This introductory material ncludes a genealogy of Alexander & Nancy Agnes(s) Montgomery McCorkle and as many of their children as practicable.  I don't know how to do an Ahnentafel.

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            These folks were Scots-Irish emigrants from Northern Ireland to:

(1)      Lancaster County & Harrisburg, Pennsylvania [Harrisburg is now in Dauphin County].  Please see references to Robert McCorkle’s maternal uncle Rev. Joseph Montgomery, 1733-1794, in Dauphin County.  [Mrs. Alexander McCorkle I, née "Nancy" Agnes Montgomery, had a brother named Joseph Montgomery.]  A Presbyterian minister, Joseph Montgomery was a member of the Continental Congress, was connected with Princeton University, and married as one of his wives Rachel Rush (widow of Angus Boyce), a sister to the Dr. Benjamin Rush of Revolutionary Era fame (and of a wee bit of notoriety for improvident persistence in using leeches to bleed hapless patients, one of whom was George Washington);

(2)      down the Great Wagon Road of the 18^th century to Rockbridge County, Virginia, in the area of Lexington, whence some of the McCorkle and Thomas and Houston families are thought to have traveled together;  some remained there; others (ours) migrated on down to:

(3)      Rowan County, NC (Iredell County was carved off in 1788) and other sites in the Piedmont of North Carolina near Salisbury and Statesville near Charlotte—particularly around the Thyatira Presbyterian Church near today's Mooresville.  Samuel Eusebius McCorkle, the eldest son & fortunate enough to have studied at the precursor of Princeton with his uncle Joseph Montgomery, was a founder of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

 [2007 update:  This past winter I found a piece of paper from Elmira Sloan McCorkle Roache, at my mom's old house, which states that her father Robert McCorkle was "educated at Chapel Hill."]  I believe it was from Rowan County, NC, that Robert McCorkle and two of his brothers (Joseph and William) went directly exploring into Kentucky in the environs of today's Lexington.  They appear on the records in the formation of Walnut Hill Presbyterian Church.  Some records, but not ours, indicate that at least three McCorkle brothers joined Walnut Hill Presbyterian Church, viz., Joseph, William, and Robert McCorkle.  Elmira Sloan McCorkle Roache wrote that her father Robert McCorkle, with brothers Joseph and William, was in the "second company" of [white] men to move into Kentucky, and that they had many perilous adventures during their insurgency, often being forced to take refuge within a primitive fort.  I doubt Elmira meant that her father was in the militia. 

          Evidently, some of these folks, excluding Robert, William, and Joseph McCorkle, went directly from Rowan County, NC, to Middle Tennessee.  Most of Northern Middle Tennessee at that time was known as Sumner County (today, the county seat of Sumner Co. is Gallatin, and the county seat of Wilson Co. is Lebanon); and they lingered a while in:

(4)      Sumner County, Tennessee, near Lebanon and Gallatin (Northern Middle Tennessee excluding Nashville and Davidson County).  We should look for some of them at the organization circa 1793 of Shiloh Presbyterian Church just outside today's Gallatin.  The Barr family was prominent amongst the members of Shiloh Presbyterian Church, but I'm not sure exactly of the degree of kinship these Barr folks had to Robert McCorkle's sister Elizabeth McCorkle Barr (I think she herself was at Shiloh Presbyterian Church, and I know her brother William McCorkle was there....);

(5)      then with escape by some from Hostilities in Sumner County, Tennessee, up to Cane Ridge and Paris, Bourbon County, Kentucky; and Logan County, Kentucky, either before or after John Purviance (a son of John & Mary Jane Wasson Purviance) was “scalped” in Sumner Co., Tennessee, in 1792. 

     [The John Purviance who was “scalped” and died tragically in 1792 was a son of Rowan County, NC, Revolutionary War soldier John Purviance and wife Mary Jane Wasson (Purviance).]  More work needs to be done looking for McCorkles' tracks in Kentucky, certainly around Cane Ridge and Paris, Kentucky; and at Walnut Hill Presbyterian Church near Lexington, Kentucky;    --and once having been established in Kentucky:

(6)      some family members, such as church “elder” David Purviance (another son of Rev. War Lt. [but postbellum called “Colonel”] John Purviance and Mary Jane Wasson Purviance), remained in Bourbon County, Kentucky, then later on moved farther north to Preble County, Ohio, to “New Paris.”  It was from New Paris, Ohio, that church "elder" David Purviance founded Miami University of Ohio and often served as its president pro tempore.  (Today's young Garner Huie, son of Joseph Headden Huie & Ann Livingston Huie of Knoxville, Tennessee, is a recent graduate of Miami University of Ohio.)  This David Purviance was a brother to Elizabeth Purviance Thomas, the mother of Mrs. Edwin Alexander McCorkle of Dyer County, Tennessee (née Jane Maxwell Thomas). (--I think Jane Maxwell Thomas McCorkle was named after her Purviance-Thomas mother's [Elizabeth Purviance Thomas's] sister, a  Mrs. Jane Purviance Maxwell.)

     As examples of the nomadic nature of these pioneers,

     of the nine (9) children of Alexander & Agnes Montgomery McCorkle's son Joseph McCorkle & wife Margaret (Snoddy) McCorkle:  an Agnes McCorkle was born 1778 in Rowan County, NC, but died in Miami County, Ohio;  a John McCorkle (d. 1829) and a Martha McCorkle, b. 1788, were born in Fayette Co., Ky., a Mary McCorkle [Edwards] was born in Bourbon Co., Ky. and an Amanda McCorkle was born ca. 1802 in perhaps Tenn. & died in Cass County, Indiana.—The source for the previous sentence about Joseph McCorkle's children is Carol Byler.

     Another good example comes from the Morrison family.  Andrew B. Morrison, born 18th July 1780 in Iredell County, NC, died in 1853 in Preble County, Ohio.  His marriage was in Bourbon County, Kentucky.  --This Andrew B. Morrison's father, Andrew Morrison, 1754-1780, was a 1^st cousin to our Margaret MORRISON McCorkle (1770-1848). --By the way, the ANDREW MORRISON who is buried at Thyatira Presbyterian Church cemetery is an uncle of "our" ancestor Andrew Morrison (the father of Margaret Morrison McCorkle). The Andrew Morrison (uncle of our Andrew Morrison, father of Margaret Morrison McCorkle) who is buried at Thyatira was a brother to the William Morrison (1704-1771) who settled Third Creek in what is today in Iredell County (Loray Community near Statesville), but was then Rowan County.   It's this William Morrison, 1704-1771, who called himself the "first inhabitor" of that country.  Eighteenth-century colonial records kept by the Moravian bishop August Gottlieb Spanenberg (of the United Brethren or Unitas Fratrem of Czech origin) mention an isolated, almost inaccessible, mill at Third Creek (founded by this William Morrison, 1704-1771).  --;

(7)      but with others—such as Robert McCorkle & his 1^st wife Lizzie Elizabeth Blythe McCorkle, and Robert's brother William McCorkle [1^st wife Peggy Blythe] and William’s 2^nd wife (“Mattie”)  Martha King McCorkle, the widow of the “scalped” John Purviance), and we think “colonel” John Purviance & wife Mary Jane Wasson Purviance—going back southward, either from the environs of Bourbon & Logan Counties, Ky., or Preble County, Ohio—to the area of Gallatin and Lebanon in Middle Tennessee.

     Elmira Sloan McCorkle Roache wrote that her father Robert and her uncle William McCorkle lost their wives after moving back down to Middle Tennessee, and that William’s 2^nd wife “Mattie” King died on the way from North Carolina in what was then wilderness and was buried on the trail in a “rude grave.”  James M. Richmond, however, thinks there is evidence Martha King (widow Purviance) McCorkle may be buried at Shiloh Cumberland Presbyterian Church’s King Cemetery near Gallatin.  (Perhaps Elmira would have considered that, at the time, a "rude grave.") Then, in Sumner County, Tennessee, in 1800 William McCorkle was to marry a 3^rd wife, Jane or "Jennie" Graham.

William’s brother Robert McCorkle trekked back to Rowan County, North Carolina, to marry “Peggy” Margaret Morrison (McCorkle) and fetch her westward, eventually to Middle Tennessee.  By then at least, certain Morrison lands whereon Margaret lived adjoined certain McCorkle lands in this part of NC;

(8)      then, receipt by brothers Robert & William McCorkle of their father Alexander McCorkle’s 2400⁺-acre Revolutionary War land grant which, they thought, had been set aside for them in Rutherford County (Murfreesborough), Tennessee.  Recipients of land grants had to get precise plats identified and set aside for them in the locality--county--where the land actually did lie, and in the age of poor communication often land claims conflicted; if so, the race became as lawyer's say a race to the courthouse; often, that is, the race became a question of who got the claim recorded first in the local courthouse.  They, and some of the associated Morrisons including Margaret Morrison McCorkle's sister Mary Morrison Morrison, who married her 1^st cousin John Morrison, a son of Patrick Morrison) settled on Bradley's Creek and  Stone’s River). "What happened to the poor children [if any] of Aunt Mary (Morrison Morrion)?" inquired Elmira Sloan McCorkle Roache in a letter to her mother, Margaret Morrison McCorkle.  --I had not known until very recently that at least some of the Rowan County /later Iredell County/ Morrisons lived  for a while--if not longer-- in Middle Tennessee; but got this from a letter recently found that had been written from Mary Morrison Morrison by then residing in Coffee County, Tennesseee, to her sister's son and her nephew Robert Andrew Hope McCorkle by then residing in Dyer County. Aunt Mary tells of having received a one-dollar bill from her nephew Edwin Alexander McCorkle residing in Dyer County, and asks to be remembered to Quincy Roache, Elmira Sloan McCorkle Roache's son, whom Mary remembers as having played sweetly as a little child on Bradley's Creek.

 The Revolutionary War land grant to Alexander McCorkle I was to be lost circa 1826 in title-dispute litigation. (Records of litigation consumed in Murfreesboro fire during Civil War.) This Rutherford County land had been devised to the two brothers upon their father’s death in 1800 in Rowan County, NC.  The father Alexander I was interred at Thyatira Presbyterian Church beside the wife who predeceased him, “Nancy” Agnes Montgomery McCorkle, and beside his 2^nd wife and widow, Rebecca [McNeeley?] Brandon McCorkle.

A letter written by Alexander McCorkle II in the year 1820, from Giles County, Tennessee (Giles County was formed in 1810 from Maury County and was and is bounded on the south by Alabama) back to homefolk in Rowan County, NC, states that his brother ROBERT McCORKLE had recognized his brother Alexander only from Alexander's voice, when Alexander had paid Robert & family a visit in Rutherford County, Tennessee.  From that letter one concludes that Robert McCorkle was blind at least as early as 1820.  -- Robert's brother Alexander McCorkle II married Katie or Catherine Morrison (a 1^st-cousin-once-removed, or was it 1^st cousin--to Margaret Morrison McCorkle).

Alexander II's niece Elmira said her uncle Alexander II was "emotional in character and joined the Methodists."  I posit that any group might seem emotional compared to the staid, stiff, rigorously correct Old-Style Presbyterians.  Alexander who by now referred to himself as "Alexander Snr" moved on a bit north to Henry County, Tennessee, which includes the town of Paris.  --;

(9)         then Robert McCorkle -- but not his brother William McCorkle who had died in 1818 in Rutherford Co., Tennessee -- removed westwardly to Dyer County in the newly opened western district of Tennessee to claim land granted in lieu of land from which they had been disseised in Rutherford County litigation—with nearby towns first Yorkville (Gibson County, Tennessee) and then, after the Civil War, Newbern (Dyer County), Tennessee. Robert McCorkle died in the spring of 1828 (April), very soon after removing to Dyer County in the newly opened Western District;

(10)       one of Robert McCorkle and William McCorkle’s sisters who remained in North Carolina, Nancy Agnes(s) McCorkle Ramsay or, earlier, Ramsey (Mrs. Robert Ramsay), and her husband and progeny, engaged in correspondence with family members who had removed westwardly into Tennessee.  These papers lie in the Archives at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and are not included here. One should also check in the archives for papers filed under the name of William McCorkle.

     Nancy Agnes McCorkle Ramsay 's siblings included Samuel Eusebius McCorkle about whom much has been written and who also remained behind in North Carolina. Samuel, a founder of UNC, was a Princeton graduate (actually, of the precursor to Princeton) and recipient of an honorary Doctorate of Divinity from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.     Samuel's wife Margaret Gillespie McCorkle was a daughter to Elizabeth Maxwell (widow Gillespie) Steele, 1733-1790, patriot notable who kept an inn in Salisbury, where she encouraged General Nathaniel Greene in the dark hours of the Revolutionary War and for the war effort gave him all the specie she owned.  The local Rowan Co. DAR group is the Elizabeth Maxwell Steele Chapter of DAR. Margaret Gillespie McCorkle's father was killed in an Indian uprising at Fort Dobbs just outside today's Statesville, NC (Iredell County), and her mother married again.  Elizabeth Steele & daughter Margaret Gillespie McCorkle are buried at Thyatira Presbyterian Church. Cemetery; 

(11)       one of Robert McCorkle’s putative paternal uncles, although not in our records, may have been a Francis McCorkle.  Francis McCorkle was Robert's uncle only if Robert's father Alexander McCorkle I was sired by Matthew McCorkle, which I rather doubt, although I believe Alexander & Francis McCorkle were surely cousins.  Whatever kin he was, this Francis McCorkle was a major in the Revolutionary War “patriot” army, surviving the battles of  Ramseur’s or Ramsour’s Mill, Cowpens, King’s Mountain, and Torrence’s or Tarrant’s Tavern. 

     I cannot yet accept that this Major Francis McCorkle was a brother to, inter alia, “our” Alexander McCorkle, Sr., the latter having been buried at Thyatira Presbyterian Church in 1800.  Others’ records (not ours) say that Francis came over with his immigrant parents and is buried beside what is now Lake Norman (created by Duke Power Company circa 1960) in a McCorkle family cemetery.

      I’ve not yet researched the kinship, if any, of the second wives of Alexander McCorkle [Sr., who died in 1800] and of Major Francis McCorkle: viz., Rebecca [ possibly: McNeely] Brandon McCorkle alias Mrs. Alexander McCorkle (buried Thyatira Presbyterian, beside Alexander & Alexander McCorkle’s 1^st wife Agnes “Nancy” Montgomery McCorkle) and Elizabeth “Betsy” Brandon McCorkle, alias Mrs. Francis McCorkle, buried near NC Hwy 150 beside Francis.  I wouldn't be surprised, though, to learn these two Brandon-McCorkle women were sisters. One anonymous listing on www.ancestry.com shows Rebecca as Rebecca (McNeely) Brandon (the 2^nd Mrs. Alexander McCorkle); I do not know about this McNeely name.  Betsy Brandon [Mrs. Francis McCorkle], daughter of “Squire” Richard Brandon, as a 14-year-old girl in 1791 prepared breakfast for General George Washington, by then President, although she knew not his identity until he had eaten and was to depart for his reception at Salisbury, some 6 miles away. The President had ridden from Charlotte on his way to Salisbury.  [NC Highway Marker at US Highway 29.]

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Why did so many Scots leave Scotland for Northern Ireland circa 1700?

