#daniel-moore — Public Fediverse posts

Robert Leonard (bef. 1730 – 1780): Documenting His French and Indian War Service in Maryland

Or, Subtitled: “I Robert Lineard now Soldier in Captain Dagurthey’s Company”

In this posting, I want to take a closer look at the documented history of Robert Leonard’s military service in Frederick County, Maryland, in the 1750s. We have a document placing him with Captain John Dagworthy at Fort Cumberland by February 1755, and after the construction of Fort Frederick in 1756-7, documents showing him serving there with Captain Alexander Beall, Dagworthy’s commander at that fort, up to November 1758. The document which tells us that Robert was serving under Dagworthy in February 1755 is an 8 February 1755 indenture that Robert made with a Frederick County farmer to whom he apprenticed his son William.[1] This indenture document gives the farmer’s name variously as Robert Byard, William Byard, or Robert Bowie. It states that Robert Leonard was a “Soldier in Captain Dagurthey’s Company” when he indentured his son on 8 February 1755. (To read the continuation of this posting, please click the numeral 2 below.)

The Indenture Document

Robert Leonard’s February 1755 indenture of his son William reads as follows:

At the Request of Robert Byard Bowie the following Indenture was Recorded February the Twenty Second Day In the Year of our Lord Seventeen hundred and Fifty five To wit This Indenture made the 8th day of February In the Twenty Eighth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord the King and in the Year of our Lord 1755 five Witneſseth that I Robert Lineard now Soldier in Captain Dagurthey’s Company hath of his own free and Voluntary Will placed and Bound his son Wm. Lineard unto Robert Byard of Frederick County Farmer and with him as an apprentice to Dwell Continue and Serve him from the Day of the Date hereof Unto the full end and Term of Fourteen Years & Seven Months from thence next Ensuing and fully to be Compleat & ended. During all which time of Fourteen Years & Seven Months and the said Wm. Byard his to give the Said Apprentice Meat Drink Cloath Washing & Lodging and Six Years After the date hereof to keep the Said Apprentice Two full Years Constantly at Schoole and at the End of his servitude to Give him his freedoms According to the Custom of the Country In Witneſs Whereof We have hereunto set our hands & Seals the day and Year Above Written

Wm. Lineard (his mark)

Robt. Byard (his mark)

Signed Sealed & Delivered in the presence of us

William Miller Benjamin Tomlinson

Note the following:

• Robert Leonard states that he was a soldier serving under Captain “Dagurthey” — i.e., under John Dagworthy.

• We know that Dagworthy was at Fort Cumberland in Frederick County in 1755, so this indenture document places Robert Leonard as a soldier at that fort. His military career had already begun by February 1755.

• The indenture states that William Lineard was Robert Lineard’s son. It does not give William’s age. As I’ve stated previously, it was not unheard of in this time and place for parents to apprentice out a child as young as six or seven years of age. The indenture document specifies 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 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.

• The indenture document does not state why Robert was indenturing this son to Robert or William Byard/Bowie. It states that six years after February 1755, Byard/Bowie was to provide two years of schooling for William Leonard.

• Note the discrepancies with the name of the Frederick County farmer to whom William Leonard is apprenticed: the surname Byard is inked out at the start of the document and Bowie written in its place. At one point the indenture document gives Byard’s Christian name as William. Otherwise, it appears as Robert. The signature of Robt. Byard again seems to have the surname itself inked out.

• I have not been able to find a Robert Byard or Bayard or a Robert Bowie in Frederick County records at this time. It’s possible that Benjamin Tomlinson, who was one of the two witnesses, is connected to a Tomlinson family that lived on Will’s Creek near Fort Cumberland from an early date.[2]

John Dagworthy and Fort Cumberland

John Dagworthy was born 30 March 1721 at Trenton, New Jersey, the son of an older John Dagworthy and Sarah Ely. He died 1 May 1784 in Sussex County, Delaware. On 20 October 1774, he married Martha, daughter of Thomas Cadwallader and Hannah Lambert and sister of General John Cadwallader.[3] In 1746, when New Jersey raised a regiment of five hundred men for King George’s War, the colony’s Council appointed Dagworthy captain of one of the companies in this regiment and his company went to Albany, New York, in September 1746 along with Pennsylvania troops to participate in an expedition against Canada that never actually took place.[4]

Dagworthy raised his own company for this expedition, and then voyaged to England to seek the Crown’s support for the military venture and was given a royal commission. After his return to the colonies with this commission, in September 1753 he was stationed at Fort Cumberland in command of two companies of rangers organized to defend and protect the frontier settlements of western Maryland. On 2 September 1754, Maryland governor Horatio Sharpe wrote Lord Baltimore stating that he had made provision to defend the colony against the French and Indians, and saying,[5]

I have given the command thereof to one Capt. Dagworthy, a gentleman born in the Jerseys, who commanded a company raised in that province for the Canada Expedition, since the miscarriage of which he has resided in this province upon an estate which he purchased in Worcester County.

In another letter to Baltimore, Sharpe praised Dagworthy and “especially his ability during the past summer to exist with his command without food,” adding that “he could no doubt be able to pass through the winter without shelter.”[6]

As Friends of Fort Frederick note,[7]

As early as August 1754 we know that the colony would “cloath” “the companies of men to be raised in this province.” Sharpe related that right after receiving funds to raise troops he “proceeded to form a company cloath & accoutre them….” In June 1755 Sharpe reports that Dagworthy’s company received 57 suits of clothes. Based on this we can safely say that these were uniforms.

In September 1754, fifty to sixty men were raised for Captain Dagworthy’s company and marched to Fort Mount Pleasant (later Fort Cumberland), and a fort was built on Wills Creek in what was then Frederick but is now Allegany County in September and October.[8] On 26 September 1754, the Maryland Gazette reported,[9]

Laſt Monday Morning, a Part of the Soldiers raiſed in this Province to go againſt the French on the Ohio, marched out of Town, for Frederick County, under Command of Lieutenant John Forty; and we hear the Remainder will march the Beginning of next Week.

On 3 October 1754, the Maryland Gazette announced that a second party of Dagworthy’s soldiers had marched from Annapolis under command of Lieutenant John Bacon to join the other soldiers in Frederick County.[10]

As Reuben Pownall Ely notes, it was while Dagworthy was in command of Fort Cumberland that his long dispute with George Washington, which I discussed in a previous posting, began. Washington had been commissioned a colonel of colonial troops and commander-in-chief of Virginia forces. Dagworthy was a captain, but held a royal commission and considered himself Washington’s superior as a result. As Jared Sparke states,[11]

At Fort Cumberland was a Captain Dagworthy, commissioned by Governor Sharpe, who had under him a small company of Maryland troops. This person had held a royal commission in the last war, upon which he now plumed himself, refusing obedience to any provincial officer, however high in rank. Hence, whenever Colonel Washington was at Fort Cumberland, the Maryland captain would pay no regard to his orders.

