The Ancestors of Otto Faulkenborough

My second great grandfather, Otto Faulkenborough

50% German

43.75% unknown but probably mostly English and Scottish

6.25% Dutch

My grandpa Faulkenberg’s first name is Henry, but he gets his middle name from his own grandpa Faulkenborough, whose first name is Otto. Their last name and mine can be traced back to Valkenburg, a town of about 15,000 people in the Netherlands that’s not far at all from Brussels, Belgium or Cologne, Germany. For what it’s worth, the Dutch “V” sounds a lot like an “F”, and Otto pronounced his last name like “Faulkenberg”. So although the name has been written several different ways over the years, the current pronunciation remains pretty true to its origins.

Back in 1642, Otto’s ancestors Lambert Van Valkenburg and Annetje Jacobs were married in the Netherlands before moving to New York City the following year. The Van Valkenburgs were one of the first families in New York, which at the time was called New Amsterdam and had a population of about 500 people.

Notice item N on the key is labeled Lambert Van Valkenburg’s home in this old drawing of New Amsterdam in 1652. If the year is right, this was their third and last home here. (from the Van Valkenburg family)

After a few years in New Amsterdam, the Van Valkenburgs moved north to the city now known as Albany. Then two generations later, Hendrick Van Valkenburg and wife Anna Huyck migrated south with their five sons to live along the banks of the North Fork Shenandoah River in Virginia - a move that occurred sometime in the 1720’s or 30’s.

For what it’s worth, Anna Huyck’s maternal grandparents were the Van Valkenburg couple who migrated to America from the Netherlands, making her and her husband Hendrick Van Valkenburg first cousins. Perhaps more significantly though, her paternal grandfather, Jan Huyck, had a close relationship with Peter Minuit, the man who purchased the island of Manhattan from the natives and founded the city now known as New York.

The first wife of Jan Huyck (who is Otto Faulkenborough’s fifth great grandfather) and the wife of New York’s founder were sisters - their maiden name being Raedt. The Raedt-Huyck and Raedt-Minuit weddings both occurred back in the Netherlands before our ancestor and Minuit came to America together in 1626 on a small ship called the Seagull (or at least the Dutch word for “seagull”). After Minuit purchased the island of Manhattan, a fort and a small Dutch colony of 30 houses were established. At first, the colony was called New Amsterdam.

At the time, Minuit was the director of the Dutch West India Company, and our ancestor Jan Huyck was New Amsterdam’s storekeeper. Not only did the two of them work together to make a profit for the Dutch West India Company, but they were the only two people chosen to be elders in New York City’s first little church.

On the left is Peter Minuit. He had a close relationship with Jan Huyck, who is Otto Faulkenborough’s fifth great grandfather. On the right is a painting of Minuit purchasing Manhattan from the natives.

For what it’s worth, some genealogy sites claim that Anna Huyck Van Valkenburg (the mother of the Van Valkenburg family who left Albany for Virginia) is actually the great granddaughter of Peter Minuit. This is because her grandmother (Jan Huyck’s second wife) was a woman named Elizabeth Peters. Due to the close relationship between Jan Huyck and Peter Minuit - and the fact that Dutch children at the time were often given their father’s first name as a middle name - it is sometimes assumed that “Peters” was actually Elizabeth’s middle name, and that her father was Peter Minuit. To me, this seems certainly possible but not very likely.

After Hendrick and Anna Huyck Van Valkenburg left New York state for Virginia with most of their children, the family began using the English versions of their first names, and their last name began being recorded as “Falkenburg” and “Faulkenborough”. Hendrick Van Valkenburg became Henry Faulkenburg or Henry Faulkenborough, and his sons Andries, Jochem, Hendrick, and Johannes became Andrew, Jacob, Henry, and John. His youngest son, Isaac, was maybe the luckiest since Isaac is the same in Dutch and English.

An aerial view of the Faulkenboroughs’ land in Virginia (from Andie Fortenberry-Criminger)

It’s not known whether or not Anna and Hendrick’s first daughter Eva made the trip. But in Virginia, they had another daughter named Mary Margaret Faulkenborough. Mary is the sister of Otto Faulkenborough’s second great grandfather Andrew Faulkenborough (previously known as Andries Van Valkenburg). She is also the fourth great grandmother of President Jimmy Carter.

