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6o
Typed 5-26-61
Lake Placid, Fla. March 26, l?6l
Mr. Henry Poellnitz Johnston P. 0. Box ?66l Birmingham 13, Ala.
Dear Mr. Johnston:
Your very nice letter came two days ago. It was most interesting and to know you are both a historian and a genealogist made it more interesting.
It is, a beautiful day here in South Fla., a day excellent for the National Sport Car Races in Searing just 14 miles away, to be held today.
For the last three days I have been doing some research on the DeVane line for a descendant who wishes to know their connections or relationship. In view of this work I am today going to give you a brief DeVane history.
This story may be quite long, but I hope you will bear with me. I am writing this letter without giving the service of documentary evidence in establishing the DeVane genealogy in America. Some of the stories have been handed down without documentary evidence. Some differ somewhat, but in the main seem to have basis for fact.
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As a boy, my father told us children that we had a heritage to be proud of; that the blood of kings ran in our veins. Being a boy I thought little of it. My father died 35 years ago. To be brief, I retired in 1951* not knowing but very little about my people I began the job to learn something of them. The story was, most of the elder DeVane?s were dead, and it became my luck to get it the hard way?research, old bibles, court records etc. has been the basis of research.
I made trips to my father's birth-place seeking information, on to Ga. and N.C. where I had been told the DeVane's first landed in America. Now I shall proceed with the Devane history briefly.:
The first Thomas DeVane landed in N.C., New Hanover County in the 1720s. One genealogist who complied the Williamson Murphy records states: