The Surber “Wilson Book”

The starting (and often ending) point of many Wilson genealogies is the “Wilson Book”, compiled by the family of William Surber Wilson of Kentucky after his death in 1981.  He collected almost 50 years of research about the Wilsons of Kentucky and Virginia going back to James Wilson, Sr.  There is a surprising amount of information for the pre-Internet era he was working in – that’s probably why it took him so long! Although we can lay our hands on the sources of much of his tree, some of it appears to be based on family stories he was privy to.  Some of what he didn’t document seems to be of as much interest as what he didn’t, given all his research.  For instance, he doesn’t claim to know the maiden name of James’ wife Martha, nor his birthplace, nor his parental connections.  There are many trees that attempt to connect James Sr. with other James Wilsons in Virginia based on readily available records with his name and matching timeframe only, so it seems reasonable to assume Surber might have had access to the same documentation and dismissed it (as I will be doing in subsequent posts).  It’s also interesting that one of the mistakes I can find concerning my direct line was a reasonable conclusion given the available records, involving a connection which took me considerable work and research to unearth.  To wit, the son James of Thomas, son of James Sr. is identified as marrying Martha Hix in 1789, with no subsequent descendants listed.  While this James was the most likely candidate to be my ancestor, who was one of the first to migrate to Kentucky, it was puzzling why Surber didn’t make the connection.  In fact, it took studying and comparing many years of tax records in both Virginia and Kentucky, looking at Thomas’ will, and finding the deed showing the sale of the land that James of KY inherited from Thomas to show that our James was *not* the James that married Martha Hix (indeed our James married a Delilah) and was undocumented by Surber.  But once again, that is another story that isn’t really pertinent to the unknown details surrounding James Sr.