Some Descendants of John Culver

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Some Descendants of John Culver

Title: Some Descendants of John Culver born 1700, died 1766, Somerset County, Maryland, and related families
Author: Lorena Martin Spillers
Publication date: 1963
Publisher: Tulsa, Oklahoma

• Key to Sources, p,273

• WikiTree Profiles that use this source

Available online at these locations:

• https://archive.org/details/somedescendantso00spil/page/n3/mode/2up

• https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/005730397

Library Holdings:

• https://search.worldcat.org/title/4393739

In Honor of Mrs. Lorena Martin Spillers

I began my Culver research at a Culver/Admire family reunion around Fort Worth, Texas when I was about 10 years old. I was amazed that I could possibly be related to all those people. That day I recorded my relatives’ names on a piece of notebook paper, and that was the start of my tree. Sixty-five years later I am still trying to improve it.

As an adult, many years after that family reunion, I became more serious about researching my Culver line. In the early 1990’s I started subscribing to online databases for genealogy information and began gathering what I could at that time. That was about the time I discovered the existence of a book called Some Descendants of John Culver by Lorena Martin Spillers. A couple of phone calls, a couple of letters and a check later, I convinced a lady at the Allentown Public Library in Pennsylvania in to make me a Xerox copy and mail it to me. As I recall, the cost was $104, but well worth that many times over to me. I have been using it as reference ever since. These days you can get a hard-bound reprint on Amazon for about $27, or the National Archives has a free online copy that was added in 2018.

I found that Mrs. Spillers’ book contained the names of some of my most distant Culver relatives. Her research made putting the pieces together much simpler and less time consuming. I found the names of my 2nd great grandfather Lafayette Culver, his father Seaborn J. Culver (1804-1829), and his father Nathan Andrew Culver (abt 1746-abt 1828). Of course, that trail leads to George Culver Sr. (1721-1782), and to John Culver Sr. (1693-1766), the subject of her book. Someone at that family reunion told me that my great great grandfather’s name was Fate; but it took years for me to realize that it was sort for Lafayette.

Mrs. Spillers’ research guided me to places where I could verify or (in very few places) correct her names and dates with records perhaps not available to her earlier. She leaves the door open to the possibility of a connection to the Edward Colver the Puritan line, but she was unable to make that connection. Additionally, I have found no researcher who has been able to make that connection with anything other than conjecture; no church or municipal records have been found that connects this John Culver to that Edward Colver line.

As she describes in the preface to her book, she performed “first-hand” research and collected materials for over 25 years on Culver-Spillers and allied families. Mrs. Spillers said she traveled thousands of miles and searched county records in Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Texas. Around 2000 I subscribed to Ancestry.com and began studying their databases. At that point all the research became much easier. I created a tree back then, and today I have over 15,000 names in it.

But Mrs. Spillers’ work was the basis for initially expanding my tree, then adding to it as the years went by. So, I want to praise and honor Eudora Lucy Ann “Lorena” Martin-Spillers (1890-1981) for her tireless work over all those years. I will take a little of the credit for my tree, but mostly the Culver side was guided by her research and writing.

Written by Jim G. Culver, 6th great grandson of John Culver, Sr. -2022.

Errata

p120: William J S Culver's year of death appears to be a typo. 1947 is the year his wife died. He died in 1928. see William J S Culver (1861-1928)

p120: George S Culver appears to be a duplicate entry from p183. see Isaac H Culver (1834-1900)

p183: George S Culver appears to be a duplicate entry from p120 (p183 is the correct place)

p183: Joshua James Staten Culver married Adeline Long Dec 1869. This marriage is possibly a census error mixup with a Lydia Adeline (Miller) Culver (1842-1913) that married his brother George Albert Culver (1849-1927). see research notes on Joshua James Staten Culver (1843-1873)

No other errors have been found in this publication have been identified. When found, please list the problem(s) here, and include a link to a source that describes the problem.

WikiTree Syntax

• <span id='Spillers'></span>Spillers, Lorena Martin ''[[Space: Some Descendants of John Culver| Some Descendants of John Culver]]'' (Tulsa, OK, 1963), [ Page ].

• <ref>[[#Spillers|Spillers]], [ Page ].</ref>