#colincampbell — Public Fediverse posts

@urlyman An absolute great idea that protocol... Maybe in an alternative reality we could've saved ourselves applying it and Campbell would've received the Peace Nobel prize or something. In this sad universe of ours only the Portuguese parliament approved it, but to no use at all. 🤦🏻

#UppsalaProtocol #RiminiProtocol #RichardHeinberg #PeakOil #ColinCampbell

Children of Griffith and Mary James: Hannah, Gwendolyn, Joseph, Mary, John, and Samuel

Or, Subtitled: Migration Trails from Maryland to South Carolina and Many Points West

As the previous posting shows, in his 20 April 1795 will in Pendleton District, South Carolina, Griffith James names his wife Mary and the following children: Hannah, Gwendolyn (Jenny in the will), Joseph, Mary, John, and Samuel.[1] The children are named in order of birth by gender groupings, with the three sons named in their order of birth as well as the three daughters. A 4 July 1874 letter of William Simpson, a great-grandson of Griffith James’ daughter Mary James Cummings, states that Griffith James also had a son Thomas, who is not named in the will. That letter and the question of the son Thomas will be discussed below. (To read the continuation of this posting, please click the numeral 2 below.)

Here are some salient pieces of information about Griffith and Mary James’ children:

1. Hannah James was born 2 November 1752 in Maryland. If Griffith James had already settled by this date in the vicinity of what would later be Sharpsburg in Washington County, then I think Hannah would likely have been born in Frederick County, the parent county of Washington. But I do not have proof of her place of birth, other than to note that her grandson Thomas Dunlap Leonard states in his 1883 “Biography of the Leonards” that Hannah was “born and reared in Maryland.”[2]

I’ve discussed Hannah James Leonard’s life in detail in my series of postings about the Leonard family. As the posting I just linked states, about 1775 in Frederick (later Washington) County, Hannah married Thomas Leonard, son of Robert Leonard and Honor Pritchard (and see also here). This family moved from Maryland to Pendleton District, South Carolina, in 1786 and from South Carolina to Lincoln (later Marshall) County, Tennessee, in 1808.

As another posting about the Leonard family notes, Hannah’s dates of birth and death are recorded on her grave marker in the Leonard family cemetery outside Petersburg, Marshall County, Tennessee.[3] The gravestone states, as indicated above, that she was born 2 November 1752 and that she died 3 November 1842. Hannah died at the Leonard homeplace outside Petersburg in Marshall County, Tennessee. The family cemetery, in which she is buried with husband Thomas Leonard, is behind the site of the old homeplace.

2. Gwendolyn James was born about 1754, probably in Frederick (later Washington) County, Maryland. I haven’t found a document giving a precise date of birth for Gwendolyn. The 1754 date is suggested by Beverly Dean Peoples and Ralph Terry Dean in their book Country Cousins, Descendants of Samuel Dean.[4] Federal censuses on which Gwendolyn is enumerated in her husband Samuel Dean’s household do not offer much help in narrowing down the year of her birth: the 1800 census places it between 1755 and 1774, the 1810 census before 1765, and the 1820 census before 1775. Gwendolyn was living in 1830 after Samuel died in 1826, but I do not find her listed as head of a household on the 1830 federal census.

As Country Cousins states, a 1751 birthdate for Samuel Dean has been handed down among his descendants. Griffith James’ will names Gwendolyn (“Jenny”) after her sister Hannah, whose 2 November 1752 birthdate is established by her gravestone. As we’ll see in a moment, there’s documentary evidence for a 1758 birthdate for Griffith’s son Joseph and for a birthdate of 19 November 1763 for Griffith’s daughter Mary. So if Gwenny was born between Hannah and Mary, her birth year would definitely fall between 1752 and 1763, and, it appears, prior to Joseph’s birth year of 1758. Samuel and Gwendolyn’s first child, Thomas, was born 13 September 1774, and that date also makes a 1754 birth year for his mother very reasonable.

Gwendolyn James married Samuel, son of Richard and Priscilla Dean, about 1773. Since Richard Dean and Griffith James lived on adjoining tracts of land outside Sharpsburg in what was then Frederick but soon to be Washington County, the marriage would very likely have occurred in Frederick County.

Gwendolyn James Dean made a will on 6 December 1834 in Anderson County, South Carolina, her husband Samuel having died there also testate with a will dated 22 May 1826 and probated 25 September 1826.[5] Gwendolyn’s will was probated 7 September 1835, so she died between 6 December 1834 and 7 September 1835. Why numerous family trees published online and Gwendolyn’s Find a Grave memorial page state her date of death as 5 December 1834 is beyond me to understand or explain.

According to Country Cousins,[6]

Samuel Dean and Gwendolyn James and others are buried in unmarked graves on what was then their property near Fairview School on Highway 116 between Belton, SC and Williamston, SC.

The cemetery in which Gwendolyn and Samuel are buried is now known as the Dean cemetery, and is close to Starr in Anderson County, South Carolina.

3. Joseph James was born in 1758, very likely in Frederick (later Washington) County, Maryland. We know Joseph’s year of birth from his death record in the death register of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary parish in Perryville, Perry County, Missouri. This states that he died in that parish on 22 May 1825, aged 67.[7] The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary parish served the English-speaking Catholic population of the area from 1817 until its merger with the German-speaking St. Boniface Parish to form St. Vincent de Paul Parish in 1965.

As previous postings have stated (see here and here), about 1780 in Washington County, Maryland, Joseph married Elizabeth, daughter of James and Sarah Walker Austin. The 20 April 1779 will of Elizabeth’s father James Austin in Washington County states that James was leaving to daughters Elizabeth and Charity shares in a tract of land called King Cole, which came to Joseph James by his marriage to Elizabeth, and which he later sold to his father Griffith James.[8]

As previously noted, about 1791, Joseph moved his family from Washington County, Maryland, to Kentucky. A book written by his son Thomas James entitled Three Years Among the Indians and Mexicans, which recounts his experiences on a trading expedition in 1809 with Auguste P. Chouteau from St. Ferdinand, Missouri, up to the headwaters of the Missouri River and to the Columbia, says that in 1803, Joseph James moved his family from Kentucky to Illinois and then in the spring of 1807, the family made its way to Missouri.[9]

The Combined History of Randolph, Monroe and Perry Counties, Illinois, states,[10]

The James family, of Welsh origin, were among the early settlers in the American Bottom [in Monroe County, Illinois]. Joseph Austin James emigrated to Illinois in 1803, accompanied by his son, Thomas James, who was born in Maryland, in the year 1782, and James A. He moved to Missouri in 1807, where he died.

One of Joseph James and Elizabeth Austin’s sons was named James Austin James, and I suspect that the history of Randolph, Monroe, and Perry Counties has given James’ father Joseph the middle name of Austin for that reason. I have seen no documents giving Joseph, son of Griffith and Mary James, the middle name Austin. If Joseph did have a middle name, it might have been Griffith and not Austin. A letter written on 4 July 1874 by William Simpson of Jacksonville, Florida, a great-grandson of Joseph James’ sister Mary and husband Harmon Cummings, states that Griffith and Mary James had a son Griffith who was a Revolutionary soldier who went west from Maryland.[11] William Simpson seems to be referring here to Joseph James, who was a private in Captain John Reynolds’ militia company, 2nd battalion, in Maryland during the Revolutionary War.[12]

Joseph James’ place of burial is not known. There’s speculation that he’s buried at Mount Hope cemetery in Perryville, Missouri, but if that’s the case, his grave is not now marked.

4. Mary James was born 19 November 1763 in Frederick (later Washington) County, Maryland. This date of birth is recorded in a document written by her son John Cummings, entitled “A Journal of the Life & Parantage [sic] of John Cummings & Wife.”[13] Biographies of John Cummings note that he was born in Pendleton District/Anderson County, South Carolina, on 2 December 1802, and in 1830, moved to Gibson County, Tennessee, where he and wife Rachel Canada became Mormons and went to Nauvoo, Illinois, then from there in 1832 to Provo City, Utah, and finally to Heber City.[14] I think it’s likely that John Cummings’ handwritten document is now held by descendants in Utah or is perhaps in a library or archive there.

