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Welcome to my occasional blog on Gilliam Genealogy. Our family has always been fiercely proud of our ancestors and their stories, where we came from and how we got to where we are. Unfortunately, those stories and details were not always well-documented and as each generation disappears, the oral history is lost. This blog will be my attempt to collect as many of those details as possible and to preserve the oral histories we can recall.
Researching the history of our branch of the Gilliam Family is complicated by use of first names that appear multiple times in each generation, multiple marriages between families and the tendency for the next generation of Gilliams to migrate from their place of birth. I will report the basis for my conclusions when there is contradictory evidence and let you make your own conclusion. Please feel free to add, subtract or comment on any of my entries – maybe we can settle the controversies once and for all!
Where to start? Based on my research to-date, what follows is my best guess on the direct Gilliam branch from the first Gilliams to come to the New World. According to John Bennett Boddie, in Historical Southern Families, Volume I, 21-year-old John Gilliam came to the Virginia Colony in 1635 aboard the ship “George” with his 18-year-old brother, Thomas. If this estimate is correct, Gilliams came to North America a mere 14 years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in 1621! John married Margery Henshaw (more about her in a future post) and settled in Surry County, Virginia, across the James River from Williamsburg. From John and Margery, we can trace our family to the present:     

                                                                                               John Gilliam (1613-1673)
                                                                                                                |
                                                                                                John Gilliam (unk.-1738) 
                                                                                                                | 
                                                                                               Hinchea Gilliam (1718-1794)                           
                                                                                                                |
                                                                                                John Charles Gilliam (1745-1825)                                        
                                                                                                                |
                                                                                                Hinchea Gilliam (1778-1858)                                                                                                                                                                                          |
                                                                                                Hardy Gilliam (1818-1897)                                                   
                                                                                                                |
                                                                                                Thomas Jefferson Gilliam (1845-1926)
|
John Calhoun Gilliam (1873-1943)       
                |
Lemuel Hardy Gilliam                    Joseph Douglas Gilliam                     John William Gilliam
(1903-1976)                                    (1905-1988)                                        (1907-1968)
           
            The focus of the blog will be on this branch of the Gilliam Family, with occasional meanderings on the families the Gilliams married into. Of course, we also have the “double-cousins” connection in the family tree with John Calhoun Gilliam’s brother, Samuel, marrying Maggie Hildreth, the identical twin sister of John’s wife, Annie. That important connection needs to be explored as part of the Gilliam Genealogy blog, as well. More to come.

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