Women of the Revolution: Patience Wright
History is filled with stories of “feisty females”. Many lived their lives skirting societal norms to carve out their own piece of history. It seems so much more has been written about the brave men who served during the Revolutionary War, yet women served in various (and important) capacities as well, even on the battlefield. One of the more interesting characters, however, was thought to have assisted in the years leading up to the war by passing information to Benjamin Franklin in a purportedly unique way.
Patience Wright
Patience Wright (née Lovell) was born in 1725 in Oyster Bay (Long Island), New York. Her parents were Quakers who moved to Bordentown, New Jersey when Patience was four years old. Her parents insisted that she and her sisters dress in white, symbolic of their purity, and the family followed a strict vegetarian diet.
Patience, spirited and headstrong, managed to escape her home and head to Philadelphia where in 1748 she married an older man, Joseph Wright, a barrel maker. The age difference came to be an issue as she would later remark to a friend “that [he had] nothing but Age and Money to recommend himself to her favour.”1
When Joseph died in 1769, she found herself in need of income. At a young age, Patience and her sister Rachel sculpted small figures out of bread dough to amuse themselves. She, along with her sister Rachel, also a widow, began to produce wax sculptures to sell. They soon became well known for their amazing life-like sculptures.
Patience had a unique method of “birthing” her art pieces. This method would become as well known as the sculptures themselves. Wax must be kept warm in order to be pliable. She would work the wax in her lap and under her skirts, and then reveal fully formed heads and torsos as if they were being birthed. She then gave special attention to minute details of her sculptures, adding lip and cheek colors and eyelashes.
The two sisters opened two businesses, one in Philadelphia and one in New York, in 1770. Their shop in New York was located on Queen Street, but in 1771 the entire block was destroyed by fire, leaving Patience financially devastated.
Patience met Jane Franklin Mecom, Benjamin Franklin’s youngest sister, and through Jane she was able to obtain an introduction from Franklin to London high society. After her move to London, his letter opened doors of opportunity and her work was soon in demand. To the lords and ladies of England she was thought to be eccentric, most notably because she wore wooden shoes and kissed both male and female on the cheek, regardless of their class. Some were accepting of her eccentricities while others expressed disdain.
Wright’s informal manner was something of a shock to the courtly set, and yet not entirely unwelcome. Her base language and friendly liberties, coupled with her work in a medium distinct from any art yet seen, made Wright something of a novelty – wholly American. Rough-hewn but strong, coarse but honest, she was the New World made flesh.2
Not everyone was enthralled with her, however. Abigail Adams remarked to her sister after meeting Patience at a London party: “Her person and countenance resemble an old maiden in your Neighbourhood Nelly Penniman, except that one is neat, the other the Queen of sluts.”3
In 1775 The London Magazine called her a “Promethean modeler” and described her work:
In her very infancy she discovered a striking genius, and began with making faces with new bread and putty, to such excellence that she was advised to try her skill in wax. . . Her natural abilities are surpassing, and had a liberal and extension education been added to her innate qualities, she had been a prodigy.4
Patience cheekily referred to King George III and his wife as “George” and “Charlotte” and they were devoted patrons, at least until she became more outspoken in her criticism of his handling of colonial matters. Even though she lived and worked in London, she was still very much an American patriot.
She corresponded with Benjamin Franklin and is said to have relayed information she overheard in her sculpting sessions regarding members of Parliament and their views on possible war with the colonies (verbatim as written originally):
to say the parlement will not meett untill more explicit acount comes from Ld. How, by a vesel sent for that purpose to bring Inteligens &c. This deception has gave meney of the wise English membrs to go on ther pleasures some one way some to ther Contry seats, that by thir means only about 50 membrs will attend at the cokpitt nor be ready at the House to apose the renewil of the aCursed act that keeps poor Platt confind in Newgate with others of our Contry men.5
After Patience’s death, Rachel would claim her sister passed letters to America in wax heads and busts: “how did she make her Cuntry [sic] her whole attention, her Letters gave us ye first alarm…she sent Letters in buttons & pictures heads to me, ye first in Congress attended Constantly to me for them in that perilous hour.”6
Her work as a “spy” was later impacted when the war began and she fell out of favor with her loyal patrons because of her strident patriotic sentiments. She wrote many letters to Franklin while he was in Paris, but apparently she had fallen out of favor with him as well (or had at least wearied him):
This is the 5th lettr I have wrot to Dr. Frankling and meny other to mr. Scayrs [Sayre], Bankcroft &c. none of which I have Recd. any answr. Mrs. Wright most respectful Complnts to dr. Frankling and hopes he is well, and most humbly begs some direction how to proced.7
She even suggested at one point that Franklin encourage a rebellion in England as well. She never received a response. In 1780 she moved to Paris, seeking to open a wax works there. Her attempts at establishing a patronage were largely rebuffed, for after all France at the time was on the brink of its own revolution. The French were also not as enthralled with Patience Wright and her unique talents as were her English patrons. She returned to London in 1782.
In an apparent attempt to “drum up some business” she wrote letters to both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson:
I most sincerely wish not only to make the likeness of Washington, but of those five gentlemen, who assisted at the signing the treaty of peace, that put an end to so bloody and dreadful a war. The more public the honours bestowed on such men by their country, the better. To shame the English king, I would go to any trouble and expense to add my mite in the stock of honour due to Adams, Jefferson, and others, to send to America.8
She never received a response from either man. A Smithsonian web site article entitled “The Madame Tussaud of the American Colonies Was a Founding Fathers Stalker”, tongue-in-cheek implies Patience was a stalker.
Patience Wright died in London in 1785 at the age of sixty. According to the Smithsonian article, Rachel wrote to Benjamin Franklin asking for funds to bury her sister, but no record exists of a response. Patience was buried somewhere in London and much of her unique work forgotten by history. Wax is not a particularly enduring substance, although some like those sculpted by Madame Tussaud have been preserved. Patience Wright’s only remaining wax figure is of William Pitt, a.k.a. Lord Chatham, on display in Westminster Abbey.
P.S. Here are two more articles featuring other “feisty females” of the American Revolutionary War: Mercy Otis Warren and Nancy Morgan Hart.
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Footnotes:
The Other Side of the American Revolution: Finding Your Loyalist Ancestors
One of the first things which compels many of us to begin our quest to learn more about our genealogical roots is the desire to find ancestors who had “fire in their bellies” during the volatile American era known as The Revolutionary War – the rebels and patriots. To be sure, it’s a matter of great pride and joy to find such an ancestor – or many ancestors if you are so fortunate – who either served on the front lines or provided aid and comfort to their fellow patriots. But, what about those ancestors who didn’t necessarily see eye-to-eye with their rabble-rousing friends and family, desiring instead to remain loyal to the British Crown? Even today some consider them traitors to the “American cause”, but shouldn’t we be curious to know their reasons? These days there are numerous resources available to discover more about our Revolutionary War patriot ancestors, but how do we uncover those on the “other side”? As it turns out, there are also vast resources for finding loyalists ancestors.
They called themselves “Loyalists”. The patriots – the rebels – called them “Tories”. To be considered a Tory meant you unwaveringly supported royal authority. On the other hand, patriots, such as the group who called themselves “Sons of Liberty”, had a decidedly different view. In the summer of 1765, the onerous Stamp Act spurred the formation of the organization known as Sons of Liberty. Ironically, the name was taken from a speech delivered in the British Parliament earlier that year when Lieutenant Colonel Isaac Barré, a British army officer and politician, referred to colonists resisting royal authority as “sons of liberty”.
Resistance had been on the rise for some time, and if the British government didn’t quite yet “get it”, Benjamin Franklin plainly informed them so in early 1766 as he testified before Parliament:
Q. What was the temper of America toward Great Britain before the year 1763?
A. The best in the world. They submitted willingly to the government of the crown, and paid, in their courts, obedience to the acts of Parliament. Numerous as the people are in the several old provinces, they cost you nothing in forts, citadels, garrisons, or armies, to keep them in subjection. They were governed by this country at the expense only of a little pen, ink, and paper; they were led by a thread. They had not only a respect, but an affection for Great Britain; for its laws, its customs and manners, and even a fondness for its fashions, that greatly increased the commerce. Natives of Britain were always treated with particular regard; to be an Old-England man was of itself a character of some respect, and gave a kind
of rank among us.
Q. And what is their temper now?
A. O, very much altered.
– Colonial agent Benjamin Franklin, before Parliament, February 1766 3
Even as he plainly spoke those words, Franklin himself yet remained loyal to the British government, this despite being fully aware of the growing resentment in colonial America. He was very proud of his British heritage and his goal had always been to ensure “that a consolidating Union, by a fair and equal Representation of all the Parts of this Empire in Parliament, is the only firm Basis on which its political Grandeur and Stability can be founded.” 6
Benjamin Franklin would, of course, eventually part ways with “the Empire”, but by this time he had made a career out of taking various royal government positions, most notably and recently as head of the American postal system. He himself would have likely been considered a “Loyalist” at the time, and later regarded with a great deal of suspicion even after he took his seat as Pennsylvania’s newest delegate to the Second Continental Congress in 1775.