We know that an English monarch, King James I (1603-1625) of Scottish background himself, strove to plant Scots in Northern Ireland to try to 'civilise' the 'savage' (and Roman Catholic) Irish; and that the Ulster Plantation in Northern Ireland as encouraged by the king grew sporadically.  That royal effort to intermix English/Scots with the Irish is the genesis of today's troubles between the 'native' Roman Catholic Irish in Ulster, on the one hand, and on the other hand the Protestant 'English' incomers to the Ulster Plantation (mainly sent from Scotland).  Heavy migration continued until roughly 1700 from Scotland to fulfill the king's design for Ulster.  The north of Ireland officially became Northern Ireland (British-ruled) after the southern revolution resulted in the free state of Eire or southern Ireland.  Now, of course, the Republic of Ireland (Eire, and mostly Roman Catholic) is a member of the European Union; as is Northern Ireland, although Northern Ireland is still technically part of the United Kingdom (The UK comprises: Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and England).

Well, then, why did so many Scots disembark from Northern Ireland?

The very success of these Scottish incomers in Ireland sealed the economic doom of many, in that their success in the wool business caused economic dislocation in the wool industry in England. The British Parliament reacted by passing protective Woolen Acts which placed restrictive tariffs on foreign woolen goods coming into England.  When Irish woolens lost their major market, thus depression struck Northern Ireland, and about the year 1718 began a long period of immigration to the New World from Ulster.  -- I suspect but do not know except from others' records (not ours kept in West Tennessee) that our Scots-Irish McCorkle-Morrison people formed part of this economically displaced Scotland-to-Northern-Ireland-to-New-World group.

We know that our McCorkles came from Pennsylvania down the Great-Wagon-Road of the 19th century from Pennsylvania.  (History reveals the path of the Great Wagon Road:  Schuylkill River, Philadelphia; to the Susquehanna River in what was then Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; to York, PA; to Gettysburg, PA; to Maryland; then southward to the Shenandoah Valley.)

I think (but am not certain) that the McCorkles that were prominently represented in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, around Staunton, were kin to ours.    An old letter of Margaret Morrison McCorkle included in this compilation writes to her daughter Elmira that she, Margaret, thinks her brother Andrew Sloan Morrison might have been at that time living up in Virginia "to attend an old lawsuit" brought there about disputed land ownership.

Cities in Virginia that sprang up along the Great Wagon Road included Staunton, and the other set of McCorkles were there.  Then the Great Wagon Road turned southward to North Carolina, with Salisbury developing as the end town in NC.  I think our McCorkles arrived from Pennsylvania into Rowan County near Salisbury circa 1754.

Why did our particular McCorkle-Morrisons leave Pennsylvania for North Carolina?

I do not know, as we have no records stating the reason for exodus.  These people tended to be Presbyterian ministers, which meant they were literate and, indeed, college graduates; or they were in kinship with Presbyterian ministers who taught them to be literate.  Literary accomplishments notwithstanding, probably they left Pennsylvania because land there became scarce causing prices to rise.  That's speculation by me. Maybe they just were filled with wanderlust.

Although good demographic studies are, I think, nonexistent for the Piedmont of NC in the early-  to mid-eighteenth century, I've read that it was the Highland Scots, generally, who removed to the Piedmont of NC, while lowland Scots had tended to settle with the English more on the coast around Cape Fear, NC.  I do not know if this is correct. Many immigrants to NC were like our McCorkle-Morrison ancestors who had spent one generation in Pennsylvania--our particular McCorkles, recall, had landed at what they called Harris' Ferry (Harrisburg) but must have been Philadelphia (perhaps I'm wrong:  was there a river they took from Northern Ireland directly into today's Harrisburg?) --but others from Northern Ireland after landing in Philadelphia went directly to the NC coast as first-generation Americans.)

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Who was the immigrant father of our immigrant son Alexander McCorkle I ?  --Samuel McCorkle? Matthew McCorkle? James McCorkle?

Choice One:  Samuel McCorkle:

Our West Tennessee records do not definitively state the name of the father of Alexander McCorkle but some other records name Alexander McCorkle's father as Samuel.  [I do not know about this SAMUEL business.] 

Choice Two:  Matthew McCorkle of Mecklenburg County, NC:

Update added in 2007:  this winter I found at my mother Joyce Cope Huie's old house on the Dyer-Gibson county line in western Tennessee a leaf of paper handwritten in pencil by Elmira Sloan McCorkle Roache.  The leaf mostly chronicles the contagion of cholera and its rapid deaths in her community, presumably in Gosport, Indiana (I'm not certain of the location as Elmira lived in numerous places after leaving North Carolina & Tennessee).  On one page of this leaf, someone else's hand, presumably Elmira's sons or one of her grandsons, has written in pencil beside the name of our Alexander McCorkle (died in 1800):  "father: MATTHEW McCORKLE."  This is interesting but not dispositive of the issue as mistakes recur in the genealogy as written by the descendants of the two long-surviving sons of Elmira (viz., Addison Locke Roache, Snr., & Robt. Quincy Roach).

Choice Three: James McCorkle

I think I've read that Roman Catholic priest Louis McCorkle identified the father of Alexander as James McCorkle; but I don't have Msgnr. McCorkle's book.  Based on my awareness of his intensive genealogical studies, I would tend to go with his decision, although once circa 1980 I dared to telephone him in his monastery(?) --living quarters--in Missouri (?), I think it was; and he was grumpy with me; he did sound aged, though, and perhaps he couldn't hear me very well.  Unfortunately, at that particular time in my life, I thought I didn't have the extra money to spend frivolously on buying his McCorkle book.  Now of course I wish I had splurged....

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     I’ve tempted time by waiting over 20 years to make all this information publicly available. The good thing about my procrastination is the advent of the Internet, which has afforded us much more genealogical  information than our mere old family records kept in West Tennessee (Yorkville-Newbern).

     Photographs of my husband and of me follow.  We live most of the time in San Antonio, Texas, but part of my heart is on the county line between Dyer and Gibson Counties, Tennessee. My theory in publishing now, finally in 2006, is that it’s better to make a full effort, replete with errors of commission and omission, than it is to wait for a perfect edition.  

Any person discovering an error, will confer a favor by making it known to [email protected]

  Samuel Finley, President of Princeton University, 1761-66.

What kin was he to John Finley, the father of Martha Finley Montgomery, who was the mother of "Nancy" Agnes Montgomery McCorkle? Our old records state a kinship.

 --All of this compilation is sponsored by my husband’s work ethic. Ralph maintains that he, in 2007 A.D. aged 60 also, will never retire, to which I respond, “Hear. Hear !”  RALPH ERVIN WILLIAMSON was born 1946 in Midland, Texas, to Lois Geraldine “Jerry” Haskins Williamson & “JC” John Conwell Williamson.  (Actually Pop's birth name was John Cicero Williamson, but he didn't like that and changed it; and his mama always called him "Charley" anyway.) Ralph is a graduate of the Philips Exeter Academy, Stanford University (Petroleum Engineering), the University of Texas (M.S. in Petroleum Engineering), and he has a J.D. from St. Mary’s University Law in San Antonio.  Yes, he was in one of my classes, the Law of the European Union—but in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1994, when we were both 46. He tells people I took advantage of his youth and inexperience.  By his first marriage he has three beautiful girls, viz., Charlotte Amalie “Amy” Williamson; "Liz" Elizabeth Anne Williamson; and Barbara Halina Williamson  Ralph's dad was an early wildcatter in West Texas, based in Midland.  Several "pay zones" for oil & gas out there in the Permian Basin bear the name Williamson Zone. When James Michener was researching for his planned book "Texas," he visited Pop to learn about "wildcatting."

Ralph Ervin Williamson is named for his father JC Williamson's first cousin: Ralph I. Williamson, who volunteered to fly with the Canadian Air Force, against Nazi Germany, before the U.S. entered WW II. World War II fighter pilot Ralph I.Williamson is interred in the American Cemetery just outside Cambridge, England, having left behind in Lubbock, Texas, a wife and one daughter, Karen Del Williamson.  Ralph Ervin Williamson is also named for his paternal grandfather, Ervin or "E" Williamson of Lubbock (a.k.a. "Popsy"), who m. Ruby Rae Conwell (Williamson), a.k.a. "Momsy." Momsy's mother was née Josephine Albina McCrimmon [Mrs. John Conwell]. One of Momsy's more interesting brothers was "Uncle Augie," alias Cornelius A. Conwell, M.D., a frontier physician born circa 1874 after the parents had left Bibb County, Alabama, to head to Texas. Uncle Augie, I think, appears on the 1920 New Mexico census as Cornelius A. Conwell, in La Jara, Sandoval County. Family legend is that Augie was a physician who tired of having to watch his patients die under primitive medical conditions, and of being paid in chickens and geese.  The farther west he removed, though, the more the indigent folks beseeched him for medical aid.  The last that nephew JC Williamson knew of Uncle Augie, the uncle resided in Regina, New Mexico.--Momsy Ruby Rae Conwell Williamson's other brothers were Uncle Howard Conwell, Uncle Ernest Conwell, & Uncle Errett Conwell.  The first two brothers lived down in Thomaston, Texas, north of today's Victoria, Texas, and are buried in the Thomaston Cemetery beside their parents.

Pictured below is Cornelius Augustus Conwell, M.D.   Augie is no kin as far as I know to the McCorkles.

Momsy & Augie's father John Conwell (variously Conwill) had fought in the eastern theatre in just about every battle of the Civil War. Enlisting in the confederal troups from Randolph, Bibb County, Alabama, "Paw Connie" fit his way up to Gettysburg and skedaddled back down as he was able to on trains running south. He participated in the stacking of arms at Appomattox. Family tradition is that Appomattox is where Paw Connie lost a finger, from trying at the last minute to shoot just one more Yankee. Much later in his life, in the early 20th century, he admitted to being glad the South had not seceded successfully, because the United States as such had achieved greater strength than secession would have brought for the South. (By then he was established in Texas, not having remained any significant time in Randolph, Bibb Co., Alabama, after returning home there at the end of the war.  Except for that brief time, before the departure to Texas, he did not live under the boot of Alabama Reconstruction.) 

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Provenance of the McCorkle-Roache Papers Preserved & sent to me in West Tennessee by “Casey” Bowden Cason McCorkle of San Leandro, California:   

The Roach(e) line of Elmira Sloan McCorkle Roach died out in California, to which state Addison Locke Roache, Jr., had moved from Indiana, along with some sisters—and finally toward the end the aged father, former Indiana Supreme Court Justice Addison Locke Roache, Sr.,  moved to California, too.  Thus did Addison Locke Roache Senior make the lifetime journey from the east coast (state of NC) to California, as far westward as he could travel.

In California some of their McCorkle cousins inherited their papers. Perhaps it was Mada McCorkle Montgomery, daughter of Finis Alexander McCorkle & Finis’ 2^nd wife Mag Hart (McCorkle)  --Mag Hart was the 2nd wife who the Dyer County neighbors gossiped had poisoned her stepson Gillum McCorkle, although Gillum's uncle, Hiram alias HRA McCorkle, records in his journal that Gillum had shot himself "while in bed with [his brother] Homer" ; or, more likely to me, it may have been either of Finis Alexander McCorkle's grandsons (by Finis’ 1^st wife Sarah Josephine Jackson McCorkle) living in California by the time of the end of the last McCorkle-Roaches, viz., Gentry Purviance McCorkle, Senior and Homer McCorkle, half-brothers to Mada [variously Maida] McCorkle Montgomery.  Gentry Purviance McCorkle, Junior, at one point added some handwritten notations to the collection of old papers. Gentry Jr. may have turned over these papers to his uncle Homer McCorkle, or Gentry Jr. may have bypassed his uncle Homer and given the papers directly to Homer's son Bowden Cason "Casey" McCorkle.

--At any rate,  I presume Homer McCorkle was at some point given the letters by the descendants of Elmira Sloan McCorkle (Roache), because it was his son Casey McCorkle who handed them down to me.  –However they came into his hands, the old letters & papers came into the hands of Casey McCorkle, who preserved them and left them to me, and therefore to all who care to read them. 

Solicitation of funds for keeping up the McCorkle Cemetery east of Newbern, Tennessee:

These old papers reveal that all these California emigrants from West Tennessee continued to contribute to, and correspond with, trustees of the Dyer County, Tennessee, McCorkle Cemetery.  Please note the crafty way in which I here solicit funds for our cemetery from all whose ancestors lie therein.

Dear McCorkle Cemetery Family,     As your McCorkle cemetery trustees, we have authorized and enthusiastically endorsed the fund raising effort of Dr. Max E. Gregory and his sister Mrs. Anna Lois Gregory Kuykendall. We have tried to be good stewards in the maintenance of McCorkle Cemetery. We believe this fund raising project is a unique opportunity for McCorkle Cemetery to establish a firm financial base into the future. If you have questions regarding this program, please get in touch.

It has been a number of years since we have asked our McCorkle families to contribute to the up-keep and maintenance of the final resting place of our ancestors and loved ones.

Max Gregory and sister Anna Lois Gregory Kuykendall have volunteered to match all gifts and contributions up to $10,000 from any family/friends of the McCorkle Cemetery. Marsha Huie has promised to give $5,000.  Presently, there are over 400 individuals buried in our beloved cemetery and we hope we will get a positive response to the Gregory/Kuykendall matching gift program.

Max, who is a retired professor from North Carolina State University, has agreed to head up the effort. He will be sending out letters and contacting potential contributors directly, as well as receiving responses and depositing gifts to the McCorkle Cemetery fund. He will be reporting his efforts directly to the McCorkle Cemetery Trustees.

We, your McCorkle Cemetery Trustees, ask that you consider your commitment to this fund rising project to establish what we have been needing for a long time – a solid financial base for the welfare and up-keep of the final resting place of our families that we hold in such great affection.

Sincerely yours,    

McCorkle Cemetery Trustees.

John Ewing Huie, 731-627-0591 ____________________

Bobby Gregory, 731-692-4080 _____________________

Tanya Messer Sandlin, 731-627-2970 ________________

Richard Flatt, 731-643-6557 _______________________

[Parker Ditmore Cashdollar, Ph.D., Dyersburg, although not a trustee is acting as financial advisor.]

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[from Dr. Max E. Gregory:]  Status report of stock certificates for McCorkle Cemetery Fund as of 11/8/2005

Errett Cotton McCorkle, 1888-1976, purchased two stocks in 1962 and 63; 117 shares of Laclede Gas, which presently represents 468 shares of Laclede Group Inc. and some unknown shares of Union Electric that merged with Cisco and later formed Ameren, which presently is 100 shares of Ameren. Both of these stocks are listed on the NY Stock Exchange. Presently, Laclede Group Inc. is selling for approximately $30/share and Ameren about $51/share.  [paragraph] Laclede Group Inc. is being held by U.M.B. Bank, under shareholder relations (contact person – "Jackie"), P. O. Box 410064 Kansas City, MO 64141-0064 – Phone 816-860-7200. The dividends from Laclede Group Inc. amount to something over $600/year. Account number for Laclede Group Inc. is 00000064145. [para.] McCorkle Cemetery Trustees cannot locate the Laclede Group Inc. stock certificate, but replacement certificates can be secured from UMB Bank at a cost of 2% of stock value. Present stock value is $13,885 which requires a payment of $280 to get replacement stock certificates. However, dividend payments will not be affected, but if the McCorkle trustees wish to sell the shares; with appropriate paper work and $280, the replacement stock certificate can be obtained. The stock certificates could then be sold through a brokerage firm. [para.]  In respect to the Ameren Corp., McCorkle Trustees are requesting stock certificates be forwarded to Ms Judy Gregory, Treasurer of McCorkle Cemetery Fund. A request has been mailed to "Denise," Ameren Investor Services, P. O. Box 66887, St Louis MO 63166-6887. The phone number is 1-800-255-2237.

