BEGATS AND BEQUEATHALS

From the time that John Lauderdale moved his family from South Carolina to Tennessee, settling first in Sumner and then in Lincoln County, and then when the family moved from Tennessee to Alabama, I cannot tell you a great deal with confidence about John Lauderdale’s life. Records of him become very sparse in this final period of his life. In telling you that he moved to Sumner County, Tennessee, in 1806 and then went from there to Lincoln County, I’m relying on information passed down among his descendants rather than first-hand records corroborating these moves.

The Sumner County, Tennessee, Years — 1806 to ?

A previous posting discusses an affidavit made by Mattie Conwill Murphy in Clay County, Mississippi, on 27 September 1962. Mattie Christine Conwill (1885-1981) was a great-granddaughter of John Lauderdale’s son Josiah Mauldin Lauderdale. Her affidavit states that John Lauderdale’s son John Gammel Lauderdale was born 13 March 1798 in Pendleton District, South Carolina, and moved in 1806 with his family to Sumner County, Tennessee. Murphy indicates that this and other pieces of family history had been given to her in writing on 9 August 1943 and 17 February 1949 by two other descendants of John Lauderdale, Winnie H. Gartrell of Hernando, Mississippi, and Martha Lauderdale Lusher of Nesbit, Mississippi.

In addition to these sources, in noting that John Lauderdale and wife Milbury moved their family to Sumner County, Tennessee, in 1806, Clint Lauderdale cites a source he identifies as “Dr. J.A. Lauderdale in an unpublished lineage survey.”[1] Dr. J.A. Lauderdale was, I’m confident, James Abner Lauderdale, aged 81, a retired pediatrician who died in Jackson, Mississippi, on 17 March 1996, and a descendant of John Lauderdale’s son John Gammel Lauderdale.[2]

I’m relying on these family-tradition sources regarding the Lauderdale family’s move to Sumner County, Tennessee, in 1806 because I myself have not found any clear records placing this family in Sumner County initially and then following that in Lincoln County. I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the information handed down by descendants that John left Pendleton District, South Carolina, in 1806 to move to Sumner County, Tennessee. But I can tell you almost nothing about his family’s years there because I haven’t been able to document this portion of John Lauderdale’s life.

I have found no solid records indicating to me that, after leaving South Carolina, John acquired land in either Tennessee or Alabama. When John and his family moved to Tennessee from South Carolina in 1806, John was 61 years of age. His son James, the oldest, was on the cusp of reaching maturity in 1806, and by the time the Lauderdales settled in Alabama — the year is given by descendants as 1819 — all three sons were of age and James had married. I think it’s likely that from the time the family moved to Tennessee, John and Milbury may have begun to rely on their children for support, and that this pattern continued after these families moved to Alabama and to the end of John and Milbury’s lives.

The move to Sumner County, Tennessee, would certainly have made sense, because, as previous postings have noted (e.g., here), John’s father James Lauderdale relocated there from Botetourt County, Virginia, at the end of his life, dying there after making a will in Sumner County on 22 September 1796.[3] Most of John’s siblings also went to Sumner County, so in moving there, John would have been rejoining his family members. As the posting I’ve just linked states, John’s brother James had a son John who was born 16 September 1768 in Botetourt County, Virginia, and who was married and living in Sumner County by 1801. Sumner County records contain abundant information about this John, who was a nephew of John Lauderdale elder (1745 – 1830/1840). It’s possible that some references to John Lauderdale in Sumner County records in the years immediately after 1806 actually point to the elder John and not his nephew John, but if that’s the case, I have yet to identify any such records.

My “educated” guess is that John Lauderdale did not sojourn long in Sumner County and did not put down roots during his brief time there. As one considers various records in his life, it’s impossible not to conclude that John was likely regarded as the black sheep of his family, and to wonder whether he would have been entirely welcome when he joined his siblings in Sumner County. During the Revolutionary period, he had gone to Georgia, while the rest of his siblings remained in Virginia and then moved to Tennessee.

Having settled in Pendleton County, South Carolina, shortly before 1790, he then found himself charged with petty larceny and sentenced to a public lashing at the county whipping post in June 1792. In January 1795 in Pendleton County, he admitted in a deed that he had wasted an inheritance of £100 left to his children Sarah and James by their grandfather Mauldin, and in recompense, he deeded each child half of his land. As the posting I’ve just linked states, it appears to me that John’s Lauderdale’s in-laws forced him to take that step. In November 1795 and November 1796, as a result of an unpaid debt, John was forced to sell his Pendleton County land to Peter Keys, and it appears to me that at this point he moved his family north to what would later be Pickens County.

It’s difficult to avoid seeing here a pattern of impropriety and prodigality, difficult to avoid reaching the conclusion that John was probably the black sheep of a family many of whom had the reputation of honorable and upright people and some of whom gave distinguished service to their country. Here’s James Guy Cisco describing the Sumner County Lauderdale family:[4]

The Lauderdales have been quiet, peaceable, law-abiding citizens, farmers and professional men. They have lived unostentatious lives, but when grim-visaged war appeared they sniffed the battle from afar and hastened to the front, where danger and honor were found.

So, to repeat, I’m tempted to think that John did not remain long in Sumner County living among his siblings, because he was probably persona non grata among his family members. I do not have a clear indicator of when he left Sumner for Lincoln County; I suspect it was between 1810-1815. The lack of an 1810 federal census for almost all counties in Tennessee is a hindrance in tracking many people moving around in the state in this period. As noted previously, I find no records suggesting to me that John Lauderdale bought land in either Sumner or Lincoln County, so land records aren’t any help at all here. All I know about the move from Sumner to Lincoln County is that the Mattie Conwill Murphy says in her previously cited September 1962 affidavit that having moved to Sumner County in 1806, the Lauderdale family “afterwards” went to Lincoln County before settling in Limestone County, Alabama.

There’s one other indicator corroborating the family tradition that the John Lauderdale family went to Sumner County, Tennessee, in 1806: it’s thought that John’s son James, whose full name is said to have been James Henry Lauderdale, married his first cousin Sarah Lauderdale Henry in Sumner County prior to 1820. Sarah was the daughter of James Henry and Anna Lauderdale. As a previous posting has noted, Anna was a sister of John Lauderdale. If John Lauderdale’s son James had the middle name Henry, I think he may well have been named for the James Henry whose daughter he married. This Henry family left Sumner County with John Lauderdale’s family and moved to Alabama when John’s family went there.

The Lincoln County, Tennessee, Years — ? to 1819

As a previous posting notes, after having married about 1800 in Pendleton District, South Carolina, John Lauderdale’s daughter Sarah and husband Thomas Lewis Leonard moved in 1806 to Tennessee, settling in Bedford County, which became Lincoln County in 1809.[5] Bedford’s early records were almost totally destroyed when a tornado demolished the county courthouse in 1830, so tracking its first settlers is a difficult enterprise. In moving to what was soon to be Lincoln County on the southern border of Middle Tennessee (Sumner is in Middle Tennessee on the state’s northern border), the Lauderdales would have been joining their daughter Sarah and Sarah’s husband Thomas Leonard.

As in Sumner County, references to John Lauderdale in Lincoln County are non-existent or well-nigh impossible to find. Just as in Sumner County, when the name John Lauderdale does appear in Lincoln County records on rare occasions in the period when it seems the Lauderdales may have been in the county, it’s not always clear whether the John Lauderdale mentioned is John with wife Milbury or his nephew John, son of James Lauderdale and Sarah Mills.