In 1775 disdain for anyone calling himself(or herself) a loyalist was evident at a Philadelphia meeting attended by several men from Paxtang (Dauphin County):
In 1775 several Paxtang men were in Philadelphia. One of them, who belonged to that vilified class of ten years previous, the “Paxton Boys,” [vigilantes] denounced, in the presence of Mr. [Joseph] Galloway and other gentlemen whose loyalist sympathies were pronounced, those opposed to resistance to English oppressions as Tories: One of the latter asked, “Pray, sir, what is a Tory?” “A Tory,” promptly replied the patriot, “is a thing whose head is in England and its body in America and its neck ought to be stretched.” 7
And it wasn’t just the gentlemen – the ladies apparently had their own disdain of loyalists. One newspaper called it a “droll affair” which occurred in Kinderhook, New York:
The following droll affair lately happened at Kinderhook, New York. A young fellow, an enemy to the liberties of America, going to a quilting frolic, where a number of young women were collected, and he the only man in company, began his aspersions on Congress, as usual, and held forth some time on the subject, till the girls, exasperated at his impudence, laid hold of him, stripped him naked to the waist, and instead of tar, covered him with molasses, and for feathers took the down tops of flags, which grow in the meadows, and coated him well and then let him go.8
This incident occurred in the early fall of 1775, a few months after the first shots of the war were fired on Boston Commons on the 19th of April. Tensions had been escalating over the past decade since the onerous Stamp Act was imposed on colonial America, and patriot mobs tarring and feathering Loyalists wasn’t uncommon. Estimates vary as to just how many colonists remained loyal to the British Crown. Families divided over the question of loyalty.
According to a blog article at Ancestry, approximately one-third of all colonists remained loyal to the Crown, an estimated half-million. Who were these Loyalists? You could count on those who depended on a favorable relation with Britain to be Loyalists – businessmen, wealthy landowners and those employed in the service of the colonial government. Another element was the clergy of the Established Church.
These are the people patriots like Samuel Adams and John Adams had to contend with as they attempted to turn hearts and minds toward revolution. By then loyalty to the British Crown had been ingrained in American culture and the mindset of the citizenry. Why rock the boat?
Might you have ancestors who chose to “rock the boat”? For tips and resources to assist you in finding them, you’ll find them in this issue of Digging History Magazine, featuring Massachusetts and is long and storied history.
FYI, purchase a subscription to Digging History Magazine and you’ll receive this issue as part of the current promotion (see link below)!
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Footnotes:
Celebrating America 250: Radical Presbyterianism (Seeds of Revolution?)
Note: This article is part of a series of articles commemorating America’s 250th birthday. You might want to read this two-part article before reading this one for continuity: Part 1 and Part 2.
Just who were those men who gathered for debate in the Mecklenburg county courthouse in May of 1775? Was there something else contributing to the particularly fiery brand of radicalism in Mecklenburg County? In 1765 the Stamp Act imposed a tax on all printed materials throughout the colonies. It was an affront to free speech.
In North Carolina, Mecklenburg County in particular, paying taxes to the Anglican Church was an affront – their version of the onerous Stamp Act. The Marriage and Vestry Acts were particularly onerous to Presbyterian firebrand Alexander Craighead and his followers. It was illegal for marriages to be performed other than by ministers of the Anglican faith. If settlers
in the back woods of North Carolina wished to legally marry they needed to travel many miles to do so.
As Scott Syfert points out in his book,The First American Declaration of Independence?, if a woman was pregnant it might take months before she was able to travel to make the union legal. Meanwhile, the child would be born out of wedlock. In 1769 Presbyterians of Mecklenburg County had sent a petition directly to William Tryon, Governor of North Carolina. Their petition for redress was filed on behalf of approximately one thousand freemen of the church of Scotland.
Petitioners pointed out the King had expressly “instructed the Lords Proprietors to grant other and greater religious privileges to dissenters.”9 Scottish Presbyterians known as Covenanters had been persecuted by the Church of England following the rise of what was considered to be a rather radical movement, led by Richard Cameron.
In June of 1680 Cameron and his followers (“Cameronians”) sought independence from the English, proclaiming them enemies of Christ and His covenants.
Their “revolution” was rather short-lived and resulted in the death of Cameron, his head and hands lopped off and presented to the authorities. Most of the 1680s were known as the “Killing Time” in Scotland – beheadings, dismemberment, hangings, imprisonment and torture were hallmarks of this decade. In 1685 two women, Margaret Lauchlane and Margaret Wilson, were tied to stakes situated in Wigtown’s tidal flats.
Margaret Lauchlane, in her sixties, was tied to a stake “a good way in beyond the other, and she was first despatched [sic], in order to terrify the other to a compliance with such oaths and conditions as they required.” However, young Margaret Wilson remained steadfast, singing the 25th Psalm “from verse 7th, downward a good way, and read the 8th Chapter to the Romans with a great deal of cheerfulness, and then prayed.” Just as she was about to go under someone pulled her up and asked if she would pray for the King, adjuring her to say “God save the King”. She replied, “God save him, if he will, for it is his salvation I desire.” She refused, however, to renounce her faith, whereupon she was thrown back into the water and drowned.10
In response to persecution many of the so-called Covenanters fled their homeland to find refuge in Ireland. By the mid 1700s many would participate in a great Scots-Irish immigration to America in search of religious freedom. In 1715 the Craighead family, Irish Presbyterians led by patriarch and minister Thomas Craighead, arrived in America. Craighead’s charismatic and animated sermons moved audiences to tears, yet in turn, his radical views were offensive to many. Thomas passed his hard-line views down to his son Alexander who began his public ministry in 1735 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
Alexander’s entrance into public ministry coincided with the period in America known as the “Great Awakening” when preachers like George Whitefield traveled across the land proclaiming the Gospel. Whitefield, a so-called “New Light”, engendered controversy of his own.
New Light preachers tended to be charismatic and of either the Presbyterian or Congregational faith, preaching to crowds of thousands. Some of them would shun cities where the Episcopal Church held sway and head to the back country, not only to preach, but to settle. Their particular religious fervor, an affront to more traditional and staid faiths, was labeled seditious – “innovators, disturbers of the peace of the church, sowers of heresies and sedition”.11
Indeed, the Carolina (South and North) backwoods were a perfect fit for these “radicals”, be they followers of Whitefield or later of Alexander Craighead. In 1741 London’s Society of the Propagation of the Gospel sent Reverend Richard Locke (Anglican Church) as a missionary among the German settlers of Pennsylvania. He would later travel throughout the region and report his findings to officials in London, expressing a special disdain for Whitefield and his followers. The area was overrun with them!
A great many Papists, but the Country is so much covered with woods & some hundred miles round tis impossible to know, but it is very much over spread with New Lights Whitefield’s Followers; Covenanters who receive their Sacrament with a gun charg’d and drawn sword; & profess they’l fight for Christ against civil Magistrates.12
The Presbyterian Church of Scotland, founded by John Knox in 1560 (the year Scotland freed itself from Catholicism), set the tone for adherents, both present and future:
The first Confession of Faith prepared by Knox and his associates, asserted explicitly the right and duty of the people to resist the tyranny of their rulers. This was the result of the reformation being carried on by the people.13
This was, of course, two centuries before the American revolutionary era. In the sixteenth century, before the Reformation of 1560, government and religion were enmeshed, and corruptly so. As such, Scotland’s Parliament wasn’t representing the people; thus, the church arose and “became their great organ for resisting oppression and withstanding the encroachments
of their sovereigns.”14
Alexander Craighead appears to have taken those founding principles to heart (and then some!). As Scott Syfert points out, “[T]he ramifications of Knox’s political views were fundamental to New Lights such as Craighead. The English kings, Craighead believed, were usurpers who had lost their legitimacy to rule as a result of their having abandoned true Protestantism in favor of satanic Anglicanism.”15
Craighead led his congregation in 1743 “with uplifted swords, their separation from the Crown which had so impiously violated Covenant engagements on both sides of the Atlantic.”16 On that day the congregation adopted their own “declaration” (in part):
We do also testify against James, duke of York, his having any legal right to rule over this realm, by reason of his Popishprinciples . . . We do likewise enter our testimony against George the I. his having any legal right to rule over this realm,because he being an outlandish Lutheran;and likewise against George the II., for their being sworn prelatics, the heads of malignants, and protectors of sectarian heretics . . . and for their being established head of the Church by the laws of England.17
Outside his circle of followers, Craighead made few friends and, no doubt, many enemies. While the Quakers didn’t seem to mind that he spoke his mind, His Majesty’s representatives thought Craighead’s pamphlets and sermons to be seditious, treasonous and a distraction.
Alexander Craighead left for Virginia sometime between 1749 and 1752 and then made his way to Mecklenburg County, settling on the Rocky River. There he found a people living far removed from civil authority who much preferred to govern themselves.
Craighead had a captive audience of like-minded Scots-Irish brethren and he freely “poured forth his principles of civil and religious government, undisturbed by the jealousy of those in authority”.18 The people he led endured hardships of the backwoods pioneer which included, by necessity, confrontations with native Indians. He organized several churches in the region.
The representatives who met in Charlotte in May of 1775 were members of these congregations. Four years before meeting at Charlotte they had fought together at Alamance against the royal governor’s troops. As one historian wrote:
Under the teachings of Craighead, it is not strange that these people should be among the first to conceive the idea of Independence, to announce it to the world in their convention held in May, 1775, and with their fortunes and lives to sustain that idea through the trying scenes of the Revolution.19
Juxtapose the Reformation of 1560 with the Mecklenburg Declaration and one wonders if history was repeating itself two centuries later. It would seem to be possible.
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Footnotes:
Celebrating America 250: Declaring Independence (May 20, 1775 or July 4, 1776?) – Part 2
If you missed it, here’s Part 1 of this thought-provoking article, part of a series leading up to the celebration of America’s 250th birthday.
