#battleofcamdensouthcarolina — Public Fediverse posts

Robert Leonard (bef. 1730 – 1780): Revolutionary Service in 7th Maryland Regiment and Death at Battle of Camden, South Carolina

Listing of Robert Leonard in the DAR’s Patriot Index, ancestor no. A069340

Or, Subtitled: “In the Late American war with Britain in the Maryland Ridgiment as Sergeant till killd. in Genl. Gatises Defiat”

As previous postings have shown, there’s good documentation showing Robert Leonard serving during the French and Indian War as a sergeant under the command of John Dagworthy and Alexander Beall in Frederick County, Maryland, at Forts Cumberland and Frederick from February 1755 to November 1758. Robert witnessed the discharge of a soldier from Beall’s company in Frederick County in March 1759, so he was still in Frederick County up to that date. (To read the continuation of this posting, please click the numeral 2 below.)

Then he joined the British Army’s 35th Regiment of Foot — his discharge from that military group preserved by his descendants tells us this — and according to his great-grandson Thomas Dunlap Leonard, while serving in that regiment, Robert was at the battle of the Plains of Abraham (the battle of Québec, Thomas D. Leonard calls it) in September 1759. The discharge paper tells us Robert was discharged from the 35th on 24 July of an unnamed year, and states that the discharge occurred at Havana. This tells us he had gone with the 35th to the Caribbean after Québec and Montréal fell and was participating in the British military campaign there. The 35th was in Havana in the summer of 1762, so the 24 July date with the missing year is 24 July 1762.

From July 1762 up to 19 August 1779, when Robert Leonard enlisted in the 7th Maryland Regiment during the Revolutionary war, I find no records at all to document his life. I assume that after his discharge in Havana in July 1762, he returned to Frederick County, Maryland, to rejoin his wife Honor and their children. But I’ve been unable to find documentary proof of that, other than the fact that he had a payment, probably a final one, in March 1763 for his service under Dagworthy. And that payment does not necessarily indicate that he was in Frederick County at the time it was issued.

I never find any land or deed records suggesting to me that Robert owned property in Frederick County. There’s every indication that he was a professional soldier throughout his adult life, and this no doubt meant that he spent his years in Frederick County living in a military garrison, with wife Honor and their children probably living in a rented house nearby. Hagerstown is some eighteen miles east of Fort Frederick, and as I’ve noted previously (here and here), there’s substantial reason to conclude that Robert’s family was probably living in Hagerstown while he was stationed at Fort Frederick.

The first clear record I find indicating that Robert Leonard returned to Frederick County after his discharge from the 35th Regiment of Foot in Havana in July 1762 is his enlistment in the 5th Maryland Regiment under Captain Richard Anderson on 19 August 1779.[1] Robert appears in the DAR’s Patriot Index as a proven Revolutionary ancestor (no. A069340) who served in the 7th Maryland Regiment under Captain Richard Anderson and who died at Camden, Camden District, South Carolina on 16 August 1780 — that is, he died at the battle of Camden.

The information that Robert died at the battle of Camden appears in a power of attorney that his widow Honor, sons Thomas and Robert, and son-in-law Colin Campbell gave to James Irwin of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, on 12 September 1800 while the Leonard family was living in Pendleton District, South Carolina. This power of attorney, which passed down in the family of Robert’s son Thomas along with Robert’s discharge from the 35th Regiment of Foot, was discussed in a previous posting. The linked posting provides a digital image and transcription of this document.

As the linked posting notes, Robert’s heirs gave Irwin power of attorney as he sought to claim any pay that might still be due for his service in both the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars. The power of attorney states that Robert served in the “war of 1753” and also “in the Late American war with Britain in the Maryland Ridgiment as Sergeant till killd. in Genl. Gatises Defiat.” As the linked posting states, the statement about “Genl. Gatises Defiat” refers to the battle of Camden, South Carolina, on 16 August 1780 at which American troops led by General Horatio Gates were decisively defeated by the British, with many casualties on the American side.

With this power of attorney, his widow Honor, sons Thomas and Robert, and son-in-law Colin Campbell tell us that Robert Leonard was killed at the battle of Camden on 16 August 1780. The muster roll of Maryland’s 7th Regiment states that he was declared “missing” from 16 August 1780 forward.[2] The muster roll gives Robert the rank of private. The September 1800 power of attorney devised by his heirs says that he served in the Maryland regiment as a sergeant, his rank under Dagworthy and Beall and also in the 35th Regiment of Foot.

The 7th Maryland Regiment was was authorized on 16 September 1776 for service with the Continental Army. It was comprised of eight companies of volunteers drawn for the most part from Frederick and Baltimore Counties.[3] In April 1780, as the British made advances in Georgia and the Carolinas, the 1st American Brigade, which included the 7th Regiment, was reassigned from the Continental Army to the Southern Department under Major General Johann de Kalb.  

Prior to this reassignment, the Maryland line had been sent south under General Lincoln as British generals Clinton and Cornwallis headed for Charleston. The troops marched through New Jersey and Pennsylvania, embarking from the mouth of the Elk River on 3 May 1780 on vessels headed to Petersburg. From there, they began their advance towards Camden.[4]

As this advance took place, leaders of the Continental Army appeared indecisive about how to defend South Carolina against the British. As a result, the Maryland troops were badly provided for during the spring and summer months of 1780, experiencing hunger. On 3 August a small group of Virginia troops joined them, followed on 7 August by some North Carolina troops. On the 13th, 700 militiamen under General Stevens also joined the troops advancing to Camden.[5]  When the battle began on the morning of the 16th, the Maryland troops fought valiantly against great odds, but were decisively defeated by British forces.

The battle of Camden was the first major engagement of the 7th Regiment in the South. Due to strategic blunders Gates made confronting Cornwallis’ forces, it was a rout for American soldiers, with the Maryland Continentals including the 7th Regiment suffering devastating losses: over 300 Maryland Continentals were killed in the battle of Camden with many more captured.[6] In all, the Continentals from various colonies taking part in this battle had 1,900 killed, wounded, or captured.[7] A biography of Richard Heron Anderson, grandson of Robert Leonard’s captain Richard Anderson, states that those wounded at Camden included Richard Anderson.[8] But I suspect the biographer is confusing the battle of Camden with the battle of Guilford courthouse in March 1781 at which Anderson suffered a crippling wound, according to his Revolutionary pension application.[9]

A project sponsored by the South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust and USC-SCIAA Archaeological Research Trust is currently underway to determine the identity of some of the soldiers buried at the Camden battlefield site. Family History Forensics is managing the DNA analysis for this project, seeking to match DNA recovered from the remains of the exhumed soldiers with DNA of descendants of those killed at the battle of Camden.

I assume that Robert Leonard is buried in an unmarked grave at the site of the battle of Camden. A memorial page has been created for him at Find a Grave’s pages for the Camden Revolutionary War cemetery, which for reasons unknown to me gives him a middle initial, G.[10] I’ve seen no documents anywhere giving Robert Leonard a middle name or middle initial.

In my next and final posting about Robert Leonard, I’ll provide a brief overview of information about his four children William, Thomas, Robert, and Mary.

[1] Archives of Maryland, vol. 18: Muster Rolls and Other Records of Service of Maryland Troops in the American Revolution, ed. Bernard Christian Steiner (Baltimore: Lord Baltimore Press, 1899), p. 225.

[2] Ibid. See also Jane Wallace Alford, Revolutionary War Patriots of Marshall County, Tennessee (Lewisburg, Tennessee: Webb, 1976), p. 117.

[3] See “American Revolutionary War Continental Regiments, 7th Maryland Regiment,” at the American Revolutionary War website; Valley Forge Park Alliance, “7th Maryland Regiment,” at the Valley Forge Legacy site; and “7th Maryland Regiment,” Grokipedia.

[4] Esther Mohr Dole, Maryland During the American Revolution (Fort Wayne: Allen County Public Library, 1980), p. 153.

[5] Ibid., pp. 154-5.

[6] Jim Piecuch, The Battle of Camden: A Documentary History (Charleston: The History Press, 2006); and “Battle of Camden,” Wikipedia.

[7] “Camden | Aug 16, 1780,” at the American Battlefield Trust website.

[8] Walker C. Irvine, The Life of Lieutenant General Richard Heron Anderson of the Confederate States Army (Charleston: Art Publishing, 1917), pp. 11-12.

[9] NARA, Case Files of Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Applications Based on Revolutionary War Service, compiled ca. 1800 – ca. 1912, documenting the period ca. 1775 – ca. 1900, RG 15, file of Richard Anderson, Maryland, S10059, available digitally at Fold3.

[10] See Find a Grave memorial page for Robert G. Leonard, Camden Revolutionary War cemetery, Camden, Kershaw County, South Carolina, created by Linda Neilson.

#AlexanderBeall #AmericanRevolution #americanHistory #BaltimoreCoMaryland #BattleOfCamdenSouthCarolina #BattleOfPlainsOfAbrahamQuébecCanada #BattleOfQuébec #CamdenDistSouthCarolina #CamdenKershawCoSouthCarolina #CharlesCornwallis #ColinCampbell #FortFrederickWashingtonCoMaryland #FrederickCoMaryland #genealogy #GeorgeWashington #HagerstownWashingtonCoMaryland #HavanaCuba #HenryClinton #history #HonorPritchard #HoratioGates #JamesIrwin #JohannDeKalb #JohnDagworthy #revolutionaryWar #RichardAnderson #RobertLeonard #ThomasDunlapLeonard #ThomasLeonard

Robert Leonard (bef. 1730 – 1780): Testimony of Thomas Dunlap Leonard’s “Biography of the Leonards” (1883)

Thomas Dunlap Leonard, “Biography of the Leonards” (1883), typescript of a manuscript whose present whereabouts have not been determined

Or, Subtitled: “He was at the Battle of Quebec. His discharge as a soldier of the English Army is yet in existence”

Robert Leonard (bef. 1730 – 1780) is one of the more problematic of my ancestors to sort out. There’s actually a goodly selection of documents providing first-hand information about his life. These include the following:

• A bible that appears originally to have belonged to Robert and wife Honor Pritchard Leonard

• A document showing him discharged from the British military unit HM 35th Regiment at a date only partly stated

• A document showing him indenturing his son William in Frederick County, Virginia, in 1755

• A power of attorney made by his widow Honor and other family members in 1800 stating Robert’s military service in the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars

• A trail of documents including muster lists, payment records, and other records capturing Robert’s service under John Dagworthy and Alexander Beall in western Maryland during the French and Indian War

• A generally very reliable family history written in 1883 by Robert’s great-grandson Thomas Dunlap Leonard, which incorporates information told to him by his grandparents, Robert’s son Thomas and wife Hannah James

• Documents chronicling his enlistment in the 7th Maryland Regiment during the Revolutionary War, and his death in 1780 in the battle of Camden (for the continuation of this posting, please click the numeral 2 below)

A treasure trove of documents, then: but they’re in many ways the source of the problem of understanding his life story: they do not always cohere. They sometimes contradict each other. And two of the documents that have survived, the bible record and his military discharge, are partially destroyed and obscured, so that making out what they say is a real challenge.

Nor do any of the first-hand documents providing information about Robert Leonard tell us important pieces of information like when and where he was born, where he married, whether he was born Maryland where we have solid documentation of his presence by 1755, or whether he was born elsewhere. Was he, as many of his descendants have thought, an immigrant, born outside the American colonies? Even that’s not clear from the sources we have to work with.

There’s additional confusion about which of his sons was the oldest and when that son was born, confusion even about the names of his sons. We have a well-documented birthdate of 15 October 1752 for Thomas, who seems not to have been the oldest son. In 1755, Robert indentured his son William, who must have been born by at least 1750, one would think, to have been indentured in 1755.[1] It appears William was older than Thomas and was likely Robert’s oldest son, but — problems piled on problems — the list of Robert’s sons provided by In his 1883 account of the Leonard family, Thomas Dunlap Leonard does not even mention William, but speaks of a Samuel who seems to have been non-existent!

Explanations are in order….

Thomas Dunlap Leonard’s “Biography of the Leonards”

As previous postings have noted (and here), a major source for information about the family descending from Robert Leonard is an 1883 manuscript entitled “Biography of the Leonards,” which was written by Thomas Dunlap Leonard (1810-1888), a son of Robert Leonard (1777-1844) and Rachel Dunlap. Robert Leonard with wife Rachel was a son of Thomas Leonard (1752-1832) and Hannah James. As a previous series of postings indicates, Thomas was a son of Robert Leonard (bef. 1730 – 1780), the progenitor of this line of American Leonards.

As the postings linked at the start of the preceding paragraph note, Thomas Dunlap Leonard grew up in Lincoln (later Marshall) County, Tennessee, living near his grandparents Thomas Leonard and Hannah James, and much of what he recorded about the first generations of this family came from information his grandparents shared with him. Here’s what Thomas D. Leonard has to say about Robert Leonard and his wife Honor Pritchard:

I shall give the life of Robert in the War of 1760 between England and France. He fought with England as well all the colonies in America was under the English government. He was at the Battle of Quebec. His discharge as a soldier of the English Army is yet in existence. It is in the family of Griffith Leonard in Tenn.; and I have seen it.

When the war took place between England and the colonies of America, he rebelled against England and fought with America and was killed at the battle of Camden, leaving a widow with four children. He married an English lady named Honor Pritchard, early after her arrival to America. We have not the history of the Prichard [sic] family. She brought up her four children in Maryland, giving a limited education, such as the opportunities of the times afforded of that age, yet of one thing we are sure that she was a lady of great moral worth of character, from the moral training that her children exhibited in their lives. Through a long life it has been my privilege to live with, and enjoy their society for twenty-five years of my life.

According to the testimony of his great-grandson Thomas D. Leonard, then, Robert Leonard the immigrant ancestor was “a soldier of the English Army” who took part in the “War of 1760 between England and France.” Note that Thomas D. Leonard does not state that Robert Leonard arrived in the American colonies as a British soldier. Generations of Robert’s descendants have concluded this, but this conclusion reads into the text something that Thomas D. Leonard does not actually say.

Thomas D. Leonard specifically says that Robert Leonard took part in the “War of 1760” as a soldier in the English army and participated in the battle of Québec. The pivotal event of that battle was the battle of the Plains of Abraham on 13 September 1759, which resulted in the capitulation of Québec to British forces on 18 September.

As we’ll see down the road, Robert Leonard’s paper discharging him from service in HM 35th Regiment of Foot provides a strong basis for concluding that Robert did, indeed, take part in this military action in Canada in 1759, and served in the 35th  from some point prior to that date until he was discharged in Havana on 24 September 1762. But a stream of documents prior to the end of the 1750s show him, prior to this point, serving as a sergeant at Fort Frederick under General John Dagworthy in the defense of Maryland’s western frontier. So he did not arrive in America as a soldier in the English 35th Regiment, but joined that regiment after some years of service under Dagworthy in Maryland. Both at Fort Frederick and in the 35th, his rank was sergeant, as it was later during the Revolution. There’s strong reason to believe that Robert, who does not appear owning land in Frederick County, was a professional soldier throughout his adult life.

But the claim that Robert arrived in the colonies as a soldier of the English army gets the chronology of his military service backwards and reads into Thomas D. Leonard’s family history something Thomas does not say, namely, that Robert was serving in the 35th Regiment when he came to Maryland. He joined that English military unit only after having spent most of the 1750s already doing military service under Dagworthy at Fort Frederick and, apparently prior to the construction of Fort Frederick, at Fort Cumberland. I suspect that the reason Thomas D. Leonard speaks of Robert Leonard serving in the “War of 1760,” taking part in the battle of Québec, and then goes on to say that Robert was a “soldier of the English Army” is that he wants to draw attention to Robert’s service in the portion of the French and Indian War that occurred in Canada in 1759-1760 with the capitulation first of Québec in 1759 and then of Montréal in 1760, and with the 35th Regiment playing a well-documented role in these actions. As we’ve seen previously, the power of attorney that Robert’s widow Honor and sons Thomas and Robert along with Honor’s son-in-law Colin Campbell made in September 1800 states that Robert was a “Sergeant in the war of 1753” — that is, in the earlier years of the French and Indian War where we have good documentation of his service in western Maryland in the colonial troops commanded by John Dagworthy.

 As a previous posting has noted, there’s documentary evidence that Robert was in Maryland by 1755 when he indentured his son William there in Frederick County. He was almost certainly in Maryland by 1752 when his son Thomas was born. The posting I’ve just linked shows that various records place Robert Leonard at Fort Frederick some eighteen miles west of Hagerstown in the 1750s. Prior to that, he would have been at Fort Cumberland in 1755 when he indentured his son William, stating that he was “a soldier in Captain Dagurthey’s Company.” Construction began on Fort Frederick in 1756 and was completed the following year.[2] Prior to this point, Dagworthy’s troops were at Fort Cumberland on the Potomac west of Fort Frederick. As the posting I’ve just linked also notes, on the 1880 federal census, the one living child of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James, their daughter Hannah, reported that both of her parents were born in Maryland. If this is accurate information (and I see no reason to challenge it), then Robert and Honor Pritchard Leonard were living in Maryland by 1752 when their son thomas was born.

There’s sound documentary evidence, then, backing Thomas D. Leonard’s statement that Robert Leonard was a soldier involved in the war between England and France. This information undoubtedly came to him from his grandparents Thomas and Hannah James Leonard, and, as he goes on to say, he had seen the papers discharging Robert Leonard from his British military service, which were kept by Thomas Leonard and then his son Griffith James Leonard. I’ll discuss those discharge papers in more detail down the road.

As I’ve noted, the 12 September 1800 power of attorney given by Robert Leonard’s widow Honor and sons Thomas and Robert with son-in-law Colin Campbell provides yet another layer of proof of Robert Leonard’s military service in Maryland during the French and Indian War. The linked posting provides a digital image and transcription of this document, noting that the Leonards gave power of attorney to James Irwin of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, to obtain any pay still due Robert Leonard for his service in both the French and Indian and Revolutionary War. About Robert’s military service in the two wars, the power of attorney states that he was,

Formerly Sergeant in the war of 1753 Genl. Washinton’s first Ridgiment and in the Late American war with Britain in the Maryland Ridgiment as Sergeant till killd. in Genl. Gatises Defiat.

Regarding the claim that Robert Leonard was a sergeant in General Washington’s first regiment in the “war of 1753”: as I’ve noted previously, I think this statement may be referencing tensions between John Dagworthy and Washington as the French and Indian War got underway and as Fort Frederick was constructed, and confusion about exactly who was in command at the two forts at which Robert Leonard was posted in the 1750s. As the posting I’ve just linked explains, in the fall of 1755, Virginia took possession of Fort Cumberland, where Dagworthy and his troops were stationed, and this placed Dagworthy on what historian Eric Sterner calls a “collision course” with Washington.[3] Washington was considered to be in charge of the fort, but Dagworthy saw him as a young upstart and refused to submit to his command.

As construction began on Fort Frederick in July 1756, Washington visited that fort, and in June 1758, he returned to the fort during his campaign to capture Fort Duquesne. All during these years, with documentary evidence that Dagworthy paid Robert Leonard for service up to March 1763,[4] there was interaction, usually hostile on the side of Dagworthy, between John Dagworthy and George Washington. And there were questions about who was in command of whom, so that confusion about whether Robert Leonard was serving under Dagworthy or Washington for part of this period of time is understandable. I’ll say more about these matters in a subsequent section of this overview of Robert Leonard’s life focusing specifically on his military service in the French and Indian War.

Thomas Dunlap Leonard’s “Biography of the Leonards” also tells us another important piece of information about Robert Leonard’s early years in the American colonies: he states that Robert “married an English lady named Honor Pritchard, early after her arrival to America.” Note that Thomas D. Leonard doesn’t state either when this marriage took place or where the couple married. A partly obscured item in the register of the bible have belonged to Robert and then his son Thomas — I’ll discuss the bible in detail later — states a 1747 date for some event that is obscured, and some Leonard researchers have suggested that this is a record of the date of Robert and Honor’s marriage, though much of this record is water-damaged and illegible.

I have no clue, by the way, why some Leonard descendants want to give Honor’s surname as Sellers when Thomas D. Leonard plainly states that it was Pritchard. I see no compelling reason to doubt Thomas D. Leonard’s testimony on this point. I strongly suspect that piece of information came to him from his grandparents Thomas and Hannah James Leonard.

Thomas D. Leonard offers one other interesting piece of information about Robert Leonard’s son-in-law Colin Campbell, who married Robert’s daughter Mary: he states, “This man was a British soldier.” Colin wouldn’t have been in service alongside Robert, since Colin was born in 1754 and was a generation younger than Robert. But since Robert Leonard appears to have been a professional soldier who served in the British army in the late 1750s and early 1760s, it seems worth noting that his son-in-law was yet another British soldier.

Finally, Thomas D. Leonard names the children of Robert Leonard and Honor Pritchard:

Robert was the oldest child, then Thos., then Samuel, then Mary.

This statement presents us with another conundrum: as I stated previously, we know for certain that by 8 February 1755, Robert Leonard had a son named William. We know this because the indenture he made on that date states that William Leonard, whom he was indenturing, was his son. The indenture contract does not state William’s age, unfortunately. But to be apprenticed in 1755, he has to have been more than a mere infant. Children as young as seven or eight years of age could be and sometimes were indentured in this period. It seems very likely that William was born prior to 1750 and was perhaps Robert Leonard’s oldest son.[5]

But Thomas D. Leonard makes no mention at all of a son William. He speaks, instead, of a son Samuel for whom no records seem to exist. “Biography of the Leonards” goes on to say that Samuel remained in Pendleton District, South Carolina, after Robert’s widow Honor and her children Thomas and Mary (Campbell) moved to Tennessee in 1808 or 1809 with Robert following soon after and with Samuel dying in South Carolina leaving, according to Thomas D. Leonard, children George, Samuel, Elizabeth, and Belinda.

A William Leonard died testate in Pendleton District, South Carolina, in 1811 with a will dated 12 February 1811, probated 29 March 1811.[6] That will names as William’s executor a son George, and names younger children Elizabeth, Samuel, Mary Ann, Agnes, and Honor Malinda. This William Leonard is, it’s clear, the man of that name who arrived in Pendleton District almost simultaneously with Thomas Leonard and the other members of the Leonard family who moved from Washington County, Maryland, to Pendleton District in 1786. As a previous posting notes, after Thomas Leonard had a survey on the Big Generostee in Pendleton District on 9 February 1786, William Leonard also had a survey of 200 acres just north of Thomas’ survey on 21 February 1786.[7]

From 1786 through 1811, it’s fairly easy to document William Leonard’s life in Pendleton District, with document after document suggesting that he’s closely related to Thomas and Robert and their sister Mary Leonard Campbell. Thomas D. Leonard’s manuscript says that “Samuel’s” son George came to Tennessee to live with his Leonard relatives there, and there’s documentary evidence of George’s presence among those relatives in Tennessee.

But until William Leonard’s son Samuel came of age in Pendleton District around 1815, there’s nary mention of any Samuel Leonard in the records of Pendleton District, while there are copious references to a William Leonard who appears to be the same man as the Samuel identified as a son of Robert and Honor Pritchard Leonard in Thomas D. Leonard’s “Biography of the Leonards.” Thomas D. Leonard seems to be mistaken in stating that Robert Leonard had a son Samuel. Robert did, however, have a documented son William born prior to 1755 who appears to be the William Leonard who shows up in Pendleton District by 1786 when other members of the Leonard family arrived there from Maryland.  I suspect William was the oldest son of Robert Leonard.[8]

Why Thomas D. Leonard would have made this mistake about the children of Robert Leonard and Honor Pritchard, I’m not sure, except that he knew personally the other three children of Robert and Honor Leonard, since he grew up near all of them in Tennessee and, later, Alabama — and he did not know the one child of Robert and Honor who remained behind in South Carolina. And, again, if Thomas was the second son of Robert and Honor and we can document that he was born in 1752, then it seems likely that if William was Thomas’ elder, he was born prior to 1750 — a birthdate also suggested by the 1755 indenture record.

About Thomas D. Leonard’s claim that Robert was the oldest child of Robert Leonard and Honor Pritchard: I have not found any firm documentation of Robert’s birthdate. The 1790 federal census, enumerating him in Pendleton District, South Carolina, simply shows him aged above 16 years.[9] In 1800, also in Pendleton District, he’s aged 26-44.[10] In 1810, still in Pendleton District, Robert’s age category is again 26-44.[11] The 1820 federal census has him, now in Lincoln County, Tennessee, aged over 45.[12] And the 1830 federal census, also enumerating him in Lincoln County and the last federal census on which he appears, shows him aged 60-69.[13] If that census has a correct birth entry for Robert, he was born between 1760 and 1769 and was younger than his brothers William and Thomas.

In my next posting surveying documents that tell the story of Robert Leonard, I’ll provide an in-depth look at Robert’s the register of the bible that originally belonged to Robert and wife Honor and to the document discharging him from service in HM 35th Regiment.

[1] Frederick County, Maryland, Land Record Bk. E, pp. 659-660.

[2] See Debra R. Boender, “Fort Frederick (Maryland),” in Colonial Wars of North America, 1512-1763: An Encyclopedia, ed. Alan Gallay (Oxford: Routledge, 1996), pp. 236-7;“Frederick, Fort,” in Encyclopedia of the French and Indian War in North America, 1754-1763, ed. Donald I. Stoelzel (Westminster, Maryland: Heritage Books, 2008), p. 160; Maryland Park Service, “Fort Frederick State Park History,” at website of  Maryland Department of Natural Resources; and “Fort Frederick,” in Forts of the United States: An  Historical Dictionary, 16th Through 19th Centuries, ed. Bud Hannings (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2006), p. 193.

[3] Eric Sterner, “General John Dagworthy: George Washington’s Forgotten American Rival,” Journal of the American Revolution (online; 11 October 2017). See also George W. Marshall, Memoir of Brigadier-General John Dagworthy of the Revolutionary War (Wilmington: Historical Society of Delaware, 1895), pp. 13-15; “General John Dagworthy,” in Biographical and Genealogical History of the State of Delaware, vol. 1 (Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: J.M. Runk, 1899), pp. 105-6; “Dagworthy Controversy,” at The Ladies of Mount Vernon’s George Washington’s Mount Vernon website; and “John Dagworthy” at Wikipedia.

[4] Henry C. Peden Jr., Marylanders and Delawareans in the French and Indian War 1756-1763 (Lewes, Delaware: Colonial Roots, 2004).

[5] The indenture document specifically states that Robert was indenturing his son William for fourteen years and seven months. When minors were indentured in Maryland at this period, the limit of indenture was usually up to their 21st birthday. If the indenture period is an indicator of William’s age at the time Robert indentured him, he would have been six years and five months old in February 1755, and therefore born in September 1748.

[6] Anderson County, South Carolina, Will Bk. A, pp. 129-130.

[7] South Carolina Plat Books (Charleston Series), vol. 15, p. 127; and Ninety-Six District, South Side of Saluda, Commissioner of Locations Plat Bk. B, p. 113.

[8] A thought that occurs to me, purely conjectural: could William have been a son of Robert Leonard born prior to Robert’s marriage to Honor Pritchard? If so, might that fact explain why Robert indentured a young son out in 1755 after he married Honor, by whom he had a son Thomas born in 1752? Perhaps Honor did not want to raise a son of Robert born to some other mother…. As I say, this is purely conjectural and should be taken as such.

[9] 1790 federal census, Pendleton District, South Carolina, p. 5. The surname is spelled Lennard.

[10] 1800 federal census, Pendleton District, South Carolina, p. 7.

[11] 1810 federal census, Pendleton District, South Carolina, p. 143. The surname is Leanard.

[12] 1820 federal census, Lincoln County, Tennessee, p. 11.

[13] 1830 federal census, Lincoln County, Tennessee, p. 190.

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Thomas Leonard (1752-1832), Son of Robert Leonard and Honor Pritchard: Maryland Beginnings

Tombstone of Thomas Leonard, Leonard cemetery, Marshall County, Tennessee, photo by Jimmy Trout: see Find a Grave memorial page for Thomas Leonard, created by Donna B., maintained by LookingForFamily

Or, Subtitled: “Formerly Sergeant in the war of 1753 Genl. Washinton’s first Ridgiment and in the Late American war with Britain in the Maryland Ridgiment as Sergeant till killd. in Genl. Gatises Defiat”

Date of Birth

The dates of birth and death of Thomas Leonard, son of Robert Leonard and Honor Pritchard, are recorded on his tombstone in the Leonard family cemetery north of Petersburg, Marshall County, Tennessee. The cemetery, which I visited in February 2008, is on the land Thomas Leonard bought in then Lincoln, now Marshall County, in September 1809 when he moved his family from Pendleton District, South Carolina, to Tennessee. The family lived on this land about 2½ miles north of Petersburg, the Marshall County seat, at what’s now called Leonard Bluff on Liberty Valley Road. The cemetery is located behind the site of an old family house known as the Leonard homestead that stood up to the middle of the 20th century but was no longer there by the 1990s.[1] I’ll discuss this house in more detail later.

The Leonard family cemetery in which Thomas Leonard and wife Hannah James Leonard are buried is said by family tradition to date to the generation of Thomas’ mother Honor Pritchard Leonard, who accompanied the family from South Carolina to Tennessee and is thought by descendants to have died after 1810. According to researcher Elizabeth Lucie Leonard Baxter, Honor is buried in the cemetery in an unmarked grave.[2] When I visited the cemetery in 2008, I noted a row of headstones too weathered to read, in a shape and style that suggested to me that these stones might date from the early 19th century. By 2008, the tombstones of Thomas and wife Hannah were also impossible for me to read. Thomas’ Find a Grave memorial page includes a photo of his stone that is fairly clear and allows the inscription to be made out.[3] See the top of this posting for a digital image.

It reads:

Thomas Leonard

Born

Oct. 15 1752

Died

April 8 1832

The tombstones of Thomas and wife Hannah are matching stones that appear to date from not long after Hannah’s death on 3 November 1842. I suspect, but do not know for certain, that they were erected by Thomas and Hannah’s son Griffith James Leonard (1787-1864), who inherited the family homeplace in his father’s will, and who lived there up to his death. Griffith and his wife are buried in the family cemetery along with several generations of their descendants and other family members.

As a previous posting notes, in his 1883 manuscript entitled “Biography of the Leonards,” Thomas Leonard’s grandson Thomas Dunlap Leonard (1810-1888), a son of Thomas and Hannah Leonard’s son Robert (1777-1844), states that Thomas Leonard’s father Robert Leonard (bef. 1730-1780) was “a soldier of the English Army” who came to Maryland — as a British soldier — around 1750.[4] As the linked posting also tells you (and see here), Thomas Dunlap Leonard’s manuscript states as well that he knew his grandparents Thomas and Hannah James personally, and that he grew up in Tennessee close to them before his family moved to nearby Madison County, Alabama, about 1818. His information on the early generations of the Leonard family rests on what his grandparents shared with him and other family members.

Thomas Dunlap Leonard, “Biography of the Leonards” (1883 manuscript)

Place of Birth

Thomas Dunlap Leonard’s manuscript does not state a place of birth for his grandfather Thomas Leonard, but does indicate that Thomas married wife Hannah James “of Maryland” about 1775, and the family then lived in Maryland before moving to South Carolina in 1786. As the previously linked posting also says, a number of records place Thomas Leonard’s father Robert at Fort Frederick some eighteen miles west of Hagerstown in the period leading up to the Revolution. Historian Henry Peden notes that Robert Leonard was stationed at Fort Frederick by August 1757, and that the account book of Colonel John Dagworthy, field commander at Fort Frederick in 1756, shows Robert Leonard paid for service by Dagworthy on 7 March 1763.[5] A document dated 8 February 1755 shows Robert Leonard indenturing his son William on that date to a local farmer and identifying himself as a soldier serving under Captain “Dagurthey.”[6]

These records suggest that when Robert Leonard’s son Thomas was born on 15 October 1752, he was very likely born in the part of Frederick County, Maryland, that would become Washington County in September 1776. Fort Frederick, where we can definitely place Thomas Leonard’s father Robert by 1757, was constructed in 1756 west of Hagerstown, as noted above, in what’s now Washington County.  Its construction was financed by Joseph Chapline of Sharpsburg in Washington County, who had ties to Griffith James, who lived at Sharpsburg and whose daughter Hannah Thomas Leonard married about 1775.[7] The likelihood that Thomas Leonard was born in Hagerstown in Frederick (later Washington) County, Maryland, seems to me very strong.[8]

“Proceedings of the Committee of Observation for Elizabeth Town District [Washington County],” Maryland Historical Magazine 12 (1917), pp. 269-271

Revolutionary Service, Hagerstown, Maryland, Militia

Previously, I’ve also noted that Thomas Leonard appears in a list of members of the first military company organized for the Revolutionary war in Hagerstown on 6 January 1776.[9] Thomas J. Scharf, whose History of Western Maryland including Frederick and Washington Counties I’ve just footnoted, transcribes a declaration the militia members signed on this date in January, noting that the company was being formed to serve the Council of Safety of Maryland. As the linked posting notes, in addition to Thomas Leonard, those signing included Richard Moore, whose father Daniel Moore lived in Sharpsburg next to a Dean family intermarried with the family of Griffith James, as well as brothers Samuel and Thomas Dean.[10] Samuel Dean was Thomas Leonard’s brother-in-law. He married Gwendolyn James, sister of Thomas’ wife Hannah James, in 1773. This militia unit was under the command of Joseph Chapline, the founder of Sharpsburg, who was connected to Thomas Leonard’s father-in-law Griffith James from the time Griffith James first appears in Sharpsburg records in September 1763.[11]

Sharpsburg is bit over thirteen miles south of Hagerstown, which was originally known as Elizabethtown. Scharf is citing minutes of the Elizabethtown District Committee of Observation for 5 June 1776, which say that on that date, a list was presented to the committee compiled on 6 January 1776 of a group of men who signed their names to a resolution to form a militia per a resolution of the Provincial Convention held at Annapolis on 26 July 1775.[12] Thomas Leonard’s sister Mary Ann married Colin Campbell at Hagerstown on 27 July 1780, and Hannah James’s sister Mary James married Harmon Cummings on 7 September 1779 at Hagerstown.[13] Both couples were married by Reverend George Mitchell of Hagerstown.[14]

We can, then, confidently place Thomas Leonard in a militia company organized for Hagerstown in Washington County, Maryland, in January 1776, in the year after it’s thought he married Hannah James of nearby Sharpsburg. In the same militia company was Samuel Dean, who married Hannah’s sister Gwendolyn in 1773. Signing next to Thomas Leonard in the declaration establishing this militia was Richard Moore, who had close ties to the family of Griffith James into which Thomas Leonard and Samuel Dean married. And leading the militia unit was Joseph Chapline, the founder of Sharpsburg with ties to Griffith James. In September 1779, another sister of Hannah and Gwendolyn James, their sister Mary, married Harmon Cummings in Hagerstown, and in July 1780, Thomas Leonard’s sister Mary Ann married Colin Campbell in Hagerstown. Both of these couples were married by Rev. George Mitchell, a Hagerstown pastor.

There are multiple pointers to Hagerstown or nearby Sharpsburg as the place in which Thomas Leonard lived from the time he married Hannah James about 1775, Hagerstown also being his probable place of birth…. Then in or just before 1786, as noted above, Thomas Leonard and wife Hannah moved their family to Pendleton District, South Carolina. This is a move that Thomas and Hannah made along with her sister Gwendolyn and husband Samuel Dean and her sister Mary and husband Harmon Cummings. The tradition of these families is that they moved to South Carolina from Washington County, Maryland.[15]

Dean Family’s Connections to Cumberland (and Bedford) County, Pennsylvania

But researcher Beverly Dean Peoples, a descendant of Samuel Dean and Gwenny James, finds a pattern of back-and-forth movement of some of her Dean ancestors from Washington County, Maryland to Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and its daughter counties of Bedford and Huntingdon in the 1770s.[16] Beverly states, “[P]rior to the move to SC with his wife’s family, Samuel [Dean] had tried to establish a home in the now Huntingdon County, PA area with his brothers Thomas, William and John.” Land records place Samuel in Huntingdon’s parent county of Bedford in 1774, and histories of the area state that he began building a house in Bedford County in 1773. Beverly thinks that Samuel’s brother William first claimed land in Cumberland County in 1766 before Beford was split from Cumberland in 1771, with Huntingdon then being formed from Bedford in 1787.

Since Samuel Dean is in the January 1776 Hagerstown militia list with his brother-in-law Thomas Leonard, he evidently had not moved his family permanently from Maryland to Pennsylvania in these years. Beverly notes that the reported birthplaces of the children of Samuel Dean and Gwendolyn James suggest that the family may have been coming and going in the 1770s between Maryland and Pennsylvania, and that as the Dean brothers were considering new locations for their families in Pennsylvania, they may have left their wives in Washington County for much of the time when they were sojourning in Pennsylvania, where skirmishes between native peoples and settlers of European descent were creating dangers for incoming settlers. Beverly Peoples notes that Samuel returned to Washington County from Pennsylvania for good in 1784, selling his land in Pennsylvania, and at this point, he joined with his brothers-in-law in their plan to move to South Carolina.

I mention Beverly’s well-researched findings about the history of the Dean family during this period because if Thomas Leonard’s brother-in-law Samuel Dean was moving with his brothers between Washington County, Maryland, and Cumberland (or Bedford) County, Pennsylvania, in the 1770s and early 1780s, it seems to me worth asking if Thomas Leonard might have been making similar moves. We know that he was definitely in the Hagerstown militia in 1776, and he begins appearing in Pendleton District, South Carolina, records in 1786. So the time frame in which I’m suggesting that Thomas might have spent some time in Cumberland or Bedford Counties, Pennsylvania, would be in that decade, 1776-1786.

12 September 1800 power of attorney of Honor Leonard, Thomas Leonard, Robert Leonard, and Colin Campbell to James Irwin of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, in possession of descendant Leonard Wilson of Petersburg, Tennessee, up to 1972

In fact, I have not found any clear records showing this Thomas Leonard in Cumberland or Bedford County, Pennsylvania, in that decade. However, I want to point to a record I shared in a previous posting. In the posting I’ve just linked, I shared a digital image of a 12 September 1800 power of attorney given by signed by Thomas, his brother Robert, their mother Honor, and their brother-in-law Colin Campbell to James Irwin of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. I’ve reposted that image here. As the linked posting explains, this document passed down among descendants of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James and in 1972 was in the possession of descendant Leonard Wilson of Petersburg, Tennessee. I have not found this power of attorney recorded in court records of Pendleton District, South Carolina, or Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.

September 1800 Power of Attorney of Leonard Heirs to James Irwin of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania

As you’ll see as you look at the image of this power of attorney, what it says is not easy to make out. Part of the document is torn away, and some words defeat me as I try to read them. The following transcript is my best attempt at reading this document:

The Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, location of James Irwin leaps out at me, of course, as I read this document in conjunction with Beverly People’s research about her Dean family members of Washington County, Maryland, before Samuel Dean and wife Gwendolyn James moved in 1786 with Thomas Leonard and Hannah James to Pendleton District, South Carolina. Who was James Irwin, and how were the Leonard family members giving him this power of attorney in 1800 connected to him?

In particular, why were they asking him to recover pay due to Robert Leonard for Robert’s service in the French and Indian War and then in the Revolution? This document states that Robert served as a sergeant in George Washington’s first regiment in the “war of 1753.” I think that “war of 1753” is a reference to what is now conventionally called the French and Indian War: Robert’s heirs are not stating that he served under Washington in the year 1753 specifically but in the war that began with hostilities building in 1753 and open warfare commencing in 1754.

As noted previously, we have documentary evidence that Robert Leonard was serving as a British soldier under John Dagworthy in western Maryland by February 1755. In 1756, construction began on Fort Frederick near Hagerstown, with construction completed the following year.[17] As stated above, we know from documentary evidence that Robert Leonard was serving under Dagworthy at Fort Frederick in 1757.[18] Dagworthy’s troops were at Fort Cumberland on the Potomac west of Fort Frederick prior to their move to Fort Frederick. Virginia took possession of Fort Cumberland in the fall of 1755 and this placed Dagworthy on what historian Eric Sterner calls a “collision course” with Washington.[19] Washington was considered to be in charge of the fort, but Dagworthy saw him as a young upstart and refused to submit to his command.

As construction began on Fort Frederick in July 1756, Washington visited the fort, and in June 1758, he returned to the fort during his campaign to capture Fort Duquesne. All during these years, with documentary evidence that Dagworthy paid Robert Leonard for service in March 1763,[20] there was interaction, usually hostile on the side of Dagworthy, between Robert Leonard’s commander John Dagworthy and George Washington. And there were questions about who was in command of whom, so that confusion about whether Robert Leonard was serving under Dagworthy or Washington for part of this period of time is understandable.

The 1780 power of attorney goes on to state that Robert Leonard then served during the Revolution as a sergeant and was killed in the defeat of General Gates. Horatio Gates was defeated by the British at the battle of Camden in South Carolina in August 1780.

And to return to the question of who James Irwin was and why the heirs of Robert Leonard gave him power of attorney in 1800 to recover pay due to Robert for his service in these two wars: there were multiple James Irwins living in Cumberland County in the period 1780-1800. I’ve entertained the idea that a man of this name who was a captain in the 5th company of Cumberland County’s 2nd militia battalion in 1780 is the James Irwin to whom the Leonard heirs gave power of attorney in 1800.[21] I suggest this possibility  because I suspect that the James Irwin of the power of attorney had some military background and ties, if the Leonard heirs were asking him to retrieve back pay for Robert Leonard’s military service.

But I honestly don’t know enough about the Irwin families in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, in this period to be certain that this James is the man named in the Leonard power of attorney. I have also entertained the possibility that a Thomas Leonard who was serving as a lieutenant in a Cumberland County militia unit under Captain William Black is Thomas, son of Robert and Honor, but I suspect this was an entirely different Thomas Leonard.[22] A Thomas Leonard born in New Jersey in 1753 married Esther Cookson in Cumberland County in 1781, with his affidavit given as he claimed a Revolutionary pension stating that he moved to Cumberland County in 1780 after having given Revolutionary service in New Jersey.[23] I think it’s highly likely he was the man who was a lieutenant in a Cumberland County militia unit in 1780.

I do, however, think it’s well worth noting that the heirs of Robert Leonard gave power of attorney to a James Irwin of Cumberland County in 1800, asking him to recover pay due to Robert for Revolutionary service. I think this is well worth noting when we know from Beverly Dean’s exhaustive research on the family of Thomas Leonard’s brother-in-law Samuel Dean that Samuel and his brothers were trekking back and forth between Washington County, Maryland, and Cumberland/Bedford Counties, Pennsylvania, in the 1770s and first part of the 1780s.

By 9 February 1786, Thomas Leonard with wife Hannah James had moved, along with Samuel Dean and wife Gwendolyn James, Harmon Cummings and wife Mary James, and Colin Campbell and wife Mary Ann Leonard, from Washington County, Maryland, to Pendleton District, South Carolina. In my next posting, I’ll pick up the story of Thomas Leonard’s life from the start of his years in South Carolina.

[1] In a telephone conversation with me on 16 December 1996, Jackie Leonard of Athens, Alabama, told me that Leonard homestead land was owned in 1996 by Tommy Wilson, owner of a horse farm, Ridge Vale Farms, whose address was Rt. 1, Petersburg, TN 37144.

[2] See Elizabeth Lucie Leonard Baxter, “Leonard Family,” Marshall County, Tennessee, Historical Quarterly 6,2 (summer 1975), and “Thomas Leonard Family Graveyard,” Marshall County, Tennessee, Historical Quarterly 10,1 (spring 1979), both reporting a transcription of the cemetery headstones made by Baxter on 28 January 1968.

[3] See Find a Grave memorial page for Thomas Leonard, Leonard cemetery, Marshall County, Tennessee, created by Donna B., maintained by LookingForFamily, with a tombstone photo by Jimmy Trout.

[4] Thomas Dunlap Leonard, “Biography of the Leonards” (1883 manuscript now circulated as typescript; present whereabouts are not known).

[5] Henry C. Peden Jr., Marylanders and Delawareans in the French and Indian War 1756-1763 (Lewes, Delaware: Colonial Roots, 2004).

[6] Frederick County, Maryland, Land Record Bk. E, pp. 659-660.

[7] See Frederick County, Maryland, Deed Bk. J, pp. 798-802, stating that Chapline had sold 215 acres to Daniel Moore and Griffith James. On Joseph Chapline and the founding of Sharpsburg, see Edward C. Papenfuse, A Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, 1635-1789 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979); Lee and Barbara Barron, The History of Sharpsburg, Maryland, Founded by Joseph Chapline 1763 (1972), pp. 8f; Maria J. Liggett Dare, Chaplines from Maryland and Virginia (priv. publ., 1902); and Thomas J.C. Williams, A History of Washington County, Maryland, etc., vol. 1 (Hagerstown, 1906; repr. Baltimore: Regional Publishing Company, 1968), pp. 23-4.

[8] The one child of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James who was still living when the 1880 federal census was taken was their youngest child Hannah (1795-1886), widow of William Depriest Moore. Hannah was living in 1880 in Marshall County, Tennessee, with her daughter Angelina and Angelina’s husband Joseph John Skidmore Gill. On the 1880 census, Hannah reported the birthplace of both of her parents as Maryland: see 1880 federal census, Marshall County, Tennessee, 4th civil district p. 347 C (ED 135, dwelling 88/family 101; 7 June).

[9] See J. Thomas Scharf, History of Western Maryland: Being a History of Frederick, Montgomery, Carroll, Washington, Allegany, and Garrett Counties, etc., vol. 2 (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts, 1882), pp. 1189-1190.

[10] The Dean home tract, Hunting the Hare, and Griffith James’ home tract, Pough, were across from each other on present-day Burnside Bridge Road close to its intersection with present-day Mills Road just outside Sharpsburg to the southeast. I visited this area in August 2007 and took photos of both pieces of land.

[11] See Frederick County, Maryland, Deed Bk. J, pp. 798-802, stating that Chapline had sold 215 acres to Daniel Moore and Griffith James. On Joseph Chapline and the founding of Sharpsburg, see Edward C. Papenfuse, A Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, 1635-1789 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979); Lee and Barbara Barron, The History of Sharpsburg, Maryland, Founded by Joseph Chapline 1763 (1972), pp. 8f; Maria J. Liggett Dare, Chaplines from Maryland and Virginia (priv. publ., 1902); and Thomas J.C. Williams, A History of Washington County, Maryland, etc., vol. 1 (Hagerstown, 1906; repr. Baltimore: Regional Publishing Company, 1968), pp. 23-4.

[12] See Henry C. Peden Jr., Revolutionary Patriots of Washington County, Maryland 1776-1783 (Westminster, Maryland: Family Line, 1998), p. 210, citing “Proceedings of the Committee of Observation for Elizabeth Town District [Washington County],” Maryland Historical Magazine 12 (1917), p. 270; and Williams, A History of Washington County, p. 1189.

[13] See Maryland Historical Society, Maryland Marriages 1777-1804 (1949), p. 226; and Gaius Marcus Brumbaugh, Maryland Records, vol. 2 (Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1928; repr. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1967), p. 522.

[14] In a 3 March 2006 email to me, researcher Barbara Horne told me that she lived in Washington County and believed that Mitchell was a Reformed minister.

[15] See Beverly Dean Peoples and Ralph Terry Dean, Country Cousins: Descendants of Samuel Dean (Franklin, North Carolina: Genealogy Publishing Service, 2001).

[16] See “Richard Deane (1701-1788) and His Children” at Rootsweb.

[17] See Debra R. Boender, “Fort Frederick (Maryland,” in Colonial Wars of North America, 1512-1763: An Encyclopedia, ed. Alan Gallay (Oxford: Routledge, 1996), pp. 236-7;“Frederick, Fort,” in Encyclopedia of the French and Indian War in North America, 1754-1763, ed. Donald I. Stoelzel (Westminster, Maryland: Heritage Books, 2008), p. 160; Maryland Park Service, “Fort Frederick State Park History,” at website of  Maryland Department of Natural Resources; and “Fort Frederick,” in Forts of the United States: An  Historical Dictionary, 16th Through 19th Centuries, ed. Bud Hannings (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2006), p. 193.

[18] See supra, n. 5.

[19] Eric Sterner, “General John Dagworthy: George Washington’s Forgotten American Rival,” Journal of the American Revolution (online; 11 October 2017). See also George W. Marshall, Memoir of Brigadier-General John Dagworthy of the Revolutionary War (Wilmington: Historical Society of Delaware, 1895), pp. 13-15; “General John Dagworthy,” in Biographical and Genealogical History of the State of Delaware, vol. 1 (Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: J.M. Runk, 1899), pp. 105-6; “Dagworthy Controversy,” at The Ladies of Mount Vernon’s George Washington’s Mount Vernon website; and “John Dagworthy” at Wikipedia.

[20] See supra, n. 5.

[21] Pennsylvania State Archives, “Cumberland County Revolutionary War Militia,” online at the website of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. On 18 October 1835 in Butler County, Ohio, a James Irwin deposed as he applied for a Revolutionary pension, stating that he was born in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, on 16 October 1758. This is not the James Irwin who signed the 1800 Leonard power of attorney. The signature of this James Irwin on his pension affidavit does not match the signature of James Irwin of the power of attorney: see NARA, Case Files of Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Applications Based on Revolutionary War Service, compiled ca. 1800 – ca. 1912, documenting the period ca. 1775 – ca. 1900, RG 15, file of James Irwin, Pennsylvania, S9743, available digitally at Fold3. In February 1833, James Irwin deposed in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, which was formed from Cumberland County, as he applied for a Revolutionary pension. The signature of this James on his affidavit does not match that of the James of the 1800 power of attorney: see ibid., file of James Irwin, Pennsylvania, W3689, available digitally at Fold3.

[22] Pennsylvania Archives, fifth series, vol. 6, ed. Thomas Lynch Montgomery (Harrisburg: Harrisburg Publishing Company, 1906), p. 340.

[23] NARA, Case Files of Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Applications Based on Revolutionary War Service, compiled ca. 1800 – ca. 1912, documenting the period ca. 1775 – ca. 1900, RG 15, file of Thomas and Esther Leonard, available digitally at Fold3. See also S. Falsey, “Sgt. Thomas Leonard,” at Brad Leonard’s Leonard Genealogy – Solomons Leonard of Duxbury and Bridgewater.

#AmericanRevolution #americanHistory #BattleOfCamdenSouthCarolina #BedfordCoPennsylvania #ButlerCoOhio #ColinCampbell #CumberlandCoPennsylvania #DanielMoore #ElizabethtownFrederickCoMaryland #ElizabethtownWashingtonCoMaryland #EstherCookson #FortCumberlandAlleganyCoMaryland #FortFrederickWashingtonCoMaryland #FrenchAndIndianWar #genealogy #GeorgeMitchell #GeorgeWashington #GriffithJames #GriffithJamesLeonard #GwendolynJames #HagerstownWashingtonCoMaryland #HannahJames #HarmonCummings #history #HonorPritchard #HoratioGates #HuntingdonCoPennsylvania #JamesIrwin #JohnDagworthy #JosephChapline #LincolnCoTennessee #MarshallCoTennessee #MaryAnnLeonard #MaryJames #PendletonDistSouthCarolina #PetersburgMarshallCoTennessee #RichardMoore #RobertLeonard #SamuelDean #SharpsburgWashingtonCoMaryland #ThomasLeonard #WashingtonCoMaryland #WilliamBlack

Thomas Lewis Leonard (1781-1870), Son of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James: Early Years in Maryland, South Carolina, and Tennessee

Thomas Dunlap Leonard, “Biography of the Leonards” (manuscript transcribed as typescript, 1883)

Or, Subtitled: “He was one of Limestone’s best citizens, no man stood higher as a good man than Thomas Leonard. His wife was his equal in all duties of a companion.”

Thomas Lewis Leonard, son of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James, was born in 1781 in Washington County, Maryland. This date of birth is based on the 1850 and 1860 federal censuses. Both censuses enumerate him in Cherokee County, Texas.[1] In 1850, the census states that Thomas was 69 years old and in 1860, he’s listed as 79. Both censuses give his birthplace as Maryland. (To read the continuation of this posting, click the numeral 2 below.)

Maryland Years, 1781-6

The 1883 manuscript of Thomas Dunlap Leonard discussed previously (and also here) states that Thomas’ parents Thomas Leonard (1752-1832) and Hannah James “of Maryland” (1752-1842) married about 1775 and “after living in Maryland for several years after their marriage in 1775 and the birth of several children they moved to South Carolina.”[2] Since a stream of documents from September 1762 to March 1792 consistently shows Hannah’s father Griffith James living in Sharpsburg, Maryland, in that time frame, it seems reasonable to assume that Thomas Leonard and Hannah James married in Hannah’s home community of Sharpsburg. I also suspect that Thomas and Hannah lived in Sharpsburg near or with the family of her father Griffith James following their marriage, and that this is where Thomas Lewis Leonard was born.

J. Thomas Scharf, History of Western Maryland: Being a History of Frederick, Montgomery, Carroll, Washington, Allegany, and Garrett Counties, etc., vol. 2 (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts, 1882), pp. 1189-1190

A January 1776 record definitely places Thomas Leonard in the part of Frederick County, Maryland, that would become Washington County in September 1776: as Thomas J. Scharf states,[3]

The first military company organized for the Revolutionary war in Hagerstown was mustered in January, 1776, the members whose names are appended subscribing to the following obligation: “We whose names are subscribed do hereby enroll ourselves into a company of military, agreeable to the resolution of a Provincial Convention held at Annapolis on the 26th of July, 1775, and we do promise and engage that we will respectively march to such places within this province and at such times as we shall be commanded by the convention or the Council of Safety of this province, or by our officers in pursuance of the orders of said convention or Council, and there with our whole power fight against whomsoever we shall be commanded by the authority aforesaid. Witness our hands the 6th day of January, 1776.”

Scharf then lists the signatories to this declaration. They include Thomas Leonard, who signed next to Richard Moore. Richard was the son of Daniel Moore, who lived in Sharpsburg next to a Dean family intermarried with the family of Griffith James, whose land was across the road from the land of Griffith James.[4] Also signing the declaration were Samuel and Thomas Dean. Samuel Dean was Thomas Leonard’s brother-in-law; he married Hannah James’ sister Gwendolyn in Sharpsburg in 1773. Thomas Dean was Samuel’s brother. This militia unit was under the command of Joseph Chapline, founder of Sharpsburg and connected to Hannah James Leonard’s father Griffith James from the time Griffith James first appears in Sharpsburg records in September 1763.[5]

Griffith James’ home tract outside Sharpsburg, Pough, viewed from Burnside Bridge Road, August 2007 Home tract of Dean family descending from Richard Dean viewed across Burnside Bridge Road from Griffith James’ home tract, Pough, August 2007

Hagerstown, where this militia unit was formed, is a bit over thirteen miles north of Sharpsburg. Hagerstown was originally known as Elizabethtown, and Scharf is citing minutes of the Elizabethtown District Committee of Observation for 5 June 1776, which say that on that date, a list was presented to the committee compiled on 6 January 1776 of a group of men who signed their names to a resolution to form a militia per a resolution of the Provincial Convention held at Annapolis on 26 July 1775.[6]

Frederick County, Maryland, Land Record Bk. E, pp. 659-660

Various records place Thomas Leonard’s father Robert Leonard, a British professional soldier, at Fort Frederick some eighteen miles west of Hagerstown in the period leading up to the Revolution. Historian Henry Peden notes that Robert Leonard was stationed at Fort Frederick by August 1757, and that the account book of Colonel John Dagworthy, field commander at Fort Frederick in 1756, shows Robert Leonard paid for service by Dagworthy on 7 March 1763.[7] A document dated 8 February 1755 shows Robert Leonard indenturing his son William on that date to a local farmer.[8] In this document, Robert identifies himself as a soldier serving under Captain “Dagurthey.” When Fort Frederick was built in 1756, its construction was financed by Joseph Chapline of Sharpsburg, the same Joseph Chapline with ties to Griffith James, whose daughter Hannah married Robert Leonard’s son Thomas in or about 1775.[9]

As a previous posting notes, Thomas Dunlap Leonard (1810-1888) states explicitly in his manuscript about the Leonard family that Robert Leonard was a soldier: the manuscript describes Robert as “a soldier of the English Army” and notes that in Thomas D. Leonard’s lifetime, Robert’s discharge papers from the English army were in the possession of his uncle Griffith James Leonard, son of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James. Thomas D. Leonard states that he had seen the discharge papers. As the posting linked at the head of this paragraph also notes, Thomas D. Leonard grew up knowing his grandparents Thomas and Hannah James Leonard both of whom died after Thomas D. Leonard reached young adulthood, and it’s clear that much of his information about the first generation of this family in America comes from their testimony.

1855 tax list, Cherokee County, Texas, p. 25A, available digitally at FamilySearch Ibid., close-up

A prefatory note about Thomas Lewis Leonard’s name: a number of published family trees and other published sources both in print and online give Thomas the middle name Alfred. His name appears in almost every document I’ve found as simply Thomas Leonard. However, the 1855 tax list of Cherokee County, Texas, shows him with the middle name Lewis: his name is written as Thomas Lewis Linard in this document.[10] It’s clear that the man with this name on this 1855 tax list is Thomas Leonard (1781-1870); his son Thomas Jr., who was born in 1829, is enumerated next to Thomas Lewis Leonard with the junior designation next to his name. This tax listing also states that Thomas Lewis Linard/Leonard was being taxed as guardian of the heirs of M. Johnson. Thomas Leonard’s daughter Maria, who married Marmaduke Johnson, died in Cherokee County on 20 September 1848, and as we’ll see down the road, in December 1849, Cherokee County court gave her father Thomas Leonard guardianship of her minor children, though their father was still living.

South Carollna Years, 1786-1808

I noted previously that Thomas D. Leonard’s manuscript states that following their marriage about 1775, Thomas Leonard and wife Hannah James lived a few years in Maryland, where they married, having a number of children born to them there, and then moved to South Carolina. The manuscript does not date the family’s move from Washington County, Maryland, to Ninety-Six (later Pendleton) District, South Carolina. But we can fairly well pinpoint the Leonard family’s arrival in South Carolina from a plat for 160 acres on the Big Generostee in Ninety-Six District that was made for Thomas Leonard (Linard in this document) on 9 February 1786.[11] The grant for this land was made to Thomas (again, with his surname spelled Linard) on 6 November 1786.[12]

South Carolina Plat Books (Charleston Series), vol. 16, p. 35

The 1786 arrival date in South Carolina concurs with information reported by the families of two sisters of Hannah James Leonard whose families moved to South Carolina along with Thomas and Hannah Leonard. Both the family of Hannah’s sister Gwendolyn, who married Samuel Dean, and of her sister Mary, who married Harmon Cummings, state that these families came to South Carolina from Washington County, Maryland, with the Leonard family in 1786.[13] The 1790 federal census of Pendleton District, South Carolina, confirms that these three families had settled near each other by that date in what had now become Pendleton District.[14] A 4 May 1826 deed that Samuel Dean made to his son Moses for 330 acres on Mountain Creek of the Big Generostee tells us that Samuel’s land shared a dividing line with land owned by Thomas Leonard prior to Thomas’ removal to Tennessee.[15]

12 September 1800 power of attorney of Honor Leonard, Thomas Leonard, Robert Leonard, and Colin Campbell to James Irwin of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, in possession of descendant Leonard Wilson of Petersburg, Tennessee, up to 1972

In the latter part of 1793, Griffith James and wife Mary would join their children who had moved to South Carolina and would settle among them. It also appears that when the children of Robert Leonard and wife Honor Pritchard moved in 1786 from Maryland to South Carolina — Thomas Leonard was joined in the move by brothers William and Robert and sister Mary Ann with husband Colin Campbell — their widowed mother Honor accompanied them. A 12 September 1800 document preserved by their descendants in Marshall County, Tennessee, shows Honor Leonard and sons Thomas and Robert, along with Colin Campbell, giving power of attorney to James Irwin in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, to represent them as they claimed a land grant for Robert Leonard Sr.’s Revolutionary service. The power of attorney states that Robert Leonard was a lieutenant in the Maryland regiment and that he was killed at General Gates’ defeat in South Carolina (i.e., at the battle of Camden in August 1780), and that the signatories were living in Pendleton District, South Carolina, when they signed this power of attorney.[16]

Thomas Lewis Leonard would have been five years old when his family moved from Maryland to South Carolina. He came of age in the South Carolina upcountry in northwest South Carolina in what became Pendleton District in 1789 and later became Anderson County. As a previous posting notes, about 1800 in Pendleton District Thomas married Sarah M. Lauderdale, daughter of John Lauderdale and Milbury Mauldin. No marriage record appears to be extant. This date is based on the birth of Thomas and Sarah’s first child, their daughter Aletha, in 1803. Sarah’s father John Lauderdale began acquiring land on the Big Generostee in Ninety-Six District in November 1786.[17] The 1800 federal census of Pendleton District suggests that the Leonard and Lauderdale families lived not far apart from each other: the families are enumerated on consecutive pages.[18]

As a previous posting states (naming Thomas Lewis Leonard’s father as Robert, instead of Thomas, his correct name), “Thomas, the 2nd son of Robert and Hannah Leonard married Sarah Lauderdale in So Carolina, moved to Lincoln Co Tn with his father in 1806.”[19] It’s possible that the Leonard family had begun to prepare for its move to Lincoln County, Tennessee, in 1806, but a deed that Thomas Leonard made in Pendleton District on 29 January 1808 states that Thomas was still living there on that date: Thomas sold William Glenn 506 acres in Pendleton District with the deed stating that both parties were living there.[20] Thomas’ wife Hannah relinquished her dower rights in the land on 15 February 1808, an indicator that the family was selling its homeplace and moving away, and on the same day, Thomas’ brother-in-law Colin Campbell, husband of Thomas’ sister Mary Ann Leonard, who had witnessed the deed, proved it. Thomas signed this deed, with wife Hannah using her mark.[21]

Tennessee Years, 1808-1808

It seems clear that the Leonard family had arrived in Lincoln County by 21 September 1809 when Thomas Leonard — this is, it seems to me, the elder Thomas who was father of Thomas Lewis Leonard — bought 640 acres on the north branch of the Elk River from Anthony Foster, with sons Griffith and Thomas (Lewis) Leonard witnessing the deed and proving it at May court 1810.[22] A land entry recorded by Charles Gibson on 14 April 1811 at the head of Cane Creek and the north Branch of Elk River states that the land Gibson was entering joined land on which Thomas Leonard was living at that time, which had originally been granted to Anthony Foster.[23] When Robert Leonard, son of the elder Thomas, entered 40 acres on the head of Pigeon Roost, a branch of Cane Creek on 16 April 1818, the entry again stated that Thomas Leonard was living on adjoining land acquired from Anthony Foster.[24]

Lincoln County, Tennessee, Bk. A, pp. 43-4

I think it’s possible, but don’t have certain proof of this, that Thomas Leonard’s son Thomas Lewis Leonard was farming with his father Thomas at this point and living with his family on the same 640-acre tract his father had bought from Anthony Foster in September 1809. Lincoln County court minutes on 28 August 1811 show Thomas Leonard Sr. being ordered by the county court to oversee a road from Robert Leonard’s to Gibson’s Gap, with hands to work under him including his sons Thomas (i.e., Thomas Lewis Leonard), Hezekiah, Griffith, and Samuel Leonard.[25] Madison County, Mississippi Territory, records suggest that Thomas’ second son John had relocated to north Alabama by this point, and Lincoln County records suggest that the oldest son, Robert, was living with his family independently of his father in 1811. Thomas Lewis Leonard was the next son after John, and was followed by brothers Hezekiah, Samuel, Griffith James, and Colin Campbell Leonard.

After his move to Limestone County, Alabama, in 1818, Thomas Lewis Leonard made two deeds for land in Lincoln County, Tennessee, to his uncle Colin Campbell in August 1822 that allow us to locate some valuable information about this Thomas in Lincoln County records before he left Tennessee for Alabama. This information is all the more helpful when many Lincoln County documents in the period 1808-1818 do not use the Sr. or Jr. designation for the two Thomas Leonards who were of age in those years.

Lincoln County, Tennessee, Deed Bk. B, pp. 226-7

On 16 August 1822, Thomas Leonard made two deeds to Colin Campbell for tracts of 135 acres and 20 acres in Lincoln County, Tennessee.[26] The two deeds recording this land sale both state that Thomas Leonard was living in Limestone County, Alabama, when he sold the land. So this tells us that the Thomas deeding the land was Thomas Lewis Leonard and not his father Thomas Leonard. Both pieces of land were on the headwaters of Cane Creek. These deeds were witnessed by Thomas Lewis Leonard’s brother Griffith James Moore and brother-in-law William Depriest Moore, husband of Thomas and Griffith’s sister Hannah Leonard.

Tennessee Land Grant Bk. S, pp. 868-9

A Tennessee land grant dated 24 March 1822 shows Thomas Leonard being granted the 135-acre tract on that date, and another grant dated 27 March 1822 records his grant of the 20-acre tract.[27] The grant for the 135 acres states that this land was assigned to Thomas Leonard by the heirs of John R. Stephenson, who had a warrant (no. 3947) for 640 acres on 23 Feb 1796. The 640 acres were entered 27 July 1820 (entry no. 11598) and surveyed 17 August 1820.

The 20-acre tract was assigned to Thomas Leonard by John Whitaker, who had a grant of 1,200 acres (warrant no. 568) on 24 June 1784. The 1,200 acres were entered 27 June 1820 (entry no. 11583) and surveyed 28 June 1820. This survey document shows this land adjoining Anthony Foster’s land on which Thomas’ father Thomas Leonard lived along with a widow Campbell who must have been, I’m assuming, the wife of a William Campbell named mentioned below; Thomas Leonard’s brother-in-law Colin Campbell died 27 May 1832, so this is not Colin’s widow Mary Ann Leonard Campbell.[28]

Tennessee Land Entries 1812-3, series 2, p. 213 Tennessee Land Entries 1811, unpaginated

Though the 27 March 1822 grant to Thomas Leonard states that John Whitaker entered this land on 27 June 1820, Tennessee land entry books for 1812-3 show Thomas Leonard entering the 20 acres on 12 January 1813.[29] A second entry of the 20 acres by Thomas Leonard dated 26 June 1820 is recorded in a later entry book.[30] The survey for the 20-acre dated 28 June 182- says that the land was on the waters of Cane Creek, a north branch of Elk River, near land claimed by Anthony Foster and William Campbell.[31]  The 24 March 1822 grant of the 135-acre tract to Thomas Leonard states that the land joined land granted to Joshua Lawrence. When Thomas’ father, the elder Thomas Leonard (1752-1832) bought 640 acres from Anthony Foster in September 1809, the deed for this land stated that it bordered land granted to Joshua Lawrence.

This chain of land documents suggests that soon after Thomas Lewis Leonard arrived in Lincoln County, Tennessee, with his father and siblings, along with his father’s brother Robert and sister Mary Ann with husband Colin Campbell, and the family matriarch Honor Leonard, Thomas Lewis Leonard entered land by in January 1813 next to land that his father Thomas had bought in September 1809. After leaving Tennessee in 1818, Thomas Lewis Leonard sold this land to his uncle Colin Campbell in August 1822. If Thomas Lewis Leonard farmed with his father during the years in which he and his family resided in Lincoln County — 1808-1818 — he may have lived on his father’s 640-acre tract. Otherwise, the two tracts that Thomas Lewis Leonard sold to Colin Campbell in 1822 may have been his homeplace in the decade in which he lived in Lincoln County, in which his wife Sarah Lauderdale Leonard gave birth to four daughters — Cynthia, Matilda Caroline, Maria W., and Minerva D. Leonard. Prior to moving to Tennessee, in South Carolina, the couple had three daughters born to them: Aletha R., Hannah, and Milbury.

In my next posting, I’ll pick up the story of Thomas Lewis Leonard from the point at which he left Tennessee for Alabama in 1818.

[1] 1850 federal census, Cherokee County, Texas, p. 876 (dwelling and family 474; 7th November); 1860 federal census, Cherokee County, Texas, beat 1, Rusk post office, p. 411 (dwelling and family 27; 4 June).

[2] Thomas Dunlap Leonard, “Biography of the Leonards” (1883 manuscript now circulated as typescript; present whereabouts are not known).

[3] See J. Thomas Scharf, History of Western Maryland: Being a History of Frederick, Montgomery, Carroll, Washington, Allegany, and Garrett Counties, etc., vol. 2 (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts, 1882), pp. 1189-1190.

[4] The Dean home tract, Hunting the Hare, and Griffith James’ home tract, Pough, were across from each other on present-day Burnside Bridge Road close to its intersection with present-day Mills Road just outside Sharpsburg to the southeast. I visited this area in August 2007 and took photos of both pieces of land.

[5] See Frederick County, Maryland, Deed Bk. J, pp. 798-802, stating that Chapline had sold 215 acres to Daniel Moore and Griffith James. On Joseph Chapline and the founding of Sharpsburg, see Edward C. Papenfuse, A Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, 1635-1789 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979); Lee and Barbara Barron, The History of Sharpsburg, Maryland, Founded by Joseph Chapline 1763 (1972), pp. 8f; Maria J. Liggett Dare, Chaplines from Maryland and Virginia (priv. publ., 1902); and Thomas J.C. Williams, A History of Washington County, Maryland, etc., vol. 1 (Hagerstown, 1906; repr. Baltimore: Regional Publishing Company, 1968), pp. 23-4.

[6] See Henry C. Peden Jr., Revolutionary Patriots of Washington County, Maryland 1776-1783 (Westminster, Maryland: Family Line, 1998), p. 210, citing “Proceedings of the Committee of Observation for Elizabeth Town District [Washington County],” Maryland Historical Magazine 12 (1917), p. 270; and Williams, A History of Washington County, p. 1189. Thomas Leonard’s sister Mary Ann married Colin Campbell at Hagerstown on 27 July 1780, and Hannah’s sister Mary James married Harmon Cummings 7 September 1779 at Hagerstown. Both couples were married by Reverend George Mitchell of Hagerstown.

[7] Henry C. Peden Jr., Marylanders and Delawareans in the French and Indian War 1756-1763 (Lewes, Delaware: Colonial Roots, 2004).

[8] Frederick County, Maryland, Land Record Bk. E, pp. 659-660. The farmer’s name appears in this document as both Robert Bowies and William Byard.

[9] Peden Jr., Marylanders and Delawareans in the French and Indian War 1756-1763, p. 54.

[10] 1855 tax list, Cherokee County, Texas, p. 25A, available digitally at FamilySearch.

[11] South Carolina Plat Books (Charleston Series), vol. 16, p. 35; and Ninety-Six District, South Side of Saluda, Commissioner of Locations Plat Bk. B, p. 113, giving the plat date as 21st February. The same page has a plat to Thomas Leonard’s brother William dated 22 February.

[12] South Carolina Grant Bk. 15, p. 416.

[13] See Beverly Dean Peoples and Ralph Terry Dean, Country Cousins: Descendants of Samuel Dean, 2nd ed. (Franklin, North Carolina: Genealogy Publishing Service, 2001), p. 5; and Louise Ayer Vandiver, Traditions and History of Anderson County (Atlanta: Ruralist, 1928), pp. 71-2, both citing oral tradition handed down by Gwendolyn James Dean and Harmon Cummings to their descendants.

[14] 1790 federal census, Pendleton District, South Carolina, p. 6.

[15] Anderson County, South Carolina, Deed Bk. R, p. 482.

[16] I have not found this power of attorney in records of either Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, or Anderson County, South Carolina. The original, of which I have a photocopy and digital copy, was owned by descendant Leonard Wilson of Petersburg, Tennessee, up to 1972, when he died. I do not know its whereabouts at present.

[17] South Carolina State Plat Bk. 21 (Charleston Series), p. 8. It’s clear that Thomas Lewis Leonard was of age and married by 21 November 1804 when his father Thomas made a deed in Pendleton District to Samuel Copeland using the suffix senior for his name: Pendleton District, South Carolina, Deed Bk. I & J, p. 123.

[18] 1800 federal census, Pendleton District, South Carolina, pp. 110A (Thomas Leonard) and 111A (John Lauderdale).

[19] The claim that the Leonard family moved from Pendleton District, South Carolina, to Lincoln County, Tennessee, appears in various published sources, but without documentation that I have seen: see, e.g., J. Lester Wolfe, “Thomas Leonard,” in Heritage of Lincoln County, Tennessee (Waynesville, North Carolina: County Heritage, 2005), p. 414. A number of Leonard researchers have reported in family trees and published articles that the Leonard family received a grant for Robert Leonard’s Revolutionary War service on Cane Creek in Lincoln (later Marshall) County, Tennessee, in 1806, but I have not seen corroboration of that grant.

[20] Pendleton District, South Carolina, Deed Bk. I & J, p. 278. It appears that litigation ensued over this land sale: Pendleton District Judgment Rolls for a case numbered 886 show that in 1810, Thomas Leonard filed suit to recover a debt of $200 owed him by John McClure and Colin Campbell. At issue was a note McClure had made to William Glenn and which Glenn then assigned to Thomas Leonard in November 1808, evidently as partial payment for the land Leonard sold Glenn. I think it’s possible that Colin Campbell was party to the suit because he had gone surety with McClure re: the note given in payment to Thomas Leonard. The case file shows Thomas Leonard appearing in Pendleton court in October 1810. I suspect he had already settled in Tennessee and had returned to South Carolina for this court hearing. An 8 February 1812 deed in Pendleton District notes that Patrick Norris had sold Ezekiel Pickens 140 acres on Oolenoy Creek of the Saluda on 7 October 1811, pursuant to an October 1810 judgment for Thomas Leonard in a suit of Thomas Leonard vs. John McClure (Anderson County, South Carolina, Deed Bk. M, p. 33). On Patrick Norris and Ezekiel Pickens, see here. Patrick Norris was a son of Robert Norris and Jean/Jane Ewing who married Rachel, daughter of William Calhoun and Agnes Long. William Calhoun was a brother of Ezekiel Calhoun, who was Jean/Jane Ewing’s husband prior to Robert Norris. Ezekiel Pickens was a son of Andrew Pickens and Rebecca Calhoun, a daughter of Ezekiel Calhoun and Jean/Jane Ewing.

[21] As a previous posting has noted, Leonard researcher Sue Cooper suggests that Thomas Leonard and his brothers Robert and William may actually have moved initially from South Carolina to Sumner County, Tennessee. She bases this conjecture on the fact that a store ledger of an unidentified Sumner County merchant she has seen shows these three men with accounts in 1806-7. It’s well documented that Thomas and his brother Robert did settle with their mother Honor and with brother-in-law Campbell in Lincoln (later Marshall) County, Tennessee, but it can also be shown that William died testate in Anderson County, South Carolina, in March 1811: see Anderson County, South Carolina, Will Bk. A, pp. 129-130. Note that an article in the Fayetteville [Tennessee] Observer entitled “In the Ground Eighty Years,” published 8 November 1894, says that S.J. Leonard of Petersburg had stated that his father Griffith J. Leonard came to Cane Creek in Lincoln County (later Marshall County) in 1808 (p. 2, col. 3). The article was originally published in the Petersburg Enterprise. S.J. Leonard was Samuel James Leonard, son of Griffith James Leonard, brother to Thomas Lewis Leonard.

[22] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Bk. A, pp. 43-4. This deed states that Thomas Leonard was in Bedford County (adjoining Lincoln on the north) when the deed was made.

[23] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Land Entries Series 2, 1817-1823, p. 77.

[24] Ibid., p. 132

[25] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Court Minutes Bk. 1, pp. 120-1.

[26] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Deed Bk. B, pp. 226-7. And see North Carolina-Tennessee Land Grant Bk. S, p. 868, warrant no. 3847.

[27] Tennessee Land Grant Bk. S, pp. 868-9, grants 16803 and 16820.

[28] Tennessee Plats and Surveys, 1817-1821, series 3, p. 401.

[29] Tennessee Land Entries 1812-3, series 2, p. 213, entry no. 4877. This same date is stated in Tennessee Land Entries 1811, unpaginated, arranged by entry date.

[30] Tennessee Land Entries 1817-1823, series 2, p. 273.

[31] Tennessee Plats and Surveys 1817-1821, series 3, p. 401.

#AlethaLeonard #AlethaRLeonard #AndersonCoSouthCarolina #AnthonyFoster #BattleOfCamdenSouthCarolina #BedfordCoTennessee #BigGenerosteeCreekPendletonDistSouthCarolina #CaneCreekLincolnCoTennessee #CaneCreekMarshallCoTennessee #CharlesGibson #CherokeeCoTexas #ColinCampbell #ColinCampbellLeonard #CumberlandCoPennsylvania #CynthiaLeonard #DanielMoore #ElizabethtownFrederickCoMaryland #ElizabethtownWashingtonCoMaryland #ElkRiverLincolnCoTennessee #familyHistory #FortFrederickWashingtonCoMaryland #genealogy #GriffithJames #GriffithJamesLeonard #GwendolynJames #HagerstownWashingtonCoMaryland #HannahJames #HannahLeonard #HarmonCummings #HezekiahLeonard #history #HonorPritchard #HoratioGates #JamesIrwin #JohnDagworthy #JohnLauderdale #JohnLeonard #JohnRStephenson #JohnWhitaker #JosephChapline #JoshuaLawrence #LimestoneCoAlabama #LincolnCoTennessee #MadisonCoMississippiTerritory #MariaWLeonard #MarmadukeJohnson #MaryAnnLeonard #MaryJames #MatildaCarolineLeonard #MilburyLeonard #MilburyMauldin #MinervaDLeonard #MosesDean #NinetySixDistSouthCarolina #NinetySixDistSouthCarolina #PendletonDistSouthCarolina #PetersburgMarshallCoTennessee #RichardMoor #RobertLeonard #SamuelDean #SamuelLeonard #SarahMLauderdale #SharpsburgWashingtonCoMaryland #ThomasDean #ThomasDunlapLeonard #ThomasLeonard #ThomasLewisLeonard #WashingtonCoMaryland #WilliamCampbell #WilliamDepriestMoore #WilliamGlenn #WilliamLeonard

Aletha R. Leonard (abt. 1803 – abt. 1845), Wife of James G. Birdwell

Thomas Dunlap Leonard, “Biography of the Leonards” (manuscript transcribed as typescript, 1883)

Or, Subtitled: “That James Birdwell and Lethe Birdwell his wife have both departed this life”

With my last posting about James Lauderdale (abt. 1707 – 1796/7), I’ve drawn to a close, for now at least, my series of postings on my Lauderdale family line. With this posting, I’m inaugurating a new series about another of my ancestral lines, one that ties into the Lauderdale line through the marriage of Thomas Lewis Leonard and Sarah M. Lauderdale. Two charts at my initial posting in my Lauderdale series show my descent from that marriage through Thomas and Sarah’s daughter Aletha R. Leonard (abt. 1803 – abt. 1845), who married James G. Birdwell, son of Moses Birdwell about 1819 in Limestone County, Alabama. (To read the rest of this posting, please click the numeral 2 below.)

I’m now going to turn my attention to the Leonard ancestral line. I’m beginning my series on that family line by talking about Aletha Leonard. In addition to the postings I’ve linked in the paragraph above, you can find information about Aletha in two postings I’ve made previously about her husband James G. Birdwell:

James G. Birdwell (1795-1849): Georgia and Alabama Years

James G. Birdwell (1795-1849): Louisiana Years

First a note about Aletha’s given name: it appears in various documents as Aletha, Alitha, Lethe, and Leatha, the latter two renditions obviously nicknames. According to E.G. Withycombe, the given name Alethea or Alithea is the English transliteration of the Greek word for “truth,” and was used as a given name in England from the 17th century.[1] Withycombe notes that the name has been spelled in various ways in the centuries in which it’s been used as a female surname in the British Isles and elsewhere. 

George R. Stewart’s American Given Names has essentially the same information, though Stewart says, curiously, that Alethea “may not actually exist in the American name-pool.”[2] If Stewart means to say that this specific spelling — Alethea — hasn’t been common in the US, he might be correct. But with the spelling Aletha, this name has frequently been used in the US as a female given name: the 1850 federal census lists 342 Alethas (a few with the census taker spelling the name Eletha). This given name has been far from uncommon in American families. Aletha Leonard Birdwell’s grandmother Milbury Mauldin Lauderdale had a sister Frances (husband Burgess Reeves) who named a daughter Aletha, and in that family line, the given name passes down repeatedly. I suspect that the name Aletha came to Thomas Lewis Leonard and wife Sarah M. Lauderdale, in fact, from Sarah’s aunt Frances Mauldin Reeves. Her Aletha was born in 1785, and this family lived in Pendleton District, South Carolina, as did Thomas and Sarah for the first years of their marriage, in which their daughter Aletha, their oldest child, was born.

In the first of the two postings about James G. Birdwell for which I’ve provided links above, I cite an 1883 manuscript written by a first cousin of Aletha Leonard Birdwell’s father Thomas Lewis Leonard, which contains a piece of biographical information about James Birdwell and wife Aletha Leonard. As that posting explains, the primary author of this manuscript, which is entitled “Biography of the Leonards,” was Thomas Dunlap Leonard (1810-1888), a son of Robert Leonard, a brother of Aletha’s father Thomas Lewis Leonard. About James Birdwell and Aletha Leonard, Thomas Dunlap Leonard has the following to say:

Thomas and Sally Leonard’s oldest child, a daughter named Alitha was born in So Carolina about the year 1803. She was married to James Birdwell in Limestone Co Al, a farmer. He was a sober, steady man of good habits and of good family. Moses Birdwell, his father, I was well acquainted with and know him to be a good citizen. James Birdwell came to Louisiana, east of the Red River in 1840 where he and Alitha died in a few years, having 3 daughters that had md. and 4 younger sons that were not gôrwn [sic] All was of good habits. I have not known anything of then for 40 years.

As the previously linked posting indicates, Thomas Dunlap Leonard’s manuscript was at some point transcribed as a typescript (of 28 single-spaced pages) and that’s the only format in which I’ve read it, as it has circulated for years among Leonard researchers. Thomas completed the manuscript in 1883 while living with his cousin Elizabeth Frances Leonard Norris in Waller County, Texas, and after this, Joseph J. Gill, husband of Thomas’ first cousin Angelina Moore, made some brief additions to the work in 1884. I have been unable to find the whereabouts of the original.

The manuscript notes that Thomas D. Leonard grew up in Tennessee knowing his grandparents Thomas Leonard (1752-1832) and Hannah James (1752-1842), both of whom died after he had grown to manhood. Thomas and Hannah, both native Marylanders, moved their family with Thomas’ mother Honor Pritchard Leonard from South Carolina to Lincoln County, Tennessee, in or about 1808, settling near what is now the town of Petersburg in Marshall County, which was formed from Lincoln. Thomas D. Leonard’s manuscript gathers information about this Leonard family from the generation of the immigrant ancestors Robert Leonard and wife Honor Pritchard, noting that Robert was an English soldier who lived in Maryland and was killed during the Revolution (as a Maryland soldier) at the battle of Camden in August 1780.

It’s clear that much of the information about the immigrant generation of this Leonard family recorded by Thomas D. Leonard comes from oral history his grandfather Thomas Leonard, son of Robert and Honor Leonard, and his grandmother Hannah shared with him. Information on subsequent generations seems to have been carefully compiled by Thomas D. Leonard over the course of his life as he lived among, interacted with and visited, and corresponded with far-flung branches of this Leonard family. In comparing what Thomas D. Leonard says about the various lines of this Leonard family with documented sources, I’ve found that his history is remarkably reliable. He knew the people he was talking about, and knew them well.

In the case of Thomas D. Leonard’s uncle Thomas Lewis Leonard, father of Aletha Leonard Birdwell, not only did Thomas live near his uncle’s family in Tennessee, but Thomas D.’s father Robert Leonard followed his brother Thomas Lewis Leonard in moving from Tennessee to north Alabama, and Thomas D. Leonard knew the family of his uncle Thomas Lewis Leonard in Alabama, too.

As noted in a previous posting, Thomas D. Leonard’s manuscript states that his uncle Thomas and wife Sarah M. Lauderdale moved their family from South Carolina to Tennessee in 1806. I find this family in the records of Pendleton District, South Carolina, where Thomas and Sarah’s daughter Aletha was born about 1803, up to 1808. Immediately following the Revolution, the widowed mother of the Leonard family, Honor Pritchard Leonard, moved from Sharpsburg, Washington County, Maryland, to Pendleton District, South Carolina, with her sons, including Thomas Leonard (1752-1832) and wife Hannah James. As we’ve seen, in about 1800 in Pendleton District, Thomas and Hannah’s son Thomas Lewis Leonard (1781-1780), father of Aletha Leonard, married Sarah M. Lauderdale, a daughter of John Lauderdale and Milbury Mauldin, who was born in Wilkes County, Georgia. Thomas D. Leonard’s manuscript notes that after moving from South Carolina to Tennessee, in 1818 Thomas Lewis Leonard then moved his family to Limestone County, Alabama.

Aletha Leonard spent the first few years of her life, then, living in Pendleton District, South Carolina, then spent her girlhood in what was then Lincoln County, Tennessee, and later Marshall County, and during her teen years, her father moved the family from Tennessee to Limestone County, Alabama, where Aletha married James G. Birdwell prior to 8 January 1820.

Deed of Thomas Leonard (Linard) to James Birdwell, Limestone County, Alabama, Deed Bk. 5, p. 107

Aletha and husband James Birdwell lived the first several years of their married life in Limestone County, having four children born to them in that county: Elvira, Hannah, John B., and Dewitt Clinton Birdwell. In 1830, James and Aletha moved their family to Jackson County, Alabama, which had been created from the Cherokee Cession in 1819 and joins Madison County on the east. During the years they spent in Jackson County from 1831-6, on 9 May 1836 in Limestone County, Aletha’s father Thomas Leonard deeded to James Birdwell for love and affection an enslaved boy named Alexander, nine years old.[3] The deed of gift states that James was Thomas’ son-in-law through marriage to Thomas’ daughter, whose name appears as Leatha here. Thomas proved the deed on the day it was made before John Gammel Lauderdale, a justice of the peace who was his brother-in-law, brother of Thomas’ wife Sarah M. Lauderdale.

Deed of James and Aletha Birdwell to John Kirkland, Marshall County, Alabama, Deed Bk. B, pp. 55-6

While living in Jackson County, James and Aletha Birdwell had three more children born to them: Thomas, Camilla, and Frances C. From 1836 to 1839, James and Aletha Birdwell lived in Marshall County, Alabama, which was formed in 1836 from Blount and Jackson Counties and the Creek Cession. On 30 November 1839 in Marshall County, James and wife Aletha sold to John Kirkland tracts of land that James’ father Moses Birdwell had patented in Jackson County in 1830, which had fallen into Marshall County at that county’s formation.[4] This land appears to have come into James’ hands due to a debt Moses had incurred to his son James. The deed suggests to me that James and Aletha had probably been living on and farming this land since the first part of the 1830s. This document was signed by James and Aletha, James signing and Aletha (who is called Letha R. Birdwell in the deed) making her mark. The deed states that James and Aletha were in Madison County at the time it was made.

It’s clear to me that, with this land sale and their temporary relocation to Madison County, James and Aletha were in the process of moving their family to Louisiana when they sold their Alabama land. As noted previously, Thomas Dunlap Leonard says that the Birdwell family moved to Louisiana from Alabama in 1840. Prior to James and Aletha’s sale of their Marshall County land in November 1839, in May 1839, Aletha’s father Thomas Lewis Leonard had sold his land in Limestone County, Alabama, and moved to Texas, with court records stating that he had “absconded” from the county in May 1839 – that is, he left debts behind. GTT — Gone to Texas— the deed and court books of north Alabama counties often note in this period when planters ruined by the economic bust of the first part of the 1830s upped stakes and went west, frequently leaving unresolved debts .…

As we’ve seen previously, the 1840 federal census confirms Thomas Dunlap Leonard’s information that by 1840 the family of James Birdwell had settled east of the Red River in Louisiana. This census enumerates the family in Natchitoches Parish, which was, in 1840, a large parish in northwest Louisiana through which the Red River ran. As the posting I’ve just linked states, all indicators suggest that James Birdwell settled his family in a portion of Natchitoches Parish that in 1870 became Red River Parish, and whose western boundary is the Red River.

The 1840 census shows James Birdwell’s family with two males 5-9, one male 10-14, and one male 40-49, as well as one female under 5, one female 5-9, two females 15-19, and one female 30-39.[5]  Also in the household are fifteen enslaved persons, one male under 10, two males 10-24, one male 24-36, two males 36-55, three females under 10, two females 10-24, two females 24-36, one female 36-55, and one female 55-100.

I’ve puzzled over this census enumeration of fifteen enslaved persons in James Birdwell’s household in 1840. The 1830 federal census shows him holding no enslaved people. As we’ve seen, in 1836, Aletha’s father deeded an enslaved boy named Alexander to James and Aletha, and the combined succession record of James and Aletha in DeSoto Parish, Louisiana, dating from 1850, shows only one enslaved person in the estate, a boy named Benton.

As I’ve thought about the listing of fifteen enslaved persons in James Birdwell’s household in 1840, I’ve realized that the 1830 federal census listing for Thomas Lewis Leonard in Limestone County, Alabama, shows Thomas holding fourteen enslaved persons, with one free man of color also found in the household.[6] Then in 1840, after Thomas Lewis Leonard had arrived in Texas, the 1840 census of the Republic of Texas shows Thomas settled in Houston (later Cherokee) County, Texas, with 1,420 acres of land and fifteen enslaved persons.[7] Thomas Leonard sold his Alabama land in May 1839 and James Birdwell followed suit in November 1839. I suspect the two families went west together, or Thomas preceded his son-in-law James Birdwell and wife Aletha by a few months, settling in what would become Cherokee County where he and wife Sarah M. Lauderdale Leonard would die. For whatever reason, it seems to me that the enslaved persons of Thomas Lewis Leonard were placed in the hands of James Birdwell in Louisiana until both families were fully settled in their new homeplaces.

Hardin Harville’s appeal to administer succession of James and Aletha Leonard Birdwell, 2 April 1850, DeSoto Parish, Louisiana, succession file no. 159;

Thomas D. Leonard states that both James and wife Aletha died “in a few years” after they moved to Louisiana in 1840. As a previous posting notes, James’ death is recorded in the 1850 federal mortality schedule for DeSoto Parish, which states that he died in that parish of cholera in December 1849.[8] On 2 April 1850, Hardin Harville, husband of James and Aletha’s daughter Hannah, filed an appeal to administer the combined succession of James and Aletha in DeSoto Parish.[9] The appeal for administration states that James Birdwell had recently died in DeSoto Parish and that his wife Lethe had predeceased him, dying in Natchitoches Parish.

It appears that Aletha died around the time of the birth of her last child, Mary Ann, who was born in 1845. It’s possible, I think, that Aletha died giving birth to Mary Ann, though I have no information to prove (or disprove) that deduction. Between 1845-8, James then moved to DeSoto Parish, where, as stated above, he died in December 1849.

Note of permission by John Birdwell for marriage of sister Camilla to Ezekiel S. Green, Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, 1 January 1853 (loose-papers marriage file, Pointe Coupee Parish)

While James Birdwell and wife Aletha were living in Natchitoches Parish, their last two children, daughters Sophronia and Mary Ann, were born. Thomas Dunlap Leonard says that James and Aletha had four sons. I’ve found documentary evidence of only three sons, and have concluded that Thomas D. Leonard is mistaken in thinking there was a fourth son. James and Aletha’s combined succession file lists six minor children including DeWitt Clinton Birdwell born about 1831) and Thomas (born 18 June 1832). We know that John B. Birdwell (who was born 1 July 1828) was also a son of James Birdwell and Aletha Leonard, because, when his sister Camilla married Ezekiel Samuel Green in Pointe Coupee Parish on 2 January 1853, John wrote a permission note, as head of her family, for Camilla’s marriage on 1 January, stating that Camilla was his sister.

The 1830 federal census shows only one male under five in the household of James and Aletha Birdwell in Limestone County, Alabama.[10] This is clearly their son John. As we’ve just seen, the 1840 census enumerates in James Birdwell’s household in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, two males 5-9, and one male 10-14. These are John B. again with his two younger brothers Dewitt Clinton and Thomas. As far as I can determine, there were no other sons than these three born to James Birdwell and Aletha Leonard.

[1] E.G. Withycombe, The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 12.

[2] George R. Stewart, American Given Names ((New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 54.

[3] Limestone County, Alabama, Deed Bk. 5, p. 107. Thomas Leonard’s surname is given as Linard in this deed.

[4] Marshall County, Alabama, Deed Bk. B, pp. 55-6.

[5] 1840 federal census, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, p. 173.

[6] 1830 federal census, Limestone County, Alabama, p. 11B.

[7] See Gifford White, 1840 Census of the Republic of Texas (Austin: Pemberton, 1966), p. 79.

[8] 1850 federal mortality schedule, DeSoto Parish, Louisiana, p. 168, l. 11.

[9] DeSoto Parish, Louisiana, succession file no. 159; and DeSoto Parish, Louisiana, Succession Bk. D, pp. 643-650.

[10] 1830 federal census, Limestone County, Alabama, p. 42A.

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