In an article providing a roster of Maryland troops in the French and Indian War, Maryland Historical Magazine adds (with no author’s name stated) that, though Fort Cumberland was a royal fort, it had been built by Virginians on Maryland soil, and this historical background also likely played into the pique between Dagworthy and Washington.[12] As Patrick H. Stakem notes, when Dagworthy refused to take orders from Washington at Fort Cumberland, Washington appealed to Virginia governor Dinwiddie, who refused to intervene, stating that Fort Cumberland was in Maryland and outside his jurisdiction.[13]

On 8 December 1754, it was reported that Dagworthy had forty-seven men garrisoned at Fort Cumberland prior to Braddock’s disastrous expedition in the summer of the following year that precipitated the decision of the Maryland Assembly to see Fort Frederick constructed.[14] Note that with this December 1754 date, we’re arrived chronologically right on the eve of February 1755 when Robert Leonard indentured his son William in Frederick County, stating that he was a soldier under Captain Dagworthy. Since Fort Frederick had not yet been constructed in 1755, that document strongly suggests that Robert was stationed at Fort Cumberland when he indentured son William.

I have found no documents indicating where Robert Leonard was prior to February 1755. I’m inclined to suspect that his service with Dagworthy began prior to that date. If so, it’s possible he was among Maryland soldiers raised in the fall of 1754 to serve with Dagworthy in guarding the frontier. Or did he come to Maryland from New Jersey with Dagworthy prior to 1754? When New Jersey raised its regiments in 1746 for the expedition to Canada, with Dagworthy commanding one of the companies of volunteers, another company was raised under the command of Captain Henry Leonard.[15] A notice in the Pennsylvania Gazette on 11 September 1746 states that five companies of 100 men had been raised in New Jersey for an expedition to Canada and had embarked for Albany.[16] The five captains of these companies are named by surnames: they include Dagworthy and Leonard.

Captain Henry Leonard was born in 1715, probably in Shrewsbury township, Monmouth County, New Jersey, son of Henry Leonard and Sarah Morford. Captain Henry’s father Henry was born about 1668 in Massachusetts and died after 17 April 1739 in Shrewsbury township.[17] The Leonard family of Monmouth County, New Jersey, included a number of military men in its first generations in New Jersey, including two first cousins of Captain Henry who were Loyalists during the Revolution, brothers John and Thomas Leonard, both of whom ended up in Nova Scotia.[18]

I have no information showing that Robert Leonard, serving with Dagworthy at Fort Cumberland by February 1755, is in any way connected to the Henry Leonard who served alongside Dagworthy in King George’s War in 1746. It may well be coincidental that two military men with the Leonard surname had ties to Dagworthy in the period 1746-1755. Still, for anyone trying to find records of Robert Leonard prior to February 1755, I think it’s worth keeping in mind that Dagworthy had at least one connection to the Leonard family of Monmouth County, New Jersey, in the 1740s.

Fort Frederick

As I’ve just indicated, when General Edward Braddock’s campaign to take Fort Duquesne from the French failed disastrously in the summer of 1755, with Braddock being killed in battle along with many of his troops, the Maryland legislature responded by making plans to build another fort in Frederick County, a fort to be named Fort Frederick. The Maryland troops serving with Braddock included Dagworthy’s soldiers. As the previously cited anonymous article in Maryland Historical Magazine providing a roster of Maryland troops in the French and Indian War states,[19]

Braddock’s defeat aroused the Assembly to action, and at the February session of 1756, after much bickering, the sum of £40,000 was voted for His Majesty’s service. At subsequent sessions the Assembly declined to do more than provide for the support of 300 militia, who could not be sent beyond Fort Frederick nor used as a fixed garrison for Fort Cumberland. Captain Dagworthy was given the command of the Maryland troops sent to the frontiers of Frederick County in 1754, and in 1756 took part in the construction of Fort Frederick.

When the new fort was built, Dagworthy was placed in command with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, with five hundred men in his battalion.[20]

On 11 March 1756, the Maryland Gazette reported,[21]

In a Letter from Fort Cumberland, dated the Fifteenth Inſtant, there is Advice, that two conſiderable Bodies of French Indians have been lately down there, and had picked up ſeveral of the Men belonging to the Fort; but that the Commanding Officer there had detached Parties immediately in Purſuit of them, which obliged them to retreat precipitately, and thereby prevented their getting among the Inhabitants.

In May 1756, the Maryland Assembly passed a supply bill of $40,000 for King’s service and defense of the frontier, with $11,000 designated for construction of a strong fortification. In addition, two companies of Maryland troops, commanded by Captains John Dagworthy and Alexander Beall, were raised, with each company to contain 100 men. Construction of the new fort eighteen miles west of Hagerstown began in June 1756.[22] 

Whereas Fort Cumberland had been hastily hobbled together with insubstantial materials, the new fort near Hagerstown was built to last and to provide strong protection against adversaries:[23]

The stone fort, named in honor of Maryland’s Lord Proprietor, Frederick Calvert, Sixth Lord Baltimore, was erected by Governor Horatio Sharpe in 1756 to protect English settlers from the French and their Indian allies. Fort Frederick was unique because of its large size and strong stone wall. Most other forts of the period were built of wood and earth. The fort served as an important supply base for English campaigns…. Fort Frederick saw service again during the American Revolution as a prison for Hessian (German) and British soldiers.

As construction of Fort Frederick was being completed, the Maryland Assembly met from 6 April through 9 May 1757 to pass an act entitled “An Act for his Majesty’s Service, and the more immediate Defence and Protection of the Frontier Inhabitants of this Province”:[24]

It appears, that a Plan has been formed for the better Defence of his Majesty’s Dominions in North-America, and for Annoying his Majesty’s Enemies in these Parts; by which it is proposed, that this Province should raise and support Five Hundred Men, to act in Conjunction with his Majesty’s Regular Forces, in the Defence and for the Security of this Province….

The act goes on to allocate funding for the fort and its troops, stating that funding

[S]hall be applied to the Raising, Cloathing, Paying, Subsisting, and Defraying all Charges and Expences attending the Supporting Five Hundred Men, including Five Captains, Ten Lieutenants, Five Ensigns, Twenty Serjeants, Twenty Corporals, and Five Drummers, to act in Conjunction with his Majesty’s Regular Forces, and under the Command of his Majesty’s General, or the Officer properly authorized for his Majesty’s Service, and the more immediate Protection and Security of this Province.

The act then specified that among those officers whose troops were included in these provisions were Dagworthy and Alexander Beall:

Provided always, and be it further Enacted, That all the Men, now under the Command of Captain Dagworthy, Captain Alexander Beall, and Captain Joshua Beall, which, by the Terms or Conditions of their Enlistment, were obliged to continue in Service longer than the Tenth Day of April, One Thousand Seven Hundred and Fifty-seven, and all the Officers of their respective Companies, shall be held and deemed as a Part of the aforesaid Five Hundred Men, and shall be paid and subsisted according to the Directions of this Act from the said Tenth Day of April.”

Those holding the rank of sergeant, like Robert Leonard, were to receive a shilling and sixpence daily for their service: “To every Serjeant, One Shilling and Six Pence per Day.”

