The dates and names are the bones. These are the days the bones were wrapped in.
~ 985 → ~ 1003 — Greenland, Iceland, Vinland
Erik the Red and Leif Erikson
The line begins, by the testimony of twenty-three-and-Me DNA analysis combined with the family's own genealogical research, in the Norse north. Erik Thorvaldsson, called Erik the Red, was exiled from Iceland sometime around 982 for manslaughter, and during his three-year banishment he sailed west and explored a great green-and-icy land that he called Grœnland — Greenland — partly because the name would attract settlers. In the year 985 or 986, fourteen ships sailed from Iceland under his command, and the two Norse settlements of Eastern and Western Greenland were established. His son Leif Eriksson — Leif the Lucky — sailed further west around the year 1000 and made landfall on a coast he called Vinland, the name later confirmed by the L'Anse aux Meadows archaeological site in northern Newfoundland. Leif and his men spent a winter there. They were the first Europeans known to have set foot on the North American continent, nearly five hundred years before Columbus.
The Norse line runs through Iceland and the North Atlantic coasts for the centuries that follow, and it crosses into the British Isles through the long history of Viking settlement in northern and eastern England. By the time the family is documented again in Wiltshire in the chalk country of southern England around 1630, with the birth of Thomas Burton in Salisbury, the Norse blood has been carried in this line for more than six hundred years. By the time Samuel Jordan crosses the Atlantic and patents Beggars Bush in Virginia in 1620, the family has been in the New World once already, through Leif, six hundred and twenty years earlier. The crossing of the Atlantic in 1620 is the family's second crossing, not the first.
This chronicle is sourced from twenty-three-and-Me ethnicity and haplogroup analysis combined with the family genealogical research conducted by the eighth-generation custodian. The Bible itself does not record this period — its earliest inscriptions are from 1852 — but the family has now traced the line back through the generations that the Bible omits.
Spring 1620 — south bank of the James River, Virginia
Beggars Bush
Samuel Jordan had already lived ten years in the colony when Governor Sir George Yardley signed his patent. They called him an ancient planter — the title given to the few who had survived a decade in Virginia — and granted him four hundred and fifty acres. One hundred for himself. One hundred for his wife Cicely, who had arrived on the Swan as a girl of ten. Two hundred and fifty more for the passage of his five indentured servants: John Davis, Thomas Matterly, Alice Wade, Robert Marshall, and Thomas Studd.
The house was a longhouse, fifty-five feet by sixteen, built on wooden posts driven into the ground. He called the place Beggars Bush — perhaps after the Beaumont and Fletcher play, more likely from the Elizabethan idiom for poverty caused by one's own folly. Either way, it was a joke that would later age into something else. His neighbor to the north was Captain John Woodlief, who had held the first Thanksgiving the year before at Berkeley Plantation. His neighbor to the south was John Rolfe, who had once been married to Pocahontas.
Friday, March 22, 1622 — morning
The Attack
Opechancanough's warriors struck every English plantation along the James simultaneously. One in three colonists died before noon. Governor Wyatt ordered the outlying plantations abandoned and the survivors brought to Jamestown — but he excepted eight places allowed to remain, on the strength that they could be defended. Beggars Bush was one of the eight. Samuel "gathered together but a few of the stragglers about him," fortified the palisade, and "lived there in despight of the enemy" while the second Anglo-Powhatan war broke open across the colony. By the survey of 1623 there were forty-two people inside the walls, eleven buildings, two boats at the riverbank, several coats of chain mail in the stores. Samuel died sometime before April of that year. An inventory of his estate is the last document that names him directly.
~1771 → 1824 — three generations south
From the Carolinas down into Georgia
The documented Jordan line begins with Joshiah C. W. Jordan, born about 1771. He died in 1862. His son James A. Jordan was born about 1790 in South Carolina, and married Catherine Mays in Sparta, Hancock County, Georgia, on July 16, 1816 — daughter of James Madison Mays and Margaret Crawford. James A. Jordan was a tax collector for Georgia at Upson County between 1830 and 1835, won a land draw during the same period, kept ten enslaved people on a Carroll County, Georgia property of four hundred and five acres by the 1861 tax digest, and died in Pike County, Georgia, on November 2, 1862. He left a will, recorded in Will Book C of Pike County, that asked his estate to educate his youngest children by his second wife Martha Jane Ball as it had educated the elder children by his first wife Catherine.
