my gggGrandfather David Lindsay
As one wag has said, "think of southern ladies in black taffeta and white lace meeting Sunday afternoons for tea to record their ancestral history"!
Good advice to remember! The Internet is full of information conjured up by well meaning folks with 'fantasy's' about their forebears! My story begins with a man by the name of Tipton Lindsey (with the help of Kate, his daughter) telling Margaret Isabella Lindsay his family tradition as best he could remember it. Margaret publishes the story in the well known 1889 publication "LINDSAY'S of AMERICA".
The publication tells of a David Lindsay arriving from Scotland before the Revolutionary War and buying and settling on a farm "near or where Pittsburgh now is". He brings four sons, Hezekiah, David Jr., Edward and William. Hezekiah settles in Ohio; David in Kentucky, Edward in North Carolina, and William dies in the battle of Guilford Court House under General Morgan.
There is more, but not all of it is true! This tradition seems to be an amalgamation of names and places wherein individual facts are correct but not collectively!
In the beginning of my research my mentor Susan Grabek was sure that I belong to this tradition. Not so! DNA research revealed that Hezekiah and I belong to separate Lindsay/Lindsey families. No, grandma Lindsay was not hiding anything, we just had separate ancestors! And the David Jr. apparently spoken of therein is found in Alabama!
So I tell another story in these pages. There are facts and there are suppositions, both of which I try to make clear. Probably the whole story shall never be known, The frontier's of America are not the place where family histories are preserved. Also, a lot of needed early Irish records were burned or otherwise destroyed in one conflagration or another.
I'll do my best!
My gggGrandfather David Lindsay died in Kentucky in 1814, age 74. One of his sons (my ggGrandfather John) was the administrator of his estate along with his stepmother Nancy McNay Lindsay. The trail from Kentucky to Kansas is complete. First to Sangamon County, Illinois, then on to the Kansas prairies where the bones of my father and grandfather are safely interred in their proper places.
The Kentucky/Illinois records are quite satisfactory. There are lands recorded; numerous court documents; even publicized historical records testifying to their presence in the land. To date I have not spent a lot of time on more recent Kansas events, activities and family connections. It's all been about getting back to my origins in Ireland or Scotland. I shall present a case for at least making it to Ireland.
The Pennsylvania records are also compelling but not absolutely conclusive. One item clouds the issue about David ever living there. It is the 1772 signature by a David Lindsay/Lindsey on the McClure Petition, where certain residents of "Stewart's Crossing" promise to give support to a 'roving' preacher to minister to them for a period of time. This signature looks unlike any other David Lindsay signature I know of!
Other than that issue, it is presented here that gggGrandfather David left Fayette County, PA in 1787 and arrived that same year in Kentucky. During his Pennsylvania years he raised a family; fought in the militia as a Lieutenant; served his community as 'road supervisor' and 'overseer of the poor'. He made close associates there and as the record shall show, followed them to Kentucky.
KENTUCKY TIMES
gggGrandfather David Lindsay first appears in the Kentucky records where he purchase land from Thomas Moore in 1787 of Westmoreland and Later Fayette County, PA. His first? wife Rebekah, died there in 1792, age 51; where they married is not known. Only a single entry in a family bible testifies to her being! It's unclear also if any of his children were born in Kentucky, David is first listed on the Bourbon County Tax Records in 1788. I have a birth date of son Joseph for 1790 but this is very questionable because the is no credible source for it. In the administration of David's estate of 1814 by John Lindsay and stepmother Nancy McNay, there is no mention of any minors requiring guardianship protection suggesting that all the heirs were of age. I say stepmother because of the recorded Harrison County, KY marriage of David Lindsay and Nancy McNay in 1796.
Life in Kentucky must have been difficult. The land was great for raising livestock (Kentucky thoroughbreds, you know) but the soil is thin and rocky. Just like Pennsylvania, it was on the frontier but statehood, county governments, schools, churches, census and such soon followed. The homestead was just three miles NNW of Cynthiana, Harrison County, KY, on the banks of Mill Creek which quickly drains northward into the South Licking River. The deed records purchasing 2021/2 acres from Thomas and Polly Moore but there must have have been more land added because in 1799 David paid taxes on 350 acres.
