5. Alexander Noble appears to have been born between his sister Jane, who was born in 1779, and his brother Patrick, who was born in 1787. As the previous posting shows, Jane’s birth year is established as 1779 by her tombstone, and as we’ll see below, Patrick’s birth year of 1787 is also indicated by his tombstone. A handwritten document entitled “Genealogy of Joseph Noble” in the surname files held by Alabama’s Department of Archives and History states that Joseph Noble was the last child of Alexander Noble and Catherine Calhoun.[1] This document states that Patrick was the fifth son of Alexander Noble and Catherine Calhoun, and if both of these pieces of information are correct, then Alexander would have been born prior to Patrick. The document has no author’s name attached to it, but statements made in it indicate that it was written by a descendant of the Noble family who had in her or his possession Joseph Noble’s diploma from Yale University and a letter John Noble wrote his brother Patrick on 28 February 1816.
The online guide to the “Noble Family Papers,” a collection held by Huntington Library in San Marino, California, states that Alexander was born in 1794 and makes him younger than Joseph.[2] If, as appears likely, Catherine Calhoun Noble was born in 1750 or 1751, then it seems more probable that her son Joseph, who was born in 1792 according to the document in the Alabama surname files, was her last child and Alexander was born between 1779 and 1787.
Note, too, that Alexander Noble witnessed the will of his uncle John Ewing Colhoun along with his brother Ezekiel Noble on 20 May 1802.[3] If Alexander had been born in 1794, he’d have been too young to witness this document in 1802. His witness to this will indicates a birthdate of 1784 or earlier for Alexander. Alexander’s birthdate seems to me to fall between 1781-4. If he was born in this time span, he would have been born in Ninety-Six District not long before it became Abbeville County.
Lucius M. Boltwood’s history of the Noble family states that Alexander Noble married Mary Harris and was “a merchant and planter on Savannah river” who died 28 March 1821.[4] As has been noted previously, the guide to the collection of Noble family papers held by Huntington Library in California states that brothers Ezekiel, William, and Alexander Noble ran family plantations, including Vienna plantation on the Savannah River, and were engaged in cotton trade together.[5] As the last posting notes, the Vienna plantation belonged to John Noble, brother of Ezekiel, William, and Alexander, and was described in a 15 February 1820 lawsuit filed by brothers Ezekiel, William, and Joseph Noble against their brothers Patrick and Alexander as John’s administrators as 1,200 acres of land lying along the Savannah River.[6] As noted previously, on 15 April 1819, Alexander Noble and his brother Patrick had received letters of administration on the estate of their brother John in Charleston, South Carolina.[7]
Huntington Library’s collection of Noble family papers contains nine letters written by Alexander Noble to his brother John Noble from the Vienna plantation on the Savannah River. The letters were written on 8 November 1806, 10 July 1807, 5 April, 15 July, 27 October, and 12 December 1808, and 6 February, 3 April, and 12 September 1809. These letters are not available digitally or in transcriptions at the Online Archive of California website. The guide to the collection of Noble family papers states:
In his letters, Alexander Noble discusses the disposition of the estate of Nicolas Cooper; his business affairs, including management of the Vienna Plantation, cotton trade, and family slaves (including news of a fire set by the enslaved woman Hannah).
The Vienna plantation was at the site of a mercantile center on the Savannah called Vienna at which Alexander Noble and his cousin James Calhoun, John C. Calhoun’s brother, had stores.[8] This was five miles southeast of the present community of Mt. Carmel in what is now in McCormick County. Vienna is now under Lake Thurmond.
A 15 November 1804 letter of Alexander Noble’s cousin John C. Calhoun is, according to Calhoun’s biographer W. Pinkney Starke, the earliest letter of John C. Calhoun that Starke could find.[9] John C. Calhoun wrote the letter to Alexander from Newport, Rhode Island, on 15 October 1804 while he was staying with the family of Floride Bonneau Colhoun, widow of John E. Colhoun. John would marry John E. and Floride Bonneau Colhoun’s daughter Floride in 1811. In the letter, John C. Calhoun tells Alexander Noble that he’d be leaving for Boston with Alexander’s Aunt Floride, then returning to South Carolina by water with Floride and her family. In editing this letter, J. Franklin Jameson notes that John C. Calhoun and Alexander Noble were schoolmates at Moses Waddel’s academy.