In a previous posting, I noted that the marriage of Mary James and Harmon Cummings on 7 September 1779 is recorded in records of Washington County, Maryland, indicating that the marriage was solemnized by Reverend George Mitchell of Hagerstown, who also married Mary Ann Leonard and Colin Campbell. Mary Ann Leonard was a sister of Thomas Leonard who married Mary James’ brother Thomas Leonard.[15]

The journal of Harmon and Mary Cummings’ son John states that Harmon Cummings was born 23 March 1756 and died 4 February 1851. Mary James Cummings died 29 March 1847 according to John Cummings’ journal. Both died in Anderson County, South Carolina, and are said to be buried in the cemetery of Mountain Creek Baptist church south of Anderson, to which they belonged.

5. John James was born between 1770 and 1780 according to the 1830 federal census of Anderson County, South Carolina, and between 1750 and 1760 according to the 1840 federal census.[16] I suspect his birth year actually fell somewhere between 1760 and 1770.

John James died in Anderson County in January 1842. In 1847, his niece Malinda Junkins, daughter of Harmon and Mary James Cummings, filed a case for partition of property belonging to John and his brother Samuel that had come to them from Griffith and Mary James.[17] Malinda’s 21 February 1847 bill of complaint states that John James died in Anderson County in January 1842 unmarried and with no legal issue, but that he had an illegitimate daughter who married William Hembree, and that Hembree was occupying the land in question. An inventory of John’s estate filed in the case file shows that the estate inventory was done on 1 February 1842 and a bill of sale in the file shows John’s estate being sold on 18 February 1842 at the house of John E. Norris.

Prior to this lawsuit on 7 April 1846, Harmon and Mary Cummings had deeded to daughter Malinda Junkins 174 acres that had descended to them from their brothers John and Samuel James, with the deed stating that both John and Samuel had died prior to April 1846, neither leaving lawful issue.[18] This document also states that William Hembree was occupying what had been the land co-owned by John and his brother Samuel.

6. Samuel James was likely born between 1760 and 1770 in Frederick (later Washington) County, Maryland. As the preceding posting states, when his father Griffith James made his will in Pendleton District, South Carolina, on 29 April 1795, the will made his two youngest sons John and Samuel, the two sons still living with their parents in 1795, their father’s executor.

The bill of complaint filed by Samuel’s first cousin Malinda Junkins in 1847 in her lawsuit against her parents says that Samuel James had left South Carolina to go west and had not been heard from in thirty years and was presumed dead. The bill of complaint also says that Samuel died unmarried and without lawful issue. The 4 July 1874 letter of William Simpson discussed above also states that Samuel James, a Revolutionary soldier, had gone west from South Carolina.

Samuel James had left South Carolina 7 September 1825 when his uncle Samuel Dean, acting as Samuel James’ power of attorney, sold Griffith Dean 154 acres on a branch of Twenty-Six Mile Creek in Pendleton District belonging to Samuel James, with the deed stating that Samuel James was “formerly of Pendleton District.”[19]

Samuel may have already left South Carolina by 12 September 1821 when Joseph Grisham filed a suit of debt against him in Pendleton District and Samuel did not (as it seems to me, reading the court documents) appear in court after having been summoned.[20] Samuel was indebted to Joseph for $20.50 promised by a note of obligation, dated 28 January 1821. When Samuel did not appear in court, his property was garnished.

I think that Samuel James continued owning property in Pendleton District after he left South Carolina, since a man of this name appears on tax lists of Anderson County in 1835, 1836, 1837, 1838, and 1840, and I’m not aware of another Samuel James living in or holding property in Anderson County at this time. This property may well have been the land whose disposition Malinda Junkins was challenging in her 1847 lawsuit.

I have been unable to discover where Samuel James went when he left South Carolina, and where he died and may be buried. If Malinda Junkins’ bill of complaint in 1847 is correct, then he left South Carolina by 1817, since he had not been heard of, she claimed, for thirty years. The 1820 federal census shows a number of men with the name Samuel James in points west of South Carolina including Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Louisiana.

As stated previously, though the will of Griffith James does not name a son Thomas, the 4 July 1874 letter of William Simpson states that Griffith James had a son Thomas, who was a Revolutionary soldier who went west. As one reads the family history William Simpson offers in this letter, it’s important to keep in mind that it definitely contains mistaken information. Simpson states, for instance, that Gwendolyn James’ husband Samuel Dean was “a frenchman who came over to this country with General Lafayette,” and that Hannah James married “a Mr. Lenard, one of the hessians that Grand Father helped take prisoner at Trenton.” Both of these pieces of information are totally incorrect.

A Thomas James married Elizabeth McFall in Washington County, Maryland, on 18 April 1778 and is found on the 1790 federal census in that county. But this Thomas James does not appear to be a son of Griffith and Mary James. His roots lie in Harford County, Maryland, and I find no information that links him to Griffith James.

[1] Anderson County, South Carolina, Will Bk. C, p. 82.

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

[3] See Elizabeth Lucie Leonard Baxter, “Leonard Family,” Marshall County, Tennessee, Historical Quarterly 6,2 (summer 1975); and Find a Grave memorial page of Hannah James Leonard, Leonard cemetery, Marshall County, Tennessee, created by Donna B. and maintained by LookingforFamily, with a gravestone photo by Jimmy Trout. Note that the Find a Grave memorial page gives Hannah James a middle name, Leona, that is erroneous. No document I’ve seen ever states a middle name for Hannah.

[4] Beverly Dean Peoples and Ralph Terry Dean, Country Cousins, Descendants of Samuel Dean, 2nd ed.(Franklin, North Carolina: Genealogy Publishing, 2001), p. 3. See also Beverly Dean Peoples, “Richard Deane (1701-1788) and His Children,” at Rootsweb.

[5] Gwendolyn James Dean’s will is in Anderson County, South Carolina, Will Bk B, pp. 6-7. Samuel Dean’s will is a “floating” will not recorded in a will book: Anderson County, South Carolina, probate files box 15, no. 173.

[6] Beverly Dean Peoples and Ralph Terry Dean, Country Cousins, p. 3.

[7] Liber Defunctorium in Parochia Sancta Maria, etc., available digitally at FamilySearch.

[8] Washington County, Maryland, Will Bk. A, pp. 29-30.

[9] Thomas James, Three Years Among the Indians and Mexican (Waterloo, Illinois: War Eagle Office, 1846).

[10] The Combined History of Randolph, Monroe and Perry Counties, Illinois, etc. (Philadelphia: J.L. McDonough, 1883).

[11] In 1999, Heidi Rose Lahey owned the original letter and another that William Simpson wrote on 7 February 1877. She has helpfully placed transcriptions of both letters online at Rootsweb.

[12] Henry C. Peden, Revolutionary Patriots of Washington County, Maryland 1776-1783 (Westminster, Maryland: Family Line, 1998], p. 184; and S. Eugene Clements and Edward F. Wright, The Maryland Militia in the Revolutionary War (Silver Spring: Family Line, 1987], p. 240)

[13] I do not know the present whereabouts of this handwritten document. Digital copies are online at FamilySearch here and here. The 19 November 1763 date of birth is also stated in Hugh S. Watson’s “Genealogy” column, Virginia Gazette (13 August 1954), p. 11, col. 1, with a clipping of this column in the Alabama Archives’ surname files.

[14] See Yvonne Cummings Miller, Biography of H. Clay and Ruby Cummings (Salt Lake City: Hiller, 1990); and Frank Ellwood Esshom, Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah (Salt Lake City: Utah Pioneers Book Publishing Company, 1913), p. 831. See also Heidi Rose Lahey’s family history site, noting the dates of birth and death of Mary James and her husband Harmon Cummings and indicating that both are registered in temple-rites records of the LDS church.

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

[16] 1830 federal census, Anderson County, South Carolina, p. 183A; 1840 federal census, Anderson County, South Carolina, p. 103.

[17] Melinda Junkins vs. Harmon Cummins, Mary Cummins, Moses Dean, et al., Anderson County, South Carolina, Equity Court no. 140 (no. 29, 1847).

