#thomasdunlapleonard — Public Fediverse posts

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

Dean Historical Marker, Starr, Anderson County, South Carolina, photo by Brian Scott at Historical Marker Database

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anderson County, South Carolina, Will Bk B, pp. 6-7

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

According to Country Cousins,[6]

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

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

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

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

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

Thomas James, son of Joseph James and Elizabeth Austin; photo reproduced in Frank Everett Stevens, The Black Hawk war, Including a Review of Black Hawk’s Life (Chicago, 1903), p. 146, attributed to Martha H. Hoke

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

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

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

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

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

John Cummings, “A Journal of the Life & Parantage [sic] of John Cummings & Wife.”

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

Maryland Historical Society, Maryland Marriages 1777-1804

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

Frank Ellwood Esshom, Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah (Salt Lake City: Utah Pioneers Book Publishing Company, 1913), p. 831 John Cummings, photo uploaded by Jerry Duke to Cummings tree at FamilySearch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#ancestry #AndersonCoSouthCarolina #AugustePChouteau #CharityAustin #ColinCampbell #ElizabethAustin #familyHistory #FrederickCoMaryland #genealogy #GeorgeMitchell #GibsonCoTennessee #GriffithDean #GriffithJames #GwendolynJames #HagerstownWashingtonCoMaryland #HannahJames #HarfordCoMaryland #HarmonCummin #HarmonCummings #HarmonCummins #HeberCityWasatchCoUtah #history #HonorPritchard #JamesAustin #JamesAustinJames #JohnCummings #JohnJames #JosephJames #KingColeWashingtonCoMaryland #LincolnCoTennessee #MalindaCummingsJunkin #MarshallCoTennessee #MaryAnnLeonard #MaryJames #MonroeCoIllinois #MosesDean #MountainCreekBaptistChurchPendletonDistSouthCarolina #NauvooMissouri #PendletonDistSouthCarolina #PerryvillePerryCoMissouri #PetersburgMarshallCoTennessee #ProvoCityUtahCoUtah #RachelCanada #RichardDean #RichardDeane #RobertLeonard #SamuelDean #SamuelJames #SarahWalker #SharpsburgWashingtonCoMaryland #StFerdinandStLouisCoMissouri #StarrAndersonCoSouthCarolina #ThomasDunlapLeonard #ThomasJames #ThomasLeonard #WashingtonCoMaryland #WiliamHembree #WilliamSimpson

Griffith James (abt. 1725? – 1795): Sharpsburg, Maryland, Beginnings

Frederick County, Maryland, Deed Bk. J, p. 799

Or, Subtitled: “I have no tradition of her parents, except their nationality, they were Welch, but Hannah was born and reared in Maryland”

“Don’t know much about history”: Sam Cooke’s song “Wonderful World” is scrolling through my head as I launch a new series of postings, this one about Griffith James (abt. 1725? – 1795). Griffith James ties into my family tree through the marriage of his daughter Hannah (1752-1842) to Thomas Leonard about 1775 in Frederick County, Maryland. I’ve just finished a series of postings about the Leonard line. This new series about Griffith James follows that Leonard series, which began with the posting I’ve just linked, about Thomas Leonard (1752-1832), Hannah James’ husband. In a posting launching a previous series about my Lauderdale family line, I offer two charts showing my line of descent from Griffith James, James Lauderdale, and Robert Leonard, family lines that tied together in my family tree when Thomas Lewis Leonard (1781-1870) married Sarah M. Lauderdale (abt. 1785 – abt. 1866) — my 4th g-grandparents. (To read the continuation of this posting, please click the numeral 2 below.)

The reason Sam Cooke’s line “Don’t know much about history” has been playing in my head as I begin gathering and organizing my information about Griffith James is this: before I undertook this gathering and organizing process, if you’d asked me what I know about Griffith James, I’d have told you confidently that I have a considerable amount of information, and that I was fairly certain I could tell you a lot about his origins, where he came from, who his parents were.

But now, I’m not so sure about that. One of the advantages of working on postings here that gather, organize, and analyze genealogical material I’ve accumulated for over fifty years is that I have a chance to look at that material from new perspectives, to correct and expand it, and in some cases, to reframe entirely what I had thought I’d known about an ancestral figure. Griffith James is a case in point.

The Documentary Trail That Begins at Sharpsburg

I’ll illustrate this point in the following posting by talking about what I know with certainty about Griffith James from the point at which a documentary trail of him begins in the area of Sharpsburg in what eventually became Washington County, Maryland. I know nothing — not with any certainty — about Griffith James before he begins showing up in records of Frederick County, Maryland, Washington County’s parent county. Prior to that point, I have not found any reliable information about where he was born, who his parents were, or where he may have lived before he settled in Frederick County prior to September 1763.

I do not know precisely when Griffith James was born. As a previous posting has shown, the gravestone of his oldest child, his daughter Hannah, in the Leonard family cemetery near Petersburg, Tennessee, gives her birthdate as 2 November 1752. If Hannah was born to a young couple who had married not long prior to her birth, then it would appear that Griffith James and his wife, whose name appears in various records as Mary, would likely have been born in the time frame 1725-1735.[1] We’ll see later that Griffith made a will in Pendleton District, South Carolina, on 20 April 1795, which was recorded (with no probate date stated) on 12 April 1796, so he died in Pendleton District between those two dates.[2] A death date of 3 October 1795 appears in a study of the Dean family entitled Country Cousins: Descendants of Samuel Dean with no information about the source of this date.[3]

Griffith James’ wife Mary, who is named in his will as “my Dear wife Mary James,” outlived him and was still living as late as 1817 when the minutes of Mountain Creek Baptist church in Pendleton District, of which Mary was a member, document a dispute between her and her daughter Mary, wife of Harmon Cummings, that began in April and continued until it was resolved in August 1817.[4] I have not found a document that provides a good indicator of when Griffith James’ wife Mary was born, or of her maiden surname.[5] As we’ll see in a moment, Thomas Dunlap Leonard, a grandson of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James, who compiled a history of the Leonard family in 1883 and who knew Thomas and Hannah personally, appears to have thought that Griffith James was married only once and that his first and only wife (i.e., Mary), whom Thomas D. Leonard does not name, was the mother of all the couple’s children.

Frederick County, Maryland, Deed Bk. J, p. 798, opening portion of ironworks agreement

The first absolutely certain record I’ve found for this Griffith James places him in Sharpsburg in what was then Frederick County by 4 September 1763. On 4 September 1763, Joseph Chapline made an agreement between himself and Samuel Beall, David Ross, and Richard Henderson to be partners in an ironworks to be erected in Frederick County. The agreement states that Joseph reserved to himself and his heirs his mill on the Antietam with 50 acres joining it, and that Joseph was also excluding from the land he was making available for the ironworks 215 acres he had sold to Daniel Moore and Griffith James.[6] This agreement was recorded 31 October 1765, but the agreement itself was dated 4 September 1763. (See the top of this posting for a snapshot of the section of the ironworks agreement stating that Chapline had sold 215 acres to Daniel Moore and Griffith James.)

I have searched Frederick County deeds for a deed made by Joseph Chapline to Daniel Moore and Griffith James prior to September 1763 without finding any such deed. What I do find are two separate deeds made, one to Daniel and one to Griffith, years down the road from 1763, after both men had been living with their families for years on the land that Chapline deeded to them, and which was clearly the land comprised in the 215 acres Daniel Moore and Griffith James had acquired from Joseph Chapline by September 1763.

As far as I can determine, Griffith James lived continuously on a tract of land just southeast of the town of Sharpsburg until May 1792, when he sold the Pough tract and then moved the following year to Pendleton District, South Carolina. Pough was a 75-acre tract contiguous to Hunting the Hare, one portion of which Richard Dean, whose son Samuel married Griffith James’ daughter Gwendolyn, owned, and another portion of which Daniel Moore seems to have acquired from Joseph Chapline.

Arthur G. Tracey’s patent/tract index and map locations for Carroll, Frederick, and Washington Counties at Maryland government’s Maryland History site Maryland Land Office Rent Rolls 1748-1775, p. 5 Arthur G. Tracey’s patent/tract index and map locations for Carroll, Frederick, and Washington Counties at Maryland government’s Maryland History site — note Hunting the Hare contiguous to Pough

Joseph Chapline patented Pough on 23 November 1761.[7] The patent record states that the tract contained 75 acres, the same amount of land that Griffith James sold on 13 May 1792 when he sold Pough (the name for the land is given in this deed) before leaving Maryland for South Carolina.[8] Though Griffith James evidently lived continuously on this land from at least September 1763, he did not receive an official deed from the Chapline family for Pough until 10 April 1787, when Joseph and James Chapline, acting as executors of their father Joseph who died in 1769, sold Griffith the Pough tract for￡5.[9] This deed specifies again that Pough was a 75-acre tract.

Washington County, Maryland, Deed Bk. E, pp. 332-3

Note the nominal price of￡5, far less than the￡330 for which Griffith James sold Pough in May 1792. This nominal price is another indicator that though this land, for which Griffith James appears on the tax list in Washington County in 1783, was Griffith’s home tract, Joseph Chapline (and then his estate) had retained the title of it for all the years on which Griffith lived on this piece of land.[10] The ￡5 also suggests to me that Griffith James may have lived on this land all the years he was at Sharpsburg as a kind of retainer of Joseph Chapline and his family, given use of a tract of land while not holding clear title to it as he lived on it. A retainer who may have had some kinship connection to Chapline? Or a retainer doing work of some kind to Chapline while cultivating his own patch of land?

After 1761 when Chapline patented Pough until 1768, I do not find Pough showing up in the Debt Books of the Provincial Land Office of Maryland. In 1768, it is listed as 75 acres belonging to heirs of Joseph Chapline, and it continues to appear in the Debt Books for Frederick County from 1770-1773, with the name given as “Tough.” Again, these documents indicate to me that Joseph Chapline perhaps had some special arrangement with Griffith James whereby he was living on Pough as its owner in the absence of a deed prior to April 1787, when Chapline’s heirs officially deeded the land to him — though, to repeat, a 1783 tax list for Washington County shows Griffith James taxed for this tract of land.

Washington County, Maryland, Deed Bk. R, pp. 181-2

The story of Pough and Griffith James’ ownership and occupation of it parallels the story of Daniel Moore, who owned another portion of the 215 acres that he and Griffith James had acquired from Joseph Chapline prior to September 1763. Daniel Moore’s portion of the 215 acres was a tract of 138 acres named Mores Delight, which Joseph Chapline sold him on 17 August 1754 with the deed stating that Daniel Moore was living on this land when Chapline sold it to him in 1754, and that the land was on the waters of the Antietam.[11] But though Daniel Moore lived on this piece of land up to his death in 1792, the deed for the land was not recorded until 11 May 1805.

We know that Daniel Moore lived with his wife Mary on this 138-acre tract at the time of his death because the will that he made in Washington County on 1 January 1792 states this and leaves Mary the land: “I give and bequeath unto my loving & faithfull Wife Mary the whole of my Land and Plantation on which I now live Containing One Hundred and thirty Eight Acres.”[12] Daniel Moore was taxed for this land in 1783.[13]

As we’ve seen, Griffith James’ Pough tract consisted of 75 acres. Daniel Moore’s home tract, on which he was already living prior to August 1754 and on which he continued living to the end of his life, was 138 acres. Joseph Chapline’s September 1763 ironworks agreement states that he had sold Daniel Moore and Griffith James 215 acres by that date. Put these two pieces of land owned by Griffith James and Daniel Moore together, and you have a total of 213 acres, very close to the 215 acres cited by Joseph Chapline in his ironworks agreement.

I have not been able to find Mores Delight on lists of land patents and tracts in Washington County, so I’m not certain of its precise location. There has been confusion about whether the name of this piece of land is Moses’ Delight or Mores Delight, and this adds to the difficulty of finding its location. If Joseph Chapline’s September 1763 ironworks agreement excluded 215 acres he had sold to Daniel Moore and Griffith James from this agreement, it makes sense, I think, to assume that Daniel’s and Griffith’s pieces of land were in the same vicinity and perhaps adjoining.

Daniel Moore’s will states that he had a son Richard. The 1783 tax assessment for Washington County shows Richard Moore assessed for a 50-acre tract called Hunting the Hare. As a descendant of this Moore family who maintains the West Virginia Family Tracks and Trails blog notes, the 1790 federal census for Washington County shows Richard and Daniel Moore as immediate neighbors, and on 10 April 1790, Daniel Moore and wife Mary sold 50 acres described as part of a tract called Hunting the Hare.[14] This deed suggests to me that Daniel Moore’s 138-acre home tract, Mores Delight, was likely originally part of a larger tract of 250 acres called Hunting the Hare on Antietam Creek that Joseph Chapline patented on 13 November 1747 after having claimed the land on 9 April 1744.[15]

Arthur G. Tracey’s patent/tract index and map locations for Carroll, Frederick, and Washington Counties at Maryland government’s Maryland History site Prince George’s County, Maryland, Deed Bk. BB, pp. 396-7.

On 22 March 1747, prior to his obtaining a patent for Hunting the Hare in November 1747, Joseph Chapline sold Richard Dean, both of Prince George’s County, 50 acres of land described as “Deans purches being part of a tract land called hunting the hair [sic].”[16] On 17 October 1747, Joseph Chapline acknowledged the deed with wife Ruhamah (née Williams) relinquishing dower rights, and on the same day, Joseph made a receipt to Richard for the £20 for which he had sold the land. The deed for this transaction is filed in Prince George’s County since the portion of Frederick County taken from Prince George’s in 1748 that became Washington County in 1776 was originally in Prince George’s.