By the time of John McKnitt Alexander’s death in 1817 historians were busy ensuring New England and the middle colonies received prominence when documenting Revolutionary War history. As Syfert pointed out:
. . . the American Revolution began at the battle of Lexington; major battles were then fought in Boston, New York and Philadelphia; the winter at Valley Forge; and then . . . Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. Various other incidents might have occurred, and, oh yes, there was the Battle at Saratoga, but they weren’t worthy of particular attention. In short, if General Washington wasn’t there, it just didn’t matter.14
Was it regional prejudice as Syfert suggests? Perhaps so since, after all, the South was far less developed than northern cities and states for that matter. About the time of John McKnitt Alexander’s death, controversy was already brewing and Alexander’s record of the Mecklenburg proceedings (and subsequent declaration) were about to explode into a controversy which would grab headlines for decades (and decades) to come.
Southerners, and North Carolinians in particular, were galled by Northern claims of American historical superiority. Congressman William Davidson of Mecklenburg began to investigate how best to set the record straight and ensure the proper place in history his constituency deserved. The opening shots, you might say, were fired when Dr. Alexander published his article in 1819.
Most of the original controversy arose when Dr. Alexander didn’t adequately explain exactly how he had obtained a “true copy” (of what?). What had been passed into his hands were his father’s “rough notes” and a full page document, legible, but unsigned and undated. This is apparently the copy he used to send to William Davidson and the Register. He would note it was a copy in “an unknown hand”.
The papers had been found by Dr. Alexander in his father’s home along with a roll of pamphlets from the bygone Revolutionary era. No one has ever been able to definitively identify who produced the copy. As was the custom of the times, the April 30 story was picked up and printed in other newspapers, including the Essex Register (Salem, Massachusetts). Former President John Adams read the story and the crux of the decades-to-come controversy was formed.
Why would John Adams be so intensely interested in the Mecklenburg Declaration? After reading it, he was struck by the fact it sounded so similar in tone to Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence as to make him wonder if Jefferson had plagiarized the Mecklenburg Declaration. If you have seen HBO’s John Adams series you know how the two men drifted apart, especially following their bitter rivalry which climaxed with Jefferson’s narrow defeat of John Adams in 1800.
Yet, in later years when both were ensconced in retirement, they began to exchange correspondence in early 1812. Adams had once concluded Jefferson to be a fraud, a “shadow man”.17 The two men never agreed on much, if at all. They simply were polar opposites, both in politics and temperament.
Over the years of their renewed “friendship” they exchanged over 150 letters, although the vast majority were written by Adams. After reading the Mecklenburg account in his local newspaper he wrote to Jefferson wondering why he had never heard of this document. His missive implied, even if subtly so, that had Jefferson known of it he had deliberately concealed it. If he, John Adams, had been made aware of it he would have championed it all the way to July 4, 1776 himself. Perhaps his logic was, as Syfert wrote:
The subtext was unmistakable: You knew about this, and suppressed it. If you had not kept the Mecklenburg Declaration secret, I would have used it to lead a movement toward independence, not you. I would now have the credit for American Independence, not you. And now I have found you out.19
Surely now Adams had proof of what he had suspected all along – Thomas Jefferson was a fraud, perhaps a plagiarist. One sentence of his June 1819 letter to Jefferson said it all, referring to his new awareness of the Mecklenburg Declaration:
The genuine sense of America at that moment was never expressed as well before, nor since.20
Many of Adams’ letters were lengthy; this one was, by contrast, rather short – only 229 words. Yet, he managed to denigrate Thomas Paine and his Common Sense pamphlet, as well as point out more than once that the Mecklenburg Declaration was produced a year before Jefferson’s. Indeed, some passages of the 1776 document were strikingly similar in tone and wording. Could Jefferson really have been guilty of plagiarism? Adams certainly thought so, for it was evident to him Jefferson had “copied the spirit, the sense, and the expressions of it verbatim”21 as he had written to another correspondent, William Bentley, on July 5.
He and Bentley continued to correspond and it becomes more evident that Adams was convinced Jefferson was both a fraud and a plagiarist. What did Thomas Jefferson make of all this? Adams had enclosed a copy of the article in his June 22 letter. After reading the article and Adams’ letter he did indeed have an opinion.
Quite simply he wrote back, “I believe it spurious”, although he did backtrack a bit before closing the letter of July 9. He declined to outright proclaim the whole Mecklenburg document a fabrication, but instead decided to count it as fact until proven otherwise. Still, he ended the letter saying, “For the present, I must be an unbeliever in the apocryphal gospel.”22
Jefferson may have been attempting to appear diplomatic and even-handed in his response, but human nature would tend to assume he was “hot under the collar”. Adams, however, continued to “investigate” and correspond with Bentley. He simply would not let it pass and became increasingly concerned with the question of which came first, the Mecklenburg Declaration or the one he himself signed in 1776. Was Jefferson a plagiarist who had lifted passages from MecDec or was MecDec a fabrication which utilized passages of the Declaration of Independence in an attempt to discredit Jefferson and this vital piece of American history? Let the national debates begin!
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day, July 4, 1826, appropriately enough, on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Fate often takes strange twists. Their years-long correspondence was discovered in 1829 and published excerpts became available. North Carolinians in particular were provoked after Joseph Seawell Jones wrote “A Defense of the Revolutionary History of the State of North Carolina from the Aspersions of Mr. Jefferson” in 1834.
To North Carolinians the Mecklenburg committee members were worth of glory and a hallowed place in history, not aspersion. Thomas Jefferson, not so much. Southerners rose together and defended the much-maligned Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. The Southern Literary Messenger proclaimed “The Question Settled”23 in June 1839 since a man by the name of Peter Force had uncovered a 1775 newspaper which had published something referred to as “resolutions”. This would add a new layer of complexity to the controversy.
Were there two separate documents, one a declaration of independence and the other a set of resolutions, which by contrast were rather bland? To ardent and unwavering Jefferson supporters it was a stick worth chasing – and chase (and bash) they did for years to come. It would later appear Jeffersonians won out after all when William Henry Hoyt published a scathing book in 1907. The title said it all and set the tone for debate for years to come:
The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence: A Study of Evidence Showing that the Alleged Early Declaration of Independence by Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, on May 20th, 1775, is Spurious
Blow by blow, Hoyt attempted to make mincemeat of MecDec, although he claimed to have at first attempted to write a defense of it. However, he would come to the conclusion that the “declaration” dated May 20 was really the “resolves” dated May 31, 1775 which Peter Force had discovered years earlier. Hoyt’s arguments were presented at length and included an extensive appendix of documents to support his conclusions.
In actuality his claims proved little, yet they were impressive enough to introduce widespread doubt as to the veracity of the whole Mecklenburg Declaration historical narrative. His approach, “death by a thousand cuts” as Syfert referred to it, was largely successful, however.
Through the years various witnesses to the events of May 20, 1775 had been interviewed and provided sworn testimony. After Hoyt’s claims became widely published others would be emboldened to challenge MecDec even more vigorously, sometimes viciously. A.S. Salley, Jr., a member of the South Carolina Historical Commission would hammer the historic claims of neighbor North Carolina. Salley was sure whatever testimony had been provided was either
coerced or coached.
On and on it went. North Carolinians continued to celebrate May 20 as a hallowed day in their history, while detractors continued to argue otherwise. Even after an important document, a diary entry written by a Moravian who happened to take note of Captain Jack’s passage through his neck of the woods during the period of time in question, the debate continued to slant toward disbelief.
In 1906 a supporter of MecDec produced a copy with “signatures”. While there had been earlier attempts to fraudulently produce the document, this one was merely meant to be commemorative in nature. Still, it engendered more controversy and derision. MecDec deniers simply would not relent.
Over the years massive amounts of ink have been spilled in defense or detraction of the Mecklenburg Declaration. At times it seemed impossible to prove beyond doubt what actually occurred.
After reading Scott Syfert’s book, this writer tends to agree with his even-handed presentation and conclusions. He used the premise of Occam’s razor which is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a scientific andphilosophical rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities.”
In other words, to use modern vernacular, “KISS – Keep It Simple (some add “Stupid”). The discovery of the Moravian diary would seem to provide adequate evidence and affirmation of the events of May and June 1775 in regards to the citizenry of Mecklenburg County. Syfert certainly believes it as his concluding views reveal. Yes, the Mecklenburg committee met on May 19 and on the 20th produced their version of a declaration of independence.
These men were a small group, yet given our knowledge now of what was brewing across the colonies, their views were largely representative of the masses. It was their fiery and patriotic sentiments which were not likely to have been necessarily meant for widespread publication, as happened later with the Declaration of Independence.
While not all historians supportive or otherwise may ever agree on whether any validity should be ascribed to John McKnitt Alexander’s “rough notes”, there is still the Moravian diary entry which also included a corroborative mention of a certain phrase from MecDec – “free and independent”. The phrase was not used in the so-called “Mecklenburg Resolves” of May 31.
Did North Carolinians make more of the events than was warranted? Perhaps, but one shouldn’t cast too much aspersion for their brand of patriotic pride. Many of their opinions and the state’s historical records were cast in stone long before corroborative evidence was uncovered.
While there are still plenty of detractors, it’s interesting to note some views swinging back in favor of MecDec. Commemorations in the form of murals, statues and plaques have appeared in Charlotte in recent years. As historian and author Andrew Roberts commented on the occasion of the 236th anniversary of MecDec in 2011: “if twenty-six North Carolinians say that something took place, my inclination as a historian is to believe them.”24
No matter. Historians love to quibble and query – it’s what they do, right?
