Or, Subtitled: Spartanburg County, South Carolina, Families Move to Wayne County, Kentucky, and Then to Lawrence County, Alabama

Spartanburg County, South Carolina, Records for Mark Lindsey

We’ve met Mark Lindsey in previous postings. As I’ve noted, when the estate of Dennis Lindsey (abt. 1755 – 1795) was sold on 12 February 1795 in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, Mark shows up as a buyer at the estate sale. He and Mary Lindsey, Dennis’s widow, lead the list of buyers, in fact, both buying horses from the estate. As the posting I’ve just linked also tells us, an 11 April 1796 account of money received by Dennis’s estate lists Mark as one of those who had made payments to the estate, as noted in the estate’s book accounts.

We’ve also seen that Mark Lindsey married Mary Jane, a daughter of David and Margaret Dinsmore of Spartanburg County, and moved with the Dinsmore family to Wayne County, Kentucky, in 1800, where Mark settled in 1801 on 100 acres that had been granted to George Bruton, who assigned the certificate for this land to Mark. This is the same George Bruton to whom Dennis Lindsey had made a deed of trust in Spartanburg County on 10 January 1792 for half of 248 acres that would be granted to Dennis on 27 November 1792.

None of these pieces of information tells us, of course, precisely how Mark and Dennis Lindsey were connected, and as I have noted in a number of previous postings regarding Dennis, his estate documents do not contain a list of heirs other than his widow Mary. We know from a 22 March 1802 Spartanburg County Commissioners of the Poor document that Dennis and wife Mary had a son Dennis (1793 – 1855/1860). But no document has so far surfaced to tell us the names of Dennis Lindsey’s other children.

What the preceding pieces of information do tell us, however, is that Mark Lindsey’s roots lie in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, where a William Lindsey (1760/1770 – 1840) also named sons Mark and Dennis, men who have been confused with the Mark Lindsey whom we’re discussing here – and with Mark’s oldest son, whom he named Dennis. The fact that Mark Lindsey married Mary Jane Dinsmore about 1793 also provides further documentation that Mark was in Spartanburg County at that period, since Mary Jane’s family can be shown to be settled in Spartanburg County at that date. Her parents David and Margaret Dinsmore had settled in what would become Spartanburg County, on Jamey’s Creek of the Tyger River, by early 1768 after having arrived in South Carolina from Ulster on 27 December 1767. It’s also easy to show that the Dinsmore family lived close to the family of Dennis Lindsey (abt. 1755 – 1795) and his father William Lindsey (abt. 1733 – abt. 1806) in Spartanburg County.

The connection of Mark Lindsey to the Dinsmore family of Spartanburg County allows us, in fact, to prove that the Mark Lindsey who moved with wife Mary Jane from Wayne County, Kentucky, to Lawrence County, Alabama, in 1819 is the same Mark Lindsey found in Dennis Lindsey’s estate records in 1795-6, who then moved with the Dinsmores to Wayne County, Kentucky, in 1800. The biography of Mark provided by Colonel James Edmond Saunders in his book Early Settlers of Alabama (New Orleans, 1899), which is based on a series of reminiscences Saunders published in the Moulton Advertiser starting in April 1880, corroborates this information. Saunders, who knew Mark Lindsey personally, states that Mark was raised in South Carolina, went to Kentucky as a young man, and then moved with his son Dennis to Lawrence County.[1]

Mark Lindsey was a tall, spare, old gentleman, who lived on a branch of Flint river when I first knew him. He wore the round-breasted Methodist coat, and had a most excellant [sic] reputation. He was also noted for his industry and good morals. The venerable Mr. McFerrin rode this circuit when quite a youth, and still remembers and speaks of the kindness and hospitality he received from the Lindseys. Mark Lindsey was raised in South Carolina. He went to Kentucky when young, and lived there a long time. In 1827 [sic] he and his son Dennis (who was a second edition of his father, in person and character), came to Lawrence county, and settled in the place I have mentioned.

