Our Berrys in Frontier America#

A History of Robert & Elizabeth Cate Berry’s 10 Children

By Benjamin Berry Henderson Sr.

In 1997, a retired Westinghouse engineer from Raleigh, North Carolina, visited Texas and saw a family tree on a computer screen for the first time. He came home, subscribed to Ancestry.com, and began a journey that would last the rest of his life.

Ben Henderson knew almost nothing about his great-grandfather, John Robert Berry, when he started. Over the next twenty years, he uncovered a family that stretched from Princess Anne County, Virginia, to Orange County, North Carolina, and then scattered across the American frontier — to Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa. He found cousins he never knew he had, in states he’d never visited. Those connections became one of the great joys of his life.

This book is the result of that journey. It is also the work of countless family researchers who shared what they knew, compared notes, and pieced together a story that spans more than 300 years and seven generations.

“I only knew a little about my great grandfather, John Robert Berry, when I subscribed to Ancestry.com myself. I am now 87 years old and decided to add my life story to my web page berrytree.org.”

— Ben Henderson

Ben passed away on June 6, 2020, at the age of 90. This digital edition is presented here so that the family he spent two decades finding can continue to read, share, and build on his work.