On 19 January 1806, John C. Calhoun wrote to Floride Bonneau Colhoun from Litchfield, Connecticut, noting that he had had a letter from Alexander Noble, who told him he was leaving Charleston in a few days for the upcountry and planning to take a trip the following summer through the western country to New Orleans and from there by water to New York.[10]
On 3 July in the same year, John C. Calhoun wrote again to Floride Colhoun from Litchfield, John stating that he had had letters from his brother James and from Alexander Noble.[11] John’s letter speaks of James’ choice to wind up his mercantile business and of Alexander’s relinquishment of the business of a merchant for that of farming with his brother Ezekiel, noting that Alexander’s brother Dr. John Noble had bought a plantation on the Savannah (the Vienna plantation) with the expectation of leaving Charleston in a few years. As we’ve seen, John Noble died in Charleston on 5 February 1819.
On 10 March 1807, Alexander gave bond in Abbeville County with his brother-in-law Thomas Casey for guardianship of Alexander’s youngest brother Joseph Noble. This bond is another piece of evidence that Alexander Noble was not, as some sources have suggested, younger than Joseph.
I have not found a record of when and where Alexander Noble married Mary Handy Harris. As a previous posting notes, Mary was a daughter of John Harris and Mary Pickens. Mary Pickens was a daughter of Andrew Pickens and Rebecca Calhoun, Alexander Noble’s aunt; Alexander Noble and wife Mary Handy Harris were cousins. Alexander and Mary had married prior to 1817 when their daughter Catherine Jane Noble was born.[12] As a previous posting has noted, when the estate of Rebecca Pickens Noble, widow of Alexander Noble’s brother William, was sold in Abbeville County on 21 March 1831, among the primary buyers of the estate was Rebecca’s sister-in-law (and niece) Mary Harris Noble.[13] William and Alexander Noble’s brother Patrick was also a primary buyer at this estate sale.
As noted above, Lucius M. Boltwood’s history of the Noble family states that Alexander Noble died 28 March 1821.[14] I have not found a burial record. I think it’s likely he died at the Vienna plantation on the Savannah River. In a letter she sent to William Berrien Burroughs of Rome, Georgia, on 9 May 1895, Mary Berrien Whitmore – this letter was discussed in the previous posting – Mary Berrien Whitmore stated that her mother was Catherine Jane Noble, daughter of Alexander Noble and Mary Handy Harris, and that her mother married James Weemys Moore Berrien (about 1831, apparently) at the home of Catherine Jane’s mother Mrs. Alexander Noble near Willington.[15] As this letter also explains, James Weemys Moore’s first wife was Catherine Jane Casey, daughter of Jane Noble and Thomas Casey, and a first cousin of Catherine Jane Noble.
At some point prior to 1850, Alexander Noble’s widow Mary Handy Harris Noble moved with her children to Rome in Floyd County, Georgia, where she is enumerated on the 1850 and 1860 federal censuses with a birth year of 1790 or 1791. In 1850, she was living with daughter Jane Catherine and husband James, and in 1860, she was heading her household with the orphaned children of James and Jane Catherine in her household. Mary died in Rome prior to 15 October 1863 when James B. Underwood was appointed administrator of her estate there.[16]
6. Patrick Noble was born in 1787 in Abbeville County, South Carolina. His tombstone in the Noble family cemetery at Willington in McCormick County, South Carolina, states that he was aged 53 when he died on 7 April 1840.[17] A number of sources including Patrick Noble’s biography in the South Carolina Governors collection at J.D. Lewis’ Carolana website give Patrick a middle name of Calhoun, which, if correct, suggests that he may have been named for his uncle Patrick Calhoun, who was in turn named for Patrick Calhoun/Colhoun, the American progenitor of the Calhoun family that settled in the Long Cane section of the South Carolina upcountry in 1756.[18] This site also states that Patrick was born at his family’s Oak Hill plantation near Willington in what’s now McCormick County but was Abbeville County at the time of his birth.