According to Mark Lindsey’s tombstone, when he died on 10 April 1847, he was 74 years old. This would place Mark’s birth in 1773. The stone, which appears to date from the period of Mark’s death, is, as Phil Waldrep notes, “an excellent example of the ‘bed/headboard’ styles of tombstone. Early settlers in New England used this type extensively.”[2] The cemetery in which Mark is buried is a family cemetery that was originally on the farm of Mark’s oldest son Dennis at Oakville in Lawrence County, Alabama. Dennis predeceased his father, dying 28 August 1836, and is buried in the cemetery with his wife Jane Brooks. Mark’s wife Mary Jane Dinsmore died 10 March 1853 and is buried beside him. It seems reasonable to think that Mary Jane had her husband’s tombstone inscribed and provided the information for the inscriber.

There is one significant problem to note regarding the tombstone, however: following Mark’s death, a suit was filed in Morgan County, Alabama, chancery court by his daughter Nancy and and Nancy’s husband William Morris, and at two points in the chancery court minutes of this case, it is stated that Mark died 10 March 1848 — not 10 March 1847, as his tombstone states. The 1848 date appears to be corroborated by the fact that Mark’s son Fielding Wesley Lindsey filed for administration of his father’s estate on 8 May 1848. Note that this year of death would place Mark’s year of birth in 1774, if the tombstone is correct in saying that Mark was in his 74th year when he died. These estate documents will be discussed in detail in a subsequent posting.

The tombstone of Mark and Mary Jane’s oldest son Dennis Lindsey is broken and no longer very legible. Photos taken of the stone before it became too worn to read show that the inscription on the stone stated that Dennis was 41 years old when he died on 28 August 1836. This would place Dennis’s birth in 1794-5. According to researcher Martha Ruggles, a descendant of Dennis with whom I was in contact in the past, a family record whose source she did not know states that Dennis was born 28 December 1794.[3]

The birthdate of Mark Lindsey and Mary Jane Dinsmore’s oldest child suggests to me that the couple married around 1793. Mark does not appear as head of a household on the 1790 federal census in Spartanburg County. As I’ve noted previously, the household of Dennis Lindsey (abt. 1755 – 1795) on the 1790 federal census shows only two males, one aged over 16, the other younger than 16. The older man would have been Dennis himself. If Mark’s tombstone has his year of birth right, he’d have been 17 at the time the 1790 census was taken, and could possibly be the son listed as 16 or younger. Otherwise, it seems possible to  me that Mark is the additional white male aged over 16 years, or one of the four white males aged under 16, found in the household of his presumed grandfather William Lindsey in Spartanburg County in 1790. In either case, the fact that the 1790 census does not show Mark as head of a household seems to confirm the deduction that he married after 1790.

Wayne County, Kentucky, Records for Mark Lindsey

As I’ve noted previously, on 28 August 1800, Mark Lindsey’s mother-in-law Margaret Dinsmore and her son John sold the land of Margaret’s husband David Dinsmore in Spartanburg County, and the Dinsmore family then begins appearing, along with Mark Lindsey, soon after this in records of Wayne County, Kentucky. David Dinsmore had taken the British side in the Revolution, and found himself exiled to Nova Scotia, where I find no record of him after 9 January 1787, when he sold his Loyalist land grant at Rawdon in Hants County, after having bought land the previous year in the same county from a William Densmore who was likely his kinsman. The 1790 federal census lists Margaret as head of the Dinsmore household in Spartanburg County, and prior to 1800 when she and son John sold David’s land, Margaret appears in Spartanburg County records as owner of David’s land. The deed for the 82 acres that Margaret and son John sold to Nathaniel Woodruff on 28 August 1800 states that the land was out of a tract of 250 acres David had bought from John Kissler in 1774.

