Season Two And America’s 250th

Stories That Live in Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. Coming down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America. Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us. So join me for season two as we discover from Sea to Shining Sea the stories that live in us. In May of 2012, I found myself on the front porch of a rundown old farmhouse back up in a tiny little holler in Northeast Tennessee. I had walked up onto that porch a little trepidatious. My parents were sitting in the rental car in the driveway behind me, I think with the doors locked. And as I knocked on the door, a woman opened the door. Now there was a screen between us, which I'm very grateful for because there was also a very large dog that kind of lunged a little bit at the door. And in that exact moment, I wasn't sure whether she was going to sick the dog on me or invite me in for sweet tea. I had gone there because we had been in Rogersville, Tennessee, just a little bit northwest of where we were at that farmhouse. And we had been to the Historical Society where I had been looking for information about my Revolutionary War ancestor, Daniel Jones. And I had been informed by the Local Historical Society that he was buried on a piece of property that he used to own that was still in the family and was a few miles outside of town. They had given me directions, like only people from Tennessee can give directions about driving over the creek and past the old oak tree and turning right. I mean, like it was amazing that we found this place. And for a split second, as I stood there on that porch staring at that dog through that screen door, I wasn't sure we actually had followed the directions correctly. Because middle of nowhere, hollering, Tennessee, I don't see anywhere where this soldier could be buried. But I very carefully explained to this woman that I was a descendant of Daniel Jones and that I had heard that he was buried there on her property. Now in Tennessee, I think, like in some places, there is a law that if somebody is buried on private property, the property owners have to provide right of way to anybody who wants to visit the grave. And so she gave me directions about how to walk back along the line of her property up a little hill through a field into a thicket of trees where I would find his gravestone. And then I asked her, are we related? And she kind of gave me a half smile and said, I reckon so. And then she proceeded to explain to me how she was related to Daniel Jones. She didn't invite me in for sweet tea, but she also didn't stick her dog on me. So I call it a win. Now, that particular trip that my parents and I took that year, that was a cross-country trip. We had left Utah in uh early, actually late April, and we had driven from Utah down to Texas, and then from Texas down to New Orleans. When we were in New Orleans, that was the first time that we met those Cowan cousins down in New Orleans that I talk about way back in episode one. And my brother, uh Cameron, one of my brothers, flew in from Utah to join us. So he couldn't be with us the whole time, but he flew into New Orleans. And then we proceeded to drive along the Gulf Coast for a few days. We spent some time in Florida. We spent some time in uh Charleston. Uh, and ultimately we were in Charleston for the National Genealogical Conference. Then we, after the conference was over, uh, Cameron flew on to England for a business trip. And my parents and I headed up through North Carolina and into that little tiny corner of Northeast Tennessee. Now, Tennessee and North Carolina, and Virginia and South Carolina, like back then the borders were mostly just suggestions back when my Revolutionary War ancestor lived there. And there was even sometimes some disputes over what property belonged to which colony at the time. Virginia had pretty strong claim because they had been a colony for so long. North Carolina was not just just south of them, but also right behind them in terms of people who had settled there. And my ancestor, Daniel Jones, was born in March of 1757 in Orange County, North Carolina. Now, Orange County was named for a member of the British Royal Family, King George of Revolutionary War fame King George. King George's son was the Duke of Orange, and so they named it Orange County. Um, and the place that Orange County sits, you might be familiar with Charlotte, North Carolina, sits right uh in that region. It's called the Piedmont, and it's the region between the coast and the mountains, particularly the Appalachian Mountains. And it was starting to be settled more and more by Scots-Irish and by Germans, and so the British influence was starting to have some, not just competition, but some animosity. So that's what Daniel was born into in those short decades before the Revolutionary War officially broke out. Now we often think of, and especially this year, the 4th of July 1776, as yes, the year we claimed our independence, but that's not the year we actually became a recognized country. That didn't happen until 1783. The Declaration of Independence, while there had been a lot of skirmishes and conflicts before that, that was the beginning of the war. And so that's the world that Daniel's growing up in. The Mecklenburg Declaration actually happened a year before the Declaration of Independence when North Carolina decided to claim their independence from British rule. And that sent down a rain of British military into South Carolina through Charleston, up through North Carolina into the Charlotte area. Well, um there's an interesting thing you need to know about how the US, particularly those American colonists as they were forming this new nation, how they felt about standing military. Standing military is a term that means that we have a national defense. And we have a standing military now, right? People can join the armed forces and they can make that a career, or they can sign up for a period of time for four years. I have a brother and sister-in-law who served in the U.S. Air Force as career military. I