The online guide to the “Noble Family Papers” states that, due to the prominent role he played in the political life of South Carolina, Patrick Noble was “the most prominent among Alexander Noble’s sons.”[19] This source provides a brief biography of Patrick Noble:
Patrick Noble (1787-1840), the 57th Governor of South Carolina was the most prominent among Alexander Noble’s sons. He was born in Abbeville and graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1806. In 1809, he was admitted to the bar and set up a law practice in partnership with John C. Calhoun. In 1814, Noble was elected to the state legislature. In 1830, the General Assembly elected him as 34th Lieutenant Governor; in 1836, he became state senator, and in 1838, the General Assembly elected him Governor of South Carolina.
In addition to the detailed biographical information about Patrick provided by both the preceding guide to the Noble papers and the Carolana website, a biography by Tom Downey at South Carolina Encyclopedia discusses Patrick’s political career in the South Carolina House and Senate and his final years serving as governor.[20] As these biographical sketches note, after having been tutored in Abbeville County by Dr. Moses Waddel, Patrick went to College of New Jersey (later, Princeton), from which he graduated in 1806.[21] As the previous posting notes, Patrick’s brother John Noble also went to College of New Jersey/Princeton, graduating in 1791.[22]
Following his graduation from Princeton, Patrick studied law in Charleston with Langdon Cheves and then in Abbeville with his cousin John C. Calhoun and George McDuffie.[23] He was admitted to the South Carolina bar on 28 November 1809 and began the practice of law with John C. Calhoun from 1809-1810. In 1814, Patrick was elected to the South Carolina House by Abbeville District, and was then reelected for the next four sessions, serving as House speaker from 1818-1823.[24]
On 5 September 1816, Patrick Noble married his cousin Elizabeth Bonneau Pickens, daughter of Ezekiel Pickens and Elizabeth Bonneau. As the posting I’ve just linked indicates, Ezekiel Pickens was a son of Andrew Pickens and Rebecca Calhoun, Patrick Noble’s aunt. Ezekiel’s wife Elizabeth Bonneau was a sister of Floride Bonneau, the wife of Patrick’s uncle John Ewing Colhoun.
In 1824, Patrick Noble declined to run for another term in the South Carolina House. Instead, he ran for the U.S. Senate, losing the election. In 1830, the South Carolina Assembly elected him to the position of lieutenant governor.[25] He was then re-elected by Abbeville District to the House in 1832, again occupying the speaker’s chair from 1833-5. Abbeville returned Noble to the House in 1832, where he again occupied the Speaker’s chair from 1833 to 1835. In 1836 he was elected to the state Senate and was immediately made president of that body. Two years later, he was reelected, then resigned his seat upon his election as governor of South Carolina on 8 December 1838.[26]
Patrick Noble died at Abbeville after a brief illness on 7 April 1840 before having completed his gubernatorial term, and was buried, as noted previously, in the Noble family cemetery at the family’s Oak Hill plantation near Willington in what’s now McCormick County.[27] His tombstone inscription reads as follows:
Here Repose
the mortal remains of
Patrick Noble
who died at Abbeville Court House
the 7th day of April 1840 in the 53rd year of his age.
He was a native of Abbeville District which he
represented successively in the Senate and House
of Representative of South Carolina during a long
course of years and was finally elected Governor
which office he held at the time of his death. As a public
man he was distinguished by moderation resulting
from a mild and even temperament and by firmness
of purpose proceeding from a high sense of duty
and sound judgement drawing its conclusions from
careful and dispassionate examination. In all the
relations of private life he was singularly exemplary,
and in public and private, such was the unblemished
purity of his character that both friends and
opponents would concur in inscribing on his tomb,
“Here lie the bones of an honest man.” The example
of his virtues silently impressed upon the community
in which he lived, contributed largely to the formation
of the high moral character of his native District
and long will the District, in common with the
whole State, deplore his loss.
