Three of the most prominent and powerful families in the Harlan County - Lee County, Va., area were the Brittains, Cawoods and Hamblens.
George Brittain's importance in early Harlan history is well known. His nephew Chadwell Brittain was prominent in Lee County affairs. Chadwell's wife was his first cousin Sarah Brittain, a niece of George Brittain.
Family tradition relates that when Sarah's father, Parks Brittain, started to move from Powells Valley, Va., to Knox County, Ky., Chadwell followed and at the first night's camping place stole his girl and ran off and married her, returning to the old home.
Berry Cawood was an early hunter and trader and had fought in the Revolutionary War, serving mostly against the Shawnee and Cherokee Indians. He came to Harlan before the county was formed and lived for many years in Mount Pleasant. His son John who had married Nancy Turner, the daughter of yet another prominent family, was also active in local affairs.
The Hamblins were prominent in business, mostly in Lee County, but had various business interests in Harlan as well. John Hamblen's daughters married into the Cawood and Brittain families further consolidating the power of the three families.
John and Nancy Turner Cawood's son William was born Aug. 8 1822. About 1847, he married Mary D. Hamblen. In 1848, their son John was born, followed by a daughter, Elizabeth, born in the fall of 1849. Their daughter Nancy was born in 1851. On Feb. 13, 1853, at Crummies Creek, a son William was born. His mother Mary died just over two weeks later on March 1 of fever.
Left with four little children, William soon remarried. His second wife was Nancy, daughter of Chadwell and Sarah Brittain. Their daughter Sarah was born about 1856. William died not long after and in 1860 his widow and children all lived with relative in Lee County. Nancy and their daughter are living with her parents and his four children by his first wife are all living with their widowed grandmother Elizabeth Hamblen.
In 1869, in Lee County, William and Mary's daughter Elizabeth Cawood married Madison K. Graham. Her brother William married Sarah J. Russell in Lee County in 1873. Their sister Nancy is believed to have married William Bowles.
Mary Hamblen Cawood's sister Sarah had married about 1848 to George Brittain's son Carlo by his second wife Nancy Posey. Carlo and Sally had six children, Elizabeth Anne, Nancy, George, Mary Louise, Drucilla and Sally.
In 1880, Mary Louise is living with her uncle, William Hamblen in a household near those of her sister Drucilla who had married in 1876 to William P. Graham and her sister Elizabeth who had married Alexander Russell.
Their sister Sally married that summer of 1880 to Hiram Cawood, as his second wife. Hiram was the son of John and Nancy Turner Cawood and thus brother to Sally's aunt's husband, William Cawood.
To add to the confusing inter-marrying of these powerful families, Nancy Turner Cawood's brother William Turner twice married Brittain women. His first wife was Elizabeth, daughter of George Brittain. After her death, he married Minerva, daughter of Chadwell and Sarah Brittain and thus sister of William Cawood's second wife.
Through the Turners, these families were connected to other prominent families; Sewall, Clay, Bailey, Middleton and Wynn