The McCorkle Trustees have also requested the accumulated dividends since 2000, of approximately $1,500.00 be sent to Ms Judy Gregory, the McCorkle Cemetery Fund’s authorized agent. The account number of Ameren Corp. is 0000173415 and the tax number is 620992994._______________________________________________________________________________

June 29, 2006                 To: Trustees of McCorkle Cemetery    From: Max Gregory

I appreciate your positive response to the letters I prepared for the matching gift program. We are looking forward to a successful program to assist in our financial needs.

John Ewing Huie sent me a copy of the list of names of potential contributors. As you have noted, the list can serve as a base; however substantial work needs to be done to make it functional. For example, I have had three address changes since my listing on that document. And I know of a number of individuals who are deceased.

The key to making this matching program a success is to get an up to date mailing address and phone numbers of the families of those individuals on that list. Also, there could be others who might be interested in participating. So I am asking each of you to come up with as many names, addresses, and phone numbers as possible. We may be able to recruit other individuals who are committed to McCorkle Cemetery to assist us in this undertaking.

My plan is to send the letters you have received to interested McCorkle Cemetery individuals and follow-up personally and by phone.

I plan to be in Yorkville August 11-20 for my wife's McLeary family reunion, my class reunion and Yorkville washer pitchin’. I suggest getting together on Sunday afternoon at 4:00 P. M. on August 13^th to go over our plans to initiate the matching gift program. I will have the letter from you, the trustees, to sign.

We can meet in Yorkville, at the old bank building next to the Yorkville Post Office. I will reserve the facility, which is nice and convenient to everyone. I want my brother-in-law, Lloyd Kuykendall, my sister’s husband, to also attend the meeting.

In conclusion, I am looking forward to a positive response to these potential plans. If you have problems with these plans or the date, let me know and we will try to accommodate your schedule.

It is hoped we will be able to initiate our fund raising drive near September 1, 2006. Please begin your work on getting the addresses and phone numbers. Without that we cannot be successful.    Thank you for your dedication and commitment to McCorkle Cemetery.

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married Margaret Gillespie in 1776.  Born in what was then the environs of Harris Ferry, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, on 23 August 1746, Samuel was educated at a precursor of Princteon College, and received a  Doctor of Divinity degree (honorary, I think) from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. –He founded a classics school in Rowan Co., NC, Zion Parnassus, and was a founder of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Look there on campus for a memorial to him.  -- Samuel's wife Margaret Gillespie McCorkle was a daughter of Elizabeth Maxwell Gillespie Steele, heroine of the Revolutionary War in North Carolina, in that she is credited with having rallied Gen. Nathaniel Green at a low military point  by giving him all of her coinage.  Elizabeth Steele's 1^st husband (Gillespie) had been killed at Fort Dobbs during a Cherokee Indian uprising.  -- A 2004 article about Samuel Eusebius McCorkle examines his reactions to the Great Revival: Peter N. Moore; Journal of Southern History, Vol. 70, 2004, entitled : Family Dynamics and the Great Revival: Religious Conversion in the South Carolina Piedmont . Also, there’s a “Steele Creek Presbyterian Church” in the vicinity of Salisbury, NC. 

II.2    John McCorkle                   m.        “Katy” Catherine  Barr

[ "« John an elder in the church[121] and member of the Legislature, useful and much beloved, died in the prime of life leaving an only son who walked in his father's steps and enjoyed his honors.@ --quoting Elmira Sloan McCorkle Roache, John’s niece. –Quaere: Is John's only son Joel McCorkle of Rowan County, NC,  in NC legislative records anywhere? did Joel ever stray as far as Bloomington, Indiana? (I don't think so. Some of Joel's writings are in the Robert/Agnes McCorkle Ramsay collection of papers at the UNC Archives in Chapel Hill. Joel writes like a lawyer.)]

www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/resources/index/indexm.html   :   Is this John above a  grandfather of the John McCorkle of Bloomington, Indiana, who reported the 1842 death of his mother, a Mrs. McCorkle,  to the Christian Church Restoration Movement literature?  --"McCorkle, Mrs.,  death reported by her son John McCorkle of Bloomington, Ind.   She died Feb. 8, 1842, in the 75th year of her age, "without a groan or a struggle after an illness of 8 days."  -- I really think the John who reported his mother's 1842 death was a son of Generation II. James McCorkle, but the dates of the mother's death do not jibe with what someone has placed on www.ancestry.com  -  All 3 wives of Generation II. James McCorkle (brother of Robert et al.) have the 1st name of Elizabeth ["E"]:  viz., Elizabeth Hall, a 2nd Elizabeth Hall, and an Elizabeth Hanna.

II.3.         Joseph  McCorkle       m.        “Peggy” Margaret Snoddy        

 “On February 11, 1775, Samuel Snoddy was appointed one of the commissioners to lay off a road from the provincial road at Morrison's Mill [a mill begun by William Morrison, 1704-1771, near today's Loray in Iredell Co, NC] to the Lime Kilns on the Catawba River.  On February 21, 1775, Samuel's daughter, Sarah Snoddy (age 22), married Andrew Mitchell in Rowan County, NC.  Sarah took the place of her sister (Margaret) Snoddy who eloped with Joseph McCorkle after a license was issued for Margaret to marry Andrew Mitchell.  This was a scandalous happening for the strict Presbyterian ideals of 1775.

“[The following is a quote from John Mantle Judah:] "The well-known story of the elopement and marriage of my grandparents is that Joseph [McCorkle] was one morning at work, roofing a house. His father came and said, 'Joe, that old fool Snoddy is going to marry his girl Margaret [Snoddy] to so-and-so tomorrow. Maybe you'd better go and see about it.'   Whereupon, Joe hastily clambered down, put on his coat and galloped off several miles to the Snoddy place. That night after the stern old father was asleep, Margaret handed out her bridle and saddle through a window and herself followed. She never saw her parents again, for old Snoddy never forgave her, leaving her a shilling* in his will. The story goes on to say that a younger sister was willing to supply Margaret's place to the bereaved groom [Andrew Mitchell], so that a wedding took place nevertheless."  (Samuel Snoddy's will actually left his daughter Margaret five shillings, the same amount he left his other six children.)    …

       JOHN SNODDY m. AGNES NIBLOCK. [Marsha Huie adds: Gracie or Gracy Niblock was a NC Huie cousin to Julius M. Huie, who migrated to West Tennessee, son of Benjamin Huie & Lavinia Cowan Huie.  Gracey Niblock in NC & Julius Huie's daughter Sophronia “Fronie” Huie Thompson [in West Tennessee] regularly corresponded: ] [ WALNUT HILL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH NEAR LEXINGTON, KY ] 

In 1778, Samuel Snoddy's son, John Snoddy (age 20) married Agnes Niblock in North Carolina.  Around 1780, John Snoddy migrated to Kentucky and in June of 1787, John and Agnes were admitted to the Walnut Hill Presbyterian Church near Lexington, Kentucky (Fayette County).  Agnes died between 1792 and 1795, leaving John with six young children.  He moved to Bourbon County circa 1795 and on February 22, 1796, John Snoddy married Nancy Neel/McNeel.  He remained there until circa 1829-30 since he was in the 1800 census and land records show he purchased 133 acres on Rockbridge Creek on April 16, 1803.  At this time, he moved to Owen County, Indiana and bought 60 acres in Wayne township, near Gosport.  [Elmira Sloan McCorkle Roache, Joseph McCorkle & Margaret Snoddy McCorkle's niece through her father Robert McCorkle, at one time lived in or near Gosport, Indiana. ] He (John Snoddy)  is listed in the 1830 census and [John Snoddy] died there on March 22, 1843.

“In Wilkes County, North Carolina on March 4, 1778, William Snoddy, Sr. (at age 29) entered 300 acres on the north side of the Yadkin River.  On May 6, 1778, Samuel was appointed a "justice".  "In November 1778, William was a chain-bearer on a survey of land in Wilkes County for his brother-in-law, Joseph McCorkle."  On February 5, 1779, he entered 300 additional acres on Blue Ridge, near the head of the Buffalo and Elk Rivers.  On May 6, 1779, he was appointed overseer of a road "from Kerr’s bridge on 3rd Creek through Captain [James?] Purviance's district, along with Matt Troy, Joseph Steel and James Brandon."

“On February 10, 1822 Thomas Snoddy (son of Samuel) sold 701 acres in NC to ? Alexander for $2100.  (This was part of the state grant to Samuel [Snoddy] and part of a grant from Earl of Granville to Andrew Morrison in 1762.)  ”   [Andrew Morrison was father of Margaret Morrison McCorkle, inter alia.] Information from Heritage Book of Iredell County, North Carolina - Volume II, page 131.  Item #136 – ”

II.4.  Alexander  McCorkle II       m.        Catherine “Katy” Morrison

* Aleck was emotional in character and joined the Methodists  » -- quoting his niece Elmira.

I think this Alexander McCorkle, a Jr., migrated west first to Giles County then northward to Henry County, Tenn., in or near Paris, Tennessee. I think Katy Morrison (McCorkle) would have been a first cousin-once-removed, that is, a generation removed, to Margaret Morrison McCorkle (Mrs. Robert), and a first cousin to Margaret Morrison McCorkle's father, the Andrew Morrison who m. Elizabeth Sloan(e).  Margaret Morrison McCorkle was Alexander McCorkle II's sister-in-law. --This Alexander McCorkle II referred to himself after the death of his father and the birth of his son as "Alexander Snr." At least one of his letters posted from Giles County, Tennessee, and addressed back home to NC lies in the Ramsay Papers in the UNC Archives at Chapel Hill.

III.1             Nancy McCorkle,                  b. circa 1780.

III.2             Mary McC ,                           b. 4^th  Oct  1781 Rowan Co, NC; d. 6^th June 1783 Rowan  Co.                                                            (Thyatira Presbyterian Church Cemetery).

III.3.            James Morrison McCorkle,  b. 24^th Seprember 1783.

III.4.            Alexander McC, III                      b. circa 1789  [note the 6-year hiatus. (?) ]

III.5.            Lewis                     ,              b. circa 1790.

III.6.            James H.               ,              b. Abt. 1792.

III.7.            John McCorkle      ,              b. circa 1793, Rowan Co, NC; d. Oct 12, 1813, Rowan Co.                                                                              (Thyatira Cemetery)

III.8.            Catherine McCorkle               b. circa 1794.

III.9.            Samuel McCorkle ,                b. Jan 01, 1795.

II.5.  William  McCorkle          m.      1^st “Peggy” Margaret Blythe,  and 2^nd “Mattie” [Martha]] King [widow of John Purviance, Jr.,  who was scalped in 1792], and 3^rd in 1800 Jane or Jennie Graham.  This Margaret ‘Peggy’ Blythe was a sister to the first wife of our Robert McCorkle, who is listed immediately below.  Robert McCorkle first married Elizabeth Blythe (“Lizzie”).     [“William, following Barton Stone, set his negroes free and went to preaching.”—quoting William’s niece Elmira Sloan McCorkle Roache.] William McCorkle died in 1818 in Rutherford County, Tennessee; so we know he did not remove to Dyer County, West Tennessee, with his brother Robert, who died in 1828.    

--It may be that some papers of this William McCorkle lie under his name in the archives of UNC at Chapel Hill; I've not checked yet.

[A Restoration Movement publication reported the following death of interest here:

McCorkle, Richard Blythe is brother of Saml. Montgomery McCorkle (1835);  Tazwell County, Illinois, Mar. 20, 1836.]

William’s children by 1^st wife “Peggy” Margaret Blythe:

III.1.                            Samuel Montgomery McCorkle, born circa 1789.

  –This must surely be the Montgomery McCorkle about whom Elmira Sloan McCorkle Roache writes; Montgomery is up in Indiana with or near to Elmira, a 1^st cousin, if Elmira’s “Montgomery” is this son of William McCorkle.

III.2.                            Richard Blythe McCorkle, born 1786 in Rowan County, N.C.

[A publication of the Restoration Movement reports that Blythe McCorkle died in 1836 on 20th March:  "McCorkle, Richard Blythe is brother of Saml. Montgomery McCorkle (1835);  Tazwell co. Ill. Mar. 20, 1836."]

III.3.               Asenath McCorkle, born 27^th Oct. 1789. 

William’s child by his 2^nd wife “Mattie” Martha King McCorkle:

III.4.                          Miles McCorkle, born circa 1796.  Miles McCorkle was a physician in Lebanon, Wilson County, Middle Tennessee.

William’s children by 3^rd wife Jane “Jennie” Jane Graham, whom he married in Sumner Co, Tenn., in 1800:

III.5.            John McCorkle, born circa 1802

  -- I'm pretty sure this is NOT the “Cousin John McCorkle” about whom Margaret Morrison writes, saying that Cousin John McCorkle is coming to Dyer County, Tennessee, to make and crop and will probably take care of Thomas, Jr. ???  I think that "Cousin John" was a son of Margaret's brother-in-law James McCorkle.  If so --that is, if Margaret referred to her brother-in-law James McCorkle's descendants-- that gives us a SLOAN family clue;  Margaret Morrison McCorkle's mother was born Elizabeth SLOAN.  That may just mean that Margaret's brother-in-law James McCorkle's wife Elizabeth Hall whose mother was a Sloan was kin to Margaret Morrison McCorkle's mother.  =  Sloan family clue...

III.6.            Amelia McCorkle, born circa 1805.

III.7.            Blanche Locke McCorkle, born circa 1807.

II.6.         Robert McCorkle, 1764-1828  m. 1^st Lizzy Elizabeth Blythe, 2^nd Margaret ‘Peggy’ Morrison.   Robert McCorkle was born 29 Oct. 1764 & died in April, in the spring of 1828.

Robert McCorkle moved from Rowan Co., NC, to Kentucky.  According to his daughter Elmira, Robert forayed into Kentucky "in the second company" of white men's incursion into Kentucky.  Carol Byler writes that Robert joined Walnut Hill Presbyterian Church’s congregation in 1789, a church also joined by Robert's brothers Joseph (who m. Margaret "Peggy" Snoddy) & William McCorkle. Our West Tenn. records do not mention Walnut Hill Presbyterian Church.

 Then, Robert moved back down to northern Middle Tennessee (I think);  I know Robert returned to Rowan Co. to claim and marry his 2^nd wife; then with the 2nd wife removed to the area of Stone’s River, near or in Murfreesboro, Tennessee; and we know his brother William went to Stone's River too, in order to take up their father Alexander McCorkle I ’s Revolutionary War land grant; and finally Robert (but not William, who died in 1818) removed farther west to Dyer County, where he died in 1828.  --Again, according to his daughter Elmira, Robert, who began life in Rowan Co., NC, may not even have lingered in Middle Tennessee upon leaving Rowan Co., but forayed directly into Kentucky. This latter point is unclear.