[18] Anderson County, South Carolina, Deed Bk. Z, pp. 195-7.

[19] Ibid., Bk. R, pp. 483-4.

[20] Joseph Grisham vs. Samuel James, Pendleton District, South Carolina, Summary Process Papers, roll 2109.

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

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.

Robert Leonard (bef. 1730 – 1780): Discharge Document from British 35th Regiment of Foot (1762)

Or, Subtitled: “Lennard Serjt in Capt Allen’s Company has served honestly and faithfully”

And now the military discharge document: As my initial posting in this series about Robert Leonard notes, Thomas D. Leonard states in his “Biography of the Leonards,” “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.”

The discharge document is extant. It is now in the Southern Historical Collection at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, to which a Leonard descendant donated it in 1993. In May 2008, Beverly Dean Peoples, a researcher who descends from Gwendolyn James Dean, a sister of Thomas Leonard’s (1752-1832) wife Hannah James,[1] kindly sent me a valuable set of notes about Robert Leonard’s discharge paper after she examined it carefully at Southern Historical Collection.

Beverly’s notes tell me that the document is (or was then) in an oversize folder tagged “Misc. Records” with no contributor or special collection of any kind noted.[2] In the folder were eight documents, none of which seemed related to the other. Robert’s discharge document is pitifully worn and crumbled, according to Beverly — six rectangles of old paper about 4 x 6 inches each sewn together by hand with tiny stitches. It appeared to Beverly that what had been an original discharge document had been folded and had eventually come apart at the folds, so that the pieces were stitched together to reassemble the parts. Even then, most of the edges of the document are gone, Beverly reported, and often big sections of the page were missing.

Beverly noted that the discharge paper has writing on both sides. She offered the following transcript:

Witt: Forbis.

His Majesty’s 35 Regt.

General Charles Otway

These are to certify that ther

Lennard Sergt. In Capt Allen’s Campaign has served honestly and faithfully for the.

And is hereby discharged having been.

During the War.

24th day of July inclusive

at Havana the 5th day.

Robert Leonard Srgt.

In her book Tennessee Phantoms, Audrey Matthews offers both photographic images of the discharge paper (or of a portion of the paper) and the following transcription:[3]

His Majesty’s 35th Regim ⏤          

General Charles Otwayes Co

These are to certify that the ⏤

Lennard Serjt in Capt Allen’s Company

has served honestly and faithfully for ther ⏤

⏤  nd is hereby Discharged Having been

⏤  uns? the War

Within to be just, and to have received

24th Day of July Inclusive

Robert Leneard Serjt

Working with an archivist assisting her at the Southern Historical Collection, Beverly Peoples determined that the discharge papers evidently date from 1760-1764.

So the following important pieces of information may be gleaned from Robert Leonard’s discharge paper:

• He served as a sergeant under Captain Allen in General Charles James Otway’s HM 35th Regiment of Foot.

• He was discharged from this British military unit at Havana on 24 July in a year that appears to fall between 1760-4.

Charles James Otway (1694-1764) was a senior British Army officer who commanded the 35th Regiment of Foot from 1717 until his death in 1764. In April 1756, the 35th Regiment left Ireland, where it was then stationed, for North America for service in the French and Indian War, or as historians often name it, the Seven Years’ War, because the war was a global conflict and not an exclusively North American one.[4] Having landed in New York, the 35th began garrison duties on the northern frontier of the British American colonies, sending detachments to Mobile and up the Mississippi valley. In March 1757, five companies under Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Monro including Captain Richard Allen’s unit marched from Albany toward Fort Edward and Monro assumed command of Fort William Henry.

In August 1757, Fort William Henry fell to French forces under Montcalm and following the surrender of the 35th and other British troops, a massacre occurred in violation of the treaty of surrender, with a number of those in the 35th Regiment among those killed. Soldiers of the 35th then withdrew and re-formed, and in July 1758, took part in the siege and capture of Louisbourg in Nova Scotia. The 35th then played a key role in the battle of Québec in 1759, with the battle of the Plains of Abraham on 13 September 1759 resulting in the capture of Québec by the British.

After Montréal fell following the final and decisive campaign of this North American part of the war between July and September 1760, the 35th, having completed its operations in North America, then took part in a West Indies campaign (1761-2) and was transferred south, taking part in the capture of Martinique in January 1762 and the Spanish stronghold of Havana in the summer of 1762.

Put together the information we can glean from Robert Leonard’s discharge document, the history of HM 35th Regiment of Foot in the period 1756-1762, and Robert Leonard’s documented service on the western Maryland frontier under Dagworthy, and a very interesting picture emerges: as noted previously, we can document that Robert was serving under Dagworthy by 8 February 1755.[5] As I’ll explain in a detail in a subsequent posting focusing on his military service in Maryland, a steady stream of documents then shows Robert continuing to serve Dagworthy’s captain in command at Fort Frederick, Alexander Beall, up to November 1758, when he was discharged from Beall’s military unit. In March 1759, we find Robert witnessing the discharge of another soldier from Beall’s troops, and that may indicate that he was still in Frederick County up to that date before he entered the service of the 35th Regiment and then took part in the Québec campaign in September 1759.

We know from Robert’s discharge paper that he joined Otway’s 35th Regiment and served under Captain Allen in that regiment. We also know from Thomas Dunlap Leonard in his “Biography of the Leonards” that Robert was in the battle of Québec. As we’ve just seen, the pivotal event in that battle took place in the battle of the Plains of Abraham in September 1759, and it can be documented that the 35th, with Allen’s troops included, played an important role in that event. So it appears that by September 1759, Robert Leonard was serving under Otway and Allen.

He was then discharged at Havana — the discharge paper states the place explicitly — on 24 July of an unstated year. Histories of the 35th show it capturing Havana in the summer of 1762. From some point in 1759 through July 1762, then, Robert Leonard served as a sergeant in Captain Richard Allen’s regiment of Otway’s 35th Regiment of Foot. At this point, he evidently returned to his wife Honor and their children in Maryland and then when the American Revolution got underway, it can be documented that he enlisted on 19 August 1779 in Frederick County as a sergeant in Captain John Reynolds’ company of the 7th Maryland Regiment.

Robert Leonard’s discharge document shows a Forbis witnessing the discharge in Havana in July 1762. This was Major William Forbes, who served with the 35th Foot during its campaigns across North America and the Caribbean and was in command of the unit at Pensacola in 1763.

Though one descendant of Robert Leonard has sought to convince me that the man of that name serving as a sergeant at Fort Frederick in the 1750s is a different person than the sergeant who was discharged from the 35th Regiment in July 1762, it’s clear to me that these are the very same man, the Robert Leonard to whose son Thomas and his descendants the military discharge document passed down. Thomas’ grandson Thomas D. Leonard, who would likely have had this information from Thomas and his wife Hannah, explicitly tells us that Robert Leonard was a soldier of the English army in the “War of 1760” who was at the battle of Québec (in 1759), and that he had seen Robert’s discharge paper at the house of Thomas Leonard’s son Griffith James Leonard.

Then in a power of attorney Robert’s widow Honor made with sons Thomas and Robert and son-in-law Colin Campbell in 1800, we’re told that Robert Leonard served as a “Sergeant in the war of 1753” connected to Washington, who was headquartered at Fort Cumberland in 1755 when we have every reason to think Robert Leonard was at that fort serving under Dagworthy. Document after document subsequently places Robert at Fort Frederick after that fort was built in 1756. In these documents as in the discharge document, Robert Leonard has the rank of sergeant, a rank the very same Robert Leonard subsequently held when he joined Maryland troops during the Revolutionary War.

In my next posting, I’ll look closely at the documentation we have for Robert Leonard’s service in the French and Indian War.

[1] See Beverly Dean Peoples and Ralph Terry Dean, Country Cousins: Descendants of Samuel Dean, 2nd ed. (Franklin, North Carolina: Genealogy Publishing Service, 2001),

[2] Working with an archivist, Beverly determined that the discharge paper had been donated to Southern Historical Collection in 1993 by Shirley Leonard of New Mexico.

