BEGATS AND BEQUEATHALS

I continue to plug away at “translating” my voluminous paper files to blog postings: when I began my family history work in the latter part of the 1970s, genealogical research was a matter of writing letters, visiting archives and libraries, and making photocopies, so much of my research is in paper files. I have files chock full of copies of documents and notes I’ve made over the years, and with each posting I make on this blog, I’m accessing and digitizing (and expanding) the documents I have about my family lines, so that I can share them here.

It has just happened that, from the time I began Begats and Bequeathals, I’ve been sharing information about lines that are primarily paternal lines of mine: Birdwell, Brooks, Calhoun, Dinsmore, Green, Kerr, Lindsey, Pickens, etc. The only logic governing this choice to focus initially on my paternal lines was that I began blogging here with the initial intent to share information about my Lindsey family, because I had been made the point person for my particular DNA group, group 10, in the International Lindsay Surname DNA Project, and I wanted members of that DNA group and others working on Lindsay or Lindsey families to have access to my years of research about my particular Lindsey family.

As a previous posting notes, having shared what I have to share about my Lindsey family, I began “climbing down and then back up” other family lines that connect to my Lindsey line, including the ones I’ve mentioned previously. And now that I’ve finished working on the Birdwell family, I’m going to do the climbing back down and up another family line connecting to the Birdwells on the Lindsey side of my family tree: this is the Lauderdale family.

My last posting featured two charts that map for you my connection through my Lindsey family line to the Lauderdale family: through Aletha Leonard, wife of James G. Birdwell, a couple who have been discussed in previous postings (and here), I descend from Sarah M. Lauderdale (1785/6 – abt. 1866), who married Thomas Lewis Leonard, son of Thomas Leonard and Hannah Elizabeth James, about 1800 in Pendleton (later Anderson), County, South Carolina.[1]

I suspect, but don’t know for certain, that Sarah’s full name was Sarah Mauldin Lauderdale, and that she was given the Mauldin surname as her middle name because her mother was Milbury Mauldin, wife of John Lauderdale of Pendleton District, South Carolina. Two sources indicate that Sarah had the middle initial M.: the 1860 federal census, the last census on which Sarah was enumerated, gives her name as S.M. Leonard; and the Civil War discharge papers of her son Alfred Murray Leonard, in whose household she appeared on the 1860 federal census along with her husband Thomas Leonard, also state that his parents were Thomas and S.M. Leonard.[2]

The 1860 federal census gives Sarah’s age as 75 and states that she was born in Georgia. On the 1850 federal census, Sarah (with her name incorrectly given as Elizabeth) appears in the household of Peter Jackson King in Cherokee County, Texas, next door to her husband Thomas Leonard, with the census indicating that Sarah was aged 64 and born in Georgia.[3] These federal censuses indicate, then, that she was born in 1785 or 1786 in Georgia. As we’ll see when I discuss Sarah’s father John Lauderdale in subsequent postings, John was living in Wilkes County, Georgia, at the time of Sarah’s birth, while claiming land in Franklin County, counties near each other in northeast Georgia, so Sarah was likely born in either Wilkes or Franklin County, Georgia. As has previously been noted, Moses Birdwell, whose family connects by marriage in multiple ways to this Lauderdale family in north Alabama, was in Franklin County, Georgia, from around 1790 until he moved from there to Madison County, Mississippi Territory (later Alabama) in 1811 or 1812.

An 1883 manuscript about the Leonard family discussed previously provides a valuable eyewitness account of Sarah Lauderdale Leonard and her husband Thomas Lewis Leonard. As a previous posting notes, Thomas Dunlap Leonard (1810-1888), a son of Thomas Lewis Leonard’s brother Robert Leonard (1777-1844), compiled a manuscript about the Leonard family to which Robert and Thomas belonged entitled “Biography of the Leonards.” This manuscript was completed in 1883 and appears to have had brief additions made to it in 1884 by Joseph J. Gill, whose wife Angelina Moore was the daughter of Hannah Leonard (1795-1886) of Petersburg, Marshall County, Tennessee. Hannah was a sister of Thomas Lewis Leonard and Robert Leonard. Her husband was William Depriest Moore.

Thomas Lewis Leonard, Robert Leonard, and Hannah Leonard Moore were children of Thomas Leonard (1752-1832) and Hannah Elizabeth James, who moved from Pendleton County, South Carolina, to Tennessee in 1806, settling in Bedford County, which became Lincoln County in 1809 — with the Leonards’ land falling into Marshall County at that county’s formation in 1836. Thomas Dunlap Leonard grew up in Tennessee knowing his grandparents Thomas and Hannah Leonard and gathering information about the history of the Leonard family from them and other Leonard relatives living near Petersburg, Tennessee. About 1818, Robert Leonard moved his family to Madison County, Alabama, and Thomas Dunlap Leonard continued his interaction with Leonard relatives in north Alabama and back in Tennessee after that move.

“Biography of the Leonards” indicates that when Thomas Dunlap Leonard finished his manuscript in 1883, he was living in Waller County, Texas, with the family of his widowed first cousin Elizabeth Frances Leonard Norris, a daughter of John Leonard (1779 – abt. 1848) and Hannah Fowler. John was a brother of Robert, Thomas, and Hannah Leonard Moore discussed above. I have never been able to find the whereabouts of the original copy of “Biography of the Leonards.” My typescript copy came to me from Leonard researcher Jackie Leonard of the Limestone County Alabama Historical Society in February 1997. Jackie Leonard did not know who owned the original manuscript.

Thomas Dunlap Leonard provides an interesting sketch of Thomas Lewis Leonard and wife Sarah Lauderdale, based on his first-hand knowledge of them as he grew up in Tennessee and Alabama. Here’s what he has to say about this couple — and note that he slips and misnames Thomas Lewis Leonard’s father as Robert and not Thomas Leonard (see the head of the posting for a digital image of the original):

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. In 1818, he moved to Limestone Co Al where he brought up his family, 11 children. He accumulated good property. In 1838 he moved to Cherokee Co Tx, settled near Alto where he opened a good farm, where he lived to be over 90 years old. Sarah died several years before him.

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.

The first document I have, chronologically speaking, for Sarah Lauderdale is a 2 January 1795 deed of gift her father made to her in Pendleton County, South Carolina, when she was only some ten years old.[4] I discussed this document and provided a transcript of it in my last posting. As that posting notes, on 2 January 1795, Sarah’s father John Lauderdale deeded to her half of the tract of 300 acres in Pendleton County on which the Lauderdale family lived. On the same day, he made a similar deed of gift to her brother James; that deed of gift precedes the one to Sarah in Anderson County’s Deed Book D. These deeds state that John was father of Sarah and James, and that he was deeding equal halves of his land to them because he had “wasted & run through” an inheritance left to them by their grandfather and this is why he was making this deed to them.

In both cases, what he deeded to his two children was to make up for, as it were, the £50 their grandfather had left each of them, which he had wasted. In addition to 150 acres, John Lauderdale deeded his daughter Sarah a year-old heifer, two yearlings, two sheep, twelve head of hogs, two feather beds and furniture, two basins, six plates, a pot, and a Dutch oven. John signed this deed with witnesses Harris and John Mauldin and Robert Norris.

As the previous posting that I just linked above states, John Lauderdale’s father James Lauderdale was still living in Sumner County, Tennessee, when this deed was made, so the grandfather who had bequeathed money to Sarah and James Lauderdale was their grandfather John Mauldin, father of their mother Milbury Mauldin Lauderdale. The presence of two brothers of Milbury, Harris and John Mauldin, as witnesses to this deed of gift suggests to me that the Mauldin family had leaned on John to place his property in his children’s hands in recompense for their lost inheritance and to assure that no more of the property that would come to them at John’s death would be squandered. By placing the family’s homeplace and other property in his children’s hands, John was effectively placing it in the hands of his wife Milbury Mauldin Lauderdale, since the children were minors when these deeds of gift were made.

The Robert Norris (abt. 1745-1826) witnessing these two deeds of gift along with Harris and John Mauldin was their brother-in-law, husband of their sister Martha Mauldin. Robert was son of an older Robert Norris discussed in a previous posting, whose wife Elizabeth Wrentz was killed in the Long Cane massacre of 1 February 1760. Following Elizabeth’s death, Robert Norris elder married Jean/Jane Ewing, widow of Ezekiel Calhoun of the Long Cane settlement, a couple discussed in the posting I’ve just linked and in other postings on this blog. As previous postings note, through the marriage of Ezekiel Samuel Green to Camilla Birdwell (and here) on 2 January 1853 in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, my Birdwell-Leonard-Lauderdale-Mauldin ancestral line connects to my Calhoun line, which descends from Ezekiel Calhoun and Jean/Jane Ewing, tying these families that had been connected in upcountry South Carolina in the latter part of the 1700s together again in the mid-19^th century.

As my previous posting shows, when John Lauderdale’s admission that he had squandered his children’s inheritance from their Mauldin grandfather is placed together with Pendleton County court records showing him convicted of and punished for petty larceny in the early 1790s, a not very flattering picture of John emerges. I’ll discuss these court documents in more detail in a later posting about him.

I have not found a record of the marriage of Thomas Lewis Leonard and Sarah M. Lauderdale. Thomas Dunlap Leonard states that their daughter Aletha was their oldest child and was born in South Carolina about 1803. This information suggests that the couple married around 1800 in Pendleton (later Anderson) County, where the Leonard and Lauderdale families were both living at that point in time.

As Thomas Dunlap Leonard’s manuscript about the Leonard family also states, in 1806 Thomas Lewis Leonard and wife Sarah moved with Thomas’ parents Thomas Leonard and Hannah Elizabeth James from South Carolina to Tennessee, settling in Bedford County on land that fell into Lincoln County at its formation in 1809. I’ll discuss that move and records documenting it in more detail in later postings about Thomas Lewis Leonard. The Leonard families settled near Petersburg in what would become Marshall County when that county was formed from Lincoln and several other counties in 1836.

By 1810, while living in Tennessee, Thomas Lewis Leonard began acquiring land in Madison County, Mississippi Territory (later Alabama), and in 1818, the family moved from Tennessee to Limestone County on the Alabama-Tennessee state line, contiguous to Madison County on the west. The 1820 Alabama state census shows Thomas Leonard’s family in Limestone County with a household comprised of a male and female over 21 years, eight females under 21 years, and two enslaved persons.[5]

After having relocated to Limestone County, Thomas and wife Sarah joined Round Island Baptist church, the first Baptist church established in the county, which is discussed in previous postings (and here) noting that Moses Birdwell, father of James G. Birdwell who married Thomas and Sarah Leonard’s daughter Aletha, joined the Round Island church in 1820. Round Island church minutes show Sarah Leonard being excluded from membership in the church in 1822 and her husband Thomas being excluded in 1824.[6] Church minutes show an unnamed Leonard man being made a deacon of the congregation on 10 April 1824, and also indicate that Sarah Lauderdale Leonard’s brother Josiah became church clerk in October 1827 and their mother Milbury Mauldin Lauderdale took the clerk’s position in June 1836 not long before her death.

The Leonards remained in Limestone County until 1839, when Thomas and Sarah sold their 660-acre homeplace on 6 May 1839 to Thomas’ brother John Leonard.[7] The deed for this land sale states that the land was the northeast ¼ of section 9, township 4, range 4 west, and the whole of section 10 in the same township and range with the exception of 40 acres in the northeast ¼ that was part of Cynthia Denton’s 100-acre dower land on the east side of Swan Creek. Cynthia was a daughter of Thomas and Sarah who married Jonas Denton about 1828 in Limestone County. Thomas and Sarah both signed the deed with witnesses A.L. Lamb and Solomon (X) York.  In May 1839, both Thomas and Sarah acknowledged the deed before Sarah’s brother Josiah Mauldin Lauderdale as j.p. and it was recorded on 11 May. The deed gives Thomas and Sarah’s surname as Linard.

As a previous posting notes, Alfred L. Lamb, one of the witnesses to this deed, married a daughter of Moses Birdwell, whose son James married Thomas and Sarah Leonard’s daughter Aletha. As the same linked posting states, Sarah’s brother Josiah Mauldin Lauderdale also married a daughter of Moses, Harriet Birdwell.

The land on which the Leonard family lived in Limestone County was in the southern portion of Limestone County near the present community of Tanner south of Athens and not far north of Decatur. As a previous posting indicates, not long after Thomas and Sarah sold their Limestone County land and moved to Texas, their daughter Aletha and husband James G. Birdwell made a similar move from nearby Marshall County to northwest Louisiana. On 10 May 1839, Limestone County court minutes note that, like many north Alabama planters and farmers leaving Alabama for Texas and Louisiana at this time, Thomas Leonard left debts behind: the court minutes report that Thomas Leonard had “absconded” from the county.[8] The economic conditions driving the move of Alabama planters and farmers to the west in this period are discussed in a previous posting.