have a grandfather, two grandfathers who both enlisted in the army during the uh World War II. And both of them enlisted for the duration of the war plus six months. So that they became part of that standing army. But back in the 1700s, this concept of a standing army was a real problem for the colonists. And so they had local militia. And the local militia were everyday people, farmers and blacksmiths, individuals who worked in the community and served and were just trying to build a life, particularly in some of these frontier towns of eastern uh western North Carolina and what would ultimately become East Tennessee. And so Daniel, uh in 1778, he got married when he was 21 years old in Hillsboro, North Carolina. And then in 1779, in December, at 22 years of age, he joined the militia. He joined as a private under Captain Trousdale's company, serving with Colonel Archibald Little's regiment. And they marched from Hillsboro to Charleston. Now I looked it up. To march from Hillsborough to Charleston took probably about three to four weeks, depending on how many troops were with them and what the conditions were of the road. Now it was winter time, and so the roads could have been a mess. They could have been clear. I didn't look it up for that particular year. But they marched from Hillsborough to Charleston because they had word that General Cornwallis or Lord Cornwallis's armies were going to be arriving. And so they were setting up breastwork in that city to protect it from siege because they thought it was going to end up under siege. The time that Daniel enlisted for was from December of 1779 to the 24th of March 1780. And so on the 24th of March 1780, Captain Trousdale's company left Charleston to go back to Hillsboro in North Carolina. And five days later, the siege started on Charleston. And within six weeks, the city of Charleston fell to the British Army. Now, interestingly enough, by the time he arrived back in Hillsboro, Daniel re-enlisted. The reason their enlistment periods were so short was because no standing army, they are part of the militia. And so their enlistment periods are just for short periods of time because a lot of these men wanted the opportunity to go back in in the spring and plant their crops and in the fall and harvest their crops. And they're trying to keep life running while also still trying to defend the country. And so he immediately enlisted, which I find really interesting, turned around, enlisted again. This time he enlisted from April of 1780 to September of 1780. He enlisted with Captain Wood's company, and uh he ended up at the Battle of Camden. Now, the Battle of Camden is a particularly harsh battle in the Revolutionary War, but it also is kind of a pivotal battle for a couple of reasons. General Gates on the US side and General Lord Cornwallis on the British side had troops that came together in Camden. And General Gates had 4,000 soldiers, one of which was Daniel Jones. He was serving as a guard at the time. His job was to keep watch, to watch for the enemy, to get information as runners came in or spies came in and to make sure it got delivered to the right people. So he's a guard with General Gates' army of 4,000 people. General Lord Cornwallis, he he had 2,000 troops. So half the size of the militia, the British Army was half the size. Now, on the morning of August 16th, 1780, very, very early in the morning, it was essentially the middle of the night. Both armies, independent of each other and unbeknownst to each other, had the same idea that they were going to have a sneak attack on the other army. So, middle of the night, under cover of darkness, these two armies start advancing on each other and very quickly realize what's happening. And within hours, this battle becomes one of the worst defeats of the Revolutionary War for the Patriots. Even with double the size of the army, they lost, either through death, wounded, or being captured, about half of those that were there. Cornwallis, half the army, only 2,000 soldiers, only about 10% of his soldiers suffered death or were wounded or captured. And General Gates, instead of leading his troops further into battle or calling his troops to retreat, essentially ran away. As a matter of fact, he fled so fast that they said he made it 180 miles in just a few days to get away from that. He was very shortly thereafter relieved of his command, and someone else was put in charge, which is a good thing, because that was in the end of August or the middle of August in 1780, worst defeat of the Revolutionary War in that region. Within two months, we're going to see a battle that changes the tide for the Patriots. And they they ascribe that to the fact that because of the disorganization, because of the militia concept instead of the standing army concept, and because of the training that some of these leaders did not have that led someone like General Gates to flee, that there were changes made quickly enough that by the time they got to Kings Mountain a couple of months later, there was a very different outcome. You'll hear all about the Battle of Kings Mountain in a couple of months when we talk about South Carolina. But what I want to talk about, the story that I want to tell now, has to do with what happened to Daniel after that. Because he goes from this battle in August, he's he's um discharged in September, and once again, he immediately turns around and re-enlists. So he re-enlists again in Hillsborough in September of 1780, but he only this time enlists for one month. And this time, Cornwallis' armies now are advancing. They're advancing on North Carolina, they're headed to Charlotte, and there is a lot of chaos. One of the things that Cornwallis was doing was he was sending out other captains to flank him. And what they were doing was they were scouring the countryside to find loyalists that they could recruit to their cause, because there was the standing British Army, but if they could collect loyalists to fight for them or to be spies for them or to cause problems for the Patriots, they figured that that was a good use