I, J. C. Stephenson, the fifth son and the sixth child of William Watson Stephenson and his wife, Melinda Johnston, late residents of Lawrence County, Alabama, am about to write a short genealogical sketch of my ancestors; also of some of their descendants. This is made at Chattanooga, Tennessee, in the year 1905, after the writer had passed his eighty-third birthday. But it is not to be inferred that he was at the time of writing eighty-three years old.
To trace the genealogy of ancestors long since dead, without records, is an undertaking attended by many difficulties and some uncertainties. Young people do not care for nor appreciate the importance of genealogical history, but when the young have become old, they in vain seek such history. But the sources of information from which they might have obtained such history have been removed. Old people after death, tell no history, unless it be found on their tombstones. Would that I had made inquiry when I might have done so with much profit in knowledge.
As far back as we can trace our forefathers is to Henry Stephenson, a shepherd, who was born about the year 1698. The first part of the eighteenth century, he lived at Ricalton, in the parish of Oxnam, Roxburgh County, Scotland, six miles from the city of Jedburgh. There are some conflicting accounts as to the members of his family. But all accounts agree that he reared six children, and that Robert was the
