Category: reflections

Now here’s something interesting. I’ve been poking around with some genealogy in my spare time over the last few weeks and found a great website that gives history of my mom’s, mother’s side of the family.
Turns out we’re related to the Pendleton’s, a “distinguished” American family. Hmmm. Wonder where the line went bad 😉 Ha. I kid.
As of right now, I can trace our family back to Capt. Henry Pendleton (May 15, 1683 – May 1721) and his wife Isabella Hurt.
Pendleton was an officer in the militia in Virginia and is the apparent father of the “distinguished” family.

“This 13 year old bride and 18 year old husband became the ancestors of a number of distinguished Americans. Of his five sons, the oldest, James, and the third, Nathaniel, were for many years Clerks of the Vestery and Lay readers at the small chapels of St. Mark’s Parish; and Philip, the son of James, was Clerk in 1782, when the Vestery books closed. His two daughters married brothers, James and William Henry Gains. His youngest son Edmund, though without a father’s care, made for himself a name which will be known and remembered as long as Virginia’s sons read her history. By his large circle of nephews and nieces, many of them his own age, he was loved and revered, and the tradition of his kindness and every ready help is handed down through nearly every branch of the family. Almost all the Pendletons of Virginia trace their decent to Henry Pendleton and Mary Taylor. (Genealogical and Historical Notes on Culpeper County, VA).”

I found this on Capt. Pendleton’s youngest son Edmund Pendleton (who’s my eighth great-uncle) on Wikipedia:

Edmund Pendleton (September 9, 1721-October 23, 1803) was a Virginia politician, lawyer and judge, active in the American Revolutionary War.
He was born in Caroline County on September 9, 1721. When he was 14 years old, he was bound out as an apprentice to the Clerk of the Caroline County Court. In 1737, Pendleton was made clerk of the vestry of St. Mary’s Parrish in Caroline and with the small profits made there he procured a few law books. In 1740, he was made clerk of the Caroline Court-Marshall. He was licensed to practice law in April 1741 and his success before the county courts caused him to become a member of the General Court in October 1745. He was appointed a Justice of the Peace for Caroline County in 1751. He helped raise and school his fatherless nephew John Taylor of Caroline, who went on to be a U.S. Senator. From 1752-1776 he was a member of the House of Burgesses. In May 1766, Pendleton discovered the John Robinson Estate Scandal which involved his mentor. Pendleton was on the Virginia Committee of Correspondence in 1773 and was a delegate to Continental Congress from Virginia in 1774.
Pendleton served as President of the Virginia Committee of Safety from 16 August 1775 to 5 July 1776 (effectively serving as governor of the colony) and as President of the Virginia Convention which authorized Virginia’s signing of the Declaration of Independence. After the Declaration, he became the first Speaker of Virginia’s new House of Delegates although a fall from a horse in March of 1777 dislocated his hip and caused him to miss the first session This crippled him so that he used crutches the rest of his life. He, along with Thomas Jefferson and George Wythe, revised Virginia’s law code. He was appointed Judge of the High Court of Chancery in 1777. When Virginia created a Supreme Court of Appeals in 1778, Pendleton was appointed its first President where he served until his death. He served as President of the Virginia Constitutional Convention in 1788.
Pendleton died October 23, 1803 and was buried at his estate, Edmundsbury. In 1907 he was moved from this location and buried inside Bruton Parish Chapel in what is now Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia.
Thomas Jefferson said of Pendleton: “Taken in all he was the ablest man in debate I ever met”.
Pendleton County, West Virginia was formed in 1788 and named in Pendleton’s honor. Pendleton County, Kentucky, formed in 1798, is also named after Pendleton.

Crazy stuff I tell ya. You never know what you can find on the Internet.