Hensleys of Caswell County

Recently, I have been in contact and sharing a lot of information with people decended from the Hensley family. Myrtle "Granny" Bowen was from this Hensley line. I always thought of the Bowens and Hensleys as being "from Tennessee", but the Hensleys were actually mostly settled in Caswell County, NC, just north of Hillsborough.

DNA turns up Hensley Ancestors

My maternal grandmother was a Hensley. This week, my DNA was linked to another person descended from this Hensley line and they have shared a lot of information I have not previously had in my family tree. I'll be busy this weekend updating my tree. I love it when out of the blue, I get a contact like this.

Our Bowens and the Borens

I just stumbled on a record I had not seen before while working on my tree. It is a marriage record for Jenny Boren, daughter of Mary McClure Boren. It is Aug 22, 1838 to Moses Bradley. The record is under the name Irviney Boren, but if you look closely at the actual handwritten record I think it is Jinney, a transcribing error. That year would make sense because her and Moses had their first child in 1838. Her family's name is recorded in several documents as Boren. Apparently, the family name later was morphed into Bowen, which survives to this day. Update - Over the past year, further work leads me to believe that the family name is Bowen and that other spellings are due to errors made at various times on census records, legal documents, etc.

Its Complicated

Tracing the family tree can get complicated. often this is caused by the lack of consistency in names. In my case an example is my mother's Bowen family. In the early 1800s they were apparently often recorded as Boren. Hard to say which name is the REAL family name. maybe one day I will know. I have for sometime been trying to find some information to confirm my belief that my gggrandfather Daniel Boren/Bowen was married to a Clementine Bradley. Tonight I found that Clementine Bradley had a brother named Moses who had children by a first wife Jenny Bowen, but when she died, he apparently sent them to live with the widow of his sister Clementine's father in law! But having the kids recorded being with her on the 1850 census, seems to close the loop for me and confirms the connections I had made. So, after several hours work tonight, I feel something was gained.