There are not many male lines of Jonathan. We have never really found anything that gives a definitive list of his children. Jonathan was one of the Cora Hiatt problems. When she wrote her book, for some reason, she skipped a generation and listed the children of Jonathan, Jr under Jonathan. Descendant researchers ever since have been piecing things back together to correct and clarify the record.

Jonathan was the middle of three brothers, the sons of William who combined today, represent more than one-fifth of all Chenoweth descendants, and all this from just one third-generation son. William was the first grandchild in the family and there appears to be much strength in the oldest and first born lines within the Chenoweth family. The name Jonathan within the family is fairly distinct. Excluding the last half of this century, where the name seems to re-emerged as a popular choice [the database has 5 Jonathans born after 1950], there were only 6 Jonathans in the earlier family, 4 being the original Jonathan we are speaking of and 3 others close descendants in his line. The other two, spelled "Jonathon", had very short lives and were from Ohio families.

The three sons, John, Jonathan and William lost their father when they were just in their teens. It is not certain where they grew up. Perhaps with their stepmother, Jane. Their father had died in Frederick Co., VA but they seem to appear as young men in Hampshire Co., VA., an area where their uncle John had settled on land he acquired from his father and brother William, just before William's death. Each would go separate ways and found very significant families.

Like his two brothers, Jonathan served in the American Revolution. Because he was tall and handsome in appearance, Jonathan was selected to be part of General Washington's guard. Through contacts with the Atchison family we now know that Jonathan married about Mar 1779 on Patterson Creek, Hampshire Co., VA. He and Chloe, his wife, would settle in the area of the newly formed Hardy Co. She was the daughter of William Atchison and Sally Trumbo. We think there were 8 children: Jonathan, Jr., John, James, Elizabeth, Delilah, Samuel, Sarah and Chloe. Nothing is known of John or James or if they ever really existed. The male lines of Jonathan, Jr died out within a couple of generations. Thus the one son Samuel carries the Chenoweth name of Jonathan. Both Elizabeth and Chloe carry strong daughter lines to present day. In contrast, John, the older brother of Jonathan, had five sons that bear lines to present day (many still living near Elkins, WV, the site of last summer's reunion) and William had seven sons that spread out to Illinois, Texas, the Midwest and early into California.

Even Samuel is controversial. Because of the Jonathan generation skip, Cora Hiatt had no place to put Samuel, so she made him a fourth son of William by his second wife Jane. There is no proof of this and much doubt of it's veracity as it belies the detailed will that William wrote just before his death. This is complicated by the 1810 census of Logan Co., KY which lists two Samuels of slightly different ages, with slightly different family numbers. The two listings are never seen again, and there only seems to be one family that emerges with traceable lines, so it is more likely that the listing itself is a double count, something that occurs with some regularity in most 1800 Censuses, particularly if people moved.

It was Jonathan that brought his family to Kentucky. Most likely he was attracted there by his younger brother William who had settled in Nelson Co., KY almost two decades earlier. The 1800 census has Jonathan living in Nelson Co., KY near William. In 1810 Jonathan is in Muhlenberg Co. while Samuel is in neighboring Logan Co. By 1830 Samuel had moved his family to Morgan Co., IL and it is thought that he died in Pike Co., IL, a place where many of children of Jonathan's brother William also settled. His widow, Nancy Elizabeth Orr, is found in Pike Co., IL in 1840.

Samuel has 6 sons: Jonathan, Gideon, Samuel, Daniel, William and John W. Little is known of the son Samuel; it is said he died young when a tree fell on him. Daniel went west to Iowa. A pioneer of the Louisa County area, he died young leaving his widow with four small children. Three of these would move to Idaho and Eastern Washington where their descendants are still found today. In 1850 Jonathan, Gideon, William and John W. are all found in Missouri. After Gideon died in 1867, some of his family and that of John W. went west to Oregon via California. They settled in the area of Douglas Co. Gideon's son Hardin became a riverboat captain on the Columbia River.

Within the first few months of starting the website in 1996, I met Greg Nelson of Keizer, OR. An ardent Chenoweth researcher, Greg has helped document the Oregon lines of Gideon, descending from Gideon's daughter, Charlotte Simmons Chenoweth, who married Edward Morgan, III. Greg has filled in a lot of detail of Samuel as well as his descendants. He also gave me the Simmons lines of Jonathan's daughter Cloe. The Simmons family connected in several areas of Jonathan's family. Gideon's wife was Mary Magdalena "Polly" Simmons, a niece of Cloe's husband, Robert Simmons. Greg believes that it was John W.'s son, Creed Lee, who sent the letter to Cora Hiatt that precipitated the Jonathan skip. Greg is helping to organize the Portland reunion in 2004, I hope you all get to meet him.

Some of the families of Gideon stayed in Missouri and are still living there today. A couple of years ago I ran across Harold Leslie Chenoweth who lives in Independence, MO. He is a son of Leslie Chenoweth and Mary Elizabeth Hancock, a grandson of Hardin E. Chenoweth, and a great grandson of John Milton Chenoweth, one of Gideon's sons that remained in Missouri.

Jonathan and William were both in Gentry Co., MO. The male lines of Jonathan, like those of his uncle, Jonathan, Jr., died out within a generation. William would move north to Iowa and settled in Des Moines. Though Shirley and Richard Harris ran across material on the family of William in Iowa, they never connected the dots. In part the confusion lies in the various successive Census listings of this family, as the ages vary willy-nilly from decade to decade. William and his marriage to Susanna Smith are given in the proper place on page 127 of the Harris book. The later lives of the children are scattered in several places among the unknown lines in the book.

It is only recently that Peter Chenoweth and I have carefully pieced these parts together. Even better, a recent obituary sent to me by Dot Tucker-Houk in Maryland, located Dorothy Cook Cocking, a great granddaughter of William M. Chenoweth and Anna Elizabeth Schuller, still living in Des Moines. (William M. was one of the sons of William Chenoweth and Susanna Smith). Dorothy's investigations in the 1970s had reached the same conclusions about the family of William and Susanna that Pete and I had arrived at much later. A pleasant surprise out of this was that Dorothy had found that a William Harding Chenoweth of Des Moines was a son of Samuel Chenoweth and Fannie A. Schuller. Samuel was another son of William and Susanna. We had found this marriage of Samuel listed on July 26, 1873 in Polk Co., IA. Fannie and Anna Elizabeth were sisters, so this was another case of two brothers marrying two sisters. Until Dorothy came to the rescue, we had not known there was a son of this marriage. Samuel and Fannie have not been found after their marriage.

William Harding is listed on page U632 of the Harris book as William H. with his wife, Nellie Grant Person. This listing is from the 1900 Census which gives them a son and a daughter, Vern and Emma G. More census work by Pete turned up a second son, Halford F. Chenoweth who was one of our unknown Social Security (SSA) listings in California. It becomes a small world. A couple of years ago, I had talked to a Mary Chenoweth in San Bernardino Co., CA. She had been the second wife of a Herbert Fayne Chenoweth. Herbert, now deceased, was raised by his mother in Iowa and had known little of his father who was a Vern. But Mary remembered that he had an uncle by the name of Fayne. It is now apparent that this was Halford Fayne Chenoweth, Pete having uncovered the middle name by obtaining Halford's SSA application.