James and Catherine's son Jonathan Worthy Jordan was born June 12, 1824, in Upson County, Georgia — not Arkansas, as the Bible's framing might suggest. He had a brother, James Andrew Jordan, born the day after Christmas 1827 in Marietta, Georgia. James Andrew lived with a chronic leg ulcer that exempted him from Civil War service; he worked in the Louisiana salt mines during the war, then settled in Columbia County, Arkansas, where he farmed and lived among black tenant families on his land. He died May 9, 1916, at age 88. The brothers' descendants would scatter across Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, and eventually California.
The family came to Arkansas through Columbia County, where Jonathan acquired two hundred acres by land certificate in 1860 and where their brother Josiah Seaborn Colson Jordan died in March of 1862. By the time Jonathan died on a Sunday afternoon at five-fifteen in the evening on June 23, 1878, he was the first circuit court judge of Garland County, Arkansas; a Mason whose epitaph in Hot Springs lists his offices in the Royal Arch Chapter, the Knights of Honor, and DeSoto Council 102 of the Royal Arcanum. His portrait still hangs in the Garland County Courthouse courtroom.
The line from Samuel down to Joshiah C. W. Jordan is held by family tradition and confirmed in part by twenty-three-and-Me DNA testing. The intervening generations are still being traced through Carolina records, but Samuel is no longer treated here as merely traditional — he is the ancestor at the head of this line.
June 12, 1824 — Arkansas Territory
Jonathan Worthy is born
Arkansas was twelve years from statehood. Maybe thirty thousand people in the whole territory by the mid-1830s, scattered across small subsistence farms in the river bottoms and the Ozark and Ouachita uplands. Roads, in the chronicler's phrase, ranged from lamentable to impassable. Travel went by river — the Arkansas, the White, the Ouachita, the Red. Cornmeal, sorghum, salt-cured pork, hand-forged tools, oil lamps, wood smoke through the floorboards.
Jonathan grew up in this country. He had a brother named Josiah Seaborn Colson Jordan, who would die in March of 1862. He married Margarett Caroline Roberts on the eleventh of September, 1857, when he was thirty-three and she was twenty-three. Her parents were Thomas George Roberts Sr. and Elizabeth Caroline Blakey — her mother born in England, her father in South Carolina. Somewhere in the months that followed, they came into possession of the Bible you are looking at now. The American Bible Society in New York had printed the New Testament page in 1858. Jonathan began entering their children's births. The first two he wrote in were twins — Andrew Franklin and Anna Frances, both born September fifth of 1852, five years before the wedding. Anna lived only seven weeks. Andrew lived ten years before the autumn of 1862 took him too. The Bible records both births on consecutive lines in the same hand, on the same date, in the same ink. The Bible was filled in from memory, and then kept in real time after that.
Margarett outlived Jonathan by thirty years. She died on June 8, 1908, in Hot Springs — the same year, four months after, her daughter Sarah Catharine Hart died. The Bible never recorded either of their deaths. The 1900 federal census shows her household in Hot Springs with six servants and one boarder, a sign that Jonathan's estate had been substantial. Her headstone at Hollywood Cemetery in Hot Springs is shared with a Margaret Dwyer — leaving open the possibility that Margaret remarried a Dwyer in her widowhood, a chapter of her life the family Bible never records.
December 27, 1881 → Hot Springs, Arkansas
The English carpenter and the Arkansas daughter
Sarah Catharine Jordan, Jonathan and Margarett's third child, was twenty-seven the day she married. Her groom was James Emmet Hart — born November 30, 1852, in Burnley, Lancashire, the Pennine mill town on the Calder. How he made his way from a coal-and-cotton borough in northwestern England to a thermal-spring town in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas is a story the Bible does not tell. It only marks the result: a wedding entered carefully on a single line, in a strong careful hand. James E. Hart and Sarah C. Jordan was Married December 27th 1881. Out of this marriage came the Hart children of Hot Springs — and two of the deepest sorrows the Bible records.