I have seen the land. It lays on a flat ridge stretching east towards the South Licking and to the west slopes down to bottom land bounded by Mill Creek on the west boundary. The Makemson family lived just across the creek to the west where they had a modest farm, mill, and distillery.
A small cemetery adjoins the property. Untended for perhaps a hundred years, it is fenced with field stone, overgrown, with only a few markers to be seen and many more either dissolved or buried in the muddy, weedy soil.
As these pages (and following) will observe, David must have had an honorable reputation. He was the first Harrison County coroner; served on juries; posted several bonds, and again elected overseer-caretaker of a poor person. He was presumably of Presbyterian ancestry. He lived close by to the renowned Cane Ridge Meeting House where great outdoor revivals were organized beginning in 1802 by Barton W. Stone and other serious minded reformers. That he was ever involved has not been established.
The Lindsay girls begin to marry local boys in 1793. In adjacent Fleming County ggGrandfather John marries Mary Glass in 1800. Deceased in early 1811 (possibly from child birth complications), John marries Sophia Lanterman later in 1811. William marries Rebecca McDowell in 1814 giving me a present day cousin Rebecca Bandy.
I shall make a great deal about David's Kentucky neighbors mainly because he never left a note for posterity about where he came from, his ancestors, nor any other clue to his wanderings and experiences! For reasons set forth, I believed he arrived in Kentucky from Fayette County, Pennsylvania where he had resided from 1772 to 1787. One confirming outside source published in 1876 by John Carol Power denotes the fact that ggGrandfather John "was born in 1773 at Ft. Pitt, now Pittsburgh Penn.". Powers goes on to present facts that otherwise should not be available to him except via oral information provided by family members! I.E. nowhere else (to my knowledge) has this collection of facts been assembled. 1876 is well before Tipton Lindsey's recorded efforts of 1885 and Margaret Isabella Lindsay's publication of 1889! Although Margaret Isabella Lindsay does not credit Powers as a source, she does basically quote him in her information about ggGrandfather John.
Further, (as I show) there is a plethora of people associated with David Lindsay in Pennsylvania found later in Kentucky as nearby neighbors and/or closely associated by activities and marriage.
One possible contradiction (mentioned earlier) is the signature obtained by Susan Grabek where a David Linds(e?)y signs the McClure Petition on Christmas Day of 1772. David's signature is accompanied by other residents of "Stewart's Crossing", now approximately the locale/town of Connellsville, Fayette County, PA. This signature looks like no other signature signed by a David Lindsay or Lindsey! Until a second (or better yet third) confirming Fayette County signature is discovered, I shall maintain that there are other more compelling, overriding facts to be considered documenting David of Kentucky presence in Fayette County, PA!
I maintain this signature was either 'sloppy'; carefully signed on the ass of a mule; or forged by someone else!
ON TO THE FRONTIER OF ILLINOIS
From Kentucky my ggGrandfather John and his second wife Sophia Lanterman Lindsay migrates to Sangamon County, Illinois. Their son John Petersen b. 1814 is along and gGrandfather Abraham will be birthed along the way (b. 1819). His first family either accompanies them or soon follows, Obviously they go with Peter Lanterman's family (his father in law); perhaps Samuel Little and family, also from Fleming County, KY; buy lands nearby; and probably bury their dead together in the Lanterman Cemetery, now 'despoiled' by virtue of being within the city limits of Springfield.
Land records indicate John purchased (perhaps not owned all at one time) 320 acres from 1823 to 1830. Abraham Lanterman (1824; brother-in-law) adjoins him on one tract where the former site of the Lanterman Cemetery was formerly located.
Here the children are raised and grandchildren born. David H. marries Mary Dorrance in 1832; gUncle John P. marries Virginia Young in 1839; and gGrandfather Abraham marries Lucy Ann wise in 1841.