As I stated previously, Richard Dean’s son Samuel married Griffith James’ daughter Gwendolyn about 1773 in Frederick County. We know that Richard Dean was in the location that would later become Sharpsburg along with Joseph Chapline as early as 1746, since the tax list for Antietam Hundred in Prince George’s County in that year shows both of these men taxed in that hundred.[17] This is not very long after Chapline arrived in this location around 1736, a point I’ll discuss in more detail later. Beverly Dean Peoples, the premier researcher of Richard Dean’s family, thinks that it’s entirely possible that Chapline brought Richard to the Sharpsburg area or Richard followed Chapline there due to some connection between the two men in eastern Maryland prior to Chapline’s decision to move west.

Beverly Peoples writes,[18]

When he came to this western most part of MD, Joseph brought with him men to build his home, settlers to clear the land, workers to build and work the Iron Works that he was establishing as well as men to defend the settlement from the Indians. Since this area was remote in the 1730’s and 40’s it is unlikely that many people arrived individually. Richard’s appearance in the 1740’s would possibly indicate he had contact with someone in the Chapline family in the eastern part of the state who had motivated him to [move] west.

It seems to me this is a thesis well worth considering. And given what appear to be close ties between Richard Dean, Griffith James, and Daniel Moore, I’d also suggest that it’s possible both Griffith and Daniel arrived in the Sharpsburg area not far down the road from Richard because they, too, had prior ties to Joseph Chapline and/or to Richard Dean. If Daniel Moore’s 138-acre homeplace was part of the original Hunting the Hare tract — and I think this may well have been the case — then he, Richard Dean, and Griffith Moore settled on adjoining tracts of land just southeast of Sharpsburg. Note the contiguity of Deans Purchase, Hunting the Hare, and Pough on this map of Sharpsburg that appears in Evelyn Vigdahl’s previously cited “Another Flooded River” article:[19]

Evelyn Vigdahl, “Another Flooded River Valley: The Deans of Huntingdon Co., Pennsylvania,” at Our Family History

Google Maps actually labels the “historic Moore farm” near the intersection of Burnside Bridge Road and Mills Road southeast of Sharpsburg as “Hunting the Hare.”[20] Both Pough and Deans Purchase are in this same location, near the intersection of Burnside Bridge Road and Mills Road.[21]

Google Maps snapshot of Hunting the Hare, historic Moore farm, southeast of Sharpsburg Photo I took in August 2007 of the entrance to Pough from the entrance to the property at Burnside Bridge Road Photo I took in August 2007 of Deans Purchase viewed from Pough across the road

So note the following:

• By September 1763, Griffith James and Daniel Moore owned 215 acres near Antietam Creek purchased from Joseph Chapline.

• We learn from other documents that the portion of this land, 75 acres, that Griffith James owned and lived on was called Pough, and that Pough was adjacent to Chapline’s Hunting the Hare tract. Chapline’s heirs deeded this land formally to Griffith James in 1787.

• In 1747, Richard Dean bought 50 acres from Chapline’s Hunting the Hare tract; this land was given the name Deans Purchase. Deans Purchase is contiguous to both Pough and the rest of the Hunting the Hare tract.

• In 1754, Chapline deeded Daniel Moore 138 acres that appear to have been also part of the original Hunting the Hare tract, and also appear to have been contiguous to Pough and Deans Purchase. We know from a subsequent deed that Daniel Moore owned another 50 acres of Hunting the Hare on which his son Richard lived for a time.

• Griffith James’ daughter Gwendolyn married Richard Dean’s son Samuel Dean.

• The 14 February 1788 will of Richard Dean in Washington County names a daughter Mary.[22] We learn from the 7 August 1795 will of Richard’s widow Priscilla that Mary’s married name was More/Moore.[23] Noting that documents from 1761 through 1792 show Daniel Moore’s wife as Mary, and that Daniel and wife Mary named a son Richard Moore, Beverly Peoples proposes that Daniel Moore may have married another of Richard Dean’s daughters — an eminently reasonable proposal, it seems to me, even if not yet entirely proven.[24]

Joseph Chapline, Founder of Sharpsburg

Because the three interconnecting men on whom I’m focusing here — Griffith James, Richard Dean, and Daniel Moore — all acquired their adjoining pieces of land from Joseph Chapline and arrived in the Sharpsburg area in its formative period when Chapline appears to have been attracting to the area settlers with pre-existing ties to him, it’s important to take a close look at Chapline’s biography and his connection to Sharpsburg, which he founded. As John Bedell and Jason Shellenhamer note, “Of all of the early residents of Maryland’s Great Valley, Joseph Chapline was most responsible for shaping settlement along Antietam Creek in the eighteenth century.”[25]

Joseph Chapline was born 5 September 1707 in Queen Anne’s parish of Prince George’s County, the son of William Chapline (1686-1752) and Elizabeth Travers. The Chapline family, whose roots were in England and which had marital ties to the Calvert family, had been in the colonies four generations prior to Joseph, first in Virginia and then in Maryland, where family members lived in Calvert and Dorchester Counties in the eastern part of that colony.[26]

Joseph spent his formative years on his father’s plantation Forrest in the easternmost part of Prince George’s County, with his father William sending him to England for a period of time to be educated. In 1730 Joseph’s father, William, moved to the western “back-parts” on the Virginia-Maryland border, settling on the Potomac about four miles above Shepherdstown and leaving Joseph, his oldest son, in charge of the Forrest plantation and of the family’s younger children.

By 1736 Joseph had followed his father west, settling across the Potomac in what was then western Prince George’s County, and after that Frederick and finally Washington County. As Bedell and Shellenhamer note,[27]

Maryland colonial records for that period show that Chapline was an active member of a community developing west of the Monocacy River. In May 1739 Joseph Chapline was a signatory on a petition of 88 inhabitants of the “back-parts” of Maryland.

On 22 October 1741 in All Saints parish in Frederick County, Joseph married Ruhamah, daughter of Reverend William Williams and Sarah James of Carmarthenshire, Wales. Ruhamah and her sisters Sarah and Jane had come to Virginia with their father, a Presbyterian missionary, following their mother’s death in Wales. By 1739, William Williams had bought land in Prince George’s County, Maryland, in the area that would later be Frederick and then Washington County.[28]

In 1744 Joseph Chapline began patenting and buying tracts of land on Antietam Creek in the vicinity of what would soon be Sharpsburg. As Bedell and Shellenhamer indicate, one of these tracts, acquired in 1747, was the 250-acre Hunting the Hare tract.[29] It is in this period from the latter half of the 1730s into the 1740s that Beverly Peoples suggests Joseph may well have brought with him to this remote backcountry part of western Maryland men to help improve his properties, build houses and structures on them, clear and settle the land, and work his ironworks once they were established. As Beverly states, “Since this area was remote in the 1730’s and 40’s it is unlikely that many people arrived individually.”[30]

Joseph Chapline prospered and accumulated wealth and status following his settlement in the Sharpsburg area. He was a justice of Prince George’s county court from 1739-1748 and after that of the Frederick court for some years. From 1749-1768, he served in the lower house of the Maryland legislature. In 1763 Joseph founded the town of Sharps Burgh, naming it in honor of Maryland’s governor Horatio Sharpe. The town was laid out on a 200-acre tract, Hickory Tavern, that Joseph bought from Edmund Cartledge on 11 July 1763, close to his plantation Rush Bottom and adjacent to his Hunting the Hare and Resurvey on Abston’s Forest tracts. The appeal of the Hickory Tavern land for a town site was that it had a good freshwater spring and was on the wagon road to Philadelphia. In 1764, Joseph out a plan for the new town, consisting of 187 lots located around the spring, with each lot measuring 103 feet wide by 206 feet long.[31]

On 12 January 1769 the Maryland Gazette reported,[32]

Lately died in Frederick County, Capt. Joseph Chapline, who, for many Years, has been one of the Representatives for that County in the General Assembly.

Joseph was initially buried on his Elias Grove estate west of Sharpsburg, and in 1893 his great-great-niece Maria Ligget Dare had his remains along with those of his wife Ruhamah and several other family members buried in Mountain View cemetery at Sharpsburg.[33] Maria Dare indicates that Joseph died owning 12,257 acres of land.[34] According to Edward C. Papenfuse, Joseph’s landholdings at the time of his death included at least 6,385 acres in Frederick County and probably as much as 15,000 acres in Frederick County and in Virginia.[35]

I’d like to return now to the 4 September 1763 document that started this discussion of Griffith James’ early years in the Sharpsburg area. As I stated previously, the 4 September 1763 agreement that Joseph Chapline made with Samuel Beall, David Ross, and Richard Henderson to be partners in an ironworks to be erected at Sharpsburg is the first absolutely certain document I’ve found placing Griffith James in this part of Maryland.[36]

Several of my previous postings (here and here) about the Leonard family connecting to Griffith James’ family through the marriage of Thomas Leonard, son of Robert Leonard and Honor Pritchard, to Griffith’s daughter Hannah note both not only ties between Robert and Thomas Leonard Joseph Chapline and his family, but also ties between the Leonards and the Beall family to which Joseph Chapline’s business partner Samuel Beall belonged. As these postings indicate, Joseph Chapline helped construct Fort Frederick near Hagerstown in Washington County, Maryland, in 1756, and from the time that fort was constructed, a trail of documents places Robert Leonard there as a soldier guarding the western frontier of Maryland.

Moreover, when the first military company in Washington County was organized for the Revolutionary War in Hagerstown on 6 January 1776, that company was under the command of Joseph Chapline’s a son Joseph. Serving in that military company were Griffith James’ sons-in-law Thomas Leonard and Samuel Dean, as well as Samuel’s brother Thomas Dean and Richard Moore, son of Daniel Moore. Previously, in 1755, Daniel Moore had served in the Frederick County militia company of Captain Moses Chapline, brother of the elder Joseph Chapline who founded Sharpsburg.

In addition, in the years in which Robert Leonard was stationed at Fort Frederick, he was under the immediate command of Captain Alexander Beall (1712-1759). Alexander was the son of William Beall (1684-1756), whose brother John Beall (1689-1742) was father of the Samuel Beall (1713-1778) who was Joseph Chapline’s business partner in the Antietam ironworks business. Samuel lived at Hagerstown.

As this previous posting states, Alexander Beall left a will in Frederick County dated 9 April 1759 which shows him owning part of a large tract of land in that county called King Cole.[37] The original King Cole tract consisted of 1,970 acres patented to Henry Crabb on 30 August 1754.[38] As we’ll see later, by 1783, fifty acres of the King Cole tract belonged to Griffith James’ son Joseph, who obtained it from his father-in-law James Austin.[39] In April 1791, Joseph sold this land to his father Griffith James, who then sold it along with James Austin in March 1792.[40]

None of the preceding information about Griffith James tells us exactly when and how he arrived in the Sharpsburg area or where he may have been prior to his arrival there. It does, however, give us a clear snapshot confirming his presence in the Sharpsburg area prior to September 1763 and his continuous residence on a piece of land he had acquired from Joseph Chapline prior to that date. All of the information I’ve compiled above also raises some tantalizing questions:

• Did Griffith James, Richard Dean, and Daniel Moore have some connections to each other pre-existing their arrival in the Sharpsburg area? And did all or any of these men have connections with Joseph Chapline pre-dating their arrival in the Sharpsburg area?

• Since we know that Joseph Chapline had a Welsh mother-in-law whose surname was James, is it possible that Griffith James had some kind of family connection with Joseph Chapline through Joseph’s mother-in-law Sarah James? There’s also a salient fact I haven’t yet mentioned: Daniel Moore had a daughter Nancy who married John Griffith. This family, too, lived in the Sharpsburg area. Given the vagaries of the patronymic naming system in Welsh families, whereby given names of fathers pass on as surnames of sons, it’s possible John Griffith and Griffith James were related to each other: Was that, in fact, the case?

• If Griffith James was related to Joseph Chapline through Joseph’s mother-in-law, would that explain the fact that he had acquired land from Joseph prior to September 1763 — we know this from Joseph’s own testimony — for which he was not given title until 1787, though he lived continuously on this land all those years? To repeat a question I’ve already asked earlier: If Griffith James was a relative of the Chapline family, was he a retainer of the family, living on land provided to him while the family held title to the land?

Lots of questions, no answers. I ask these questions not to suggest that any of this speculation has been proven, but to put the questions out on the board for consideration, as any researcher seeks to extend information about Griffith James back beyond September 1763 in the Sharpsburg area. Another tantalizing piece of information to place on the board now: in his 1883 manuscript about the Leonard family Thomas Dunlap Leonard says the following about the parents of his grandmother Hannah James Leonard:[41]

[Thomas Leonard, son of Robert Leonard and Honor Pritchard,] married Miss Hannah James of Maryland about the year 1775. I have no tradition of her parents, except their nationality, they were Welch, but Hannah was born and reared in Maryland.

This statement, which evidently relies on information given to Thomas D. Leonard by his grandparents Thomas and Hannah James Leonard, seems to me to imply that Thomas D. Leonard thought Hannah James’ parents were Welsh-born. The Welsh background of the family is fairly evident in the names Griffith and James, both common Welsh surnames. The given name Gwendolyn, which Griffith James and wife Mary gave a daughter, is another Welsh cultural tag. I am also not forgetting that Pritchard, the surname of Robert Leonard’s wife, is yet another Welsh surname.

