To view entire text of CHAMBERS FAMILY RECORD go to http://members.aol.com/InmanGA/chambersbook.html
Does anyone know where the Chambers Family Cemetery is locate? It is in Clayton, formerly Fayette County on the former Chambers property. It is NOTE the Elisha Hill family cemetery. InmanGA@aol.com would like to know.
Joseph Sanders Chambers (1799-1858) &
Frances Asbury Stinchcomb (1802-1894)
Joseph S. Chambers (1799-1858) and Frances Stinchcomb Chambers (1802-1894) were married (1822) in Elbert County and moved to Henry/Fayette after Joseph's older brother William had established himself in the area. Their children were:
Sarah (1823-1840) married William Mills--separate biographical information
Mary Frances (1825-1912) married (Rev.) Bogan Mask--separate biographical information
Rebecca Ann (1828-1908) married (Rev.) Daniel McLucas--separate biographical information
Martha (1830-1913) married John Lamb--separate biographical information
James Absalom (1833-1905) married Mary Dorman--separate biographical information
Elmira (1840-1907) married James Andrew Bull
Joseph (1845-1846)
excerpts from The Chambers Family Record by Sadie Chambers Burdett, 1950:
In the shadows back of Over-the-River rose the Henry County homeplace of Grandpa's father, JOSEPH S. CHAMBERS and his wife, FRANCES STINCHCOMB. My great-grandfather JOSEPH died before I was born. From the stories I heard of Great-Grandpa, I know he was a "local" Methodist preacher, one who did not give his entire time to the work of an organized church but who earned his living in some other way (in Great-Grandpa's case it was farming) and who preached out of the overflowing gladness of his heart. I used to think of Great-Grandpa as a sort of ecclesiastical Paul Revere--his broad hat glistening with raindrops, his black cape-collar flying in the wind; urging his horse onward through rain or sleet or snow as he shouted, "Rouse ye! Rouse Ye! for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!" In great-grandpa's day local preachers and circuit-riders alike proclaimed a militant gospel.
Great-Grandmother FRANCES STINCHCOMB died when I was too young to have known her. Of her, also I had very definite ideas. Great-Grandma was the Lady in our family. Little in stature, among tall sons and daughters, she was always dainty and sweet in black silk dress and snowy cap and apron. In a busy household, she was the director. Without raising her voice she influenced sons and daughters and the slaves she had brought from her father's house, to do her bidding. She was revered by everyone for her graces; and for her forefathers who had come with families, household goods, and slaves from Virginia in the distant past. For even more than these, Great-Grandma was a person set apart--because she was a niece of WILLIAM PENN! Nor did it occur to any of her descendants to doubt that Great-Grandma's uncle was the great Quaker who established the province of Pennsylvania.
As I think of the Henry County homeplace, I am reminded how much of life is taken up with marrying and giving in marriage. It was here that Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma gave two of their daughters in marriage to two preachers---Aunt MARY to Uncle BOGAN MASK, a godly man whose church was not only a building, but was wherever he saw a soul in need; Aunt ANN to the gentle and beloved Uncle DAN'L McLUCAS, so recently from Scotland (*Later information reveals that it was Uncle Dan'l's mother who came from Scotland as a child of twelve years) that he spoke with a delightful accent when he read the marriage vows at the wedding of my father and mother. From here Aunt MARTHA went home with some of the Alabama cousins and there met her future husband, Great-Uncle JOHN LAMB. Here Aunt SARAH married the brilliant young WILLIAM MILLS; and here, when their son, JAMES JOSEPH MILLS, was born, Aunt SARAH died. From this place Aunt EL journeyed by horseback one winter day to the home of Great-Great-Uncle JOHN CHAMBERS at Chambers' Mill in Fayette County. Aunt EL was to assist with the festivities incident to a wedding in Great-Uncle JOHN's household. We are not sure which of Uncle JOHN's daughters was the bride that winter. It may have been Cousin POLLY, who married WILLIAM RICE; or Cousin MARTHA, who married DUDLEY GLASS of Alabama. The tenderness with which Aunt EL in later years recounted details of that visit--of riding horseback over frozen roads with laughing groups of young folks; of gathering Christmas greens from the woods, of decorating the wedding cake, or molding candles to light up the house--leads us to believe that it may have been at that time she met JAMES ANDREW BULL. At any rate, meet him she did, to fall head over heels in love with him, as he with her. Later they were married and lived "happily ever after".
It is not these days nor these weddings that I associate principally with the Henry County homeplace, though it was while he was attending school near here that Grandpa met and married his young teacher, MARY ANN DORMAN. Uppermost, instead is the period of the Civil War, when Yankee soldiers occupied the place and pitched their tents all over the hillside. That was after Grandpa and his fifteen year-old brother had left to join the Confederate Army--along with all the other men in the family connection. When war-clouds gathered over the South, Great-Uncle JOHN LAMB brought Aunt MARTHA and the children from Alabama to be near their folks while he joined the colors. From far-away Mississippi came Great-Uncle JAMES ANDREW BULL, with Aunt EL and her two babies.
It was from the Henry County homeplace, and the dwellings scattered among the shady groves near by that the gray-clad soldiers went away; and to these wasted acres they returned.
Grandpa came back soon after the war was over. Great-Uncle JAMES ANDREW BULL came, too. In the Battle of the Wilderness Great-Uncle JOHN LAMB gave up his life for his beloved South.
All were accounted for, save one. For weeks and months they waited for Great-Uncle JOE. He was only a boy when he went away; only a boy when he fell wounded in battle; a boy, lonely and sick, "up North" in a Yankee prison; a frightened boy on the long trail home. Walking all the way, sleeping out of doors wherever he could find a place, he would build fires at night for comfort as well as for light and warmth. What thoughts were his as he sat by his lone campfires, what he endured of hunger, loneliness and fear, his sorrow-stricken family never knew. It was a year from the time he was released from prison until he stumbled up the chestnut lane at home. ......
The poignant story of Uncle JOE came to Cousin JESSIE from her grandmother, my Great-Aunt EL. When her father died in 1858, Aunt EL inherited a part of the homeplace and purchased from the other heirs their shares. So it came about that, while her husband and brothers were fighting in Virginia, she was carrying her burden at the homeplace. Her story is the same as that of Great-Aunt MARTHA LAMB; of Great-Aunt MARY MASK; of Grandma MARY ANN DORMAN CHAMBERS and Great-Aunt ANN McLUCAS--in their homes near-by; and of many another woman in the South during the tragic days of the war and the bitter reconstruction years that followed. She was in the house the day the Yankee soldiers came--with her young son and a dear niece, one of Aunt MARY MASK's daughters. With them was the slave-girl, QUEEN, and her husband, JACK. From the windows they watched the soldiers moving about in the grove. When darkness fell, they blew out the lamps and kept vigil in the glow of the "light 'ood" fire. For hours they watched, frightened at every sound.
It was nearly "sun-up" when Aunt EL finally fell asleep, to be wakened by the voice of a Yankee officer ordering torches to be lighted. When Aunt EL heard the dread words, she knew what they meant. The house was to be set on fire--the house her father had built, where he had died; the house of a thousand memories---where she had been born, where she had been married---and there was nothing she could do to prevent it.
Suddenly she thought there might be a chance. Her husband had said that a brother Mason might be a brother still, in spite of war. Perhaps this Yankee soldier was a Mason. It was worth trying anyway. Taking a tiny emblem from its hiding place, she flung open the door and called to the officer in charge. She could not remember afterwards what she had said, nor did she recall the officer's reply. She only knew that he turned at last and signaled the soldiers, and the torches were extinguished.
Yet, though the house was spared, it was stripped of all supplies and goods, fences were destroyed, fruit trees were cut down. These things Aunt EL could bear, though it was hard. But when the careless hands tore apart a tiny trunk, scattering its contents--the folded, yellowed garments of a baby who was dead--it was as if they were tearing her heart out, too....
Another face which was part of Great-great Uncle JOHN's household (and of Great-Grandfather JOSEPH's, too) was the sad sweet face of their mother, MARTHA. But our Great-Great Grandmother MARTHA POSEY CHAMBERS really belongs to another chapter.
At the Henry County homeplace lived:
JOSEPH CHAMBERS (my Great-grandfather)--b. about 1799--d. 1858
FRANCES STINCHCOMB (my Great-grandmother)--b. about 1802--d. 1894
(They were married Aug. 29, 1822)
Their children were:
SARAH, MARY, MARTHA, JAMES ABSOLOM, REBECCAH ANNE, ELMIRA VICTORIA, JOSEPH