Next up: Radical Presbyterianism (Seeds of Revolution?). Was there something else contributing to the particularly fiery brand of radicalism in Mecklenburg County?
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Footnotes:
Celebrating America 250: Declaring Independence (May 20, 1775 or July 4, 1776?) – Part 1
In honor of the celebration of America’s 250th birthday, this is the first in a series of articles in the coming weeks which are related to this momentous occasion. First up is a two-part article, a thought-provoking one, regarding our founding document, The Declaration of Independence.
May 20, 1775 or July 4, 1776?
Does that seem an odd question to put forth as America prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of its founding document? It’s settled fact the document originally drafted by Thomas Jefferson which proclaimed liberty for all is one of our country’s first and most fundamental founding documents, right?
The image pictured below page is a composite of sorts, depicting what Americans know as the Declaration of Independence signed on July 4, 1776 overlaid with a somewhat questionable document. Some might even call it “fake” (the word is used a lot these days, isn’t it?). Note: Click the image to view the full image if you wish.
Indeed, many historians past and present insist the whole document, the so-called Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, and its premise are fake, even preposterous. I confess to not having ever heard of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence until I was researching family history for a client and discovered her ancestor, John Davidson, was one of the signers of the document. Having no prior knowledge of the document (or the controversy), my inquiring mind wanted to know more. I found some answers and thoughtful insights after reading an excellent book entitled, The First American Declaration of Independence?, by Scott Syfert.
Since we’re approaching “Independence Month” let’s take a trip back in time and put ourselves in the place of our forbears who were growing increasingly agitated with distant and unrepresentative British governance. In May of 1775 news of an event which had occurred, quite shockingly the month before, in Lexington, Massachusetts, finally reached Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Historians would later refer to this seminal event as “the shot heard ‘round the world”.
The night before several riders, including Paul Revere, had ridden through the countryside warning of approaching British troops. Just past sunup on April 19 the first shots rang out and eight militiamen were felled. The engagement wasn’t a battle, per se, as it’s since been romanticized – more of a skirmish. Nonetheless, eight Americans lost their lives and the fuse had been lit. News at that time traveled at the speed of an express rider, and about a month later word reached the North Carolina backwoods.
The meeting called in Mecklenburg County wasn’t necessarily extraordinary for the times. News of alarming incidents had triggered meetings, pamphlets, essays and newspaper diatribes for some time. In 1774 Rowan County (next to Mecklenburg) stood with Bostonians after the unceremonious tea-dumping incident in December 1773. If Boston was under duress and oppression, then so was Rowan County and the rest of America. One resolution put it rather succinctly: “the Cause of the Town of Boston is the common Cause of the American Colonies.”25
The pot was beginning to boil in Mecklenburg County as well. A summons was sent to the captain of each militia company throughout the county to appoint two persons to send to Charlotte with enough authority to put in action a plan to deal with increasing encroachment on their rights and liberty. At the time Charlotte wasn’t much more than a small village, but it was the county seat and location of the Mecklenburg County court house.
Although records of the meeting were lost in a fire at John McKnitt Alexander’s home in the early 1800s, the oft-repeated story has remained unchanged in North Carolina historical records.
The committee of men met, debated and drafted a set of resolutions, later called the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence (or “MecDec” for short). Less than a page long, MecDec proclaimed the citizenry of Mecklenburg County “a free and independent People”26 who ought to be free to govern themselves. Furthermore, they proposed to “dissolve the political bands which have connected us to the Mother Country” and solemnly pledged “to each other our mutual cooperation, our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred honor.”27
About 2:00 on the morning of May 20 all resolutions passed unanimously. One of the delegates, Captain James Jack, was recruited to express the committee’s declaration to Congress in Philadelphia. By mid-June Captain Jack had delivered his package and returning home carried a circular, or open letter, signed by North Carolina’s congressional delegates: Richard Caswell, William Hooper and Joseph Hughes.
Acknowledging alarming concerns of their constituents, the three congressmen urged citizens to prepare as other colonies were doing the same:
We conjure you by the Ties of Religion Virtue and Love of your Country to follow the Example of your sister Colonies and to form yourselves into a Militia. The Election of the officers and the Arrangement of the men must depend upon yourselves. Study the Art of Military with the utmost attention; view it as the Science upon which your future security depends.28
They spoke of readiness, watchfulness and resisting tyranny, then with this seemingly misplaced ending, wrote:
. . . look to the reigning Monarch of Britain as your rightful and lawful sovereign, dare every danger and difficulty in support of his person crown and dignity and consider every man as a Traitor to his King who infringing the Rights of his American Subjects attempts to invade these glorious Revolution principles which placed him on the Throne and must preserve him there.529
Huh? The final sentence seemed totally out of place with the preceding words. Why the hesitancy and caution in the ending? In actuality, while Congress was well aware of growing unrest of American colonists, they were still hoping to find a way to compromise with the Crown and avoid armed conflict. On July 5, 1775, just days following Captain Jack’s departure, Congress adopted the so-called “Olive Branch Petition”.
Clearly, Congress was tip-toeing around this delicate issue:
Your Majesty’s Ministers, persevering in their measures, and proceeding to open hostilities for enforcing them, have compelled us to arm in our own defence, and have engaged us in a controversy so peculiarly abhorrent to the affections of your still faithful Colonists, that when we consider whom we must oppose in this contest, and if it continues, what may be the consequences, our own particular misfortunes are accounted by us only as parts of our distress.30
They were displeased with the state of affairs in America, yet proceeded ever so delicately so as not to outright blame the King – merely his magisterial authorities. Congress needn’t have bothered to broach the subject so delicately as King George refused to even read the document. This was when Congress and all Americans realized war was inevitable. Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense, was published in January 1776. On July 4, the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia. The history seems clear for all the above-described events. Thus, it begs the question as to why and when the Mecklenburg document became such a controversial piece of history. Good question.
MecDec became controversial years later, long after the Revolutionary War was fought and won, when an article submitted by “J. McKnitt” was published in the April 30, 1819 edition of the Weekly Raleigh Register. Dr. Joseph McKnitt Alexander
signed his name just as his father John had.
Dr. Alexander provided details of the Mecklenburg event, noting that Abraham Alexander was elected chairman and his own father elected clerk of the proceedings. He recorded each Resolve in the article and added that “bye-laws” had been added. The resolutions “were all passed, sanctioned and decreed unanimously, about 2’clock, A.M. May 20.”31
Dr. Alexander further wrote that Captain James Jack was sent to Philadelphia to deliver a copy of the Mecklenburg proceedings. He noted that the Captain, upon returning to Charlotte, informed his fellow committee members that while Congress individually agreed with the declaration’s sentiments, they deemed it premature to proceed further at the time. The joint letter sent back and signed by North Carolina’s delegation confirms as such. Again, what was controversial since it seemed to mesh with what one might refer to as “facts already in evidence”.
Perhaps it was how Dr. Alexander ended his article:
The foregoing is a true copy of the papers on the above subject, left in my hands by John McKnitt Alexander, dec’d. I find it mentioned on file that the original book was burned April, 1800. That a copy of the proceedings was sent to Hugh Williamson in New York, then writing a History of North Carolina, and that a copy was sent to Gen. W.B. Davie.32
While his father had maintained custody of all original papers, Dr. Alexander admitted most of them were destroyed in the 1800 fire. From whence came the resolutions published in the 1819 article? John McKnitt apparently attempted to reconstruct what he could from what remained. When he completed the task he sent at least one copy to General Davie, someone John had served with during the war. Historians refer to it as the “Davie Copy”.
It’s doubtful John McKnitt Alexander was concerned with what future historians would think of what he did to preserve an important part of history. In the ensuing years he would always claim it was the correct version of what transpired in May 1775. This was all well and good while residents of the area who recalled those events were still around to verify his claims, but when he and others began dying off it was harder to make those claims. As the Register’s editor pointed out in 1819, there may have been those in the community who were not aware of what had transpired in ‘75.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this article next week.
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Footnotes:
What’s In a Name: Wartime Baby Names
American humorist Evan Esar once said, “a signature always reveals a man’s character – and sometimes even his name”.27 In the case of those highlighted in this article, their names more likely spoke volumes about the political leanings of the family they were born into.
I came across these years ago when I was writing “Tombstone Tuesday” articles for the Digging History blog. The more I researched the more of them I found. It was simply amazing to discover how many men were named “States Rights” and it appears that most, if not all, were born in Confederate or former Confederate states…hmm.
Many were born around the time of the Civil War. Some carried the name into the twentieth century. South Carolina seemed to have been a hotbed of states rights fervor – Union County in particular – before, during and long after the Civil War. Here are a few examples:
States Rights Aycock
He was born on July 29, 1933, son of Edmund and Lula Aycock. His great grandfather Jasper Aycock had a son named States Rights, born on December 23, 1860, three days after South Carolina seceded from the Union.
States Rights Crawford
He was born in March 1860, according to the 1900 census, to Benjamin Franklin and Emily Crawford. He died suddenly and unexpectedly on March 19, 1904. His obituary stated the town of Union was shocked by his death. He had been away on business in Atlanta, returned home a day after feeling a carbuncle (boil) coming on. He went to bed, “blood poisoning at once set in and after suffering intensely Mr. Crawford passed away.”32
States Rights Gregory
He was born in Union County, South Carolina on July 14, 1859 to William and Evaline Gregory. In 1860 and 1870 his full name was recorded and thereafter he would be enumerated as “States R.” or “States”.
