The History of the Faulkenberg Family: Virginia and the Carolinas

The short version of "The Lost Van Valkenburgs" is that the Hendrick Van Valkenburg branch of the Albany Van Valkenburgs migrated 400 miles southwest to Orange County, Virginia. How long it took them to make the journey is hard to say, but the first record of them in Orange County is in 1735. At the time, Orange County actually included all of what is now Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky, as well as most of West Virginia. Though the land the Falkenburgs bought is relatively close to Orange County as it exists today.

Here’s a graphic of Andie Fortenberry Criminger’s, showing precisely where Andrew, Jacob, and Henry’s huge plots of land were along the Shenandoah. This was created using Andrew’s testimony.

According to Andrew’s 1787 testimony mentioned earlier, this land includes hundreds of acres along the banks of the winding North Fork of the Shenandoah River between the modern day towns of Woodstock and Edinburg in Shenandoah County. This spot is situated 94 miles west of Washington, D.C. and just a few miles east of West Virginia, two places that didn’t exist until after the Falkenburgs left Virginia around 1746. From 1743 until the year of that departure, one of the Henry Falkenburgs worked as a road overseer. At that time, the son would have been in his early 20’s and the father in his late 60’s. According to encyclopedia.com, George Washington oversaw a road project in Virginia at age 21. Based on that and the fact that older brother Andrew is also listed as a road overseer in 1744, it’s probably safe to assume the other overseer in the family was Henry, the son. Though the Falkenburgs would leave Virginia a couple of years later, we already start seeing documents with our family name spelled “Falkenborough”, “Faulkenborough”, “Folkenburrough”, and even “Falconbourough” before their departure.

A copy of a 1744 document from Virginia, listing Andrew “Falkenborough” as a road overseer (from Fortenberry Criminger)

In 1748, Henry Falkenburg was listed as one of the first 100 settlers in Anson County, North Carolina. Here the Falkenburg clan lived along the Pee Dee River. Specifically, there is a deed showing ownership of a plot of land on the south side of the Pee Dee River spanning both sides of Little Creek. This spot is within a few miles of the South Carolina border, as well as the modern day towns of Pee Dee, Cordova, and Rockingham, all of which are on the north side of the state line. On modern roads, it’s a 310 mile drive from their home in Virginia - almost all south but slightly west as well.

In Ancestors of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, the title couple’s son Jeff says two of the President’s ancestors, Mary Margaret Falkenburg (sometimes printed Falkenborough) and George Helms, were married during this period in Anson County. Carter’s book states that Mary was the daughter of Jacob, but Mary Falkenburg Helms herself gave testimony in February of 1787 alongside Andrew. In this deposition, she is identified as the daughter of “Henry Falkenburg Senr”. The Van Valkenburg genealogy book doesn’t list a sister named Mary for Andries, Jochum, Hendrick, Isaac, and Johannes, but this isn’t particularly surprising. Mary gave birth to her first son in 1756, so she was probably born after the family left Albany in the 1720’s. Jimmy Carter is a direct descendant of Mary’s second son George Helms, Jr. This means President Carter and my grandpa Henry Otto Faulkenberg were not only both born in 1924, but are also both seventh generation descendants of Mary Margaret Falkenburg’s father Henry, making the two of them sixth cousins.

Our family has no apparent blood relation to Elvis Presley. But for what it’s worth, Mary Falkenburg Helms’s son George Helms, Jr. married a woman named Sarah Presley. George, Jr.’s brother John married Sarah’s sister Savannah. The father of those two women is Elvis’s ancestor, which is the connection that makes Elvis and Jimmy Carter sixth cousins, once removed. Another unexpected blood relative of President Carter is legendary music producer Berry Gordy. To my knowledge, there’s no record of the Faulkenbergs owning slaves at any point, but James T. Gordy - the grandson of George Helms, Jr. and the great grandfather of Jimmy Carter - had a child with his slave, a son also named Berry Gordy. That child’s grandson of the same name is the Motown legend, making him Jimmy Carter’s second cousin. Berry Gordy’s son Stephen is a singer from the group LMFAO who goes by the stage name Redfoo.

A copy of a deed from 1759, in which Henry Falkenborough leaves land in South Carolina to his grandson Jacob, son of Isaac

Going back to our branch of Jimmy Carter’s ancestry, all of the following names appear on deeds and tax listings in North Carolina between 1750 and 1763: Henry Falkinburg, Henry Falkenbury, Sr., and Henry Falkenborough. This includes two 1759 deeds where Henry (Hendrick the father) left land to his grandsons, one of them being yet another Henry, who was the son of Jacob (Jochum), and the other being another Jacob, son of Isaac. According to Victor Faulkenburg’s research from the 1970’s, the original Isaac was on a grand jury in 1771 and ended up being fined ten pounds for contempt of court. He was also a second lieutenant in General Campbell’s Loyal Militia of North Carolina during the Revolutionary War.