The duties of these troops, the act maintains, were not only to maintain and garrison the fort, but to engage in ranging to assure the safety of inhabitants of the frontier, “with Orders to Range as near the Settlement of the Inhabitants as the Nature of that Service shall require.” Alexander Beall’s troops in particular played a key role in acting as rangers to secure the western parts of Maryland: in 1756, the Maryland Assembly paid Beall “for the support of the ranging parties on the Western Frontier” and to “raise more men for the defense of the frontier regions of Maryland.”[25]

From the time Fort Frederick was built, a steady stream of records shows Robert Leonard serving there as a sergeant under Dagworthy and Beall. Henry C. Peden notes that Robert was stationed at the fort by August 1757.[26] A set of muster rolls with an indexed ledger found in the Calvert Papers, dated 1762, tracks the troops at the fort from 9 October 1757, though it appears some of the men appearing in these muster rolls had been with Dagworthy as early as 1754.[27] Commenting on these muster rolls, the previously cited Maryland Historical Magazine says,[28]

The records from which this roster [of Maryland troops in the French and Indian War, 1757-9] is compiled, consist of 53 muster rolls and an indexed ledger, which is dated 1762. They show service from October 9th, 1757, up to which time the troops had been paid in one of the ways mentioned above; but it is probable that some of the men had been with Captain Dagworthy as early as 1754. These records were most carefully kept in order to secure payment for the men in spite of the Assembly’s refusal to provide for them and final settlement appears to have been made March 16th, 1763. There are twelve rolls each for the companies of Captains John Dagworthy, Alexander Beall, Joshua Beall, Francis Ware, and seven for that of Richard Pearis.

The muster rolls for Alexander Beall’s company show the following:[29]

LEONARD, ROBERT. Sgt. Capt. A. Beall’s co. O. 9, 1757 to F. 16, 1758.

Discharged

According to Murtie J. Clark, the roster of Beall’s company shows Robert Leonard discharged on 8 November 1758.[30]

In addition to this set of records, Frederick County Land Record books in this period of time repeatedly show Sergeant Robert Leonard of Alexander Beall’s company witnessing the discharge of soldiers from Beall’s company:

• On 10 February 1757, Sergeant Robert Leonard and George Barrance witnessed the discharge of John Harris from Beall’s unit.[31]

• On 18 June 1757, Leonard and Barrance witnessed the discharge of William Smith from Beall’s company.[32]

• On 25 and 28 July, the same two men witnessed the discharge of Joseph Hughes and Adam Coonce from the same unit.[33]

• From 4-10 August 1757, several men of the unit recorded their discharges before Leonard and Barrance.[34]

• On 22 November 1758, Leonard and Barrance witnessed the discharge of William Kimbol from Beall’s company.[35]

• On 22 March 1759, Robert Leonard witnessed the discharge of Henry Petner from Beall’s unit.[36]

According to Henry Peden, a payment to Robert Leonard dated 7 March 1763 appears on Colonel Dagworthy’s account book.[37] This payment postdates his period of service in the British 35th Regiment of Foot from some point prior to 13 September 1759, when the battle of the Plains of Abraham took place, to 24 July 1762, when he was discharged from this military unit. It does not necessarily mean, I think, that Robert had continued serving under Dagworthy up to March 1763, only that he received a payment for some reason from Dagworthy on that date, and must have returned to Maryland after his discharge in Havana in July 1762 from the 35th.

During the years in which Robert Leonard served in Alexander Beall’s company under Dagworthy’s command at Fort Frederick, soldiers garrisoned at the fort were among those suffering severe defeat with Major James Grant in the battle of Fort Duquesne on 14 September 1758; the Fort Frederick troops then lost a number of men at the battle of Fort Ligonier on 12 October 1758; and troops from Fort Frederick were present at the occupation of Fort Duquesne on 25 November 1758.[38] It seems to me very likely that Robert Leonard took part in some or perhaps all of these military actions.

Some Notes about Alexander Beall

Robert Leonard’s commanding officer at Fort Frederick, Captain Alexander Beall, was born about 1712 in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and died about May 1759 in Frederick County. His father William Beall (1684-1756) was the son of Alexander Beall, (1649-1744), an immigrant from Fifeshire, Scotland, to Maryland. William Beall (whose wife was Elizabeth Magruder) was a substantial landowner in Frederick County, some of whose descendants intermarried with members of the Massachusetts Leonard family that moved to Monmouth County, New Jersey, and are discussed above.[39]

A virtual tour of Fort Frederick barracks provided by online by Maryland Park Service offers a glimpse of the captain’s quarters at the barracks, observing,[40]

The senior officer of the fort would have had the most spacious and luxurious quarters in the Governor’s House. The commander at Fort Frederick was typically Capt. Alexander Beall. Because he was an officer, his furnishings, clothing, accoutrements, etc. were paid for at his own expense. Therefore, the quality could vary at his discretion, although the quality and quantity of his possessions would be far superior to the companies’ enlisted men.

It’s interesting to note that the 9 April 1759 will of Alexander Beall in Frederick County shows him owning part of a large tract of land in Frederick County that bore the name King Cole.[41] The will stipulates that King Cole, a parcel of 246½ acres, was to go to Beall’s son Magruder. The original King Cole tract consisted of 1,970 acres patented to Henry Crabb on 30 August 1754.[42] By 1783, some fifty acres of the King Cole tract belonged to Joseph James, whose sister Hannah married Thomas Leonard (1752-1832), son of Robert Leonard and Honor Pritchard.[43] James obtained the land from his father-in-law James Austin. On 12 April 1791, Joseph sold this land to his father Griffith James, who then sold it along with James Austin on 3 March 1782.[44] This Frederick County land fell into Washington County at the creation of that county in 1776.

Some Notes about Joseph Chapline and Fort Frederick

In a previous posting, I noted the role played in the construction of Fort Frederick by Joseph Chapline (1707-1769), founder of Sharpsburg, where Griffith James lived. The posting I’ve just linked notes that Griffith James, whose daughter Hannah married Robert Leonard’s son Thomas, had ties to Chapline. The first document I’ve found for Griffith James in the Sharpsburg area is a 4 September 1763 agreement that Chapline made with Samuel Beall, David Ross, and Richard Henderson to be partners in an ironworks to be erected in Frederick County.[45] The agreement states that as Chapline made this agreement, he was reserving 215 acres he had sold to Daniel Moore and Griffith James.

Note the name Samuel Beall: Chapline’s business partner Samuel Beall was a first cousin of Captain Alexander Beall, Robert Leonard’s commander at Fort Frederick. Samuel’s father John Beall was a brother of Alexander’s father William Beall. Samuel lived at Hagerstown thirteen miles north of Sharpsburg and close to Fort Frederick. Joseph Chapline helped to finance and support the construction of the fort and was awarded 10,000 acres of land by the Maryland Assembly in 1764 for his role in building the fort.[46] A 1757-8 muster list for Chapline’s militia company in Frederick County shows Richard Dean, whose son Samuel married Griffith James’ daughter Gwendolyn, along with Richard’s sons Thomas and William serving in Chapline’s militia company.[47]

Joseph Chapline served as a surveyor to the Proprietary in 1744, and in 1755 he formed the first company of militia in Antietam Hundred to protect the frontier against Indian raids during the French and Indian Wars.[48] Chapline played such a formative role at Fort Frederick that in the latter part of 1757, local inhabitants of the area around the fort offended by the behavior of some of the British officers stationed there wanted Chapline held responsible for the officers’ misbehavior.[49]

As I’ve also previously noted, the first military company organized for the Revolutionary war in Hagerstown on 6 January 1776, which included Robert Leonard’s son Thomas as well as his brother-in-law Samuel Dean and Samuel’s brother Thomas, was under the command of Joseph Chapline’s son Joseph (1746-1821).

In my next posting, I’ll comment on documents capturing Robert Leonard’s final years of military service as a sergeant in the 7th Maryland Regiment during the Revolutionary War.

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

[2] See Will H. Lowdermilk, History of Cumberland, Maryland, etc. (Washington, D.C.: Anglim, 1878), p. 278; and J. Thomas Scharf, History of Western Maryland, etc. (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts, 1882), p. 108. Lowdermilk says that a Benjamin Tomlinson was among the earliest settlers of Cumberland, Maryland, and built a house on Will’s Creek in 1789 five miles out from the town.