States Rights Gist
He was born in Union County, South Carolina on September 3, 1831 to parents Nathaniel and Elizabeth Gist, his name owing to his father’s “nullification politics”33 His family was wealthy, with roots dating back to early Maryland settlements.
After graduating from South Carolina College (later University of South Carolina) in 1852 he attended Harvard Law School for one year. States, as he was known to his family, returned home to South Carolina and was admitted to the bar in 1853.
Not long after his return States joined a local volunteer militia as captain, quickly advancing to aide-de-camp to the governor and promoted to brigadier general at the young age of twenty-four. His cousin, Governor William Henry Gist, appointed States as his special aide-de-camp, bringing him to Columbia to live in the governor’s residence. In April of 1860 States resigned his military position and worked full-time for his cousin.
With it appearing Republican Abraham Lincoln would win the election, the governor sent States to visit six other southern governors to gauge their support in advance of a likely secession convention. When Governor Gist left office in December 1860 the new governor, Francis Pickens, appointed States as his adjutant and inspector general, beginning in January 1861. South Carolina was the first state to secede on December 20.
States’ job was now a challenging one as he was tasked with overseeing the mobilization of military forces and keeping an eye on operations in Charleston. Fort Sumter fell into Confederate hands, and on April 14, 1861 he accompanied the Governor and General Beauregard to the fort to raise the Confederate flag.
While continuing to recruit troops for the Confederate Army he paid a visit to Richmond and was introduced to President Jefferson Davis and General Joseph E. Johnston. The General sent States as a volunteer aide-de-camp to General Barnard E. Bee at Bull Run on July 20.
When General Bee and one of his officers, Colonel Jones, were killed, States assisted Beauregard in commanding the regiment. Upon his return to Charleston he continued recruitment and by March 1862 had been commissioned as a brigadier general in the provisional Confederate Army. From May 1862 to May 1863 he would be in charge of defending the Carolina coastline.
Along with General William H.T. Walker of Georgia he would lead two brigades from South Carolina to join forces with General Johnston in Mississippi. They would participate in the Vicksburg and Jackson campaigns in July 1863. Walker’s division was sent to Chattanooga to merge with General Bragg’s Army of Tennessee in late August 1863. A few weeks later, as preparations were underway for Chickamauga, States was summoned for duty in the main army.
The brigade he led was just under one thousand infantryman and upon arrival he found himself being appointed acting commander of Walker’s division, Walker having been promoted to temporary corps commander. His brigade went right into the thick of things by plugging a hole in Breckinridge’s division. In the short span of forty-five minutes he would lose more than 170 men. He took charge again during the Battle of Chattanooga.
During the Atlanta campaign of 1864 he served again with Walker’s division. Walker was killed on July 22 and States suffered a hand wound. His brigade was again reassigned, back to Tennessee. On November 30, 1864 States Rights Gist was killed while leading his brigade on foot after his horse had been killed. He was buried near the battlefield; his remains were re-interred in Columbia, South Carolina in 1866.
Despite his lack of formal military training, his service was exemplary. “He was a strict disciplinarian and his brigade was deemed by superiors and peers to be one of the finest in the Army of Tennessee in appearance as well as in conduct. States Rights Gist was the model of a civilian gentleman turned solider.”34 No doubt, his father would have been proud.
States Rights Gist Finley
States Rights Gist Finley was the son of David Edward and Elizabeth (Gist) Finley and born on August 30, 1898 in York County, South Carolina, “on the day of the first primary election, while his papa was being nominated for congress.” David Finley served as a Untied States Congressman from March 1899 until his death on January 26, 1917.
Interestingly, States Rights Gist Finley had a brother named “Gist Finley”, but he would be known as either “States R.” or just “States” Finley. While States Rights Gist did not have any children (he had married in May of 1863), perhaps members of his extended family chose to later honor him by passing on his name.
States Rights Compere Fowler
He was born on June 9, 1860 in Yell County, Arkansas. His father, Coleman, had been born in Union County, South Carolina. In census records he was enumerated as “States R.C. Fowler” or “S.R.C. Fowler”. He died on February 17, 1937 in Yell County.
States Rights Sartor
He was born August 1862 to parents Joseph and Elizabeth Sartor in Monroe County, Mississippi. He is enumerated as “States R.” in 1880. He died in 1896 and his grave stone reads “Steven R. Sartor”. Perhaps he tired of his birth name?
States Wright Jolly
States Wright Jolly, as he signed his World War I draft registration in 1918, was enumerated both as “States W.” and “States R.” The Social Security Death Index referred to him only as “States Jolly”. He was another South Carolinian.
Not that it wasn’t common practice at the time, but it’s interesting to note many of them simply went by their initials “S.R.” One can imagine how someone might have wanted to conceal (or change) their real name following the South’s defeat, but most seem to have proudly borne it, and in some cases continued passing the name down through the family line.
It’s conceivable that female names were also influenced by the volatile time around the Civil War, as evidenced by a baby girl named Shellanna Marvilla (or Marviller) Holt. Born during the Atlanta Campaign in Jonesboro on August 30, 1864, family researchers claim she was named by Union General John “Blackjack” Logan. The bullets (shells) they were surely a-flying!
War time baby names popped up during World War II as well. In the days leading up to D-Day the world was on edge. Americans waited anxiously to hear word and many towns and cities across the country made plans to sound sirens when word came the invasion had begun. California’s war council, however, decided to forego the sirens because, according to Governor Earl Warren, it would “be bad to celebrate until we’ve won something.”35
Woodall Rodgers, Mayor of Dallas, Texas received a letter from the National Noise Abatement Council criticizing plans to sound sirens across the nation because it would create “unnecessary and needless noise.”36 Rodgers ignored the criticism and emphasized the city of Dallas would herald the nation’s push into western Europe.
Those sirens began to sound in Texas between 2:00 and 2:30 a.m. on the morning of June 6, 1944. In Houston most retail stores were planning to close and more than four hundred churches opened their doors early that day for twenty-four hours of special prayer for peace and early victory.
As sirens sounded in Dallas, a doctor arrived at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Lester Renfrow to delivered their baby girl. In honor of the faraway invasion, her mother proclaimed she would name her Invasia – Invasia Mae Renfrow.
News of her birth appeared in newspapers across the country, tucked in amongst war headlines. One newspaper displayed a picture of Invasia and her mother Willie Mae, surrounded by soldiers at war around the world – she was “Invasion Girl.”
The Renfrows weren’t the only family to patriotically name their newborn in honor of the day. In Norfolk, Virginia, parents Randolph and Alice Edwards named their daughter “Dee Day”. Patrolman L.B. Hoedling made it public after driving a member of the King’s Daughters staff to their home to deliver her.
The King’s Daughters started out as a small group of women in Norfolk, Virginia, all members of the Granby Street Methodist Church, who set out to make a difference in their community. These women from privileged families had never known hardship, yet they determined to care for the less fortunate. What they started in the late nineteenth century is now known as Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters.
Invasia Mae and Dee Day weren’t the only children born around that time with patriotically- themed names. Another baby had been christened SteVen, the “V” capitalized for victory. It appears to have been common at the time, as noted in a column by William J. Conway published in several newspapers in April 1950.
He was musing about that year’s census and the challenges faced by the census takers. “Enumerators the last time out came up with some unique combinations indeed. Such as Carbon Petroleum Dubbs, Early Christmas Bennett and States Rights Finley.”37 Conway reminded readers of the names which made headlines six years earlier and wondered if any changes had been made in those war-time names.
One baby born that day doesn’t appear to have made any headlines in 1944, but on June 6, 1964 it was observed, by obtaining a marriage license in Bozeman, Montana, that Earl D-Day Samuel Campbell had also been named in honor of the invasion.
The 1950 census records were released in 2022. Might there have been lots of kids named Ike, Winston, Franklin, Douglas or perhaps Patton? One thing’s for sure . . . it’s not likely we’ll find many (if any) named Adolph!
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Footnotes:
Pedigree Collapse: Are We All Cousins?
Have you ever thought about how many ancestors one person could possibly have? Mathematically speaking, taking one’s family tree out thirty generations would result in about a BILLION ancestors. Taking it out forty to fifty generations would result in approximately a TRILLION ancestors — more people than have EVER lived on the earth!
Of course, that has never happened (or ever will), but why is that? The answer is pedigree collapse.
Pedigree collapse is defined as “the phenomenon in which ancestral inbreeding causes the number of a descendant’s ancestors to be smaller than that predicted by a binary tree:
where n represents number of generations.”38
Researchers and theoreticians have hypothesized that historically eighty percent of all marriages have been between second (or closer) cousins. Some geneticists also estimate that every person on planet earth is at least a fiftieth cousin to everyone else.
Family researchers may not see pedigree collapse for several generations, but inevitably it will pop up as you climb the family tree. For my own family (starting from my father), it occurs in the fourth generation when first cousins, John Clayton Hall and Catherine Kate Hall, married in 1879.
As the chart shows, John Clayton’s father was John Oxly and he was a brother to Catherine’s father Eli. Consequently, for the sixth generation Hall line pedigree collapse occurs because there are shared grandparents for John C. and Catherine — Joseph Hall and Mary Catherine Matlock.
I haven’t come across any other instances of pedigree collapse in the Hall line . . . yet. There is, however, an anomaly of sorts on the Strickland side. Mary Angeline Hensley was both my 2nd great-grandmother and my 3rd great-aunt.
CRAZIES, BLACK SHEEP AND MURDERERS (OH MY!)
