Family Reminiscences
By LeGrand M. Jones

Preface

My son Silas some years ago requested me to write a sketch of our family, before the facts known to me should pass away with me and be forgotten. I at first thought of confining myself almost exclusively to genealogy; but I have departed from this idea to some extent, as will be seen. I have said little, if anything, of the living, or of those facts known to my children, or as accessible to them as to me. I have, since my health gave way, frequently regretted that I did not, during the lives of my mother and my maternal grandmother, write out and preserve the more prominent facts of our family history, especially those relating to our Huguenot ancestry. I could forty years ago, no doubt, have carried the history of my wife's family back a generation or two further. I could probably have learned from Col. Woods when his great-grandfather Woods came from Ireland to North Carolina; and also, from my wife's maternal grandfather, when his ancestors came to this country. But forty years ago i did not feel any particular interest in collecting and preserving these facts for my children. My wife had the family Bible, in which the record of her father's family was kept. When she got the Bible, after her father's death, it had gone pretty much to pieces. There is an impression in the family that, some years before her death, she took out the leaves containing this record, and gave them to her brother Levi for safe-keeping. Levi, I understand, is of the same impression; but, if the record was placed in his hands, he has mislaid it. My sister gave our own family record, some years ago, to her brother Isaac, but he seems to have mislaid it. This will account for the omission of some dates as to births and deaths, that would otherwise be expected.

Most of the time i have been unable to write, and when able to do so, could write only a little at a time.

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