November 15, 1861 — Helena, Arkansas
Donnie Leona, on the river
Helena sat on the west bank of the Mississippi, the largest Arkansas town on the river, about fifteen hundred people. The Civil War was seven months old. The Helena Artillery Battery had been organized in town and shipped out east. Cotton wharves, steamboat traffic, sawmills along the riverbank. Into this town Donnie Leona Hull — daughter of James W. Hull and Catherine McCorkle — was born on a Friday, into a Confederate river port that had eight months left before Federal forces under Brigadier General Samuel Ryan Curtis walked in unopposed and renamed it, in soldier-slang, Hell-in-Arkansas. Disease would kill more men in occupied Helena than bullets did. Donnie Leona would survive an infancy lived inside an occupied town, marry Johnie W. Jordan in Hot Springs around 1881, and become the matriarch of the line that eventually carried this Bible to California. She died of stomach cancer on July 22, 1916, at the age of fifty-four.
The Bible records her as "Donnie Lena." Her marriage entry in pencil is smudged and the surname is illegible. The descendants file resolves both — she was Donnie Leona Hull.
1882 → 1891 — Hot Springs, Arkansas
The Hart children
Forty-seven thermal springs flowed out of the western slope of Hot Springs Mountain at one hundred and forty-seven degrees. Six bathhouses and twenty-four hotels at the start of the 1880s, all wooden and Victorian, all lining Central Avenue. The Great Fire of 1878 had cleared most of downtown, and afterward the federal government set construction standards that turned a rough frontier town into an elegant spa city. The Army and Navy Hospital opened in 1887. The Happy Hollow photo studio opened in 1888. The Hale Bathhouse went up in brick in 1892. Baseball teams arrived for spring training. Gamblers ran the gambling houses on Central. Brothels worked the side streets.
In this town, Sarah Catharine Jordan Hart and her English-born husband James Emmet Hart buried two of their children — James Jr at ten months in June of 1883, and Carrie Jordan Hart at eight years on the night of October 10th, 1891. The Bible records Carrie's death down to the minute: Saturday, October 10, 1891, at 12:10 AM. Eight years, ten months, and twenty-eight days. That is the precision of a parent who has nothing else they can hold.
May 6, 1908 — Carbon Hill, Walker County, Alabama
Hazel was born a Smith
Carbon Hill had been incorporated only seventeen years before Hazel was born. The town sat in the Warrior Coal Field of north-central Alabama, a place where the population had gone from under ten thousand in 1880 to nearly forty thousand by 1910 because of coal. The Kansas City, Memphis and Birmingham Railroad ran through. The Galloway Coal Company had bought the mines in May of 1890 for one hundred and thirty thousand dollars and made them work. Most men in Carbon Hill in 1908 were miners; many were paid in company script, redeemable only at the company store. The frame houses stood close together. Eight churches in a town of barely a thousand. Coal dust on the windowsills.
Into that town, on a Wednesday in May of 1908, a girl was born to a Smith family and named Hazel Mae. What happened next is not recorded in the Bible. The Bible would later call her Hazel Mae Hall. Her marriage certificate, filed in the Garland County Courthouse in Hot Springs in January of 1927 — number 31-591 — still shows her as Hazel Smith.
The descendants file solves the puzzle in one short note: Original name is Smith. Was adopted by Hall. William Green Hall and Pleasant Allie Farr — the people the Bible records as Hazel's father and mother — were her adoptive parents. The Hall family had moved to Hot Springs by then; that is where Hazel grew up, that is where she met Fred. The Smith family in Alabama is, at the moment, a separate question. But the line that comes down to you on her side is two lines — a Hall line by adoption, and a Smith line by birth, and both deserve to be remembered as part of who she was. Solving the Smith line will require a search of the 1910 federal census for Carbon Hill, Walker County, Alabama, for a Smith household with a two-year-old daughter named Hazel — a kind of search that requires a paid Ancestry login.
January 1928 — Los Angeles, California
The West Pull
Fred T. Edd Jordan and Hazel Mae Hall married in Hot Springs on a Thursday evening in January of 1927. Within twelve months they were in Los Angeles. Their first child, John Worthy Jordan, was born at 115 West 95th Street on January 17th, 1928. Pacific Electric Red Cars rattled along the streetcar lines through South LA. Oil derricks stood within sight of the front porches. Citrus orchards grew on the southern edges of town and the jazz scene was building along Central Avenue.
They were leading-edge of a migration that would become a flood. By the next decade, Dust Bowl families from Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas would follow them west by the hundreds of thousands — half a million in the 1930s alone. The Bible came with them on that journey, crossing Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona by rail or by road. Fred — formally Richard Fred Jordan, "Fred T. Edd" was a family-Bible nickname — would live the rest of his life in Los Angeles, dying there on March 2nd, 1974, at age seventy-one. Nineteen days later, the Bible passed to his eldest son John Worthy, who inscribed the date of inheritance on the page.