     We do know that other of Robert McCorkle's relatives, circa 1792, removed up to Kentucky from Middle Tennessee, from the environs of Lebanon and Gallatin, to escape Indian depredations in Sumner Co., Tenn.  They landed particularly in Bourbon County (near Paris), Kentucky; and that is why they were at Cane Ridge meeting house in 1801-4, and attended the birth of the Christian Church / Disciples of Christ/ Church of Christ / at Cane Ridge, Bourbon County, Kentucky. 

     Robert had 2 children by his 1^st wife “Lizzie” Elizabeth Blythe, viz.,  1.  infant “Aleck” Alexander McC, born and died circa 1790; and 2.  Elizabeth McCorkle (Mrs. Thomas Anderson), born 1791.  Elizabeth McCorkle Anderson at death was living in Lebanon, Wilson Co., Tennessee, I think in the home of her daughter Elizabeth C. Anderson McMurry (the daughter Elizabeth was the wife of a Cumberland Presbyterian minister, John Mitchell McMurry).

 I think Thomas Anderson had had a first wife before marrying Elizabeth McCorkle, daughter of Robert & Lizzie Blythe McCorkle.--Thomas Anderson's mother was née Mebane, and there is today a town of Mebane, North Carolina, west of Durham.

Robert’s children by 2^nd wife Margaret “Peggy” Morrison, a daughter of Elizabeth Sloan(e) & Andrew Morrison (and a paternal granddaughter of William Morrison, 1704-1771, & Margaret (maiden name unknown) Morrison) were: 

III.3.                                   Rebecca Cowden McCorkle (Thompson)

born 28^th Dec 28 1795 in Rowan Co., NC &  died 1829 in Middle Tennessee, some 2 years after the death of her husband Gideon Thompson. -- Rebecca & Gideon Thompson left two orphaned daughters, 1^st:  Jane M. Thompson (Mrs. Benjamin Williams); Jane M. Thompson Williams died in 1850 & is buried in the McCorkle Cemetery, Dyer County, Tennessee, as "Jane Williams, consort of Benj. Williams." I just recently found her name as having joined the old family church, Lemalsamac Christian Church as it was then known, in the year 1850 which was also the year of her death.  Her husband Benjamin Williams then "removed" from Lemalsamac, but I know not where. The 2^nd daughter of Rebecca Cowden McCorkle was Mary “Polly” Thompson (Mrs. Matthew Dickey).  

born 13^th Feb. 1797 in Rowan Co, NC; and died 2^nd August  1890, either in Indianapolis, Marion Co, Indiana, at the home of her oldest son Justice Addison Locke Roache; or in the town of California in the state of Missouri at the home of a younger son “Quincy” Robert Quincy Roache.  It is mostly to Elmira and the record-keeping of her progeny that we owe this present collection of old correspondence.  [Added later:  "Uncle" Joseph Smith JOE McCorkle of Yorkville and his descendants retained their McCorkle-Morrison papers, also.  We owe much to Uncle Joe's great-granddaughter Carol Branz of Spokane, Washington, who even has an old trunk containing locks of hair from some of the eldest generation.]

III.5.            Edwin Alexander McCorkle, born 18^th March 1799,

in Rowan County, NC, died 10th January 1853 in Dyer County, Tennessee. Married Jane Maxwell Thomas of Lebanon, Wilson County, Tennessee, who died in 1855 in Dyer County, Tennessee. Edwin is my great-great grandfather through my father [Howard] Ewing Huie, 1907-1971.  We know from certain old documents that Edwin Alexander McCorkle served as one of the earliest Justices of the Peace of Dyer County.

III.6.                  Jehiel Morrison McCorkle “JEM,” born 3^rd Jan. 1803, buried in the Dyer County, Tenn., McCorkle Cemetery. Born in Rowan Co., NC, he died in 1849 in Dyer County, Tennessee.  Married "Betsy" Elizabeth Smith in Rowan County, NC.  Member of the first Dyer County Court and in the earliest Dyer County militia; hence the honorific used for him, "Major J M McCorkle." –I have his children listed elsewhere; and I note elsewhere Jehiel & Betsy McCorkle’s loss of at least three sons to the Civil War.  --One of Jehiel's sister Elmira's grandsons has written in pencil on Elmira's old records that he believed Betsy Smith (Mrs. Jehiel Morrison McCorkle) was probably a niece of his father, Dr. Stephen Roache; unfortunately, I do not know about this, but doubt it ....

Somehow--we don't know how--some of Jehiel Morrison McCorkle's papers have landed in the University of Tennessee at Martin archives in the late 20th century, in connection with records of the early Dyer County court.   He was an early member of the first Dyer County militia. He died in 1849 so we know this was not Civil War-connected.  And evidently Jehiel kept the minutes for the Dyer County Court, which would have made him today's equivalent, I guess, of the County Court Clerk; but the truth is hazy. -- Nor do we know how some of John Edwin McCorkle's papers arrived there.--An application made in Gibson or Dyer County, Tennessee, by a Thomas kinsman for a Revolutionary War pension for service in the North Carolina line --of either James Thomas or Henry Thomas, I can't remember which brother-in-law it was of Jane Maxwell THOMAS McCorkle alias Mrs. Edwin Alexander McCorkle--  lists as a reference "Major J M McCorkle."  That would be Jehiel Morrison McCorkle.

III.7.            Margaret Permelia McCorkle (Scott)              (as of 1^st Jan. 1833: Mrs. Lemuel Locke Scott),  b. on the 14^th of June 1805; d. 19^th November 1853, a few months after the death of her brother Edwin A. McCorkle on the 19th of January of 1853. Husband Lemuel Locke Scott:  2^nd Sept. 1804-17^th Sept. 1866.   They lived in Neboville-Yorkville area of Gibson County.

               IV.7.1.            John A. Scott                                       b. 3^rd November 1833. 

               IV.7.2.        Wm. Leander Scott                                      born 3^rd  July 1835. 

His Last Will and Testament appears farther below.

--Tuberculosis caused him to move, under doctor's advice, to the mountainous area of Spencer, Van Buren County, Tennessee, during which time his 1^st cousin John Edwin McCorkle (my great-grandfather) acted as Leander's guardian in West Tenn.  Quaere:  Is Leander Scott buried in Van Buren County, Tennessee?

Two wives:  the second was Addie Fernandez (Scott), who at one point appears in the early membership rolls of Lemalsamac Christian Church (as Addie Scott). There, she was "withdrawn from."   [Wm. AARON Scott and brother GLENN Smith Scott  of Yorkville-Nebo descend from Leander Scott's son Lemuel Scott who m. Ella Bernice Smith (Scott).  Aaron and Glenn Scott's father Lemuel Scott--a grandson of Lemuel Locke Scott & Margaret Permelia McCorkle (Scott)--instructed them never to trust a "Campbellite" [this is kind of a pejorative term for a member of the Disciples of Christ-Christian Church-Church of Christ] because his, Lemuel's, uncle Bob--yes, a Campbellite--upon the early demise of Bob's brother Leander Scott had tried to do Leander's heirs out of their rightful inheritance of land.  By now, though, all is forgiven in the interest of family harmony.]

               IV.7.3.            “Bob” Robert Quincy Scott , 1837-1907. 

Bob Scott was born 18^th January 1837;  d. Jun 05, 1907; m. Sallie Jane Owens on 21^st May 1867; and she died 22^nd June 1936 in Dyer, Gibson County, Tennessee.--  I think Bob had a daughter named Elma Faye Scott, born 1853 died 1950, aged 97; and a son James Herbert Scott, 1878-1923, who wrote the weather column for the Memphis newspaper, the Commercial Appeal.  And there was a James Herbert Scott, Junior, 1914-1928; and a Byron Estelle Scott, 1906-1946.  This last information about Bob's children comes from Glenn Scott.

Bob Scott moved his church membership from Lemalsamac to Nebo. 

               IV.7.4.            Sallie L. Scott  (Rodgers) ( Locke).                Sallie was born 22^nd  Feb 22, 1838.

 I would hazard a guess that her real Christian name was "Sarah." (?)

 In Gibson County, she married  John A.  Rodgers).  (Quaere:  Did John A. Rodgers die in the Civil War?)

Then, Sallie L. Scott married again and became  Mrs. Richard W. “Dick” Locke)

She is buried McCorkle Cemetery, Dyer County, Tennessee, where her parents Margaret Permelia McCorkle Scott & Lemuel Locke Scott are buried.

Although I know Dick Locke served as a trustee for the McCorkle Cemetery, and although I think Dick Locke's other wife is buried in the Old Yorkville Cumberland Presbyterian Church Cemetery, I have not located a tombstone for Richard W. "Dick" Locke.  As he served as a trustee for the McCorkle Cemetery, he should have a memorial erected there, even at this late date.

               IV.7.5.            James J. Scott                                     b. Mar 19, 1840

 [presumably named after Lemuel Locke Scott’s father, James Scott, 1777-1853].

               IV.7.6.            Margaret E. Scott,                  born 18^th Dec. 1841.

 Presumably named after Margaret Permelia Scott & her mother Margaret Morrison McCorkle. 

               IV.7.7.            David E. Scott                                       b. 3^rd May 1845.

[Natalie Huntley, efficient manager of the Dyer County Tennessee Genealogy rootsweb Internet site, has graciously transcribed the will of W. LEANDER SCOTT, dated 12 August 1885 and probated in the December term of Dyer County court , in which the will was recorded on 9th February 1886.  The clerk of court was Z.G. Watkins.]

 

    Last will and Testament of W. L. SCOTT dec'd

    Know all men by these presents, that I, W. L. SCOTT of the County of Dyer and State of Tennessee do hereby ordain and publish this my last will and testament - First - I will all of my personal property, except what the law allows my wife, be sold and all of my debts be paid -

2nd - I will to my wife during her widowhood and my son LEMUEL two hundred acres of land, being the same on which I formerly lived in the 8th Civil District of Gibson County Tennessee, but in the event my wife marries again she is to have a homestead during her life in said land, or if she prefers she may have one half of s'd land during her life - and my son LEMUEL the remainder - the division to be made according to quality & quantity.

Third - I will the one hundred and thirty five acres of land that fell to me in the division between myself & Bro. R. H. [Robert QUINCY Scott, 1837-1907] SCOTT after the death of our sister SALLIE L. LOCKE to N. R. A. McCORKLE

 [Marsha Huie thinks the trustee was probably HRA McCorkle alias Hiram R.A. McCorkle, a brother to inter alia John Edwin McCorkle and a 1^st cousin to LEANDER Scott]

 in trust, authorizing and empowering him to sell said land at his own option and make deed without _____ or hindrance - and use any or all of the proceeds if needs be in paying my debts and educating my son LEMUEL, after my other personal effects have been exhausted and pay any balance that may be in his hands to my son LEMUEL when he arrives at the age of twenty one - but if he dies without bodily issue it is to be distributed as hereafter set forth -

4th Should my son die without bodily issue before my wife [née Addie Fernandes], she is to have a life estate in the two hundred acres of land described above and at her death it shall go, one half to my Bro. R. H. ["Bob" Robert QUINCY Scott] SCOTT and the other half to my niece LULA MOODY during her natural life - for her sole use benefit free from the controll of any husband she has or may hereafter have and at her death to her bodily heirs or children if she die without children or issue to R. H. SCOTT.

5th - If there is any of effects of the sale of said land remaining in my Trustees hands after the foregoing requirements have been complied with it shall be divided equally between R. H. SCOTT & LULA WOODS.

6th - I hereby appoint JOHN E. McCORKLE, Executor of this my last will and testament of whom no bond shall be required and he is to have a liberal compensation for the services.

Witness my hand and seal this the 12th day of August 1885

W. L. SCOTT  [known as LEANDER Scott]

Witnesses:
JNO. E. McCORKLE [John Edwin McCorkle]

W. R. A. McCORKLE

[This might be another 1st cousin, William Leander McCorkle (son of RAH & Tirzah Scott McCorkle; or it might be HIRAM R. A. McCorkle, also 1st cousin)

E. M. ALLEN
S. A. DICKEY

This will was transcribed, as written, and contributed by Natalie Huntley

[Now back to children of Robert & Margaret "Peggy" Morrison McCorkle:]

III.8.                Robert Andrew Hope McCorkle [Robert A H or RAH], born in Iredell County, NC; and died in Dyer County, Tennessee. Married Tirzah Scott.  Robert was born 20^th March 1808, Iredell Co, NC; d. 26^th  Sept 1873, Dyer Co, Tennessee.  He and Tirzah Scott married in Gibson County, Tenn., in 1828.

Children of RAH & Tirzah Scott McCorkle:

   IV.8.1.            Sarah Elmira McCorkle (Algea)  --She is buried beside her unmarried daughter in the McCorkle Cemetery.  Although her father RAH McCorkle pointedly called her Sarah McCorkle after the misbehavior of her estranged husband, her tombstone says:  ALGEA.

--  I don't want to write her husband's name because Sarah had to leave separate herself from him and continue to live, along with her 2 Algea children, with her father RAH and mother Tirzah Scott McCorkle. --Well, I guess I must: Jonathan Francis Algea, M.D. --According to a letter of his brother-in-law Joe McCorkle, Mr Algea was defrocked from doctorhood. (Please see in these materials the Affidavit of Joseph Smith McCorkle, Sarah's brother, regarding the shenanigans of Jno. Francis Algea.

 --Uncle Hiram McCorkle's antebellum journal entries reveal close friendship as young men with  a "Francis" who I think was Jno. Francis Algea.)

   8.2.            Addison Alexander McCorkle, died young.

                                  His father wrote about his death, “Addison’s flesh mortified.”

   8.3.            Susan L. McCorkle (McNail)  --The last McNail about whom I knew anything was Maurice M. McNail, who died in Detroit, Michigan, in--I think--the late 1980s. He told me then that he had lost all his family records because his house in Detroit had been vandalized.

   8.4.            James Scott McCorkle, M.D., in Newbern, Tenn.;  m. Elizabeth Obedience Clements of Weakley Co.  (Obviously, he was named after his mother Tirzah's father, James Scott of Pennsylvania, then York County, South Carolina, then Gibson-Dyer County, Tennessee (1777-1853).)

    8.5.            Robert Eusebius McCorkle, died young; McCorkle Cemetery beside his parents.  Others write his name as “Robert EDWARD McCorkle” but I’m sticking to Robert EUSEBIUS.

   8.6.            ?I’m not sure there was a son born named John McCorkle? –some records have him, some don’t.

   8.7.            Joseph Smith “Joe” McCorkle, died Yorkville, Tennessee; buried McCorkle Cemetery. Note the Mormon name. My father Ewing Huie, 1907-1071, was a pallbearer for his "Uncle Joe McCorkle" who was in fact a 1st cousin to John E. McCorkle, maternal grandfather of Howard Ewing Huie.

   8.8.            Parley Pratt McCorkle, died young; note this Mormon name, too.

   8.9.            William Leander A. McCorkle, died as a mature adult but too young, leaving a wife, Alice J. Wells (McCorkle); and "Willie" or "William" also left a daughter Eudora McCorkle Roberson, who had moved to Marshall County, TN, with her husband.  All but Eudora’s husband are buried McCorkle Cemetery, Dyer County, Tennessee. I don't know what happened to Eudora's widower after her death.

[...END of Children of Robert McCorkle, a son of immigrants Alexander & "Nancy" Agnes Montgomery McCorkle.  Now to the immigrants' son James McCorkle:]

II.7.         James McCorkle  m. 1^st Lizzy Elizabeth  Hall dau. of Elizabeth Sloan & Thomas Hall of Rowan Co, NC;  and 2^nd another Elizabeth Hall, daughter of Hugh Hall & Margaret King (Hall); and James’ 3^rd wife was  Elizabeth Hanna (widow Johnson) (McCorkle).  James McCorkle was born 4^th May 1768 in Rowan, North Carolina. He moved to & lived in Ohio a while (Piqua County, Ohio).  In the UNC Archives (on campus in Chapel Hill), I read a letter from him, having removed from Rowan Co., NC, to Piqua County, Ohio, a letter written in Ohio back to his brother-in-law in Rowan County: Robert Ramsay (husband of "Nancy" Agnes McCorkle Ramsay).  In this letter, James McCorkle extolled the air of freedom  [although he carefully did not say freedom from slavery] and egalitarianism up in Ohio.  Not much difference was noticed up there between rich and poor, he adjudged. --James McCorkle died in Franklin, Boone County, Indiana,  2^nd  Dec 1840.  Perhaps he moved from Ohio to Indiana in old age to live with a child; I do not know.

James moved from NC to Ohio; but lived at his death in Frankfort, Boone County, Indiana. James’ niece Elmira Sloan McCorkle Roach(e) lived, at least for a while, nearby her uncle James in Indiana. James is the recipient of a letter from his sister-in-law Margaret Morrison McCorkle, a letter I presume to have been preserved by Elmira.)

 One of our old records lists Elizabeth Hall two or three times as his wife; I have never understood this and used to figure it a mistake.   Evidently, though, JAMES McCORKLE, brother-in-law to Margaret Morrison McCorkle (Mrs. Robert McCorkle), in fact  married two Elizabeth Halls, women with different parents; and then a 3^rd wife named, others’ records say, Elizabeth Hanna (widow Johnson). If so, he had 3 wives named Elizabeth, which must have made his married life serene. Someone has cited a book listing Elizabeth Hanna’s genealogy:  Jerry Lavern Larson, The Sons of Lars, Privately Printed in 1987 in Universal City, Texas, a suburb of San Antonio.  241 Flintstone Lane, Universal City, Texas 78148-4343, phone 210 658-0489

     James McCorkle by first wife, whom he married circa 1790 in Iredell County, NC :  Elizabeth Hall, 1770-1794, daughter of  THOMAS  Hall and Elizabeth SLOAN (Hall).  This 1^st wife named Elizabeth Hall (the 1^st of 2 with that same name) is said by submitters to ancestry.com to have died in the year 1794; I do not have records on this. Now, here’s more confusion.  Some submitters on www.ancestry.com say that this 1^st wife had a son named Levi McCorkle, born on b: 27 JAN 1793.  Evidently, I would presume but do not know, this Levi McCorkl born in 1793 died because his father James McCorkle, by his 2^nd wife, names another child Levi, below, the later one being Levi A. McCorkle, born in August of 1800.  I do not know how to resolve this LEVI issue. 

--There is one McCorkle instance of which I'm aware in which one father had two sons named the same first name;  according to my father's McCorkle 1st cousin, Annie Glenn McCorkle, an elderly Ida McCorkle (Mrs. Irving Adair McCorkle) --who lived around 1930 across from what was then the Newbern High School--regretted that her son had allowed his second wife to name her son the same name (these are descendants of Jehiel Morrison McCorkle); Kenneth McCorkle was a Christian Church minister--I think in Kentucky.

James McCorkle by  second wife:  Elizabeth Hall, daughter of Hugh Hall & wife Margaret KING (Hall).  One submitter on ancestry.com says this Elizabeth Hall McCorkle was born 19^th August 1777 in Iredell County, NC, and died 2^nd June 1817 in Piqua County, OHIO.  If the birth date of Benoni [Benjamin?] A. McCorkle, below, is correctly listed as 2^nd June 1817, that means this Elizabeth Hall McCorkle died in childbirth. 

1.                  Thomas Jay MCCORKLE b: 5 FEB 1797span>

2.                  Lavinia M. MCCORKLE b: 30 OCT 1799

3.                  Levi A. MCCORKLE b: 21 AUG 1800  [But why would he name two sons Levi; something seems to be amiss here??????]

4.                  Hugh Hall MCCORKLE b: 26 NOV 1801

5.                  John A. MCCORKLE b: 26 JUN 1804

6.                  Louisa W. MCCORKLE b: 6 AUG 1805

7.                  Margaret King MCCORKLE b: 9 MAY 1808

8.                  Samuel Eusebius MCCORKLE b: 20 APR 1811 –named after an uncle.

9.                  John Quincy Adams MCCORKLE b: 26 MAR 1814

10.            [Benjamin?] Benoni A. MCCORKLE b: 2 JUN 1817 

This mother named Elizabeth Hall (McCorkle) died in 1817.  Poor thing; she bore one too many children.  How dreadful was childbearing for women back then.  To save time, because I must finish these chapters this week, I’ll list again the children of the 2^nd wife Elizabeth Hall (James McCorkle):

Back to the 2^nd marriage:  Now to the marriage 12^th April 1796 to the Elizabeth HALL who was a daughter of Hugh Hall and Margaret KING Hall.  This Elizabeth Hall is listed by someone on www.ancestry.com as being born 19^th August 1777 in Iredell County, NC, and dying 2^nd June 1817 in Piqua [County], Ohio.   This contributor to ancestry.com says that JAMES McCORKLE married this Elizabeth Hall on 12^th April 1796 in Iredell County, NC.   -- I just don’t know…; here, I’m relying entirely on others’ records, which makes me nervous.]

Her children by James McCorkle: 

1.            Thomas Jay MCCORKLE b: 5^th February  FEB 1797 –His son surely must have been the Thomas McCorkle, Jr., about whose custody Margaret Morrison McCorkle wrote her daughter Elmira—Margaret presumed Cousin John [A.?] McCorkle would come down to Dyer Co, Tenn., and make a crop that year; and that he would probably take Thomas, Jr.  --. Here’s, I'm pretty sure, the father of the THOMAS Junior about whom Margaret Morrison writes when she says that Cousin John [A?] McCorkle will  probably take Thomas Jr. into his custody when he comes down to Dyer County, Tenn.,  to make a crop that next spring.    -- Somebody has placed on the Internet that the mother of Thomas McCorkle, Jr., was née Mary Noble; I have no independent knowledge of this (no West Tenn. records).

2.            Lavinia M. MCCORKLE b: 30^th October 1799

3.            Levi A. MCCORKLE b: 21 AUG 1800 –His mother was the Elizabeth Hall born of Hugh Hall and Margaret KING Hall. 

4.            Hugh Hall MCCORKLE b: 26 NOV 1801

5.                         John A. MCCORKLE b: 26 JUN 1804 b. Jun 26, 1804  -- Again, could this be the “Cousin John McCorkle” who, his aunt by marriage Margaret Morrison McCorkle, writes:  plans to come down to Dyer County, Tennessee, and make a crop; and she expects him to take [his nephew] Thomas, Jr.  (?) Yes, I think it is.

6.                         Louisa W. MCCORKLE b: 6 AUG 1805

7.                         Margaret King MCCORKLE b: 9 MAY 1808

8.         Samuel Eusebius MCCORKLE b: 20 APR 1811 (named after an uncle in Rowan Co., NC)

9.    John Quincy Adams MCCORKLE b: 26^th 27^th  MAR 1814

      10.    Benoni A. MCCORKLE [Benjamin McCorkle, perchance?)  b: 2 JUN 1817; died 1817.  The mother, this Elizabeth Hall (McCorkle), according to others’ records died in 1817, evidently in childbirth.  Poor thing. 

Then, James McCorkle married a 3^rd wife, Elizabeth Hanna (widow JOHNSON), 1783-1857.  They married 21^st August 1821 in Miami County, Ohio.  She bore one son by James McCorkle, viz., William Augustus McCorkle, born 2^nd November 1822. William Augustus McCORKLE . 

As mentioned, the Restoration Movement lists certain deaths, including that of a Mrs. McCorkle, in 1842, as reported by her son John McCorkle of Bloomington, Indiana:   "McCorkle, Mrs., death reported by her son John McCorkle of Bloomington, Ind.  She died Feb. 8, 1842, in the 75th year of her age, 'without a groan or a struggle after an illness of 8 days.' "

And, as mentioned, who are these two:  McCorkle, E.     Dyersburgh [sic.], Tenn.      1832; and

McCorkle, B       Holland's Grove, Ill      1836   ? ? ?


Submitters on Ancestry.com say the following about the one child of James & third wife Elizabeth Hanna (widow Johnson) (Mrs. James McCorkle). I myself knew, and know, nothing about her from our old records. These other people name a son as:

So, above, we get a SLOAN family clue about who might have been kin to "our" ancestor, Elizabeth Sloan Morrison (Mrs. Andrew Morrison), the mother of Margaret Morrison McCorkle, inter alia.  To repeat:  James McCorkle (brother to our Robert McCorkle) had a first wife, whom he married circa 1790 in Iredell County, NC , named Elizabeth Hall, 1770-1794, and she was a daughter of  THOMAS  Hall and Elizabeth SLOAN (Hall).  -- Was this Elizabeth Sloan (Hall) kin to "our" ancestor Elizabeth Sloan (Morrison)?

Another clue: We should keep in mind the early grave (the earliest?) in the Fourth Creek Presbyterian Meeting House cemetery in what became downtown Statesville, Iredell County (formerly Rowan County), North Carolina: that of one  Fergus SLOAN. It was this Fergus Sloan on whose land (I think I read this somewhere) Fort Dobbs was erected during the French & Indian War(s) era.

Now to the Daughters of the Immigrants to the Colonies Alexander & Agnes Montgomery McCorkle:

II.8.                         Elizabeth McCorkle Barr, born in Rowan Co., NC.  Mrs. William or James Barr;  other records say 'James" but mine say “William”-- Others’ records say she married James Barr on 18^th December 1774 in Rowan County, and that he was a son of WILLIAM BARR and Catherine MORRISON; also that James Barr was born in  1745 in Chester Co., PA, and died on 22^nd May 1788 in the Salisbury area of Rowan County.   Some records, not ours, say Elizabeth McCorkle (Barr) also married a 2^nd husband named Andrew Kilpatrick?  --quaere: was he perhaps a 1^st husband? There’s something wrong here; it's just not in our records, but is on www.ancestry.com and in other relatives' records.              --This Elizabeth McCorkle Barr/Kilpatrick was “Lizzie”  to her niece Elmira Sloan McCorkle Roache;  and “Bettie” in her father Alexander McCorkle I’s  will — As Elizabeth Barr she appears, I think, in the church records of Shiloh Presbyterian (C.P.) Church near Gallatin, Tennessee. My record says "William" but other records say Elizabeth McCorkle married James Barr, who was born in 1745 in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and died 22 MAY 1788 in Salisbury Dist., Rowan Co. North Carolina. On  www.ancestry.com, someone has contributed the following children for Elizabeth Barr; I do not have records of these children, so I don’t know the veracity....

1.                  Elizabeth Barr

2.               Alexander Barr            b: 1776

3.               Catherine Barr             b: 1780

4.                 Hannah Barr                b: 8 Oct 1775 in Rowan Co. North Carolina

5.                William Hampton Barr b: Aug 1778 in Rowan Co. North Carolina

II.9                         "Nancy" Agnes McCorkle Ramsay (became Mrs. Robert Ramsay on 21 Feb. 1790) (also known as Agnes Ramsay), born in Rowan Co., NC, 1760 on 9^th Feb.; d. 21^st April 1822 & is buried where her parents are buried, in Thyatira Presbyterian Church Cemetery, Rowan Co., NC.  Robert Ramsay (earlier spelled Ramsey) was born in 1741, in Rowan County, and died 7^th Nov. 1828 in Iredell County (carved from Rowan County in 1788).  — Her papers are in the University of  North  Carolina Archives, and in the spring of 2007 anno domini I was finally able to get there and read some of them!!!   The precise date of the 1790 marriage bond of Robert Ramsey, later spelled “Ramsay,” and Agness McCorkle was 18^th Feb. 1790; bond number 0000128700, North Carolina Marriage Bonds, 1741-1868.  Image Number 005230.  Rowan County, NC.  Record Number 02 367; bondsman was James McCorkle, presumably the bride’s brother.   Carol Byler lists the children of Nancy McCorkle Ramsay as:

1.            Agnes Montgomery Ramsay b. Dec 17, 1790.

2             David Ramsay      b. Dec 17, 1792, Iredell Co, NC; d. Jun 08, 1857, Iredell Co, --It was either this son David Ramsay or his son James Graham Ramsay who went up to Philadelphia and graduated from the venerable old Thomas Jefferson medical college, then returned to North Carolina; I can't remember which, but I read the papers at UNC.

3.            Mary                     b. circa 1795.

4.            Infant male,  b. Oct 14, 1799, Rowan Co, NC; d. Nov 18, 1799, Rowan Co, NC (Thyatira Cemetery).

5.            Martha                                                 b. circa  1800.

6,            Mary                                                    b. circa  1795.

Alexander Archibald,                    born circa 1766 in Rowan Co., NC;

William Archibald,                         born circa 1768 in Rowan Co., NC

Agness ["Nancy?"] Archibald,         born circa 1770 in Rowan Co., NC

Margaret Archibald,                      born circa 1772 in Rowan Co., NC

Elizabeth Archibald,                        born ?????

Our old West Tennessee records do not state the parentage of the immigrant Alexander McCorkle. --  James McCorkle?  Samuel McCorkle?  Matthew McCorkle?

If the father of Alexander were Matthew--and I doubt it--Alexander would have had a brother named Francis McCorkle.  Evidently, some of others’ records say that the Alexander McCorkle who m. “Nancy” Agnes Montgomery had an older brother named Francis McCorkle,  but not Aunt Ora McCorkle Huie’s records and not Aunt Katie Pearl Fox’s.  It is this Francis McCorkle who was a major in the “patriot” or Whig army. Because of Francis McCorkle's military status, much will, I suppose, have been written about Francis McCorkle, but I’ve not yet researched Francis.  We read from others’ records that Francis McCorkle’s wife was (2^nd wife?)  was “Betsy” [Elizabeth] Brandon (McCorkle); also, we know that our immigrant Alexander McCorkle’s 2^nd wife was Rebecca Brandon (McCorkle), buried at Thyatira, and that Rebecca Brandon was not the mother of Alexander Sr.’s children.

 – Perhaps I should note here that Meigs County, Tennessee, marriage records include these two, much later, marriages:   Francis McCorkle & Mary E. Newton, 16 Dec. 1875; and Evander McCorkle & Emaline Witt, 19 July 1860.

Other early NC marriage bonds that may, or may not, be of interest ( I don’t know who all these people were) :  a James McCorkle who m. Margaret Kennedy on 14 Feb. 1804 in Mecklenburg County, NC, with witness Shared Gray and bondsman Wm. Givens;

a Stephen McCorkle who m. Mary Martin on 7 Nov. 1795 in Lincoln County, NC with witnesses Wm. Martin & Jo Dickson.

