LAY Family: And the work begins

John David "Big Valley"
Dave Lay (Nancy Lay's big brother)

Nancy Lay (abt. 1768-abt. 1860) is the daughter of Jesse Lay, Sr., who is one of several children of John Lay, who died when young leaving his wife Elizabeth alone. There is so much to the Lay family story and for the genealogists among us, trying to sort through the Lay family as various parts made their way through Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. There is an extemely short list of names each successive generation used, causing lots of confusion and consternation is sorting them all out. 

Then, I discovered the Lay Family Genealogical Association, Inc., a group who has been operating for many, many years and have several very serious genealogists who have unraveled much of the tree. Unfortunately, and this impression may not be 100% correct, it looks like the active pubhlished work of the organization died out in 2016. The leader of the group, a woman of great skill, died in 2017. Much of this research was published in Lay of the Land, a publication of the group. These are no longer in print. I got a copy from a very generous Wikiteer who also guided me to other sources, including some of his own scholarship.

I am sorting this Lay family information now, but I believe it will take some time to do so.  I also got a couple of resource names that are also out of print: Gilbert Lay's Lay Family Geneaology and Arlie Lay's Lay Family History.

If you have copies of any of these or know where to get them, please let me know by leaving a comment.

Clan William: The Southern Contingent: 1st Corporal Buren Strickland

Watercolor of the battle of Malvern Hill by Sneden 
nps.gov

The Strickland Family as it relates to the Munsons began when Silas Strickland married Olive Marie Munson back in 1829. They moved from Connecticut to Georgia and then Alabama, where they rasied their children. 

Today, the subject is Buren Strickland, who was probably born in Russell County, Alabama. Buren's siblings grew up and married, but Buren stayed with his mother and never married.

Capt Thomas Munson > Samuel Munson > Samuel James Munson > William Munson > William II Munson > William Munson > Olive Maria Munson > Buren Strickland

On July 1, 1861, he went to war, fighting with the 15th Alabama Infantry Regiment, Company C. The regiment was organized in August 1961 at Fort Mitchell in Alabama. The regiment had 11 companies. According to the National Park Services, the regiment consisted of 900 members from Russell, Barbour, Dale, Henry, Macon and Pike counties into 11 companies. This regiment saw heavy action. It moved from Tennessee to Virgina and then became part of Trimble's Campaign.

Later, it served under the Army of Northern Virginia. Battles included Suffolk, Chickamauga, and
Knoxville. It also fought at Petersburg, Appomattox, Cross Keys, the Second Manassas, Port Republic, and in the Wilderness Campaign. The group took heavy casualties throughout the war. When the unit finally surrendered at Appomattox, it surrendered with a mere 15 officers and 204 soldiers.

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/maps/malvern-hill-july-1-1862

"The Seven Days battles ended with a tremendous roar at Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862. The contending armies collided for the final time that week on ground that gave an immense advantage to the defenders—in this case McClellan’s Army of the Potomac. With the security of the James River and the powerful United States Navy at his back, McClellan elected to stop and invite battle. 

The Confederates, elated by their victories but frustrated by their inability to achieve truly decisive battlefield results, obliged McClellan by attacking Malvern Hill. The hill itself was a modest elevation about 2 ½ miles north of the James River. Its strength lay not in its height, but rather in its fields of fire. Gently sloping open fields lay in front of the Union position, forcing any Confederate attacks against the hill to travel across that barren ground. 

McClellan unlimbered as much artillery as he could at the crest of the hill, facing in three directions. Nearly 70,000 infantry lay in support, most of them crowded in reserve on the back side of the hill. General Lee recognized the power of Malvern Hill. 

In tandem with James Longstreet, one of his top subordinates, Lee devised a plan where Confederate artillery would attempt to seize control of Malvern Hill by suppressing the Union cannon there. Lee believed his infantry could assault and carry the position if they did not have to contend with the fearsome Union batteries. 

The Confederate bombardment failed, but Lee’s infantry attacked anyway, thrown into the charge after a series of misunderstandings and bungled orders. Lee himself was absent when the heaviest fighting erupted. He was away looking for any alternate route that would allow him to bypass Malvern Hill. But once the attack started, Lee threw his men into the fray. Some twenty separate brigades of Southern infantry advanced across the open ground at different times. 

As the Confederate leaders had feared, the Federal batteries proved dominant. Most attacks sputtered and stalled well short of the hill’s crest. Occasionally McClellan’s infantry, commanded by Fitz John Porter, George Morell, and Darius Couch, sallied forward to deliver a fatal volley or two. Pieces of Confederate divisions led by D. H. Hill, Benjamin Huger, D. R. Jones, Lafayette McLaws, Richard S. Ewell, and W. H. C. Whiting advanced at different times, always without success. General John B. Magruder organized most of the attacks. 

Late in the day, a few Union brigades and some fresh artillery raced to the hilltop in support. But in fact only a small segment of the Army of the Potomac saw action at Malvern Hill. The dominance of the position enabled less than one-third of the Union army to defeat a larger chunk of the Confederate army at Malvern Hill. 

As with each of the other battles during the dramatic week, darkness concluded the action. Malvern Hill had demonstrated the power and efficiency of the Union artillery in particular. Confederate leaders and soldiers alike could look back on poor command and control as the principal cause of their defeat. The casualty totals were more balanced than expected for a battle in which the outcome never was in doubt. Slightly more than 5000 Confederates fell killed and wounded, while roughly 3000 Union soldiers met a similar fate." https://www.nps.gov/rich/learn/historyculture/mhbull.htm

Buren didn't make it through the entire war. He fought at Winchester, Virginia and Creek Stand in early 1862 and was promoted to 1st Corporal on December 1st. In July, he was at Cross Keys in early June of 1862. His last battle was part of the Seven Days Battle, which culminated at Malvern Hill, a win despite the fact the Union took many casualties and the battle didn't advance General McClellan's position at all. 

Buren lost his fight with his injuries on July 7, 1862. He was 23 years old. 

According to the testimony of his surviving siblings, all Buren had was a share of the property on which his mother resided. His mother, O.M. Jackson, received his Confederate pension. The testimony of his sister Mary Strickland Renfroe, was provided to the probate court. Other testimony is available on Ancestry.com

Click images to enlarge

Susannah Gourley Thompson, Oldest Rock Grove Resident

JOSEPH GOURLEY > SUSANNA GOURLEY m Daniel Thompson

We don't have a plethora of southern antecedents. Most come originally from the Puritan northeast US, not the more free-wheeling commerce-driven settlers who landed in Virginia and parts south.

Yet, the Gourley's had long been in Loudoun County, Virginia. Their origins are most likely Scottish and their presence in Virginia goes back until at least the mid 1700s. I've found indications that they were Quakers. Waterford, the town in which Susanna's father Joseph was born, was a Quaker settlement started by Pennsylvanian Amos Janney in 1733. Joseph and his wife Grace Morgan's antecedents started from Pennsylvania. I'm slowly chipping away at the story.

The birthday gift giving list looks like
Who's Who of my family tree

Susanna was one of at least eight children born to Joseph Gourley and Grace Morgan. In some of my research of Grace's family, it appears they may have been part of the Keithian Quakers, a group that split from the Friends in 1690 over disagreements on things like water Baptisms, which the Quakers had foregone some time previously. These Keithian Quakers often ended up as Baptists. If you hear the term Baptist Quaker or Primitive Baptists, that's most likely what's being referred to. It walks like a Quaker and talks like a Quaker, but isn't a Quaker. This makes sense as most of the Cooper's who settled in Iowa ended up as Baptists.

This interesting story comes from a Gourley relative, Patty, who shared the information online:

"A letter from Mary Verniece Byrd, one of the descendants of Susannah Gourley Thompson, dated April 18, 1973, to Reeva Decker. Susannah Gourley, born 1801, married Robert Thompson, born 1799, in Louden County, Virginia. She was born in either Pittsylvania County or Spotsylvania County, Virginia. Susannah Thompson had a son Scott who was much younger than her other children and full of the devil. Scott's wife Marietta was alive in 1937 as my little boys and I stopped to visit her a few hours in passing through. It is through her that I got my history about Susannah Gourley Thompson as she knew her well before she died. She told me that Susannah Gourley Thompson said that she well remembered the War of 1812. She had 3 brothers who fought in it. Her father - Joseph Gourley- was too old but he hauled provisions to the soldiers at Point Lookout, Maryland. If you look on your map it is a point south of Washington, D. C. at the edge of the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River joined. She said she wore a blue dress and stood in a wagon, and waved a flag as the soldiers marched by. She would have been at least 11 years old." 

Susanna married Daniel Thompson about 1819. Daniel was born about 1800 in Virginia. Unfortunately, after having 11 children, he died in his 40s after their arrival in Stephenson County, Illinois.  Susanna's siblings spread out as well, some staying in various parts of Virginia and some moving to Clark and Crawford County (remember, there was a very large contingent of Quakers in the area), and then on to Livingston County or Stephenson County, and one to Champaign County, Ohio.

Susanna's son Daniel, born in 1828 in Virginia, married into the Quaker Cooper family, marrying Ann Cooper on 05 May 1850 in Illinois. They had seven children before he died prematurely at age 37 in Osage, Mitchell County, Iowa in 1864. His will made his wife not only the beneficiary of his estate, but the sole executor of Daniel's will.

Susanna's daughter Margaret Ann, was born 28 Oct 1821 in Virginia. She married a Cooper, as well, marrying Chalkley Jared Cooper on 28 Jul 1840 in Crawford County, Illinois. C J and Margaret had nine children before Margaret's death in 1880 in Rock Grove. CJ survived until 1885.

Susanna eventually became Rock Grove's oldest citizen. She had her 83rd birthday in 1884, but she still had a lot of life left in her. She resided with son-in-law CJ Cooper in some of the last years of her life. "Grandma Thompson," as she was known by all, lived on to the age of  97 and died of complications of age cared for by her daughter Grace. She outlived all but two of her children.

I hope to talk a little more about some of the other Thompson kids in a future post.