Schooling - Scholin - Berkeley & Loudon Counties Virginia

[Randy]

Just Joined today - My grandfather always told me he was 1/16 Blackfoot, but I determined that his ancestors came from Virginia -

If my grandfather was 1/16 Blackfoot, then his great grandfather, Joseph Schooling, who was born 1782 in Berkeley County Virginia VA, would have been 1/2 Blackfoot. Joseph's father was James Schooling and his mother a Blackfoot woman most likely - but they never married, or family would not allow them to marry, or she died in childbirth.

The father of James Schooling was Francis Schooling who married Elizabeth Powell March 21, 1751 Providence Twp. Mongtomery County Pennsylvania PA at Augustus Evangelical Lutheran Church, Trappe PA, by 1768 they were in Loudoun Co Virginia where they leased land from Andrew and Adam Hatfield - They transferred this land to William Williams of Loudoun in 1773 and were next found in Berkeley Co. Virginia by 1787 when on Tax List as France Scholin. We think they had three sons, James (born 1757 PA), Joseph (born 1759 PA) and William Francis (born 1764 PA) Schooling, all served in the Revolutionary War, the latter, William Francis Schooling being killed at Brandywine Pennsylvania September 11, 1777. Son of Francis Schooling, Joseph Schooling, relocated to Mercer and Washington County Kentucy where he married Susannah Fisher, daughter of Adam Fisher and Elizabeth Garr.

My ancestor, James Schooling, stayed in Berkeley Virginia where he had a union with a Blackfoot woman and had one son, my ancestor, Joseph Schooling in 1782. James Schooling married in New Market, Loudoun Co Virginia December 29, 1784 to Mary Hardwick (thus my ancestor, Joseph Schooling saying in a letter dated 1850 that "he was born 2 or 3 years too soon" and never accepted by his father's wife and half siblings, except one, John H. Schooling) - this union resulted in 9 other children, half siblings of my ancestor, Joseph Schooling. Both Francis Schooling and his son James are taxed in Berkeley County in 1787.

Apparently after James Schooling 's parents died, James Schooling and his family relocated also to Washington County Kentucky about 1798 where his brother Joseph had gone previously. The Revolutionary War pension record in 1840 Kentucky of James Schooling confirms his residence in Virginia serving under Captain Little, Major Morgan, General Dark, William Lucas, Captain Jarret, and he says also he distinctly remembers General George Washington and Lafayette - his affidavit confirmed by Michael Matheny who also resided in Berkeley Co Virginia and later Mercer County Kentucky.

Would love to know what Blackfoot really means, -- I found a reference that there were many Tuscarora Indians living in Berkeley in 1780s and dressed in European clothes, or how does this relate to melungeon or other groups of mixed Indian blood or tribes. THANKS

[techteach]

Welcome Randy,
Your folks followed very much the same path as mine until they leave Berkeley County. Mine went to Ohio and then Iowa. I do not see the name in my genealogy though. There is a Schooler and a Schooley but no Schooling. Both of these names are later times and other places. I am sure someone here will help you out.
We are all trying to find out the origin of Blackfoot. Check out the article on the opening page. Some have the oral history that it is due to black moccasins; others have heard that the fleeing Piedmont natives banded together and called theselves blackfoot. I am hoping for an identification of a two-line song in the next two weeks that might help identify who they were.
Welcome again.

Cindy

[Bill Childs]

Welcome, Randy.
I doubt I can add to you research, but Joseph Schooling certainly has some interesting neighbors in 1820 Wash. Co., Ky., on which you might want to do some additional research. While all of these are listed a White, there were no "others" apparently, listed in the entire county (?):
His neighbors in 1820:
John Lawson
James Bowling
Joseph Williams
John Schooling
James Schooling
Nathan Lawson
Chesley Lawson
Joseph Schooling****
John Berton (Burton)
Wm. Bowling
Zach Lawson
Jacob Lawson
James Bowling
..........
While every Lawson & Bowling surname were not Saponi and every Burton was not "Cherokee", there may be a clue or two here. Compare these to some surnames on this forum by doing a "search" for these surnames, or go to the "Names" posting on (I think) "Share History Research", or it may have been posted to the "Shoot the Breeze" section of the forum within the last couple of days.
Again, Welcome.
Bill

[Linda]

Hi Randy, welcome to the board. It's late and I'm going to be out this weekend, but I wanted to mention that I had family in Berkeley, WV at the same time. The patriarch was an Ulm, several generations from Germany, but the wife had only a first name noted. I'll try and look into more details later.

[Randy]

Cindy, Bill and Linda - I just checked NOW the website since posting and THANKS to all of your for responding and for your info and suggestions. I will check out the Washington County Kentucky names that have the Indian connnection as you suggested. I have an old photograph of my ancestor, George Fraim Schooling, who was the youngest son of Joseph Schooling (1/2 "Blackfoot") and his first wife, Mary Fraim, who died shortly after George's birth in 1829, and the photograph of him to me shows Indian features - perhaps favoring his "Blackfoot" grandmother. Linda it is great you have Berkeley Co Va ancestors too but I have never run across the name of Ulm yet. Your reference to Blackfoot Town Maryland is interesting too, as I have seen a Schooling reference to Maryland as well. I find this "Blackfoot" link so very intriguing, although I am just as proud to have determined other Indian ancestry out of my ZILLION other ancestors, one being a Cherokee woman who became the wife of my ancestor, "Bald Jimmy" James Stewart (from Ireland ) in Halifax ( Lunenburg ) Co Virginia in the 1760s when he paid 50 pounds of tobacco as dowry for her, later he moved to Caswell Co North Carolina AND the other being a Mohawk Indian Chief, Caniachkoo , Sachem of the Third Castle, of the Turtle Clan, near Albany New York, whose unnamed daughter married my Dutch ancestor, Peter Adrianensen Van Woggelum, whose daughter Tryntje married in 1661 to Jan Mangels ( Roll ) who eventually received Indian land in Albany Co., New York by a Canastagione Deed dated March 4, 17 1681/2 written in Dutch whereby land was transferred by three Sachem -- Rhode, Saddiaquisak and Todarasse, the latter being a grandson of Chief Caniachkoo -- apparently the deed being conveyed because Jan had married the granddaughter of Caniachkoo. I am so fortunate to know an actual name of one of my Indian ancestors. I am researching the Mohawk too, and hope to visit the area soon.

[Dan Akin]

Welcome Randy; Sometimes it seems to be a very small world. My ggggrandparents William and Margaret Jennings Barnes were married here in Boone Co. Mo. in 1859 at Union Cumberland Presbytarian Church by Rev. Robert Schooling. Robert Schooling was born in 1787 in Berkley Co. Va. He was the son of James Schooling and Mary Hardwick. He married Elizabeth Schooling in 1810 in Washington Co. Ky. dau. of Joseph Schooling and Susannah Fisher. Rev. Schooling established the Schooling/Naylor cemetery where my ggggggrandfather Benjamin Green is buried. This cemetery is the place where my Green family gathered to plan their strategy before applying to the Guion-Miller Commission in 1908 for Eastern Cherokee claims. This was all written about in the Columbia Daily Tribune newspaper in 1908.
Dan Akin.

[techteach]

Dan:
Do your Green ancestors come from Berkeley County? My Green ancestors come from there. Can you provide more? Would be interesting to see if we match up. I have not matched any of the Greens who have posted, although we may have tried this before and do not match up. My Green line were from near Shepherdstown, now WVA.

Cindy

[Linda]

So, does it look like Randy and Dan had ancestors who were neighbors?

[Dan Akin]

Hey you guys; I want to tell you a story that I have held back and in the light of this stuff about the Schoolings it is eneough to give a person like me, a severely amaturish historian, the goose-bumps.
This story is in W. F. Switzler's "History of Boone County Missouri" published in 1882, pages 1071 and 1072.
"Thirty years ago the good people of Perche, a portion of Mo., Rocky Fork, and Bourbon (all a part of Boone County), resented the sobriquet of "Blackfoot" as a slur at their section of the county, but happily for the impartial historian, whose duty it is to deal in the facts, they have not only reconciled to the inevitable appelation, but glory in the same. There are three or four traditions relative to the origin of the name "Blackfoot." Gen. S. B. Hatton, the oldest citizen living in that section, says the name originated at Perchetown, and grew out of a general fight, in which nearly all of the male members of that community participated. The victorious party raised the war-whoop declaring they were the "Blackfoot Tribe from the headwaters of the Perche." The name was remembered, as well as the sore heads inflicted upon the defeated party. One side applied the term in a boasting spirit, the other as an epithet, and between the two factions the name was fixed upon that region of the country for all time to come. Another tradition attributes the origin of the name to a dance which occurred IN THE SCHOOLING NEIGHBORHOOD, where the boys and girls danced barefooted, and bantered each other on the comparative blackness of their pedal extremities."
The "Blackfoot Rangers" were a group of what the north called "Bushwackers." They were always able to escape into "Blackfoot Country" as the Union soldiers refused to follow them there. There is even a song for the "Blackfoot Rangers."
Dan Akin.

[Bill Childs]

Dan. Are the surnames of the "victorious party" recorded or can you identify the area (township?) of Boone Co. that was called "Blackfoot country"?