I do know who this Joel McCorkle was; Joel was a son of the immigrant Alexander McCorkle's son John McCorkle:   Joel McCorkle m. Polly Fauster [Foster? Forster?] on 23 Sept. 1801 in Rowan County, with Thomas L. Cowan as either witness or bondsman or officiating person.  Joel McCorkle, son of John, remained in Rowan Co., NC; and some of his papers lie within the Ramsay collection at the UNC Archives in Chapel Hill.

And here are two Revolutionary War deaths recorded. I do not know how these men fit into the McCorkle family:

McCorkle, John          Ensign      [But where?]                          Killed 1781

McCorkle, Samuel        Ensign North Carolina                            Died 12^th Aug. 1777.

____________________________________

____________________________________

The Peregrinations of Robert M^cCorkle (who died in Dyer County, West Tennessee, in April, in the spring of 1828):

               We know that Robert McCorkle was born in North Carolina in Rowan-Iredell County (Iredell County was carved out of Rowan in the year 1788), although his eldest sibling had been born in Pennsylvania; we know Robert was born to immigrant parents Alexander McCorkle & “Nancy” Agnes Montgomery, the parents coming, first, to Pennsylvania, from Northern Ireland, then, we think but are not certain, to the area of Lexington, Virginia, in Rockbridge County. Then, the parents removed to the Piedmont of North Carolina near Salisbury and Statesville, probably coming down the Great Wagon Road of the 18^th century.

·         “Nancy” Agnes Montgomery McCorkle’s mother was née Martha Finley, and “Nancy” Agnes(s) Montgomery (McCorkle) was a sister to Presbyterian minister Joseph Montgomery, born 1733 in Paxtang, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania & died 1794. That sibling relationship between Agnes Montgomery McCorkle and Joseph Montgomery, the old family records reflect. [Please see my contribution to someone else’s Wikipedia entry on this Joseph Montgomery.]

·         Broader historical records reveal that our Joseph Montgomery served in the Continental Congress.  This Joseph Montgomery, born 1733, is highlighted in the web site of the Presbyterian Church. “The Political Graveyard” says this about him: “Montgomery, Joseph (1733-1794) — of Pennsylvania. Born in Paxtang, Dauphin County, Pa., September 23, 1733. Delegate to Continental Congress from Pennsylvania, 1780-82; common pleas court judge in Pennsylvania, 1786-94. Died in Harrisburg, Dauphin County, Pa., October 14, 1794. Interment at Lutheran Church Cemetery, Harrisburg, Pa."

·         Please see also: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress:  “MONTGOMERY, Joseph, a Delegate from Pennsylvania; born in Paxtang, now Dauphin County, Pa., September 23, 1733; pursued classical studies and was graduated from Princeton College in 1755; studied for the ministry; licensed to preach by the presbytery of Philadelphia in 1759 and ordained as a minister in 1761; held several pastorates 1761-1777; commissioned a chaplain in Col. Smallwood’s Maryland Regiment of the Continental Army and served from 1777 until 1780; delegate to the general assembly of Pennsylvania 1780-1782; Member of the Continental Congress 1780-1782; recorder of deeds and register of wills for Dauphin County 1785-1794; justice of the court of common pleas 1786-1794; died in Harrisburg, Pa., on October 14, 1794; interment in the Lutheran Church Cemetery.”  Bibliography: Forster, John Montgomery. A Sketch of the Life of the Rev. Joseph Montgomery. Harisburg, Pa.: Printed for private distribution, 1879.   See also Wikipedia, the online dictionary, its entry on Joseph Montgomery.

Aunt Ora McCorkle Huie's and her sister Aunt Katie Pearl McCorkle Fox's Records of West Tennessee indicate a connection between Dr. Benjamin Rush and "Nancy" Agnes Montgomery McCorkle.  And, sure enough, here it is:  Agnes' brother, Rev. Joseph Montgomery, married as one of his wives a sister of Dr. Rush: viz., Rachel Rush (widow of Agnus Boyce).

Martha Finley Montgomery was the mother of “Nancy” Agnes Montgomery McCorkle (that is to say, the mother of Mrs. Alexander McCorkle).  One record, not ours, says Martha Finley Montgomery’s husband’s name was John Montgomery. The mother, née Martha Finley, would have been born sometime around 1700.  The old handwritten Dyer County, Tennessee, family records [kept by Aunt Ora McCorkle Huie (Mrs. Julius Adolphus “Dolph” Huie) and Ora’s younger sister Katie Pearl McCorkle (Fox); and typed up in the 1960s by Ora’s only child Maury Adolphus Huie, 1895-1973] say that this Mrs. Martha Finley Montgomery’s father, named John Finley, was somehow a founder of Princeton University. The Princeton U records reveal that a Samuel Finley was president 1761-1766.   – As I (Marsha Cope Huie) write this paragraph, I think the old records say a John Finley was our ancestor’s (Mrs. Martha Finley Montgomery’s) father who was instrumental in founding Princeton; this Finley name must however be checked for accuracy, with which I hereby charge the next generations. Perhaps John Finley was the grandfather (?)  of Princeton president Samuel Finley of Princeton, as well as father of Martha Finley Montgomery and grandfather of Nancy Agnes Montgomery (McCorkle);   or perhaps Samuel Finley was a brother (collateral ) to our Martha Finley Montgomery (Martha the mother of Rev. Joseph Montgomery and of Mrs. Alexander McCorkle).  I do not  know the precise relationship between Princeton president Samuel Finley and our Martha Finley (Montgomery), which further research should establish. [Material quoted from the Internet about Samuel Finley & Princeton will be placed toward the rear of this document.]

"Our" Robert McCorkle's nephew, Joel McCorkle, named a son John Finley McCorkle. (Joel was the only child --I think-- of John McCorkle, Robert's brother who remained in Rowan County, NC.)

 Appended to this document (near the very end) are materials from the Princeton University Internet web site, which say that a Samuel Finley was an early president of Princeton, 1761-1766. – What kin was our ancestor John Finley to this Samuel Finley?  Grandfather?  Dates don’t seem to fit for John to have been Samuel Finley’s father (?).  We do know, again, that our “Nancy” Agnes Montgomery McCorkle’s brother,  Presbyterian minister Joseph Montgomery (born 1733) served in the Continental Congress, so it is worthy of note that the Princeton web site says the following about its early president John Witherspoon, who also served in the Continental Congress:  “ John Witherspoon, eminent Scottish divine who held the office from 1768 to his death in 1794. Witherspoon was the only ordained clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence, and for six years thereafter he was an active and influential member of the Continental Congress….”   --  The Continental Congress nexus lends credibility to aunts Ora and Kate’s old family records in Dyer County, as we know “Nancy” Agnes Montgomery McCorkle’s brother Joseph Montgomery (a Presbyterian minister living 1733-1794) served in the Continental Congress.

Robert McCorkle’s older brother, Samuel Eusebius McCorkle, had been born in Pennsylvania (Samuel Eusebius McCorkle was a graduate of the precursor to Princeton College; was admitted to the Presbyterian ministry for New York; & received a Doctorate of Divinity from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania).  It may be that our Robert McCorkle was born in Pennsylvania, as was his older brother Samuel, but I think, and most records say,  that he was born in North Carolina. –A book about Samuiel Eusebius that my father had is: Samuel M. HOUCK, , “To receive the morning star: Thyatira Presbyterian Church, 1752-1976.”
 

Thyatira Church is in the Statesville, NC, area, but nearer Mooresville.  Its address is Salisbury, NC:  Thyatira, 220 White Road, Salisbury, NC 28147.  Directions:  To get to Thyatira from Mooresville, NC, go toward East Iredell Avenue, go 2.6 miles; bear left on NC HWY 152 West and stay on that road a very short distance, less than a mile, until it becomes NC HWY 150 / NC Hwy 152. Go left on NC Hwy 150.  Now drive for 8.7 miles.  You will turn left on White Road and there is the Church in 0.1 mile.  --In late May 2007 our daughter Elizabeth Ann Williamson's graduation party held by Davidson College took place in an abandoned but scenic quarry about 2 miles from Thyatira Presbyterian Church.

“Rowan County was formed in 1753 from Anson County, and was named for Matthew Rowan (d. 1760), acting governor at the time the county was formed. The county seat is Salisbury. Initially Rowan included the entire northwestern sector of North Carolina, with no clear western boundary, but its size was reduced as a number of counties were split off. The first big excision was to create Surry County in 1771. Burke and Wilkes Counties were formed from the western parts of Rowan and Surry in 1777 and 1778, respectively, leaving a smaller Rowan County that comprised present-day Rowan, Iredell (formed 1788), Davidson (1822), and Davie (1836). Surry, Burke and Wilkes subsequently fragmented further as well. Depending on where your ancestors lived, you may want to look at records for some of these later counties also. Records of very early land grants in the Rowan County area will be found with Anson County.”       … … … … … …

“Thyatira is one of the oldest Presbyterian churches west of the Yadkin River.” […End of quoted material from Internet, provided by Expedia.com Travel….]  In the summer of 2007 I learned that the Yadkin River is called the Pee Dee River in South Carolina. ____________________________________________________________________________________________ We know that Robert McCorkle moved from North Carolina westerly into Kentucky.  I've come to doubt that he lingered in Sumner County, Tennessee (then, a generic term for northern middle Tennessee excluding Nashville and Davidson County) on his way to exploring Kentucky.  Only in the winter of 2007 did I discover a leaf of paper, at my mom's in West Tennessee, written by daughter Elmira, which said that her father Robert was in the second company of [white] men to move westward into Kentucky.  Finally, that explains to me his membership in 1789 of Walnut Hill Presbyterian Church near Lexington, Kentucky.  I guess his first wife Elizabeth Blythe McCorkle went into Kentucky with him. (?)

Robert married (1^st wife) “Lizzie” Elizabeth Blythe 11^th  Sep 1788 in Rowan County, N.C., and had two children, Aleck McCorkle who died in infancy and Elizabeth McCorkle (Anderson) who was raised by her deceased mother’s mother.  I think the children may have been born in Kentucky but do not know. Surviving child Elizabeth McCorkle Anderson’s maternal grandparents were Reverend James Blythe and Elizabeth King (Blythe). [Please note that Samuel KING witnessed the will of Robert McCorkle's father, Alexander McCorkle, who died in Rowan Co., NC, in 1800.]

Something I read lately made me think the in-law Blythes moved into Kentucky with Robert & Elizabeth Blythe McCorkle, also--I'm not sure about this--but returned to Middle Tennessee. I know the Blythes were at Shiloh Presbyterian Church near Gallatin for a time.

Elizabeth McCorkle (Anderson) alias Mrs. Thomas Anderson--daughter of Robert & Lizzie Blythe McCorkle:

  --was this Mrs. McCorkle-Anderson's Anderson-McMurry daughter née Elizabeth C. Anderson as  Goodspeed's entry states?

Goodspeed Biographies of Wilson County, Tennessee

E[lizabeth] C. [Anderson] McMURRY was born December 25, 1809, in Sumner County, Tenn., and is a daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth (McCorcle) Anderson, born in North Carolina         www.rootsweb.com/~tnwcogs/docs/goodsp05.html

Rev. John Mitchell McMurry, 1804-1875

[The Goodspeed History of Wilson County, Tennessee. Biographical Appendix. ... Child of John Mitchell McMurry and Elizabeth C. Anderson McMurry: ... www.cumberland.org/hfcpc/minister/McMurrJM.htm

-- Elizabeth McCorkle Anderson was raised by her grandmother Blythe [Elizabeth King Blythe] in or near Lebanon, Tennessee. Robert McCorkle’s first wife Elizabeth Blythe McCorkle died evidently after Robert had moved back down to northern middle Tennessee from Kentucky, but she may have died up in Kentucky.... . We know for certain that Elizabeth Blythe McCorkle’s widower Robert McCorkle went back to Rowan County, North Carolina, to marry circa 1794 and fetch westwardly, as his 2^nd wife, Margaret “Peggy” Morrison, daughter of Andrew & Elizabeth Sloan Morrison. At one time the Morrisons and the McCorkles were adjoining landowners in Rowan County. --Some of the other relatives must have moved from Rowan Co., NC, directly to northern Middle Tennessee, then called Sumner County. (Later, Wilson Co. was carved from Sumner, taking in the town of Lebanon, but the town of Gallatin remained in Sumner Co.).  There in Sumner Co., in 1792, occurred the scalping of John Purviance II, a son of John Purviance & Mary Jane Wasson Purviance.  Young John Purviance's widow married William McCorkle, Robert's brother.  --I guess but do not know that Robert McCorkle himself lived awhile in Sumner County. (?)

[Source:  Letter from Robert & Peggy McCorkle’s daughter Elmira Sloan McCorkle Roache to her nephew, James Scott McCorkle, M.D., of Newbern, Tennessee.]

Mrs. Andrew Morrison:  We also know that Elizabeth Sloan (Morrison)--mother of Margaret Morrison (McCorkle), Robert McCorkle's 2^nd wife--was herself a McCorkle descendant.  Elizabeth Sloan Morrison's mother (I think); that is, I think it was Mrs. [somebody] McCorkle Sloan--was a sister to our immigrant Alexander McCorkle (b.1722 or 1723 - d.1800).

[--Same source, Elmira, who thought that her mother "Peggy" Margaret Morrison McCorkle and father Robert McCorkle were 2^nd cousins; -- but from Elmira’s descriptions of their consanguinity I read them to have been first cousins-once removed.  Quaere: were Robert McCorkle & his 2^nd wife Margaret Morrison McCorkle first cousins or --as I suspect--1^st cousins-once-removed?]

The scalped John Purviance’s brother, church elder David Purviance, remained in Bourbon County, Kentucky, for some years, and signed the “Last Will and Testament of the Springfield, Kentucky, Presbytery” in order to form the new “Christian Church-Disciples of Christ.”

This David Purviance served in the Kentucky legislature then moved on to Ohio where he served in the Ohio legislature and served as a founder and often president pro tempore of Miami University of Ohio.  Some of the Purviance and Thomas people removed on to Preble County, Ohio, where “church elder” David Purviance moved. 

 “Elder” David Purviance was a brother to Elizabeth Purviance Thomas, alias Mrs. William Thomas, née Elizabeth Purviance; and Elizabeth Purviance Thomas was the mother of Mrs. Edwin Alexander McCorkle, née Jane Maxwell Thomas.  “Elder” David Purviance died and is buried in Preble County in the old cemetery of, I think New Paris, Ohio.

Many family members remained in Ohio, but others of the Thomas and McCorkle and Purviance families moved back down to northern middle Tennessee after troubles with the indigenous peoples resolved.  Some went north; others went back south; and their grandchildren were to end up within fewer than fifty years in an internecine civil war that divided loyalty generally between the two geographic regions, the industrial north and the south whose agrarian economy was based on the immoral practice of slavery.

This “church elder” David Purviance who died in “New” Paris, Ohio, was, as mentioned, a son of Mary Jane Wasson (Purviance) [she died in 1810 aged 68, the year of formation of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church].  I think, but do not know for certain, that it is she who is listed as "Mrs. Purviance" on the earliest church rolls as recalled by later members of Shiloh Presbyterian Church located just outside today's Gallatin, Tennessee, in Sumner County.

