On our honeymoon Nancy and I visited Big Stone Gap, Virginia, where my maternal grandmother was born. While there we found the headstones of my 2nd great grandparents (that is, great great grandparents), Squire Benjamin Bentley (1849-1903) and Virginia Elizabeth Wells Bentley (1854-1917), in the Riverview Cemetery in East Stone Gap.
Benjamin's ancestry can be traced back only to the beginning of the 18th century in Alexander County, North Carolina, and possibly to England at the end of the 17th century.
Elizabeth's ancestry can be traced very far back and connects in innumerable places through both of her parents with what genealogists call the world family tree. The world family tree consists of centuries of royal and noble genealogies from whom virtually everyone is descended in some way. Elizabeth's parents were also (like my wife and me) named David and Nancy, surnamed Wells. David was murdered, apparently by the Ku Klux Klan or a predecessor group, on the last day of the American Civil War in 1865. Nancy died of measels some two decades later.
David's great grandmother was named Hannah Howard, whose ancestors seem to include the Howards who were the Dukes of Norfolk in England. Nancy's grandmother was named Jerusha Booth, whose ancestors include several generations of knighted Booths going back to Adam de Booth (b. 1255, d. ?).
More on the world family tree later.
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