[3] The Tennessee Phantoms (Prosser, Washington, 1989).

[4] See A.E. Readman, ed., Records of the Royal Sussex Regiment (Chichester: West Sussex County Council, 1985); Richard Trimen, An Historical Memoir of the 35th Royal Sussex Regiment of Foot (Southampton: The Southampton Times Newspaper and Printing and Publishing Co., 1873); Seven Years’ War Journal of the Proceedings of the 35th Regiment of Foot (1757), available digitally at Archive.org; John M. Kitzmiller, In Search of the “Forlorn Hope” (Ogden, Utah: Meridian, 1988); and University of New Brunswick Library, “Muster Books and Pay Lists (WO 12/4949): 35th (Dorsetshire) Regiment of Foot: 1760-61, 1765-1782,” (Great Britain, War Office, PRO WO 12/4949) in The Loyalist Collection.

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

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

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.

Thomas Leonard (1752-1832) and Hannah James (1752-1842): Children Robert, Thomas, John, Hezekiah, Samuel, Griffith, Colin, and Hannah

Or, Subtitled: “Saw Lincoln County when it was a cane brake infested with bear, wolves, deer and many other wild animals”

In three previous postings, I discussed the life of Thomas Leonard (1752-1832), son of Robert Leonard and Honor Pritchard. I began with a look at the documents that chronicle his early years in Maryland, where he was born in the part of Frederick County that became Washington County in 1776, and where Thomas married Hannah, daughter of Griffith James, about 1775. I then looked at Thomas’ years in Pendleton District, South Carolina, to which he, his siblings, and their widowed mother Honor moved from Maryland by early 1786. I ended with an examination of documents following Thomas’ life in Lincoln (later Marshall) County, Tennessee, from 1808 up to his death in 1832. (Please click the numeral 2 below to read the continuation of this posting.)

In this posting, I’m going to provide a brief overview of the children of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James. My goal is to document salient facts about each of these children, e.g., dates and places of birth, marriage, and death. There’s much more information to be found about each child. The following accounts of the children of Thomas and Hannah James Leonard are not exhaustive:

1. Robert Leonard, the first child of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James, was born 14 February 1777 in Washington County, Maryland, and died 4 August 1844 at Rusk in Cherokee County, Texas. On 17 March 1807 in Abbeville County, South Carolina, Robert married Rachel Dunlap. These dates of birth, marriage, and death are provided by Robert and Rachel’s son Thomas Dunlap Leonard in his record of the family of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James written in 1883. This document, entitled “Biography of the Leonards,” has been discussed in previous postings (and here) noting that its present whereabouts are not known and that it has circulated among Leonard descendants as a typescript.

Thomas Dunlap Leonard records the following about his parents Robert Leonard and Rachel Dunlap:[1]

Robert was the oldest child, born in Maryland the 14th of Feb., 1777. Married Rachel, dau of Wm. Dunlap in Abbeville District of So Carolina on 17 Mar 1807. He moved with his father to Lincoln Co Tn and settled on Cane Creek half a mile above Petersburg. Subsequently moved to middle Alabama, settled in Perry Co where he lived from 1818 to 1824, lived there until 1840, then to Texas, settled in Cherokee Co. where he died on 4 Aug. 1844 in the 67th year of his age. He was a hatter by trade, also a farmer. His life was spent in usefulness to his neighbors, his country and his family, teaching his children the importance of industry, honesty, and truthfulness. At all times with his wife taught their children the importance of the Christian religion which all had embraced before their death, but two and they embraced since the death of their parents. Robert was truly a good man, good husband, good father, good citizen; he was my father and his wife Rachel, my mother. Language will fail me in attempting to portray her excellencies. She was brought up in the faith and membership of the Presbyterian Church and strictly adhered to their discipline in the government of her family, teaching them to observe the commandments of our Saviour.

She ruled her children in love and impressed on their minds at their earliest age those principles of love to God and love of His services, and to search his words of truth for their guide through life. She became convinced of the importance of immersion as baptism, when she was about 40 years of age, when she and her husband were buried with Christ in baptism in Flint River, Madison Co. Ala. She lived to see all of her children members of the Baptist Church, but two and they followed in her footsteps after her death. She died in Cherokee Co, Tx in the year 1862 in the 62nd year of her life and was buried by the side of her husband in the town of Rusk, Cherokee Co. Tx. after having spent a long life of usefulness, to her family, neighbors, and church. Thus ended the life of a God loving woman.

A previous posting explains why I think it’s likely that, following Thomas Leonard’s marriage to Hannah James about 1775, this couple lived at Sharpsburg in Washington County, where Hannah’s father Griffith James lived. If I’m correct in deducing this, then Thomas and Hannah’s son Robert and the three (or possibly four: see the notes below on Samuel) brothers born after him in Washington County were probably all born in Sharpsburg.

A biography of Robert’s son William R. Leonard (1822-1905) in Memorial and Biographical History of McLennan, Falls, Bell and Coryell Counties, Texas states that his father Robert Leonard was a soldier of the War of 1812 and served under Andrew Jackson at the battle of Horseshoe Bend.[2] His service papers show him serving under Colonel Robert Dyer in the Cavalry and Mounted Gunmen of Tennessee Volunteers.[3]

The biography of William R. Leonard also indicates that his father Robert Leonard moved about 1824 to Madison County, Alabama, where he lived on the Flint River nine miles east of Huntsville.[4] He then moved to Texas about 1840, according to this source, settling first in Nacogdoches County and then in Cherokee County, where he died in 1844, aged 67. A certificate for a Texas headright grant that Robert Leonard received on 4 March 1844 states that he arrived in Texas on 3 April 1840.[5] As a previous posting notes, Robert’s brother Thomas moved from Limestone County, Alabama, to Nacogdoches County, Texas, in June 1839, receiving a headright grant that fell into Cherokee County at that county’s formation in July 1845. In moving to this part of Texas in 1840, Robert Leonard was following in the footsteps of his brother Thomas.

At her “Leonard/Kellum/Hughes Family Tree” at Ancestry, Peggy Strickland states,[6]

According to old hand written Leonard Family history, Rachel [Dunlap]’s Father brought Rachel and her two sisters from Ireland, their mother having died in Ireland when Rachel was three years old. Her Father had previously been to America and fought in the Revolutionary War, in which he lost one leg.

The 1850 federal census for Cherokee County, Texas, on which the widowed Rachel is shown living at Rusk, reports her birthplace as Ireland.[7]  A previous posting talks briefly about a Limestone County, Alabama, court case that ensued after Robert Leonard’s brother Thomas sold his homeplace in that county to their brother John Leonard in 1839 as Thomas prepared to move to Texas. The court case, James Birdwell, assignee, vs. John Linard, revolved around a promissory note for $500 that James Birdwell, who married Thomas Leonard’s daughter Aletha, claimed Thomas assigned to him when John paid him for his land. James alleged that the promissory note was given to Rachel, wife of Robert Leonard, for safekeeping. Robert and wife Rachel moved to Texas soon after Thomas moved his family there. John Leonard died in 1846 and James, who then died in 1849, claimed that Rachel had never delivered John’s $500 promissory note to Thomas Leonard to him.

As the first-born son of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James (and their first child), I think it’s likely Robert Leonard was given the name Robert after his paternal grandfather Robert Leonard.

2. Thomas Lewis Leonard, the second child of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James, was born in 1781 in Washington County, Maryland, and died in October 1870 in Cherokee County, Texas. About 1800 in Pendleton District, South Carolina, he married Sarah M. Lauderdale, daughter of John Lauderdale and Milbury Mauldin. Sarah’s name is consistently written in documents with the middle initial M.; I suspect her full name was Sarah Mauldin Lauderdale, and that she was named for her grandmother Sarah, wife of John Mauldin.

Thomas is my direct ancestor, and I’ve provided extensive documentation in previous postings about his life in Maryland, South Carolina and Tennessee, then about his years in Limestone County, Alabama (and here), and finally about his final years in Cherokee County, Texas.

