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- just ran across your November 4, 1996, query posted on the Cumberland County PA Genweb page in which you were seeking information about the McGinnis family of Carlisle, PA. I recently came into information indicating that Lt. John W.McGinnis, who served in the PA militia of Cumberland County 2nd Battalion, 6th Company, during the Revolution, is my g4grandfather. I am descended from James McGinnis who was the son of John W. of Carlisle. James settled in the Cincinnati area circa 1802, where he died in 1819.
Bob Barnes
Bellevue, WA
My oral family history passed down from my mother, was that what she knew of her father's maternal line started with the union of James McGinnis and Lucy Cary in Cincinnati early in the 19th century. According to the oral tradition, the couple lived on a farm near Cincinnati and that both lived out their lives on the farm and had been buried there. The Cary's were a prominent family in New England (New Hampshire and Connecticut). Books on the Cary family were quite enough to establish Lucy's bona fides and they mention the marriage to James but with no dates; only a single daughter is mentioned but it is implied that there were other children. But who was this James McGinnis? None of the oral tradition included dates of birth, marriage or death for the couple. I descend from Amanda McGinnis who was a daughter of Lucy and James. When I started research this line I ran into immediate difficulties because the 1810 census for Ohio does not exist for the Cincinnati area, and the preceding census for this area prior to statehood is apparently of very limited availability. As a result I focused on the when, where and how of the Cary family's arrival in the area and on deeds/land records. The extended Cary family including Lucy's (b 4/1784) father and uncle, who had bounty land warrants as a result of their military service in the revolution relocated to the Cincinnati area in 1802, and took up lands about 8 miles north of Cincinnati. James McGinnis was making land transactions reflected in the Hamilton County records as early as 1802. There are some indications that James was possibly in the area even earlier but I have been unable to confirm this. The surname Cary also shows up before 1802 but again without enough supporting detail to establish if it was my line or one of those from the mid-Atlantic states or the South. A series of land transactions establish that James and Lucy were married by the Fall of 1804 and several of the transactions indicate that they were selling land in Cincinnati and taking on a mortgage in order to acquire lands outside of Ohio. The family was making preparations to leave Cincinnati in 1807 to settle elsewhere. In the 1810 U.S. census, James and Lucy are living in Covington, KY and have a family apparently consisting of 5 sons and 1 daughter. Two of the presumed sons are between 10-25 years of age which, if true, would suggest that this is James' second marriage since Lucy was only 26 at the time. The mortgage on the lands outside Ohio mentioned in the Hamilton deeds was paid off by 1811 according to marginal notes in this record. The family next shows up in the first Cincinnati City Directory of 1819, where James is listed as a planemaker. In the 1820 U.S. census, Lucy McGinnis, a mantuamaker is listed as the head of household, a strong indication that James had passed in either 1818 or 1819. The breakdown of presumed family members is one male (10-15), two females (0-9), one female (10-15) and lastly one female (26-44) who would be Lucy who is 36 years old at the time of the census.
The History of Muscatine County Iowa Volume 2 (1911) has a biographical sketch of one of James and Lucy?s grandsons, J. Linn Hoopes, and states that his grandparents were Lucy and James McGinnis of Columbus [sic], OH. It states that they had five children, James, John, Ellen, Amanda and Minerva. (It also states that James McGinnis was from Ireland which wasn?t especially helpful!). J. Linn Hoopes? mother ( my gggrandmother ) was Amanda McGinnis Hoopes who was born March 17, 1812, in Covington, KY. Minerva McGinnis, was born in 1813 or 1814, also in KY, presumably in Covington. Ellen was born June 7, 1809, in Cincinnati. James was born in 1805 in Cincinnati and died there on April 20, 1835. Of John I know nothing. Assuming the above listing of the siblings is in birth order, he was the second born son would be likely to have be born between 1806 and 1808. The 1810 census for the family in KY suggest that there was possibly another son or two in the mix, one or more of which may have died in childhood. Of the two older male children from the 1810 census who were too old to have be Lucy's offspring I have no further information.
James (the son) apparently never married. In 1828 Ellen married William McCammon, a very successful ship builder and industrialist in Cincinnati and who was probably related to the Thomas McCammon who lived next James and Lucy in 1819. Minerva married a Joel F. Harris (farmer) in 1830 or 1831 and they subsequently removed to Illinois where they had 3 children. Amanda married Joseph J. Hoopes (carpenter and house builder) formerly of Chester Co. PA) in 1837/8 in Cincinnati and the newlyweds and the first born, a girl, named Ellen (b 11,1838), lived within a block or so of Lucy in Cincinnati, removing to Muscatine IA in 1840 about the time of Lucy passing (June 10, 1840). Amanda and Joseph Hoopes had four children, Ellen , J. Linn, Fannie and Rebecca. Ellen married a Robert R. Lawther of Sugargrove, Warren Co. PA, and they had a number of children only 4 of which, all boys, survived to adulthood and were prominent in Texas (Dallas) politics/society in the late 1800s. J. Linn married in Muscatine had a single child, a boy, who died in childhood, Fannie (my great grandmother) who married Charles Augustus Stith in 1871 in Galveston, TX, giving birth to my grandfather, Robert Marcus Stith (Rob), in Galveston in 1874. She fell sick with TB (consumption) a few years later and removed with her young son to Muscatine where she passed in 1881 and her son was raised by his grandparents and Fannies' younger sister, Rebecca, in the Hoopes? family home in Muscatine. Rob graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1900, married my maternal grandmother, Sarah Lewis a native of Philadelphia, January 1, 1900. The newlyweds moved to Hawaii in 1901 and subsequently relocated to Seattle in 1902, where my mother was born in 1914. She had an older sister, married, divorced, no children and an older brother who married in 1945 and had 2 boys and a girl. In 1938 my mother married a Dr. Clifford A. Barnes in Seattle and they had three children, 2 boys and a girl. I am the younger son and middle child.
The recent information that came to my knowledge that provided the connection between James McGinnis of Cincinnati to LT John W. McGinnis of Carlisle was a family group sheet on Lucy Cary and James McGinnis compiled by Thomas A. McCammon of Hilton Head, SC, who is probably a third or fourth cousin of mine (of unknown removal) in 1985, he is currently 89 years of age. He submitted it to the Williams Yates collection which is now carried as international genealogical data base by Ancestry. Com. If you desire a copy of same I will be happy to send one to you. I am attempting to contact him at present but it has been 25 years and I don't know quite what to expect.
Bob
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1778 - 1819 (41 years)
