This letter shows early efforts to uncover
our Warnock ancestory. The facts are not necessarily correct but the story
is interesting.
Portsmouth, Ohio
June 28, 1906
Mr. Wesley Warnock:
I wrote a letter to
you on hearing your daughter making quite a numberof inquiries concerning
our ancestry. And I thought I would relate what I had heard from
legendary and other sources:
An old man by the name
of Gray who was acquainted with "Dad Warnock" your grandfather, He told
my brothers that he came here as a Revolutionary soldier and was surrendered
by Cornwallis at Yorktown, and would not return to the old country (Ireland
or Scotland), because he had killed his brother in a hunting accident in
Ireland, mistaking him for a deer in the red brush.
That he settled on the
Eastern shore of the Potomac River in Maryland. I would like very much
for you to give all you can of our family from the very earliest information
you have till and including the birth of yourself and your brothers and
sisters, we have much of this but may not have it correct in every way.
Many funny anecdotes
have come down to us by tradition from the days of your boyhood, or rather
from the days of your fathers boyhood. I should like very much to
see you and have a long talk with you.
I am William H. Warnocks
son, I was well acquainted with Uncle Billy, your father, he used to dress
buckskins and he and another made ox whips at my fathers house on Tygarts
Creek in Greenup Co. Ky. My grandfather James
Warnock lived at the mouth of BuffaloCreek
and I was raised 5 miles below,
across Tygarts Creek opposite the Old Guilky
home. I suppose you know of in
your boyhood days as they were the nearest
neighbors your father had in that
direction. My grandfather (On the
maternal side) lived at the mouth of Leatherwood Creek, and by grandfather
Warnock at the mouth of Buffalo Creek
(all on Tygarts Creek). This was
while the country was wild and new and the
wolves were howling along the hills, and
bear, deer and turkeys were plentiful. Many stories are told of your
uncles hunting along Tygart Creek and at Grassy Ford, and the other streams
emptying into Tygarts Creek. It is a noticeable fact with all the
people of the Warnock name believe we sprang from one common family who
were originally of Scotland and were driven out by persecution from Scotland
and settled in the Northern part of Ireland, and migrated to this country
about the time of the Revolution.
I will be pleased to
hear from you and will tabulate the same for future reference and hope
to have it all placed into a book of our family history.
Our understanding is
that our ancestors coming over to Ireland and intermarrying with the Irish
and therefore we are of Scotch-Irish decent
[sic] and there fore we need not be ashamed
of our lineage.
TAYLOR WARNOCK