The Ancestors of Mary Elizabeth Carr Faulkenborough

My second great grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Carr Faulkenborough, is seated.

Her granddaughter Rose is on the tricycle.

81.25% British, all appearing to be English specifically

9.375% Irish

9.375% German

On September 17, 1888, exactly one year before the birth of my great grandpa Marshal Faulkenberg, his older sister Rhoda died at the age of two. Their mother was Mary Carr Faulkenborough, so I think it’s safe to assume baby Rhoda had been named for Rhoda Dodson, Mary’s paternal grandmother who was not only alive for the first 24 years of her granddaughter’s life but living in Branchville, Indiana - the same tiny town as Mary. In Mary Carr’s traceable ancestry, there are some people who have been in America since the 1600’s. Though truth be told, it’s hard to say if that includes grandma Rhoda’s Dodson ancestors.

There were definitely Dodsons living in Plymouth Colony in the mid 1600’s, and those Dodsons had ancestors by the name of Williams in Plymouth as early as the late 1620’s. But the oldest Dodson we can say with certainty is Rhoda’s ancestor is her father Jonathan, who was born in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. It’s possible that he descended from the Plymouth Dodsons, but there’s a Dodson family genealogy website that says most American Dodsons colonial roots are actually found in Pennsylvania, Maryland or Virginia. Based on that, I think it’s less than likely that the Dodsons in Mary Carr Faulkenborough’s ancestry come from the Massachusetts Dodsons.

Fayette County, Pennsylvania

Fayette County, Pennsylvania is located pretty close to Morgantown, West Virginia. From there, Jonathan Dodson moved west to Hardin County, Kentucky, where his daughter Rhoda married John Carr. Mary’s father Hiram Carr was born to Rhoda and John in Perry County, Indiana in 1830.

Back in Ireland (and possibly Scotland before that), “Carr” was apparently “Kerr”. This line of Mary’s ancestry left Ulster, Ireland for the Philadelphia area around 1700. Then, the Carr family spent some time in the western halves of Maryland and Pennsylvania before there are records of the Carr family buying land in Bullitt County, Kentucky as early as 1784. Mary’s grandparents, John Carr and Rhoda Dodson, were married in or near Elizabethtown in Hardin County, Kentucky. Between 1825 and 1830, Rhoda’s youngest son Hiram was born, and her husband John died shortly after. Almost immediately, Rhoda decided to move with her six children to Perry County, Indiana, where some of her relatives had already settled.

Top: Dunluce Castle in Ulster, Ireland

Bottom: Barbados

One more item of interest in Mary Carr’s paternal ancestry has to do with Barbados, an island country located about 400 miles north of Venezuela that was once an English colony. Mary’s grandmother Rhoda Dodson Carr was the daughter of James Dodson, Jr. and Mary Ashcraft - two relatively early Perry County, Indiana settlers who came to Branchville in 1820 or perhaps just before. Mary Ashcraft’s second great grandfather, John Ashcraft II, was born in Barbados in 1644. His father John I was born and married in England, but came to live in Barbados in the 1640’s. I can’t say with certainty what first brought him to Barbados, but I imagine it was that his father-in-law owned a sugar cane plantation there. This would make sense to me because in 1663, a close friend of John Ashcraft I’s father-in-law deeded John a sugar cane plantation that produced molasses and rum.

The older John spent the rest of his life in Barbados, but John II eventually moved to Stonington, Connecticut. On the surface, this might seem like an unlikely move. But according to the Yale University Center for the Study of Slavery, molasses and other sugar products were being shipped from Barbados to Connecticut in such large quantities at that time, that Connecticut became the biggest distiller of rum in the New World. At a time when the city of Hartford hardly had a thousand residents, it boasted 21 rum distilleries.

There, his grandson Daniel Ashcraft (the grandfather of Perry County, Indiana settler Mary Ashcraft Dodson) was arrested for killing an American Indian. Daniel eventually moved to modern day West Virginia and was actually himself killed in an Indian raid. Before long, Daniel’s son Richard moved across the state line to Pennsylvania. Here Richard roamed the area working as a spy and Indian scout - a job that apparently involved hunting down and killing natives who were reported to be attacking white settlers in the area. Richard served in the French and Indian Wars, so at least some of this work was probably being done during that period.

Richard Ashcraft’s life came to an end in 1792 when he drowned after attempting to cross a frozen stream on horseback in western Pennsylvania. Soon, his widow Elizabeth Carr Ashcraft moved the family to Hardin County, Kentucky to be close to her brothers. Here, Richard and Elizabeths’ daughter Mary married a Dodson before moving to Perry County, Indiana. This Dodson family is listed as early and active members of the “Regular Baptist Church of Christ called Middle” in Fork of Anderson in Perry County.

Westmoreland State Park in Westmoreland County, Virginia

The Hortons lived in this county in the 1650’s. George Washington was born here as well.

 

On Mary Carr’s mother’s side, the Hortons have been in America almost as long as the Plymouth Dodsons. Around the year 1650, Mary’s sixth great grandparents William Horton and Mary Margaret Bridges left Staunton, Gloucester, England for Westmoreland County, Virginia - an area near Yorktown. The Horton line then hung around Stafford, Virginia for quite a while before reaching the Louisville, Kentucky area in about 1770. Mary Carr’s second great grandfather Aden Horton sold land in the city of Louisville in 1830. Not too far away in Hardin County, his son Anthony Horton married a woman named Elizabeth Bruner, whose grandparents had all been born in Germany. Elizabeth gave birth to Mary Carr’s maternal grandmother, Charlotte Horton, in Kentucky in 1804. Then after the Hortons moved to Perry County, Indiana, Charlotte married a man named William Sprinkle.

Kempten am Rhein, Germany

Back in Germany, his family name was actually spelled “Sprenckel”. And it was around 1690 that Sprenckels left Kempten am Rhein, a town in the Rheinland-Pfalz region for another town in Germany by the name of Mörfelden-Walldorf, Groß-Gerau. About 20 years after that, they came to York County, Pennsylvania, an area not far from Baltimore. This choice is not too surprising considering Pennsylvania was by far the most popular destination for early German-American immigrants.

Before long, “Sprenckel” became “Sprinkle”, and the Sprinkle line moved to Somerset County in the western part of the state before spending a few generations down in Surry County, North Carolina. A very old letter from Perry County, Indiana refers to this part of North Carolina as the "Yadkin country”. Mary Carr’s maternal grandfather William Sprinkle was born in North Carolina in 1801, but it wasn’t too long before a pretty big number of Sprinkles came to Perry County, Indiana, where the number continued to grow.

William’s father Michael Sprinkle moved his family to Perry County, Indiana in 1816. Not only did Michael have 18 children between his two marriages, but William actually has a half brother who is 49 years younger than him. On top of that, Michael’s brother John, who is listed as the first settler in Warrick County in southern Indiana, had ten children himself. It has been written in old letters that Michael Sprinkle, and I assume his wife and kids, came down the Ohio River in a canoe when they crossed into Indiana in 1816. For what it’s worth, the first Sprinkle in Indiana was probably George, the brother of John Sprinkle and Mary Carr’s great grandfather Michael Sprinkle. George was said to have been captured by Indians in 1791 at the Battle of Miami, which was fought along the Indiana-Ohio border.

Mayberry from “The Andy Griffith Show” is based on Mt. Airy, a town in Surry County, North Carolina, where the Sprinkle family lived for a while

In Perry County, Mary Carr’s grandfather William Sprinkle married Charlotte Horton. Their second daughter, Rebecca Armenta Sprinkle, was born in Perry County in 1834 and married Hiram Carr at age 20. It appears that they had a total of nine children, the second oldest being my second great grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Carr Faulkenborough.

Mary and husband Otto’s grave in Ewing Cemetery, which is in the woods near Branchville. The sign actually says “Faulkenborough Cemetery”.