Thomas and Sarah Lauderdale Leonard were in Texas by 6 September 1839, when Thomas patented 320 acres in Nacogdoches County.[9] By 1840 Thomas Leonard appears on a tax list in Houston County owning 1,420 acres for which he had a complete title from the general land office, and fifteen enslaved persons.[10] Houston County is contiguous to Cherokee County, where Thomas and Sarah lived to the end of their lives after that county was formed from Nacogdoches County in 1846. As noted above, Thomas Dunlap Leonard states that Thomas Leonard moved his family from Alabama to Cherokee County, Texas, in 1838, settling near Alto, “where he opened a good farm” and lived to be 90, with his wife Sarah dying several years before him. Since Thomas and Sarah were in Alabama on 6 May 1839, they did not move to Texas in 1838, though it’s possible Thomas went there prior to selling his land in Alabama in order to look for new land on which to settle after he moved.

Alto, near which Thomas and Sarah Leonard lived in Cherokee County, is some 25 miles northwest of Nacogdoches. The 1870 federal mortality schedule for Cherokee County shows Thomas Lewis Leonard dying of typhus in that county in October 1870.[11] Except for Thomas Dunlap Leonard’s statement that Sarah Lauderdale Leonard predeceased her husband by several years, I have not found clear documentation regarding when Sarah died. In a 20 September 1998 email to me, researcher Nancy Breidenthal told me that she had been told that another researcher, Winnie May Leonard Brown of Wichita, Texas, indicated that Sarah died in Cherokee County in 1866, but Nancy had been unable to contact Ms. Brown to verify that information. Neither Thomas nor Sarah appears on the 1870 federal census, and as noted previously, the 1860 federal census shows both alive in Cherokee County in that year.

In subsequent postings, I’ll discuss in greater the documentation of Thomas Leonard’s years in South Carolina, Alabama, and Texas. The primary purpose of this posting is to provide a brief overview of his life from the time he married Sarah M. Lauderdale, in order to “introduce” Sarah as I launch this new series of postings that will trace my Lauderdale family line back from Sarah Lauderdale Leonard.

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[1] Thomas Leonard’s middle name is given as Alfred in numerous family trees published online. The 1855 tax list for Cherokee County, Texas (p. 25) lists Thomas as Thomas Lewis Linard. He is taxed for 400 acres worth $1,800 from a grant to H. Vansickle, on the Neches River, with 11 enslaved persons worth $5,000 and 5 horses worth $250. His middle name is stated on this tax list to distinguish him from his son Thomas, who is listed on the same page as Thomas Linard Jr.

[2] 1860 federal census, Cherokee County, Texas, beat 1, p. 411B (dwelling/family 29; 4 June), household of A.M. Leonard; and Ogreta W. Huttash, Civil War Records of Cherokee County, Texas, vol. 1 (Jacksonville, Texas; 1982) p. 42. Alfred Murray Leonard was discharged from the 10^th Militia Brigade of Texas state troops (CSA) on 6 January 1864, citing document 901-1, Texas State Library and Archives. I have not been able to locate the discharge papers Huttash is abstracting here.

[3] 1850 federal census, Cherokee County, Texas, p. 876 (dwelling/family 473; 7^th November).

[4] Anderson County, South Carolina, Deed Bk. D, pp. 365-366.

[5] 1820 Alabama state census, Limestone County, p. 17.

[6] See “The Membership of the Round Island Baptist Church, As Recorded in the Minutes, 1817-60,” Limestone Legacy 1,1 (January 1979).

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

[8] Limestone County Court Minutes Bk. 1838-1843, pp. 41-2.

[9] See Carolyn R. Ericson, Nacogdoches Headright Grants 1838-1848 (New Orleans: Polyanthos, 1977), p. 38). The land Thomas Leonard patented (grant no. 145) was a third-class headright grant.

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

[11] 1870 federal mortality schedule, Cherokee County, Texas, unpaginated, beat 2, line 19. This document erroneously states that Thomas was born in South Carolina. Both the 1850 and 1860 federal census correctly state that Thomas was born in Maryland: see supra, n. 2 and 3.