Church "elder" David Purviance's father -- John Purviance  --  was a soldier in the North Carolina continental line:  Revolutionary War “colonel” John Purviance, who moved back down to Tennessee from Bourbon County, Ky.

The father John Purviance did not convert to his son’s new “Christian Church.”  The father remained a Presbyterian, albeit later, at least after 1810, a Cumberland Presbyterian.

Mary Jane Wasson Purviance & husband John Purviance are presumably buried in Middle Tennessee. But where?  Shiloh CP Church?    --Again, this “church elder” David Purviance was a brother to Elizabeth Purviance Thomas, the mother of Jane Maxwell Thomas McCorkle—alias Mrs. Edwin Alexander McCorkle, who (Jane) in 1855 was buried in the McCorkle Cemetery.  Also, therefore, this “elder” David Purviance was a brother to the “scalped” in 1792 John Purviance; and to  alia).

As mentioned, this “elder” David Purviance is listed as a co-founder with Barton Stone of the Christian Church/ later subdivided into a Church of Christ.  [I think I’ve written this ad nauseum, so this will be it:  David Purviance was a brother to, inter alia,  Elizabeth Purviance (Mrs. William Thomas), who (Elizabeth Purviance Thomas) was the mother of Jane Maxwell Thomas (Mrs. Edwin Alexander McCorkle), the Jane who died in Dyer County in 1855, soon after her husband Edwin Alexander McCorkle had died 10 January 1853. ]

--  The Families Jacob Thomas & wife Margaret Brevard Thomas and Alexander McCorkle & wife Nancy Agnes(s) Montgomery McCorkle and John Purviance (descended from Jon de Purvaiance on the west coast of France in what became Huguenot territory), and a James Scott (1777-1853) family, are mixed up together in many ways. And the Thomases were somehow mixed up with old Sam Houston’s Houston family.  It's very clear to me that Sam Houston and David Thomas (the latter a brother of Jane Maxwell Thomas McCorkle, alias Mrs. Edwin Alexander McCorkle) were connected as they each signed the Texas Declaration of Independence, one signature beside the other; and as David Thomas was appointed the first attorney general of Texas (the nascent Republic of Texas) before his untimely death in 1836. [Asenath Houston married Isaac J. Thomas; Isaac J. Thomas was a son of the John Thomas who married Mary Jetton. The John Thomas who married Mary Jetton was himself a son of Jacob Thomas who married Margaret Brevard (Thomas), Rowan County, N.C., later Iredell County.]

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   And so John Purviance [Jr.] had been scalped in 1792 in Sumner County, Tennessee. We know that Robert McCorkle’s brother, William McCorkle, married as his 2^nd wife Martha “Mattie” King, the widow of John Purviance [(John Purviance, Jr.)—I’m denominating the scalped John Purviance as a “Junior,” but in truth do not know if his name exactly matched the name of his father, the elder “colonel” John Purviance, participant in North Carolina in the Revolutionary War and husband of Mary Jane Wasson (Purviance)].  And we know that Martha King Purviance McCorkle died before 1800 because that is the year in which William McCorkle married his 3^rd wife, Jane "Jennie" Graham (in Sumner County, Tennessee).  Robert McCorkle married his 2^nd wife, Margaret Morrison, in Rowan Co., NC, circa 1794. 

--We know also that the Cumberland Presbyterian schism from the more formal Presbyterians occurred in 1810 just outside Dickson, Tennessee, in what is now a Tennessee State Park:  Montgomery Bell Historic Shrine. 

Mary Jane Wasson Purviance (Mrs. "colonel" John Purviance) died aged 60 in 1810 [or was it 1801] so I presume she did not join the Cumberland movement from the Presbyterians;  Levi Purviance’s biography of his father "church elder" David Purviance (David a son of Mary Jane Wasson & John Purviance) clearly states that “colonel” John Purviance, father of David, became a Cumberland Presbyterian, but did not adopt the teachings of Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone, (and of his son “elder” David Purviance) nor their Restoration Movement (early 19^th-century genesis of the Christian Church - Disciples of Christ - Church of Christ).

I have found record of an 1810 marriage of a Robert McCorkle in Boone County, Kentucky, to a Miss Keith:  Polly KEITH married 15 Mar 1810 to Robert McCORKLE. This is not our Robert, who was a son of Alexander McCorkle (Sr.).  It may be this other Robert who became a Cumberland Presbyterian minister. This other Robert who was in Kentucky may even have been a nephew of our Robert McCorkle.  I do not know; but I'm inclined to believe the CP preacher Robert came from the Staunton/Augusta, Virginia set of McCorkles who (I suspect) stopped there on the Great Wagon Road while "our" branch of McCorkles moved on southward to the Piedmont of North Carolina.--And there is record of an early Robert McCorkle moving into West Tennessee's Chester County and being a Methodist minister.

This last record is: 

 The above Methodist preacher Robert is another (not "our") Robert McCorkle: a Methodist preacher in Chester Co., Tennessee, in 1837.

It is known that a Robert McCorkle appears in the earliest Presbyterian, then Cumberland Presbyterian, records of Kentucky and northern Tennessee in trials for the newly formed Cumberland Presbyterian ministry and, even though he would have been over 40 years old at the time, the applicant (licentiate) may have somehow been our Robert McCorkle.  (Please recall his daughter Elmira's handwritten note that her father Robert McCorkle had been educated at Chapel Hill.) The new denomination was desperate for educated clergy.  The two reasons for separation from Presbyterianism involved, one, rejection of the Presbyterian insistence upon a college-educated clergy, which was impracticable on the frontier; and, two, rejection of the Presbyterian Doctrine of Predestination. 

– “Our” Robert & Margaret “Peggy” Morrison McCorkle’s daughter, Elmira Sloan McCorkle Roache, wrote that her father Robert McCorkle, and presumably Robert’s brother William McCorkle, had explored into Kentucky in the second company of men to make inroads so far west; and we know that their relatives who had settled in Sumner Co., in northern Tennessee, retreated circa 1792 up to Bourbon County, Kentucky, during troublous times with the indigenous population; then (some of them) moved on back down to Sumner County, Tennessee [Lebanon or Gallatin area], after Indian relations improved.  [See the Cumberland Presbyterian web site on the Internet.] 

William McCorkle--Robert's brother--or some of his people, appear in Sumner County, Tennessee, as members of Shiloh Presbyterian Church near today’s Gallatin. Someday I hope to visit the “King Cemetery” which is sometimes the name given the Shiloh Presbyterian Church Cemetery.  --  James M. Richmond, alive today, whose wife is a descendant of William McCorkle (brother to our Robert) has identified the parents of “Peggy” Margaret Blythe as Reverend James Blythe and Elizabeth King (Blythe), parents of: (1) Mrs. William McCorkle, née “Peggy” Margaret Blythe; and (2) the first Mrs. Robert McCorkle, née Elizabeth “Lizzie” Blythe.  And so it was Mrs. Elizabeth King Blythe who raised Robert’s daughter Elizabeth McCorkle (later Mrs. Thomas Anderson), who died in Lebanon, Tennessee, in the home of her daughter Elizabeth Anderson McMurry (wife of Cumberland Presbyterian minister John Mitchell McMurry who long preached in McMinnville, Tennessee, then retired to Lebanon, Tennessee).

A letter, discussing William McCorkle's distressing economic situation soon after William had removed from NC into Tennessee, lies in the University of North Carolina Archives at Chapel Hill amongst the Ramsay papers.  The letter is written by a Ramsay friend or relative who had moved westwardly into Tennessee also, and is sent back to Rowan County, NC, addressed to Robert Ramsay, the husband of "Nancy"Agnes McCorkle (Ramsay) a sister to "our" Robert McCorkle, the Robert who m. 1^st Elizabeth Blythe and 2^nd Margaret Morrison). (This "Nancy" Agnes McCorkle Ramsay was a daughter of the immigrants Alexander McCorkle & "Nancy" Agnes(s) Montgomery McCorkle.)  The writer informs William McCorkle's Ramsay brother-in-law, Robert Ramsay, that William had not been able to make a crop of corn nor to do productive work and implied that William was near starvation. (I hope to return to the UNC Archives and photocopy this letter; somehow, I suspect William McCorkle was more interested in religious subjects and religious life than in making a crop to feed himself; but this is speculation.)

Our Robert McCorkle and his brother William McCorkle claimed the Revolutionary War land grant made to their father, Alexander McCorkle (who died 1800 in Rowan County, NC, buried at Thyatira Presbyterian Church Cemetery near Millbridge near Mooresville near Salisbury and Statesville). --A SLOAN mill is an historic spot preserved very near Thyatira Church. Recall:  Mrs. Andrew Morrison (mother of Margaret Morrison McCorkle, 1770-1848) was née Elizabeth Sloan.  --  The immigrant Alexander McCorkle in Rowan County, NC, by his last will and testament, left this Revolutionary War land grant to only these two sons.  Robert McCorkle begins to appear on the Rutherford County, Tennessee, deed records in the early 1800s, around 1808, as does his brother William McCorkle.  Unfortunately, William McCorkle died in 1818 in Rutherford County near or in Murfreesborough, Tennessee, and did not remove to Dyer County, West Tennessee, with his brother Robert McCorkle.

               It may even be that Revolutionary War “colonel” John Purviance, the one who married Mary Jane Wasson, was a member of  Walnut Hill Presbyterian Church while they were up in Kentucky after 1792 when  the son John Purviance [was he really a Jr.?] had been scalped by Indians in Sumner County, Tennessee, in 1792.  I speculate on this point.  We know that some of the Robert McCorkle family worshipped there also, including brothers Joseph “Joe” McCorkle and William McCorkle.  As mentioned, Joseph (m. "Peggy" Margaret Snoddy) was to move on up north, to Piqua Co., Ohio,  to escape slavery, as his descendant John Hale Stutesman writes.  Carol Byler writes that Robert McCorkle joined the Walnut Hill congregation in 1789, before John Purviance Jr. was scalped in Middle Tennessee in 1792--was his 1st wife Elizabeth Blythe (McCorkle) with him then?--; that Joseph “Joe” McCorkle had joined in 1788 with wife Margaret Snoddy McCorkle; and that William McCorkle joined in 1790.  —Again, 1790 is before John Purviance Jr. was scalped in 1792 in Sumner County, Middle Tennessee.

We need to read the books listed below to see what they tell us about the earliest members. 

Walnut Hill Presbyterian Church (est. 1785) is near Lexington, Ky.

“The present building was constructed during the "great revival" to replace an earlier log building that stood on the site. The building is stone and as it was originally constructed had eight square windows on two levels that allowed light to enter the sanctuary at the ground level as well as in the galleries that surrounded the inner room on three sides. In 1880 the church was remodeled and eight large Gothic windows were added to replace the square windows and the galleries were removed from the inside. The church continues to serve as an active house of worship. ”

“Walnut Hill Presbyterian Church is located on Walnut Hill Rd. in southeastern Fayette County at the intersection of old Richmond Rd. ”

·                     Bean, Richard M. The Jewel on Walnut Hill : the Story of the Walnut Hill Church, Lexington, Kentucky, 1784 through 1994. Lexington: Richard M. Bean, 1995. R285.1769 W163b KY 1995

·                     Daughters of the American Revolution. Kentucky Cemetery Records v. 1-5 Lexington: Kentucky Society, Daughters of the American Revolution, 1960 - 1986. R976.9 D265k KY (Genealogy Ref. )

·                     Daughters of the American Revolution. Inscriptions on Tomb Stones of Old Cemeteries of Lexington and Fayette County, Kentucky. Lexington: DAR, 1984. R976.947 D265i KY 1984

·                     The Lexington Kentucky Cemetery. Lexington: Hisle’s Headstones and Kentucky Tree Search, 1986. R976.947 L591 KY 1986

·                     Milward, Burton. A History of the Lexington Cemetery. Lexington: The Lexington Cemetery Company, c1989. R976.947 L591m KY 1989

·                     Nash, Leslie. Old Union Christian Church Cemetery, 6856 Russell Cave Road, Lexington, KY 40511.Lexington: Leslie Nash, 1995.R976.947 Ol1 KY 1995

·                     Pisgah 1784-1984, Woodford County, Kentucky. [Woodford, County?] Pisgah Presbyterian Church, 1984. R285.17694 P674 KY 1984

·                     Sanders, Robert Stuart. Annals of the First Presbyterian Church Lexington, Kentucky : [1784-1984]. Tallahassee, FL: Rose Printing, 1984. R285.09769 Sa56a KY

·                     Sanders, Robert Stuart. History of Walnut Hill Presbyterian Church (Fayette Co., Ky). Frankfort, KY: KyHistorical Soc, 1956. R285.1769 Sa56hi KY   ”

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·                     The above was quoted directly from the Internet web site for Walnut Hill Presbyterian Church; the above writing about Walnut Hill Presbyterian Church is most emphatically not my work. I’ve not yet had a chance to examine the above books on Walnut Hill Presbyterian Church to look for traces of the sons of the immigrant Alexander McCorkle Sr.

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Where are John Purviance & wife Mary Jane Wasson Purviance buried?

·                     It may be that North Carolina Revolutionary War “colonel” [I think he was really a lieutenant but am not certain; but a James Purviance was a captain or colonel] John Purviance and wife Mary Jane Wasson Purviance are buried at Shiloh Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Middle Tennessee in what is sometimes called the King Cemetery; but this is speculation as yet.  John Purviance outlived Mary Jane Wasson Purviance, who died in 1810 aged 68.  Now to rank speculation:  he may be buried in Brown Cemetery, Giles Co., Tennessee as there has been mention made of a Mr. Maxwell (a son-in-law of the Purviances?) who is buried next to a “Mr. Pevines.”  Or, John Purviance (widow of Mary Jane Wasson Purviance ) may possibly have died when visiting his son "church elder" David Purviance up in New Paris, Preble County, Ohio.

·                     These then are our 3 clues:  Shiloh Presbyterian Church near Gallatin, Tennessee; Brown Cemetery in Giles County, Tennessee, adjacent to a Maxwell son-in-law or cousin; and possibly up in the old cemetery in Preble County, Ohio. 

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·                     The KING/ BLYTHE /McCorkle CONNECTION

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·                     Please Recall:  Reverend James Blythe, Presbyterian minister, and Elizabeth King (Blythe) were the parents of two daughters, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Blythe and Margaret “Peggy” Blythe. These Blythe sisters married two McCorkle brothers, Robert McCorkle and William McCorkle, respectively.   Their mother, Elizabeth King (Blythe), was a sister to the Rev. Samuel King who witnessed the immigrant Alexander McCorkle’s 1800 will in Rowan-Iredell Co., NC.

The CHILDREN of ROBERT McCorkle who died in 1828 in Dyer County, Tennessee:

FIRST WIFE Elizabeth Blythe McCorkle:

Robert McCorkle & his 1^st wife Elizabeth “Lizzie” Blythe had two children, viz., Aleck (male who died in infancy; I guess his full name was Alexander); and Elizabeth McCorkle (Anderson). 

 -- Update:  Finally, in 2007 I located Robert McCorkle & Lizzie Blythe McCorkle's grandson, Robert A. Anderson, an attorney, who removed from Middle Tennessee to Durant and Lexington, Mississippi.  Robert A. Anderson is buried in the Mizpah Cemetery in Holmes County, Mississippi. -- To repeat, Robert A. Anderson was a son of Elizabeth McCorkle (Mrs. Thomas Anderson).  I'm told the old Anderson home of this Robert A. Anderson grandson of "our" Robert McCorkle (1764-1828) is of local interest in Holmes County, Mississippi. -- I got the middle initial "A" from the Mississippi census, which may not be correct.

