Isaac Harris, of Brunswick County, Virginia, was the father of six sons and two daughters that have been identified to date. Two of his sons were Revolutionary War soldiers. After the war, the sons lived in Rutherford County, North Carolina. John and William died there, and many of the descendants of William's son, Harbert, remained in the area, as well as some of John's descendants.

Benjamin, Reuben, and Zachariah settled in Greenville County, South Carolina. From there Zachariah moved to Franklin County, Georgia. Later, Wooten, Benjamin, Reuben, and Zachariah moved to Tennessee. Wooten lived in Hickman County, Tennessee. Zachariah also lived there at first, but soon moved to Humphreys County. Reuben lived in Jackson County, and Benjamin lived in White County, where he died. Both Wooten and Zachariah moved to Illinois before 1830, and Reuben, Benjamin's widow, Rutha, with her son, Silas Harris, were there before 1840.

In the 1950s, my sister, Deon (Moulton) Rasmussen did research in Fayette and Montgomery Counties, Illinois, where Zachariah and Wooten Harris lived. Her purpose was to find additional information that would give clues to extend the line back in an effort to find the antecedents of the six brothers. She, with the help of Esther Hoffman, a local researcher, traced the descendants of Wooten and Zachariah with their many intermarriages with other families in the area. Shortly before Deon's death in 1964, she gave her records to me. Later, I joined the Fayette County, Illinois, Genealogical Society and received their quarterly publication Fayette Facts. This gave me the opportunity to exchange information with many others who were working on these same families. Esther Hoffman, Deon's researcher, had passed away, leaving her genealogical records with her cousin, Audrey Probst, of Fillmore, Illinois. We corresponded for many years and shared our records.

Still later, I submitted a history of the Harris Family to the editors of the Bulletin of the Genealogical Society of Old Tryon County, and corresponded with Margie Cox of Marion, North Carolina. I am indebted to her for sharing her research on the descendants of her ancestor, Harbert Harris, son of Isaac's oldest son, William. Alice Duncan, a descendant of Reuben, had considerable research material on his family, and we shared our research with each other. In addition, data on all the brothers' families was found by research at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Since this version of my history will be available on the internet, I have chosen not to include families who have many children born after 1900. However, when there are a number of children born before 1900 in the family, I may include the names of the rest of the children but not their dates.

In presenting this genealogical history, I have chosen to divide the records into parts. In Part I, the records and basic background material concerning Isaac Harris's family is given. Each of Isaac's children and descendants are featured in a separate section of the book, Parts II through IX. You can go directly to a particular part, with a mouse click on one of the hotlinks below, or on the navigation bar at the top and bottom of this page:

1. Foreword (this document)
2. Part I -- Harris Beginnings
3. Part II -- William Harris Family
4. Part III -- John Harris Family
5. Part IV -- Wooten Harris Family
6. Part V -- Benjamin Harris Family
7. Part VI -- Elizabeth Harris Family
8. Part VII -- Mary Harris Family
9. Part VIII -- Reuben Harris Family
10. Part IX -- Zachariah Harris Family

Throughout the book, I have used certain standard approaches to presenting the data that are commonly used in genealogical publications.

Showing basis for approximate year of birth for individuals:

Extensive use was made of census records and other records wherein an age at a specific event was recorded. I have made it a practice to record the age and the year of the event to show the basis for the approximate age given for that person. Therefore, whenever a person's birthdate is determined from an age given in connection with a specific event, the age and year of the event is recorded in the following manner:

1. If a marriage was the event, then it would be recorded in this manner: "b 1864 (19-1883)," meaning that person was age 19 in that year, and you would expect that person was married in 1883.
   
   
2. In some cases, an age may be determined by ages indicated in a probate record. Usually, children over the age of 14, but under the age 21 years, were allowed to choose their own guardian, while those under age 14 were assigned a guardian by the court. At times, their age on their birthday that year is given. These records would be recorded in the same way.
   