A case in point: on 27 February 1815, Lincoln County court minutes state that administration of the estate of James Lauderdale had been granted to John Hawkins and John Lauderdale.[6] This John Lauderdale is, I’m pretty sure, John, son of James Lauderdale of Sumner County, Tennessee, with wife Sarah Mills, that James being a brother of John Lauderdale who married Milbury Mauldin. James with wife Sarah died in Sumner County at some point before 9 December 1811, when court minutes say that Samuel D. and Josiah Lauderdale were appointed administrators of the estate of James Lauderdale, giving bond with James and John Lauderdale in the amount of $8,000 for the administration.[7] Samuel, Josiah, James, and John were all known sons of James Lauderdale of Sumner County.

The James Lauderdale for whose estate administration John Hawkins and John Lauderdale were appointed in Lincoln County on 27 February 1815 is, I’m fairly certain, James son of James Lauderdale and Sarah Mills — the same James who gave bond with his brother John Lauderdale for their brothers Samuel and Josiah as these brothers administered the estate of their father James in Sumner County in December 1811.

James Lauderdale, son of James Lauderdale and Sarah Mills, was killed at the battle of New Orleans on 23 December 1814.[8] After his family came from Virginia to Tennessee, he became a surveyor, receiving land in various parts of the state as recompense for his surveying and also distinguishing himself as an officer under Andrew Jackson in the Creek War and the War of 1812. He evidently died owning property in Lincoln County, and the court record of his estate administration suggests to me that his brother John Lauderdale (born 16 September 1768) and brother-in-law John Hawkins (married Sarah Lauderdale) were appointed administrators of James’ estate in Lincoln County. Other of this James Lauderdale’s brothers including Samuel and William appear in Lincoln County records in the first decades of the 1800s.

To complicate this picture of a tangled web of men named James and John Lauderdale appearing in Lincoln County records at the same time: on 7 August 1815, James Lauderdale, son of John Lauderdale and Milbury Mauldin, bought thirty acres of land in Lincoln County on the headwaters of Flint River. James purchased this tract from William Mitchell, with the deed noting that Mitchell had received it by a grant from the state of Tennessee on 27 July 1814 (grant no. 5859).[9] James paid $90 for the land. The deed has no witnesses. It was proven 8 August 1815 and recorded 3 September 1815.

This James Lauderdale is the man who is, I stated above, often called James Henry Lauderdale, the James Lauderdale who married his cousin Sarah Henry Lauderdale. James was born in 1790 and had evidently married Sarah when he bought this land. Given that his father bought no land while the Lauderdale family resided in Lincoln County, I suspect that John and Milbury lived on this land with their son James and his wife Sarah, along with James’ brothers Josiah Mauldin and John Gammel Lauderdale, during the years in which the family was in Lincoln County.

James Lauderdale’s tract is noted in two land entries for George Parrish in that county in 1816 and 1817: on 21 August 1816, George Parrish entered ten acres on James Lauderdale’s corner, waters of Flint River, in Lincoln County; and on 20 September 1817, Parrish entered another fifteen acres in the same location with the land entry stating that the land cornered on James Lauderdale’s land.[10] This land would have been close to the Alabama border: the headwaters of the Flint River are only a few miles north of the border; the river flows from Lincoln County, Tennessee, south into Madison County, Alabama, which borders Limestone County, where the Lauderdales finally settled, on the east. On its north border, Limestone County is bordered in part by Lincoln County, Tennessee.

A John Lauderdale mentioned in Lincoln County court minutes on 27 February 1815 could possibly be John with wife Milbury Mauldin, but this John might also be that John’s nephew John: at that court session Thomas Blackmore and John Lauderdale returned to the county court a list of taxable property in Captain Lauderdale’s district.[11] At the same court session, John Lauderdale and James Weathered were appointed to settle the account of the executors of Nathaniel Parker.[12] On 15 August 1815, John Lauderdale was a purchaser at the sale of the estate of Abel Dockery in Lincoln County.[13] The Captain Lauderdale mentioned here is William Lauderdale, son of James Lauderdale and Sarah Mills and brother of the James Lauderdale who died in the battle of New Orleans in December 1814.[14]

You can see the problem here, I hope: due to the replication of given names like James and John among the families descending from the Lauderdale family of Botetourt County, Virginia, it becomes difficult to sort one James or John from another James or John. John Lauderdale with wife Milbury Mauldin is misidentified in one online or published family tree after another as his nephew John, son of James Lauderdale and Sarah Mills. When both Johns may have had some connections to the same county at the same time, the challenge of sorting them from each other becomes even more difficult.