SECOND WIFE of Robert McCorkle,1764-1828, was Margaret Morrison McC, 1770-1848:

These are the children of Robert & “Peggy” Margaret Morrison McCorkle (his 2^nd wife):

1)           Rebecca Cowden McCorkle (Mrs. Gideon Thompson),

 Both husband and wife died in Middle Tennessee, within 2 short years of each other, before the removal to West Tennessee.  Then, Edwin Alexander McCorkle & wife Jane Maxwell Thomas McCorkle, and Robert Andrew Hope McCorkle & wife Tirzah Scott McCorkle, raised the two orphaned daughters of Rebecca Cowden McCorkle Thompson.  These two daughters were: Jane M. Thompson (Williams) and Mary Thompson (Dickey). 

Recently I was able to identify a deteriorating grave marker that was unfortunately lying against the fence at the McCorkle Cemetery in Dyer County, as being that of  Jane M. Thompson Williams, “consort of Benjamin Williams.”  (I hired a man to glue the marker back together and place it close to Jane's grandmother's, Margaret Morrison McCorkle's, tombstone; along with gluing together some other deteriorating tombstones; but I know my periodic unilateral efforts to shore up the old cemetery probably do not have long-term significance.  My efforts don't count for much: in the fall of 2006 I went out there with a spray bottle filled with bleach to try to clean up and make legible the old stones, but ended up with 6 weeks of allergic bronchitis.

A granddaughter of Robert & Margaret Morrison McCorkle, this Jane Williams should have a new marker, or at least we should try better to shore up the existing one.  Sad to report, Jane M. Thompson Williams died young, in 1850 according to her tombstone.   “As blithe and merry as a lark,” her maternal grandmother Margaret Morrison McCorkle had described her as a child removed to West Tennessee, in some of the letters copied here, infra. (Margaret spelled it "blythe.")

 --In the 2nd winter I spent teaching at the U of Memphis law school, the winter of 2007, Annie Glen McCorkle gave me her grandfather (and my great-grandfather) John Edwin McCorkle's old plantation desk. Inside was, to my delight, the first membership book of the family church, Lemalsamac. Therein,  Jane M. Thompson Williams & Benjamin Williams are listed (yes, in the first membership book of Lemalsamac Christian Church). They joined the Lemalsamac congregation in the year of Jane's death, 1850; and thereafter Benjamin Williams is noted as having "removed."  Where this Benjamin Williams went, I do not know.

(2)           Elmira Sloane McCorkle Roache m. in 1816 Dr. Stephen Roache in Middle Tennessee (Rutherford County). The Internet site www.ancestry.com has entries regarding the Roache family of Dr. Stephen Roache. Elmira & Stephen Roache have no descendants surviving today, sad to say as they were educated, religious, prominent folks.

(3)           Edwin Alex^r. McCorkle married Jane Maxwell Thomas (McCorkle) on 28 November 1826 in Lebanon, Wilson County, Tennessee. --  Edwin died in early 1853 and Jane died soon thereafter,  in 1855.— 

 [   Names of their children to be placed here…

....  Hiram R. A. McCorkle--the "Hiram" is for the mother Jane's brother, Dr. Hiram Jacob Thomas. His first wife was Margaret A. L. Cowan (McCorkle);

      Rebecca McCorkle Zarecor --alias Mrs. John C. Zarecor.  My mother Joyce Cope Huie, born 1915, says that back then women joined the church of their husbands.  And sure enough "Aunt Becky" Zarecor became a Cumberland Presbyterian, not a Campbellite.  Today in 2005 in Yorkville, some of her Zarecor descendants constitute a hearty part of the backbone of the Yorkville Cumberland Presbyterian Church;

      Elizabeth McCorkle Reeves --alias Mrs. Wyatt Reeves

"Lizzie" Reeves moved to Gadsden near Humboldt in Gibson Co., Tennessee.  By the time of her marriage, she would have found herself a Christian Church/ Church of Christ member to marry if she could; and she did.

     Anderson Jehiel McCorkle  -- he first married a Martha Scott sister of my great-grandmother Sarah Elizabeth "Sade" Scott Huie (Mrs. Julius M. Huie); after Martha's death, AJ married Lou Fox.

 (an "uncommon good man," his uncle RAH McCorkle wrote to his aunt Elmira);

     David Purviance McCorkle  -- he  first married a Margaret Scott sister of my great-grandmother Sarah Elizabeth "Sade" Scott Huie (Mrs. Julius M. Huie); he removed to adjacent Obion County where he married again.

 

     John Edwin McCorkle, 1839-1924;

 

     the twins Margaret Latina McCorkle Gregory --Mrs. John T. Gregory--

&

     Finis Alexander McCorkle;         ]

DAVID PURVIANCE McCORKLE:     One of the sons of Edwin Alexander McCorkle & Jane Maxwell Thomas McCorkle was David Purviance McCorkle, who moved just north of Dyer County to the contiguous Obion County, where he's buried in Mt. Moriah Cemetery.  Something I read recently listed him as a member of the Confederate Congress (Confederate States of America), but I had never heard that elsewhere and we have no record of it.  In the 1950s as a child I used to wonder why so many McCorkles from Obion County showed up at our family funerals conducted in Newbern; now I know they were mostly descendants of DP McCorkle.

I found the following entry on www.ancestry.com: Florence Ellen McCorkle (Walker).  Born 4 May 1867 in Dyer County, Tennessee, a child of David Purviance McCorkle & [2nd] wife Elizabeth Anne Jackson, she died 20 July 1937 in Obion County, Tennessee. Florence Ellen McCorkle married, in 1888: Waller Bright Walker.

 [David Purviance McCorkle's 1st wife was Margaret Scott (McCorkle), a daughter of James "Jimps" Scott and Violet B. Roddy Scott, the parents being buried in the old Yorkville C P Cemetery. Margaret Scott McCorkle was a sister to my great-grandmother "Sade" Sarah Elizabeth Scott Huie a.k.a. Mrs. Julius M. Huie.  Margaret Scott McCorkle died during the Civil War, in 1862.  ["Dave's Marg is gone," reported Dave's uncle RAH McCorkle to RAH's sister Elmira in 1862.] 

       Was David Purviance McCorkle's 2nd wife, Elizabeth Anne Jackson (McCorkle), a sister to the Sarah Josephine Jackson (McCorkle) who was the 1^st wife of Finis A. McCorkle, Finis being a younger brother to David Purviance McCorkle? If so, their father was a Baptist minister named Gillum or Gilliam Jackson of Obion County, Tennessee; --I know Gillum/Gilliam Jackson was the name of "Sallie Jo" Jackson McCorkle's father.] 

 (4)          [“Jem McCorkle” I think he signed his name, but am not absolutely certain about the "Jem"]                          Jehiel Morrison McCorkle m. in NC  Elizabeth “Betsy” Smith (McCorkle); and by my count they lost 3 sons to the Civil War, viz.,  HC or Henry Clay McCorkle, Brice’s Crossroads, Guntown, Mississippi; Locke McCorkle; and Eddie McCorkle.—Recently, I’ve noticed that some of the papers of Jehiel Morrison McCorkle are in the Archives at the University of Tennessee at Martin.  He died in 1849, so was unaware that he would lose 3 sons in the Civil War. He was a member of the first county court of Dyer County, Tennessee, which historian Earl Willoughby recently told me probably meant he was a magistrate, and evidently he served as clerk of the first courts as he kept the minute books.  His court records lie in the archives at the University of Tennessee at Martin.--Recently Earl Willoughby informed me that Jehiel Morrison McCorkle was a member of the 1st militia formed in Dyer County (that does not mean formed for the Civil War, as Jehiel died in 1849).  As mentioned, the application for a Revolutionary War pension of HENRY THOMAS names as a reference "Major J M McCORKLE." 

[I again refer to the grand tombstone erected by Mr. & Mrs. Harry Pipkin in the "new" Yorkville Cemetery, Gibson County, Tennessee. Mrs. Harry Pipkin was née "Manie Mack" Mary McCorkle (PIPKIN), and she was a descendant of Jehiel Morrison McCorkle. Tombstone contains genealogical information, including names of her children....]

Robert Andrew Hope McCorkle ["Robert A H" or RAH], born in Iredell County, NC; and died in Dyer County, Tennessee. Married Tirzah Scott in Gibson County in 1828.  Robert was born 20^th March 1808, Iredell Co, NC; and d. 26^th  Sept 1873, Dyer Co, Tennessee.  (Tirzah Scott McCorkle was a daughter of James Scott (1777-1853) and 1^st wife Sarah Dickey Scott (1777-1838).)  I think it was this James Scott (the father of Tirzah Scott McCorkle and of James or "Jimps" Scott, inter alia) who took a second wife in Gibson County, Tennessee, in 1838 or 1839: viz., Mary Landers (Scott).  --  I imagine that Tirzah had consumption (tuberculosis), for her husband mentions in his correspondence that Tirzah's cough continued to be troubling.

I don't think the following are in the correct birth order.

•••••JOHN  DICKEY, son of John Dickey & Sarah Robinson (Dickey);

•••••REBECKAH  DICKEY;

•••••William Dickey;

•••••James Dickey;

•••••David Dickey, circa 1776-1831; and

•••••Matthew Dickey, born circa 1776 - and died 1810 in Franklin County, Tennessee.

•••••["our" Sarah Dickey Scott, 1777-1838, buried old Yorkville

CP Church Cemetery];

[Sarah Dickey Scott & her siblings are listed in the Margaret Dickey DICKEY GENEALOGY

gathered on the Internet as that compiler's Generation number Nine (9).]

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   --In the spring of 2007 we placed a new marker for this Scott family in the old Yorkville C P Cemetery.

                    To the right in the photograph below is the back of a tombstone newly placed for Cornelius Huie, who lived circa 1835-1850 and was a son of Benjamin Huie & wife Lavinia Cowan Huie (or Levina Cowan Huie).

One of Margaret Morrison McCorkle’s letters circa 1838 (transcribed herein, in Chapter Two) mentions the re-marriage of “Old Friend Scott” who very likely would have been James Scott (1777-1853). And, indeed, there is record of a marriage in Gibson County, Tennessee, of a James Scott:  with  license, or marriage vows, taken on 14^th June 1838. The name of the bride is listed as Mary Landers (Scott).   But absolutely nowhere else had I ever heard that James Scott married a 2^nd wife after the death of Sarah Dickey (Scott).

–Old Gibson County marriage records also reveal the marriage or license on 8^th December 1832 of James & Sarah Dickey Scott’s son "Jimps" James Scott [II] to Violet B. Roddy [misspelled as “RODDY, Vilett B”].  They are my direct ancestors, through my father EWING HUIE, 1907-1971, whose paternal grandmother (Howard Anderson Huie’s mother) was James & Violet B. Roddy Scott’s daughter, “Sade” Sarah Elizabeth Scott (Mrs. Julius M. Huie), 1839-1893.

I made a mistake on one side of the above-photographed tombstone, unfortunately for posterity.  Erroneously, I listed the second wife of James "Jimps" Scott (born 1810) as Mary Landers (Scott). In fact, Mary Landers Scott was the 2^nd wife (I think) of "Jimps" Scott's father, the James Scott who lived 1777-1853 and who was probably Margaret Morrison McCorkle's "old friend Scott." One reason for my mistake is that M.L. Scott is listed in at least one old Gibson County census as living with the son "Jimps" James Scott. (The son is not called "Jimps" on the census records.) 

I think the following is "Jimps" James Scott, born I think in 1810--the father of, inter alia, Allen "Tobe" Scott; "Sade" Sarah Elizabeth Scott Huie; the female TRIMBLE ancestor of James Spence Trimble & Mentia Trimble Hicks of Yorkville; & Rev. Thomas ELIHU Scott....    ....    But a problem arises:  "Jimps" Scott's original tombstone--so in ruins at the Old Yorkville CP Cemetery as to be almost illegible (in fact, his name is missing)--states his years of life to be 1810-1872; if that is correct (perhaps I misread the 1872; perhaps the year of his death if more legible would read 1882). I'm just not certain that this 1880 census is about "our" James "Jimps" Scott. The information in brackets is from me, so take it with the understanding of my confusion about the death date:

1880 Census, District 9, Dyer County, Tennessee:  James Scott, head of household. 

Name:	James Scott      White Male
Home in 1880:	District 9, Dyer County, Tennessee
Age:	71
Estimated birth year:	abt 1809 [If it's "Jimps" it's actually, 1810]
Birthplace:	South Carolina
Relation to head-of-household:	Something other than a direct relationship (Other)
Father's birthplace:	South Carolina  [If it's "Jimps" the father's name is James Scott, 1777-1853]
Mother's birthplace:	South Carolina [If it's "Jimps" the mother's name is: Sarah Dickey Scott, 1777-1838]
Neighbors:	View others on page
Occupation:	Retired Farmer
Marital Status:	Married  [If it's "Jimps" Scott, this wife listed in census would have to be his 2nd wife; not "Jimps's" 1st wife Violet B. Roddy Scott]

I don't know who the above Joe L. Williams was.  We do know that a brother of the above "Jimps" James Scott, head of the above household, was John Dickey Scott (variously, John Dickie Scott). And we know that John Dickey Scott married SUSAN or SUSANNAH C. WILLIAMS (Mrs. John Dickey Scott) (born circa 1816) a daughter of a Joseph Williams.  [Also, I wonder if these Williams folks were kin to the Benjamin Williams who married Jane M. Thompson (Williams), Jane being a daughter of Rebecca Cowden McCorkle (Thompson) & a granddaughter of Robert & Margaret Morrison McCorkle.],

 

The following Tennessee 1860 Slave Schedule makes me feel sad; but I had known these Scotts were considered a bit more "well-to-do" than the neighbors, and that there were numerous freedmen surnamed Scott around Newbern postbellum, and even in my childhood in the 1950s.  One I remember, e.g., was "Nellie" or Nelson Scott.      Slave schedule   Page 302

Name:	James Scott  [ I think this is "Jimps" James Scott, born 1810 in SC]
County:	1860        Dyer County                District 9

--Also listed in the Gibson County records is the marriage of James & Sarah Dickey Scott’s daughter Tirzah Scott to Robert AH McCorkle on 1^st December 1828. 

--Listed, too, is the first marriage of Sallie or Sarah L. Scott, a daughter of Margaret Permelia McCorkle (Scott) & Lemuel Locke Scott:  Sarah (Sallie) L. Scott  married John A. Rodgers on 21^st April 1858. He died in 1862, during the Civil War.  Sallie L. Scott (Rodgers) was to marry a 2^nd husband, Richard W. Locke, who was a trustee for McCorkle Cemetery in Dyer County.  He should have a marker there, I think—either there, or in the Old Yorkville CP Cemetery, where his (2^nd ) wife is buried. [ I think it was Dick Locke’s 2^nd wife who is buried at Yorkville, but may be wrong about the order of marriage, and it’s possible he’s buried there with her at Yorkville; but I’ve found no marker for him in either cemetery, and that’s a shame.  Clearly, he was a substantial citizen of worth.]