BEGATS AND BEQUEATHALS

Abraham Marshall Birdwell spent time in Arkansas before joining his brothers in Hopkins County, Texas, after its formation, and also joining these brothers in northeast Texas were their half-brothers Samuel J. and Henry Landers Birdwell, along with their sisters Nancy Wright Birdwell and husband Calvin Cunningham, and Rebecca and Margaret Birdwell, both unmarried when they came to Texas. Some of these half-siblings of Ritha appear to have moved to Texas along with their sister Ritha and their parents.

Moses’ Final Years and Death in Texas: Testimony of the Cunningham Journal

The scant information we have about Moses’ final years in Texas and his death there in 1849 comes from a handwritten journal composed by members of the Cunningham family into which Moses’ daughter Nancy married. In September 1996 and October 1997, a Cunningham descendant, James Bryant, wrote me to provide information about the Cunningham journal. He says that the portion of the journal stating that Moses Birdwell died in Texas in 1849 after having moved there in 1846 was composed by Walter Dunn Cunningham (1883-1913), his sister Caroline, and their father Scott Cunningham prior to 1903. Walter and Caroline were children of Scott Cunningham (1855-1923), whose father David Cunningham (1809-1877) was a brother of Calvin Cunningham (1812-1865), husband of Moses’ Birdwell’s daughter Nancy. According to James Bryant, in 1997, the Cunningham journal belonged to a grandson of Scott Cunningham, David Cunningham, who lived in Missouri.

James Bryant was a grandson of Walter Scott Cunningham (1854-1943), whose parents were Calvin and Nancy Birdwell Cunningham. According to James, as an adult, Walter Dunn Cunningham spent much time with his cousin Walter Scott Cunningham in Texas as he dealt with respiratory illness caused by a childhood bout with smallpox, and made notes on family history during that period of time. His father Scott Cunningham then helped shape those notes into the account written in the Cunningham journal, with Scott’s daughter Caroline writing the final handwritten account.

In James Bryant’s possession in 1996-7 was also a letter written by Walter Dunn Cunningham to Nancy Birdwell Cunningham and her son Walter Scott Cunningham, asking them to make corrections on the account of Cunningham-Birdwell family history he had compiled. As James Bryant points out, this letter proves that important pieces of information in the journal including the date and place of Moses Birdwell’s death came from Moses’ daughter Nancy.  James also indicated in his letters to me that the DAR had accepted the Cunningham journal as a proof for membership. James Bryant also had another family history written by Nancy Birdwell’s husband Calvin Cunningham, as well as letters from Nancy’s brother Henry Landers Birdwell and other family members, of which he sent me transcripts.

The Cunningham journal states that Moses Birdwell died in Texas in 1849, with his wife Hannah, whose name is not stated, dying the year before. The journal also states that Moses came to Texas in 1846, and since Moses moved to Texas in that year with his daughter Ritha and her husband George M. Connally and we know that this family settled initially in Hopkins County, joining other Birdwell family members there, I think we can conclude that Moses and his wife Hannah died and are buried in that county. James Bryant tells me that the information about the deaths of Moses and Hannah recorded in the Cunningham journal was supplied by their daughter Nancy.

Moses and Hannah Birdwell’s Move to Texas in January or February 1846: James Parkhill’s Account

In October 1998, James Parkhill of Roswell, New Mexico, a great-grandson of Ritha Birdwell and her second husband John James William Parkhill, sent me the following account of the move of the family of Ritha Birdwell and first husband George M. Connally to Hopkins County, Texas, in 1846 with Ritha’s parents Moses and Hannah Birdwell:

Around January-February 1846, George, Ritha and the children, along with Ritha’s sisters, brothers and brother-in-law David Goodner Parkhill & family came with them. As an aside, nearly 95% of the Parkhills are descended either from John or David Parkhill who came in 1846 to Texas. This trip was accomplished by first building boats and rafts near Guntersville, Alabama. These boats carried them, their belongings, livestock, west and north on the Tennessee River to the Ohio River in Kentucky. Ritha was also pregnant at that time too. When they reached Paducah, Kentucky, she delivered her next child George Birdwell Connally. They stayed in Paducah about 6 weeks. They continued to and down the Mississippi to the mouth of the Red River in Louisiana. They worked their way up the Red River to Shreveport, Louisiana, where they stayed a period of another six weeks.

They continued up the Red River to the north of Clarksville, Texas. They went a short distance by land to south of where Paris, Texas is today. They lived for a short time with Ritha’s brother in Hopkins Co., Texas, then moved to and lived about 14 miles south of Paris, Texas on Click Creek.   

A version of this account is at the Pounds-Belknap-Parker family tree of an Ancestry member whose username is killeen49, who notes that the account she has posted was written by Jim Parkhill. This version states that Ritha Birdwell and George Madison Connally settled their family on Click Creek “in the area of Hopkins County, Texas.” Unless I’m mistaken, Click Creek is in Lamar County, the parent county of Hopkins County, to the north of Hopkins County. I think it’s likely that, having moved to Texas in 1846 and having joined George and Zachariah Birdwell in that county, Moses and wife Hannah spent their final days with their oldest son George and died while living with him in Hopkins County.

George, who came to Texas in 1834 and served with the Mounted Riflemen of the Texas Militia after arriving there, applied on 5 July 1838 for a headright grant of 1,280 acres in Red River County.[1]  On 1 August 1838, he gave an affidavit in that county as he claimed the land. On 12 February 1840, 640 acres were surveyed for him in Lamar County, with another 640 acres surveyed in the same county for him on 20 February 1840. These tracts were granted to him on 13 September 1841. When Hopkins County was formed in 1846, this land fell into that county and this is where George and his family were living when Moses and Hannah Birdwell arrived in Texas in early 1846.