of their time. Well, Daniel's job, as he reenlisted in September of 1780 with Captain William Rogers' company under Major O'Neill, was, and I quote, to harass, harass British and loyalist supply lines and troops as Cornwallis moves north. And so that's what he got to do for the last couple of months that he was in service in the militia. I don't know exactly what that looks like, but I do know that we can read it with a lot of detachment now and almost amusement, but the realities of war are often not that at all. Um, and so I just can't even imagine in this community that he grew up in, in this community where his wife is living, they didn't yet have any children, or at least not any children that I've found so far. It's very possible that they could have had a child or two by this point that might have, um she might have been pregnant. Like, I don't know, there's no record of that. But here's this community where his family lives, and he's trying to protect his community, and he's trying to protect their way of life. And to know that the British Army is advancing on your community after having just suffered that level of defeat a month or two earlier has to have been a hard thing. But nevertheless, his role was to harass the British and Loyalist supply lines and troops as Cornwallis moved north. Well, that is the last record that I have of Daniel serving in the Revolutionary War. The war doesn't end officially for three more years with the Treaty of Paris, when the United States of America is officially declared a recognized country. And yet those critical months in 1780 really were, with that defeat and then that turning of the tide, kind of the change that needed to happen for the Patriots to have hope that this was possible for them to win this war. So I don't know why Daniel didn't enlist again, maybe not right away, maybe after harvest season, but he didn't. And I know that he didn't, or at least I'm fairly certain that he didn't, because several years later in 1832, when he was nearing the end of his life, he applied for a Revolutionary War pension. And his pension file contains all of the details about who he served under and the periods of time in which he served. And so that's where the story comes from. Just a few lines in a pension file that lists dates of service and captains he served under that sent me down a rabbit hole of researching who these captains were and exactly where their troops were and what they were doing. And it paints such a vivid picture of that early part of Daniel's life. Now, as Daniel left the service, we know that he eventually ended up in Hawkins County, Tennessee. Now, here's what you need to know about Hawkins County, Tennessee. It sits, like I said, right in that tiny corner of Northeast Tennessee, where it borders Virginia on the north and North Carolina on the east. And for a really long time, um, North Carolina, Tennessee didn't exist. The North Carolina Territory, that colony, extended out through what we now know of as Tennessee. Interestingly enough, there are people uh in Virginia who thought they owned part of that territory. The the boundary of where those states now uh exist was not clear and was not well communicated. Today, Hawkins County is the largest county in Tennessee, and part of that is because of the way that it developed. It developed because it sat on the route of three major migratory trails. The trails that went from Virginia down into Tennessee and West, and the trails that went from Virginia down into the newly opened at the time Florida territories. And so you have the uh Holston River, which was the initial and major migratory route. You have the Knoxville to Abingdon Road, which is where there were several forts and um supply stations along that particular route. And then you have the Great Indian War Path. All three of those major migratory routes went through what is now Hawkins County, Tennessee. So if you ever are doing your family history and find somebody randomly born there or somebody stopping there for a, you know, a few years before moving on to somewhere else, it's probably because they were taking one of those routes, and that was the way they went. Now, in 1789, we know that Daniel was in Hawkins County, Tennessee, and settled there by then. He and his wife had a few children before that. Their oldest child was born in 1783, the year. That uh the Paris Treaty, the Treaty of Paris was signed. But uh we're not exactly sure where those older children were born. There's conflicting reports about North Carolina versus Tennessee. And it could be just because Tennessee was part of North Carolina, or it could be because they actually moved from where they had been living, near Hillsboro, and over into where they would eventually end up near Rogersville, which is the town in Hawkins County that Daniel and his family originally settled near. But in 1789, we see a really interesting entry into a tax book. And it's the first record we have definitively of him in this county. And it is he is registering a stray boar. Right? Apparently, there was a law on the books at the time that said that if you found a stray animal, any stray animal, a boar, a horse, a cow, uh, like whatever the stray animal was, a chicken, like it just doesn't matter. If the animal was a stray, you had to register it, and you had to pay two-thirds of the assessed value of that animal in a tax. And then you had to keep that animal and keep it fed and cared for for 12 months. And if you did that, at the end of the 12 months, you could claim that animal as yours. So we have this random entry in a taxbook for Daniel in 1789 that he registered a stray boar. And that is why we know that he was in Hawkins County by at least that point. Now, I have images in my head because I've been to this little holler now. I've seen the way that a holler. Do you know what a holler is? It's this tiny little narrow valley in between two mountain ridges, and we're talking Tennessee Appalachian Mountain mountain ridges, not Rocky Mountain ridges. And almost always there's like a little creek or stream that