Patrick’s wife Elizabeth Bonneau Pickens is buried with him in the Noble family cemetery, with a tombstone stating that she was born 19 July 1797 and died 7 June 1834.[28]
7. Joseph Noble was born in 1792 in Abbeville County, South Carolina. This date of birth is stated in the “Genealogy of Joseph Noble” document held by the Alabama Department of Archives and History which is discussed above.[29] As this document and other sources state, Joseph graduated from Yale University; the unidentified author of “Genealogy of Joseph Noble,” who is clearly a Noble descendant, states that she or he had Joseph’s Yale diploma at the time this document was written. A brief biography of Joseph Noble in Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College states that he entered Yale in his sophomore year and notes that his cousin John C. Calhoun graduated from Yale in 1804.[30]
The Yale biography also notes that after finishing at Yale, Joseph studied law and was admitted to the bar at Columbia, South Carolina, in 1816. The author of “Genealogy of Joseph Noble” states that she or he had a letter written on 28 February 1816 by Joseph’s brother John Noble to their brother Patrick speaking of Joseph’s recent admission to the bar.
In 1818, Joseph Noble took part in the migration of members of the Calhoun-Pickens-Noble kinship network from South Carolina to Alabama which has been discussed in a number of previous postings (see, e.g., here). On 13 March 1818, he was appointed attorney general of the middle district of Alabama Territory.[31]
Alabama Department of History and Archives has uploaded to its digital archives, a letter Joseph wrote on 12 September 1818 from Tuscaloosa.[32] Joseph sent the letter from “Falls of the Tuskaloosa” to Samuel B. Bidgood of Jackson, Alabama. The letter notes that Joseph had arrived at Tuscaloosa on the 18th ult. (18 August) after a tedious journey, and refers to Alabama as the “land of promise.” Joseph states,
I am better pleased with this country than I anticipated. This Town makes an indifferent appearance with respect to buildings, but it contains some very respectable inhabitants, & has I suspect more retail trade than St. Stephens & Jackson put together. The population of the Town is about six hundred & very probably will not increase until the lands are sold. Choice lots here will sell for $3000 at the sales without doubt, at all events some merchants of the place are willing to give that price. The neighborhood affords some beautiful tracts of high lands well calculated for corn & cotton, & I should be content to own them at a fair price, but there are capitalists who will give forty dollars per acre for them. The best high lands here can be rated only as the second quality, but they certainly are much more productive than their appearance would indicate. Upon the whole this section of the Territory country promises to be very agreeable & is as healthy as any part of the Territory.
As “Genealogy of Joseph Noble” and his Yale biography indicate, Joseph Noble died unmarried on 17 October 1822.[33] A number of published sources state that Joseph died in Greene County, Alabama. I have not found a burial record.
[1] “Genealogy of Joseph Noble,” Alabama Surname Files, Alabama Department of Archives and History, available digitally at Ancestry in its collection Alabama, U.S., Surname Files Expanded, 1702–1981.
[2] See “Noble Family Papers,” an online guide to a collection of family papers found in the manuscript collections of Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
[3] Anderson County, South Carolina, Will Bk. 1791-1834, pp. 22-31; Charleston County, South Carolina Will Bk. D, 1800-7, p. 361-4. See also Virginia Alexander, Coleen Morse Elliott, and Betty Willie, Pendleton District and Anderson County, South Carolina, Wills, Estates, Inventories, Tax Returns, and Census Records (Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1980), p. 29.
[4] Lucius M. Boltwood, History and Genealogy of the Family of Thomas Noble of Westfield, Massachusetts, with Genealogical Notes of Other Families by the Name of Noble (Hartford, Connecticut: Case, Lockwood & Brainard, 1878), p. 738.