It’s possible, of course, that Thomas D. Leonard means to say here that Griffith James’ family had recent Welsh roots though it had been in the colonies a generation or two prior to Griffith himself. It seems to me, however, that Thomas thought Griffith James and wife Mary were actually Welsh-born and were the immigrant ancestors of this James family line. If that’s true, then it may also have been the case that this couple arrived in Maryland — perhaps even in the Sharpsburg area — directly from Wales. And that would mean attempts to find information about Griffith James prior to September 1763 in the vicinity of Sharpsburg need to look back to Wales for information. Perhaps to the Carmarthenshire family of Sarah James, mother-in-law of Joseph Chapline?

Frederick County, Maryland, Inventory Bk. A1, p. 459

And then one final surprising piece of information: In updating my notes about Griffith James as I worked on this blog posting, I’ve unearthed a list of debts to the estate of Nathan Peddycoart, who died in 1759 in Frederick County, Maryland. Among the debts that Nathan’s widow Sarah Dorsey Peddycoart listed in her inventory of Nathan’s estate was a debt from one Griffith James for one shilling and sixpence due 10 January 1743.[42]

Is this the Griffith James who had bought land from Joseph Chapline by 1763? Given the Frederick County location of this estate record, that’s entirely possible. If this is “our” Griffith James, then this record would indicate that he was in Maryland, perhaps in Frederick County’s parent county, Prince George’s, by January 1743. If I’m correct in thinking that the Griffith James who lived at Pough outside Sharpsburg was born in the period 1725-1735, and if this record pertains to that same Griffith James, then he’d have been in this part of Maryland as a very young man in 1743.

Lots of questions, no answers. But it’s important to keep asking….

[1] The only federal census on which Griffith James appears, the 1790 census, shows him in Washington County, Maryland (p. 9) with a household comprised of two males aged 16 and over, one male aged under 15, and two females, information that is hardly helpful in determining Griffith’s birthdate.

[2] Anderson County, South Carolina, Will Bk. 1793-8, p. 82.

[3] Era Josephine Morgan Davis, Louise S. Rourke, and Marc B. Smith, Country Cousins: Descendants of Samuel Dean (1996), p. 3. In correspondence with me in January 1997, researcher Barbara Morris of Bellaire, Texas, stated that the 3 October 1795 death of date was sent by Lucy Rebecca Dean to Louise Rourke in the 1980s. Louise Rourke, who lived in Citrus Heights, California, was the primary author of Country Cousins. Unless I’m mistaken, Lucy Rebecca Dean (1942-2023, m. John Kennemur) was a daughter of Richard Brown Dean and Joanne Richardson. Rebecca Dean Kennemur was a DAR member and active genealogist. This Dean line descends from Samuel Dean and Gwendolyn James through their son Richard P. Dean.

[4] Mountain Creek Baptist church appears to have been established in the 1790s some six miles southwest of Anderson, South Carolina. Its original minutes are held by the Special Collections and Baptist Historical Collection at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. Microfilmed and digitized copies of the church minutes are available at FamilySearch. A transcription of the Mountain Creek minutes from 1798 to 1907 by Debbie Giles Harbin was published by the Anderson County Chapter of the South Carolina Genealogical Society in 2002.

[5] Mary James does not appear as a household head on the federal census in either 1800 or 1810. The minutes of Mountain Creek Baptist church state that in 1817, she was living with her the family of her son-in-law Samuel Dean, husband of Gwendolyn Dean. The 1810 federal census shows a female aged over 45 in Samuel’s household in Pendleton District (p. 151).

[6] Frederick County, Maryland, Deed Bk. J, pp. 793-804.

[7] See Arthur G. Tracey’s patent/tract index and map locations for Carroll, Frederick, and Washington Counties at Maryland government’s Maryland History site; and Maryland Land Office Rent Rolls 1748-1775, p. 5.

[8] See Washington County, Maryland, Deed Bk. G, pp. 771-2, stating that on 13 May 1792, Griffith James sold to Robert Hoffman for ￡330 his tract called Pough, 75 acres, with wife Mary releasing dower.

[9] Washington County, Maryland, Deed Bk. E, pp. 332-3.

[10] In 1783, Griffith James is on the Washington County tax list in Lower Antietam Hundred, taxed for the Pough property, with the acreage given as 100 acres. The tax list states that this property comprised 60 acres of woods and 40 acres arable; Griffith was also taxed for four horses and eight beef cattle: see “Washington County 1783 Tax Assessment,” Western Maryland Genealogy 7,4 (October 1991), p. 171; and “Assessment of 1783, Index,” citing Lower Antietam and Sharpsburg, p. 34 (MSA S1161-11-1. 1/4/5/54) at website of Maryland State Archives.

[11] Washington County, Maryland, Deed Bk. R, pp. 181-2.

[12] Washington County, Maryland, Will Bk. A, pp. 279-280. The will was probated 24 March 1792.

[13] See “Assessment of 1783, Index,” citing Lower Antietam and Sharpsburg, p. 35 (MSA S1161-11-1. 1/4/5/54) at website of Maryland State Archives. This transcription reads the acreage as 128 acres and gives the tract name as Moses’ Delight.

[14] Geolover, “Sarah’s Surprise, Part 2,” West Virginia Family Tracks and Trails, citing Washington County, Maryland, Deed Bk.  G-7, pp. 44-46.

[15] See Arthur G. Tracey’s patent/tract index and map locations for Carroll, Frederick, and Washington Counties at Maryland government’s Maryland History site. See also John Bedell and Jason Shellenhamer, Archeological Overview, Assessment, Identification, and Evaluation Study of Newly Acquired Lands at Antietam National Battlefield, Maryland (2014, National Parks Service), pp. 36-7; Evelyn Vigdahl, “Another Flooded River Valley: The Deans of Huntingdon Co., Pennsylvania,” at Our Family History; and “The Farmsteads of Antietam – Jacob Avey Farm,” at the website of Jacob Rohrback Inn.

[16] Prince George’s County, Maryland, Deed Bk. BB, pp. 396-7.

[17] “Tax List, Antietam Hundred, Prince George’s County 1746,” transcribed by Karen Walker for Maryland Genealogical Society.

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

[19] See supra, n. 15.

[20] When Joseph Chapline patented Pough in November 1761 (see supra, no. 7), the tract was described as 75 acres at the head of a spring and the foot of Elk Ridge Mountain next to Keep Tryst, Boston, and Little I Thought It. Little I Thought It is the huge tract out of which the land for the Antietam ironworks was taken. On 25 July 1769, David Ross, one of Chapline’s business partners in the ironworks, had a Frederick County grant for 8,025 acres, a tract called Boston, a resurvey of Little I Thought It, part of Keep Trieste, part of Dutch Loss, and Mill Place. The survey for this land shows it bordering both Pough and Hunting the Hare. Arthur Tracey’s map for plats in Sharpsburg district shows Pough bordering Boston on the east, with Hunting the Hare bordering Boston on the north. On the Little I Thought It tract of 6,352 acres as the site for the ironworks, see Thomas J.C. Williams, A History of Washington County, Maryland, etc. (Hagerstown, 1906; reps. Baltimore: Regional Publ. Co., 1968), pp. 23-4.

[21] For photos of the Deans Purchase portion of Hunting the Hare viewed from Pough that I took in in August 2007, please see this previous posting.

[22] Washington County, Maryland, Will Bk. A, p. 168. The will spells the surname as Deane.

[23] Ibid., pp. 161-2.

[24] Richard Deane (1701-1788) and His Children.”

[25] John Bedell and Jason Shellenhamer, Archeological Overview, Assessment, Identification, and Evaluation Study of Newly Acquired Lands at Antietam National Battlefield Maryland (2014, National Parks Service), p. 36.

[26] See ibid., and Edward C. Papenfuse, A Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, 1635-1789 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), pp. 210-211; Lee and Barbara Barron, The History of Sharpsburg, Maryland, Founded by Joseph Chapline 1763 (1972); Maria J. Liggett Dare, Chaplines from Maryland and Virginia (priv. publ., 1902); Thomas J.C. Williams, A History of Washington County, Maryland, etc., vol. 1 (Hagerstown, 1906; repr. Baltimore: Regional Publishing Company, 1968), pp. 23-4; Sharpsburg Historical Society, “Joseph Chapline – Founder of Sharpsburg, MD,” at the website of Sharpsburg Historical Society; and Peoples, “Richard Deane (1701-1788) and His Children.”

[27] Bedell and Shellenhamer, Archeological Overview, Assessment, Identification, and Evaluation Study of Newly Acquired Lands at Antietam National Battlefield Maryland, pp. 36-7.

[28] Dare, Chaplines from Maryland and Virginia, pp. 6, 22; Williams, History of Washington County, Maryland, pp. 23-4; and Grace L. Tracey, Pioneers of Old Monocacy (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2002), pp. 245-7. See also Find a Grave memorial page of Ruhama Williams Chapline, Mountain View cemetery, Sharpsburg, Washington County, Maryland, created by jrrmr910, maintained by Michael J. Chapline.

[29] Ibid.

[30] “Richard Deane (1701-1788) and His Children.”

[31] Bedell and Shellenhamer, Archeological Overview, Assessment, Identification, and Evaluation Study of Newly Acquired Lands at Antietam National Battlefield Maryland, pp. 41-2.

[32] Maryland Gazette (12 January 1769), p. 3, col. 1.

[33] See Find a Grave memorial page of Col Joseph Chapline, Mountain View cemetery, Sharpsburg, Washington County, Maryland, created by jrrmr910, maintained by Michael J. Chapline.

[34] Dare, Chaplines from Maryland and Virginia, p. 7.

[35] Papenfuse, Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, 1635-1789, p. 211.

[36] See supra, n. 6.

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

[38] See Arthur G. Tracey’s patent/tract index and map locations for Carroll, Frederick, and Washington Counties at Maryland government’s Maryland History site.

[39] “Washington County 1783 Tax Assessment,” p. 171; and “Assessment of 1783, Index.”

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

[41] “Biography of the Leonards,” 1883 manuscript circulated as a typescript among Leonard family members and researchers, whose current provenance is not known.

[42] Frederick County, Maryland, Inventory Bk. A1, p. 459.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robert Leonard’s discharge paper (front and back) from British 35th Regiment of Foot, photocopy published in Audrey M. Matthews, The Tennessee Phantoms (Prosser, Washington, 1989)

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

And now the military discharge document: As my initial posting in this series about Robert Leonard notes, Thomas D. Leonard states in his “Biography of the Leonards,” “His discharge as a soldier of the English Army is yet in existence. It is in the family of Griffith Leonard in Tenn.; and I have seen it.”

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

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

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

Witt: Forbis.

His Majesty’s 35 Regt.

General Charles Otway

These are to certify that ther

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

And is hereby discharged having been.

During the War.

24th day of July inclusive

at Havana the 5th day.

Robert Leonard Srgt.

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

His Majesty’s 35th Regim ⏤          

General Charles Otwayes Co

These are to certify that the ⏤

Lennard Serjt in Capt Allen’s Company

has served honestly and faithfully for ther ⏤

⏤  nd is hereby Discharged Having been

⏤  uns? the War

Within to be just, and to have received

24th Day of July Inclusive

Robert Leneard Serjt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#AlexanderBeall #AmericanRevolution #BattleOfPlainsOfAbrahamQuébecCanada #BattleOfQuébec #CharlesJamesOtway #ColinCampbell #FortCumberlandAlleganyCoMaryland #FortFrederickWashingtonCoMaryland #FortWilliamHenryLakeGeorgeNewYork #FrederickCoMaryland #genealogy #GeorgeWashington #GriffithJamesLeonard #HannahJames #HavanaCuba #history #HonorPritchard #JohnDagworthy #LouisJosephDeMontcalm #Martinique #MontréalCanada #PensacolaFlorida #QuébecCanada #RichardAllen #RobertLeonard #RobertMonro #ThomasDunlapLeonard #ThomasLeonard #WestIndies #WilliamForbes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Explanations are in order….