3. John Leonard, the third child of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James, was born between 1781 and 1784 in Washington County, Maryland, and died 14 November 1846 in Limestone County, Alabama. In 1806 in Pendleton District, South Carolina, he married Hannah Fowler, daughter of Joshua and Elizabeth Fowler.[8]

My reason for assigning John a birthdate of 1781-4 is as follows: in his discussion of the children of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James, Thomas Dunlap Leonard indicates that John was the third child of Thomas and Hannah, born after his brother Thomas and prior to his brother Hezekiah. We know that Thomas Lewis Leonard was born in 1781, and as I’ll discuss below, the tombstone of Hezekiah Leonard shows his date of birth as 24 June 1784. So John was born between 1781 and June 1784. The 1830 and 1840 federal censuses confirm that he was born between 1780 and 1789.[9]

Thomas Dunlap Leonard states the following about John Leonard:

John Leonard married Hannah Fowler, daughter of Joshua Fowler of So Carolina about 1806, moved to Madison Co., Ala, where he lived until 1838, when he moved to Limestone Co., Al, where he lived until death, which occurred about 1847 or 1848. Hannah, his wife, died in Madison Co. about 1828 or 1829. Their children were born near Madison Cross Roads in Madison Co. John lived through life as he had been reared up by his parents, a lover of all the ennobling virtues that constitute good child, a good husband, father and citizen. I was intimately acquainted with him, the last 20 years of his life. He was governed in all his actions through life from the noble principles of Christian spirit, truth and honesty was his motto. When I look back at the character of old acquaintances, John Leonard stands side by side with the best of citizens of old Madison Co. When I look back from my old age, my heart swells within me of love and admiration for the excellence of John Leonard. Aunt Hannah was truly his peer in all of the excellencies of wife, companion, mother and citizen. The character of her daughters prove the excellencies of the early training of the mother. Their deportment gives a better comment on the life and character of their mother than I can give.

In the War of 1812, John Leonard served in the 16th Regiment of Burrus’ Mississippi Militia.[10] Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Burrus’ regiment was comprised for the most part of men living in or near Madison County, Mississippi Territory (later Alabama), which bordered on Lincoln County, Tennessee.[11] Also serving in Burrus’ militia was Robert Leonard’s first cousin Samuel Dean, son of Robert’s aunt Gwendolyn James and husband Samuel Dean, and Moses Birdwell, father of James Birdwell who married John Leonard’s niece Aletha, daughter of Thomas Lewis Leonard. Moses also had a daughter whose given name I haven’t found, who married a Lamb, and Alfred L. Lamb, a son of that couple, married John Leonard’s daughter Hannah A.E. Leonard.

John Leonard’s date of death is stated in a will book of Limestone County, Alabama, according to his descendant Jackie Leonard of Athens, Alabama.[12]Minutes of the Limestone County circuit court case James Birdwell assignee vs. George W. Fisher admr. of John Linard dec’d. state on 2 December 1846 that “the said John Linard hath departed this life intestate as we are informed” and that George W. Fisher was estate administrator.[13] Fisher was granted administration on 6 December 1846.[14]

4. Hezekiah Leonard, the fourth child of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James, was born 24 June 1784 in Washington County, Maryland, and died 27 March 1817 in Lincoln County, Tennessee. These dates of birth and death are inscribed on his tombstone in the Leonard family cemetery at the old Thomas Leonard homestead just north of Petersburg, Marshall County, Tennessee.[15]

Thomas Dunlap Leonard says this about Hezekiah:

Hezekiah, a son of Thomas and Hannah Leonard died at the home of his parents in Lincoln Tenn. about the year 1816. He was grown not married.

Hezekiah left a nuncupative will in Lincoln County dated 27 March 1817.[16] The will, which was probated 5 May 1817, states that Hezekiah was in “his last sickness” and bequeaths Hezekiah’s property to his brother Griffith. It was witnessed by his brother Robert and cousin George, son of William Leonard.

5. Samuel Leonard, the fifth child of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James, was born about 1786 in either Washington County, Maryland, or Pendleton District, South Carolina. He died about 1817 in Lincoln County, Tennessee. I estimate Samuel’s birthdate as about 1786 because Thomas Dunlap Leonard places him between his brother Hezekiah, who was born 24 June 1784, and his brother Griffith, who was born 26 September 1787. Since his parents moved from Maryland to Pendleton District, South Carolina, late in 1785 or early in 1786, I think he may have been born in either Maryland or South Carolina.

After having noted that Hezekiah Leonard died at the home of his parents in Lincoln County, Tennessee, in about 1816, Thomas Dunlap Leonard states:

Samuel at, and near the same time, he was just about grown.

I think it’s likely that Samuel is buried in the Leonard family cemetery, but I haven’t seen any transcription of a tombstone for him.

6. Griffith James Leonard, the sixth child of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James, was born 26 September 1787 in Pendleton District, South Carolina, and died 1 September 1864 in Marshall County, Tennessee. On 7 April 1836 in Lincoln County, Tennessee, he married Nancy Emmett Porter, daughter of Stephen and Mary Porter.

Griffith’s dates of birth and death are recorded on his tombstone in the family cemetery on Thomas Leonard’s old homestead just north of Petersburg, Tennessee.[17] Griffith’s date of death is also stated in an affidavit given by John Cowden and the widow Nancy in Marshall County on 22 August 1868; the affidavit is found in his War of 1812 pension and bounty land application file.[18] John Cowden was the husband of Mary Hannah Leonard, daughter of Griffith and Nancy Leonard. John and his mother-in-law Nancy state that Griffith was aged 73 when he died on 1 September 1864. Their affidavit also says that he refused to vote for secession in the vote held in Tennessee on 8 June 1861 and was consistently loyal to the Union though his son Samuel was a Confederate soldier.

Thomas Dunlap Leonard offers a fulsome remembrance of his uncle Griffith James Leonard and Griffith’s wife Nancy:

Griffith J. Leonard remained with his parents until their death bestowing that care on them that was essential to their happiness is old age. Having by inheritance and cultivation obtained those hightoned traits of character that fitly qualified him for the practical duties of life as a good citizen, husband and father. His neighbors can all testify to his excellencies of character with pleasure. His children proved the excellencies of their parents.  Griffith Leonard was a superior order of intellect, had no opportunities of school la early life to improve his intellect. He was a self made man and had acquired a fine degree of practical and useful knowledge. A man of high toned moral principles not capable of condescending to any low degrading act under any circumstances. He was a true patriot through life, he fell from an unerring rifle shot of an Indian warrior on the furious battlefield of Talledega, Ala. in the year 1812. It pierced his neck and passed through, from which wound he recovered and lived to marry his [wife?] and bring up an excellent family. He also accumulated a good home, a good large tract of Tennessee best land for his amiable widow and children.

He leaves them as his parents left him viz, with high toned sense of moral training to qualify them for usefulness to society, themselves and their God. He died 1a the year 1864, being In the 77th year of his age. Thus ended the long and useful life of Griffith J. Leonard, leaving his amiable wife with a large family to care for at the end of a cruel war that had devastated nearly every ordinary contort of life, and in the midst of a helpless people as herself. Yet she by inheritance and education had a good stock of industry and economies to draw from. That she has brought up her excellent family is credit to herself and to her departed husband. She has demonstrated these excellent traits of character inherited from her parents end by education that so fitly qualified her for her duties as mother to her children and her labor has been crowned with success.

Nancy Porter was a daughter of Stephen and Sary Porter, born Jan. 10, 1818. They were the best of citizens, Iived up to those excellent rules of discipline that so eminently qualified them for usefulness in life to themselves, families, neighbors and their God. Stephen Porter’s excellent example will be remembered by his acquaintances with pleasure as long as their lives last. It affords me pleasure now to look back over half a century when Stephen Porter assembled his family and visiting neighbors around the family altar for prayer night and morning. His Godly influence was felt by his neighbors during life, and after death he was missed by all. He has gone to his reward of a good man. May his posterity emulate his worthy example.

Griffith’s War of 1812 pension and bounty land file contains further detailed information about his service and injuries during that war. On 1 August 1851, Griffith filed a bounty land claim in Marshall County that is preserved in this file. This document states that Griffith was aged 64 and living in Marshall County. It also notes he was a sergeant in Captain John Porter’s 1st Regiment of the Tennessee Militia under Col. J.K Wynn in the Creek War. He was drafted at Fayetteville, Tennessee, on 1 October 1813 and discharged at Fayetteville on 1 January 1814. The affidavit was signed by Griffith.

Another affidavit Griffith gave in Marshall County on 2 June 1855 is in the pension and bounty land file. This gives his age as 69 and states that he was a resident of Marshall County.  It further indicates that he was a 1st sergeant under Colonel John Porter in the 1st regiment of Col. John K. Wynn in the War with Great Britain and the Creek Indians of 1812-1815. He had made a bounty-land application for this service on 28 September 1850. Again, this document is signed Griffith Lenard.

A 4 July 1871 affidavit of Nancy Leonard in Marshall County found in the pension and bounty land file attests to her husband’s service. Nancy notes that Griffith was severely wounded on 8 November 1813 at Talladega, Alabama. She signs the affidavit Nancy E. Lenard. 

An affidavit provided by James Luna, an ensign in Griffith’s unit, on 4 September 1845 in Marshall County says that Griffith J. Leonard was a 1st sergeant in John Porter’s Company of West Tennessee Militia and served in the action against the Creeks from October 1813 to January 1814. He received a severe wound in his neck in the battle of Talladega on 9 November 1813, Luna states.

A biography of Griffith’s grandson Dr. John Norris Cowden also speaks of his grandfather Griffith J. Leonard’s War of 1812 service.[19]  Noting that John Norris Cowden was the son of Dr. John Cowden and Mary Hannah Leonard and was born in Marshall County, the biography states:

James Griffith Leonard, the father of Mrs. Cowden, was an intimate friend of General Andrew Jackson, under whom he served throughout the War of 1812, participating in the battle of Tishomingo [sic].

As Thomas Dunlap Leonard’s biography of his uncle Griffith notes, Griffith was the son who remained at home with his parents Thomas and Hannah Leonard up to their deaths, and for this reason, his father willed the family homeplace and land to his son Griffith. Thomas Leonard’s will is transcribed and discussed in a previous posting noting that the will stipulates that Griffith was to care for his mother Hannah up to her death. Griffith and wife Nancy continued living in the old Leonard house up to their deaths, with Griffith leaving the homeplace to his son William Stephen (Bud) Leonard.

In an article published in the Fayetteville Observer in August 1908, John Bright speaks of a number of early settlers of Lincoln County, Tennessee, including Griffith James Leonard.[20] Bright notes that Griffith, whose wife was Nancy Porter, came to Lincoln County at an early date, settling north of Petersburg and leaving “a character of good citizenship, worthy of imitation by his posterity.” 

Griffith James Leonard was named for his maternal grandfather Griffith James, who moved from Washington County, Maryland, to Pendleton District, South Carolina, following his children who had settled there in the 1780s. Photos of Griffith James Leonard, his wife Nancy, and their son Samuel with Samuel’s family are found at the Ancestry tree of Dawn Leonard, “Leonard/ Leonard/McLeod/Miller Family Tree.”[21] The photo of Griffith is found at the head of this posting.

7. Colin Campbell Leonard, the seventh child of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James, was born about 1791 in Pendleton District, South Carolina, and died between 16 June 1856 and 29 November 1859 in Jackson County, Arkansas. About 1817 in Lincoln County, Tennessee, Colin married Jean Williams. As Thomas Dunlap Leonard’s brief biography of his uncle Colin states, Colin’s wife Jean died and he then married a second time. Thomas D. Leonard appears not to have known the name of Colin’s second wife.

Thomas D. Leonard states the following about Colin Campbell Leonard:

Collin Campbell Leonard son of Thos, and Hannah Leonard was born in Maryland, brought up in South Carolina, married Miss Jean Williams of Tennessee about the year 1817. I have no knowledge of the Williams family. They had only two children, a daughter and a son. I am under the impression both children are dead. Aunt Jean died and Uncle Collin moved from Lincoln County to McNairy County West Tenn. He married the second time, had seven children by her. I met with two sons on the battle field of Perryville, Ky. I have no further knowledge of his family.

Uncle Collin was dissipated (drank) in early life. He was a good soldier in the Indian war of 1812 to 14. He was a true friend to friends and bitter enemy to his enemies. He possessed noble generous principles. His latter life was a steady habits. He became a member of the Methodist church and a preacher before death. His sons informed us that their father was dead. Nothing further is known of his family.

The 1850 federal census shows Colin with a woman in his household whose name is given by the census taker as Mary A.L. (or S.?) Collins, aged 28, born in Virginia.[22] The census lists Colin as a farmer aged 59 who was born in Tennessee. Also in the household are children Colin C., 12, Thomas C., 8, William R., 6, and Levi W., aged 1, all born in Tennessee.

It appears to me that Mary is Colin’s wife, and that the census taker has inadvertently assigned her the surname Collins because her husband is named Colin C. Leonard. At some point after this census enumeration was made, the family moved to Jackson County, Arkansas, where on 20 June 1855, a circuit course case of debt, Atrides Crow v. Collin C. Leonard, was filed.[23] On 16 June 1856, Colin’s property was attached by the sheriff due to a judgment in this case.[24]

On 29 November 1859, Mary Leonard married Cyrus Black in Jackson County, Arkansas.[25] The marriage record gives Mary’s age as 37, indicating an 1822 birth year. This matches the birth year of the Mary who is found in Colin Campbell’s household on the 1850 federal census and who appears to be mother of his sons Colin C., Thomas C., William R., and Levi W.

The federal census shows Cyrus and Mary Black living at Cache in Jackson County, Jacksonport post office.[26] Mary is aged 37 and born in Virginia — a match to the Mary found in Colin C. Leonard’s household in 1850.  Also in the household are Thomas, William, and Levi from Colin’s household on the 1850 census, all now with the surname Black, and daughters Nancy and Alfy Black, aged 8 and 4, who are likely also children of Colin C. Leonard. Nancy was born in Tennessee and Alfy (who is likely Alpha) in Arkansas. 

Colin Campbell Leonard was named for his uncle Colin Campbell, who married Mary Ann Leonard, sister of Thomas Leonard. For a discussion of documents showing Colin Campbell Leonard receiving permission to keep an ordinary at his father’s house in Lincoln County, Tennessee, and being charged in that county with assault and battery, see this previous posting.

8. Hannah Leonard, the eighth child and only daughter of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James, was born 10 January 1795 in Pendleton District, South Carolina, and died 11 December 1886 at Petersburg in Marshall County, Tennessee. On 1 July 1817 in Lincoln County, Tennessee, she married William Depriest Moore, son of David Dower Moore and Jane Depriest.

These dates were inscribed on Hannah’s tombstone in the Moore family cemetery outside Petersburg.[27] The stone is now broken into pieces, though William D. Moore’s stone remains intact and legible.

The War of 1812 pension and bounty land application file of William Depriest Moore and wife Hannah contains a 23 May 1878 document stating that Hannah was aged 82, née Leonard, living near Petersburg, and had married William D. Moore on 1 July 1817 in Lincoln County, Tennessee.[28] William, who was a Virginia native, served during this war as a private in Captain David Elliott’s Company, Kentucky Militia.

Thomas Dunlap Leonard offers an extensive reminiscence of his aunt Hannah and her husband William D. Moore:

Hannah Leonard married William D. Moore of Kentucky in the year 1827. He was a house painter and cabinet workman, equal to any of his day. He was a man of superior genius of mind, his natural endowments were above the average. He cultivated it to a general usefulness in practical science. He was a good farmer, fine judge of stock, which he had a fine taste for and cultivated successfully. He was truthful, honest, and reliable in every sense of the term. He accumulated a good living, raised a family of six children, viz Angeline, Thomas D., Alpha, Alitha, William C., Margaret, and Amanda. He died in November in 1855, leaving Hannah with a competency and with her most amiable of children to take care of her in old age, which duty they here performed, to credit to themselves and satisfaction to their aged mother, who still survives and is now 89 years of age, now living with her son-in-law and daughter, Jo. J. S. and Angelina Gill.

Hannah was the only daughter of Thomas and Hannah Leonard. Language fails me to portray the excellencies of this good woman neither can her neighbors or children do her justice. She has lived for seventy five years near where she now Ilves. Saw Lincoln County when it was a cane brake infested with bear, wolves, deer and many other wild animals.  Right around Petersburg and cane Creek all of her age have gone across the river. She is left as a lone tree of the forest but must soon fall, and go to join her loved ones that have gone before and must follow after. She has an Inheritance awaiting her that is far better than anything she has ever realised on earth. I rejoice to know that kindred blood course my veins, that I can say she is my aunt, my father’s sister.  I rejoice to know she has left such a noble posterity that acted well their parts in life. I rejoice to know that I as their biographers of William D. and Hannah Moore gives me such pleasure to speak of their merits without a stain on their character. I rejoice to know that the hand and heart of their daughter[s] have been sought by the noblest sons of Tenn., also that their sons sought and obtained their equals in the daughters of Tennessee.

A portrait-photograph of Hannah Leonard and William Depriest Moore appears in a number of published sources and has recently been published online as their old Marshall County homeplace and farm have gone on the market for sale.[29] The portrait is featured along with photos of the farm and the Moore house in Amy Edmiston’s Pretty Old Places blog.[30]

[1] Thomas Dunlap Leonard, “Biography of the Leonards” (1883 manuscript now circulated as typescript; present whereabouts are not known). The 14 February 1777 date of birth is also stated in a lineage provided by Sarah Johnson Berliner to DAR: See NSDAR Lineage Book, vol. 93 (1912) p. 83; and Mary Smith Fay, War of 1812 Veterans in Texas (New Orleans, 1979; repr. Greenville, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1994), apparently citing records filed by U.S. Daughters of 1812 Descendants.

[2] Memorial and Biographical History of McLennan, Falls, Bell and Coryell Counties, Texas (Chicago: Lewis, 1893), pp. 721-3. This biography gives William’s middle name as Rinualdi. The “Anderson-Monroe Family Tree” at Ancestry maintained by weblady173 has a digital image of a page from a bible that appears to have belonged to one of William R. Leonard’s children, giving his middle name as Roden. This Ancestry tree also has a copy of an undated autobiography written by William R. Leonard near the end of his life, which appears not to have been finished and was transcribed by one of his children.

[3] NARA, Indexes to the Carded Records of Soldiers Who Served in Volunteer Organizations During the War of 1812, compiled 1899 – 1927, documenting the period 1812 – 1815 RG 94, file of Robert Lenard, available digitally at Fold3. Fay, War of 1812 Veterans in Texas, states that Robert served in Captain Edwin S. Moore’s Company of Tennessee Volunteers.

[4] Memorial and Biographical History of McLennan, Falls, Bell and Coryell Counties, Texas, pp. 721-3.

[5] Nacogdoches District Court Returns, files 54 and 58, available digitally at the website of Texas General Land Office.

[6] PeggyStrickland55, “Leonard/Kellum/Hughes Family Tree,” Ancestry.

[7] 1850 federal census, Cherokee County, Texas, town of Rusk, p. 61 (dwelling/family 412, 31 October).

[8] The marriage is indexed in Ancestry’s database entitled South Carolina Marriage Index, 1641-1965, compiled by Hunting For Bears (2005). A specific date of marriage is not given in this database; this entry appears to be citing Georgia Genealogical Magazine, no. 60-61 (spring-summer 1976). Thomas Dunlap Leonard’s “Biography of the Leonards” also states that John Leonard married Hannah Fowler “about 1806.”

[9] 1830 federal census, Madison County, Alabama, p. 72A, showing John aged 40-49 (the surname is Linard here); and 1840 federal census, Limestone County, Alabama, p. 151A, showing John aged 50-59.

[10] NARA, Indexes to the Carded Records of Soldiers Who Served in Volunteer Organizations During the War of 1812, compiled 1899 – 1927, documenting the period 1812 – 1815, RG 94, file of John Lenard, available digitally at Fold3.

[11] See “16th Regiment, Mississippi Militia, War of 1812,” at WikiTree.

[12] Jackie Leonard is citing Limestone County, Alabama, Will Bk. 7, p. 333, which states that John Leonard was “dec’d. 14 Nov. 1846.” Because this will book is under lock and key in the digital files available at the FamilySearch site, I haven’t been able to access the original and obtain further information about this document.

[13] Limestone County, Alabama, Circuit Court Minutes Bk. 1847-1857, p. 136.

[14] Limestone County, Alabama, County Court Record Bk. 1830-1849, p. 422 mistakenly writing the year as 1847 and not as 1846.

[15] See Find a Grave memorial page of Hezekiah Leonard, Leonard cemetery, Marshall County, Tennessee, created by Donna B., maintained by Prairie Mary, with a tombstone photo by Jimmy Trout.

[16] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Will Bk. 1, p. 156-7. See also Frances T. Ingmire, Lincoln County, Tennessee, Wills, Inventories, and Miscellaneous, March 1809 – April 1824 (St. Louis, 1984), p. 8; and Helen C. and Timothy R. Marsh, Wills and Inventories of Lincoln County, Tennessee (Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1989), p. 8.

[17] See Find a Grave memorial page of Griffith J. Leonard, Leonard cemetery, Marshall County, Tennessee, created by Louise Jenkins, with a tombstone photo by Jimmy Trout.

[18] NARA, War of 1812 Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Application Files, compiled ca. 1871 – ca. 1900, documenting the period 1812 – ca. 1900, RG 15, file of Griffith J. Lenard, WC 15252, widow Nancy E., WO 25978, available digitally at Fold3. Nancy’s widow’s brief has a cover page stating that her maiden name was Nancy E. Porter and that she received certificate 15252 and bounty land warrants 56760-40-50 and 79828-12055. This cover pages also says that Griffith J. Leonard and Nancy Porter married in Lincoln County, Tennessee, on 7 April 1836, and that Nancy died 18 April 1910 at Petersburg, Tennessee.

[19] John Trotwood Moore and Austin P. Foster, Tennessee, the Volunteer State, 1769-1923, vol. 3 (Chicago: S.S. Clarke, 1923), pp. 238-241. See also this previous posting about Dr. John Norris Cowden.

[20] Fayetteville Observer (27 August 1908).

[21] Ancestry tree “Leonard/ Leonard/McLeod/Miller Family Tree, maintained by dawnleonard818. Photo of Griffith, of wife Nancy, and of son Samuel James Leonard with his family.

[22] 1850 federal census, Rutherford County, Tennessee, Gambrill district, p. 184 (dwelling/family 483, 30 September).

[23] Jackson County, Arkansas, Circuit Court Minutes Bk. B, pp. 544-5, 561.

[24] Jackson County, Arkansas, Deed Bk. G, pp. 32-5.

[25] Jackson County, Arkansas, Marriage Bk. I.

[26] 1850 federal census, Jackson County, Arkansas, Cache, Jacksonport post office, p. 610B (dwelling/family 1069; 7 August). Cyrus Black appears to have died by 17 December 1866, when Mary E.L. Black married Ephraim L. Hughey, a South Carolinian who came to Arkansas from Fayette County, Alabama, in Jackson County. Ephraim died in Jackson County on 4 May 1874 and the 1880 federal census for Jackson County shows Mary as the widow Hughey with her son Levi W. Leonard (this is his surname now, not Black) living next to her with his wife Mary Catherine Narrimore and their children.

[27] See Helen C. Marsh, Timothy R. Marsh, and Ralph D. Whitsell, Cemetery Records of Marshall County, Tennessee (Shelbyville, Tennessee: Marsh Historical Publishing, 1981), p. 253. The 10 January 1795 birthdate for Hannah also appears in Jane Wallace Alford, Revolutionary War Patriots of Marshall County, Tennessee (Lewisburg, Tennessee: Webb, 1976); in Gail Gill Sanders, “Joseph Jonathan S. and Angelina (Moore) Gill,” in Heritage of Lincoln County, Tennessee, ed. Lincoln Co. Heritage Committee (Waynesville, NC: Walsworth, 2005), p. 321; and in Adelaide Moore Moss, “William Depriest Moore,” in ibid., p. 517. This birthdate for Hannah Leonard is also stated in DAR lineage reports submitted by Nancy Alford of the Robert Lewis chapter of Tennessee (DAR no. 537116) and of Mary Aletha Hathaway Dorsey of the Chief John Ross chapter (DAR no. 537605), both entering DAR as descendants of David Moore, father of William Depriest Moore.

[28] NARA, War of 1812 Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Application Files, compiled ca. 1871 – ca. 1900, documenting the period 1812 – ca. 1900, RG 15, file of William D. Moore, , WC pension 17127 and WO pension 31237, available digitally at Fold3.

[29] See J. Lester Wolfe, “Thomas Leonard,” in Heritage of Lincoln County, Tennessee, ed. Lincoln County Heritage Committee (Waynesville, North Carolina: County Heritage, 2005), p. 414; and Adelaide Moore Moss, “William DePriest Moore,” in ibid., p. 517, noting that Moss notes that William DePriest Moore and Hannah Leonard belonged to Union Grove Presbyterian church in Marshall County.

[30] Amy Edmiston, “The Moore Homestead,” Pretty Old Places.

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

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.

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]

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.

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.

May I present
THE LEATHER BOYS.

Thank you for going through this process with me.

#TheLeatherBoys
#ColinCampbell
#LGBTQ #Illustration #Design #Illustrator #NornCutson #Illustrator #Art #Artist #AYearForArt #ArtistsOnMastodon #ArtistsOfMastodon
#DigitalArt #ArtMatters #MixedMedia #MastoArt #MastoCreative #MastoArts #MastoCreatives #AVLArt #AVLArtists #AVLArts

Work in progress.

#WIP #WorkInProgress #Sketch #Sketchbook #Sketching #Drawing #TheLeatherBoys
#ColinCampbell
#LGBTQ #Illustration #Design #Illustrator #NornCutson #Illustrator #Art #Artist #AYearForArt #ArtistsOnMastodon #ArtistsOfMastodon
#DigitalArt #ArtMatters #MixedMedia #MastoArt #MastoCreative #MastoArts #MastoCreatives #AVLArt #AVLArtists #AVLArts

#WIP #WorkInProgress #Sketch #Sketchbook #Sketching #Drawing #TheLeatherBoys
#ColinCampbell
#LGBTQ #Illustration #Design #Illustrator #NornCutson #Illustrator #Art #Artist #AYearForArt #ArtistsOnMastodon #ArtistsOfMastodon
#DigitalArt #ArtMatters #MixedMedia #MastoArt #MastoCreative #MastoArts #MastoCreatives #AVLArt #AVLArtists #AVLArts

#WIP #WorkInProgress #Sketch #Sketchbook #Sketching #Drawing #TheLeatherBoys
#ColinCampbell
#LGBTQ #Illustration #Design #Illustrator #NornCutson #Illustrator #Art #Artist #AYearForArt #ArtistsOnMastodon #ArtistsOfMastodon
#DigitalArt #ArtMatters #MixedMedia #MastoArt #MastoCreative #MastoArts #MastoCreatives #AVLArt #AVLArtists #AVLArts

Work in progress, sketch layer hidden.

#WIP #WorkInProgress #Sketch #Sketchbook #Sketching #Drawing #TheLeatherBoys
#ColinCampbell
#LGBTQ #Illustration #Design #Illustrator #NornCutson #Illustrator #Art #Artist #AYearForArt #ArtistsOnMastodon #ArtistsOfMastodon
#DigitalArt #ArtMatters #MixedMedia #MastoArt #MastoCreative #MastoArts #MastoCreatives #AVLArt #AVLArtists #AVLArts

The face takes shape.

#WIP #WorkInProgress #Sketch #Sketchbook #Sketching #Drawing #TheLeatherBoys
#ColinCampbell
#LGBTQ #Illustration #Design #Illustrator #NornCutson #Illustrator #Art #Artist #AYearForArt #ArtistsOnMastodon #ArtistsOfMastodon
#DigitalArt #ArtMatters #MixedMedia #MastoArt #MastoCreative #MastoArts #MastoCreatives #AVLArt #AVLArtists #AVLArts

"Hazel eyes, he has..."

Beginning the digital process.
I've brought my pencil sketch into Illustrator. It's on it's own locked-down layer, while I am building my lines and shapes on their own separate layer.

This close-up shows my process starting with the shape of the face and the features, using the pen tool with the locked-down pencil sketch as a guide.

#WIP #WorkInProgress #Sketch #Sketchbook #Sketching #Drawing #TheLeatherBoys
#ColinCampbell
#LGBTQ #Illustration #Design #Illustrator #NornCutson #Illustrator #Art #Artist #AYearForArt #ArtistsOnMastodon #ArtistsOfMastodon
#DigitalArt #ArtMatters #MixedMedia #MastoArt #MastoCreative #MastoArts #MastoCreatives #AVLArt #AVLArtists #AVLArts

….and when they see the love in our eyes
and still they don’t believe us?

#TheLeatherBoys #ColinCampbell #LGBTQ #NornCutson #Sketch #Sketchbook #Sketching #Drawing

I’m figuring out what I like so much about his face and how to communicate it.

Also I just realized how this is such an example of my #ActuallyAutistic traits…

Neurotypical people don’t think about things this much (unless they are making money from it) and *certainly* not enough to do something creative with those thoughts…

And if they did, would it feel physically painful for them not to ACT upon that creative thoughts?

Some people might call it “inspiration”.

#TheLeatherBoys #ColinCampbell #LGBTQ #NornCutson #Sketch #Sketchbook #Sketching #Drawing

More of #RitaTushingham ’s mugging!

🤣

#TheLeatherBoys #SydneyJFurie #ColinCampbell #LGBTQ

Look at the way this frame is composed. So much is being communicated visually!

… and every shot of the movie is like that!

#TheLeatherBoys #RitaTushingham #GladysHenson #ColinCampbell #SydneyJFurie #LGBTQ

Pete may be the most complex character in the film.

I was uncomfortable with him at first, because he’s TOO MUCH, and when you realize where this story is going, his actions take on a predatory aspect.

BUT… it is clear that Pete is the character the director most identifies with. We seem to be seeing the story through his eyes. Reggie may be closest to a traditional protagonist, but Pete - and the actor, #DudleySutton - show an earnest vulnerability, a yearning for connection, that prevents him from coming across as a villain.

Pete, as obnoxious as he is, as manipulative as he is, is heartbreaking.
I can easily imagine what he saw as his future: living with Reggie, supporting his Grandmother, building a future of their own, riding motorcycles together, happily ever after.

… and he thought he was just moments away from his dreams coming true.

#TheLeatherBoys #LGBTQ #ColinCampbell

At the beginning of the movie, Reggie comes across as a joke, a cartoon - his hair is a character unto itself! - but as his character gains gravity, he becomes more handsome and dashing.

I noticed right away, without knowing where the film was going, that he was filmed in the sexualized way that women are traditionally shot: his pants are waAaayyyy too tight, and he’s constantly bending over, displaying his butt for the camera.

His pivotal moment is when he stands up for his Grandmother… and he’s the only person in his family to do so.
This is when we see that he is a quality person, and that differentiates him from Dot, who is bound to repeat the same destructive patterns of her mother.

#TheLeatherBoys #ColinCampbell #LGBTQ

Everyone involved with this film is firing on all cylinders: the direction, the cinematography, writing, cast, all perfection.

#RitaTushingham is so fun to watch; she is ALL OVER the frame, back and forth in the foreground and background; she makes you feel you’re in a cage with her. She’s constantly mugging into the camera in a way that makes it seem like she’s going to become a full-on comic character at any moment, but Tush doesn’t go there. Dot is ridiculous, but she’s never a joke.

… or if she is, she’s a sad one.

#TheLeatherBoys #LGBTQ #ColinCampbell #DudleySutton