Let’s face it — everyone has relatives they’re not necessarily proud of. Harper Lee, author of acclaimed novel To Kill A Mockingbird, said it best:
You can choose your friends but you sho’ can’t choose your family, an’ they’re still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge them or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don’t.39
The “anomaly of sorts” mentioned above unravels like this:
My three-times great grandmother Eliza Boone (Mary Angeline Hensley’s mother) married James Henry Hensley at the age of eighteen in 1855. Eliza was born in Rankin County, Mississippi and she and James were married in Lafayette County, Arkansas.
Sometime after their first child John was born in 1856, James and Eliza migrated to Jack County, Texas to become cattle ranchers. Their daughter Mary Angeline was born in 1857, followed by another daughter, Pink, in 1861 and one more son, Henry, circa 1862.
James Henry Hensley died in February of 1865 at the age of thirty-six, leaving Eliza with four children and a cattle ranch to run. Eliza married John Wesley Brummett probably around 1866 or 1867 in Jack County.
The family was enumerated in 1870 with Eliza’s four Hensley children and two of their own, Lizzie (3) and Wilborn (4 months). Eliza’s oldest daughter, Mary Angeline Hensley, was thirteen years old. Another daughter, Sarah Belle Brummett, was born around 1871.
There appears to have been some hanky-panky going on though. According to Hamilton County, Texas history, John Wesley and Mary (Hensley) Brummett came to the county in 1874. John had married his step daughter (I haven’t been able to locate the marriage record, however), and if the divorce records are correct, his and Eliza’s divorce was not finalized until April 7, 1879 in Jack County. A distant cousin believes J.W. and Mary ran off to Illinois (his birth place) and then returned to settle in Hamilton County, though their first child was born in Kansas.
After reading testimony and depositions regarding attempts by Eliza’s family to get on the Dawes Commission Rolls (Indian Rolls), I strongly suspect there was “bad blood”. Throughout the proceedings, every single person in Eliza’s family, including Eliza herself, never once acknowledged or mentioned Mary Angeline as her daughter (sort-of-like “you’re dead to me”). By the way, Eliza and other family members were unsuccessful in their attempt to get on the rolls — they made it the first time and had it overturned (identity of an ancestor too sketchy apparently).
John Wesley Brummett had fathered three children with Eliza. He fathered SEVENTEEN children with Mary. Two of those children died shortly after birth and one daughter, Maggie May (age four), died in 1900 of a snake bite. After Mary died in 1906 (my theory — he killed her with all those kids!) he married Mary Owen, a widow with four children of her own. They had one child together, Lincoln, born around 1908-9. Impressively, J.W. Brummett fathered TWENTY-ONE children!
Despite whatever hanky-panky might have occurred, John Wesley Brummett appears to have become a pillar in his community. He helped purchase land for the Fairy Church of Christ in 1896 and was a faithful member until his death in 1935. In a related story, I wrote an extensive article, entitled “Dying (or Lying) to Get on the Dawes Rolls (or, how my ancestors were Indians one minute and the next, not so much)”, featured in this 2025 issue featuring the “Sooner State” of Oklahoma. Eliza and her family, or at least her sister Martha, were desperately trying to convince the Choctaw tribe that they were of Native American descent. If you have ancestors who tried to get on the Dawes Rolls and failed (or, for that matter, succeeded), it’s quite a tale!
I categorize this story (at least somewhat) under the heading of “black sheep” — in my family research I haven’t found any crazies or murderers (yet).
While researching family history for my Aunt Patsy I did run across both a “crazy” and an attempted murderess. First of all, my aunt didn’t know much about her father’s side of the family. She had never seen a picture of her grandfather. I located a picture of George Thornton Lawson – she wept for joy. Having never seen a picture of George she certainly had no idea of his parentage.
George was the son of Henry William and Nancy Catherine (Potts) Lawson. Henry had immigrated to America from England. By trade he was a tailor. Henry came to America through New Orleans, and as the family legend goes, was determined to marry an “Indian princess”. He headed to Alabama. Princess or not, he married Nancy Catherine Potts around 1861. Nancy was twenty-five years younger than Henry. All seemed well. I’ve since discovered deed records in Colbert County from the 1870s indicating the couple was selling land to various individuals.
However, in 1880 I noticed an anomaly in the census records. Nancy was enumerated twice – once at the family home in Colbert County and again as an inmate at the Alabama insane hospital in Tuscaloosa. Whatever did that mean?
With a little digging I found a Lawson researcher who had uncovered the likely story. It seems that Nancy tried to kill Henry and instead of jail she was apparently sent to Tuscaloosa. Perhaps she suddenly snapped unexpectedly, and rather than jail she was committed to the asylum.
Whether or not she was unhinged enough to warrant commitment to the state’s insane asylum is unclear. What is clear, via subsequent census records, is that Henry eventually left Alabama with the children and headed west to Texas.
In 1900 Nancy was enumerated as a married woman with six children and living at the Bryce Insane Hospital in Tuscaloosa. Her family, unbeknownst to her, had left her behind. Much the same record appeared in the 1910 and 1920 censuses at the hospital.
Nancy died on June 10, 1925 and was buried in the hospital’s cemetery, her family long gone. Her husband Henry had died in Kaufman County, Texas in 1897; her son George had died in 1913 in Dallas County — perhaps, unbeknownst to her.
What about your family . . . any crazies, black sheep or murderers?
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Footnotes:
Obsolete Occupations: Getting Knocked Up (a queer English custom)
If you regularly research family history, you’ve probably come across occupations which you don’t recognize. Technology has steadily replaced, and made obsolete, many common jobs our ancestors performed. Even things which we find quite common today, weren’t at all common back then (if they even existed at all). For instance, not everyone in eighteenth century England had a clock or watch. This Industrial Revolution era (and beyond) occupation is indeed curious, or as Americans called it – “a queer English custom”.
Once upon a time everyday working folks paid someone to “knock them up”. This, of course, elicits winks and giggles amongst us 21st century denizens as “knocked up” often refers to what Merriam-Webster calls “sometimes vulgar: to make pregnant”.40 There was nothing vulgar intended or implied as this quaint and curious English and Irish custom, begun during the Industrial Revolution and carried forward into the early twentieth century (and beyond for some locales), was an honorable occupation. Before alarm clocks were available and affordable, “getting knocked up” was essential to ensure working men and women avoided fines for arriving late to work.
It may have been a curious custom, but it was honest work for anyone willing to arise before anyone else in the neighborhood, and rain or shine, walk around tapping on their clients’ windows, or should I say “knocking them up”. They would advertise themselves as a “knocker-up” or “window tickler” and were paid perhaps two to three pence per week to make sure their client rolled out of bed on time.
The work of knocking up the neighborhood was necessity on one side of the world, while on the other side Americans found it a “Queer English Custom”.41 For some it wasn’t a neighborhood job, but rather a part of their duties as caretakers at prominent residences. At Fullham Palace, the bishop of London’s residence, the lodgekeeper began working up servants around 5:30 a.m.
The palace knocker-up used a fifteen-foot pole known as a “rousing stave” to wake up the servants, knocking until the “wakee” gave “a more or less grateful answer in reply.” Although similar, there was a difference between the pole used in rousing the help and the one used during church services “directly upon the persons of inattentive or dozing members of the congregation.” The church rod was meant to bring slumbering congregants “a proper sense of their position.”42
During the era before alarm clocks were more readily available in the United Kingdom, one might see a card in the window of the general store: “Workmen called early in the morning. Terms moderate.” The Washington Post, musing about knockers-up in England, opined:
The “knocker-up” would have a much harder job in America than he has in England, for there he is favored by purely local condition. In the first place, the houses in the industrial sections are closely packed together in long rows, like the buildings in the business sections of American cities, and are very seldom more than two stories high. Thus the “knocker up” is able to quickly arouse an entire street of workers, the rattle and roar of his stick bringing the men and women promptly from their beds. And his work is expedited by the fact that many of the sleepers hear him while he is a dozen hoses away, and are out of bed and rapping on their windows in reply by the time he reaches them.43
In other words, a knocker-up would have a harder time making a living in America since buildings in larger cities were built so close together. Why pay for a knocker-up when the rap on your neighbor’s window is sufficient to arouse you? Perhaps the equivalent today would be people who “borrow” a neighbor’s Wi-Fi signal instead of paying for their own Internet service?
