My Immigrant Ancestors

While talking with a friend today we discovered our ancestors came to this country in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds from England, Ireland and Scotland. So many of us in the deep south descend from those pioneers who migrated down through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. Just as in present day, people migrated in groups or families. Besides the Councils who came down from NC, the Poseys and Pelts, the Boyettes and my mother's Robison, Jones and Coopers also migrated south.

Around 1850, after the native Americans were pushed out of north Florida, the land which now belonged to the Federal Government, sold for as little as $1.25 an acre. Now I understand how my great grandfather, John Cecil Council came to own so much land.

I find members of the Robison (Robinson) family in Wakulla County, Florida. Larkin Robison, believed to be brother to John Monroe Robison, is buried in   
Woodville Cemetery in Leon County, Florida.

I am digging bones again now that I have downloaded Legacy 9, supposed to be the most popular genealogy program out there today. I plan to take a couple of classes with Larry Van Horn who writes a column for our local paper and who is the predominant family historian in this area. His expertise extends to all the digital records and histories found online.

When I began exploring family roots in the seventies and eighties, I traveled around south Georgia perusing old records, files, and cemeteries. I bought books about early families in North Carolina and Virginia where the first John Council stepped off a ship.

Seventeenth Century Isle of Wight County Virginia by John Bennett Boddie is filled with information including names like John Council, his son Hardy Council and their descendants. Many of the residents here came before the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth.

Boddie explains the difference in his use of Puritan and Pilgrim. "The Brownist Movement (Separatist Movement)was an original defection from the English Church and favored separation from that body. There is a definite parallel between two of its offspring, viz: The Ancient Church formed in London in 1592, removed to Holland in 1597, whose remnants in 1618 migrated to Virginia - though most of them died enroute; and the Separatist or Pilgrim Church which in 1607-8 escaped to Holland and in 1620 embarked for Virginia but landed in Plymouth....the two groups then had much in common and history shows that the Rev. John Robinson, at different times served both of them."

Could that John Robinson be an ancestor of mine?  Robinson and Robison seem to be interchangeable on many records of that time.

Before Isle of Wight county became such, it was home to several tribes of native born groups including the Warascoyak and the Nansemonds. This was the James River region. The first white settlers who came were the Puritans, who came over from Holland after breaking from the church in England.

Boddie gives a couple of chapters to explaining the forces of the church and how they played out in forming Isle of Wight County, Virginia. Of  course many fights with the local Indians caused death to those early settlers. Boddie uses written records of the time to tell this story of the history of Isle of Wight County.

Boddie offers proof that men from Isle of Wight County were among the first settlers in North Carolina. So the migration began to move south.

In a chapter on Land Grants 1674-1705 I find other names in my family lines: Council, Jones and Robinson. In Land Grants 1628-1674, I see a Justinian Cooper. Could he be an ancestor to my Samuel Cooper line which I traced back to South Carolina?

John Council is named in a Deed Book in 1697. In May of 1775, Joshua Council was name to a County Committee of Safety. Was this man related to John Cecil Council born in 1833 in Alabama?

As a genealogy enthusiast, finding these surnames and the dates when they lived in Virginia  is like finding pieces of a jig saw puzzle and trying to find their place among all the other pieces. It is addictive and keeps me up at night. What intrigues me is how many of the names in Boddie's book are also found in the 1800 census records in Georgia, Alabama and Florida where my known ancestors lived.

We are a land of immigrants.
All the Councils, Joneses and Coopers as well as the Robisons, Robinsons and Poseys and Bealls came here from England, France, Holland, Ireland and Scotland in the days when white people fought the Indians for the land. With all the talk of immigration today, it is hard to think of my family as immigrants because they came so long ago, but still they came here to find a better life for themselves and their families just as do the people who come today.

I know we must be careful to monitor everyone in order to protect us from terrorists, but we are still the land of the free and that is what drives people to try to live here. Freedom which we all cherish is what many now want to deny anyone who is brown or black or comes from Africa. We have what we want here and we want to turn others away from sharing our land of the free.

Immigrants who come here from impoverished regions will take any job, usually, just to be able to live in this great country. Many wealthy people work undocumented people and pay them small wages, and those workers don't complain. They sometimes do the work no one else will do just so they can be here. Some are treated like slaves. Those same wealthy people pretend to be angered about illegal immigration when they are fostering the process.

In recent years I have met Americans who are first and second generation descendants of immigrants. They are so glad their grandparents came to this country, worked very hard to raise and educate their families. I feel that I have been ignorant of the whole matter of immigration most of my life because my family and people I knew growing up were descendants of those who fought in the war for our independence from England.

I assumed that most people in this country, other than Native Americans, had the same family backgrounds. Now I realize that our country is full of recent immigrants who are making a huge difference in our culture, a difference that many don't like and don't want. People with my kind of  ancestry are often afraid that darker skinned people will prevail and change us in a way they won't like. Well, it has already happened. Our popular music today is not what I grew up listening to and the food we eat is not what I grew up eating. The traditions we followed a few generations ago have changed in many households and in many communities, but is that so bad?  

Most young people embrace the changes and accept people for who they are and not the color of their skin. However, there are always those who hate anyone who is different. I have hope that as time passes we can all accept the changes in our culture and look for the good it brings us, not the bad.

If my ancestors had not wanted a better life for themselves and their families and if they had not braved the hardships to get here back in the seventeenth century,  what would my life have been like? They broke all kinds of laws to  build a country where freedom of religion and freedom of speech could be guaranteed. And now we have Americans who want to curb freedom of religion if it is not what they believe.

I hope the immigration laws can soon be worked out so that those who have been here most of their lives can be given a path to stay and work. I hope they can also be made so that those who want to come here don't have to wait for ten years to gain citizenship. Surely compassionate men and women in our government can put themselves in the places of the people affected by our laws and make the right decision.