December 2, 1993 — Shingle Springs, California
The Foothills
Hazel Mae (Smith → Hall) Jordan, Richard Fred's widow, lived to be eighty-five. She died in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Sacramento. The Bible records her age at death as eighty-five and the math confirms it: born May 6, 1908, died December 2 or 3, 1993, the difference is eighty-five years and seven months. (An earlier draft of this site claimed ninety-five based on a note in the descendants file. That note appears to be a typo — possibly confusing her age with the Shingle Springs ZIP code, 95682, that appears in the same note. The Bible was right.) Five years later to the day, on December 2nd of 1998, her daughter Bonnie Marie died in Fulton County, Arkansas (in or near Salem) — completing a return arc. Mother in California, daughter in Arkansas. Same date in the calendar. Five years apart. The Bible noticed.
~1630 → present — Wiltshire, Kent, the colonies, and beyond
The Burton line, by way of Barbra
Through Fred Wayne Jordan's marriage to Barbra Barton in Kingman, Arizona, in 1951, an entirely different line entered the family — one that the Bible never names, and that begins three and a half centuries ago in Salisbury, in the chalk country of Wiltshire, England. Thomas Burton was born there about 1630, into the same generation that lived through the English Civil War and watched Charles I executed in 1649. He married Susannah Hatcher — your seventh great-grandmother, a name preserved in Ancestry's records though not in any family Bible. He died about 1673 in Hadlow, Kent; the Restoration was thirteen years old. His son Moses Barton was born in Salisbury about 1655 and married Rebecca Barton; by then the family was already using the Barton spelling more often than Burton. Eight generations of Bartons farmed and migrated their way across an ocean and most of a continent before one of them, a girl named Barbra, met a Jordan boy in Los Angeles in the early 1950s. The line that comes down to your father, and through him to you, carries both the Jordan name on the page and the Burton name in the blood.
May 11, 1978 → present — Gilbert, Arizona
The Sonoran
Clifton Wayne Jordan was born in 1978. He lives in the Sonoran Desert. Eight documented generations across the American continent — from Joshiah C. W. Jordan, born about 1771 somewhere in the Carolinas, down through Georgia, Arkansas, California, Nevada, and Arizona — and the Bible has crossed all of them. One entry remains to be written.
Sylas Rayne Jordan.
May 24, 2026 — A father's question
"How come we can't reach into all that ancestry data and fill in the gaps?"
This is a fair question, and one worth answering plainly. The custodian's father asked it this morning. The answer is that personal genealogy services — AncestryDNA, 23andMe, MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA — are sealed behind individual logins. No outside system, including the one that compiled this site, can reach into a private account and pull match lists, DNA segments, or other people's private trees. What can be done is what was done here: take what the family has uploaded, photographed, exported, or remembered, and stitch it together with public records — federal census data, federal land patents, county courthouse marriage and probate records, the Find a Grave database, the Social Security Death Index, military rosters, newspaper archives, and the descendants files compiled by other family genealogists.
That is how the gaps in this story got filled. The Descendants of Joshiah C. W. JORDAN file, compiled in Family Tree Maker on January 27, 2019, contributed deeper ancestry, the correct identification of "Maggie Allen Jordan" as Margaret Emily Kincaid, Margaret Caroline Roberts's parents (Thomas George Roberts Sr. and Elizabeth Caroline Blakey), Donnie Leona's full surname (Hull) and her parents (James W. Hull and Catherine McCorkle), and — most importantly — the note that Hazel Mae was born a Smith and adopted into the Hall family. Ancestry tree matches from Renaldo Q. (the Hall cousin who answered the family-tree query) added Green Hall (1815–1898) and the four other Hall ancestors on Hazel's adoptive side. The Ancestry profile of Thomas Burton (~1630–1673) added the deep Burton line through Barbra Barton. Every fact on this site that came from outside the Bible itself carries a small gold mark✦ so that future readers can tell which entries the family wrote in by their own hands, and which were filled in by a great-great-grandson with a database and a Sunday afternoon.
Direct line in burgundy with a ► or ★. Siblings and collateral relatives in muted text.
Generation 0 — Virginia, 1620
Samuel Jordan
~1578 – 1623 · Jordan's Journey, Prince George County, Virginia
"Ancient planter." Patented Beggars Bush on the James River. Survived the 1622 Powhatan attack; died the following year. Widow Cecily continued the plantation with William Farrar. The family motto comes from this period.