Not everyone appreciated their neighbors’ knocker-up at such an early hour, especially actors and actresses who tended to “sleep in” after arriving home late the night before. One London actress, a Miss Hay, was just dropping off to sleep when she heard a “weird sound against her window.” Startled, she rushed to the window and threw the curtains aside, and heard “Coom on, Joe,” shouted a voice. “Are you no gettin’ oop to-day?” The knocker-up had forgotten his regular client was away.44
Not only did the knocker-up arouse his clients, he even saved a few it appears. The London Evening News reported two women saved themselves from a burning house by sliding down sheets to the street. The fire was just below their living area and a knocker-up had sounded the alarm when it was apparent escape by the stairs would be impossible. The building was gutted, but the occupants were saved thanks to their neighborhood knocker-up.45
As well known as their services were in certain parts of England, one journalist was startled out of a sound sleep one morning after relocating to Lancashire. He also received quite an education about “knocking up” in the process:
TEN MINUTES WITH A “KNOCKER-UP”. When the present writer first settled in Lancashire, he took up his residence in one of a row of new houses – the landlord called them “villas,” but that is a detail. Early on the following morning he was rudely awakened by a sound at the window which can only be likened to the rattle of peas, though they seemed to be propelled by steam power through a “shooter” about fifty times the usual size. Jumping out of bed, he rushed to the window and pulled aside the extemporised blind, whereupon a cry, which sounded like “fire” came from below, followed immediately by the retreating clatter of clogs. This was puzzling, but in no way alarming, for the house, exuding moisture as it did from every pore, was as safe as a freezing chamber. Later the same day the mystery was cleared up. The supposed man with the pea-shooter practised the little-known industry of the “knocker-up,” and roused people at any time they liked by rattling wires, fastened to a long stick, against their window-panes; and, not being then accustomed to the new hours, he woke up the wrong man. “I was always a good getter-up,” said a knocker-up to the writer recently, “and some of the mean at the mill used to ask me to give them a call. I did, and for nothing, except, perhaps, a drink now and then; but when they got too many – I had to go to work myself – I charged them 2d. a week. I kept at my work until I was getting a bit done, and then, as I had got a pretty good connection, I started knocking-up for a living. I get up a four; sometimes earlier, especially in Whit week and holiday times, when people go off on trips; them I’m at it pretty nearly all through the night. But, as a rule, it’s four, and I’m done about six – yes, done for the day. It’s not so easy as you think. You see there’s a man in the next street here that wants calling at four, and another right over yonder at a quarter-past four. It’s a good walk. Well, then I have to come back here; and so I go on. There’s so much dodging about, arrange things how you like. I’ve above two hundred to knock up every morning, and they pay me 2d. a week; it takes me best part of Saturday afternoon to draw the money. Some knockers-up have a good many more than that, particularly the old widow women, but their sons or daughters help them, or, perhaps, an old couple manage it between them. How many knockers-up in Lancashire? I don’t know; I don’t think anybody does. Thousands, I should think. You see nearly everybody among working folk has a knocker-up, because they’re on the safe side then. If they get a few minutes late, they’re ‘baited’ (fined) or lose a quarter. Yes; I should hear about it if I stopped in bed till seven some morning. But sometimes I oversleep myself a bit, and then I have to tell them to look sharp, as I am late. Oh, yes; I have known knockers-up to miss a morning altogether; but they mustn’t do that very often, I can tell you. If they won’t do it right, somebody else will.” Thus the knocker-up. It may be added that in some places the charge for the service he does is 3d. a week, and that his industry is a favourite refuge for men when they become too old to follow their trade.46
Such was the life of one knocker-up who admittedly himself didn’t always “rise to the occasion” on time himself. One humorist mused a veritable tongue-twister about a knocker-up’s dilemma:
Tommy Jones was always late for work, so his employer approached him one morning and inquired what had made him so late.
“Well,” replied Tommy, “it’s this way. You see our knocker-up has a knocker-up that knocks our knocker-up every morning at four o’clock. Well, our knocker-up’s knocker-up didn’t come to knock our knocker-up up, so our knocker-up didn’t come to knock us up.”47
While the job normally provided steady income, a knocker-up was out of luck when worker strikes occurred from time to time. One such person ended up in court after he’d stolen a pair of boots, “pleading that because of the cotton lockout nobody wanted his services and that he was starving.”48
One knocker-up in particular was adversely affected during the same cotton lockout. He had been calling on clients every morning for forty years, his only occupation and sole means of support. Suddenly, two hundred clients didn’t need his services or perhaps couldn’t afford them during the lockout. In 1912 clients still preferred their reliable knocker-up to alarm clocks.49
One of Oldham’s best knocker-ups was a deaf and dumb man. Why was that? As one client explained, “He’s the best caller-up I could have,” because he can’t hear me when I should all right. I have to get out of bed and go down and push him away from the door.”50
Unfortunately, there were no knocker-up trade unions either to protect their livelihood in the event of work stoppages. In one town, however, knockers-up combined their efforts and began demanding advance payment.
For many years the profession was strictly male-oriented, but in the early twentieth century women began to pursue careers as knockers-up – an oddity for sure. Still it must have taken a special kind of person to arouse themselves before heading out to arouse others. Such was the case of Henry Wood, who years before had been nursed back to health by Florence Nightingale.
Despite the challenges of his chosen occupation, Henry seemed well suited for the task:
Leaving his bed every morning at four o’clock he is soon afterwards in the streets. He meets nobody but the friendly policeman as he goes from house to house and taps with a long stick at the bedroom windows of cotton-workers who pay him a few pence a week to do so. “Owd Harry” has to face many bitter and wretched mornings in the course of a year, yet he is hale and hearty and likely to go on rousing people to the duties of the day for a long time to come.51
Despite occasionally over-slumbering themselves most knocker-ups were reliable. Indeed, it was true, according to Mr. W.B. Mucklow who produced a stereopticon slide show in 1892 – a sort of “man-on-the-street” exposé. Mucklow had met with every day “street characters” in the great cities of the world. At the top of his “50 Life Models” was none other than a knocker-up, followed by the milk boy. Other life models included “two old fruit women”, “the Italian and monkey”, “the blind Bible reader” and last of all “the policeman”.52
The profession eventually experienced a setback of sorts, as evidenced by a news blurb entitled “Persons Not Insurable”. In 1913 certain provisions of British law forbade the following men from obtaining insurance: “men who volunteer, or are asked, in a market, to put burrs under the wheels of vehicles, cover the horses, and adjust their nose-bags, while the drivers are in a shop, no payment for these services being promised; a ‘knocker-up’, engaged by various people to wake them daily for a fixed weekly payment.”53 Brits did have some unusual occupations, didn’t they?
When World War I broke out, knocker-up services were in even higher demand in Lancashire especially as workers went to work in military-related industries. It turned out to be a boon for a knocker-up who might normally receive up to three pence a week per client. Now that the war effort had kicked in, they could demand four pence as extra war pay.54
It appears the practice wasn’t going away even though the rest of the modern world had long since adapted to waking up to alarm clocks. During World War II certain areas of England still employed their friendly neighborhood knocker-up. Men were off to war and women took up the profession “in English mill towns, making the rounds and knocking on houses to waken workers in time to get to work.”55 Scotland adopted the practice briefly in 1941 when a shortage of alarm clocks for factory workers was noted.56
Alarm clock shortages aside, the reliable knocker-up was sorely missed in some communities. London’s Guardian held a poetry contest, offering “a first prize of two guineas and a second prize of one guinea…for Lines on the Alarm Clock’s Summons.” First prize was a clever acrostic:
A voice to all the houses crises: “Sleep no more!
Laggards and lie-abeds, awaken!
Abandon now the sonorous snore;
Rise up and get you read for
Munching your matutinal bacon!”
Cursing, I scramble out of bed; half-blind,
Look for the place I put my socks in.
Oh! what a bane this bell I find!
Cannot some keen, ingenious mind
Kindly invent an anti-tocsin?
Second prize was a short homage to bygone days:
The knocker-up with rattling canes
Rapped against the window-panes.
Nor did he cease his strident knocking
Until you “showed a leg” – or stocking.
Buy nowadays our chanticleer
Crows lustily beneath our ear.
Often from the bedside locker
We receive our morning shocker.
Do not ignore thus siren’s warning,
Or blitzed will be your busy morning.57
In the early 1950s there were still a few knockers-up awakening railway workers in Derby, England. However, in 1951 it was announced that English railroads had ended the “ancient job” of knocker-up:
Britain’s most unique jobholder – the “knocker-up” – had been declared extinct by a ruling of the nation’s socialized railways. Ever since trains began running in Britain, “knockers-up” have plodded before dawn through snow, fog and rain to awaken engineers and firemen in the big railway towns.
They knocked on doors until sleepy heads emerged from windows above and assured that the men behind the throttle would get to work on time.
But the railway management decided it could save about $840,000 yearly by asking the trainmen to wake themselves.
Today, 1000 former “knockers-up” were looking for new jobs. They predicted, however, that the muddle caused by their absence would convince the railway management to revoke its order before the month was out.58
Alas, it appears this was the end of the knocker-up. After years of indispensable service to mankind they were suddenly quite the opposite – “dispensable”.
******************
Postscript: Being a knocker-up wasn’t the only “curious profession” of the nineteenth century, however. Others included: “artificial ear and nose makers, prayer-makers, leg stretchers, saladmakers, knockers up and fourteenth men.”59
The “fourteenth man” was much in demand in Paris where, to avoid the awkwardness of having thirteen guests at a dinner, the “lucky man” always ready at a moment’s notice. This is, of course, in contrast to the Thirteen Club whose express purpose was to challenge the notion of the number thirteen being unlucky.
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Footnotes:
Digging History Magazine: Volume 2026: Issue 2
The second issue of 2026 features articles on Iowa, “The Hawkeye State”. This issue, like all issues in this continuing series (Illinois is next), will feature the state’s history, including how to find great historical and genealogical records and more:
● Mining Genealogical Gold: Finding Historical Iowa Records (and the stories behind them). The land we now call Iowa stands as a testament to American possibility. Here, upon vast prairies that once stretched beyond vision, a story unfolded that tells us not just about a single state, but about our nation itself. This story begins long before recorded history, when glaciers sculpted the terrain and left behind soil so rich that it later earned the title of “black gold.” In continues through centuries of native peoples who built civilizations among its rivers and rolling hills. And it carries forward into our present age, where Iowa remains fundamental to understanding America.42
● The Vacant Chair: Iowa’s Civil War Soldier Farmers (and the families they left behind). The premise of this article is two-fold, not only highlighting the Civil War service of Iowans, many of them farmers, but the wives and families they left behind. While there were no battles fought in the state, the war and its aftermath nevertheless left its mark on the young state of Iowa.
