One of the articles in Beyond Germanna that most pleased me was written by Sally T. Baughn about Eve Baumgardner Boughan. This was almost fifteen years ago, in the July 1991 issue, on page 151. I will use many of her words in this and following notes.
"My husband and I have just made a connection that gave us the surname of his great-great-great-great-grandfather’s wife, a name that family members have been seeking for at least sixty years, perhaps longer. It happened this way:
"A few months ago, my husband and I went to our local library to see what they had added to their genealogy room since our last trip there. One of the previously unseen items was a subscription to Beyond Germanna which I began to look through. During my page turning, I notice the surname ‘Deer’ which had arisen during some previous research on the Baughn family. Upon stopping to look more closely, I read, ‘Eve Baumgardner m. (prob.) Ambrose Bohannon.’
"Imagine my curiosity! In all our research through publications and papers from Culpeper County, VA, there had been only one Eve and she was the wife of Mordecai Boughan. Now not only was someone named Eve, but she had a brother named Joel, a half-brother Moses, and half-sisters Catherine and Susanna. Of her ten children, our Eve named two sons Joel and Moses, and two daughters Catherine and Susanna. Additionally, a Jeremiah and a Simeon Deer had lived at the same time in Culpeper County, and Eve had two sons named Jeremiah and Simeon.
"Reading on, my excitement grew upon finding that John Deer had left an inheritance to Eve ‘Bohan’, who was presumed to be the wife of Ambrose Bohannon, coexecutor of John Deer’s will. In my heart of heart, I knew it had to be our Eve and ‘Bohan’ was simply another version of a phonetic spelling of Boughan. Now to prove it!
"A phone conversation with the author of the article, Ardys V. Hurt, left us still wondering, as she did not know a great deal about Eve, but she promised to do what she could. It took a bit of time, during which we were still running into some stone walls in Virginia, but Mrs. Hurt came through. When we were beginning to lose hope, the mailman delivered a letter which read, in part, ‘Eve Baugh was definitely the daughter of Frederick and Catherine Baumgartner.’ The proof would be forthcoming as soon as copies were made. Three days later, the proof came, in the form of a copy of a deposition made by Eve Vaughan/Baughan in March 1828, wherein Eve stated she was the sister of Joel Bumgarner and Dolly Fleshman."
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.