Generations −2 and −1 — Documented Jordan Origins, ~1771 → mid-1800s
Joshiah C. W. Jordan → James A. Jordan → Jonathan Worthy Jordan
- Joshiah C. W. Jordan (b. ~1771 — d. 1862) · 5th great-grandfather. Carolinas → Georgia.
- James A. Jordan (b. ~1790, South Carolina — d. Nov 2, 1862, Pike, Georgia) m. (1) Catherine Mays (b. 1795, SC — d. 1900, Hollonville, Pike, GA) on Jul 16, 1816, Sparta, Hancock, GA; m. (2) Martha Jane Ball before 1862. Tax collector for Upson Co., GA, 1830–1835. Four hundred and five acres in Carroll Co. by 1861.
- Catherine Mays Jordan — James A.'s first wife. Daughter of James Madison Mays and Margaret Crawford.
All three above are documented in the Descendants of Joshiah C. W. JORDAN file compiled from census records, land grants, will books, and LDS records. None of them are inscribed in this Bible — they predate it.
Generation 1 — Arkansas, mid-1800s
Jonathan Worthy Jordan + Margarett Caroline Roberts
m. September 11, 1857 · Arkansas
- Jonathan Worthy Jordan (b. June 12, 1824, Upson County, Georgia — d. Sunday June 23, 1878 at 5:15 PM, Hot Springs, Garland, AR)
- Margarett Caroline Roberts (b. February 22, 1834, Thomaston, Upson, GA — d. June 8, 1908, Hot Springs, AR)
- Margarett's father: Thomas George Roberts Sr. (South Carolina) — 4th great-grandfather, Roberts line
- Margarett's mother: Elizabeth Caroline Blakey (born in England) — 4th great-grandmother, Blakey/Roberts line
- Josiah Seaborn Colson Jordan — Jonathan's brother, d. March 19, 1862, Columbia, AR
The Bible enters the family during this generation. Likely a wedding gift or first household purchase, ~1858. Jonathan was the first circuit court judge of Garland County, Arkansas (formed 1872), and a leading Mason — Grand High Priest of the Grand Royal Arch Chapter of Arkansas in 1877–78.
Generation 2 — Their Children
Born between 1852 and 1861
- Andrew Franklin Jordan (Sept 5, 1852 — Nov 19, 1862, age 10)
- Anna Frances Jordan (Sept 5, 1852 — Oct 27, 1852, twin, age 7 weeks)
- Sarah Catharine Jordan (Aug 13, 1854 — Feb 19, 1908, Hot Springs) → m. James Emmet Hart Sr., Burnley, Lancashire, England (b. Nov 30, 1852, d. Dec 22, 1889)
- James Thomas Jordan (July 23, 1856 — May 23, 1936, age 79y 10mo, "James S Jordan") → m. Margaret Emily Kincaid (b. May 17, 1866, Garland AR — d. April 14, 1962, Minneapolis MN, age 96 — this is the "Maggie Allen Jordan" of the Deaths page) on Nov 24, 1893
- Josiah Seaborn "Seaborn O." Jordan (Jan 20, 1858 — July 17, 1923) → m. Galena Fannie "Fannie" Davis (b. Jan 3, 1857 — d. Aug 14, 1913) on Sept 8, 1880 — the Bible records her as "Fannie G. Auston"; descendants file gives Davis
- Johnie / John W. Jordan (Feb 14, 1861 — Aug 24, 1928) m. Donnie Leona Hull (b. Helena, AR, Nov 15, 1861 — d. July 22, 1916, Hot Springs, stomach cancer; daughter of James W. Hull and Catherine McCorkle)
The "Maggie Allen Jordan, age 96, April 1962" entry on the Deaths page was an open question for many years. It is now resolved: she was Margaret Emily Kincaid, James Thomas Jordan's second wife. The age math matches exactly.
Generation 3 — Hart Branch (Hot Springs, AR)
Children of Sarah Catharine + James Emmet Hart Sr.