By July 1801, Mark Lindsey’s brother-in-law John Dinsmore had entered 200 acres of land in Wayne County, Kentucky, and John’s mother Margaret entered an additional 100 acres in September 1801. Court order books for Wayne County show Mark Lindsey ordered by the court on 16 November 1801, along with Joseph Ming and George Bruton, to view and help lay out a road from Monticello, Kentucky, to Vanwinkle’s mill.[4]

Vanwinkle’s mill was established by Abraham Vanwinkle (also Van Winkle), who came to Wayne County, where he was a judge and county sheriff, about 1798.[5] His mill on Elk Creek two miles south of Monticello was the first mill in the county.[6] On 18 February 1813, Mark Lindsey’s son Dennis would marry Jane, daughter of Thomas Brooks and Sarah Whitlock, in Wayne County; Thomas Brooks’s daughter Margaret married Abraham Vanwinkle’s son Ransom Vanwinkle on 9 September 1823 in Wayne County.

The George Bruton named along with Mark Lindsey in the November 1801 court record mentioned above was, of course, the man from Spartanburg County, South Carolina, to whom Mark’s presumed father Dennis Lindsey made a deed of trust in 1792. In June 1801, Bruton received a certificate for 100 acres in Wayne County, which he had assigned to Mark Lindsey at some point before August 1802, when Mark began to be taxed for this land.[7]

I have not found an official deed from George Bruton to Mark Lindsey for this land. On 24 February 1805, Mark filed a patent for the land, which was granted to him officially by the Commonwealth of Kentucky on 11 December 1811 — land documents I’ll discuss in detail below. The patent and grant records state that the 100 acres had been granted to George Bruton in June 1801, then assigned by him to Mark Lindsey. These documents also state that the land was on the south side of Beaver Creek in Wayne County, adjoining Bruton’s headright grant. As I noted above, by August 1802, Mark began to be taxed for this land, so it’s clear it was in his possession by that date.

When Mark and wife Mary Lindsey sold this land on 13 October 1819 as they moved to Alabama (this land record, too, will be discussed in detail below), their deed to Evin Wright states that the 100 acres had come to Mark from George Bruton, who assigned the certificate he had gotten for it in June 1801 to Mark, and that the land was Mark’s homeplace in the years in which he lived in Wayne County.

George Bruton’s Revolutionary pension application states that after he had volunteered for service in Spartanburg County in the fall or winter of 1780 under Captain George Roebuck, who was serving under Colonel Benjamin Roebuck (this is the same unit in which William Lindsey and his son Dennis Lindsey served, he moved to Madison County, Kentucky, when he was about 30 years old, and then six years later to Wayne County. This information appears in an affidavit George gave in Wayne County court on 25 September 1832, which also states that he was born in Spartanburg County and would be 70 years of age on 5 June 1832.[8]

George had definitely settled in Wayne County by 21 November 1803, when he and wife Martha sold to Richard Summers, all of Wayne, 200 acres on Beaver Creek out of a survey dated 17 January 1799, granted to Bruton by a patent dated 26 September1803.[9] In 1804, George and wife Martha sold another 100 acres on both sides of Beaver Creek to Thomas Summers.[10]

It’s interesting to note that when George Bruton’s daughter Eliza married Daniel Sandusky in Wayne County on 23 July 1828, the minister solemnizing the marriage was Reverend Thomas Brooks, whose daughter Jane married Mark Lindsey’s son Dennis. The marriage file has a note from Bruton giving his permission for the marriage, and a return for the marriage signed by Thomas Brooks.

According to Harlan Ogle in his Deep Roots and Rich History: Historical Glimpses of Monticello and Wayne County, Kentucky, following the Revolution, many Revolutionary soldiers chose to relocate from Virginia and the Carolinas to Kentucky — and Wayne County was one of the places in which a number of these soldiers chose to settle.[11] Ogle explicitly mentions George Bruton as one such soldier.