[Dan Akin]

Bill; I can gather names from the cemetery and there are records from the Union Cumberland Presbyterian Church at Riggs on the web. There is Graves, Riggs, Seymour (one of my very old surnames), my family of Barnes, Nailor/Naylor, Killgore, Brown, Woods, my Green family, my family of Stivers, Henderson, Sweeney, Wisdom, Cook and others.
Blackfoot Country is all of the waters that are in the Perche Creek watershed. Silver's Fork, Rocky Fork, (North) Grindstone, Callahan's fork are the ones I can think of so far.
The Roche Perche/Perche empties into the Mo. River at Old Providence.
Dan Akin.

[Dan Akin]

Bill; I'm sorry. Blackfoot country was all of the headwaters of the watershed of the Perche Creek. That would be starting just north of the I-70 Interstate corridor where you find "Blackfoot Road" along the Perche. The creeks I mentioned are contained in the headwaters area in north Boone County.
Dan Akin.

[Randy]

Thanks Dan for the info about Rev. Robert Schooling. Yes, I am familiar with the Boone County branch of the Schooling family. It was Robert's brother, John H. Schooling, who supported and "loved" my ancestor, Joseph Schooling, who seems not to have been "accepted" by "all" of his half-silblings because he was "born too soon" (out of wedlock??) OR because he was "half Blackfoot" or perhaps BOTH - I am not totally sure at this point. It is very interesting though that Joseph Schooling left Kentucky in the late 1810s and went to Indiana, where he became a State Representative and eventually settling in Lawrence County Missouri, where he became a County Judge. Perhaps others were jealous of his success, or he was driven to "make something of himself" because of his origins.

Regardless, the "Blackfoot country" Missouri reference was interesting too. You said one tradition was that it was in the "Schooling neighborhood" - does the history of Boone County give any more specifics of where that was? Does the book give any biographical info about any of the Schooling families and where they exactly lived?

I found on the internet at http://www.bartonpara.com/civilwar/rebel/blakfoot.htm
(note blackfoot is spelled blakfoot in the browser title)
a reference to the "Blackfoot Rangers" song which does not seem to support any fact that "Blackfoot" there referenced the Eastern OR Western Blackfoot Indians, but just perhaps denotes a "label" given to a group in the region for some reason. I have copied the info here from that website (shows copyrighted @ Big Canoe Records, 1995) and according to the site, "the words to this song in Belden´s Ballads and Songs, where we also found “The Call of Quantrill” and “Kelly´s Irish Brigade.” All three songs originally came from a manuscript in the possession of George E. Sexton (“presumably,” Belden says, “a Confederate veteran”) of Fayette, Mo."

"Although the Quantrill and Blackfoot songs have some superficial similarities, they were sung to different tunes. The “Blackfoot Rangers” was almost certainly sung to the tune of the “War Song of the Texan Rangers,” a song contained in Sigmund Spaeth´s book, Weep Some More My Lady (1927) and in the collection Sound Off: Soldier Songs (1929). “Blackfoot Rangers” is, in fact, almost a direct steal from this song, with only slight variations in phrasing. In Sound Off it is noted that the “Texan Rangers” song was written by James T. Lytle of Ben McCulloch's Rangers and set to the tune of “I´m Afloat,” written by Henry Russell."

“Blackfoot” is the name of an area of northern Boone County, Mo., near the headwaters of Perche Creek and refers, not to the Indian tribe, (meaning "Western Blackfoot"?? - Randy's comment) but to the fact that the people living in that part of the county either had the habit of going barefoot or dancing barefoot and thus literally having “black feet.” There are several stories about the origins of the term, and it is clear the name was not always viewed as particularly complimentary. Perchetown or “Persia” was considered to be the capitol of the Blackfoot country, though others contend the real capitol was the community of Dripping Springs."

Joseph A. Mudd, in his book With Porter in North Missouri (1909), says the Blackfoot Rangers were a company of some 65 men from Boone and Randolph counties organized by Capt. Harvey McKinney at the town of Everetts in northern Boone County, and later commanded by Capt. L.M. Frost. They were, in fact, sometimes known as “Frost´s Company.” Their first battle, according to Mudd, was the Battle of Moore´s Mill in Callaway County, July 28, 1862, a fight waged between a small Confederate force under the command of Col. Joseph C. Porter, and a considerably larger Missouri (Union) Militia cavalry regiment under the command of Columbia's Col. Odon Guitar. What happened to the unit after this battle is unclear."

