Mail to:
Amber Dalakas
Please support RootsWeb
December 27, 1914
President’s Message
To the DeHart Family and their Friends:
After investigating I have concluded that the most lasting and appropriate way to keep a permanent record of our annual meetings is to put the information into a booklet and to distribute them.
What I am writing in this booklet is as near true as I have been able to make it with the facts as handed in. By expending a lot of energy and money we might get much fuller and more accurate information. The original intention, however, is for as many of the kin as can to meet each year and get better acquainted with one another and learn what progress each is making toward the things in life that count most. While we are doing these things it is necessary to inquire in to the life of our ancestors see how we are related and how they succeeded so well. The value of living would be very materially diminished if we know that we would be soon forgotten. Because we see our duty along that line is to follow the injunction of the Scriptures where it intimates so many that it is our duty to honor our ancestors and even the race we represent.
The last meeting was largely a memorial meeting; since that meeting it appears that we should carry that idea further and have a part of our program along that line each year. If we do not have the time that we gave for it last year it might be handed to the secretary and placed in the record at a subsequent time. We hope those who were asked at our last meeting to contribute something this year will do so and thus recorded before so much data is forgotten.
We feel grateful for the co-operation given by our relatives who live at other places especially those in Virginia and Tennessee. There are several living at other points who seem willing to give any information they may have regarding the history of the family and many have expressed the desire to be with us at some of our meetings.
We think that probably the most important matter to put in this booklet are the names and addresses of those who have attended our meetings. So far as we can these names will be put in family groups; we have not stated the relationship but that can be designated by pencil markings of those who wish to preserve these booklets.
There are several things that we have not found out well enough to state as facts but we think points to something from which to form reasonable conclusions You can guess as well as I and I will not say as to how much to believe. I will mention some of them:
There is a man by the name of F. J. DeHart in New York state who writes me that he does not know whether he descended from one of the four Huguenot brothers who came to South Carolina but that he met one DeHart in New Jersey and another in Maryland each of whom claimed one of the four brothers for an ancestor.
My grandfather, John DeHart, said he had many DeHart kin in Kentucky. I understand that the relatives of General Richard P. DeHart, late of Indiana, do not claim to be related to the DeHarts of this part of the country but in the General’s biography he relates that he went to visit his relatives in Kentucky but stayed only one day because of the war feelings against such an active participant in that great war.
My Grandfather also said he had two uncles who were preachers. We do not have any records of them that we can call authentic but “Grand Dad” DeHart, of Monroe county, Tennessee, who was an active minister of the gospel until he was one hundred and six years old, was the age to have been a brother to our Great Grandfather Nathan DeHart. We ought to find to find out if we can just how much kin he is to us. I am proud of him anyway because I know he claimed kin with us and also because he had our name and helped so much to add respect to it. He was a noted man and did a wonderful lot to reconstruct a war torn enmity into friendship in Tennessee and Kentucky by reorganizing churches where others had failed.
There is another man we have lost trace of and I will now tell you all I know about him. He lived on a part of the place so long owned by the late John McHan about two miles from Needmore and his name was John DeHart; he lived there about 1826 to 1832; at the same time my Grandfather John DeHart lived at the Jack Freeman place about one mile away. As that DeHart and my grandfather had exactly the same name and were said to be cousins, the neighbors called one “Monkey John”, and in the calls to land lines near that place reference is made to “Monkey John Branch” and the “Monkey John” line. I have never heard where he went when he left this country or anything about him except that he came here from Tennessee. If he was a first cousin who was his father? and was there any more of them and where do they live?
My Grandfather had a younger brother named Martin who lived here a short while and for sometime in Cherokee county and near Copperhill Tennessee. He went from there to Texas and later to Arkansas. I have made an effort to locate some of his family and my letters have been returned to marked “unclaimed”.
About fifty years ago he wrote a letter to my Grandfather indicating that he had some doubt that a man could live well in this country. I remember what I was told that Grandfather wrote was something along this line: "I have so many feather beds, so many horses, and killed so many hogs, and sold so many beef cattle, sold so much corn and had honey seven years old." He was said to have been a thrifty man but lost most of what he had saved during the Civil War and for that reason moved away from Texas.
