McKown family tree and gravesites

Descendants of John McKown (1722-1809)
>William McKown 1763-1843
   > John McKown* 1787-1870
     > James French McKown 1818-1880
        > William McKown 1843-1924
           >Alexander McKown 1876-1948
              >Arthur McKown 1911-1932]
There are no living descendants from this line of the McKowns who lived in McKownville, from James French McKown and later. The lines of descent from some of John (the son of William) McKown's other children, and from his brother Absalom and his sister Catherine, probably do have living members.

*previous to 2022/09 given here as John A McKown; primary sources (numerous property deeds, baptism records) and the present grave marker show no second name or initial. This error began in newspaper articles of 1950-1980 vintage.




The family tree available through this page was constructed by Susan Anderson and William Kidd starting from sources in local archives, but has been expanded with extensive additions and revisions based on online documents and information sources, many of these accessed through an ancestry.com subscription. We think it is accurate in the relationships that are shown. It is not claimed to be complete; there may well have been other individuals for whom we have not found evidence, especially in those families farther away from the line of the McKownville McKowns, and there are certainly lines of descent in those families that we have not pursued further.

Please NOTE: the pdf file is a LARGE page, 37 by 112 inches.
It is not suited for printing on letter-sized paper; and you will waste much ink and paper if you manage to succeed in sending it unscaled to an ordinary printer.
It is intended for viewing on-screen in a pdf viewer or browser window; ZOOM IN to read the text and notes.
Use a screen-grab utility to select small parts of the page if you wish to print selections.
            Access the pdf page: Descendants of John McKown family tree

The information on the people shown in that tree, and additional persons, for example linked as parents to spouses, is included in this ged format file (most of the common family tree programs can import this).
Catherine Sprung, the wife of William McKown (1763-1843) was previously married to Absalom Woodworth, who died in 1785. We have traced a limited family tree (Woodworth pdf chart) showing relatives starting from Absalom's father Daniel Woodworth.
John McKown (1787-1870) married Catherine Hilton in 1810. Some of her relatives lived nearby in Guilderland, and her brother Peter married a daughter of George Brown, friend of William McKown and the proprietor of the next tavern and hostelry to the west along the Great Western Turnpike (a family tree descending from Catherine Hilton's parents - Hilton pdf chart).

McKown family origins (Scotland or Ireland?)

McKown gravesites
 William McKown's family memorial at Prospect Hill.
 
The McKownville McKowns are, most of them, now buried in the Prospect Hill Cemetery in Guilderland.
Some of them were originally interred in a family burial plot behind McKown's hotel in McKownville. Those remains and gravestones were moved in 1865. The remains were reburied in Prospect Hill with new stones and two adjacent memorial columns; the old gravestones did not complete the journey and, it was revealed in 1973, had been used to improve the floor of the cellar of an old house near Prospect Hill. That house, and an old hotel/tavern next door, were once owned by a relative, James A McKown, and his wife Alida.











The original gravestone of William McKown (1763-1843)

Three of the old gravestones were reported taken away in 1973 by the people who discovered them. These stones were next seen in 1996 in broken condition on a property near State Farm Road. Probably at this time, or soon after, two members of the Guilderland Water Department took the trouble to transport the fragments to the treatment plant building in the Guilderland Industrial Park, and carefully to arrange and preserve them in wood boxes, as reported in 2013. These broken stones are still there, and were found and imaged by Bill Donato in 2021. Perhaps they might sometime be moved back to McKownville, possibly to the former McKownville water treatment building, near where they originated?










McKowns who moved into the city of Albany, mostly descendants of Robert McKown, ended up, many of them, in Albany Rural Cemetery.
A few others, also more distantly related, are in Oakwood Cemetery in Troy, Greenbush Reformed Church Cemetery in East Greenbush, and Mountain View Cemetery in Castleton.
Farther away, Catherine McKown and her three children were buried in Carlisle Rural Cemetery.

Location maps and links to files containing GPS positions for the McKown gravesites at:
Prospect Hill;
Albany Rural;
Oakwood;
Greenbush Reformed Church;
Mountain View Castleton;
Carlisle Rural

return to McKownville local history page
return to McKownville Improvement Association index page