It’s clear to me that the John Lauderdale enumerated on the 1820 federal census in Lincoln County is John with wife Milbury Mauldin. This census corroborates John Lauderdale’s presence in Lincoln County in 1820. The information provided by this census about the composition of John Lauderdale’s family fairly well matches what’s known of John Lauderdale with wife Milbury Mauldin. The household contains a male aged 45+, two males 16-25, one female aged 16-25, and two females aged 45+.[15] The elderly male and one of the elderly females are, I think, John Lauderdale and wife Milbury. The two younger males are evidently John and Milbury’s sons Josiah Mauldin and John Gammel Lauderdale, both unmarried in 1820. Who the other older female is in this household in 1820 isn’t clear to me.

It can be shown that the John Lauderdale on the 1820 federal census in Lincoln County is not his nephew John, son of James and Sarah Mills, by the fact that the younger John appears on the 1820 census in Sumner County.[16] Though this John Lauderdale’s brother James evidently had property in Lincoln County at the time of his death in December 1814 and his brothers Samuel and William appear in Lincoln County records, and though John was co-administrator of the estate of his brother James in Lincoln County, I do not think that the younger John Lauderdale ever lived in Lincoln County.

Final Years in Limestone County, Alabama — 1819 to 1830/1840

Though John Lauderdale (with wife Milbury Mauldin) is enumerated on the 1820 federal census in Lincoln County, Alabama, the tradition handed down among their descendants is, as Clint Lauderdale reports, that they made their final move from Tennessee to Limestone County, Alabama, in 1819.[17] As a previous posting notes, John’s daughter Sarah and husband Thomas Lewis Leonard moved from Lincoln County to Limestone County in 1818: this date is stated in the 1883 manuscript written by Thomas Dunlap Leonard entitled “Biography of the Leonards,” which is discussed here.[18]

Having moved to Limestone County, John Lauderdale and wife Milbury evidently spent their final years living with son John Gammel Lauderdale and his wife Penelope Nichols, who married in Limestone County on 8 February 1824. As was noted previously, it’s evident that an elderly male aged 80-89 and an elderly female aged 60-69 enumerated in John and Penelope Lauderdale’s household in Limestone County on the 1830 federal census are John’s parents John and Milbury Mauldin Lauderdale.[19] These elderly household members are no longer in the John Gammel Lauderdale household on the 1840 census, so it appears they both died in Limestone County between 1830 and 1840. Since minutes of Round Island Baptist church in Limestone County show Milbury Lauderdale taking the position of clerk of this church in June 1836, it appears Milbury died between that date and 1840. (Note that Milbury had sometimes signed records by mark prior to 1836, an indicator that she may not have been literate at an earlier point in her life.)

It has been suggested that John and Milbury are buried in the cemetery of Round Island Baptist church in Limestone County. If that’s the case, then note that their graves are either unmarked or the stones are now illegible. Of their four children, the only one who remained in Limestone County and died there was Josiah, whose burial place is also unknown. He preceded his mother Milbury as the Round Island church clerk, so it’s possible that if his parents are buried in the Round Island cemetery, Josiah is as well. But no tombstone has been found for him in the church cemetery.

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[1] Clint A. Lauderdale, History of the Lauderdales in America, 1714-1850 (Bowie, Maryland: Heritage Books, 1998), p. 25, n. 38. Clint Lauderdale provides no further information about J.A. Lauderdale except to say that he had been in touch with Dr. J.A. Lauderdale in Tennessee as he compiled his book on the Lauderdale family, and J.A. Lauderdale was deceased by 1998 when the book was published (p.x).

[2] “J.A. Lauderdale Jr., retired pediatrician,” Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Mississippi) (18 March 1996), p. 10, col. 1.

[3] Sumner County, Tennessee, Will Bk. 1, pp. 39-41.

[4] Jay Guy Cisco, Historic Sumner County, Tennessee (Nashville: Folk-Keelin, 1909), p. 273.

[5] On 21 September 1809, Thomas Leonard, father of Thomas Lewis Leonard, bought 640 acres on Cane Creek in Lincoln County from Anthony Foster with the deed stating that Thomas was living in Bedford County: see Lincoln County, Tennessee, Deed Bk. A-1, p. 43. From this point forward, the Leonard family was clearly in Lincoln County following its formation in 1809, until Marshall County was formed in 1836 and the Leonards’ land fell into that county. In an email she sent me on 7 March 2009, Leonard researcher Sue Cooper told me that she thinks Thomas Leonard and his brothers Robert and William may actually have moved initially to Sumner County, Tennessee, from Pendleton County, South Carolina, in 1806. She says that the store ledger of an unidentified Sumner County merchant shows a Robert, Thomas, and William Leonard with accounts in 1806-7. Since Thomas Leonard definitely had brothers Robert and William, this record may well tell us that before settling in Bedford (later Lincoln) County, Thomas Leonard spent some time in Sumner County — and perhaps the Lauderdale family made the move from South Carolina to Sumner County in the company of the Leonard family.

[6] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Court Minutes Bk. March 1814-November 1816, p. 463.

[7] Sumner County, Tennessee, Court Minutes Bk. March 1810-March 1815, p. 148.

[8] See The Biography of the American Military and Naval Heroes, of the Revolutionary and Late Wars (New York: P.M. Davis, 1826), pp. 333; and “Biographical Sketch of the Late Lieutenant Colonel James Lauderdale of Tennessee,” Analectic Magazine, 5 (May 1815), pp. 378-385.

[9] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Deed Bk. C, p. 357.

[10] Tennessee Land Entries, 2^nd Surveyor’s District, Series 2, Bk. 39, 1815-7, p. 402, no. 9515 and p. 614, no. 10355.

[11] Lincoln County, Tennessee, Court Minutes Bk. March 1814-November 1816, p. 465.

[12] Ibid., p. 468.

[13] Frances T. Ingmire, Lincoln County, Tennessee, Wills, Inventories, and Miscellaneous, March 1809-April 1824 (St. Louis, 1984), p. 30. I’m inclined to think that the John Lauderdale in these 1815 Lincoln County court records is John Lauderdale’s nephew John, and that John is the John Letherdale who was a sergeant in the 2nd West Tennesse Militia during the War of 1812, mustered in on 20 Sept. 1814: see See NARA, Indexes to the Carded Records of Soldiers Who Served in Volunteer Organizations During the War of 1812, compiled 1899 – 1927, documenting the period 1812 – 1815, RG 94, available digitally at Fold3.

[14] On William Lauderdale, see Cooper Kirk, William Lauderdale, General Andrew Jackson’s Warrior (Fort Lauderdale: Manatee, 1982).

[15] 1820 federal census, Lincoln County, Tennessee, p. 119.

[16] 1820 federal census, Sumner County, Tennessee, p. 164.

[17] See Clint Lauderdale, History of the Lauderdales in America, pp. 25, 89, 91.

[18] Thomas Dunlap Leonard’s year for the Leonard family’s move from Lincoln County, Tennessee, to Limestone County, Alabama, is supported by documents in both counties: Lincoln County court minutes for 7 July 1814 show Thomas on a road jury at that time, but by 25 August 1818, he was a juror for the Limestone County superior court trial of Vance Greer vs. Chapman R. Willborn: see Limestone Legacy 13,2 (winter 1991), p. 41, citing Limestone County, Alabama, Superior and Circuit Court Abstracts 1818-20, pp. 87-9.

[19] 1830 federal census, Limestone County, Alabama, p. 11A.