This volume is a compilation of some of the descendants of Giles Thomas and his wife Nancy Ann (Wheeler) Thomas, with short biographical sketches. A brief summary of the ancestry of Giles and Nancy is given in an addendum. Giles Thomas, the son of David and Hannah (Greene) Thomas, was born 30 November 1763 in that part of Baltimore County, MD, that later became Harford Co. (Harford Co was cut off from Baltimore Co some years after Giles Thomas's birth.) Giles Thomas died 21 Mar 1842. He married 4 June 1786 Nancy Ann Wheeler (born 10 May 1762, died 12 Jun 1834), daughter of Benjamin and Mary (Neale) Wheeler. Giles entered the army when he was only 16 years of age and served as a private in the Maryland troops until the close of the Revolutionary War. He served under Gen Nathaniel Greene in his campaign in the Carolinas. As compensation for service in the War, he received a land warrant, No. 1747, lying west of Fort Cumberland in Washington Co, MD. His name also appears in the pay record in the Maryland Land office. He resided at Port Tobacco, MD, during his active years but moved, sometime between 1796 and 1801, to Montgomery Co, VA, where he bought a farm and settled on Catawba Creek. He and his wife are buried in Westview Cemetery in Blacksburg, VA.
About the Author: W. Conway Price (1906-1991) was a scientist, researcher, and professor. He received his BS in 1927 from VPI (now Virginia Tech) and his PhD from Columbia in 1932. His career began in Cambridge, as a landscape architect with Warren H. Manning. He also worked at Boyce Thompson Institute in Yonkers as Assistant Plant Pathologist and the Rockefeller Institute in Princeton. He was Associate Resident Professor at the University of Pittsburgh, and at the University of Florida in Lake Alfred and Gainesville, where he was Lab Director and Resident Professor. He was Editor and Chief of the magazine Phytopathology 1952-54, elected as Fellow in that society in 1970, and acknowledged as "an outstanding teacher and creative researcher" and "considered, by his peers, one of the top plant virologists in the world today." He spent more than ten years in the Philippines, employed by UN FAO, retiring in 1974. From early childhood, he was a voracious reader, interested in many different subjects, including history. His interest in family research may have been sparked by that of his father, and by the 1940s, his genealogical records were voluminous. Perhaps this was a genetic trait, which he passed to his daughter. In 1980, they began their collaboration, which resulted in Increase in Prices, when he was living in Dallas, Texas, and she in southern California. After this he completed several other genealogical compilations, some of which his daughter has published.