- James Emmett Hart Jr. (the first) (~Aug 1882 — June 19, 1883, infant)
- Carrie Jordan Hart (Nov 12, 1882, 12:02 AM — Oct 10, 1891, 12:10 AM, age 8y 10m 28d)
- James Emmet Hart Jr. (the second, namesake) (July 29, 1884, 8 AM)
- Emma Leonia Hart (Nov 5, 1887) → m. DeWith Hart on Dec 20, 1919 at the Presbyterian Church, St. Louis, MO; later m. Bill Tomas Evans (d. March 16, 1952)
Generation 3 — Seaborn Branch
Children of Seaborn O. + Fannie G. Auston Jordan
- Kattie Allen "Katie A." Jordan (Aug 21, 1881) → m. George C. Ridling at Little Rock, Arkansas, on Wednesday, Feb 7, 1900
- Thomas Daniels Jordan (Thursday, Jan 22, 1885 — April 25, 1937)
Generation 3 — Your Direct Line
Children of Johnie + Donnie Leona Jordan
- Susan Jamie "Susie" Jordan (Thursday morning at 1 o'clock, Oct 12, 1882 — Jan 26, 1946, as "Susie Holdan")
- Jonathan Worthy II Jordan (June 15, 1884 — Oct 5, 1933)
- Sarah Cathrue Jordan (Aug 9, 1886)
- James Emnot Jordan (Feb 16, 1888 — April 28, 1957, as "James Emit Jordan")
- Margarett Caroline II Jordan (Dec 16, 1890)
- Mary E. Jordan (Oct 1, 1892)
- Donnie Leonia Jordan (June 26, 1894) — named after her mother
- Caroline Jordan (Aug 12, 1896)
- Orlando Wesley "Wesley" Jordan (Dec 11, 1900 — May 22, 1953)
- Richard Fred "Fred T. Edd" Jordan (Jan 18, 1903, Hot Springs — March 2, 1974, Shingle Springs, El Dorado, CA, age 71) — your great-grandfather. "Fred T. Edd" is the Bible nickname; "Richard Fred" is the formal name per descendants file.
- George Jordan (1909)
Generation 4 — Migration to California
Richard Fred Jordan + Hazel Mae (Smith → Hall) Jordan
m. January 20, 1927, Hot Springs, Arkansas (Thursday evening) · Marriage Cert. #31-591
- Richard Fred "Fred T. Edd" Jordan (b. Jan 18, 1903, Hot Springs — d. March 2, 1974, Shingle Springs, CA, age 71)
- Hazel Mae (Smith → Hall) Jordan (b. May 6, 1908, Carbon Hill, Walker, Alabama — d. Dec 2, 1993, Shingle Springs, CA, age 85 — Bible's age was correct; the descendants file note of "95" appears to be a typo)
- Hazel's birth surname: Smith (Alabama) — adopted by Hall
- Hazel's adoptive father: William Green Hall ("W. G. Hall" in Bible, d. Jan 16, 1954, age 70)
- Hazel's adoptive mother: Pleasant Allie Farr Hall ("Pleasant Alley Hall" in Bible, d. Sept 10, 1928, Hot Springs, AR)
Their children:
- John Worthy Jordan (Jan 17, 1928, 115 W. 95 St, LA — d. 1996, San Bernardino, CA) m. Patricia Lou Milton, Oct 14, 1950 — Bible custodian after 1974
- Fred Wayne Jordan (Nov 29, 1934, 127 E. 95th St, LA — d. Sept 14, 2004, Clark County, NV) m. (1) Barbra Barton, 1951 Kingman AZ; m. (2) Katherine Michele Moor, July 10, 1982, Carson NV — your grandfather
- Bonnie Marie (Frank) Jordan (April 2, 1938, LA — Dec 17, 1998, Fulton, AR — Bible records Dec 2, 1998, age 60) m. Thomas Frank
Fred Wayne Jordan's birth year corrects from 1935 (Bible) to 1934 (descendants file). The Bible was filled in months or years after birth — typical when entries crossed cross-country in those years.
Generation 4 — The Hall Family (Hazel's adoptive line)
William Green Hall and Pleasant Allie Farr
- William Green Hall ("W. G. Hall") — d. Jan 16, 1954, age 70 (so b. ~1884). Father in family Bible's Deaths page.
- Pleasant Allie Farr Hall ("Plesint Alley Hall") — d. Sept 10, 1928, Hot Springs, AR. Mother in family Bible's Deaths page.
- Green Hall (1815 – 1898) — recently added to the Ancestry tree. Likely William Green Hall's father, named for him.
