Children of Mary Brooks (d. 1787, Frederick County, Virginia) — Mary Brooks (1745/1750 – aft. 15 May 1815) and Husband Jacob Hollingsworth (1742 – 1822)

Fort Hollingsworth, photograph (June 2015) by Wikimedia user Gwringle, at the Fort Hollingsworth-White House page at Wikimedia Commons

Or, Subtitled: Migration of Families with Quaker Roots from Pennsylvania through North Carolina into Northwest Georgia by 1790

Chester County, Pennsylvania, Beginnings of Jacob Hollingsworth

Alpheus H. Harlan, History and Genealogy of the Harlan Family, and Particularly of the Descendants of George and Michael Harlan, Who Settled in Chester County, Pa., 1687 (Baltimore: Lord Baltimore Press, 1914), p. 33

As has been noted previously, Jacob Hollingsworth, who married Mary Brooks about 1767-8, was the son of Samuel Hollingsworth and Barbara Shewin of Chester County, Pennsylvania. In his history of the Harlan family long connected to the Hollingsworths, Alpheus Harlan indicates that Jacob was born about 1740 or 1742.[1] According to J. Adger Stewart in his classic study of descendants of Valentine Hollingsworth, the immigrant ancestor, the first son of Samuel and Barbara Shewin Hollingsworth, also named Samuel, was born about 1740.[2] Stewart evidently bases this estimated birthdate on the fact that Samuel and Barbara married in 1738. He does not suggest a birthdate for Jacob, but implies that Jacob was born about 1742. As Alpheus Harlan notes, Samuel Hollingsworth was a farmer of Birmingham township in Chester County, and died there in November 1751.[3] This suggests that Jacob Hollingsworth was born in Birmingham township in Chester County.

Children of William Lindsey (1760/1770 – 1840) and Rachel Earnest — Rachel Lindsey and First Husband Jacob Cooper (2)

15 November 1829 summons by Thomas Bomar, Spartanburg court of ordinary, announcing Isaac Lindsey’s application for probate of the will of Jacob Cooper, Spartanburg County, South Carolina, loose-papers estate file of Jacob Cooper, file 580

Or, Subtitled: “Sail Bills,” Meeting Houses, and Family Squabbles

As the previous posting notes, the Spartanburg county loose-papers estate file of Jacob Cooper and the case file for the equity court case his widow Rachel Lindsey Cooper pursued on behalf of herself and their son Jacob Henry Cooper against the other heirs of the estate contain rich genealogical information, enabling us to document quite a bit of this family’s history over a considerable length of time.[1] In what follows, I want to discuss these two sets of documents and to note what they tell us about the Cooper family.