Mark Lindsey first appears on Wayne County tax lists on 26 November 1801 tax, when he’s taxed for a poll for 1 white male over 21 and a horse.[12] The following year, on 12 August 1802, Mark was taxed for 100 acres on Beaver Creek entered by George Bruton, in addition to a white male over 21, and a horse.[13] Mark was taxed again for this land in 1803, with the record again stating that George Bruton had entered the land, that it was on Beaver Creek, and, now, that the land was land of second quality. This tax record again shows Mark taxed for a male over 21, and now for two horses.[14]

As I have noted in a previous posting, in September 1803, an Isaac Lindsey whom I cannot place entered 100 acres of land in Wayne County.[15] I find no record indicating that Isaac actually settled in Wayne County at any point. He is not on either the 1800 or 1810 federal census in this county. He does, however, appear on the 1806 tax list next to Mark Lindsey, and if I’m reading that tax record (see below) correctly, he’s taxed as a landless member of Mark’s household. As the posting I have just linked at the head of this paragraph indicates, I wonder if he’s the Isaac Lindsey who witnessed Dennis Lindsey’s 1792 deed of trust to George Bruton in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, and if Isaac is Mark’s brother — and is the man who apparently went to St. Helena Parish, Louisiana, from Spartanburg County in the fall of 1809.

In 1804, Mark Lindsey again appears on the Wayne County tax list with 100 acres on Beaver Creek entered by Bruton, and a white male 21+, with 2 horses. The land is now being taxed as land of third quality.[16] I find the 1805 tax list for Wayne County too light to read on microfilm in the filmed version of the tax list held by the Family History Library of Salt Lake, or in its digitized version at the FamilySearch website.

As I have noted above, on 24 February 1805, Mark Lindsey patented the 100 acres on Beaver Creek in Wayne County assigned to him by George Bruton between June 1801 and August 1802, when Mark first shows up on the county tax list with this land.[17] As Willard Rouse Jillson explains, the 1801 grant Bruton had received was a headright claim, and was based on an act of the Kentucky Assembly of 21 December 1795.[18]  When Kentucky became a state and took charge of vacant lands, the area south of Green River was opened up to any persons with families of which the husband was over 21. One could patent not less than 100 and not more than 200 acres, and had to have been a bona fide settler on the land for a year before taking possession of it. This information points to George Bruton having settled on Beaver Creek in Wayne County at least a year prior to June 1801.

The grant for this land was made to Mark Lindsey by the Commonwealth of Kentucky on 11 December 1811, with the grant stating that George Bruton had been granted the 100 acres in June 1801, and having then assigned the land to Mark Lindsey, who had it surveyed on 24 February 1805. The grant also states that the land was on the southwest side of Beaver Creek, adjoining the west line of George Bruton’s headright survey.

Mark continued to be taxed for this land annually during the years in which he resided in Wayne County.[19] Mark Lindsey appears on the 1810 federal census in Wayne County with a household comprised of a male 10-15, a female under 10, a female 26-45, and a female over 45.[20] Something is awry about this census listing: the household should contain a male 26-45 (Mark). The male aged 10-15 is Mark’s son Dennis, who was born in 1794; the younger female is his daughter Nancy, who was born in 1801, and the older female is wife Mary Jane, born in 1779. Possibly the elderly female is Mary Jane Dinsmore’s mother Margaret, who was born in 1747 in Northern Ireland. By 1806, her son John is taxed for her land in Wayne County, and that may indicate that she had passed the land on to John by then and was then dependent on her son-in-law and daughter.

Mark Lindsey continues on the Wayne County tax list from 1810 to 1817, when I no longer find his name on the tax list.[21] The 1818 tax list is lost. It’s possible that when he and wife Mary Jane sold their land in Wayne County in 1819, they had actually moved to Alabama with son Dennis, who went there in 1817 from Wayne County — though the 1819 deed for the sale of their land in Kentucky has both Mark and Mary Jane signing as if they were still resident in Wayne County.