Thomas Dunlap Leonard’s “Biography of the Leonards”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#AgnesLeoanrd #BattleOfCamdenSouthCarolina #BattleOfPlainsOfAbrahamQuébecCanada #BattleOfQuébec #CimberlandCoPennsylvania #ColinCampbell #ElizabethLeonard #familyHistory #FortCumberlandAlleganyCoMaryland #FortDuquesnePennsylvania #FortFrederickWashingtonCoMaryland #FrederickCoMaryland #FrenchAndIndianWar #genealogy #GeorgeLeonard #GeorgeWashington #HagerstownWashingtonCoMaryland #HannahJames #HavanaCuba #history #HonorMalindaLeonard #HonorPritchard #JamesIrwin #JohnDagworthy #LincolnCoTennessee #MarshallCoTennessee #MaryLeonard #Maryland #MontréalCanada #PendletonDistSouthCarolina #QuébecCanada #RachelDunlap #RobertLeonard #SamuelLeonard #ThomasDunlapLeonard #ThomasLeonard #WashingtonCoMaryland #WilliamLeonard

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

Griffith James Leonard, photo uploaded to Ancestry tree “Leonard/ Leonard/McLeod/Miller Family Tree,” maintained by dawnleonard818

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Leonard’s signature on a 14 October 1843 promissory note in Madison County, Alabama, Circuit Court Case File, Brooks, Linard 1843

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

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

Thomas Dunlap Leonard states the following about John Leonard:

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

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

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

Tombstone of Hezekiah Leonard, photo by Jimmy Trout — see Find a Grave memorial page of Hezekiah Leonard, Leonard cemetery, Marshall County, Tennessee, created by Donna B., maintained by Prairie Mary

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

Thomas Dunlap Leonard says this about Hezekiah:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1 August 1851 bounty land claim of Griffith J. Leonard, in NARA, War of 1812 Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Application Files, compiled ca. 1871 – ca. 1900, documenting the period 1812 – ca. 1900, RG 15, file of Griffith J. Lenard, WC 15252, widow Nancy E., WO 25978, available digitally at Fold3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nancy Porter Leonard, seated, right, with granddaughter Josie Cowden Bliss behind her, photo uploaded to Ancestry tree “Leonard/ Leonard/McLeod/Miller Family Tree,” maintained by dawnleonard818 Samuel James Leonard, seated front middle, and family, photo uploaded to Ancestry tree “Leonard/ Leonard/McLeod/Miller Family Tree,” maintained by dawnleonard818

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hannah Leonard and William Depriest Moore — see Amy Edmiston, “The Moore Homestead,” Pretty Old Places

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

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

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

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

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

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

William D. Moore farm May 2025, ibid. William D. Moore house, ibid. Original front downstairs room, William D. Moore house, ibid. Daughters of William D. Moore and Hannah Leonard — Angelina, Amanda, Aletha, Margaret, ibid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[20] Fayetteville Observer (27 August 1908).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#AbbevilleDistSouthCarolina #AlethaLeonard #AlfredLLamb #AlphaLeonard #AmandaLeonard #ancestry #AndrewJackson #AngelinaLeonard #AtridesCrow #BattleOfTalladega #CacheJacksonCoArkansas #CharlesBurrus #CherokeeCoTexas #ColinCampbell #ColinCampbellLeonard #CyrusBlack #DavidDowerMoore #DavidElliott #familyHistory #FayettevilleLincolnCoTennessee #FlintRiver #genealogy #GeorgeLeonard #GeorgeWFisher #GriffithJames #GriffithJamesLeonard #GwendolynJames #HannahAELeonard #HannahFowler #HannahJames #HannahLeonard #HezekiahLeonard #history #JacksonCoArkansas #JacksonportJacksonCoArkansas #JamesGBirdwell #JaneDepriest #JeanWilliams #JohnCowden #JohnKWynn #JohnLauderdale #JohnLeonard #JohnMauldin #JoshuaFowler #LeviWLeonard #LimestoneCoAlabama #LincolnCoTennessee #MadisonCoAlabama #MadisonCoMississippiTerritory #MadisonCrossroadsMadisonCoAlabama #MargaretLeonard #MarshallCoTennessee #MaryAnnLeonard #MaryHannahLeonard #McNairyCoTennessee #MilburyMauldin #MosesBirdwell #NacogdochesCoTexas #NancyEmmettPorter #NancyLeonard #PendletonDistSouthCarolina #PerryCoAlabama #PetersburgMarshallCoTennessee #RachelDunlap #RobertLeonard #RuskCherokeeCoTexas #SamuelDean #SamuelJamesLeonard #SamuelLeonard #SarahMLauderdale #SharpsburgWashingtonCoMaryland #StephenPorter #ThomasCLeonard #ThomasDunlapLeonard #ThomasLeonard #ThomasLewisLeonard #WashingtonCoMaryland #WilliamDepriestMoore #WilliamDunlap #WilliamRLeonard #WilliamRinualdiLeonard #WilliamRodenLeonard

Thomas Leonard (1752-1832), Son of Robert Leonard: Lincoln County, Tennessee, Years (1808-1832)

Marshall County Historical Quarterly 10,1 (Spring 1979), cover photograph

Or, Subtitled: “My will and desire is that my wife Hannah, Leonard, Shall remain quietly in peaceable poſseſsion, of the room, commonly called hers, during her natural life”

This posting continues (and concludes) my documentation of the life of Thomas Leonard (1752-1832), son of Robert Leonard and Honor Pritchard. This series began with an account of Thomas’s birth and coming of age in Washington County, Maryland, and then followed him to Pendleton District, South Carolina, where he and wife Hannah, his widowed mother Honor, and other family members settled in 1786 after they moved from Maryland. Now this final posting about Thomas’s life will document it life in its final period in Lincoln County, Tennessee.

I’ve told some of the story of Thomas Leonard’s move from South Carolina to Tennessee in a posting about his son Thomas Lewis Leonard, who is my ancestor. As the linked posting says, an 1883 family history written by Thomas Dunlap Leonard, a grandson of Thomas Leonard who grew up knowing his grandparents Thomas and Hannah Leonard and hearing their account of the family’s history, states that Thomas and Hannah moved their family from South Carolina to Tennessee in 1806.[1]

Angie May Gill Wallace, “History of Marshall County Families,” Marshall Gazette (19 September 1947), p. 3

Arrival in Tennessee

The 1806 date for the family’s move is repeated in other published accounts of this Leonard family.[2] Family histories assigning an 1806 date for the arrival of the Thomas Leonard family in Lincoln County, Tennessee, also state that the family received a land grant on Cane Creek in Lincoln (later Marshall) County for the service of Thomas’s father Robert Leonard in the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars. According to Angelina May Gill Wallace, a great-granddaughter of Thomas’s daughter Hannah Leonard Moore, the original papers for this land grant remained in the possession of the Leonard family at Petersburg, Tennessee, in 1947 when Wallace’s article was published.

The document to which Angie Gill Wallace refers was, however, not a land-grant document. It was, rather, the 12 September 1800 power of attorney that Thomas, his brother Robert and brother-in-law Colin Campbell, and mother Honor Leonard gave to James Irwin in Pendleton District, South Carolina, authorizing Irwin to claim back pay and any possible land grant due to them for Robert Leonard’s service in the two wars. This power of attorney is discussed and transcribed in a previous posting.

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

I have found no record of a land grant given to the Leonard family in Tennessee (or elsewhere) for Robert Leonard’s service. As I’ve previously explained, the first record I find for this family in Lincoln County, Tennessee is a deed for Thomas’s purchase of 640 acres from Anthony Foster on a north branch of Elk River on 21 September 1809.[3] The north branch of Elk River to which the deed refers is Cane Creek, which flows into Elk River, tributary of the Tennessee River that meets the Tennessee River in Limestone County, Alabama. Elk River does not at any point run through Marshall County, Tennessee, though it flows through Marshall’s parent county of Lincoln.

Thomas Leonard’s September 1809 land purchase in Lincoln County, Tennessee, followed his and wife Hannah’s sale of their homeplace in Pendleton District, South Carolina, on 29 January 1808 and Hannah’s relinquishment of dower for this sale on 15 February 1808.[4] It’s clear that the Leonard family made its move from South Carolina to Tennessee between 25 February 1808 and 21 September 1809.

“In the Ground Eighty Years, Fayetteville [Tennessee] Observer (8 November 1894), p. 2, col. 3

These dates correspond with information that appears in a November 1894 article published in the Fayetteville [Tennessee] Observer.[5] The article quotes S.J. Leonard of Petersburg, a grandson of Thomas and Hannah Leonard and a son of their son Griffith James Leonard. Samuel James Leonard states in the article that his father Griffith came to Cane Creek in Lincoln (later Marshall County) in 1808. As we’ll see below, Thomas Leonard willed his land on Cane Creek near Petersburg to his son Griffith, who lived and farmed with his father after the family settled on Cane Creek, inheriting the Leonard homestead that will be discussed below.

A previous posting discusses Thomas Leonard’s September 1809 purchase of 640 acres in Lincoln County in detail. As the posting notes, Thomas’s sons Griffith and Thomas witnessed Anthony Foster’s deed to their father and proved the deed at May court 1810.[6] A land entry recorded by Charles Gibson on 14 April 1811 at the head of Cane Creek and the north Branch of Elk River states that the land Gibson was entering joined land on which Thomas Leonard was living at that time, which had originally been granted to Anthony Foster.[7] When Robert Leonard, son of the elder Thomas, entered forty acres on the head of Pigeon Roost, a branch of Cane Creek on 16 April 1818, the entry again stated that Thomas Leonard was living on adjoining land acquired from Anthony Foster.[8]

Also previously noted: Leonard researcher Sue Cooper suggests that Thomas Leonard and his brothers Robert and William may actually have moved initially from South Carolina to Sumner County, Tennessee. She bases this conjecture on the fact that a ledger of an unidentified Sumner County merchant she has seen shows these three men with accounts in 1806-7. It’s well documented that Thomas and his brother Robert did settle with their mother Honor and with brother-in-law Campbell in Lincoln (later Marshall) County, Tennessee, but it can also be shown that William died testate in Anderson County, South Carolina, in March 1811.[9] And it’s clear that Thomas Leonard was still living in Pendleton District, South Carolina, in January 1808 when he and wife Hannah sold their homeplace there.

1810-1820

Histories of Lincoln and Marshall Counties note that by 1810, Thomas Leonard was settled on the middle fork of Cane Creek in that county. Goodspeed’s history of Lincoln County notes that Thomas was a settler on Cane Creek in the first or second decade of the 19th century.[10] A 19 June 1810 court record states that he was assigned by the court to oversee a road from the west fork of the west side of Little River where the road intersected the road from Jefferson to the mouth of Little River near Major Smith’s.[11]

At some point after the family arrived in Tennessee, Thomas Leonard’s family built a house on their homestead north of Petersburg that stood until the latter half of the 20th century. I have not seen information dating the initial construction of this house. The spring 1979 issue of Marshall County Historical Quarterly has a picture of the old Leonard homeplace on its cover (see the image at the head of this posting).[12] The house was a two-story white frame house with chimneys at both ends and porches on front and back. It appears to have been built in the early Greek Revival pattern of antebellum Southern farmhouses, and to have been added onto as the family grew, so that there was large lean-to wing projecting out of the back of the house.

In her Marshall Gazette article of September 1947, Angie May Gill Wallace talks about the “Leonard homestead” established by Thomas Leonard’s family.[13] She describes the old Leonard house as follows:

The dwelling is a low rambling farmhouse with wide porches constructed of logs and clapboard. The farm buildings are in excellent repair, having been recently heired by Mr. John Wilson of Lewisburg, Tenn., who is a grandson six generations removed. … At the termination of one of the garden walks is the family graveyard where Thomas and Hannah Leonard with many of their descendants are buried.

In an article she published in 1975 in the Marshall County, Tennessee, Historical Quarterly, Elizabeth Baxter notes that the cemetery that Angie Gill Wallace says is at the termination of a garden walk from the old Leonard house is on a hill overlooking a lake, and is shaded by trees that lend their beauty to the site.[14] It’s not clear to me what lake Baxter is referring to here. Cane Creek is definitely visible from the hill on which the cemetery stands, and to the east of the creek is a body of water that may be a pond or small lake, but I’m not sure that water feature is visible from the cemetery.

A biography of Dr. John Norris Cowden in Tennessee, the Volunteer State also speaks of the old Leonard House as it stood in 1923.[15] John N. Cowden was a son of Dr. John Cowden and Mary Hannah Leonard, a daughter of Thomas Leonard’s son Griffith James Leonard. The biography states: “Thomas Leonard, removed from North [sic] Carolina to Tennessee, settling on a land grant, and the old mill, house and barn which were erected one hundred and twenty-six years ago are still standing on the farm, which is now owned by W. S. Leonard, an uncle of the subject of this review.”[16]

As a previous posting notes, the old Leonard house and family cemetery behind it are located about 2½ miles north of Petersburg at what’s now called Leonard Bluff on Liberty Valley Road.[17] As the linked posting says, I visited the cemetery in February 2008, noting that the old homestead house was no longer standing.

Berry C. Williams, “A Brief History of Lincoln County,” Fayetteville Observer (16 January 1951), unpaginated 100th anniversary edition

As the biography of John Norris Cowden indicates, after settling on Cane Creek, Thomas Leonard erected a mill on his land. Berry C. Williams provides the following information:[18]

Joel Yowell, an early citizen of Petersburg, had a large horse-mill two miles from Petersburg, with a hand-bolting machine attached. Jesse Riggs and Thomas Leonard also had mills of this kind. Leonard and Yowell had wheat threshers attached to their mills, and Leonard also had a cotton-gin attached.

According to Helen and Timothy Marsh, an old clerk’s list of early land transactions in Lincoln County that were otherwise not recorded shows that in May 1810, Anthony Foster deeded to Thomas Leonard another 230 acres in Lincoln County, which Foster had acquired as a Tennessee land grant.[19] The deed was proven at Lincoln County court on 28 May 1810 by oaths of Griffith and Thomas Leonard, with the surname spelled as Linard.[20] Immediately preceding this notation in the court minutes books is a record of a grant of 230 acres by the state of Tennessee to Anthony Foster, with the note that this was grant no. 674. The same court minutes state that at this court session, Thomas proved his ear mark, a swallow fork in each ear. In addition to the other early records I’ve just cited, an 1810 Lincoln County muster roll of local militiamen includes Thomas.[21]

As the last posting notes, after his move to Tennessee, Thomas Leonard appeared in litigation in Pendleton District, South Carolina. The linked posting discusses a lawsuit filed by Thomas in May 1810 regarding a promissory note that had been assigned to him by William Glenn, to whom Thomas and wife Hannah sold their South Carolina homeplace. An 8 February 1812 deed in Pendleton District also notes that Patrick Norris had sold Ezekiel Pickens 140 acres on Oolenoy Creek of the Saluda River on 7 October 1811, pursuant to an October 1810 judgment for Thomas Leonard in this suit re: the promissory note, Thomas Leonard vs. John McClure.[22]

Lincoln County court minutes for 27 May 1811 show Thomas Leonard on a road jury to mark a road the nearest and best way from Fayetteville to the Bedford County line and on to Fishing Ford and Nashville.[23] Because Thomas Leonard’s son of the same name was of age by 1811 and had not yet moved from Tennessee to Alabama, this record could refer to either of the two Thomas Leonards. As a previous posting notes, another 1811 court order specifies that the Thomas Leonard to whom the order was issued was Thomas Sr.: on 28 August 1811, the county court ordered Thomas Leonard Sr. to oversee a road from Robert Leonard’s to Gibson’s Gap, with hands to work under him including his sons Thomas, Hezekiah, Griffith, and Samuel Leonard.[24] Since many Lincoln County documents in the period 1808-1818 when both Thomases were living in Lincoln County and both of age do not use the Sr. or Jr. designation, it is not always simple to know to which Thomas the documents refer.