A hand drawn map that Victor tracked down from the South Carolina period

Victor also located a record from 1783 of a Falkenburg woman receiving compensation from North Carolina for Revolutionary War Services. It is Victor’s belief that this compensation is for supplies confiscated from the homestead since Isaac was a Loyalist. It’s hard to be sure, but I agree with him. Isaac’s older brother Jacob (Jochum) moved across the border to South Carolina in 1749, and apparently his sons, James and Henry, were listed as Loyalists there as well. By the time the first U.S. census was conducted in 1790, there were no Faulkenbergs of any spelling left in Anson County, which had a population of 5,133 at that time.

1790 Lancaster County, South Carolina census

The first United States census found a whopping 71 people with the last name Faulkenburg living in eleven different households in Lancaster County, South Carolina, a place located right across the border from Anson County with a population of 6,302 people in 1790. The surge in numbers here really isn’t too surprising when you take into account the fact that Henry (Hendrick) migrated south from Albany with five sons about sixty years earlier. Speaking hypothetically, if each of those five sons married and had three sons, and then each of that generation of sons married and had four children, that would make 102 Faulkenburgs. That’s if everyone from all four generations were still alive in 1790, which they certainly wouldn’t be. In fact, one of the heads of households listed on the 1790 Lancaster County census is “Widow”. Anyway, my point is that there’s no reason to think any of those 71 Faulkenburgs came from anywhere other than the missing branch of the Van Valkenburg family tree.

1800 Lancaster County, South Carolina census

In his research, Victor Faulkenburg was able to acquire a hand-drawn map of the land where at least some of the clan ended up living along Lynches Creek near the modern day towns of Pleasant Hill and Heath Springs, a spot about 70 miles southwest of Pee Dee, North Carolina. By 1800, the number of individuals was reduced to 41 and the number of households to four. Kershaw County came into existence between these two censuses - part of it being a chunk taken out of Lancaster - but despite the fact that there are records of Faulkenbergs living in Kershaw County at some point, none appear on the 1800 census. The heads of the four Faulkenburg households listed in 1800 are Henry, the son of Jacob (Jochum); Isaac Faulkenburg, the son of Andrew (Andries); Jacob, the son of the original Isaac (brother of Jochum and Andries); and John, another son of Jacob (Jochum).

1810 Lancaster County, South Carolina census

According to Victor Faulkenburg’s research, all the Faulkenbergs of Perry County - of his spelling, our spelling, and others - are descendants of James Faulkenborough, a man who was born in 1785 in Lancaster County, South Carolina. He appears as the head of a household for the first time at age 25 in the 1810 Lancaster County census as “James Faulkenburg”. So logic would dictate that he is probably the son of one of those four men listed as heads of households in 1800. When Victor Faulkenburg and Wanda Fortenberry were exchanging letters back in the 1970’s, Wanda said she thought the James who eventually migrated to Indiana was the son of an Isaac. As you can see, the Carolina Faulkenburgs used a handful of male first names over and over, Isaac being one of them. However, there was only one Isaac listed as the head of a household in Lancaster County when James was fifteen.

There is also a record from 1797 of “Andrew Falkenbury” of Kershaw County giving or possibly selling land to “James Falkenbury”, son of Isaac of Lancaster County. It doesn’t mention any exchange of money in the deed, so it’s hard to say for sure. The James who came to Indiana would only have been twelve years old then, pretty young to be owning land. But again, no James appears as the head of a household in the census that occured three years later. Actually, neither does any Andrew - not in Kershaw or Lancaster counties. To me, this looks like an elderly grandfather a year or two from death giving land to his adolescent grandson.

Most members of the Falkenburg/Faulkenborough family of South Carolina ended up moving to Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabma and using the name "Fortenberry". For what it’s worth, there is an Isaac Fortenberry buried in Warren Cemetery in Sandy Hook, Mississippi. He lived from 1765-1845, and his first wife was Charity Gaziway, born in 1750. His second wife was Bethany Cordelia Magee, born in 1780. According to findagrave.com, this man's father was also named Isaac and was only eleven years older than him.

Realistically, I don't think there's any way Isaac's father could have been an eleven year-old boy, which would make him more like ten at the time of conception. My guess is that this Isaac Fortenberry was the son of Andrew Faulkenborough (born 1710), making him one of the many Faulkenboroughs to move to Mississippi and start going by Fortenberry. If this is the case, that means Indiana pioneer James Faulkenborough was the son of Isaac Fortenberry (previously Faulkenborough) and Charity Gaziway. Isaac's second wife gave birth in Lancaster County, South Carolina before James moved to Indiana, which makes me think the death of James's mother had an impact on his decision to move to Indiana. And perhaps his move to Indiana had an impact on his father's decision to follow other family members to Mississippi instead of staying in South Carolina.

It would be hard to prove for sure that James's parents are truly Isaac Fortenberry and Charity Gaziway, but it appears to be the most likely scenario. The only other likely scenario is that the grave of James's parents is long gone. Regardless, by 1810, James’s household was the only one left in Lancaster County using the name “Faulkenburg”. Although there were six others from our family recorded as “Fortenberry”, plus another in Kershaw County, where there was also a “Falkuberry”.