runs through the bottom of it. That's how the little valley was created to begin with. And so you've got these little hollers with little creeks running through them. And oftentimes families would find that very fertile ground and they would, that's where they would settle. And then the family would grow in the hauler. But the interesting thing about the haulers is that it keeps them isolated. And so you might have two or three families that end up settling there. And if you've ever done family history in Tennessee or places with similar geography, you know that you end up with lots of intermarriage between families. You might have two or three siblings from one family marrying, you know, two or three siblings from the other family that lived across the creek. And now you've got double first cousins happening. And then two or three generations later, second or third cousins might marry each other. It's very common because those little haulers were very isolated, even though they weren't really, in today's travel time, all that far away from some of the larger towns or cities. And so back up in this little hauler, I just have this image of Daniel Jones settling his wife and his children. As I looked up a couple of the other individuals who were settled in the neighborhood in the holler near him, they were men who had come from North Carolina with him, a couple of them who had served with him in the Revolutionary War. And they're starting over, they're starting a new life, they're in a new place, and he's apparently out catching wild boar to help get his family set up. So in 1789, he purchases or uh registers that stray boar. By 1790, so the next year, he purchases 144 acres in the holler that is called Beech Creek. Beech Creek was the creek that ran through the bottom of the holler. And it's so beautiful. Like I can't even explain how beautiful Beach Creek is, how beautiful this place is. Even though I was a little scared standing on that front porch, um, the peace still, because it is still really isolated, because there are still just a few farms, it's like you can almost step back in time. Or like if you look out across the field, you'll see somebody come walking across the field in Revolutionary War era clothing with a sickle on their shoulder and a, you know, dog running by their side. Like the imagery and the imagination just runs wild in this place. And so my imagination runs wild as I think about Daniel starting uh his life there with his family. 1790, he gets 144 acres. In 1796, he purchases another three acres in the next hauler over because he wants to build a mill. And that that hauler is one hauler closer to the town of Rogersville. And so there is opportunity there for trade. They're just south of the Holston River. And through that whole period of time, the 1780s, the 1790s, you've got major trade happening on the Holston River. As a matter of fact, I mentioned those um fuzzy borders, if you will. There was a couple of men who actually purchased from the Cherokee, it was something like 200 million acres, part of what is now Hawkins County. And they started selling off that land. So they had purchased it in an agreement from the Cherokee, and then they were selling it off to settlers who are coming down from Virginia. And when the North Carolina government um decided that Tennessee was going to be its own place, like it was originally called Franklin, and then the counties had two names at the same time because the government of North Carolina and this newly formed state of Tennessee were trying to figure out what their borders were and what the names were and all of that. Meanwhile, these two men from Virginia had been selling off all this land that they thought belonged to the state of Virginia, and ultimately the North Carolina government said, no, it doesn't. And they had to cede all that land to this newly formed state of Tennessee. So all of this is happening right there in this little community or this little enclave that is Hawkins County. And this is this is the world that Daniel is raising his family in. This is the world where he's trying to eke out a living, where he's deciding, you know, seven years in, let's go over a holler and build a mill so that he has some additional income for his family. And he does it, and he does it beautifully. He and his wife end up having eight children, born between 1783 and 1810, six girls and there are six boys and two girls. And all eight of those children lived to adulthood. And all but one of those children stayed in Hawkins County and raised their families there, some in that same little holler. And then in 1832, when he's living with his youngest son, his wife has passed away, he applies for that Revolutionary War pension and gives the account of the his time of service. And his pension is granted with an allotment of $30 a year. And he manages to collect three years of that pension. And we're not sure why he only collected three years because he lived for another nine years after his pension, but he dies in 1841 at the age of 84 in Hawkins County, Tennessee. And, you know, I don't know what you believe, but that as I stood on that porch and could almost see him walking over the hill through that field, I got so excited to possibly meet him one day, right? Like just love the idea of learning these stories about my ancestors and the things that they went through, even things that might just seem for the most part like a very simple life. Like I just want to hear his stories from him firsthand. And I hope I get to do that someday. I've always said that if I didn't live in Utah, I would live in Tennessee. And the place in Tennessee I would probably live would be right up there on that ridge, up into the Appalachians, going up from Knoxville up to Rogersville in those one of those little haulers. I'd have to be careful though, because Daniel now has over 4,000 descendants that we've identified. And I'm probably still related to half the town of Rogersville. As long as they invite me in for sweet tea and don't stick their dog on me. Studio sponsored by Ancestry.