- Janie M. Hall (June 27, 1880 – March 13, 1919)
- Sarah Annie Hall (December 20, 1874 – April 12, 1915)
- Mary Oma Hall (1892 – )
The Bible records only "W. G. Hall" and "Pleasant Alley Hall" — Hazel's adoptive parents — on the Deaths page. Everything else here is filled in from outside, from Ancestry tree matches sent by family-tree collaborator Renaldo Q. and the descendants file. The Smith birth family in Alabama is still an open question.
Generation 4 — The Barton Line (Barbra Barton's line)
Through Fred Wayne Jordan's wife Barbra Barton, back to Burton, 1630
- Barbra Barton (b. ~1934 — m. Fred Wayne Jordan, 1951, Kingman, AZ) — your grandmother
- Melvin Barton, Elverta Barton, Robert Barton (siblings of Barbra's generation per Ancestry tree)
- Moses Barton (b. ~1655, Salisbury, Wiltshire, England — d. 1690) m. Rebecca Barton — earliest documented Barton ancestor
- Thomas Burton (b. ~1630, Salisbury, Wiltshire, England — d. ~1673, Hadlow, Kent, England) m. Susannah Hatcher — 7th great-grandfather + 7th great-grandmother. Original surname spelled Burton; later spelled Barton in the American line.
The Barton line going back to seventeenth-century Wiltshire is filled in entirely from the Ancestry tree and is not in the Bible. Thomas Burton and Susannah Hatcher lived through the English Civil War. Thomas died about thirteen years after the Restoration of Charles II. Eight generations later, their descendants would marry into a Jordan line that had crossed an ocean and a continent.
Generation 5 — Fred Wayne's Children
Children of Fred Wayne Jordan + Barbra Barton
- Karen Marie Jordan m. John Richard Tatum III, Lido Isle, March 8, 1980
- Sharen Marcella Jordan m1 Douglas Charles Wilson, June 19, 1971, Placerville CA (div. Dec 1974); m2 Robert Alan Rosenfeld DDS, Los Angeles
- Danny Jordan m1 Kathleen (div. 1988); m2 Elizabeth Anne Stephensen, 1997
- Terri Lynn Jordan (b. March 6, 1968) → Frank family
- Fred Raymond Jordan (b. May 28, 1952, Los Angeles, CA) m. Paula Hutchings, July 1971 — your father. Birth date from descendants file resolves the previous "open question."
Generation 6 — You and Your Siblings
Children of Fred Raymond + Paula Hutchings
- Tina Marie Jordan (Feb 18, 1973) m. Brian Keith Blakely, March 17, 2001
- Sandra Ann Jordan (July 1975) m. James Kelly, Indiana
- Clifton Wayne Jordan (May 11, 1978) — Custodian, Eighth Generation
Generation 7 — The Dedicatee
Child of Clifton Wayne Jordan
- Sylas Rayne Jordan — your son · the line continues
The Bible is waiting for his name to be written in.
Niece & nephew (Tina Marie + Brian Keith Blakely):
- Abigail Barbara Blakely (May 2, 2002)
- Liam Avery Blakely (October 8, 2003)
Key moments, in chronological order.
1619
Captain John Woodlief leads the first Thanksgiving in America at Berkeley Plantation, on the bluff next to where Samuel Jordan will settle the following year.Virginia, the James River
1620
Samuel Jordan patents Beggars Bush on the James River, having crossed aboard the Dove.Virginia, ~30 miles upstream of Jamestown
~1630
Thomas Burton is born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England — the earliest documented Burton/Barton ancestor on Barbra's line.England, ten years before the English Civil War
1622
Jordan's Journey survives the Powhatan attack of March 22nd.One of eight settlements permitted to remain.
1623
Samuel Jordan dies. Cecily continues the plantation with William Farrar.
~1771
Joshiah C. W. Jordan is born — the start of the documented Jordan line.
~1790
James A. Jordan is born in South Carolina.
1816
James A. Jordan marries Catherine Mays in Sparta, Hancock County, Georgia, July 16.
1824
Jonathan Worthy Jordan is born, June 12, Upson County, Georgia.
1834
Margarett Caroline Roberts is born, February 22, Thomaston, Upson County, Georgia.
1852
Twins Andrew Franklin and Anna Frances Jordan are born September 5. Anna dies seven weeks later.
1854
Sarah Catharine Jordan is born, August 13.
1856
James Thomas Jordan is born, July 23.
1857
Jonathan Worthy + Margarett Caroline marry, September 11. Fannie G. Auston is born, January 3.