"Mount! mount! and away o´er the green wood so wide,
The sword is our sceptre, the fleet steed our pride.
up! up! with our flag, let its bright folds gleam out,
Mount, mount and away on the wild Blackfoot scout!
We heed not the danger, we heed not the foe,
While our fleet steeds will bear us right onward we go;
For God smiles on Blackfoot and He speeds the right,
And never as cowards will we fly from the fight.
Chorus:
Then mount and away, give the fleet steed the rein,
The Ranger´s at home in Blackfoot again.
Spur! spur! in the chase, dash on to the fight,
Cry vengeance for Blackfoot and God speed the right!"
The might of the Federal gathers thick on the way,
They hear our wild shouts as we rush to the fray.
What to us is the fear of the death-stricken plain?
We´ve braved it before and we'll brave it again.
Hurrah! my brave boys you may fare as you please.
No Federal banner now waves on the breeze.
´Tis the flag of the bushwhack that waves o´er each height,
While on its proud folds our star sheds its light.
Chorus"

This particular area of eastern Howard County and western Boone County Missouri and so called "Blackfoot country" of west central and northwest Boone County during the Civil War seems to have been a stronghold of Southern sympathizers from which local guerrillas such as Capt. William Stuart (or Stewart), Clifton D. Holtzclaw carried on intensive activities during 1864, and who were also joined in guerrilla activites by William Clarke Quantrill, George Todd and William "Bloody Bill" Anderson.

Nevertheless, the reference to Blackfoot is interesting and may or may not add to the quest for the "real" meaning.

[Bill Childs]

Dan. Thanks. You don't need to get cemetery listings. I'll just page thru the area.
Randy. Thanks for the additional info.

[techteach]

Just an interesting coincidence - the name McCulloch is common on the headstones of the cemetery where my Blackfoot gggrandmother is buried.

Cindy

[Randy]

Everyone, thanks for all the information - I have been researching"all" Schoolings since I was in high school but some of my Schooling information comes also from other Schooling "cousin" descendants -

Joseph Schooling actually lived in Bullit County Kentucky and served in War of 1812, later serving as Constable and/or Captain - then in Jefferson County Kentucky from which he left about 1823 (not 1810s as previously stated above - should not rely on my failing memory, ha!!) and moved to Parke County, Indiana where he was commissioned as Justice of the Peace January 14, 1824, then JP for Vermillion County in 1824 and again in 1828, resigning in 1834 - Vermillion being formed from Parke in 1824 and he lived in or near Newport, Helt Township, Vermillion County. Later he served in the House of Representatives from 1834 to 1835 from Vermillion Co Indiana- his first wife, Mary Fraim dying there May 20, 1829. Then he married Margaret Wilson there on December 7, 1831 and later he went to Southwest Missouri in 1840 when it was Barry County, from which Lawrence County Missouri was formed in 1845 and at that time he was appointed the first presiding Judge of the county; and continued as Associate Judge from 1846 until his death December 15, 1850.

Dan Akin - I reread the letter Joseph Schooling wrote May 17, 1850 to his beloved half-niece, Martha Dickerson, daughter of John H. Schooling, and in his letter Joseph Schooling actually mentions that he was not in the habit of writing his relations unless first receiving correspondence from them, the reason being he was born 2 or 3 years too soon and for that reason "I have on the background and for fear of being thought troublesome - I have not in that respect probably done my duty." He also mentions in the letter (Rev.) Robert Schooling, her uncle and his half-brother, who had written to Joseph Schooling that he had visited Martha's mother ( Jane McKitrick Schooling ) in Washington County Kentucky two years ago, and that her mother (Jane) had sent by Robert money back to Joseph Schooling that she (Jane) had borrowed, and that Robert had tried to come to see Joseph Schooling as late as February 1850, but had to return home after traveling 40 miles when his horse became lame -- Joseph Schooling remarked in the letter that it was good enough that her mother had sent the money, and he was satisfied she had sent the money and whether or not he ever receives it (from Robert Schooling), he considered the money no longer owed. Thanks again everyone, Randy

[cuzzinkc]

Randy, I'm interested in what you said about Mohawk Chief Caniachkoo in one of your posts. ("AND the other being a Mohawk Indian Chief, Caniachkoo , Sachem of the Third Castle, of the Turtle Clan, near Albany New York, whose unnamed daughter married my Dutch ancestor, Peter Adrianensen Van Woggelum, whose daughter Tryntje married in 1661 to Jan Mangels ( Roll ) who eventually received Indian land in Albany Co., New York by a Canastagione Deed dated March 4, 17 1681/2 written in Dutch whereby land was transferred by three Sachem -- Rhode, Saddiaquisak and Todarasse, the latter being a grandson of Chief Caniachkoo -- apparently the deed being conveyed because Jan had married the granddaughter of Caniachkoo.")

Jan Mangels Roll and Tryntje van Woggelum are my 9th great grandparents. Their granddaughter Jannetje Mangels Roll (dau of Pieter Roll and Janetje Du Chesne) married George Personett sometime before 1731, and my grandmother's maiden name was Personette.

I'd love to know how you descend from Caniachkoo and if you've discovered any new info on him! Hope to hear from you soon.