While writing the last post, on the McMurry family’s migrations from Virginia to Kentucky in the late 1770s to early 1790s, I was somewhat vague about where they lived in Virginia. Other than one source—which states that William’s youngest son, Robert McMurry,was born in Fincastle on December 6, 1772—all of the sources I’ve seen state that William McMurry and his family lived on the Cow Pasture River. The location has been more specifically described as being on the lower Cow Pasture River and near a stream called McMurry Creek.
From what I’ve been able to learn so far, there is no tributary to (or anywhere near) Cow Pasture River that is still called anything like “McMurry Creek.” A distant cousin and fellow family historian, John Drye, has contacted the local history society for that area to see if they might have any insight into where McMurry Creek might have been, but he’s gotten no information so far. John suspects that the McMurry farm might have been in the area around Nicelytown, and that area is a leading candidate for me, too.
The Cow Pasture River is fairly long—just about 50 linear miles from source to mouth, but slightly over 80 miles as the river flows, because of the meandering nature of the river. It would be great to be able to be able to narrow down possible locations for the McMurry home along this river.
I’ve been reading through some excellent research notes by Don McMurray (a distant cousin), who’s spent much time, effort and money doing historical research on the McMurrys in Virginia, Northern Ireland, and elsewhere. In his notes were a couple of additional clues to the location of the McMurry property on the Cow Pasture River that made me think it might be possible to start narrowing down possible specific locations.
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Another of the finds that my cousin Sharon Black sent along to me earlier this week is a newspaper account of Ruth Black’s old sod house. I had heard tales of the old sod house from my grandparents, Vernon and Dorothy Black, and I have several artifacts from the sod house that they brought back with them from various trips to Kansas in the 1950s through 1970s.
