In fact, we are cousins of Looney's Tavern! An article from the Huntsville Times shows we are cousins with William Bauck Looney (I am his 2nd cousins 4x removed). His ancestor listed below, Absalom Looney, Jr., is the son of my ancestor Absalom Looney (and brother of my ancestor Michael Looney), described in the previous post.
THE HUNTSVILLE TIMES
Looney family tree has many great stories
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Madison Spirit
A double stone marks the burial plots of William Henry Looney and his wife, Ora Lelia Abernathy, in the northwestern corner of the old section of the Madison City Cemetery south of Mill Road. Looney is an unusual family name, but I also encountered it while researching the pioneer families of Redstone Arsenal lands. Some of that land was owned by John Warren Looney and his brother Absolem. Absolem was the third generation with that name.
His father Absolem Jr. is buried on his land at the old airport site in Huntsville. Absolem Jr. was a Revolutionary War veteran who brought his wife, Margaret Warren, and their children to Madison County in 1811 by flatboat from Tennessee. He had obtained land here in 1809. The first Absolem (Sr.) was born in 1729 and lived in Virginia. He had a brother who married a Rhea, like the county in Tennessee, and became a great-grandfather of William Bauck Looney, owner of Looney's Tavern in Winston County from Civil War-era fame. Absolem Sr. had another brother who married a Lauderdale, like the county in Alabama. Their father was Robert Looney, who came to Virginia before 1735, having been born in 1692 on the Isle of Mann in the British Isles.
The youngest Absolem Looney's brother, John Warren Looney, was a great-grandfather of Madison's William Henry Looney. John owned land with a mill and riverboat landing on the west side of Indian Creek's confluence with Huntsville's Spring Branch Creek. He sold it to Thomas and George Fearn in 1834 for their project to transport cotton to the Tennessee River from Huntsville via the Indian Creek Navigation Co.'s canal from Big Spring.
John began a move to Goliad, Texas, in 1848, but he died near Nacogdoches, leaving his wife and children to continue the journey. One of John's sons, Tuberville, in 1841 married Martha Bailey, a daughter of Madison pioneers James and Sarah Bailey. They had sons William, John, James Bailey and Henry. Martha died soon after Henry's birth, which is possibly a reason that Tuberville left in 1850 for Texas to be with his widowed mother. When he left, Tuberville took his son William but he left John, James Bailey and Henry to be raised by their grandmother Sarah Bailey. When she died, they were kept by an aunt, Sarah Bailey Blackburn, wife of David, on Rainbow Mountain....
Somebody needs a spelling lesson. Incident; not incedent!!
ReplyDelete