Mt Vernon Langfords

Mt Vernon Langfords

Fielding Langford was born in Crab Orchard, Lincoln county, Kentucky and lived there with a number of Langford family members. About 12 miles from Crab Orchard, in Rockcastle county, is the town of Mt. Vernon, and there are Langfords living in that town. In the past we have assumed that the two groups of Langfords are related, but YDNA tests show that the male-lines of the two groups do not have a blood relationship, because the two male-lines have different YDNA.

YDNA gives no information about a female link into a family, and that leaves open the possibility that the two groups of Langfords could have a blood relationship via an illegitimate son of a female Langford who took the maiden name of his mother. The illegitimate son would have the YDNA of his father, who would likely be unknown, even though that son was known by his mother's maiden name. Similarly, if one son were adopted instead of being illegitimate, his YDNA would be that of his blood father, even though he was known by the name of his adopted father. In these examples, the common ancestor of the two Langford groups would be the father of a daughter who had an illegitimate son, or the adopted father of an adopted son.

It is the nature of YDNA testing, that the time span going back to a common ancestor could be large, perhaps 4 or 5 generations to 20 or more generations. Thus, if a common ancestor of the Crab Orchard and Mt. Vernon Langfords exists, he probably lived a number of generations before Fielding Langford. He may have lived in Great Britain prior to migrations of some of his descendants (blood or adopted) to the US.

Comments about an adopted or illegitimate relationship between the two groups of Langfords are, of course, speculation. A more likely situation is that when surnames were adopted in Great Britain, persons not related chose the name Langford or its variant spellings, and their descendants spread throughout Great Britain and, through migration, to the US. Some of those descendants settled in Crab Orchard and Mt. Vernon, having the same surname but no genetic relationship. I've mentioned the possibility of an adoption or illegitimacy relationship with the hope that researchers won't assume there is no relationship of any kind between the two groups but will keep their mind open to the possibility of a social relationship between the two groups.

Even though this site is focused on the genealogy of Fielding Langford, information about the Mt. Vernon Langfords is being kept in this site in case it proves useful to persons who research the Mt. Vernon line and/or the Crab Orchard line.

The Langford families were prominent in the history of Mt. Vernon, and the old Langford house was the scene of interesting activities, ranging from stage coaches, to Indians, to Civil War battles, to the storage of civic records.

The Online Mt. Vernon Langford Genealogical Data contains pictures of some of the Langfords. These pictures are set up to be used with PAF 4 or 5. Click the following link to get a list of the Langford pictures. Right-click the pictures to download them. Do not change the names of the pictures. For use with PAF 4 or 5, save the pictures in a folder called langfordwebmultimedia that is in the folder containing your PAF 4 or 5 database.

Download Langford Multimedia folder for PAF 4 or 5

Some of the data are given as pdf files that can be viewed with the Adobe® Reader. If you have a recent version of a web browser, you probably already have the reader; if not, click the icon to obtain the reader. If you have problems reading the pdf files, click on the icon to download the latest version of the reader. While you are viewing the pdf files, you can save them to your hard drive by clicking File and then Save.

The Adobe reader version 6.0.0 has problems. It is slow, and clicking the back arrow takes forever to return to the web page that linked to the pdf file. Adobe has fixed those problems with version 6.0.2 Use the icon below to download and install version 6.0.1 Start the reader via the icon (put on your desk top). Go to Help and select Updates to go to version 6.0.2

If you would like to receive occasional notices about changes and additions to this site, send an email to Allen Leigh at the address given below and request that you be added to the email list for the Fielding Langford site. I respect your privacy, and your address will be used only for the occasional notices and will not be given to anyone. Put Langford in the Subject so my spam program won't delete your email.