[6] Abbeville County, South Carolina, Equity Court files, box 6, pkg. 178.
[7] Charleston County, South Carolina, Letters of Administration 1815-9, p. 436.
[8] Bobby F. Edmonds, The Making of McCormick County (McCormick: Cedar Hill, 1999), p. 361. See also Rob Pavey, “Vienna Was Site of Famous Duel,” Augusta Chronicle (12 April 2013), online at the Augusta Chronicle website.
[9] Correspondence of John C. Calhoun, vol. 2, part 1, ed J. Franklin Jameson (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1900), p. 93.
[10] Ibid., p. 102.
[11] Ibid., p. 106.
[12] See Find a Grave memorial page of Catherine Jane Noble Berrien, Myrtle cemetery, Rome, Floyd County, Georgia, created by Bill Schroeder.
[13] Abbeville County, South Carolina, Probate Files box 69, pack 1697.
[14] Boltwood, History and Genealogy of the Family of Thomas Noble of Westfield, Massachusetts.
[15] The letter is transcribed at the Glynn County, Georgia, website GlynnGen in a section of this site transcribing material from a typescript book entitled The Burroughs Book written by Mac Hazlehurst Burroughs in 1947. On The Burroughs Book, see this page on the GlynnGen site. The letter is on p. 465 of The Burroughs Book. Wilson Library’s Special Collections department at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has a collection of Mac Hazlehurst Burroughs’ papers entitled “Mac Hazelhurst Burroughs Papers, 1741-1949,” collection 1923.
[16] Floyd County, Georgia, Will Bk. B, p. 197.
[17] See Find a Grave memorial page of Patrick Noble, Noble cemetery, Willington, McCormick County, South Carolina, created by Garber Graver, maintained by Find a Grave, with tombstone photos by Gypsy Soul.
[18] “Patrick Calhoun Noble: 27th Governor of the State of South Carolina 1838 to 1840,” Carolana.
[20] Tom Downey, “Noble, Patrick,” South Carolina Encyclopedia. See also Cyclopedia of Eminent and Representative Men of the Carolinas of the Nineteenth Century, vol. 1 (Madison, Wisconsin: Brant & Fuller, 1892), pp. 222-3.
[21] As noted previously, documents in the estate of Patrick’s father Alexander Noble show the estate paying Moses Waddel for tuition of Patrick and his brothers Joseph and Ezekiel.
[22] On the multiple connections of members of the Calhoun kinship network to Princeton, a school founded by New Light Presbyterians to train Presbyterian ministers which was “the educational and religious capital of Scottish-Irish America,” see this previous posting, citing “History of Princeton University” at Wikipedia.
[23] “Patrick Calhoun Noble,” Carolana; and Downey, “Noble, Patrick.”
[24] “Patrick Calhoun Noble,” Carolana; and Downey, “Noble, Patrick.”
[25] “Patrick Calhoun Noble,” Carolana; and Downey, “Noble, Patrick.”
[26] “Patrick Calhoun Noble,” Carolana; and Downey, “Noble, Patrick.”
[27] See supra, n. 1.
[28] See Find a Grave memorial page of Elizabeth Bonneau Pickens Noble, Noble cemetery, Willington, McCormick County, South Carolina, created by Gypsy Soul with tombstone photos by Gypsy Soul.
[29] See supra, n. 1.
[30] Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, vol. 6: September 1805-September 1815 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1912), p. 488. The biography cites Boltwood, History and Genealogy of the Family of Thomas Noble of Westfield, Massachusetts, p. 738.
[31] Alabama Territory Register of Appointments, Civil and Military (1818-9), p. 1.
[32] “Letter from Joseph Noble in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, to Samuel B. Bidgood in Jackson, Alabama,” Alabama Department of Archives and History Digital Collections.
[33] See supra, n. 1; and Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, vol. 6, p. 488. See also Boltwood, History and Genealogy of the Family of Thomas Noble of Westfield, Massachusetts, p. 738.
Begats and Bequeathals 