SALISBURY — A local man hopes that his efforts to learn more about his twin ancestors will serve as a blueprint for others wanting to learn about their histories.
For the past few years, Salisbury resident Scott Ketchie has worked to learn more about the lives of Stephen Ketchie and Benjamin Ketchie, twin brothers born almost two centuries ago.
Scott Ketchie said that learning about his grand uncles was a challenging yet rewarding genealogical undertaking.
“I’ve studied the Ketchie family for two years,” said Scott Ketchie. “I recently taught a class at Catawba College last fall.”
The Ketchies were born in this area on Aug. 19 in 1845.
“Today marks 181 years since they were born,” Scott Ketchie said, adding that although the pair were identical twins, their caregivers didn’t have trouble telling them apart.
“Benjamin and Stephen were twins; Benjamin was 9.5 pounds at birth,” Scott Ketchie said. “My father always told me this: Stephen was a tiny 1.5 pounds at birth.”
The pair’s mother died in childbirth, and they were taken in by their father, who died a couple of years later. With no will, the pair was split.
“For Stephen and Benjamin, they were taken to two separate caretakers,” Scott Ketchie said.
Stephen was taken in by Moses Freeman, who worked as a cobbler in Salisbury. Benjamin was sent to the Walton family.
“Benjamin, from what I read in the newspaper in 1902, he did not like his orphan father.” Scott Ketchie said. “But from orphan boys, they became brothers. They raised each other.”
Although separated into two different households, they both lived in the area. They grew up like childhood friends prior to the onset of the Civil War.
“When the Civil War erupted, they showed grit and loyalty,” Scott Ketchie said. “They both participated in harsh battles, like Cold Harbor; they suffered under Petersburg. They spent nine months in the Petersburg trenches together.”
After reading a number of papers from that time, Scott Ketchie learned about a food-related incident that happened during the war.
“Stephen and Benjamin were low on rations when they were in the Winston area,” Scott Ketchie said. “They walked off from their unit, and they went into a potato field where they thought, ‘Hey, we should get as many rations as we could.’ They picked potatoes and about three Union soldiers came down from where they were, and they shouted out, ‘That’s enough picking potatoes there.”
This anecdote was printed in the paper and dictated by Stephen Ketchie’s son, Squire Ketchie.
After the war, the pair would move back to the Salisbury area. Benjamin became a founding member of Park Avenue Methodist Church on East Council Street. Stephen went into politics, serving as a longtime member of Spencer’s governing board.
Scott Ketchie first learned about his grand uncles from his father. Scott Ketchie said that his father, starting in the ’80s, performed his own genealogical investigation into the twins. A picture is what prompted the initial investigation.
“My father had a portrait, from 1909, of the Easter get-together,” Scott Ketchie said. “He went to the Rowan Public Library where he did some research.”
He learned that the Ketchie family came to America around 1751. Scott Ketchie carried the torch by doing his own research, searching a number of online databases and reading scans of old newspapers.
“I’ve used Newspapers.com,” Scott Ketchie said. “I’ve used NC-pedia; I’ve used Ancestry work. I’ve studied Stephen and Benjamin for a long time. From the time I was a kid, I was inspired by how much they gave to the community. How much they endured their orphanhood.”
Comparing his investigation to his father’s, Scott said there are notable differences, primarily in the technology. Scott said his father did not have access to the various online databases that he availed himself of.
“They can find whatever they need now, as opposed to the ’80s and ’90s,” Scott Ketchie said, adding that the ease with which information can be accessed doesn’t replace the importance of having physical copies. “Take what you research and put it all together. That’s how I do my research; I print out everything that I have. I either document them or download them on a USB drive; that’s the best way to go about it if you’re going to do genealogy research.”
Scott Ketchie encourages others to start their own genealogical journeys.
“It’s easier today than it was then,” Scott Ketchie said. “You have to understand what our families brought to this nation, even if it’s ugly and demeaning; they hold a special purpose in history. They may have been a small-scale portion of it, but they were part of history nevertheless.”
