BIG SANDY ROOTS

Dedicated to the Genealogy of the pioneer families that settled the Big Sandy River region of Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia

The photo above is of Nehemiah Hoover Hall and Mahala Devore. Nehemiah was born in 1832 and Mahala in 1842, both in Washington County, Ohio. According to Nehemiah's obituary, he and Mahala had been married sixty years when he died February 1, 1917 in Mason County, West Virginia. Nehemiah was the son of William R. Hall and Mary Missouri Sprague. Mahala was the daughter of Solomon L. Devore and Margaret Goodwin. Both were children of the original pioneer families that settled Ohio just after the Revolutionary War. Nehemiah's grandparents were members of the Original Ohio company who migrated to Ohio in 1789 after receiving land grants from the Continental Congress through the Canadian Refugee Act, which also recognized their contributions in the Revolutionary War.

As with much of the genealogical material the author has gathered, the photo above was provided, along with others, by a not so distant cousin who was kind enough to respond to a posting on the Internet. It is with the same spirit this site has been created. It is likely that anyone who finds their way here, is related to someone listed here in some way, and will therefore be a cousin of some kind. The author sincerely hopes everyone who visits finds something of interest. All are welcome to take and use what they want as long as it is not for any commercial purpose. Anyone finding an error is encouraged to contact the author with corrections, and anyone who can provide additional information will be greatly appreciated. Be assured any information provided that is identified as confidential will not be posted, or otherwise released.

The author began doing genealogical research after reading the genealogical pages of an old Family Bible. On those pages he found recorded the names, births, marriages, and deaths of parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins spanning several generations. It was a long list of people, known and loved by the author's grandparents and great grandparents, who had been largely forgotten by the family. What started as simply an effort to preserve a grandparent's memories, soon became an effort to preserve the history of the families. For example, the author discovered grandparents, William Sprague and Millicent Eames, were among the Puritans that arrived in New England during the Great Migration, Another grandparent, Chaddus Brown (married to Elizabeth Sharprowe) was the first Ordained Baptist Minister to permanently settle in America. It was no small surprise to discover that Chaddus' granddaughter Alice (or Ellis) married Major Joshua Sprague, and it was Joshua and Alice that helped settle frontier Ohio.

Whether from New England, New York, Pennsylvania, or Virginia it seems that all the early families found their way to the Big Sandy River region, and planted roots that have now spread throughout the fifty States. It is in their memory Big Sandy Roots is dedicated. Larry Hall - 12/2001

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� 2009 by Larry Hall

All the photographs and original material on this website belong to the individual that contrubuted the material and/or that holds the copyright. All the material posted on this website was posted with the understanding that it may be freely copied and distributed for private, non-commercial use.