Blue Star Chronicles

I have had an interest in genealogy off and on for a few years. I haven’t done anything with it since I started blogging - but I haven’t lost my interest. I have opened up my Family Tree Maker file a couple of times thinking I would work on it only to come back to the blog. I did that the other night and happened to open it to a colorful character in my family tree and thought that might make a half-way decent Thursday Thirteen.

No doubt my Mother would prefer I write something about the more upstanding citizens in my family tree - but for this TT I think I’ll start with some of the more …… colorful citizens and events. Just some random characters out of my family tree.

1. Patrick Boggan (born about 1725 in Ireland) is one of my favorites. His son-in-law founded Wadesboro, North Carolina. A little book was written about Captain Paddy at the time and it is said he fought in the War for Independence, was an active Whig and ‘avowed Tory hater’. Apparently, when he took a notion, he’d go out in the country to hunt down people he determined were Tories or had helped Tories.
   

   Capt. Paddy B. went all thro’ that country destroying the settlers ….. These settlers were probably mostly Tories and simple Scotch folk who had been taught to “Serve God and honor the King” and who knew very little about the war.

   The author of this little book describes more of Capt. Paddy’s ‘most intense hatred for the Tories to the day of his death.’

   Old Johnny Lindsay, who lived 5 miles out on what is now the Lilesville road, where his descendants now live, had been a Tory. Mrs. Glass has heard that he would capture horses and hide them in the swamps of Jones’s Creek until he could trade them off to the Tory forces. After the peace, he was the object of Capt. Paddy’s persecution. On public days when many were in town and liquor no doubt flowed freely, if he caught Old Johnny Lindsay in town, he would chase him out side after him out, ride after him perhaps armed, and old Johnny would go tearing home.

2. Boggan Cash was a famous duelist of his time. He was the grandson of what was described as a ‘respectable family in South Carolina’. His uncle Thomas Cash ‘was killed in a fight at Morven by a man named Tom Curtis over 50 years ago.’ Curtis escaped to Texas and remained there 15 years when a relative of the man he had killed discovered him and brought him back to South Carolina for trial. He was convicted of murder in the second degree.
3. John Marks (early 1700s) born in England and married Lady Elizabeth Hastings of the Royal House of Hastings, daughter of the reigning Earl, 6th or 7th of Huntingdon. who was ‘disinherited by her people for her misalliance and her name was expunged from their records.’ John Marks (or Marx) was a barrister who was not considered the social or political equal of or suitable mate for the high born daughter of the House of Hastings. In addition, he was Jewish.
   

   It is said also that John Marx was as a Jew, and eloped with Lady Hastings against the wishes of her family, the opposition being so great that he brought his wife to America, settling in Virginia, at Charlottesville in Albemarle County. They changed their name from Marx to Marks, gave their children Christian names and reared them in the Christian faith. The latter form of spelling has been handed down in this branch of the family.

4. Brothers Pleasant, James and Dudley Mask - all born in the early 1800s fought in the Civil War. After the war they did what many young men of their time did - they took off and went out west. Pleasant and James were put in jail for murder. James died in jail and Pleasant was hanged. Dudley lived out the rest of his life in Mississippi.
5. Beloved Curmudgeon’s first two ancestors to come to America were bona fide pirates. They were pirates for King George. One has to wonder how they divided their bounty with the King. They became quite wealthy in America. But they were loyal to King George as evidenced by the side they took in the War of Independence. Unfortunately, that resulted in the family having to high-tail it out of the colonies after the war. Many went to Canada and the others went ‘out west’ which was Pennsylvania at that time.
6. My g’grandfather, William Baird was born the same year and in the same county as John Henry ‘Doc’ Holliday. They were born to families of the same class (which mattered a great deal back then) so I imagine them as having been boyhood friends or acquaintances at least.
7. Greenberry (last name withheld) was a pioneer in Texas. He was a tough man as were most of the men who made their way to Texas in the early 1800s. He built a home and had a large family. One day he took his 5 sons with him hunting. When the men returned home they discovered all the women and children had been slaughtered. Neighbors reported seeing a band of Indians headed in the direction of the homestead. Greenberry and his sons took off to find the killers but lost the trail in a creek. They spent weeks hunting for the killers. Rumors circulated around town that it wasn’t Indians that had massacred the family, but townspeople who held a grudge against Greenberry. Nothing I’ve found has explained what Greenberry might have done that would lead the people in town to kill his family in revenge, but that is the story that has been handed down and was reported in a newspaper of the time. There was also no explanation as to what kind of revenge Greenberry and his sons took.
8. George Otis Bonaparte Eugene Robert Gober, late 1800s, just because of that name!
9. Elizabeth Grace and her daughter Comfort Grace Harris were murdered by her son-in-law, Jordan Harris in 1842. I never found out what happened.
10. Sterling Harris (early 1800s) was struck and killed by lightning.
11. Col. Joseph Pickett of South Carolina had two sisters who both married and were ‘quite wealthy’. One sister married Mumford De Jarnettes and they were considered ‘very overbearing *prominent*’.
    

    Mr. De Jarnettes kept store in what was afterward Myers’s store. He had a dispute with Richmond Davidson, who kept Hotel right where the present Court House now stands, got in a terrible passion and struck Davidson over the head with the handle of his gun and nearly killed him. The gun being loaded went off, and De Jarnette was shot dead right in his own store.

12. Another Captain Paddy story. His daughter Polly married Jonathan May. One day she came home crying.
    

    “What’s the matter Polly?” said Capt. P. Jno. May had been treating her badly. “Well, go in the house and sit down with your Mother and I’ll go over and thrash Jno. May.” Polly stopped crying and said snappishly, “Would you thrash Col. Pickett? Col. P. had proven a prosperous man and was probably the great man of the family.

13. An old family story is about a ggg’uncle, John Shaw, who had left the state after his father died and was never heard from again. His father had a different last name for the reasons sons had different last names than their father’s in those days (mid 1800s). Until my grandmother’s generation this was a deep-dark family secret. She would be very upset with this information being put out there if she was still alive. While doing genealogy research on a forum I found a woman (or she found me) from the same line. After talking a bit it turned out she was that very same ggg’uncle’s ggg’grandaughter. She and I are the same generation down from the same gggg’mother. So after all these generations, the family now knows what happened to that ggg’uncle when he took off without telling anyone ‘went out west and was never heard from again.’