Abraham and Ann's first child John D. is b. in 1842; the last Harriet C. in 1862, just three years prior to Ann's death in 1865 ("near Elkhart", Logan County).
In Springfield ggGrandfather John dies in 1842; his sons administers his estate. Sophia lives mostly with their son gGrandfather Abraham and his wife Ann Wise Lindsay. Children are born in Illinois both to Abraham and his brother John Petersen Lindsay.
ggGrandmother Sophia dies ca 1860-1870 and gGrandmother Ann dies in 1865. Grandfather William Henry (now twenty six) migrates to Russell County and is found on the 1880 Kansas census with his father Abraham listed as a widower in William's household. In 1885 William marries Mary Ann (Molly) Missimer, a girl of German-Swiss descent from Fawn Grove, York County, Pennsylvania.
By horse or wagon I dunna know, but by 1871 "Fossil Station" (now Russell, KS) was the end of the railroad line! Grandma and Grandpa settle around Bunker Hill and two children are born there in 1786 and 1888. But by 1890 they are found in Ottawa, Williamsburg, and Waverly, Kansas. In 1907 they are back in Bunker Hill to stay. They both are buried in a little cemetery on the NE fringes of Bunker Hill along with many relatives including Abraham's brother John Petersen.
I have yet to find the resting place of Abraham (or Ann). I suspect his grave is in Franklin or Coffee Counties where William and Molly wandered for several years. I suspect Ann was buried in the Lanterman Cemetery in Illinois.
My father William Guy (born at Waverly, Kansas in 1900) finishes high school in Bunker Hill; marries a girl (Eva Shaffer) from a farm west of Douglas, Butler County, Kansas whom he met while she was teaching school in Bunker Hill, dies in 1966 at the age of 66 in Wichita, Kansas.
BEFORE KENTUCKY The Pennsylvania Connection
This publication is replete with circumstantial evidence that the gggGrandfather David arrived In Kentucky from Fayette County, Pennsylvania in 1787 and remained there until he died in 1814.
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There were thought to be three David Lindsay/Lindsey's in SW Pennsylvania in the early days when the area was settled. One David (always Lindsey) was found in what is now Washington County and is determined to be a man possibly (but unproven) from Fredrick County, Virginia and associated with other local Lindsey inhabitants William, Hezekiah, and Edmund of the Tipton Lindsey tradition. It has been ascertained the this man was a private under the command of Captain Robert Miller in the later stages of the Revolutionary War. He disappears from the records after selling his Cecil TWP property in 1780. Later documents find him in Alabama.
Governmental records list two additional David's in early Westmoreland/Fayette County records, sometimes spelled Lindsay and at other times Lindsey. Except for the indeterminate 1772 McClure Petition, none of the documents found display an actual signature. This confusion is by virtue of the fact that all the documented references are county clerk recordings and simply the clerk's rendition of the name! There is one 1779 will filed for Ezekiel Hickman, which if carefully recorded, list one of the witnesses as David Lindsay.
Further, tax records locate these two David's first in Tyrone TWP, Westmoreland County and subsequently in Tyrone TWP, Fayette County, then Bullskin TWP of Fayette County. It turns out there is a reasonable explanation for the apparent existence of two David Lindsay's. Fayette County is formed out of Westmoreland County in 1783 (and retained Tyrone TWP). The greater portion of Tyrone TWP, Fayette County was renamed Bullskin TWP in 1784! There was one David after all!
David appears in the "Stewart Crossing" area in 1772, the same year his first child Eliza Jane is born. My ggGrandfather John is born in 1773, "near Ft. Pitt", as the records show. It is quite likely that all his children were born in the same place. There are no marriage relationships of the children established here simply because they were too young for such attachments.
1778 finds David a Lieutenant of various units of the militia (always 3rd Battalion) and secondly in a "Company of Rangers". It is suggested here that this is the work of a younger man; the Lieutenant status because of his land ownership and his rank a result of his popularity with the unit which nominated him so.
There is no recorded deed in the area for David Lindsay. The fact that he paid taxes during the Pennsylvania years dictates that he did indeed own property. In 1787, just before David disappears from the area, there is a recorded item which declares that a Zachariah Connell settles for £156.00 with 'blacksmith' David Lindsay for a tract of land he later patents as "Mud Island". That property is now the heart of downtown Connellsville, PA. This incongruence is clarified if it is understood the David Lindsay retained his ownership in the land by virtue of "Tomahawk Rights". These are property rights preserved (and defended) because lands of this type were established prior to any governmental jurisdiction's existing in the province. The new 'owner'/'founder' simply used his hatchet to mark trees to outline his property boundaries!
For whatever reason David never patented the land himself, but Zachariah Connell must have indeed thought the land had proper frontier title and thus willing to pay for the privilege of ownership!
BEFORE PENNSYLVANIA the NEW JERSEY Connection
Just as David Lindsay arrived on the banks of the Yohogania River in 1772 he disappears in 1787. He appears and then he disappears! From hence did he come from? No letters, written history, oral tradition, or anything else of a materiel nature provides much help!
But there are clues which provide intelligent possibilities. He had to come from the south through the wilderness General Edward Braddock (with George Washington) carved from Ft. Cumberland, in 1755 to attack the French at Ft. Duquesne; or, via Forbes Road (later improved as the Pennsylvania Turnpike) General John Forbes pushed through the wilderness from Carlisle to again attack and finally remove, the French forever at Ft. Pitt in 1758. The latter trace cut east to west across what was then a large Bedford County. ("Roads & Trails")
I imagine he came south down the Kings Highway running from Trenton, New Jersey to Philadelphia and thence west on the Pennsylvania/Forbes Road to Ft. Ligonier. From there he was only 24 miles from Stewart's Crossing. He came from Newton, Sussex County, New Jersey!
I suspect Stewart's Crossing was the end of a long road first traversed by sea from the Cookstown Area of Ireland to his "Land of Canaan"! It began after 1758 when he wrote to his Fleming Cousins in "Pennsillvena" telling of family news and seeking advice on the necessary requirements to bring and survive in the new land. He worried that they were "all ded or killed" because he hadn't heard from them as expected. Obviously he had heard some rumors of the ongoing 'French and Indian Wars' which lasted from 1754 to 1769.
This David Lindsay was the man who appears in the Sussex County, NJ records in 1769. A "wavor" (weaver) by trade, he found employment on a 'plantation' for sale as a tavern proprietor at a junction between 'Andover Furnace' and Newton, Sussex County, New Jersey.
That he found his Fleming "cusens" is almost certain as the letter correctly identifies family members known to be in Sussex County, (now Hunterdon CO.) NJ at the time. (The "Pennsillvena" address is not an error, as for some time the area was considered part of Pennsylvania even though in reality it was in New Jersey!)
Further, there is a 1769 Sussex County petition Thomas Boore submits to the authorities to keep a "public place" where both David and his Fleming cousin Andrew signs as supporters of his endeavor.
The Fleming's of the Cookstown Area (specifically Moneymore, County Derry), County Tyrone, Ireland had migrated to America and so had he! And not only is the Cookstown Area the home of the Fleming's, it is also the home of the Lindsay's of Loughry, Now Loughry is a townland in the parish of Derryloran. County Tyrone, just south of Cookstown. It is also one of the 'root locations' of DNA Group 1 of which I am a part!
David Lindsay of Sussex County is found on several documents from 1769 to 1771. Several variations of his signature exist and do not exactly match (but very close) those of the David Lindsay of Kentucky! My thesis is that this Fleming cousin is my gggGrandfather. That this man was married to a Fleming (as researchers suggest) is questionable; that he came to America with a wife (Rebekah) is also uncertain; I have more confidence he left NJ in 1772 for the wilds of SW Pennsylvania.
Just as the Pennsylvania David came and went, so too did the New Jersey David from Ireland go quietly to seek his fortune on the new frontier!
And so it is, all the truth is yet to be discovered. Irish records prior to 1800 being what they are, this is probably as far as I can go.
This life's a tale,
An empty song.
'Tis but a breath,
However long.
For my children; October 2010.