community.

    However, one can easily guess that there was considerable tension between his parents. His father, John₁, if one can read between the lines, was a man of great charm with considerable weaknesses for music, alcohol and gambling. Whether he was told by his wife, Hannah, to go or if he left on his own, we probably will never know. But we do know that he did leave the wife and children of his first marriage before any of the children married, evidently never to return. And he did establish, in a distant place, another family of at least as many or more children, not having divorced his first wife and therefore without a sanctioned marriage.

    There is a story that one line of John₁'s descendants tells ostensibly regarding one of his sons, but given what we know of the personality of that son, it pretty clearly does not apply to him, and surely is a story originally about the father, John₁ ... a story about a man who could not be counted on by his wife show up where and when he said he would, who was easily distracted by a chance to play his fiddle for a crowd, or to drink a jug, or to pursue a challenging wager.

    Whatever the impetus, Thomas₁₁ apparently left the parental home at about the same time as his father. He first appears as an adult on the Little Levels tax list in 1793, probably as a brand new 21-year old. Both he and his father last appear on those lists in 1796.¹

    So far we do not know where Thomas₁₁ was during the eight years 1797-1805 while his father was in North Carolina, eastern Tennessee and eastern Kentucky. At the end of that period, in about 1805, he married Christina_11.1 Blubaugh, probably in Lee County in extreme southwestern Virginia . Most

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1 Bath Co, Personal Property Tax Lists, 1791-1823.

2 Tumbo, Mr. S.C, "Turnbo Sketches" in the Ozark Quarterly, says they were married in Virginia. The birth year of their eldest known child is about 1805. At that time Christina's parents may have been living in Lee County, Virginia, if so, Thomas and Christina would have been married there. So far I have found no official record of their