Personal Info

For such I can learn you to be, in tracing the biography of our family and in writing up its history, I find we have all descended from the same English ancestors consisting of three brothers, Richard, John, and James, and their half sister, Sallie Crump, all of whom came to Virginia in the year 1738 and settled, my great grandfather Richard (the elder) on the Pamunkey River, John at Port Royal, and James emigrated to Illinois, from whose descendants the family has spread out over western Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Kansas, etc.

John's posterity settled in Fluvanna and about Charlottesville, Louisa County, in lower Virginia, and emigrated to North Carolina, Tennessee, and the South-west, and a branch of them into Kentucky, about Lexington.

Richard, my great grandfather, and his posterity settled very largely in lower Virginia, and of whose children, three brothers, David my grandfather, Harfield and William came to the valley of Virginia, then a new country, raised large families and grew rich and prosperous.

I have just learned of you from a Mr. Carroll, of Charleston, West Virginia, Jefferson County, where I have, or I should say we have, numerous Timberlake relations. Mr. Carroll said he was visiting Florida during the winter and stopped at a splendid hotel in Monticello kept by Mr. J.C.S. Timberlake, whom he described as being a whole souled, affable and agreeable gentleman, which is characteristic of our name everywhere and like all the rest of the name, love good living. Mr. Carroll had with him a printed menu and was quite delighted with the proprietor, the hotel, and the bill of fare. He said you told him you were kin to all of the Timberlakes.

So now, with this introductory as to the biography of the family, I am most anxious to hear from you and want you to trace back for me as near as you can, your family on both your paternal and maternal sides as far as you can go. Name your grandfather's brothers and sisters, where they lived. Also name your father's brothers and sisters, and that will enable me to know what generations you or they belong to, and will be easy to trace the relationship to my grandfather, my father and yourselves.

My father, Richard Harfield Timberlake, had only three children, myself the eldest (John S. Timberlake), Richard Lewis, my second brother who was killed during the Confederate War, and my brother Thomas W. Timberlake, who lives near me, and is six feet, three inches tall.

I was born February 16, 1833, Richard was four years younger, and Thomas W. is seven years my junior. I was fifty seven last February 16, 1890.

Permit me to say as a family, we Timberlakes have a great analogy of family traits and resemblances, and which has been largely perpetuated by numerous intermarriages. We have a family record that has never been surpassed, if equalled, by so large a posterity and so remarkably distinguished for their excellent traits of character wherever found and which is the same everywhere, This may be due largely to the fact that we descend from the old English Anglo Saxons, from whom I have traced our stock, and that the grandfather of our great grandfathers was an old English Nobleman of London, where our family came from and where the name is numerous.

My great grandmother was a Harfield, a lady of the Court of Queen Ann, and that illustrious Queen sent her (my great grandmother), together with my great grandfather and his two brothers, to America in a chartered vessel. The Timberlake urbanity of manner, love of style, good living, etc, is therefore easily traced to nobility itself.

I wish your photo, if possible give me your size, height, description of complexion, color of hair and eyes. Also your age. (If you are an old bachelor, I will keep that a secret)

Now, my father's family; My father's mother was Mary Davis a niece of President Jeff Davis and a daughter of the President's father's brother. My wife is my third cousin, whose mother's grandmother was the sister of our great grandfather, and she married her third cousin, John Casllen [aka CASTLIN], of Macon Georgia who was my father's first cousin. His (Casllen's) mother was a sister to my father's father. I married Carrie Virginia Casllen, my third cousin, at Macon, Georgia, May 1st, 1860.

My brother's wife's great great grandmother was a Miss Bell, and 1/2 sister to George Washington's mother, and on her father's side, related to General Robert E. Lee. Her mother (my brother's wife's mother) was a Timberlake; my father's first cousin, and she is therefore my brother's third cousin, and his wife is third cousin to my wife.

I graduated at the Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Virginia. My brother Thomas W. Timberlake graduated at the University of Virginia. We are farmers, and live near each other.