Jimmy Carter is sixth cousins once removed with Elvis Presley, as well as my dad and his siblings

The family now known as the Faulkenboroughs didn’t stay too long in Virginia. Apparently there was a dispute as to who was the rightful owner of the land along the Shenandoah River, and in 1748 “Henry Falkenburg” (the son previously known as Hendrick Van Valkenburg) was listed as one of the first 100 settlers in Anson County, North Carolina, which runs right along the South Carolina border inland. In North Carolina, most people inland were Loyalists during the Revolutionary War, and most people near the coast were Patriots. Records show the Falkenburgs/Faulkenboroughs in Anson County did not go against that pattern.

A spot in Anson County, North Carolina just a mile or two from the Faulkenboroughs’ land

Nor did Otto’s ancestors go against that pattern just a few miles away in Lancaster County, South Carolina. By the time the first United States census was conducted in 1790, there were no Falkenburgs or Faulkenboroughs in Anson County, North Carolina, but there were 71 of them just across the state line. In the next couple of decades, many family members in South Carolina began using the last name Fortenberry and moving west towards Mississippi. Many others stuck around but changed their name to Faulkenberry.

My dad at Lynches Creek in Lancaster County, South Carolina. This creek ran along the Faulkenboroughs’ land.

In 1810, “James Falkenburg” (also often recorded as James Faulkenborough) was the only household in Lancaster County, South Carolina using the name Falkenburg or Faulkenborough. And in almost no time, he and wife Barbara decided to move northwest. After driving “a flea bitten gray mare hitched to a two wheeled cart” through the Cumberland Gap, they stayed for some time in Meade County, Kentucky and arrived in what is now Perry County, Indiana sometime between 1811 and 1814. Indiana only had about 25,000 settlers at the time and wouldn’t become a state until 1816.

A spot in the Cumberland Gap along the old Wilderness Road that the Faulkeboroughs and many other pioneers traveled

According to old letters from Perry County, Indiana compiled by the Esareys and Ewings, these two families, the Faulkenboroughs, the Walkers, the Jenkins, and the Frakes all crossed into Indiana from Kentucky together, despite the fact that some of the families had come to Kentucky from the south and others from the north. Apparently, they all crossed the Ohio River at modern day Alton, Indiana where the Indiana Ferry carried passengers across the Ohio into the mouth of the Little Blue River, which meets the Ohio at Alton.

This picture of the Ohio River was taken from the Indiana side in Alton. If this were a video taken in about 1811, you would see James and Barbara Faulkenborough board a ferry on the opposite shore and float from right to left across the screen, eventually disappearing behind the trees on the left side. Just a few yards past those trees is where the Little Blue River meets the Ohio.

From there, they continued ten miles inland to the area now known as Branchville. There James and Barbara Faulkenborough found a big spring and built two log cabins right by the spot where the Ewing/Faulkenborough Cemetery is located today. When the spring ran dry, James and Barbara moved (presumably less than a couple of miles), but in the 1930’s it was written that ruins of the stone chimneys from those original cabins were still findable near the cemetery. I’m not sure if they’re still findable 90 years later.

A really nice Indiana pioneer homestead would have looked a lot like this around the time of James and Barbara’s arrival in the Indiana territory

Unfortunately, not much is known about Barbara’s ancestry. She was a widow when she married James in South Carolina. Previously, she had used the surnames “Black” and “Flie”, and it’s not known which was her maiden name and which was her first husband’s name. I used to wonder if “Flie” might be a typo of “File”, but I’ve since found quite a few old letters from Perry County, Indiana that mention Barbara. None of them refer to this former last name as “File”, and one even specifies that the name was pronounced like “fly” but Barbara had never seen it spelled.

One of these old letters was written by James and Barbara’s great granddaughter, a Ewing girl who was born on the land where James and Barbara lived. Apparently, the writer’s mother used to say her husband’s grandmother, Barbara Flie Faulkenborough, was a wonderful woman and a “yarb doctor who practiced her profession near and far”. I assume a yarb doctor is someone who makes homemade medicines out of herbs. Apparently, the writer’s mother also had a very high opinion of her grandfather-in-law, James Faulkenborough.

