Reaching Out to Many Branches of the Osborne/Wilson Tree

by Glenn N. Holliman

Those of you reading this posting are descendants of Frances Wilson Osborne (1851 - 1940) and George Washington Osborne, Jr. (1846 - 1927). The ancestors of this couple braved the North Atlantic to come to the New World. Some of these persons, our great grandparents, uncles and aunts, became the most famous frontier men and women in American history. Many were pioneers who fought Native Americans, later the British and Tories, and finally each other in a Civil War that took the lives of many of our direct ancestors.

The descendants and ancestors of this couple go by the names of Osborne, Wilson, Greer, Wilcoxson, Brown, Boone, Morris, Wright, Adema, Noeltner, Aker, Sherwood, MacKenzie, Hayes, Holliman, Stansbery, Payne, Murphy, Hensley and Jahn. No doubt more can be added.

By using this blog site articles and photos can be archived and available to all family members. Your comments, articles, family trees, corrections, photographs, diaries and old letters are most welcome. In this format I, you and loved ones can hand off our family stories to the future. I invite all to join. My email address is Glennholliman@Embarqmail.com.

Frankie Osborne, as my generation's great grandmother is known, was born deep in the Appalachian Mountains of Ashe County, North Carolina. Millard Fillmore was president of the United States when she entered this world, and Franklin D. Roosevelt when she died. She lived through and during four major wars including the one that most affected her life, the American Civil War (1861-1865).

This triple photo display of George Washington Osborne, Jr is in an album passed down from Mayme Osborne (one of G.W.'s two daughters) to Louise Stansbery Sherwood and her sister, Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick. G.W. appears to be in his 50s which would date these pictures in the 1890s.

Frankie's father and several cousins died in that war, and her husband to be, George Washington Osborne, Jr. was wounded twice. If G.W. (as he was known) had not encountered a nasty knife thrust into his side from a Union sympathizer, he and Frankie might not have met and married. She was 14 when G.W. came to her house, deep in Wilson Cove near Trade, Tennessee, to recuperate from his injury.

Frankie nursed the 19 year old G.W., and in January 1867, when she was all of 15 1/2 years, they married. That marriage lasted until G.W.'s death in June 1927 in Bristol, Tennessee. Six sons and two daughters grew to maturity from this couple.