[3] Reuben Pownall Ely, et al., An Historical Narrative of the Ely, Revell and Stacye Families Who Were among the Founders of Trenton and Burlington in the Province of West Jersey 1678-1683, with the Genealogy of the Ely Descendants in America (New York, Chicago: Fleming H. Revell, 1910), pp. 183-193. See also John and Joyce Stroman Ely at Web Family Card site.

[4] Ely, Historical Narrative of the Ely, Revell and Stacye Families, p. 184, citing New Jersey Archives, vol. VI, p. 424.

[5] Ely, Historical Narrative of the Ely, Revell and Stacye Families, p. 185.

[6] Ibid.

[7] A Gentleman Officer at Fort Frederick, “The Material Culture of the Maryland Troops, Standards and Guidelines for Portraying a Member of the Fort Frederick Provincial Garrison 1756-1759,” at Friends of Fort Frederick website.

[8] See Lee Offen, “A Timeline of Maryland Forces from 1754 to 1764,” at Academia. This essay is also found at Offen’s History Reconsidered website.

[9] Maryland Gazette (Monday, 26 September 1754), p. 3, col. 1.

[10] Maryland Gazette (Thursday, 3 October 1754), p. 3, col. 2.

[11] Jared Sparke, The Life of George Washington (Boston, 1839; repr. Boston: Little, Brown, 1857), p. 71.

[12] “French and Indian War, Roster of Maryland Troops 1757-1759 [CALVERT PAPERS],” Maryland Historical Magazine 5,3 (September 1910), pp. 271-2.

[13] Patrick H. Stakem, Fort Cumberland, Global War in the Appalachians: A Resource Guide, 2nd edn. (2014), p. 14.

[14] Offen, “Timeline of Maryland Forces from 1754 to 1764.”

[15] See Joseph F. Folsom, “Colonel Peter Schuyler at Albany, Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, n.s. 1,3 (July 1916), p. 162; and “Proceedings of the Council of New Jersey, 19 March 1747,” in Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New Jersey, ed. William A. Whitehead, ed., in New Jersey Historical Society, Archives of the State of New Jersey, vol. 6, series 1: 1738-1747 (Newark: Daily Advertiser, 1882), p. 425.

[16] Pennsylvania Gazette (11 September 1746), p. 2, col. 3.

[17] See Brad Leonard, “Descendants of Henry Leonard 1618 – 1678, Ironworker, of Massachusetts and New Jersey”; Bill Barton, “Leonard Siblings Henry, James, Philip, Sarah & Thomas in America and Some of Their Descendants”; and S. Falsey for Brad Leonard, “Leonard Genealogy, Leonards in America and Their Origins.”

[18] See William Stockton Hornor, New Jersey, This Old Monmouth of Ours (Freehold, New Jersey: Moreau Brothers, 1932), pp. 209-210; O.B. Leonard, “The Leonard Family In New Jersey,” Monmouth Inquirer (8 and 15 November 1883); Edwin Salter, “Genealogical Records of the First Settlers of Monmouth and Ocean Counties and their Descendants,” in A History of Monmouth and Ocean Counties (Bayonne: F. Gardner and Sons, 1890), p. xxvii; Fanny Louise Koster, Annals of the Leonard Family (New York, 1911), pp. 195-6.

[19] “French and Indian War, Roster of Maryland Troops 1757-1759,” p. 271.

[20] Ely, Historical Narrative of the Ely, Revell and Stacye Families, p. 187.

[21] Maryland Gazette (Thursday, 11 March 1756) p. 3, col. 2.

[22] “Col. Washington’s Frontier Forts,” at website of Col. Washington’s Frontier Forts Association.

[23] “Fort Frederick State Park” at the website of Maryland State Parks. A virtual tour of the fort is available at “Fort Frederick Barracks Virtual Tour,” at the website of Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Maryland Park Service. For a visually rich essay capturing how Dagworthy’s troops at Fort Frederick were clothed, see Gentleman Officer at Fort Frederick, “The Material Culture of the Maryland Troops, Standards and Guidelines for Portraying a Member of the Fort Frederick Provincial Garrison 1756-1759.”

[24] Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly, 1757-1758, vol. 55, “Acts of the Assembly Passed in April and May 1757,” pp. 119f.

[25] Henry C. Peden Jr., Marylanders and Delawareans in the French and Indian War 1756-1763 (Lewes, Delaware: Colonial Roots, 2004), p. 16.

[26] Ibid.

[27] The original Calvert Papers, consisting of family papers and other documents, is held by Maryland Historical Society of Baltimore. They are available as well on 32 reels of microfilm at the National Archives.

[28] “French and Indian War, Roster of Maryland Troops 1757-1759,” p. 272.

[29] Ibid., p. 281.

[30] Murtie J. Clark, Colonial Soldiers of the South, 1732-1774 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1983), pp. 79-81.

[31] Frederick County, Maryland, Land Record Bk. G, p. 155. This discharge was not recorded until 21 August 1761, hence its appearance in Record Bk. G and not F.

[32] Frederick County, Maryland, Land Record Bk. F, p. 252.

[33] Ibid., pp. 291, 296.

[34] Ibid., p. 297.

[35] Ibid., p. 579.

[36] Ibid., p. 658.

[37] Peden, Marylanders and Delawareans in the French and Indian War 1756-1763, pp. 28, 65, 135, 157, 177, 185, 187, 201, 245, 295, and 361.

[38] “French and Indian War, Roster of Maryland Troops 1757-1759,” p. 272; and Ely, Historical Narrative of the Ely, Revell and Stacye Families, p. 187.

[39] Ernest E. Bell, One Lind of Descent from Our Immigrant Ancestor Alexander Bell/Beall of Maryland (Baywood Park, California, 1995, pp. 5-7, 236-7.

[40] See supra, n. 23.

[41] Frederick County, Maryland, Will Bk. A, p. 127.

[42] See Edward C. Papenfuse and Sarah Patterson, “Dr. Arthur G. Tracey patent/tract index and map locations for

Carroll, Frederick, and Washington Counties,” prepared by the Maryland State Archives in October 2009.

[43] See 1783 tax list, Washington County, Maryland.

[44] Washington County, Maryland, Washington Deed Bk. G, pp. 368, 815-6.

[45] Frederick County, Maryland, Land Record Bk. J, pp. 798-802.

[46] Peden, Marylanders and Delawareans in the French and Indian War 1756-1763, p. 64.

[47] Ibid., p. 80. See also Clark, Colonial Soldiers of the South, 1732-1774, pp. 102-3.

[48] See Philip Craycraft, “Joseph Craycraft’,” at his Craycraft Family History site, citing a source entitled “Twigg Family Research Pertaining to the Life and Times of Robert & Hannah Twigg” by Jerry B. Twigg (1996).

[49] See Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly, 1757-1758, vol. 55, pp. 332-4.