Together, James and Barbara Faulkenborough had four daughters and two sons. Some old letters from Perry County say Barbara carried their oldest child, Mariah, as a baby through the Cumberland Gap. Their younger son was named Littleton Smith Faulkenborough and often went by “Bob”. He’s even recorded as “Robert” sometimes. This man is Otto’s father.

It’s probably safe to assume that somewhere around the time the Van Valkenburgs were leaving Albany for Virginia, one or two of Otto’s maternal ancestors were leaving Norway or Sweden for Germany. I say that because it’s been consistently recorded in Indiana that Otto’s mother was a woman named Catherine who was born in Germany (or “Prussia”), and according to ancestry.com, 1% of my uncle’s DNA comes from Scandinavia, a region from which many people have migrated south to Germany over the years, oftentimes bringing their blond hair with them. My dad and his siblings have other German ancestors too, but they’re all multiple generations further back than Otto’s mother, which might explain why none of the six of them are particularly blond.

Margaret Klippert Schrader, the sister of Otto Faulkenborough’s mother

In 1841, John Klippert left Germany and arrived in New Orleans. Then his wife Margaretha Brown, their two sons, and five daughters all boarded a ship called Camera on December 1, 1843 and arrived in New Orleans twelve days later. By the 1850 census, the family was still in New Orleans, but they moved to Perry County, Indiana not long after. Otto’s mother Catherine is one of the five Klippert daughters.

Otto Faulkenborough pictured with his wife Mary, his son Marshal, and his daughter Bettie

Otto’s father, Littleton Smith “Bob” Faulkenborough, was married three times before Otto was born in 1858. The first time was actually a double wedding where Bob married Catherine Shoemaker-Beard, and Bob’s sister Matilda Faulkenborough married Catherine’s brother Adam Shoemaker. Just five years later, Catherine died. Bob’s second wife was a woman named Mary J. Riddle, and the third wife (Otto’s mother) was another Catherine. The marriage certificate lists her name as “Catherine Volz”, but Volz must have been a previous husband’s name. Otto’s death certificate says her maiden name was Catherine “Clipper”, and an old letter from Perry County says “Otto Faulkenborough’s mother and Dutch Jim’s mother was a sister of Mrs. Shrader.” Well, John and Margaretha Klippert had a daughter named Margaret who married Charles Schrader.

The ruins of Valkenburg Castle on a hill above the town of Valkenburg

Catherine married Littleton Smith “Bob” Faulkenborough in Perry County in 1854 and gave birth to Otto Faulkenborough there four years later. Littleton and his son Samuel (Otto’s half brother) apparently both served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and both ended up dying of measles in 1864 at Camp Noble, just across the river from Louisville in New Albany, Indiana. It might not be the most exciting war casualty to read about, but it’s a pretty typical Civil War family tragedy considering the majority of deaths were caused by disease not related to combat. At the time of their deaths, Barbara Flie Faulkenborough was still alive, and she went to meet the corpses of her son and grandson at Alton, Indiana to have them brought back to be buried in the family cemetery.

Otto and wife Mary’s grave in Ewing Cemetery, which is in the woods near Branchville. The sign actually says “Faulkenborough Cemetery”. Otto’s grandparents James and Barbara are buried here too. It has been written in old letters that the bodies of Otto’s father and half brother, who died of measles in the Civil War, were shipped back to be buried in this cemetery as well.

Otto was only five or six when his father and half brother died. And it actually seems that Otto’s mother died somewhere around this same time. While there’s no record available of her death or burial, there are old letters from Perry County that say Otto was raised by his cousin James C. Faulkenborough, who was 22 years older. It wouldn’t make much sense for Otto’s older cousin to adopt him unless Otto’s mother died while he was still a kid. Also, for what it’s worth, I assume the reason why Otto’s middle name never appears on any records is because his parents died when he was so young that he didn’t know his own middle name, and his cousin who adopted him probably didn’t know it either.

Left to right: part of Otto’s obituary, a drawing of Otto that might be a wanted poster, part of an article about one of Otto’s run-ins