BEGATS AND BEQUEATHALS

Benjamin Green tutored the children of John Ewing Colhoun and wife Floride Bonneau from 1801 up to John’s death at Keowee Heights on 26 October 1802 and reported to John about conditions at his upcountry and lowcountry plantations, and on 21 October 1802, as John made a codicil to his will, Benjamin witnessed the codicil along with John Simpson Jr. and Robert Anderson, signing as Benjamin Green Jr. This may indicate that his father, the older Benjamin Green, was still living in October 1802. The codicil John Ewing Green made on 21 October 1802 appointed his nephew Ezekiel Pickens, son of General Andrew Pickens and Rebecca Calhoun, an executor of John’s will.

Then following John E. Colhoun’s death in October 1802, records of Benjamin Green Jr. become sparse, and as I have noted previously, I’m not entirely clear about when and where Benjamin died. I’m fairly sure he was the B. Green witnessing a deed of Ezekiel Pickens to Edward Landers in Pendleton District on 14 November 1806.[1] After this, I don’t find clear records of him.

Because Benjamin has proven hard to track following the death of John E. Colhoun, I’m happy to have found recently a few more pieces of information providing documentation for him after John died. The document at the head of this posting is a signed affidavit by Benjamin Green Junr. (he signed as B. Green) that it appears he made on 28 October 1802 at Pendleton courthouse two days following John E. Colhoun’s death.[2] The affidavit is filed in John’s probate file in Anderson County. Compare Benjamin’s signature here with his signature on letters to John E. Colhoun.

Benjamin’s affidavit has to do with instructions John E. Colhoun gave on his deathbed to Ezekiel Pickens as one of his executors. Benjamin affirmed that he had heard John give these instructions about the disposal of his property including enslaved persons. Also giving affidavit along with Benjamin were Andrew Pickens Jr., Ezekiel Pickens’ brother, and John Simpson, who witnessed the codicil to John E. Colhoun’s will making Ezekiel Pickens an executor. John Simpson was the husband of Ann Pickens, sister of Andrew Jr. and Ezekiel Pickens. These affidavits were made before Patrick Norris, a half-brother of John Ewing Colhoun.

On 18 November 1802, Robert Anderson (a neighbor and close friend of General Andrew Pickens for whom Anderson County is named) also gave an affidavit at Pendleton courthouse affirming John E. Colhoun’s deathbed instructions. This affidavit, made before John Harris, husband of Mary Pickens, another child of Andrew Pickens and Rebecca Calhoun, was witnessed by John Simpson and Ezekiel Pickens.

Another set of affidavits also filed in John E. Colhoun’s Anderson County probate file shows Robert Anderson, John Simpson, and Benjamin Green affirming John E. Colhoun’s 21 October 1802 codicil making Ezekiel Pickens an administrator of his estate. This set of affidavits was given before John Harris on 18 November 1802, as was Robert Anderson’s testimony about John E. Colhoun’s deathbed instructions.

Finally, in a Pendleton District court of common pleas judgment file documenting the case of Ezekiel Pickens exr. vs. James Gillison and James Dickeson, I find a subpoena to Benjamin Green issued on the second Monday in March 1804, requesting Benjamin to appear at Pendleton courthouse on the second Monday in October 1804 to testify in this case.[3] I don’t find a record of Benjamin’s testimony in this file, only the subpoena.

These documents don’t give us a date and place of death for Benjamin Green younger, but they do underscore that he was still living in March 1804, either in Abbeville County, where his father seems to have been living as late as March 1802 and possibly as late as October 1802, or in Anderson County.

A note about how I found these documents. The new experimental all-text search tool at FamilySearch, which uses AI to scan and transcribe digitized texts (and the collection that is searchable is constantly expanding), is helping me find information in estate/probate files, land-record files, and court files that I have never seen before, since that information could previously be found only by laborious combing through many pages of manuscript documents in digitized form. Much of this material has never been indexed or transcribed. The new FamilySearch AI search tool is a real gem in surfacing material in these sorts of files, I’m finding.

You can restrict your search to a name, and set parameters like location and date range. I encourage those doing genealogical research who have not yet tried out this tool to do so. It sometimes yields valuable information you may not previously have seen.

---

[1] Pendleton District, South Carolina, Deed Bk. H, pp. 453-4.

[2] Affidavit of Benjamin Green Jr., apparently 28 October 1802, probate file of John E. Colhoun, Anderson County, South Carolina, probate file no. 184.

[3] Ezekiel Pickens exr. vs. James Gillison and James Dickeson, Pendleton District, South Carolina, court of common pleas judgment roll file no. 1591.