I find Mark listed on 20 November 1813, as a purchaser (an axe) at the estate sale of Edward Ryan in Wayne County, and on 19 September 1815 at the estate sale of Isaac Summers, where he bought a cow, calf, and sorrel mare. On 19 February 1816, Mark witnessed the sale of 200 acres to William Bartleson by Catherine, John, and Andrew Bartleson and Elizabeth Ryan (Deed Bk. B, pp. 283-4). The land was on Beaver Creek, out of a suvey dated 16 May 1799, and was on the corner of George Bruton’s survey and Eliott Jones’s land. When Mark’s son Dennis married Jane Brooks on 18 February 1813, Elliott Jones was the minister marrying the couple. According to Bess D. Stokes and Elizabeth F. Duncan, Elliott Jones was among the first Methodist preachers in Wayne County, solemnizing many early marriages there.[22]

On 31 May 1819, when Robert Gillespie willed to the trustees of the Methodist Episcopal church in Wayne County land on which to erect a meeting house, the trustees named included Thomas Brooks, father of Dennis Lindsey’s wife Jane, and Elliott Jones.[23] As did Mark and Dennis Lindsey, Elliott Jones moved from Wayne County, Kentucky, to Lawrence County, Alabama.[24]

On 13 October 1819, Mark Lindsey and wife Mary sold to Evin Wright, all of Wayne County, Kentucky, their 100-acre homeplace. The land went for $240, with the deed noting that it lay on Beaver Creek and had been granted by Wayne County court in June 1801, and that it bordered George Bruton’s headright survey on the west. Richard Simmons and Adam Vickery witnessed the deed, and Mark and Mary Lindsey both signed it.[25] On 21 February 1820, Simmons and Vickery proved the deed and it was recorded. The deed makes clear that Mark and Mary were selling out in Wayne County to move elsewhere, and the fact that Mary signed it underscores that interpretation. In this period, migrating settlers generally moved in the fall after their crops had been gathered in and before winter weather set in.

In his Early Settlers of Alabama, cited previously, James Edmond Saunders notes that shortly after the war with the Cherokees ended in 1817, the Cherokees ceded the land from which Lawrence County was formed and white settlers began moving onto it. He writes,

As soon as the Indian title was extinguished, emigrants settled sparsely in various parts of it [i.e., the county], and it was fortunate that it was so, for without the supplies they raised it would not have been possible to have sustained such a rush of people as came afterward. The inducements were great: a rich soil easily reduced to cultivation, and the price of cotton very high. The country was filled up in a short space of time by settlers, generally of high respectability and a good education; and a large proportion of whom were members of the church. Very few were wealthy. I know the general impression is to the contrary; but the large estates which have been in our county have been made here. A majority of our early settlers were in good circumstances, and hence the aggregate of wealth in our county was great.[26]

[1] James Edmond Saunders, Early Settlers of Alabama (New Orleans, 1899), pp. 122-3. This biographical account was previously published by Saunders in “Early Settlers of Lawrence County” in Moulton Advertiser (16 December 1880), p. 1, col. 4. Saunders erroneously states that Mark and Dennis moved to Lawrence County in 1827. Dennis came to Madison (later Lawrence) County from Wayne County, Kentucky, in 1817, and Mark and wife Mary Jane followed two years later.

[2] Phil Waldrep, Cemeteries of Lawrence County, Alabama, vol. 1 (privately published, Trinity, Alabama, 1993), p. 270.

[3] Martha Ruggles sent this information to me in a letter dated 8 April 1991; she was living in Caldwell, Idaho, at the time. The original letter is in my possession.

[4] Wayne County, Kentucky, Court Order Bk. Bk. A, p. 23.

[5] Augusta Phillips Johnson, A Century of Wayne County, Kentucky 1800-1900 (Louisville: Standard, 1939), p. 95.

[6] Ibid., p. 24.

[7] Wayne County, Kentucky, Certificate Bk., 1803-1806, p. 395, #119.

[8] Revolutionary pension application S30891. I find David and George Bruton on the tax list in Madison County, Kentucky, by 1790.

[9] Wayne County, Kentucky, Deed Bk.A, pp. 71-3.

[10] Ibi, pp. 73-5.

[11] Harlan Ogle, Deep Roots and Rich History: Historical Glimpses of Monticello and Wayne County, Kentucky (Monticello: Morris, 2000), pp. 28-33.

[12] Wayne County, Kentucky, Tax List, 1801, p. 5.

[13] Ibid., 1802, p. 14.

[14] Ibid., 1803, p. 16.

[15] Wayne County, Kentucky, Court Order Bk. A, p. 61.

[16] Wayne County, Kentucky, Tax List, 1804, p. 22.

[17] Kentucky Patent Bk. 10, p. 214, #6150, grants south of Green River. The grant made 11 December 1811 is in Kentucky Land Grant Bk. 10, p. 214.

[18] See Willard Rouse Jillson’s introduction in The Kentucky Land Grants  (Louisville: Standard, 1925).

[19] For tax listings up to 1810, see Wayne County, Kentucky, Tax List, 1806 (21 April), p. 20; 1807 (22 May), p. 18; 1808 (14 June), p. 14; and 1809, p. 13. From 1806, when Mark was taxed for 3 horses, he was taxed each year after that up to 1809 for an additional horse, for a total of 6 in 1809. The 1806 tax list appears to show Isaac Lindsey taxed along with Mark, with Mark owning 100 acres but Isaac not having land. This piece of data may well strengthen the deduction that Mark and Isaac were closely related, possibly as brothers, and may indicate that Isaac did settle with Mark in Wayne County in the early 1800s, for a period of time.

[20] 1810 federal census, Wayne County, Kentucky, p. 366.

[21] See Wayne County, Kentucky, Tax List, 1810 (17 June), p. 17; ibid., 1811, p. 21; 1812, p. 20; 1813, p. 29; 1814, p. 3; 1815, p. 2; 1816, p. 3. I do not spot specific dates on Wayne County tax lists after 1810. Mark is consistently taxed for 100 acres, except in 1812, when he’s in Captain Vickery’s 53^rd Regiment, taxed for a white male 21+ and 3 horses with no mention of land. In 1814, the 100 acres appear again, but the tax list erroneously states that they lie on Otter Creek. By 1815, Mark’s son Dennis begins appearing on the tax list. Tax lists from 1812 to 1816 show Mark in Captain Vickery’s district. In 1814 a John Lindsey whom I cannot place also appears in this district. From 1810 to 1816, Mark is taxed variously for 5 horses and 3 horses, with the studs valued in 1814 at $400 and in 1815-6 at $450.

[22] Bess D. Stokes and Elizabeth F. Duncan, Methodism in Wayne County, Kentucky 1802-1974 (Somerset, Kentucky: Commonwealth Journal, 1974), p. 8.

[23] Wayne County, Kentucky, Will Bk. A, p. 17. In August 1819, Thomas Brooks was among those appointed to appraise Gillespie’s estate: see ibid., p. 384.

[24] See D. Costner’s biography of Elliott Jones in The Heritage of Lawrence County, Alabama, ed. Heritage Book Committee (Clanton, Alabama: Heritage Publ. Consultants, 1997), pp. 162-3. This source states that Jones was born in 1764, probably in Virginia, and died 16 December 1841 in Lawrence County, where he is buried in the Watson Cemetery just outside Moulton. According to Joy Gallagher at the page of William Shasteen (1786/7 – 1841) at Chastain Central, a website apparently no longer online, Elliott Jones married Elizabeth, daughter of Dawson Wade, and moved from Wayne County, Kentucky, to Lawrence County, Alabama, in 1822.

[25] Wayne County, Kentucky, Deed Bk. C, pp. 118-9.

[26] Early Settlers of Alabama, pp. 36, 42-3.