Robert Leonard (bef. 1730 – 1780): Documenting His French and Indian War Service in Maryland

Or, Subtitled: “I Robert Lineard now Soldier in Captain Dagurthey’s Company”

In this posting, I want to take a closer look at the documented history of Robert Leonard’s military service in Frederick County, Maryland, in the 1750s. We have a document placing him with Captain John Dagworthy at Fort Cumberland by February 1755, and after the construction of Fort Frederick in 1756-7, documents showing him serving there with Captain Alexander Beall, Dagworthy’s commander at that fort, up to November 1758. The document which tells us that Robert was serving under Dagworthy in February 1755 is an 8 February 1755 indenture that Robert made with a Frederick County farmer to whom he apprenticed his son William.[1] This indenture document gives the farmer’s name variously as Robert Byard, William Byard, or Robert Bowie. It states that Robert Leonard was a “Soldier in Captain Dagurthey’s Company” when he indentured his son on 8 February 1755. (To read the continuation of this posting, please click the numeral 2 below.)

The Indenture Document

Robert Leonard’s February 1755 indenture of his son William reads as follows:

At the Request of Robert Byard Bowie the following Indenture was Recorded February the Twenty Second Day In the Year of our Lord Seventeen hundred and Fifty five To wit This Indenture made the 8th day of February In the Twenty Eighth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord the King and in the Year of our Lord 1755 five Witneſseth that I Robert Lineard now Soldier in Captain Dagurthey’s Company hath of his own free and Voluntary Will placed and Bound his son Wm. Lineard unto Robert Byard of Frederick County Farmer and with him as an apprentice to Dwell Continue and Serve him from the Day of the Date hereof Unto the full end and Term of Fourteen Years & Seven Months from thence next Ensuing and fully to be Compleat & ended. During all which time of Fourteen Years & Seven Months and the said Wm. Byard his to give the Said Apprentice Meat Drink Cloath Washing & Lodging and Six Years After the date hereof to keep the Said Apprentice Two full Years Constantly at Schoole and at the End of his servitude to Give him his freedoms According to the Custom of the Country In Witneſs Whereof We have hereunto set our hands & Seals the day and Year Above Written

Wm. Lineard (his mark)

Robt. Byard (his mark)

Signed Sealed & Delivered in the presence of us

William Miller Benjamin Tomlinson

Note the following:

• Robert Leonard states that he was a soldier serving under Captain “Dagurthey” — i.e., under John Dagworthy.

• We know that Dagworthy was at Fort Cumberland in Frederick County in 1755, so this indenture document places Robert Leonard as a soldier at that fort. His military career had already begun by February 1755.

• The indenture states that William Lineard was Robert Lineard’s son. It does not give William’s age. As I’ve stated previously, it was not unheard of in this time and place for parents to apprentice out a child as young as six or seven years of age. The indenture document specifies 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 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.

• The indenture document does not state why Robert was indenturing this son to Robert or William Byard/Bowie. It states that six years after February 1755, Byard/Bowie was to provide two years of schooling for William Leonard.

• Note the discrepancies with the name of the Frederick County farmer to whom William Leonard is apprenticed: the surname Byard is inked out at the start of the document and Bowie written in its place. At one point the indenture document gives Byard’s Christian name as William. Otherwise, it appears as Robert. The signature of Robt. Byard again seems to have the surname itself inked out.

• I have not been able to find a Robert Byard or Bayard or a Robert Bowie in Frederick County records at this time. It’s possible that Benjamin Tomlinson, who was one of the two witnesses, is connected to a Tomlinson family that lived on Will’s Creek near Fort Cumberland from an early date.[2]

John Dagworthy and Fort Cumberland

John Dagworthy was born 30 March 1721 at Trenton, New Jersey, the son of an older John Dagworthy and Sarah Ely. He died 1 May 1784 in Sussex County, Delaware. On 20 October 1774, he married Martha, daughter of Thomas Cadwallader and Hannah Lambert and sister of General John Cadwallader.[3] In 1746, when New Jersey raised a regiment of five hundred men for King George’s War, the colony’s Council appointed Dagworthy captain of one of the companies in this regiment and his company went to Albany, New York, in September 1746 along with Pennsylvania troops to participate in an expedition against Canada that never actually took place.[4]

Dagworthy raised his own company for this expedition, and then voyaged to England to seek the Crown’s support for the military venture and was given a royal commission. After his return to the colonies with this commission, in September 1753 he was stationed at Fort Cumberland in command of two companies of rangers organized to defend and protect the frontier settlements of western Maryland. On 2 September 1754, Maryland governor Horatio Sharpe wrote Lord Baltimore stating that he had made provision to defend the colony against the French and Indians, and saying,[5]

I have given the command thereof to one Capt. Dagworthy, a gentleman born in the Jerseys, who commanded a company raised in that province for the Canada Expedition, since the miscarriage of which he has resided in this province upon an estate which he purchased in Worcester County.

In another letter to Baltimore, Sharpe praised Dagworthy and “especially his ability during the past summer to exist with his command without food,” adding that “he could no doubt be able to pass through the winter without shelter.”[6]

As Friends of Fort Frederick note,[7]

As early as August 1754 we know that the colony would “cloath” “the companies of men to be raised in this province.” Sharpe related that right after receiving funds to raise troops he “proceeded to form a company cloath & accoutre them….” In June 1755 Sharpe reports that Dagworthy’s company received 57 suits of clothes. Based on this we can safely say that these were uniforms.

In September 1754, fifty to sixty men were raised for Captain Dagworthy’s company and marched to Fort Mount Pleasant (later Fort Cumberland), and a fort was built on Wills Creek in what was then Frederick but is now Allegany County in September and October.[8] On 26 September 1754, the Maryland Gazette reported,[9]

Laſt Monday Morning, a Part of the Soldiers raiſed in this Province to go againſt the French on the Ohio, marched out of Town, for Frederick County, under Command of Lieutenant John Forty; and we hear the Remainder will march the Beginning of next Week.

On 3 October 1754, the Maryland Gazette announced that a second party of Dagworthy’s soldiers had marched from Annapolis under command of Lieutenant John Bacon to join the other soldiers in Frederick County.[10]

As Reuben Pownall Ely notes, it was while Dagworthy was in command of Fort Cumberland that his long dispute with George Washington, which I discussed in a previous posting, began. Washington had been commissioned a colonel of colonial troops and commander-in-chief of Virginia forces. Dagworthy was a captain, but held a royal commission and considered himself Washington’s superior as a result. As Jared Sparke states,[11]

At Fort Cumberland was a Captain Dagworthy, commissioned by Governor Sharpe, who had under him a small company of Maryland troops. This person had held a royal commission in the last war, upon which he now plumed himself, refusing obedience to any provincial officer, however high in rank. Hence, whenever Colonel Washington was at Fort Cumberland, the Maryland captain would pay no regard to his orders.

In an article providing a roster of Maryland troops in the French and Indian War, Maryland Historical Magazine adds (with no author’s name stated) that, though Fort Cumberland was a royal fort, it had been built by Virginians on Maryland soil, and this historical background also likely played into the pique between Dagworthy and Washington.[12] As Patrick H. Stakem notes, when Dagworthy refused to take orders from Washington at Fort Cumberland, Washington appealed to Virginia governor Dinwiddie, who refused to intervene, stating that Fort Cumberland was in Maryland and outside his jurisdiction.[13]

On 8 December 1754, it was reported that Dagworthy had forty-seven men garrisoned at Fort Cumberland prior to Braddock’s disastrous expedition in the summer of the following year that precipitated the decision of the Maryland Assembly to see Fort Frederick constructed.[14] Note that with this December 1754 date, we’re arrived chronologically right on the eve of February 1755 when Robert Leonard indentured his son William in Frederick County, stating that he was a soldier under Captain Dagworthy. Since Fort Frederick had not yet been constructed in 1755, that document strongly suggests that Robert was stationed at Fort Cumberland when he indentured son William.

I have found no documents indicating where Robert Leonard was prior to February 1755. I’m inclined to suspect that his service with Dagworthy began prior to that date. If so, it’s possible he was among Maryland soldiers raised in the fall of 1754 to serve with Dagworthy in guarding the frontier. Or did he come to Maryland from New Jersey with Dagworthy prior to 1754? When New Jersey raised its regiments in 1746 for the expedition to Canada, with Dagworthy commanding one of the companies of volunteers, another company was raised under the command of Captain Henry Leonard.[15] A notice in the Pennsylvania Gazette on 11 September 1746 states that five companies of 100 men had been raised in New Jersey for an expedition to Canada and had embarked for Albany.[16] The five captains of these companies are named by surnames: they include Dagworthy and Leonard.

Captain Henry Leonard was born in 1715, probably in Shrewsbury township, Monmouth County, New Jersey, son of Henry Leonard and Sarah Morford. Captain Henry’s father Henry was born about 1668 in Massachusetts and died after 17 April 1739 in Shrewsbury township.[17] The Leonard family of Monmouth County, New Jersey, included a number of military men in its first generations in New Jersey, including two first cousins of Captain Henry who were Loyalists during the Revolution, brothers John and Thomas Leonard, both of whom ended up in Nova Scotia.[18]

I have no information showing that Robert Leonard, serving with Dagworthy at Fort Cumberland by February 1755, is in any way connected to the Henry Leonard who served alongside Dagworthy in King George’s War in 1746. It may well be coincidental that two military men with the Leonard surname had ties to Dagworthy in the period 1746-1755. Still, for anyone trying to find records of Robert Leonard prior to February 1755, I think it’s worth keeping in mind that Dagworthy had at least one connection to the Leonard family of Monmouth County, New Jersey, in the 1740s.

Fort Frederick

As I’ve just indicated, when General Edward Braddock’s campaign to take Fort Duquesne from the French failed disastrously in the summer of 1755, with Braddock being killed in battle along with many of his troops, the Maryland legislature responded by making plans to build another fort in Frederick County, a fort to be named Fort Frederick. The Maryland troops serving with Braddock included Dagworthy’s soldiers. As the previously cited anonymous article in Maryland Historical Magazine providing a roster of Maryland troops in the French and Indian War states,[19]

Braddock’s defeat aroused the Assembly to action, and at the February session of 1756, after much bickering, the sum of £40,000 was voted for His Majesty’s service. At subsequent sessions the Assembly declined to do more than provide for the support of 300 militia, who could not be sent beyond Fort Frederick nor used as a fixed garrison for Fort Cumberland. Captain Dagworthy was given the command of the Maryland troops sent to the frontiers of Frederick County in 1754, and in 1756 took part in the construction of Fort Frederick.

When the new fort was built, Dagworthy was placed in command with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, with five hundred men in his battalion.[20]

On 11 March 1756, the Maryland Gazette reported,[21]

In a Letter from Fort Cumberland, dated the Fifteenth Inſtant, there is Advice, that two conſiderable Bodies of French Indians have been lately down there, and had picked up ſeveral of the Men belonging to the Fort; but that the Commanding Officer there had detached Parties immediately in Purſuit of them, which obliged them to retreat precipitately, and thereby prevented their getting among the Inhabitants.

In May 1756, the Maryland Assembly passed a supply bill of $40,000 for King’s service and defense of the frontier, with $11,000 designated for construction of a strong fortification. In addition, two companies of Maryland troops, commanded by Captains John Dagworthy and Alexander Beall, were raised, with each company to contain 100 men. Construction of the new fort eighteen miles west of Hagerstown began in June 1756.[22] 

Whereas Fort Cumberland had been hastily hobbled together with insubstantial materials, the new fort near Hagerstown was built to last and to provide strong protection against adversaries:[23]

The stone fort, named in honor of Maryland’s Lord Proprietor, Frederick Calvert, Sixth Lord Baltimore, was erected by Governor Horatio Sharpe in 1756 to protect English settlers from the French and their Indian allies. Fort Frederick was unique because of its large size and strong stone wall. Most other forts of the period were built of wood and earth. The fort served as an important supply base for English campaigns…. Fort Frederick saw service again during the American Revolution as a prison for Hessian (German) and British soldiers.

As construction of Fort Frederick was being completed, the Maryland Assembly met from 6 April through 9 May 1757 to pass an act entitled “An Act for his Majesty’s Service, and the more immediate Defence and Protection of the Frontier Inhabitants of this Province”:[24]

It appears, that a Plan has been formed for the better Defence of his Majesty’s Dominions in North-America, and for Annoying his Majesty’s Enemies in these Parts; by which it is proposed, that this Province should raise and support Five Hundred Men, to act in Conjunction with his Majesty’s Regular Forces, in the Defence and for the Security of this Province….

The act goes on to allocate funding for the fort and its troops, stating that funding

[S]hall be applied to the Raising, Cloathing, Paying, Subsisting, and Defraying all Charges and Expences attending the Supporting Five Hundred Men, including Five Captains, Ten Lieutenants, Five Ensigns, Twenty Serjeants, Twenty Corporals, and Five Drummers, to act in Conjunction with his Majesty’s Regular Forces, and under the Command of his Majesty’s General, or the Officer properly authorized for his Majesty’s Service, and the more immediate Protection and Security of this Province.

The act then specified that among those officers whose troops were included in these provisions were Dagworthy and Alexander Beall:

Provided always, and be it further Enacted, That all the Men, now under the Command of Captain Dagworthy, Captain Alexander Beall, and Captain Joshua Beall, which, by the Terms or Conditions of their Enlistment, were obliged to continue in Service longer than the Tenth Day of April, One Thousand Seven Hundred and Fifty-seven, and all the Officers of their respective Companies, shall be held and deemed as a Part of the aforesaid Five Hundred Men, and shall be paid and subsisted according to the Directions of this Act from the said Tenth Day of April.”

Those holding the rank of sergeant, like Robert Leonard, were to receive a shilling and sixpence daily for their service: “To every Serjeant, One Shilling and Six Pence per Day.”

The duties of these troops, the act maintains, were not only to maintain and garrison the fort, but to engage in ranging to assure the safety of inhabitants of the frontier, “with Orders to Range as near the Settlement of the Inhabitants as the Nature of that Service shall require.” Alexander Beall’s troops in particular played a key role in acting as rangers to secure the western parts of Maryland: in 1756, the Maryland Assembly paid Beall “for the support of the ranging parties on the Western Frontier” and to “raise more men for the defense of the frontier regions of Maryland.”[25]

From the time Fort Frederick was built, a steady stream of records shows Robert Leonard serving there as a sergeant under Dagworthy and Beall. Henry C. Peden notes that Robert was stationed at the fort by August 1757.[26] A set of muster rolls with an indexed ledger found in the Calvert Papers, dated 1762, tracks the troops at the fort from 9 October 1757, though it appears some of the men appearing in these muster rolls had been with Dagworthy as early as 1754.[27] Commenting on these muster rolls, the previously cited Maryland Historical Magazine says,[28]

The records from which this roster [of Maryland troops in the French and Indian War, 1757-9] is compiled, consist of 53 muster rolls and an indexed ledger, which is dated 1762. They show service from October 9th, 1757, up to which time the troops had been paid in one of the ways mentioned above; but it is probable that some of the men had been with Captain Dagworthy as early as 1754. These records were most carefully kept in order to secure payment for the men in spite of the Assembly’s refusal to provide for them and final settlement appears to have been made March 16th, 1763. There are twelve rolls each for the companies of Captains John Dagworthy, Alexander Beall, Joshua Beall, Francis Ware, and seven for that of Richard Pearis.

The muster rolls for Alexander Beall’s company show the following:[29]

LEONARD, ROBERT. Sgt. Capt. A. Beall’s co. O. 9, 1757 to F. 16, 1758.

Discharged

According to Murtie J. Clark, the roster of Beall’s company shows Robert Leonard discharged on 8 November 1758.[30]

In addition to this set of records, Frederick County Land Record books in this period of time repeatedly show Sergeant Robert Leonard of Alexander Beall’s company witnessing the discharge of soldiers from Beall’s company:

• On 10 February 1757, Sergeant Robert Leonard and George Barrance witnessed the discharge of John Harris from Beall’s unit.[31]

• On 18 June 1757, Leonard and Barrance witnessed the discharge of William Smith from Beall’s company.[32]

• On 25 and 28 July, the same two men witnessed the discharge of Joseph Hughes and Adam Coonce from the same unit.[33]

• From 4-10 August 1757, several men of the unit recorded their discharges before Leonard and Barrance.[34]

• On 22 November 1758, Leonard and Barrance witnessed the discharge of William Kimbol from Beall’s company.[35]

• On 22 March 1759, Robert Leonard witnessed the discharge of Henry Petner from Beall’s unit.[36]

According to Henry Peden, a payment to Robert Leonard dated 7 March 1763 appears on Colonel Dagworthy’s account book.[37] This payment postdates his period of service in the British 35th Regiment of Foot from some point prior to 13 September 1759, when the battle of the Plains of Abraham took place, to 24 July 1762, when he was discharged from this military unit. It does not necessarily mean, I think, that Robert had continued serving under Dagworthy up to March 1763, only that he received a payment for some reason from Dagworthy on that date, and must have returned to Maryland after his discharge in Havana in July 1762 from the 35th.

During the years in which Robert Leonard served in Alexander Beall’s company under Dagworthy’s command at Fort Frederick, soldiers garrisoned at the fort were among those suffering severe defeat with Major James Grant in the battle of Fort Duquesne on 14 September 1758; the Fort Frederick troops then lost a number of men at the battle of Fort Ligonier on 12 October 1758; and troops from Fort Frederick were present at the occupation of Fort Duquesne on 25 November 1758.[38] It seems to me very likely that Robert Leonard took part in some or perhaps all of these military actions.

Some Notes about Alexander Beall

Robert Leonard’s commanding officer at Fort Frederick, Captain Alexander Beall, was born about 1712 in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and died about May 1759 in Frederick County. His father William Beall (1684-1756) was the son of Alexander Beall, (1649-1744), an immigrant from Fifeshire, Scotland, to Maryland. William Beall (whose wife was Elizabeth Magruder) was a substantial landowner in Frederick County, some of whose descendants intermarried with members of the Massachusetts Leonard family that moved to Monmouth County, New Jersey, and are discussed above.[39]

A virtual tour of Fort Frederick barracks provided by online by Maryland Park Service offers a glimpse of the captain’s quarters at the barracks, observing,[40]

The senior officer of the fort would have had the most spacious and luxurious quarters in the Governor’s House. The commander at Fort Frederick was typically Capt. Alexander Beall. Because he was an officer, his furnishings, clothing, accoutrements, etc. were paid for at his own expense. Therefore, the quality could vary at his discretion, although the quality and quantity of his possessions would be far superior to the companies’ enlisted men.

It’s interesting to note that the 9 April 1759 will of Alexander Beall in Frederick County shows him owning part of a large tract of land in Frederick County that bore the name King Cole.[41] The will stipulates that King Cole, a parcel of 246½ acres, was to go to Beall’s son Magruder. The original King Cole tract consisted of 1,970 acres patented to Henry Crabb on 30 August 1754.[42] By 1783, some fifty acres of the King Cole tract belonged to Joseph James, whose sister Hannah married Thomas Leonard (1752-1832), son of Robert Leonard and Honor Pritchard.[43] James obtained the land from his father-in-law James Austin. On 12 April 1791, Joseph sold this land to his father Griffith James, who then sold it along with James Austin on 3 March 1782.[44] This Frederick County land fell into Washington County at the creation of that county in 1776.

Some Notes about Joseph Chapline and Fort Frederick

In a previous posting, I noted the role played in the construction of Fort Frederick by Joseph Chapline (1707-1769), founder of Sharpsburg, where Griffith James lived. The posting I’ve just linked notes that Griffith James, whose daughter Hannah married Robert Leonard’s son Thomas, had ties to Chapline. The first document I’ve found for Griffith James in the Sharpsburg area is a 4 September 1763 agreement that Chapline made with Samuel Beall, David Ross, and Richard Henderson to be partners in an ironworks to be erected in Frederick County.[45] The agreement states that as Chapline made this agreement, he was reserving 215 acres he had sold to Daniel Moore and Griffith James.

Note the name Samuel Beall: Chapline’s business partner Samuel Beall was a first cousin of Captain Alexander Beall, Robert Leonard’s commander at Fort Frederick. Samuel’s father John Beall was a brother of Alexander’s father William Beall. Samuel lived at Hagerstown thirteen miles north of Sharpsburg and close to Fort Frederick. Joseph Chapline helped to finance and support the construction of the fort and was awarded 10,000 acres of land by the Maryland Assembly in 1764 for his role in building the fort.[46] A 1757-8 muster list for Chapline’s militia company in Frederick County shows Richard Dean, whose son Samuel married Griffith James’ daughter Gwendolyn, along with Richard’s sons Thomas and William serving in Chapline’s militia company.[47]

Joseph Chapline served as a surveyor to the Proprietary in 1744, and in 1755 he formed the first company of militia in Antietam Hundred to protect the frontier against Indian raids during the French and Indian Wars.[48] Chapline played such a formative role at Fort Frederick that in the latter part of 1757, local inhabitants of the area around the fort offended by the behavior of some of the British officers stationed there wanted Chapline held responsible for the officers’ misbehavior.[49]

As I’ve also previously noted, the first military company organized for the Revolutionary war in Hagerstown on 6 January 1776, which included Robert Leonard’s son Thomas as well as his brother-in-law Samuel Dean and Samuel’s brother Thomas, was under the command of Joseph Chapline’s son Joseph (1746-1821).

In my next posting, I’ll comment on documents capturing Robert Leonard’s final years of military service as a sergeant in the 7th Maryland Regiment during the Revolutionary War.

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

[2] See Will H. Lowdermilk, History of Cumberland, Maryland, etc. (Washington, D.C.: Anglim, 1878), p. 278; and J. Thomas Scharf, History of Western Maryland, etc. (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts, 1882), p. 108. Lowdermilk says that a Benjamin Tomlinson was among the earliest settlers of Cumberland, Maryland, and built a house on Will’s Creek in 1789 five miles out from the town.

[3] Reuben Pownall Ely, et al., An Historical Narrative of the Ely, Revell and Stacye Families Who Were among the Founders of Trenton and Burlington in the Province of West Jersey 1678-1683, with the Genealogy of the Ely Descendants in America (New York, Chicago: Fleming H. Revell, 1910), pp. 183-193. See also John and Joyce Stroman Ely at Web Family Card site.

[4] Ely, Historical Narrative of the Ely, Revell and Stacye Families, p. 184, citing New Jersey Archives, vol. VI, p. 424.

[5] Ely, Historical Narrative of the Ely, Revell and Stacye Families, p. 185.

[6] Ibid.

[7] A Gentleman Officer at Fort Frederick, “The Material Culture of the Maryland Troops, Standards and Guidelines for Portraying a Member of the Fort Frederick Provincial Garrison 1756-1759,” at Friends of Fort Frederick website.

[8] See Lee Offen, “A Timeline of Maryland Forces from 1754 to 1764,” at Academia. This essay is also found at Offen’s History Reconsidered website.

[9] Maryland Gazette (Monday, 26 September 1754), p. 3, col. 1.

[10] Maryland Gazette (Thursday, 3 October 1754), p. 3, col. 2.

[11] Jared Sparke, The Life of George Washington (Boston, 1839; repr. Boston: Little, Brown, 1857), p. 71.

[12] “French and Indian War, Roster of Maryland Troops 1757-1759 [CALVERT PAPERS],” Maryland Historical Magazine 5,3 (September 1910), pp. 271-2.

[13] Patrick H. Stakem, Fort Cumberland, Global War in the Appalachians: A Resource Guide, 2nd edn. (2014), p. 14.

[14] Offen, “Timeline of Maryland Forces from 1754 to 1764.”

[15] See Joseph F. Folsom, “Colonel Peter Schuyler at Albany, Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, n.s. 1,3 (July 1916), p. 162; and “Proceedings of the Council of New Jersey, 19 March 1747,” in Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New Jersey, ed. William A. Whitehead, ed., in New Jersey Historical Society, Archives of the State of New Jersey, vol. 6, series 1: 1738-1747 (Newark: Daily Advertiser, 1882), p. 425.

[16] Pennsylvania Gazette (11 September 1746), p. 2, col. 3.

[17] See Brad Leonard, “Descendants of Henry Leonard 1618 – 1678, Ironworker, of Massachusetts and New Jersey”; Bill Barton, “Leonard Siblings Henry, James, Philip, Sarah & Thomas in America and Some of Their Descendants”; and S. Falsey for Brad Leonard, “Leonard Genealogy, Leonards in America and Their Origins.”

[18] See William Stockton Hornor, New Jersey, This Old Monmouth of Ours (Freehold, New Jersey: Moreau Brothers, 1932), pp. 209-210; O.B. Leonard, “The Leonard Family In New Jersey,” Monmouth Inquirer (8 and 15 November 1883); Edwin Salter, “Genealogical Records of the First Settlers of Monmouth and Ocean Counties and their Descendants,” in A History of Monmouth and Ocean Counties (Bayonne: F. Gardner and Sons, 1890), p. xxvii; Fanny Louise Koster, Annals of the Leonard Family (New York, 1911), pp. 195-6.

[19] “French and Indian War, Roster of Maryland Troops 1757-1759,” p. 271.

[20] Ely, Historical Narrative of the Ely, Revell and Stacye Families, p. 187.

[21] Maryland Gazette (Thursday, 11 March 1756) p. 3, col. 2.

[22] “Col. Washington’s Frontier Forts,” at website of Col. Washington’s Frontier Forts Association.

[23] “Fort Frederick State Park” at the website of Maryland State Parks. A virtual tour of the fort is available at “Fort Frederick Barracks Virtual Tour,” at the website of Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Maryland Park Service. For a visually rich essay capturing how Dagworthy’s troops at Fort Frederick were clothed, see Gentleman Officer at Fort Frederick, “The Material Culture of the Maryland Troops, Standards and Guidelines for Portraying a Member of the Fort Frederick Provincial Garrison 1756-1759.”

[24] Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly, 1757-1758, vol. 55, “Acts of the Assembly Passed in April and May 1757,” pp. 119f.

[25] Henry C. Peden Jr., Marylanders and Delawareans in the French and Indian War 1756-1763 (Lewes, Delaware: Colonial Roots, 2004), p. 16.

[26] Ibid.

[27] The original Calvert Papers, consisting of family papers and other documents, is held by Maryland Historical Society of Baltimore. They are available as well on 32 reels of microfilm at the National Archives.

[28] “French and Indian War, Roster of Maryland Troops 1757-1759,” p. 272.

[29] Ibid., p. 281.

[30] Murtie J. Clark, Colonial Soldiers of the South, 1732-1774 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1983), pp. 79-81.

[31] Frederick County, Maryland, Land Record Bk. G, p. 155. This discharge was not recorded until 21 August 1761, hence its appearance in Record Bk. G and not F.

[32] Frederick County, Maryland, Land Record Bk. F, p. 252.

[33] Ibid., pp. 291, 296.

[34] Ibid., p. 297.

[35] Ibid., p. 579.

[36] Ibid., p. 658.

[37] Peden, Marylanders and Delawareans in the French and Indian War 1756-1763, pp. 28, 65, 135, 157, 177, 185, 187, 201, 245, 295, and 361.

[38] “French and Indian War, Roster of Maryland Troops 1757-1759,” p. 272; and Ely, Historical Narrative of the Ely, Revell and Stacye Families, p. 187.

[39] Ernest E. Bell, One Lind of Descent from Our Immigrant Ancestor Alexander Bell/Beall of Maryland (Baywood Park, California, 1995, pp. 5-7, 236-7.

[40] See supra, n. 23.

[41] Frederick County, Maryland, Will Bk. A, p. 127.

[42] See Edward C. Papenfuse and Sarah Patterson, “Dr. Arthur G. Tracey patent/tract index and map locations for

Carroll, Frederick, and Washington Counties,” prepared by the Maryland State Archives in October 2009.

[43] See 1783 tax list, Washington County, Maryland.

[44] Washington County, Maryland, Washington Deed Bk. G, pp. 368, 815-6.

[45] Frederick County, Maryland, Land Record Bk. J, pp. 798-802.

[46] Peden, Marylanders and Delawareans in the French and Indian War 1756-1763, p. 64.

[47] Ibid., p. 80. See also Clark, Colonial Soldiers of the South, 1732-1774, pp. 102-3.

[48] See Philip Craycraft, “Joseph Craycraft’,” at his Craycraft Family History site, citing a source entitled “Twigg Family Research Pertaining to the Life and Times of Robert & Hannah Twigg” by Jerry B. Twigg (1996).

[49] See Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly, 1757-1758, vol. 55, pp. 332-4.

"My Maria" is a song co-written by #BWStevenson and #DanielMoore. Lindy Blaskey, a music publisher at ABC/Dunhill Records, thought Moore had a possible hit with his verse and chorus, but could not get him to finish the song, so Blaskey took what Moore had so far and asked Stevenson to finish writing it with an additional verse. David Kershenbaum, Stevenson's producer at RCA, agreed with Blaskey that it sounded like a hit and produced.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewyu4dIVj-8

"My Maria" is a song co-written by #BWStevenson and #DanielMoore. Lindy Blaskey, a music publisher at ABC/Dunhill Records, thought Moore had a possible hit with his verse and chorus, but could not get him to finish the song, so Blaskey took what Moore had so far and asked Stevenson to finish writing it with an additional verse. David Kershenbaum, Stevenson's producer at RCA, agreed with Blaskey that it sounded like a hit and produced.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewyu4dIVj-8

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.

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.

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