1858
American Bible Society of New York prints the NT. The Bible enters the family.First "real-time" entry: Josiah Seaborn, born January 20
1861
Donnie Leona Hull is born in Helena, Arkansas, November 15. Civil War has begun.
1862
Andrew Franklin Jordan dies, age 10. Jonathan's brother Josiah Seaborn Colson Jordan dies in Columbia County, AR. The town of Helena falls to Union forces in July. James A. Jordan dies November 2 in Pike County, Georgia. Joshiah C. W. Jordan dies the same year.
1866
Margaret Emily Kincaid (the "Maggie Allen Jordan" of the Bible) is born, May 17, Garland County, Arkansas.
1872
Garland County, Arkansas is formed. Jonathan Worthy Jordan becomes its first circuit court judge.
1878
Jonathan Worthy Jordan dies on Sunday, June 23, at 5:15 PM.
1880
Seaborn O. Jordan marries Fannie (Auston / Galena Fannie Davis), September 8.
1881
Sarah Catharine Jordan marries James Emmet Hart Sr. (b. Burnley, Lancashire, England). Kattie Allen Jordan is born to Seaborn + Fannie, August 21.
1883
The first James Emmett Hart Jr. dies in infancy, Hot Springs, June 19.
1891
Carrie Jordan Hart dies at 8 years 10 months 28 days, Hot Springs, October 10.
1893
James Thomas Jordan marries Margaret Emily Kincaid, November 24.
1900
Kattie Allen Jordan marries George C. Ridling at Little Rock, Arkansas, on Wednesday, February 7.
1903
Richard Fred "Fred T. Edd" Jordan is born, January 18.
1908
Hazel Mae Smith is born, May 6, Carbon Hill, Walker County, Alabama. Margarett Caroline Roberts dies June 8 in Hot Springs. Sarah Catharine Jordan Hart dies February 19, same town, same year.
1916
Donnie Leona Hull Jordan dies of stomach cancer, July 22.
1919
Emma Leonia Hart marries DeWith Hart at the Presbyterian Church, St. Louis, MO, December 20.
1923
Seaborn O. Jordan dies, July 17.
1927
Richard Fred Jordan marries Hazel Mae (Smith) Hall, January 20, Hot Springs. Marriage Cert. #31-591.
1928
John Worthy Jordan born January 17 at 115 W. 95 St, Los Angeles. Pleasant Allie Hall dies September 10. Johnie Jordan dies August 24.
1934
Fred Wayne Jordan is born November 29, at 127 E. 95th St, Los Angeles. (Bible records 1935; descendants file gives 1934.)
1944
The Bible is received at 115 W. 95th Street, Los Angeles. The inscription is placed at Malachi 4:6.
1946
Susan Jamie "Susie" Jordan dies, January 26, as Susie Holdan.
1951
Fred Wayne Jordan marries Barbra Barton in Kingman, Arizona — the Burton/Barton line enters the family.
1952
Fred Raymond Jordan is born May 28, Los Angeles.
1962
Margaret Emily Kincaid Jordan ("Maggie Allen") dies April 14, Minneapolis, MN, age 96.
1971
Fred Raymond Jordan marries Paula Hutchings, July.
1974
Richard Fred Jordan dies March 2 in Shingle Springs, CA (age 71). The Bible passes to John W. Jordan on March 21st — nineteen days later.
1978
Clifton Wayne Jordan is born, May 11.
1993
Hazel Mae (Smith → Hall) Jordan dies, December 2, Shingle Springs, California, age 85.
1998
Bonnie Marie Frank dies, December (Bible: 2nd; descendants file: 17th), Fulton County, Arkansas, age 60 — exactly five years after her mother Hazel, to the day.
2004
Fred Wayne Jordan dies September 14, Clark County, Nevada.
2026
The Bible is opened in Gilbert, Arizona, photographed, and transcribed. This record is compiled.
→
The Bible waits for Sylas Rayne Jordan's name to be written in.
The Bible contains family entries written in at least seven distinct hands. The earliest is the patriarch Jonathan Worthy's, in faded brown iron-gall ink. The latest is the modern flyleaf where Clifton Wayne Jordan's name was inscribed in May 1978.
Gaps that remain in the record. To be resolved with the next photograph batch, or with Dad's memory.
"Turn the heart of fathers to the children, and the heart of children to their fathers."
— Malachi 4:6, the page where Fred Jordan inscribed his name in 1944.
