My father’s name was George Hudson Ashmore, Jr. His father’s name was…wait for it…George Hudson Ashmore, Sr. Where did the Ashmores come from? For most of my life, I thought we were from Brunswick, Georgia, because I knew my grandparents were from there, and my parents grew up there.
Here are my great-grandparents Arthur and Fannie (Deal) Ashmore listed in the 1930 Brunswick City Directory with their daughter Frances and my grandfather, George H. Ashmore Sr.
It turns out that from the mid-1750s to the 1920s — 170+ years — these Ashmores lived in Liberty County, Georgia, a little southwest of Savannah and about an hour north of Brunswick. Liberty County is called that because of its importance in pushing Georgia to support the American Revolution.
STRONG ASHMORE (?-1784)
Strong Ashmore, a South Carolinian who was granted land in the 1750’s in what is now Liberty County, belonged to the historic Midway Church there. He served in the Revolutionary War and died (without a will, darn him) in 1784. Liberty County and the Midway Church have a fascinating history…more to come on that another time.
JOHN ASHMORE (1767-1849)
Strong’s son John, my 4th great-grandfather, born in 1767, was the subject of my previous post because he lost three of his four children during the 1804 hurricane. He farmed in Liberty County, and was an elder of the Pleasant Grove Church, an offshoot of the Midway Church. He and wife Sarah, whose baby was torn from her arms by the 1804 hurricane, were married for 52 years.
At the time of his death in 1849, he held 11 African Americans enslaved, at least one of whom, Toby, he probably fathered in 1810. He had a religious epiphany around 1815 and was involved, ironically, in ministering to the enslaved African-American community. My Ashmore ancestors were enslavers, and profited from the properity that the enslaved people’s labor brought to Liberty County, but they were what would have been considered no more than middle-class during their time in Liberty County.
JOSEPH ASHMORE (1819-1889)
Poor Joseph, John’s son who was spared by the hurricane, died young, at 41. He did have time to sire my 2d great-grandfather, Joseph Ashmore, who was born in 1819. Joseph had three wives and eight children. His first wife died in December 1864, as Sherman’s Army was passing violently through Liberty County on its march to the sea, and his second wife, my 2d great-grandmother, had a tragic story that I’ll tell some day.
In 1876, Joseph was elected to the position of Liberty County Ordinary (probate court judge), and that office got passed down to his Ashmore descendants like a frisbee until the 1930’s. If you had a relative who died in Liberty County during that time, an Ashmore signed the paperwork. The last of them, Mollie Ashmore, was the first female Ordinary in Liberty County. Her family owned the land that the Liberty Regional Medical Center (their hospital) sits on today.
Arthur E. ASHMORE (1869-1950)
Joseph’s son Arthur Emma Ashmore was my great-grandfather. His mother (Emma) died when he was 11, and he was apprenticed out to a relative who was a wheelwright.
His only full brother died in the state insane asylum at 71, having been committed there some time after accidentally shooting one of their half brothers in the face with a shotgun while hunting.
Arthur found his peace on the river, and became a steamboat captain on the Altamaha River. Before he died in 1950, he was the captain of the last ferry boat to run between Brunswick and Jekyll Island before the causeway was built.
He moved to Brunswick in the 1930’s, and that’s why I thought my family was from Brunswick. (Obviously we weren’t big on telling family history stories!)
GEORGE H. ASHMORE, SR (1909-1972)
My grandfather, George Hudson Ashmore, Sr., lived his life and raised his two boys — George and Arthur — in Brunswick. He worked at one of the local mills and lived in downtown Brunswick. More stories to come about him!
GEORGE H. ASHMORE, JR (1936-2012)
My father, George Hudson Ashmore, Jr, graduated from Brunswick’s Glynn Academy, the 6th oldest public high school in the U.S., dating from 1788. He and my mother, Nancy May Lowe Ashmore, married and moved away in 1954 while Dad was attending Georgia Tech, and didn’t move back until after Dad retired from ITT…but that’s all a story for another day.
One of these days, I’ll find out more about Strong Ashmore and where he came from originally, before showing up in South Carolina and Georgia in the 1750’s. My DNA and research tell me the family came originally from the British Isles.
Like many in those days, a lot of my ancestors were given a maternal maiden name as their middle name, so I suspect “Strong” was his middle name and that there’s a clue there. Yet another mystery to solve…
But “Hudson” — my father’s and my grandfather’s middle name? Which is also my brother’s middle name? And my father’s first cousin’s? And my nephew’s? Apparently my great-grandparents just picked it out of thin air, and it became a recent family tradition. Way to prank the genealogists, people.
Next up…my paternal grandmother’s Ham family.