. Since they could be our ancestors in other Stanford lines, it may be worth exploring the Robert S ancestry sequence.
In Chart 1, MyHeritage data enable the Robert S Stanford ancestry line to be traced back as far as Charles Stanford, born about 1600. Charles would be my 9th-great grandfather. The line cannot be extended farther back than 1600 because ancestry records for Charles Stanford do not include the name of either parent.
So-called "record matches" are found in authentic ancestry data bases; others, called “smart matches,” are found in ancestry trees and thus may be undocumented. This is especially true of ancestry records for parties who lived ever farther back in time. This means that pedigrees of parties in such ancestry records cannot be authenticated. Records for nobility and many other public figures usually are well documented, but most records of non-nobility parties who lived more than a hundred years back in time are unlikely to be well documented and authenticated. In Chart 1, names marked with an asterisk (*) are record matches. Note that in Chart 1 all names except Charles Stanford are record matches.
Following the Robert S ancestry sequence derived from MyHeritage sources, his great grandfather Charles Stanford was born circa 1600 in London. Charles’ parents are unknown, so the Stanford ancestry prior to Charles cannot be traced. Charles married Sarah Dale, born 1604 in London. By 1628 they had moved to Barbados, a small island in the Lesser Antilles of the British West Indies, where son Robert was born. Sarah moved back to London where she died in 1648. Charles returned to London where he died in 1661.
Robert Stanford grew up on Barbados and married a woman named Susannah (or Susan), born 1632, surname and place unknown. Their son Robert Jr was born in St. Michael, Barbados, in 1654. Susanna died on Barbados, death date unknown. Robert returned to England where he died in 1670.
Robert Stanford Jr remained on Barbados where he married Mary Clancey, born in 1662 in St. Michael Parish, Barbados. Son Robert S Stanford was born in 1694, the same year that Robert Jr died on Barbados. Mary subsequently married Nicholas Handmerry, birth and death dates and places unknown, and Abel Tudor, born 1674 in Wales, died 1725 in St. Michael Parish, Barbados. At some date thereafter, Mary left Barbados for British Clarendon Jamaica where she died in 1730.
Robert S (possibly Samuel) Stanford left Barbados at some time after the turn of the 18th century to go to the American colonies where he settled in West Caln Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania.
We know from Barbadian records that Stanfords were present on Barbados during the Colonial era, but we do not know why the Stanford family may have resided on Barbados for three generations. Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of North America. What were they doing on Barbados? Why did Charles Stanford go there? Why did Robert S Stanford leave Barbados? We don't know, but a review of the history of Barbados may suggest some possible answers.
On 14 May 1625, Captain John Powell landed on Barbados and claimed the island for King James I. On 17 February 1627, Henry Powell, John Powell's brother, along with 80 English settlers and 10 African slaves acquired from a Spanish ship mid-journey, founded a colony on Barbados at Jamestown (modern Holetown).
The early English settlement was established as a proprietary colony and funded by Sir William Courten, a City of London merchant who acquired the title to Barbados and several other islands. Since the first colonists were tenants and indentured servants, much of the profits of their labor returned to Courten and his company. Between 1640 and 1660, more than two-thirds of the English who emigrated to the Americas went to Barbados. The vast majority of English settlers who came to Barbados were indentured servants who exchanged five years of labor for their ship’s transport fees and were given a few acres of land and ten pounds upon being granted their freedom. (https://ancestralfindings.com/english-settlers-barbados) The indentured labor initially experimented with cultivation of tobacco, cotton, ginger, and indigo, but none proved profitable.
The introduction of African slaves and sugar cane cultivation by Jewish Dutch investors from Brazil in 1640 completely transformed Barbados culture and its economy. A sugar plantation required a large investment and a great deal of heavy labor. Indentured servants from northern Europe proved unable to survive the tropical climate and diseases and to do all of the work necessary to cultivate sugar cane, so the Dutch Jews began importing slaves from east Africa. Barbados became an English center of the African slave trade until that trade was outlawed in 1807, with final emancipation of slaves on Barbados occurring over several years after 1833. Dutch traders supplied the equipment, financing, and enslaved Africans, in addition to transporting most of the sugar to Europe. English smallholders eventually were bought out and the island filled with large sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans.
By the mid-1650s, most of the cultivable land on Barbados had been cleared for sugar plantations and Barbados had become so densely populated that Barbados agriculture could not grow enough food to support the population of whites and Africans. By 1660 there was near parity with 27,000 blacks and 26,000 whites. By 1666 at least 12,000 white smallholders had been bought out, died, or left the island. Many of the remaining whites were increasingly poor. By 1680 there were 17 slaves for every indentured servant. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbados) Due to the implementation of slave codes which aggravated differential treatment between the ruling planter class and the Africans and white workers, the island became increasingly unattractive to poor whites. In response to these codes, several slave insurrections were attempted during this time, but none succeeded. Poor whites who had the means to emigrate often did so.
So why did Charles and Sarah Stanford go to Barbados? The logical explanation is that they went in pursuit of economic opportunity. We don't know details of Charles' and wife Sarah's lives prior to 1628, but they became acquainted with John and Henry Powell who offered them the opportunity to become settlers of new land recently claimed for the English crown. They may have been among those first 80 indentured servants arriving on Barbados in 1627. They must have "gotten busy" right away since son Robert was born on Barbados in 1628.
Robert married Susannah (surname unknown) who was born on Barbados in 1632. (Susannah's surname may have been Spencer; her granddaughter, Susanna Spencer Stanford, was born 1676 on Barbados; it is not an unreasonable assumption that she may have been named for her grandmother.) Some Stanford ancestries indicate that both Robert and Susannah may have been born in West Nimba, Liberia, rather than Barbados. The Stanfords probably were tobacco/cotton/ginger/indigo tenant planters who may have shifted to planting sugar cane after its introduction to Barbados in the 1640s.
MyHeritage ancestry records indicate that Robert and Susannah's son, Robert Jr, was born on Barbados in 1654. Robert Jr married Mary Clancey (born 1662 on Barbados) in St. Michaels parish. Baptism records indicate that Robert Jr and Mary had four daughters, Susanna Spencer in 1676, Mary Hackett in 1677, Susanna in 1687, and Elizabeth in 1692. Son Robert S [Spencer?] was born on September 8, 1694. His father, Robert Jr, died only two months later on November 12, 1694, circumstance unknown, and is buried on Barbados. As a widow with young children, Mary married twice more on Barbados and outlived both husbands. Robert S remained on Barbados, but Mary eventually immigrated to Jamaica where she died in 1730.
In 1671 a group of Quakers visited Barbados and appeared to have come into conflict with the Barbadian planter class for suggesting that slave-owners should treat their slaves with humanity and attempt to convert them to Christianity. In 1676 the Quaker Alice Curwen visited Barbados and, in a letter to a slave-holding friend, unambiguously denounced slavery.
Robert Jr's household is listed on the Christ Church parish register for 1680 with "27 acres of land, 0 white servants and 9 negros." This suggests that Robert Jr may have been a tenant working 27 acres, or he may have been a "smallholder" somewhere between the tenant class and the planter class. By 1680 the fortunes of tenant planters had diminished due to the newly implemented slave codes that precipitated slave unrest. Many of the white smallholders were bought out by the ruling planter class, and some decided to emigrate. By the turn of the 18th century, most of the tenants on Barbados had descended into the ranks of "poor whites." In search of better economic opportunity, any who had the means emigrated to more promising shores.
Robert S Stanford immigrated to Pennsylvania around 1721 to West Caln Township, Chester County, only a few miles to the west of the port of Philadelphia. When profitability declined on Barbados, many of the wealthy planter class immigrated to Charles Towne (later Charleston), South Carolina, in search of more profitable opportunities (https://video.scetv.org/video/beyond-barbados-the-carolina-connection-qftqnv/). The fact that Robert S immigrated to Philadelphia rather than Charles Towne suggests that he was a smallholder down on his luck. He may have been able to sell his smallholding to sugar industry planters and use the proceeds to immigrate deliberately to Pennsylvania. Or, he may have lost his land on Barbados to indebtedness foreclosure. In desperation to leave Barbados, he may have taken any passage to the American colonies that he could afford, thus arriving in the port of Philadelphia quite by chance. We do not know if he took his slaves with him.
Bob Epperson believes that the father of Robert Stanford Sr of Barbados was a John Stanford who was married to an Elizabeth (possibly born Kingsland). A letter written in 1661 to Robert Sr’s uncle Nathaniel Kingsland, a large sugar planter on Barbados, indicates that Robert Sr’s mother may have been a Kingsland. Bob believes that the Robert S Stanford family of Barbados more likely descended from John Stanford of St Joseph’s parish as opposed to Charles and Sarah (Dale) Stanford. Although there were other Stanford/Sandiford/Standford/Sanford families on Barbados, none of them used Robert as a first name in their family records found on Barbados. Bob cites evidence in support of the John-Robert S ancestry sequence, including the facts that Robert S was christened in the St Michaels parish of the Church of England (Episcopalian Church in the US today, called the Anglican Church outside the US) on Barbados on 8 Sep 1694, and John’s son Robert was born in England and arrived as a child on Barbados about 1642. John’s grandson, Robert was born 18 Oct 1654 and died some time after 1666. Bob also cites evidence that John’s great-grandson, Robert S Stanford died 12 Nov 1695 in St Michaels Parish, Barbados, at the age of 14 months and could not have migrated to Pennsylvania.
The MyHeritage search engine in fact does turn up a record for a John Stanford, born between 1611 and 1620 in London, and who died in St. Joseph Parish, Barbados, at some time after May 12, 1662 (possibly the birth date of this last-born child). His wife was named Elizabeth Stanford, born Gladwell (not Kingsland). John and Elizabeth had five children, one of whom was named Robert, born circa 1645, place unspecified. In the MyHeritage records, Robert’s siblings correspond to John’s children. Robert’s children are not listed, so it has not been possible to connect him to Robert Stanford who died on Barbados, September 7, 1765, at the age of 90 years.
Today, an elite colonial-era holiday rental villa named "Stanford House" is located opposite the Barbados polo club in Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados (http://www.jalbarbados.com/stanford-house-polo-ridge-st-james). The name Stanford is not uncommon today on Barbados. The "9 negros" noted on the Christ Church parish register for 1680 probably were given their owner's surname, and it cannot be ruled out that Robert Jr or Robert S may have engaged intimately with other settlers or slaves on Barbados. [In the latter possibility, we may have cousins on Barbados who can be verified only with DNA evidence.] A Google search on "Stanfords on Barbados" turns up the following list of Barbados residents: Ronald Stanford is Assistant Superintendent of Police; Claire Stanford is human resources officer at a life insurance company; Pamela Stanford is a licensed private tour guide; Dwayne Stanford is a forward on the Barbados Caribbean football team; Maria Stanford is a landscape artist; Pedro Stanford is a civic interest blogger; and Archibald Stanford is a thief. A website reference for each of these can be found by Googling their names plus "Barbados." There probably are more Stanfords on Barbados who do not appear in web pages.
This excursion to Barbados may have been entertaining, but it long has been a red herring that has distracted Stanford family ancestry researchers who have attempted to identify the father of Samuel C Stanford (1740-1822). But it may not be pointless because some day we may discover that a branch of the Stanford family ancestry passed through Barbados after all.
Appendix B. The Stanford Ancestry Extended
Although there is no documentary evidence of the immediate ancestor of Robert Stanford (1699-1765), the MyHeritage search engine can trace the ancestry sequence prior to Robert as far back as 1480. The ancestry sequence dead-ends there because no parents are identified in the ancestry record for William Stanford (1480-1570). If this ancestry sequence could be authenticated, William would be my 12th-great grandfather. Chart 29 displays this tentative ancestry sequence. All of the places indicated in this sequence listing are birth places. Record matches, found in data bases that the MyHeritage search engine accesses, are likely to be documentable; smart matches, found in other ancestry trees, may not be documentable and thus may be less reliable. Names marked with an asterisk (*) are record matches.
David Stanford (1602-1680) immigrated from Horsham, Sussex, England, to Falmouth, Cumberland, Maine, in the American Colonies. His great grandson, Robert Stanford (1699-1765) moved to Chester, Pennsylvania, at an unknown date. His record is not a record match, and we have no information about his birth circumstances or why he moved to Chester. Robert’s mother is identified as Mary Howland, and the wife of Robert Stanford (1644-1709) also is identified as Mary Howland. Even without a record match, these facts connect Robert (1699-1765) to Robert (1644-1709) as his father.
In this ancestry sequence, Robert Stanford (1644-1709) would be my 6th-great grandfather, and his brother, Thomas Stanford (1650-1695), would be my 6th-great uncle. Their father, Thomas Stanford (1618-1683) would be my 7th-great grandfather. His 4th-great grandson was Amasa Leland Stanford (1834-1893), the founder of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Thomas Stanford (1618-1683) would be our first ancestor in common. Amasa Leland Stanford then would be my 8th-cousin, twice removed. I would be Amasa Leland Stanford’s 4th cousin, twice removed.
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