Court minutes for 3 May 1814 report that Thomas Leonard had been indicted by the state of Tennessee on a charge of tippling.[25] The court minutes about this case state that James Greer, prosecutor, and Arthur Brooks, witness on behalf of the state, had been required to post bond ($100 for Greer and $50 for Brooks) on condition that they appear to give testimony against Thomas Leonard. I take the charge to mean that Thomas was distilling and selling whiskey. As we’ll see later when we have a look at Thomas’s will, the will confirms that he had a still, which he bequeathed to son Griffith in his will.

On 7 May 1814, no true bill was found in the state’s case against Thomas on the charge of tippling.[26] The grand jury ordered the state to pay costs. It’s interesting to note that two days prior to this, Thomas’s son Colin Campell Leonard had been given permission by the court to keep an ordinary at his father’s house.[27] At the same May 1814 court session, the state charged James Greer, the prosecutor in Thomas Leonard’s case, with tippling. Also at this court session, a charge of assault and battery against Thomas’ son Colin was continued. On 4 August 1814, Colin was found guilty of assault and battery on James Greer. This series of court records make one wonder if a dispute between Greer and the Leonard family over the market for whiskey was driving Greer’s prosecution of Thomas Leonard for operating a tippling house.

In his 1883 history of the Leonard family, Thomas Dunlap Leonard observes that “Uncle Colin was dissipated (drank) in early life,” but had been a good soldier in the Indian War of 1812-4.[28] Thomas D. Leonard went on to observe that Colin had been a true friend to his friends and a bitter enemy to his enemies, and possessed noble and generous principles. In his later life, he had steady habits, and became a Methodist preacher, Thomas D. Leonard added.

On the subject of fighting and carousing: Goodspeed’s history of Lincoln County says that Petersburg, Fayetteville, and Arnold’s Grocery (now Smithland) were noted places for the settlement of all sorts of grudges in “pummelling” fights.[29] Apparently the fights were public spectacles and the onlookers assured that fair play occurred, biting and weapons being outlawed. 

Court minutes for 9 November 1814 show Thomas Leonard having resigned from his position as overseer of a local road and Stephen Harmon appointed “in room of” Thomas.[30] This record could possibly refer to Thomas’s son Thomas, who might by this point have begun his preparations to move his family to Alabama. A Thomas Leonard continues to appear in court minutes as a juror: court minutes for 18 February 1815 show him on a jury that found John Porter guilty of hog stealing.[31] In May 1815, Thomas Leonard is listed among those owing notes to the estate of George C. Witt in Lincoln County.[32]

On 3 May 1815, Thomas or his son Thomas appears in court minutes on a jury in the case of Samuel A. Harris vs. Thomas Shute.[33] This may be the case that is listed in the same court session as James Harris vs. Thomas Shute.[34] At issue in the case was a dispute about who caveated a tract of land.

Lincoln County, Tennessee, Court Minutes Bk. March 1814-November 1816, p. 193

On 4 May 1815, the elder Thomas Leonard was tried on the state charge of tippling.[35] The court record identifies him as a “yeoman,” stating that he had pled not guilty and “for his trial put himself on the County.” The jury, which included his nephew Joseph Dean, found him guilty, fining him a dollar plus costs. On the same day at the same court session, Thomas or his son of the same name was on a jury that tried Obediah Hogg on a state of Tennessee indictment of assault and battery.

Court minutes for 8 May 1816 show Thomas or his son Thomas serving as a juror along with Griffith Leonard in the case of James Daniel vs. John Bell.[36] A 21 April 1818 survey of thirty-five acres on the headwaters of Cane Creek in Lincoln County for land assigned by Brin(?) M. Gassen says that the tract bordered land assigned by Anthony Foster to Thomas Leonard, on which Leonard was then living.[37]

23 October 1819, Thomas was on a jury in several Lincoln County trials.[38] We can know with certainty now that this is the elder Thomas, since his son of that name moved to Alabama in 1818.

1820-1830

The 1820 federal census enumerates the household of Thomas Leonard in Lincoln County with one free white male aged 26-44, one free white male aged 45+, and a free white female aged 45+.[39] Thomas is also shown as holding four enslaved people. Next to Thomas is the household of son-in-law William Depriest Moore, who married Thomas’ daughter Hannah, and next to William Moore is Thomas’s brother-in-law Colin Campbell. The younger male in the household with Thomas and Hannah Leonard is their unmarried son Griffith James Leonard.

As previously discussed, Thomas’s son Thomas Lewis Leonard sold two tracts of land on Cane Creek in Lincoln County to his uncle Colin Campbell on 16 August 1822, one containing 135 acres and the other twenty acres.[40] The posting I’ve just linked notes the documents showing when Thomas Leonard younger obtained these pieces of land, and their location next to his father’s original 640-acre tract. On 27 January 1823, both deeds were proven in court by the subscribing witnesses.[41]

Thomas Leonard’s family appears on the 1830 federal census in Lincoln County with one male 30-40, one male 80-90, and 1 female 70-80.[42] In the household are also eight enslaved persons: slaves: one male 10-24, two males 36-55, and 3 males 55-100; one female 55-100, and one female over 100.

The male aged 30-40 in Thomas Leonard’s household in 1830 was, again, Thomas’s son Griffith James Leonard, who was born 25 September 1787, according to his tombstone in the Leonard family cemetery.[43] In his 1883 Leonard family history, Griffith’s nephew Thomas Dunlap Leonard states that Griffith remained with his parents until their death, bestowing care on them in their old age.[44] As has been previously noted and as we’ll see in more detail a moment, Thomas Leonard’s 9 July 1829 will left the Leonard homeplace outside Petersburg to his son Griffith, who lived his whole life at the homeplace, according to Angie May Gill Wallace, and left it to his youngest son William Stephens (Bud) Leonard.[45] 

Thomas Sr. and Jr. are on an 1830 tax list in Lincoln County in the district of Thomas’s son-in-law Capt. William D. Moore’s. Thomas Sr. is taxed for 230 acres on Cave Creek. His son Griffith is also taxed for 128 acres on Cave Creek in the same district, on Cave Creek. Since Thomas’s son Thomas was in Limestone County, Alabama, by this time, the tax list appears to indicate not that he lived in Tennessee, but still owned land there.

Lincoln County court minutes for 24 January 1832 reference the case of John Nield vs. Thomas Leonard.[46] The minutes state that the sheriff had been ordered by the court to sell a tract of land on which Thomas Leonard lived on the waters of Cane Creek, on which James Rust (had previously?) lived, to satisfy a judgment against Thomas handed down on 16 July 1831. It’s not clear to me what this case was about and not at all clear that Thomas Leonard lost land due to a court judgment not long before his death.

Lincoln County, Tennessee, Will Bk. 1, 1827-1850, pp. 79-80

Thomas Leonard’s Will and Probate

Thomas Leonard made his will in Lincoln County on 9 July 1829.[47] The will reads as follows:

Thomas Leonards last will and Testament In the name of God Amen  I, Thomas Leonard of the County of Lincoln State of Tenneſsee do make, ordain and declare, this instrument which is written to be my last will and testament; revoking all others — Imprimis all my debts of which there are but few, and none of magnitude which are to be punctually and speedily paid, and the legacies herein after mentioned, or bequeathed , are to be discharged as soon as circumstance; will permit and in the manner directed

Item 1st To my beloved wife, I give and bequeath, the use interest (word is repeated) and profits with the future increase if there should be any one negroe woman named Hannah, and Moses her husband and Nancy (commonly called Nanny) also all my household furniture belonging to her room, and all the Kitchen furniture to use and dispose of as she may think proper, also my will and desire is that my wife Hannah, Leonard, Shall remain quietly in peaceable poſseſsion, of the room, commonly called hers, during her natural life after the death of my wife Hannah to revert back to my Son Griffith Leonard,

Item 2nd To my son Robert Leonard I give four hundred dollars, which money is to be made, if not in hand, out of my estate, hereafter bequeathed to my son Griffith Leonard,

Item 3rd To my daughter Hannah Moore, wife of Moore fifty and one half acres of land, now in the poſseſsion of said Moore, situated lying and being in the County of Lincoln and State aforesaid, and bounded as follows to wit) Beginning at a White oak my north west corner, running thence east, one hundred and eighty poles to a dogwood and two beeches, a north east corner of my tract thence south fifty poles , thence west and North to the beginning for compliment during her natural life; after her death my will and desire is that my grandson Thomas D Moore, shall have the before mentioned and described tract, to his own proper use and benefit

Item 4th To my son Griffith Leonard, I give and bequeath, the ballance of my land , with the appurtenances thereunto belonging, as per deed for two hundred and thirty acres, after what has been before described or bequeathed to my daughter Hannah Moore, as per bounds before described leaving as per deed one hundred and seventy nine acres, and one half of the same more or leſs also all the household and kitchen furniture belonging to the ballance of my house, and all my farming tools belonging to the plantation, of every description, all the stock of hogs horses and cattle, and Sheep, waggon and gear, still Tubbs and all other properties belonging to me, that is not herein mentioned. If any then Should be, to his own use and benefit; or disposal,

Item 5th If any person being a legal heir, not herein mentioned, my will and desire is that my son Griffith pay him or them, the sum of five dollars each, and lastly I nominate and appoint my Son Griffith Leonard my executor to this my last will and testament, In witness whereof, I have hereunto, set my hand, and affixed my seal, this 9th day of July in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and twenty nine

Signed Sealed and delivered Thos Leonard (seal)

in the presence of Test

Nacy Meeks

John Lovett

Parker Campbell

State of Tenneſssee

Lincoln County Court April Term 1832

The last will and Testament of Thomas Leonard, decd was produced in open Court for probate, and thereupon came Nacy Meeks, and Parker Campbell, two of the subscribing witneſses thereto, who being first duly sworn, agreeably to law, say they heard the said Thomas Leonard acknowledge, the same to be his last will and Testament. and that he was at the time of signing sealing publishing and declaring the same, of sound mind and memory. which is ordered to be so certificed, whereupon came Griffith Leonard the executor named in the will, and took the oath, prescribed by law, and entered into bond & so, this 16th April 1832. given under my hand at office in Fayetteville this

Brice M Garner Clk of P&P Superior

By Peter R Garner DC

Lincoln County court minutes show Nacy Meeks and Parker Campbell proving Thomas Leonard’s will on 16 April 1832 and Griffith Leonard being appointed executor on that date.[48] Thomas Leonard’s tombstone in the Leonard family cemetery records his date of death as 8 April 1832. With his will having been proven in court on 16 April, his son and executor Griffith Leonard returned the inventory of the estate on 16 July 1832, Griffith Leonard returned the estate inventory.[49]

Lincoln County, Tennessee, Deed Bk. I, p. 236

Shortly before his death, on 31 March 1832, Thomas sold his son Griffth enslaved persons Dick and Mack for $1,000.[50] The deed identifies Thomas as Thomas Lenard Senr. of Lincoln County, and is signed Thomas Lenard. Nacy Meeks and Parker Campbell witnessed this deed. Court minutes for 17 April 1832 show the deed proven in court on 16 April 1832 by Nacy Meeks and Parker Campbell, at the same time they proved the will of Thomas Leonard.[51]

Thomas D. Leonard offers a florid, sentimental tribute to his grandparents Thomas and Hannah James Leonard in his biography of the Leonards.[52] He states,

Thomas Leonard, [Hannah James’s] husband and her and family constituted a God loving family. Then [sic: he means “when”] they came to Lincoln County in 1806, their children were grown. Three of them were married.

The blessings and sentiments contained in the CXXVIII Psalm, pro[p]riety be applied to their family, also the same blessings are clearly verified in their children, and grandchildren, vis “Blessed is everyone that feareth the Lord and walketh in his ways for thou shall eat the labor of thy hand.” Happy shalt thou be and it shall be well with thee, thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the side of thy house: thy children like olive plants round thy table. Behold that thus shalt the name be blest that feareth the Lord.” Can any one of the older and thinking ones of their descendants say that these promises does [sic] not apply to the family of Thomas and Hannah Leonard? Has not their example been a light to us that knew them? Have we not remembered their teachings a thousand times through our lives? Does not thee by precept and example of the parents extend to the children to the third fourth generation of them that love the Lord, as well as to those that hate him. I love to know that I have descended from such noble spirits. I love to know that their offspring have inherited their noble disposition and have been guided by their teachings.”

Thomas’s wife Hannah lived ten years following his death, dying 3 November 1842 at the Leonard homeplace outside Petersburg. Thomas and Hannah are buried together in the family cemetery behind the site of the old house. Her tombstone records her date of birth as 2 November 1752.[53] I’ll have more to say about Hannah in future when I trace the James family line.

A Brief Postscript

A little postscript about a source that is sometimes cited in discussions of Thomas Leonard, which has incorrect information about his life during the American Revolution. In a letter dated 4 July 1874, William Simpson, a grandson of Thomas Leonard’s brother-in-law Harmon Cummings, states that Thomas Leonard was a Hessian soldier whom Harmon Cummings took prisoner in Trenton, New Jersey, during the Revolutionary War.[54] Simpson, who was living in Jacksonville, Florida, when he wrote this letter, was a son of Mary Cummings and Thomas Simpson; Mary was a daughter of Harmon Cummings and Mary James, a sister of Hannah James Leonard.

It’s not clear to me whether Harmon Cummings himself was the source of the incorrect information that Thomas Leonard was a Hessian soldier held prisoner at Trenton, New Jersey, during the Revolution, or whether that information is something his grandson William Simpson acquired somewhere. As we’ve seen, there’s solid documentation that Thomas Leonard was the son of a British soldier, Robert Leonard, who came to Maryland after 1750 to help guard the frontier of western Maryland as the tensions that led to the French and Indian War began to develop. As the linked posting also shows, there’s equally solid documentation showing that Thomas was a member of the first military company organized for the Revolutionary war in Hagerstown, Maryland, on 6 January 1776.

Thomas Leonard was neither German (Hessian) nor a hireling for the British Army during the Revolution. There actually was a Thomas Leonard serving as a Loyalist major for the British who was taken prisoner at Trenton, New Jersey, when Harmon Cummings was there during the Revolution. But this is an entirely different man than Thomas, son of Robert Leonard and Honor Pritchard. This Thomas was born in 1708 in Monmouth County, New Jersey, and was a son of either Nathaniel or Thomas Leonard.[55]

In my next posting, I’ll provide some brief information about the children of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James.

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

[2] See J. Lester Wolfe, “Thomas Leonard,” in Heritage of Lincoln County, Tennessee, ed. Lincoln County Heritage Book Committee (Waynesville, North Carolina: County Heritage, 2005), p. 414; and Angie May Gill Wallace, “History of Marshall County Families,” Marshall Gazette (19 September 1947), p. 3. The article states that it was written for the Robert Lewis chapter of DAR.

[3] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Deed Bk. A, pp. 43-4.

[4] Anderson County, South Carolina, Deed Bk. I & J, p. 278.

[5] “In the Ground Eighty Years, Fayetteville [Tennessee] Observer (8 November 1894), p. 2, col. 3. The article was originally published in the Petersburg Enterprise.

[6] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Deed Bk. A, pp. 43-4.

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

[8] Ibid., p. 132.

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

[10] Goodspeed’s History of Lincoln County, Tennessee (Nashville: Goodspeed, 1886; repr. Columbia, Tennessee: Woodward & Stinson, 1972), p. 768.

[11] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Court Minutes Bk. February 1810-1810, pp. 9-10, 15-6.

[12] Marshall County Historical Quarterly 10,1 (Spring 1979).

[13] Wallace, “History of Marshall County Families.”

[14] Elizabeth Lucie Leonard Baxter, “Leonard Family,” Marshall County, Tennessee, Historical Quarterly 6,2 (summer 1975),

[15] John Trotwood Moore and Austin P. Foster, Tennessee, the Volunteer State, 1769-1923, vol. 3 (Chicago: S.S. Clarke, 1923), pp. 238-241.

[16] I’m dubious about the claim of this biography that the Leonard house was built in 1797. I suspect that the rambling old farmhouse that was erected at some point in the 19th century was on the site of and may have incorporated an earlier house that may have dated to the early 19th century when the Leonards arrived on Cane Creek. That original house would likely have been a log cabin.

[17] 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.

[18] See also Berry C. Williams, “A Brief History of Lincoln County,” Fayetteville Observer (16 January 1951), unpaginated 100th anniversary edition. See also Goodspeed’s History of Lincoln County, Tennessee, p. 769.

[19] Helen C. and Timothy R. Marsh, Early Unpublished Court Records of Lincoln County, Tennessee (Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1993), p. 126.

[20] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Court Minutes Bk. February 1810-1810), p. 9.

[21] “Muster Roll — War of 1812,” Lincoln County, Tennessee, Pioneers 24,1 (January 1995), pp. 27-8.

[22] Anderson County, South Carolina, Deed Bk. M, p. 33. On Patrick Norris, who is part of my Calhoun family kinship network in Abbeville and Pendleton District, see this previous posting. Patrick was the son of Robert Norris and Jean/Jane Ewing, and married Rachel Calhoun, daughter of William and Agnes Calhoun. On Ezekiel Pickens, son of Andrew Pickens and Rebecca Calhoun and a member of my Calhoun-Pickens kinship network, see this previous posting.

[23] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Court Minutes Bk. February 1811-February 1812, p. 57.

[24] Ibid., pp. 120-1.

[25] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Court Minutes Bk. March 1814-November 1816, p. 13.

[26] Ibid., pp. 36-7.

[27] Ibid., p. 21.

[28] Thomas Dunlap Leonard, “Biography of the Leonards.”

[29] Goodspeed’s History of Lincoln County, Tennessee, p. 769.

[30] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Court Minutes Bk. March 1814-November 1816, p. 101

[31] Ibid., p. 147.

[32] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Will Bk. March 1809-April 1824, p. 108; and see Frances T. Ingmire, Lincoln County, Tennessee, Wills, Inventories, and Miscellaneous, March 1809-April 1824 (St. Louis, 1984), p. 30.

[33] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Court Minutes Bk. March 1814-November 1816, p. 188.

[34] Ibid., pp. 190-2.

[35] Ibid., p. 193.

[36] Ibid., p. 345.

[37] Tennessee Plats and Surveys 1817-1822, p. 77.

[38] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Court Minutes Bk. October 1819-July 1823, pp. 21-3

[39] 1820 federal census, Lincoln County, Tennessee, p. 12 (119).

[40] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Deed Bk. B, pp. 226-8. On 31 December 1832, Colin Campbell sold the 135-acre tract to his nephew Griffith James Leonard, Thomas’s son: see Lincoln County, Tennessee, Deed Bk. I, pp. 251-2. See also North Carolina-Tennessee Land Grant Bk. S, p. 868, warrant no. 3847.

[41] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Court Minutes Bk. October 1819-July 1823, p. 604.

[42] 1830 federal census, Lincoln County, Tennessee, p. 178.

[43] Photos of the tombstone by Jimmy Trout are at the Find a Grave memorial page of Griffith J. Leonard, Leonard cemetery, Marshall County, Tennessee, created by Louise Jenkins.

[44] Thomas Dunlap Leonard, “Biography of the Leonards.”

[45] A Wallace, “History of Marshall County Families.”

[46] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Court Minutes Bk. April 1830-October 1833, p. 316.

[47] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Will Bk. 1, 1827-1850, pp. 79-80. WPA workers Katherine Rhea and Mary Earle Parks published a transcript of the will in 1936: see Will Books, 1810-1850, Lincoln County, Tennessee (WPA Historical Records Project, 1936), pp. 44-5.

[48] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Court Minutes Bk. April 1830-October 1833, p. 329.

[49] Ibid., p. 368.

[50] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Deed Bk. I, p. 236.

[51] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Court Minutes Bk. April 1830-October 1833, p. 332.

[52] Thomas Dunlap Leonard, “Biography of the Leonards.”

[53] See the Find a Grave memorial page of Hannah James Leonard, Leonard cemetery, Marshall County, Tennessee, created by Donna B., maintained by LookingforFamily, with tombstone photos by JimmyTrout. This site incorrectly names her Hannah Leona James Leonard. I’ve seen no documents giving Hannah James a middle name, and suspect that the Leona is a misreading of part of her name on her tombstone: Hannah LEONArd.

[54] I have a transcript of William Simpson’s letter sent to me in May 2008 by Cummings researcher Stephen Ehat, who told me that Mary Ann McDonald of Lyman, Wyoming, had a photocopy of the original letter. I don’t have information about who might own the original.

[55] See Clifford Neal Smith, Muster Rolls and Prisoner of War Lists in American and Archival Collections Pertaining to the German Mercenary Troops (DeKalb, Illinois: Westland, 1974, pp. 91-2.

#ancestry #AngelinaMayGillWallace #AnthonyFoster #ArthurBrooks #BriceMGarner #CaneCreekLincolnCoTennessee #CaneCreekMarshallCoTennessee #CharlesGibson #ColinCampbell #ColinCampbellLeonard #ElkRiverLincolnCoTennessee #EnslavedManDick #EnslavedManMack #EnslavedManMoses #EnslavedWomanHannah #EnslavedWomanNancy #EnslavedWomanNanny #EzekielPickens #familyHistory #FayettevilleLincolnCoTennessee #genealogy #GeorgeCWitt #GriffithJames #GriffithJamesLeonard #HannahJames #HannahLeonard #HarmonCummings #HezekiahLeonard #history #HonorPritchard #JacksonvilleDuvalCoFlorida #JamesDaniel #JamesGreer #JamesHarris #JamesIrwin #JamesRust #JesseRiggs #JoelYowell #JohnBell #JohnCowden #JohnLovett #JohnNield #JohnNorrisCowden #JohnWilson #JosephDean #LeonardBluffMarshallCoTennessee #LimestoneCoAlabama #LincolnCoTennessee #MarhHannahLeonard #MarshallCoTennessee #MaryCummings #MaryJames #MonmouthCoNewJersey #NacyMeeks #ObediahHogg #OolenoyCreekPendletonDistSouthCarolina #ParkerCampbell #PatrickNorris #PendletonDistSouthCarolina #PeterRGarner #PetersburgMarshallCoTennessee #RobertLeonard #SaludaRiver #SamuelAHarris #SamuelJamesLeonard #StephenHarmon #SumnerCoTennessee #ThomasDunlapLeonard #ThomasLenard #ThomasLeonard #ThomasLewisLeonard #ThomasLinard #ThomasShite #ThomasSimpson #TrentonMercerCoNewJersey #WashingtonCoMaryland #WilliamDepriestMoore #WilliamGlenn #WilliamSimpson #WilliamStephensLeonard

Thomas Lewis Leonard (1781-1870), Son of Thomas Leonard and Hannah James: Nacogdoches and Cherokee County, Texas, Years, 1839-1870

Certificate to Thomas Leonard for 320-acre headright grant, 5 September 1839, Texas General Land Office land grant file 1647, patent volume 9, patent number 595, certificate 138, available digitally at the website of Texas GLO

Or, Subtitled: “Situated in Cherokee County on the waters of the River Neches north of the San Antonio Road and about 6½ miles SE from Rusk”

So on to Texas, the final destination in the life journey of Thomas Lewis Leonard and wife Sarah Lauderdale: as the previous posting shows, on 6 May 1839 Thomas and Sarah sold their home tract of 660 acres in Limestone County, Alabama, to his brother John Leonard, and on 20 May, they both proved the deed.[1] It appears that soon after this date Thomas and Sarah moved with a number of their children to Nacogdoches (later Cherokee) County, Texas, where, on 5 September, Thomas made a headright claim at the office of the Nacogdoches County land commission for 320 acres of land (certificate no. 138), a tract granted to him on 3 June 1844.[2]

Certificate to Thomas Leonard for 320-acre headright grant, 1 August 1841, Texas General Land Office land grant file 660, patent volume 5, patent number 496, certificate 139, available digitally at the website of Texas GLO Nacogdoches County, Texas, Board of Land Commissioners Records, file 23

After 2 March 1836, Texas gave headright grants of 640 acres to heads of families who had immigrated to the Republic of Texas prior to 1 January 1842 and who became residents for at least three years. On 1 August 1841 at the office of the land commission of Houston County in Crockett, Thomas received another certificate (no. 139) for 320 acres, bringing the tally of his headright grant to the full 640 acres.[3] This piece of land was also granted to him on 3 June 1844. When Cherokee County was formed from Nacogdoches in July 1845, Thomas’ headright land fell into Cherokee.

Cherokee County is in central east Texas, with its county seat, Rusk, lying 130 miles southeast of Dallas and 160 miles north of Houston. As John R. Ross notes, rapid settlement of what would become Cherokee County began in 1834.[4] The Houston-Forbes treaty of February 1836 assured the neutrality of the Cherokee living in this part of Texas, but increasing settlement of settlers of European descent resulted in violence, precipitating a massacre of members of the Killough family near present-day Jacksonville, Texas, on 5 October 1838. This sparked the Cherokee War of 1839 and the expulsion of all native Americans from the county, causing more settlers of European background to move into the county and claim land.

As my first posting in this series about Thomas Lewis Leonard notes, the 1883 document entitled “Biography of the Leonards” composed by Thomas’ cousin Thomas Dunlap Leonard states that when Thomas and Sarah Lauderdale Leonard moved to Texas, they settled “near Alto where he opened a good farm.” Alto is a small town of some thousand residents about twelve miles southeast of the county seat, Rusk. It was laid out in 1849 on a drainage divide between the Angelina and Neches Rivers — hence its name meaning “high” in Spanish.

Close-up of Joseph Martin’s 1851 map of Cherokee County prepared for Texas GLO, online in the collection, GLO Historic County Maps, at The Portal to Texas History site, a digital repository hosted by the UNT Libraries 1902 Texas GLO map of Cherokee County, online in the collection, GLO Historic County Maps, at The Portal to Texas History site, a digital repository hosted by the UNT Libraries Close-up from ibid.

A number of maps of Cherokee County allow us to pinpoint precisely where Thomas’ two headright grants of 320 acres were located. Joseph Martin’s 1851 map of Cherokee County and a 1902 plat map of the county, both drawn for the General Land Office of Texas, show Thomas Linard with two tracts of 320 acres contiguous to each other, bordering Hiram Vansickle’s 1,467-acre survey to the west and bordered on the south by a headright grant tract belonging to Thomas’ son-in-law William Marmaduke Johnston.[5] The shape of the two tracts matches the plats for each 320-acre tract drawn on the surveys found in the GLO files for these two headright grants.

1960 Texas Highway Department map of Cherokee County, available digitally in the Abilene Library Collection at the Portal to Texas History Google map of Cherokee County, Texas, with the location of Thomas Leonard’s 640-acre headright grant marked

Surveys of both of Thomas Leonard’s 320-acre tracts dated 20 August 1845 state that the land was in Cherokee County on the waters of the River Neches, with the survey for the land granted by certificate 138 stating that it was north of the San Antonio Road and 6½ miles southeast of Rusk and the survey for the land granted by certificate 139 noting that it was about 6 miles south of Rusk. A map prepared in 1960 by the Planning Survey Division of Texas Highway Department and a Google map allow us to place these tracts south of Rusk and north of Alto, west of US highway 69 and just north of the junction of Manson Branch and Turkey Creek, which come together northwest of Alto to form Bowles Creek, a tributary of the Neches River.[6] As we’ll see in a moment, Vansickle’s grant (a portion of which Thomas bought), Bowles Creek, and the Neches River are all referenced in subsequent land records of Thomas Leonard in Cherokee County.

According to Gifford White, who abstracted a number of Texas county tax lists for 1840 and published a book using those tax lists to create a “census” of Texas based on the tax lists, Thomas Linard appears on an 1840 tax list in Houston County taxed for 1,420 acres for which he had a complete title from the General Land Office, and fifteen enslaved people.[7] As I’ve just noted, Thomas obtained a certificate for 320 acres of headright land at the Houston County land office in August 1841, but that land was in Nacogdoches County and fell into Cherokee County in 1845.

I have found no documents suggesting that Thomas Leonard lived or owned land in Houston County, which borders Cherokee on the northeast. As a previous posting states, the 1830 federal census shows Thomas with fourteen enslaved persons and one free man of color in his household, and the 1840 federal census enumerates the household of Thomas’ son-in-law James Birdwell in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, with fifteen enslaved persons who, I suspect, were Thomas Leonard’s property. So that information matches what Gifford White is reporting about this 1840 Houston County tax list — the original of which I have been unable to track down and read.

Nacogdoches County, Texas, Deed Bk. G, pp. 110-1

Thomas Leonard appears on an 1845 tax list in Nacogdoches County.[8] On 1 December 1845, Thomas filed three interesting documents. On that date, he sold land to his son-in-law Marmaduke Johnston, and then deeded enslaved persons and land to Marmaduke’s wife Maria, Thomas’ daughter, and land to his (i.e., Thomas’) wife Sarah.[9] The deeds to Maria Johnston and Sarah Leonard were deeds for love and affection — i.e., gifts deeded to these two family members. Since the land Thomas sold to his son-in-law Marmaduke Johnston and the land he deeded for love and affection to Sarah was not the land granted to Thomas as headright land — we know this because Thomas sold the two 320-acre headright tracts on 25 July 1848 and 24 June 1853 while retaining the land on which he was evidently living by 1845 — he had apparently purchased additional land from the Hiram Vansickle survey by this date. I do not have a deed for that land purchase.

The deed for love and affection to wife Sarah states that Thomas was giving Sarah 538 acres bordering Hiram Vansickle’s survey (the land was actually a portion of 1,476 acres surveyed for Vansickle) and with Bowles Creek running through the land. Sarah was to have unhindered ownership and use of the property with its appurtenances. Thomas signed as Thomas Linard, and A. Gibson and Adolphus Sterne witnessed the deed. On 8 December, Thomas acknowledged the deed and it was recorded.  

Nacogdoches County, Texas, Deed Bk. G, pp. 115-6

Then on the same day, Thomas made a deed of gift to daughter Maria, naming her as Maria W., wife of Marmaduke Johns[t]on, two enslaved persons, Ransom aged nineteen and Patience aged nine. Thomas signed the deed with Absalom and James Gibson witnessing, with Thomas proving it on 8 December. On the same day, Thomas deeded to Maria for love and affection 200 acres on Bowles Creek with Absalom Gibson and Adolphus Sterne as witnesses.

The curiosity of the deed of gift to Sarah Lauderdale Leonard is that it’s clear from other documents that Thomas and Sarah lived on the 538 acres he deeded over to Sarah in December 1845, and they may, in fact, have been living on this land even as Thomas placed it in his wife’s name. Thomas was taxed for this land consistently from 1849 forward, as we’ll see in a moment, and as we’ll also note, he sold his two headright grants on 25 July 1848 and 24 June 1853, an indicator that by 1848, he was definitely not living on the headright land. So why deed the land to wife Sarah when Thomas clearly maintained control of it — otherwise, he would not have been taxed for the land, but Sarah would have been?

The best answer I can think of for this legal maneuver is that, as we’ve seen previously, Thomas was still being pursued for debt into the late 1840s by creditors he left back in Alabama when he made his move in 1839 to Texas. Perhaps he placed his home piece of land in his wife’s name to escape legal liability should creditors try to garnish or take the land to satisfy debts he had not paid in Alabama.

Another possibility is that Thomas’ family members thought he was not managing his finances well and wanted the land out of his legal possession in order to protect it from being sold away. I suggest that possibility because, as we’ve seen previously (and here), precisely this sort of drama took place in Sarah Lauderdale Leonard’s family when she was a girl in Pendleton District, South Carolina, when her father John Lauderdale deeded his home tract of land in January 1795 to Sarah and her brother James, with the deed stating that he was taking that step because he had wasted and run through an inheritance given to them by their grandfather. As the two postings I’ve just linked indicate, it appears that this inheritance came to the two children from their maternal grandfather John Mauldin, and that members of the Mauldin family were leaning on John Lauderdale to place his land in his children’s name due to his profligate ways.

A note about the three men who appear as witnesses to Thomas Leonard’s deeds in December 1845: Absalom Gibson (1804-1884) was a judge and surveyor in Nacogdoches and Cherokee Counties who came to Nacogdoches with his family from Tennessee in 1833 or 1835 and later lived in Angelina County.[10] James Gibson (1826-1899) was Absalom’s son.[11] The 1850 federal census shows the family of Absalom Gibson living next to that of Thomas Leonard’s son Alfred Murray Leonard in Cherokee County.

Adolphus Sterne, portrait in Sterne-Hoya House Museum in Nacogdoches, Texas, online at website of Center for Regional Heritage Research of Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches

Adolphus Sterne (1801-1852) was a German-born Jewish colonist and financier of the Texas Revolution, who was a merchant and legislator.[12] In 1847 he was elected to represent Nacogdoches in the House of Representatives of the Second Legislature. The Sterne-Hoya House Museum in Nacogdoches commemorates Sterne, his family, and his contributions to the history of Nacogdoches.

According to researcher Nancy Breidenthal, on 31 December 1847, Thomas Leonard purchased property from his son A.M. (Alfred Murray) Leonard. This information appears in notes Nancy sent me a number of years ago, citing the deed index for Cherokee County, Texas, without stating a specific deed book or page number for this deed, and without providing details regarding the property Thomas purchased from his son.

Thomas Leonard 25 July 1848 deed to John W. Young, Texas General Land Office land grant file 660, patent volume 5, patent number 496, certificate 139, available digitally at the website of Texas GLO

On 25 July 1848, Thomas Leonard sold one of his two headright grants, the tract he had been granted by certificate no. 139.[13] He sold this land for $400 to John W. Young, with Absalom and George Gibson witnessing as he signed the deed. Absalom Gibson proved the deed on 16 October 1848 and it was recorded on 30 November. The original deed is filed with the Texas GLO for this tract of land.[14]

Thomas’ daughter Maria W. Leonard Johnston died in Cherokee County on 20 September 1848.[15] After this, the probate minutes books of Cherokee County show ongoing litigation by Maria’s father Thomas that appears to have begun in December 1849. The litigation had to do with his appeal for guardianship of Maria’s children on the ground that Marmaduke Johnston was wasting their estate. Thomas was granted guardianship with no contestation on the part of Marmaduke Johnston, who remarried to Martha Vinning in Cherokee County on 13 February 1851. Probate minutes indicate that Maria died owning two enslaved persons (evidently Ransom and Patience named in Thomas’ December 1845 deed of gift to Maria) and 150-175 acres of land, and it appears that this property spurred Thomas Leonard’s litigation on behalf of her children Cornelia A., Alfred Thomas, Minerva E., William Edwin, and Mary Martha Elizabeth. Probate court minutes for 29 July 1852 show Thomas selling Ransom, the enslaved man he had deeded in 1845 to Maria, for the benefit of her heirs.

Thomas appears on the on the 1849 tax list in Cherokee County as Thos. Leonard, taxed for 538 acres worth $1,076 granted to H. Vansickle in a grant for 1,476 acres, and thirteen enslaved persons worth $3,900, with six horses worth $130.[16] His son Alfred M. is listed long with his father, perhaps because the two were farming together, and has one enslaved person. The tax list also states that Thomas has 320 acres worth $160 granted to him — his remaining headright tract, that is.

The 1850 tax list in Cherokee County shows Thomas Linard taxed for 593 acres, with a notation that this land was out of Hiram Vansickle’s survey of 1,476 acres.[17] The land is valued at $1,614. Thomas is also taxed for eleven enslaved persons valued at $3,850 and five horses valued at $300. Listed next to Thomas is his son Thomas E. Linard, with no property recorded; it appears the two were farming together. Thomas Edwin Leonard was twenty-one years of age in 1850. On the same page is Thomas’ son Alfred M. Linard taxed for 593 acres out of Hiram Vansickle’s tract and 320 acres — that is, Alfred is taxed for the same land for which his father is also taxed. This tax list offers further evidence that Thomas and his son Alfred may have co-owned the land he (or they?) had purchased from Hiram Vansickle’s survey. Alred M. Linard is also taxed for two enslaved persons.

Thomas Leonard 24 June 1853 deed to William C. Moore, Texas General Land Office land grant file 1647, patent volume 9, patent number 595, certificate 138, available digitally at the website of Texas GLO

NOTE: The following is out of chronological order, because I misread the year 1853 as 1850 in the deed above when I composed this posting. I cannot move this material to the correct place in the narrative without messing up the footnotes: On 24 June 1853, Thomas Leonard sold his remaining piece of headright land to William C. Moore for $320, with Absalom and James Gibson witnessing as he signed as Thomas Linard.[18] James Gibson proved the deed 9 July 1853 and it was recorded on the 12th. Later in 1850 on 8 November, Thomas sold property to A.B. (Andrew Bogle) Criswell (1814-1864), who had come to Cherokee County from Talladega County, Alabama.[19]

The 1850 federal census enumerates Thomas Leonard in Cherokee County.[20] The census shows only two members of the household, Thomas himself and his son Thomas E., whose name is given as Thomas A. Thomas elder is aged 69, a farmer born in Maryland with real property valued at $3,000. Thomas A. is aged 21, is a farmer, and was born in Alabama. Sarah Lauderdale Leonard is enumerated in the household of the family living next to Thomas Leonard and his son: she’s listed as Elizabeth Leonard, aged 64, born in Georgia, in the household of Peter and Patience King.[21] Note that Elizabeth’s age and place of birth match the documented date and place of birth of Thomas Leonard’s wife Sarah M. Lauderdale.

It’s not clear to me why Thomas’ wife Sarah would be living apart from him in 1850 in the household of a seemingly unrelated family next-door to her husband. By 1860, the federal census shows Thomas and wife Sarah living together again in the household of son Alfred, so if this was some sort of separation, it appears to have been temporary. It does make me wonder all over again about Thomas’ deed of gift of his land in December 1845 to Sarah — when one document after another shows him continuing to own and control and be taxed for this land after 1845.

The 1850 federal slave schedule shows Thomas, whose name appears to be spelled Thos. Leinard, owning eleven enslaved people in Cherokee County, males aged 54, 30, 19, 10, 4, and females aged 35 (two), 20, 17, 6, and 2.[22] All are listed as black. Listed next to Thomas on this slave schedule is William Marmaduke Johnston with two enslaved persons.

The 1850 agricultural schedule enumerates Thomas in Cherokee County with 100 acres of improved land and 400 unimproved acres, and a farm valued at $3,000, with machines and tools valued at $400, six horses, nine milk cows, four oxen, twenty other cattle, and sixty swine.[23] The livestock are valued at $600. The farm has produced in the last year 1,000 bushels of corn, twenty-four bales of ginned cotton @400 pounds per bale, 200 bushels of peas and beans, 100 bushels of sweet potatoes, and 300 pounds of butter. It has also produced homemade manufactures valued at $50, with slaughtered animals valued at $100. Listed next to Thomas is P. King in whose household wife Sarah appears to be living in 1850.

In 1851, Thomas Leonard is taxed in Cherokee County, TX, for 538 acres worth $1,200 granted to H. Vansickle, and 205 acres worth $410 granted to James T. Cook, 14 Negroes worth $6,600 and 6 horses worth $350.

On 5 February 1853, Thomas bought property in Cherokee County from A.B. Criswell.[24] I have no further details about this deed record. On Thomas’ sale of his remaining 320-acre headright grant in June 1853, see above.

In 1853, Thomas appears as Thomas Lenard Sr. on the Cherokee County tax list, taxed for 538 acres worth $1,200 from the Vansickle tract, and for 205 acres worth $400 originally granted to James T. Cook.[25] Thomas is also taxed for twelve enslaved persons worth $5,600 and five horses worth $350. In addition, as guardian of the heirs of M. Johns[t]on, Thomas is taxed for 200 acres of land valued at $400 out of the Vansickle grant, along with an enslaved person valued at $600. I suspect this is Patience, who had been deeded to Maria Leonard Johnston as a deed of gift by Thomas in December 1845. Next to Thomas on the tax list is his son Alfred Murray Leonard, taxed for 600 acres of Vansickle land valued at $1,200 and two enslaved persons also valued at $1,200.

As has been noted previously, the 1855 tax list for Cherokee County gives Thomas a middle name: he appears on this tax list as Thomas Lewis Linard, and is taxed for 400 acres worth $1,800 from the Vansickle tract, along with eleven enslaved persons worth $5,000 and five horses worth $250.[26] Thomas is also taxed again as guardian of his daughter Maria’s children for 400 acres of Vansickle land and one enslaved person. Next to him is his son Thomas, listed as junior, with no taxable property; he is obviously farming with his father. Also taxed beside Thomas Sr. and Jr. is A.M. (Alfred Murray) Leonard, who is taxed for 428 acres of Vansickle land and 265 acres from James T. Cook, as well as three enslaved persons.

The 1860 federal census enumerates Thomas and wife Sarah in the Cherokee County household of their son Alfred and wife Mary M. McGaughey Leonard.[27] Thomas is aged 79, a farmer born in Maryland. Wife S.M. is 75, born in Georgia. Both are literate. As household head, A.M. Leonard has a real worth of $2,560 and personal worth of $9,423. It’s clear to me that in his advanced years, by 1860, Thomas had turned over management of his farm and property to his son Alfred. The 1860 slave schedule for Cherokee County lists Thomas with one enslaved person, a boy aged six, and shows his son A.M. Leonard (next to Thomas) with twelve enslaved persons: the eleven enslaved persons of Thomas in 1850 have now become twelve enslaved persons listed in the name of his son Alfred.[28]

The deduction that Alfred is now managing his father’s farm is reinforced by the 1860 agricultural schedule for Cherokee County, which lists only A.M. Leonard, and has no listing for his father Thomas.[29] A.M. Leonard has 150 acres of improved land and 170 acres unimproved, with the land valued at $2,560. The agricultural schedule shows Thomas and his son Alfred continuing to operate a robust farm — with the labor of enslaved people, obviously. The farm has three horses, four mules, sixteen milk cows, three working oxen, fifty other cattle, fifteen sheep, and fifty swine, all valued at $915. In the past year, it produced sixty bushels of wheat, 1,500 bushels of corn, twenty bushels of oats, fourteen bales of ginned cotton @400 pounds per bale, and fifty pounds of wool. It also raised twenty bushels of peas and beans, eight bushels of Irish potatoes, forty bushels of sweet potatoes, and produced 100 pounds of butter, twelve pounds of beeswax and twelve of honey, with slaughtered animals valued at $50.

Found next to the family of A.M. Leonard on the 1860 census, and also on both the slave and agricultural schedules is his brother Thomas E. Leonard. Thomas E. has a real worth of $2,360 and personal worth of $730. In his household are two small children, a daughter S.E. and son A.M., whose name was probably Alfred Murray Leonard. Also in the household is his niece Mary Martha Elizabeth Johnston, daughter of his sister Maria. The 1860 slave schedule shows him with one enslaved person. The entry for him on the 1850 agricultural schedule next to his brother Alfred is crossed through and only partly filled in.

Thomas Leonard’s listing in 1870 federal mortality schedule, Cherokee County, Texas

The 1870 mortality schedule for Cherokee County shows Thomas dying in October of that year of typhoid fever.[30] His age is given as 87, and his place of birth (erroneously) as South Carolina. This document indicates that Thomas was living in household 470 in beat 2 at the time of his death; the federal census for that year shows that this was the household of his daughter Cynthia, widow of James Reuben Blanton.

I have not found precise information about when Sarah Lauderdale Leonard died. Thomas Dunalp Leonard’s 1883 manuscript “Biography of the Leonards” says, “Sarah died several years before him.” A communication that researcher Nancy Breidenthal sent me on 20 September 1998 states that she had been in touch with a descendant of Thomas and Sarah who thought that Sarah died about 1866 in Cherokee County. Since Sarah does not appear on the 1870 federal census, it does seem that she died in the decade 1860-1870, and likely predeceased Thomas.

I have not been able to find any information about where Thomas and Sarah might be buried, and can find no estate records for Thomas. A prefatory note to Helen Woodell Crawford’s Early Probates and Wills of Cherokee County, Texas says that her book was compiled from the original old probate and will papers of the county, many of which were never listed in the probate books.[31]  Crawford notes that during the early 1970s, several hundred of these papers were apparently stolen before her work was completed. Her book lists no Leonard estates.

Thomas Dunalp Leonard’s “Biography of the Leonards” states that Thomas and Sarah Lauderdale Leonard “lived to see all but two of their children buried, namely Syntha and Alfred,” and that the couple “lived many years as consistent members of the Baptist Church, as did the greater part of their children.” As we’ve seen previously, Thomas and Sarah belonged to Round Island Baptist church in Limestone County, Alabama, before they made to Texas, but church minutes show both being excluded from membership in the early 1820s. I have no further record of their church connections.

Thomas Dunlap Leonard, who continued his close ties to the family of his uncle Thomas Leonard after his father Robert Leonard moved to Nacogdoches (later Cherokee) County, Texas, in 1840,[32] says the following about Thomas, his wife Sarah, and their children:

Thomas’ daughters all married in Limestone Co Al. He brought up an excellent family. He was one of Limestone’s best citizens, no man stood higher as a good man than Thomas Leonard. His wife was his equal in all duties of a companion. She by her example and precepts impressed her good qualities on her daughters so firmly as to prepare them for all the duties of a companion. I had the acquaintance and have been in all their families and know them to be excellent ladies. They in turn taught their children to recognize all those hightoned principles that constitute good citizens and christians.

In a subsequent posting, I’ll provide information about the children of Thomas and Sarah Lauderdale Leonard.

[1] Limestone County, Alabama, Deed Bk. 5, pp. 567-8.

[2] See Texas General Land Office land grant file 1647, patent volume 9, patent number 595, certificate 138, available digitally at the website of Texas GLO. See also Nacogdoches County, Texas, Board of Land Commissioners Records, files 24A-B; and Carolyn R. Ericson, Nacogdoches Headrights 1838-1848 (New Orleans: Polyanthos, 1977), p. 38. The land records show Jacob Gregg and William Watson witnessing Thomas’ application for a land certificate. Both were early settlers of Houston County, Texas, the Greggs arriving there in 1837 from Illinois and settling near the Neches River and San Antonio road.

[3] See Texas General Land Office land grant file 660, patent volume 5, patent number 496, certificate 139, available digitally at the website of Texas GLO. See also Nacogdoches County, Texas, Board of Land Commissioners Records, files 23, 24C.

[4] John R. Ross, “Cherokee County, Texas: History, Geography, and Economy,” Handbook of Texas, a site maintained by the Texas State Historical Association.

[5] Digital copies of Joseph Martin’s 1851 map and the 1902 Texas GLO map are available online the collection, GLO Historic County Maps, at The Portal to Texas History site, a digital repository hosted by the UNT Libraries.

[6] The 1960 Texas Highway Department map of Cherokee County is available digitally in the Abilene Library Collection at the Portal to Texas History. On Bowles Creek, see Anonymous, “Bowles Creek (Cherokee County),” Handbook of Texas Online, maintained by the Texas State Historical Association.

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

[8] On the 1845 tax list, see Pauline Shirley Murrie, Early Records of Nacogdoches County, Texas (Waco: 1965), p. 20, citing p. 16 of the original.

[9] My notes for the deed to Marmaduke Johnston, which came to me from Nancy Breidenthal, say that this deed is filed in Cherokee County, Texas, Deed Bk. G, p. 58. The deeds of gift to Thomas’ wife Sarah and daughter Maria Johnston are in Nacogdoches County, Texas, Deed Bk. G, pp. 110-1, 115-6. I do not have a copy of the deed to Marmaduke Johnston and know no details about it. Because records for both Nacogdoches and Cherokee Counties are locked at the FamilySearch site, I cannot consult the original records. I do have photocopies of the deeds of gift to Sarah Linard and Maria Johnston. If it’s correct that the deed to Marmaduke Johnston is in Cherokee County Deed Bk. G while the two deeds of gift are in Nacogdoches County Deed Bk. G, I cannot account for the fact that these instruments are filed in two different counties, especially when one notes that Cherokee County was separated from Nacogdoches in July 1845, and this land (and the enslaved people named in the deed of gift to Maria) were in Cherokee County.

[10] See Frank W. Johnson, A History of Texas and Texans, vol. 5 (Chicago: American Historical Society, 1914), p. 2588; and Joyce Beasley Starling, “Absalom Gibson,” in Cherokee County History, ed. Cherokee County History (Jacksonville, Texas, 2001), p. 282. Absalom is buried in Crawford cemetery at Lufkin, Angelina County.

[11] James Gibson is buried in Largent cemetery at Lufkin, Angelina County.

[12] See Archie P. McDonald, “Sterne, Nicholas Adolphus: Financier of the Texas Revolution and Influential Legislator,” at Handbook of Texas, a site maintained by the Texas State Historical Association; “Adolphus Sterne,” at Wikipedia; and “Adolphus Sterne,” at Center for Regional Heritage Research of Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches.

[13] Cherokee County, Texas, Deed Bk. B, p. 298.

[14] See supra, n. 3.

[15] I have scanned copies of the register of the bible of William Marmaduke Johnston and Maria W. Leonard, sent to me in February 2005 by their descendant Sarah Jane Brown. The bible register gives their dates of birth, marriage, and death, with similar information for some of their children. I do not know who presently owns this bible.

[16] 1849 tax roll, Cherokee County, Texas, unpaginated, arranged alphabetically and available digitally at FamilySearch.

[17] 1850 tax roll, Cherokee County, Texas, p. 16A, available digitally at FamilySearch.

[18] Cherokee County, Texas, Deed Bk. H, pp. 322-3. The original deed is in the Texas GLO file for this tract of land, certificate no. 139: see supra, n. 2. On William C. Moore, see Mrs. James E. Bishop, “William C. Moore and Elizabeth Younge Moore,” in Cherokee County History, p. 419.

[19] Cherokee County, Texas, Deed Bk. E, p. 115; I’m citing research notes of Nancy Breidenthal that do not specify what the property Thomas was selling was. Andrew Bogle Criswell is buried in Cedar Grove cemetery in Kaufman County, Texas.

[20] 1850 federal census, Cherokee County, Texas, p. 876 (family/dwelling 474; 7 November).

[21] Ibid., family/dwelling 473.

[22] 1850 federal slave schedule, Cherokee County, Texas, unpaginated, 16 November.

[23] 1850 federal agricultural schedule, Cherokee County, Texas (p. 153, no. 31, 2 November).

[24] Cherokee County, Texas, Deed Bk. H, p. 283.

[25] 1853 tax roll, Cherokee County, Texas, p. 19A, available digitally at FamilySearch.

[26] 1855 tax roll, Cherokee County, Texas, p. 25A, available digitally at FamilySearch.

[27] 1860 federal census, Cherokee County, Texas, beat 1, Rusk post office, p. 411 (family/dwelling 27, 4 June).

[28] 1860 federal slave schedule, Cherokee County, Texas, p. 1 (4 June).

[29] 1860 federal agricultural schedule, Cherokee County, Texas, p. 1.

[30] 1870 federal mortality schedule, Cherokee County, Texas, beat 2, p. 1. Mary Smith Fay, War of 1812 Veterans in Texas (New Orleans : Polyanthos, 1979), p. 192, notes Thomas Leonard’s death in Texas in 1870, stating that he was born in 1781 in Maryland. She gives his wife’s name (erroneously) as Lara Lauderdale. Fay is apparently citing

Eleanor Henrietta Stevens Galvin, 1812 Ancestor Index, 1892-1970: National Society United States Daughters of 1812 (Norcross, Georgia: Harper, 1970).

[31] Helen Wooddell Crawford, Early Probates and Wills of Cherokee County, Texas (Jacksonville, Texas, 1983).

[32] Abstract of Land Claims Compiled from the Records of the General Land Office of the State of Texas (Galveston: Civilian Book Office, 1852) shows Thomas Lineard with 320 acres in Cherokee County, survey 164 on the Neches River, and Robert Lineard also with 320 acres in Cherokee County on the Neches River, with no survey number given.

#AbsalomGibson #AdolphusSterne #AlfredMurrayLeonard #AlfredThomasJohnston #AltoCherokeeCoTexas #ancestry #AndrewBogleCriswell #BowlesCreekCherokeeCoTexas #CherokeeCoTexas #CorneliaAJohnston #CrockettHoustonCoTexas #CynthiaLeonard #EnslavedPersonPatience #EnslavedPersonRansom #familyHistory #genealogy #GeorgeGibson #HiramVansickle #history #HoustonCoTexas #JacksonvilleCherokeeCoTexas #JacobGregg #JamesGBirdwell #JamesGibson #JamesTCook #JohnLauderdale #JohnLeonard #JohnMauldin #JohnWYoung #LimestoneCoAlabama #MariaWLeonard #MarthaVinning #MaryMarthaElizabethJohnston #MinervaEJohnston #NacogdochesCoTexas #NacogdochesNacogdochesCoTexas #NechesRiverTexas #PendletonDistSouthCarolina #PeterKing #RuskCherokeeCoTexas #SarahMLauderdale #TalladegaCoAlabama #Texas #ThomasDunlapLeonard #ThomasEdwinLeonard #ThomasLenard #ThomasLeonard #ThomasLewisLeonard #ThomasLinard #ThomasLinnard #WilliamCMoore #WilliamEdwinJohnston #WilliamMarmaduleJohnston #WilliamWatson

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

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

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

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

Maryland Years, 1781-6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

South Carollna Years, 1786-1808

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tennessee Years, 1808-1808

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[24] Ibid., p. 132

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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