   
3. If a census is the event, a person's approximate year of birth, etc., would be recorded as follows: "b 1825 (25-1850)," meaning the person's age was given as age 25 in an 1850 census record. In the 1900 census, the month and year of birth is given, so it seemed unnecessary to record the person's age that year. When the census was before 1850, the ages were recorded for different age brackets. Example: If a person was between age 10 and 15 years of age in 1830, "(10-15, 1830)" would appear immediately following the approximated year of his/her birth. A person whose age was under 10 years in 1820 may have "(-10 1820)" following his/her approximated year of birth, and so forth.
   
   In some census years, a person who was under age one year would have their age recorded in months. Also all ages were supposed to be as they were on June 1 of the census year. Example: 3/12 or 11/12. Usually the month that a child was born was called for on the record. In such cases, I have recorded the event as follows: "b Nov 1869 (age 8 mo 1870 b Nov)."
   
   

Identifying families with detailed family listings:

In each family listing, children are listed in chronological order, with an ordinal numeral to show first, second, etc., children. Just in front of the name, an asterisk indicates that there is also a family listing for that person and his/her descendants.

Hotlinks to subsequent family listings:

When a person shown as a child also has his or her own family listed elsewhere in the book, besides the asterisk before the name, you will note the name shows in a different color, normally blue, and is underlined. This is an indication that this is a "hotlink." You can click the left mouse button on the link, and it will jump directly to that listing. [The following example is not a hotlink, but they look just like this. ] Due to the complexity of setting hotlinks to jump back to the spot you came from, you will need to use the "Back" button of your browser to return to the place you jumped from. If you make several such jumps in succession, then it will take an equal number of clicks on the "Back" button to return to your initial place in the book.

Use of capital letters for surnames:

In the family listings, I have used capital letters for the SURNAMES, in line with common practice in genealogical listings. There is an example of this below.

Use of bold type to highlight names of spouses:

Within the family listings, I have put the names of the spouses of the descendants of Isaac Harris in bold type, as an aid to readers who are searching for the spousal family lines. You will note an example of this in the next section:

Identifying family lines of cousins who intermarried:

Among the descendants of Isaac Harris, there are several instances where cousins married one another. To clarify these situations, I have shown the family line of the spouses by indicating the generation steps from Isaac Harris by use of superscripts and parenthetical annotations. For example: "Wooten W. Hallford . . . married, second, Sarah M. Harris, daughter of William B. Harris ³ (Wooten², Isaac¹) December 25, 1884 . . ."

Here is a somewhat more complex example, from the same family listing: "Lucy Caroline HALFORD b 29 Jun 1841; m John Wesley Cook⁵ (b Jul 1847 IL, s/o William Thomas COOK⁴ [Frances Harris³, Wooten², Isaac¹] and Minerva RILEY). . ."

Finding your way through the book:

Each part of this book begins with the known facts about one of the children of Isaac Harris. After the narrative, I have listed the currently known descendants of that child's line. Next comes the listing of the next generation's children, and so on down the line. This is where organization of the lists may seem confusing at first.

Each generation's children are listed in order of birth. The next family listed after the list of children will be the children of the first child in the list. The next family group will be that of the oldest child of the oldest child above, on down the line.

In each case, we follow the children of the children of the children, in numeric order, before picking up with the second child of the prior listing. There are separate headings set for each child who has descendants of his or her own. Thus, the listings trace the descendants of the eldest, then the next in line, etc., until all descendants of that line are listed. Then it goes back to the second oldest, tracing all that child's generations, before reverting to the third oldest, etc. The pattern repeats in each generation.

That's why we have used the "hotlinks" described above as an aid in tracking an individual family through each part of the book. If the ancestor of interest to you happens to be the third or fourth child in the first generation, a mouse click will get you directly to the correct family listing. If we were to use a system of indenting each generation a few spaces, by the time you have scrolled down a few pages you would not be able to see the relationship between the indents any longer, anyway. So the hotlink approach seems to be a better method. And, in some cases, where descendants of one line have intermarried with descendants of a different basic line, the hotlinks will jump to the entries in a different part.

If you end up losing place in the listings, you can simply scroll up to the top of the page, or down to the bottom, and use the navigation bars provided there to get back to the beginning of any specific part of the book.