George’s land was south of Cooper, Texas, and north of Sulphur Springs, and as Birdwell researcher Shannon Birdwell pointed out to me in an August 1996 email, when Jim Chapman Dam was erected to impound the South Sulphur River and Jim Chapman Lake was formed, much of the land George Birdwell owned in Hopkins County was inundated by the lake. Shannon thinks, and I agree, that it’s likely George and Hannah Birdwell were buried on the land of their son George, and if their graves were marked, then the markers are now lost.

George Birdwell’s brother Zachariah also had a headright grant of 1,280 acres in Lamar County that fell into Hopkins County at that county’s formation. This land was in northwest Hopkins County and continues to be known as the Birdwell survey.[2] It’s south of the community of Emblem, east of Commerce, Texas.

Cunningham Journal on Moses’ Twenty Children, Ten by Each Wife

The section of the Cunningham journal providing information about Moses and Hannah Birdwell’s move from Alabama to Texas in early 1846 and about their dates of death in Texas also states that Moses Birdwell was married twice and had ten children by each of his wives. The journal states that Moses’ oldest two sons – speaking of George Washington and Zachariah Birdwell – were in Texas prior to 1836. George, who was born on 23 November 1791, was definitely Moses’ oldest son. Zachariah was born 6 January 1801, according to his tombstone in Stewart cemetery at Ridgeway in Hopkins County, Texas.[3] As we’ve seen, however, Moses Birdwell’s son James was born in 1795, and was Moses’ second son after George W.

As we’ve also seen previously, the name of Moses’ first wife, whom he appears to have married about 1790, perhaps in Sullivan County, Tennessee, and who died prior to his marriage to Hannah Folkindon/Folkinden/Folkinsin in August 1816 in Madison County, Mississippi Territory, is not known. In his account of the move of Ritha Birdwell and husband George M. Connally to Texas in 1846 with Ritha’s parents found at the Pounds-Belknap-Parker family tree at Ancestry (see above), James Parkhill states that he has been told that Moses’ first wife was Louise Marshall. Parkhill notes that the name Marshall runs down family lines from Moses Birdwell as a given name for sons. He also states that he has no proof of the claim that Moses’ first wife was Louise Marshall.

For what it’s worth, Ancestry’s ThruLines report to me that as a descendant of Moses Birdwell, I appear to descend from an unnamed daughter of Alexander Marshall (1750-1829) of Prince Edward County, Virginia, who was likely the wife of Moses Birdwell. ThruLines state that in my Birdwell line descending from Moses, I have multiple DNA matches to Alexander Marshall and a daughter of his that likely married Moses Birdwell.

I have not been able to prove this information. I’ve done only sketchy research so far to test this genealogical link suggested by Ancestry’s ThruLines. My primary critical question is, How could a family living in Chesterfield County, Virginia, at the point at which Moses Birdwell married his first wife around 1790 – a number of documents suggest that Alexander Marshall was in that Virginia county at this point – have had a daughter who married a man living in Sullivan County, Tennessee, or Franklin County, Georgia? Further research is clearly warranted regarding this ThruLines hint.

As a previous posting states, though the Cunningham journal states that Moses Birdwell had ten children by each of his two wives, apparently citing information provided by his daughter Nancy Birdwell Cunningham, it does not name those ten children. There is no estate record for Moses in Hopkins County, Texas, and no other extant document giving the names of his twenty children (if the Cunningham journal has accurate information) has been found.

Brief Biographical Observations about Moses

Moses Birdwell makes a very brief appearance in the 1883 manuscript entitled “Biography of the Leonards” discussed in this previous posting about his son James, who married Aletha Leonard, daughter of Thomas Lewis Leonard and Sarah M. (probably Mauldin) Lauderdale. This document, authored by Thomas Dunlap Leonard (1810-1888), who knew Moses and his son James personally, states that Moses Birdwell was “a good citizen” of Limestone County, Alabama, where, as we’ve seen, Moses lived from 1818 to 1830 and where his son James married Aletha Leonard around 1820.

In notes compiled by Betty Jo Birdwell of Big Spring, Texas, in October 1998, there’s information about a story handed down in the family of Moses Franklin Birdwell (1844-1937), son of Joseph Allen Birdwell (1819-1887), who was a son of Moses Birdwell and wife Hannah. According to this family story, Moses Birdwell was blind in his later life. The story captured in these notes seems to garble facts about the life of Moses Birdwell, however, since it has him living in Alabama up to the Civil War, and as we’ve seen, he left Alabama in 1846 and died in Texas three years later.

In my next posting(s), I’ll discuss the problem of identifying Moses’ children – ten by each of his two wives, if the testimony of the Cunningham journal is correct – and offer my own list of both proven children and other very likely children of Moses.

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[1] Texas General Land Office, Red River/Lamar County file 57, certificate 49; I have a copy of the documents in this file. See also Gifford E. White, First Settlers of Lamar County, Texas, from the Originals in the General Land Office and the Texas State Archives (G. White, 1982), p. 31.

[2] U.G. and Gail Herman, “The History of the Herman Family,” in Pioneers of Hopkins County, Texas, ed. Sylvia M. Kibart and Rita M. Adams, vol. 1 (Wolfe City, Texas: Henington, 1986), p. 107. And see White, First Settlers of Lamar County, Texas, p. 32.

[3] See Find a Grave memorial page of Zechariah [sic] Birdwell, Stewart cemetery, Ridgeway, Hopkins County, Texas, created by Brandon Darrow, with a tombstone photo by Brandon Darrow.