My mother descends from George Andrew Toy, a ship captain, from the British Colonies, who married a lady from Sweden named Christina.
A distant relative informed me that George and Christina settled in a Swedish area along the Delaware river as did the next generations of Toys.
George's great, great grandson, whose name was also George, migrated to Kentucky from Maryland and first married a woman named Mary while living in Maryland.
His second wife was named Melvina with whom he had six or seven kids.
Many of those children are said to be buried in the old Virginia Cemetery in Peasticks, a small community in Bath County, KY.
The next generation in my Toy line would be George and Mary's son Joseph, who married Cynthia Craig.
Jospeh and Cynthia's son Thomas was born 1851 in Bath County and he married Florence Warders and their son, Claude Owen married Martha "Mattie" Collins.
Thomas Toy
Florence Warders
Claude and Mattie are the parents of my maternal grandmother, Gladys Toy who married James Cartmill.
My Hawkins ancestors were originally from Estill County, Kentucky and that branch of my tree begins with John and Mary "Polly" Barnes. John and Mary had two sons, Edward and John William.
Tracing the Hawkins linage has been difficult enough and made even more complicated with the speculation that Edward and John Williams father was also married to a woman named Mary Smith and they also had several children together. I have since learned that John fathered several children with his two wives, all of whom were born in Estill County, Ky.
There is some mystery attached to my Hawkins ancestors too, sort of a "make them skeleton's dance" kind of discovery.
As it turns out, the notorious Edward "Ned" Hawkins was known as a ruthless murderer, and that ya'll is a whole other story. I tend to believe the actual article that relates the story of how Ned killed the sheriff, but not all the dramatic stories that were badly written and blown out of proportion to make the story more dramatic.
So, John William married Rebecca Hester Flora, a Lewis County, Ky native. They were married in in Carlisle, Nicholas County, KY. I have found them living in Nicholas, Bath and Fleming Counties throughout their married life.
John and Rebecca's son Marion Francis married Ella Mae Banta and their child Willie Lee is my paternal grandmother. Mamaw and her twin sister, Frankie Dee were born October 18, 1918.
It was many years before I discovered the mystery of what happened to my great grandfather John but I did learn that after his children with Rebecca were grown he wandered off from his family. He became a river boat captain, married a woman named Susannah Townsend, with whom he had three more children. One of those children, a son, drowned at a young age while living on the river boat.
According to Johns great grand daughter, he died from Tuberculosis and is buried in Indiana.
My Banta ancestors sailed to this country on a ship called "The Faith" and arrived here in the late spring of 1659 around the same time my Toy family made their way to America.