I have had letters from some of the DeHarts in Kentucky; they do not seem to have much information about the family in this part of the country but speak of the DeHarts in Virginia and the fact our Great Grand father spoke of them as near relatives makes it pretty certain that the Virginia DeHarts are akin to the Kentucky DeHarts and we know that we are related to both by tracing out the facts that have come down to us.
These family traditions are things that should interest every one of the name especially since so many of them have made good names for themselves, and, to some extent, that it should make us feel that it behooves every one of us to hold up their standard of living by making our lives a standard for the generations yet to come.
Another thing we should look after is to keep a closer touch with relatives who go out from this country and in every way strive to encourage them and in that way let them know we recognize them and that our friendship and kindred interest is worth cherishing. It has been suggested that we write every one living away at least once a year and try to get a letter from them that can be reported at the next yearly meeting following. Such a proceedure is not a vicious clannishness, but, on the other hand, it will do something to lead them to believe it is worth something to be related to a family that wishes to maintain a good reputation and live such lives as will make their relatives proud of them.
From the reports we get from families who are not closely related to us and scattered about the United States we are led to believe that we have no apology to make for the name but on an average we have fine examples from them which we would do well to emulate. It does not seem unlikely that every one of the DeHarts originated from the same stock of people. The name indicates that. The fact that the traditions of every one goes back to the same place of origin. The religion of the original stocks indicated the same. The family names of all of them, so far as we know, show a relation to some of these names, viz: Simon, Elias, Elijah, Elisha, William, Nathan, James, Andrew, Peter, Joseph, and some other Biblical names like Aaron, Isaac, Noah, Zeke, and Shadrick. But everyone of them so far as we have been able to hear from those who are well informed say they are of French origin and most of them trace to the Huguenot expulsion as the reason for their coming.
If we are to make these records a permanent sort of permanent sort of family history to be preserved we are putting the Memorials prepared and read at our last meeting in this record. If we choose to make this practice a permanent part of our program we think it appropriate to have the grandchildren of the persons wished to be remembered to prepare and present to the meeting a short correct statement of the outstanding facts about the life so that it can be entered in the next report of the family. This is a way we might well adopt to keep a record that will be more enduring than gravestones because of the several hundred printed most of them will be preserved.
An unexpected phase of history we ran into is that the Harts in France seem to have adopted a prefix showing some things we had not expected. For instance, the Harts in the Rhine Basin are called Rhinehart, and there are other names like Everhart that possibly show that they are from the same stock. There are Harts and DeHarts who are known to be relatives. Some one of the relatives who wants to take up a harmless pastime might do well to study along these lines.
But I hope we will not lose sight of the fact that this organizations was started to enable the relatives to get together at least once a year and get acquainted and learn to know each other better, to see and learn the children and let them see there is one day at least when we can mingle together in prefect equality.
My intention is to have a blank page so that you can write in and make your family history complete up to date. It is to be hoped that this will be done so hereafter there will be no doubt that you are one of us. There are some contradictions and possibly errors in dates and other ways and if you find such errors you ought to make a note of it on the page and if there is another booklet for next year it can be corrected. We have had to rely on the memory of the very old who did not realize the importance to the coming generations of knowing these facts until it was almost too late. If you find where we have been misinformed or for other reasons made statements you do not approve I hope you will write me making the correction. If you do your part the maker of the next booklet will feel more certain he is getting more perfect details. Say, do not be afraid of offending us - we say to you as a relative that on the whole we think we stand among the substantial families, of this part of the county. While we do not wish to claim superiority we do think we belong to the important class called the Great Common People.
I have invited several relatives to have their pictures in the booklet but few seem to wish to do it, but I am putting the picture of my Grandfather John DeHart at the age of eighty-five so that you can see how he last looked; also a group containing his sons who lived to be old, and a cousin their age ranged from sixty-six to seventy-nine years. The pictures are neither the kind I would have preferred but they show the features the best of any available, These things may seem small but I feel some one if not all will appreciate the work it required.
A. J. DeHART, President
Mail to:
Amber Dalakas
Last updated: Thursday, 18-Apr-2024 22:48:27 MDT