● Weathering Iowa. If Iowa were a person, its best friend would be agriculture and its worst enemy would be the weather. The land may have the richest soil in the world, but the sky seems determined to destroy it at every opportunity. Iowans do not just farm; they battle nature as if it were a seasonal sport. Tornadoes, floods, blizzards, and droughts all show up on the schedule, and if the Bible promised plagues of locusts, Iowa has the climate to make it happen.50
● The Dash: Vida Lois “Mom” Moreland Wade (1891-1976). In the 1930s and ‘40s she was known as “Mom Wade”, and historical evidence confirms how fondly she was remembered. For as long as she could remember, Vida wanted to be a nurse. Instead, years later, she established a maternity home, perhaps, as her family speculates, to fulfill her long-held dream.
Purchase the issue here: https://digging-history.com/store/?model_number=mar-apr-26
Or consider a regular subscription: https://digging-history.com/digging-history-magazine-subscription/
Thanks for stopping by! Purchasing a subscription entitles you to subscriber benefits (20% off all services, including custom-designed family history charts) AND a chance to win your very own custom-designed family history chart! Details here (or click the ad below).
Footnotes:
History Twisters: (Naming Our Fair City: Lubbock . . . . or Willis?)
I wrote this article several years ago as newsletter editor of the South Plains Genealogical Society (SPGS), and presented it as a “theory”. We simply don’t know for sure, as you will see.
By the way, if you’re interested in exploring your family history (or you’ve been working on it for years), consider joining SPGS. On Saturday, May 9, we will be celebrating the 65th anniversary of our founding at our regular meeting at Mahon Library (Community Room) at 10:00 a.m. More info here: https://spgstx.org/
Long-time Lubbockites are no doubt familiar with the story of how our fair city came by its name. Articles have been published over the years in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. You might think the article title a bit odd, but there’s another story (theory) to be told.
Thomas Saltus Lubbock was born on November 29, 1817 in Charleston, South Carolina to parents Henry Thomas Willis and Susan Ann (Saltus) Lubbock. At the age of seventeen Thomas went to New Orleans and became a cotton factor. A cotton factor worked with cotton planters to market and sell their product, acting as a broker for a commission.
That career was short-lived after Thomas heard about the Texas Revolution. He then marched to Nacogdoches with Captain William Cooke’s New Orleans Greys and participated in the Siege of Bexar, the Revolution’s first major campaign. Lubbock then set out to once again acquire an honest living, taking a job on an upper Brazos River steamboat.
Unbeknownst to Lubbock the Revolution continued as Santa Ana laid siege to the Alamo and later General Sam Houston, in turn, laid waste to the Mexican forces at San Jacinto. Meanwhile, his brother Francis Richard Lubbock had arrived in 1836 and would later serve as Texas governor during the Civil War. In 1838 twenty-one year-old Thomas sailed from Galveston back to New Orleans.
Three years later he served as lieutenant in a combined political-military-commercial fiasco (as it turned out to be) known as the Texas-Santa Fe Expedition. The expedition, conceived by Republic of Texas President Mirabeau Lamar, was tasked with establishing a trade route to Santa Fe and, hopefully, persuade New Mexicans to join the new republic.
The party, consisting of merchants and civil commissioners protected by the military force, headed out from Kenney’s Fort about twenty miles north of Austin on June 19, 1841. Traveling north and crossing the Brazos River they arrived in present-day Parker County on July 21.
Their intentions were to travel northwest and find the Red River, but instead mistook the Wichita River for the Red and had to backtrack. Meanwhile, the Mexican guide had disappeared. Fighting off both Indians and starvation, the expedition eventually reached Quitaque Creek in present-day Motley County. Not knowing how to best descend the steep Caprock, part of
the military force was sent ahead to locate some New Mexican settlements.
After finally making it across some rather difficult terrain, and expecting to be welcomed with open arms by New Mexicans, the group was instead met with armed resistance. New Mexico Governor Manuel Armijo had been informed of the expedition and sent forces to dissuade the Texans. Around the area of present-day Tucumcari, without a shot being fired, the expedition force surrendered itself into Mexican hands.
Thomas was among those captured and he and his men were marched to Mexico City and confined in the Santiago Convent. Ever the adventurer, Lubbock escaped by jumping from a balcony and made his way home to Texas.
Lubbock continued serving in various military campaigns, and by the early 1860’s he was an avid secessionist, a member in good standing of the Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC). KGC sought to establish a slave-holding empire throughout the South, stretching all the way to Central America, with Havana as the center of the so-called “golden circle”.
Lubbock accompanied other secessionists to Virginia and in June of 1861 petitioned President Jefferson Davis for “authority to raise a company or battalion of guerrillas”.60 Impressed with this band of Texans, Davis wholeheartedly welcomed their support.
While still in Virginia, Thomas Lubbock, Benjamin Franklin Terry and fifteen other Texans organized as independent rangers who would act as civilian scouts for the Confederate Army. Lubbock and Terry both served as battlefield aides at the “First Bull Run” and were afterwards authorized to raise a cavalry regiment. The regiment, the Eighth Texas Cavalry, was more
commonly known as Terry’s Texas Rangers, however.
Terry served as the regiment’s colonel and Lubbock its lieutenant colonel. Lubbock fell ill and left the regiment at Nashville. While recuperating at Bowling Green Hospital, Lubbock received word that Colonel Terry had been killed at the Battle of Woodsonville (Kentucky) on December 17, 1861. Lubbock, however, never recovered nor returned to active duty, dying shortly thereafter in January of 1862.
Good story and a worthy namesake for our beloved city, right? But, what if Lubbock wasn’t actually his family surname? And, why in the world would I ever propose such a thing? For the answer to that question, read on.
Can you imagine Lubbock being named Willis — I can’t. However, the actual and historical family name from which Thomas Saltus Lubbock descended could possibly have been Willis and not Lubbock. I came across research notes assembled by Eric Lubbock, 4th Baron Avebury, and was intrigued. Following is a summary of his research and various hypotheses.
The story begins with Reverend Henry Willis, born in 1738 or 1739 to John and Temperance (Hames) Willis. Following a brief naval career, Henry Willis married Jane Lubbock, daughter of Richard and Jane Lubbock. They married in 1765 and together had six or possibly seven children. Their third child, Richard Lubbock Willis, was born in 1770.
It is assumed Jane died in childbirth since Henry remarried in 1784. Prior to his remarriage Henry had attended Merton College and Oxford in pursuit of a career as a minister. He later served as Rector of Little Sodbury and Vicar of Wapley. Henry remarried yet again in November of 1792 and subsequently took an appointment to a parish in East Shefford, Berks.
Along the way Henry obtained land and had the expectation of inherited wealth if certain conditions were met. However, Eric noted that Henry’s wealth may have been depleted by the extravagances of his son Richard Lubbock Willis. In his original will dated October 3, 1783 Henry wrote: “Having by some Indiscretions (but much more by disappointments) only a small matter to leave behind me . . .”61
A codicil dated August 30, 1791 referred to son Richard’s excesses and/or improprieties:
My eldest son Richard Lubbock Willis having by his Infamous Conduct forfeited my favour & affection I here cut him of [sic] from any Share of my Effects except for one shilling to be paid him after my decease by my Executors.
Henry’s daughters Temperance Jane and Ann Packer Willis immigrated to Augusta, Georgia, either with Richard Lubbock or perhaps on their own in 1794 following Henry Willis’ death. Richard Lubbock Willis immigrated sometime around 1790 to Augusta. A man named Richard Lubbock married thirteen year-old Diana Sophia Sandwich in Beaufort, South Carolina and
their first child, Henry Thomas Willis Lubbock, was born on July 24, 1792. Was it possible Richard had dropped the Willis surname? Had he named his first child after his father to regain favor with him? Or, was this even the same person?
According to Eric it seems likely Diana Sophia’s husband was somehow related to the Willis family since she was named executrix of the will of Ann Packer Willis, “formerly of Grovesend, Alverton, Gloucestershire, sister of Temperance Jane Willis”. Even though the Gloucester Record Office had concluded Richard had dropped the Willis surname, Eric believed that may not have been the case.
How could the ill-tempered and disinherited Richard Lubbock Willis possibly be the same man who was by all accounts a pillar of his community? While Ann Packer Willis had referred to Diana Sophia as her “sister and wife of my brother Richard” Eric proposed Diana’s Richard may have been a first cousin named Richard Lubbock, and referred to colloquially as her “brother”. That might be a stretch too, but still intriguing.
Richard the “black sheep” was in England in June of 1794 following the birth of Henry Thomas Willis Lubbock in 1792. If this Richard was indeed the father, then perhaps he had returned to England before Henry Willis’ death in December of 1794 to get back in the good graces of his father.
Henry Thomas Willis Lubbock studied medicine and was a practicing physician until 1819. He married Susan Ann Saltus and in 1817 Thomas Saltus Lubbock was born — and later his name attached to our city.
Based on Eric Lubbock’s research, this story does beg the question: was Thomas Saltus Lubbock really a Lubbock or descended from a man named Henry Willis? Perhaps this particular bit of history isn’t so settled after all, eh?
If you’d like to read more about Eric Lubbock’s research and theories, see the footnotes below and draw your own conclusions. Eric Reginald Lubbock was born in 1928, inherited his title in 1971 and served in the House of Lords. The long-time politician was passionate about family history and passed away on February 14, 2016 at the age of 87.
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Footnotes: