Boring into History, Part II

To be young was very heaven!
      One of the heirs to Joseph Boring’s liberty-loving patrimony was his son Isaac. Born on March 8, 1762, in Orange County, he was an adolescent when his father died and willed to him the family’s grist mill. On March 7, 1780, Isaac married his step-sister Phebe Browning, daughter of his mother’s second husband John and his first wife Elizabeth Demarest. Phebe was born on September 19, 1762, in Essex County on Virginia’s Middle Peninsula. As their marriage in the springtime bloomed the American cause in South Carolina was grievously endangered when Charleston fell to General Henry Clinton and 5,000 Patriots were taken prisoner. The remnants of the army scattered towards North Carolina and were pursued by Charles Cornwallis, now leading the British campaign in the South. At this parlous hour the Continental Congress dispatched General Horatio Gates to the South to conduct a counterattack.

 The Battle of Camden

      The two armies met at the Battle of Camden on August 16, 1780. Isaac fought in this crucial engagement and the preceding skirmish at Little Lynches Creek, having been drafted in early May in Hillsborough. He served as a private in Captain George Oldham’s company of Colonel John Collier’s North Carolina state militia regiment. The force of which he was part formed the center of General Gates’ line, and when the British soldiers attacked with bayonets the militiamen, poorly trained and without bayonets of their own, broke ranks and fled. This implosion allowed Lord Cornwallis to outflank the Patriot forces and inflict one of the worst defeats in the annals of American warfare. In a report about the incident written by Lieutenant Colonel H. L. Landers of the Army War College and printed by the government in 1929, the author concluded:

The mention of it calls to mind the havoc wrought by untrained troops fleeing from a battle field, pursued by the phantoms of terror; troops that were fully expected by their leaders to fight, constituting two-thirds of the Army, terrifiedly rushing from the battle field without firing a shot, before scarcely any of their number were wounded; deserting the regular forces whom they might have protected and from whom protection would have been received. The cowardice of the militia, induced as it was by mob fear, was followed by no miraculous intervention whereby those who held their ground and bravely fought might be saved. The latter, in turn, were also overcome by the enemy. Their gallantry alone could not win victory from a more numerous foe of equal military merit.

Isaac was discharged from his six-month service in South Carolina in November, purportedly due to injury. He made his way back home, to a section subdivided from Orange in 1777 called Caswell County. Lord Cornwallis and the British army ranged through the area in 1781, winning Pyrrhic victories against the Patriot guerillas yet ultimately playing into the hands of General Gates’ replacement, General Nathaniel Greene, and his war of attrition.

When this tired journalist chanced to stop for the night on his return from Hillsborough, he heard from the residents in the area of North Hyco Creek that their sympathies are neither for nor against the new county, as the journey to Hillsborough is not as difficult for them as for some in northwestern Orange (soon to be Caswell). … Yours truly may, in fact have to discontinue his journalistic wanderings in this area, as he feels strongly called to take up arms to assist the Revolutionary Forces in the colonies which are gathering to help defend our infant nation whose independence from the Mother Country was officially declared less than one year ago.

—Joshua Lea, May 1777

      Isaac was probably a yeoman farmer after the war. Phebe had nine children between 1781 and 1801. On March 9, 1783, John Browning, Isaac’s father-in-law and step-father, sold him 400 acres on Storm Creek for £10. On October 10, 1786, Isaac and Phebe sold 100 acres to Nicholas Browning, a relative, for £50. In 1787 Isaac worked on a road crew and also attested to Nicholas’s will when he died. As a Revolutionary War veteran Isaac was granted land in Wilkes County, Georgia, a sprawling precinct stretching west of the Savannah River, and with a cavalcade of extended family relocated there around 1790. As Wilkes was subdivided into smaller counties the Borings found themselves in Greene, where on January 14, 1797, Isaac purchased 136 acres. Then on February 22, 1800, Isaac bought 287 ½ acres in Jackson County, where he would reside for the remainder of his days.
      Among the party who moved from North Carolina to Georgia were Isaac’s mother Susannah and her second husband John Browning, yet they stayed in Greene County when Isaac moved on. John died there on November 18, 1803, and left to his wife the 187 ½-acre plantation, furniture including a feather bed, a slave named Jack, and a bay mare named Bonny. Susannah died in 1812, having over her 82 years come from the coastline of colonial Virginia to the frontier of an independent nation. She left behind the following instructions:

It being appointed that all the human family shall die and being far advanced in years and considerably affected in body, though sound of mind and memory; and being possessed of small property, do make this my last will and testament, viz:

1st My will that my faithful and trusty servant Jack shall have freedom at my death.

2nd My three horses beasts, to-wit, Polly, Bonny, and Snip, three head cattle, that is one, cow and one three year old steer and young heifer, feather beds, bedsteads, sheets, counterpanes, blankets, bed quilts, pillows, coulster, one woman’s saddle, bridle, large jugs, plates, cups, saucers, pitchers, copper coffee pot, skillets, pots, knives and forks, etc. with all the rest of my property shall be divided between my children, Susanna Hart, Isaac Boring, and David Boring. I also constitute my sons Isaac and David Boring my executors. In testimony whereof I set my hand and affix my seal the 18th day of February 1812.

Settling Down at Last

      Isaac Boring brought his family to Jackson County around the same time as arrived a related branch, the Lyles, and the two families settled along the Mulberry River. In 1801 Isaac served as a justice of the peace and owned one slave according to a tax list. On December 12, 1802, he bought 135 acres from George West. According to an 1809 tax list he owned 287 ½ acres. The 1810 census for Georgia is not extant, but the 1820 record shows Isaac’s household comprising just three people and no slaves. In the intervening decade Isaac had sold 50 acres in 1812, bought 428 acres in 1816, and finally sold 234 ½ acres in 1819.

 Georgia in 1823

      In 1827 Georgia held a land lottery in which territory expropriated from the Creek was raffled to white settlers. As a Revolutionary War veteran Isaac was entitled to two drawings, and he garnered two plots of 202 ½ acres each in Lee County, which he left to his heirs. The 1830 census indicates the expansion of Isaac’s fortunes and household: in addition to he and Phebe there appear two younger white people, perhaps grandchildren; twelve slaves; and a free black man over the age of 55. Isaac’s health was already failing, as he made his will on September 14, 1829. He died on May 18, 1831, at the age of 69. His will was proved on June 7 and leaves extensive instructions, some of which I have excised:

I, Isaac Boring Senior of the County & State aforesaid, being of perfect sound mind & disposing memory, and calling to mind the uncertainty of Life, do hereby make my last will and testament, revoking all wills heretofore made by me

Item 1. I resign my body to the grave and my Soul into the hands a gracious God in hope of a glorious Resurrection and everlasting life.

Item 2. I desire that all my just debts be discharged.

Item 3. I give and bequeath to my beloved wife Phebe Boring, all the land pertains to the tract whereon I now reside, including the Plantation and Appurtenances together with all my stock of horses, hogs, cattle etc. And also the following Negroes to Wit, Moses, Jane, Ester, Lewis, Moriah, Reubin, Willis, Caroline, Clarey, Mary and Tilley, during the term of her natural life, with a discretion in her my said wife Phebe, and my Executor hereafter named to sell any of the personal or real property above, specified or implied, at any time they may think proper & best adapted to the interest of the Legatees.

Item 4. At the decease of my wife Phebe Boring, I give & bequeath to my children hereafter named an equal dividend of all my property specified in the above and third Item, or the proceeeds thereof to Wit John Boring, Elizabeth Lyle, Susanna Tait, Robert Boring, Isaac Boring, Phebe Johnson, Having regards to the property already given and for which receipts are taken.

…

Item 10. All the residue of my Estate real or personal to Wit, Two Tracts land in the County of Lee, Two Tracts in the County of Gwinnett, one in Jackson, whereon David Thomas formerly resided & adjoining Waid Station, I give and bequeath to my children & Grand Children under the same Rule & Proportion by which these Several Legacees are herein before regulated. And that my Executors do proceed to sale & dispose of the said lands, as soon as it may be thought by them to be most expediant and conducive to the interest of the respective Legatees, And that distribution of the proceeds therof may be made.

Item 11. It is to be understood as the true intent & meaning of the foregoing Items making distribution of my property between my children & Grand children that each respective family of Grandchildren, are to be entitled to no more than an individual Childs from whom they desended would be entitled, upon an equal division of the whole property. It is also to be understood that by the word appurtenance named in the third Item is intended to imbrace Household & Kitchen furniture, working tools ,. or whatever may be found upon the premises belonging to me.

La Révolution trahie
      Phebe was the widow of a Revolutionary War veteran at a time when, as their numbers dwindled, eligibility for increasingly generous pensions was expanded by Congress. On May 6, 1844, she came before the Inferior Court of Jackson County to avail herself of new provisions allotting pensions to Revolutionary War widows. Phebe conveyed to the judge information about her husband’s service, much of which has formed the basis of this narrative and now comprises part of the Isaac Boring file at the National Archives. Unfortunately the other part of that file is the government’s denial of this octogenarian wretch’s request for an annuity, a mockery of justice scarcely surpassed in the annals of the Nineteenth Century.
      The miserable bureaucrats said they needed “further proof” in spite of the evidence adduced by Phebe: sworn testimony from friends and family including one avowal that she was “a lady whose character for truth and veracity was entirely above suspicion”; appeals from her nephew, a justice of the peace in Forsyth County; and discharge papers from Capt. Oldham. She even tore from her Bible’s pages the family tree containing dates of birth, marriage, and death, and sent them to the miserly potentates who held within their power her economic fortunes. On February 4, 1852, her daughter Phebe Johnson granted power of attorney to a lawyer in Washington, D.C., but what good this did we cannot know.
      The denial of Phebe’s pension under the spurious claim that “further proof” was needed will strike readers as particularly outrageous in light of a story relayed by her great-grandson Isaac Boring Lester. In a letter dated October 12, 1931, to the Commissioner of Pensions in Washington, D.C., he recounts a tale which was passed down through the generations.

The closing line of the letter is a direct question—“was she pensioned”—that echoes through the centuries. Sadly it is too late to right this wrong, but Phebe’s story does not end in complete defeat. On April 27, 1855, at the age of 92, she came before the court and restated her case, this time regarding land bounties of 160 acres that Congress had recently begun granting to Revolutionary War soldiers and widows. Victory was hers at last, and although it was short-lived Reverend (she died on July 30, 1857) Phebe’s tireless efforts vindicated Isaac’s service in the Revolutionary War and serve as an example to posterity.

Tempted and tried, we’re oft made to wonder

Why it should be thus all the day long;
While there are others living about us,
Never molested, though in the wrong.

Farther along we’ll know more about it,
Farther along we’ll understand why;
Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine,
We’ll understand it all by and by.

—Reverend W. A. Fletcher

Boring into History, Part I

      In William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet the leading lady wonders, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet” (II.ii.1-2). Unfortunately for the genealogist it is not sweet fragrance but the drudgery of parsing names on which the history of the Boring family hinges. Every conceivable phonetic manifestation of “Boring” is found in the record, from Boren and Borrin to Boreing and Bouring. Far from inducing boredom, these discrepancies and diversions put one on a path that is contradictory, perplexing, and vexatious. The narrative I present is my best interpretation of documents that are sometimes inadequate and other researchers’ findings that are frequently in disagreement. For the purposes of crafting a usable and understandable account of our branch of the Boring family, I have made elisions and assumptions, which while not academically laudable seems prudent given the lack of reliable sources. Let us hope this is not an instance in which a recently-seen bumper sticker pertains: “Genealogy: Annoying the living. Confusing the dead.”

The First Generation
      Arthur C. Wardle in his 1938 book Benjamin Bowring and His Descendants: A Record of Mercantile Achievement traces the “Boring” patronymic to Stephen Bourying in 1303 in Devonshire, a county in southwest England known for its Celtic heritage, mild climate, and bucolic landscape. Another source posits the derivation as northern European and while unsure of the meaning suggests a north German surname formed from the Slavic word for “pine” or “strife.” The first in our ancestry to reach these shores was probably John Boreing, born in England in the early 1600s, who landed in southeastern Virginia in 1656. According to George Cabell Greer’s 1912 Early Virginia Immigrants, 1623-1666, he was among nineteen indentured servants whose passage was paid by the merchant George Abbott. Nell Marion Nugent’s Cavaliers and Pioneers discloses that Abbott was granted 1,000 acres in Nansemond County (present-day city of Suffolk) on October 4, 1656, for the transportation of twenty passengers to Virginia and that among them was John Bowinge, most likely a misprint of “Boering.” Abbott was a participant in the headright system, which encouraged the importation of labor to the Virginia colony and reimbursed the cost of transportation with land grants. He also availed himself of the practice of indentured servitude, paying the way of poor immigrants in exchange for their labor, particularly in the rapidly ascendant tobacco fields.

There is an objection which the English make. They say that during the months of June, July, and August, it is very unhealthy; that their people, who have then lately arrived from England, die during these months, like cats and dogs, whence they call it the (sickly) season. When they have this sickness, they want to sleep all the time, but they must be prevented from sleeping by force, as they die if they get asleep. This sickness, they think, arises from the extreme heat that exists there. Then, again, when it has been a half-an-hour very hot, if the wind shifts and blow from the northwest, it immediately becomes so cold, that an overcoat may be worn. Thus, this country appears to lie in the dividing line between the heat and the cold....
—David Peterson DeVries, Voyages from Holland to America, A.D. 1632 to 1644

      John arrived in the New World as an indentured servant, part of a wave of around 50,000 between 1630 and 1680, during which staggeringly high mortality rates required constant replenishment. The average term that an adult indentured servant worked before being released from his contract was four to seven years, and it is likely John labored for a comparable period as he next appears in the records a decade later in neighboring Lower Norfolk County (now the city of Chesapeake). According to Virginia Land Patents of the Counties of Norfolk, Princess Anne & Warwick, John sold 300 acres to John Ladd on October 11, 1670, having acquired said land from Roger Fountaine on August 28, 1665. On January 1, 1673, John filed his will in Lower Norfolk, and following his death in the late spring of 1677 it was probated. Though we don’t know the name of John’s wife, this document reveals the names of his two sons.

In the name of God I John Bouring doth will and bequeath unto my two Sonnes being Edmond & John Bouring all my Land being six hundred acres of land and to be equally divided betweene them when they shall come of age...
witness: Wm Hatfield Hugh Hoskings.
Jno. Bouring
Deposition of Hugh Hoskings, aged 34 yeares or thereabouts 17) June 1677.
Adam Keeling. Hugh Hoskins & Seale.

    

 Norfolk and vicinity

New Country to Backcountry
      Edmond Bouren was born around 1660 and was on the cusp of his majority when he became fatherless. Around age twenty he married a woman named Sarah. In 1682 in Lower Norfolk County he began selling land and in 1685 had acquired holdings beyond his father’s bequeathal. Edmond’s name appears on a land description dated November 7, 1704, in Currituck Precinct, then part of Albemarle County and now in the northeastern corner of North Carolina. “Currituck” translates from one of the indigenous languages as “the land of wild geese,” an appropriate designation given that the area, separated from Virginia by the Great Dismal Swamp, became a hideout and refuge for the insurrectionists of Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676. Edmond made his will on July 29, 1711, and died soon thereafter. It was transcribed from the will book by researcher T. J. Shumaker:

In the Name of God Amen. I Edmund Bouren of Corotuck in No. Carolina being Sick & weak of body but of perfect mind & memory, & calling to mind yt all [unclear word] must Dye Doe make & ordaine this my Last will & Testamt. revokeing other will or wills by me formerly made. First I give my body to ye Earth from whence itt was taken to be buried In such Decent manner as my Executrix hereafter named Shall think Conveniant. Secondly I Give my Soul to almighty God who Gave itt hopeing by his merits to receive forgiveness for all my sins & transgressions which I have Committed in this wicked World

I Give to my Son Jos. Bouren my Bay mare & all her Increase. I Give to my Son Jos. Bouren my Bay horse coult. I Give to my Son Jos. Bouren & my mill. I Give to my Son Jos. Bouren my plantation & tract of [land] on youpon ridge after my wives decease to him & his heirs forever.

I Give to my loving wife Sarah Bouring my Sorrel mare & all her Increase....

My will & Desire is that my Son Jos. Bouren have all ye Cattle in my Stock wch. are of his proper marke, also my will & desire is that my Daughter Sarah Bouren have all ye Cattle in ye Stock wch. are of her proper marke....

I Give my Negroe man Leboe to my wife Sarah Bouring During her life & after her Decease to my two Daughters Jane Bouren & Susannah Bouren, also my will & Desire is that my loving wife Sarah Bouren have all of rest(?) part of my Estate att her Disposel Except one Gold ring wch I Give to my Daughter Mary Bouren, also I make & ordaine & appoint my loveing wife Sarah Bouren my whole & Sole Executrix of this my last will & Testament to see itt Duly performed & to pay all my lawfull & just Debts, also my will & Desire is yt my Brother Benja: Tulle & my brother Williams & my friend Jos. Wicker may oversee my Estate and prevent any [unclear word] wch. may or shall happen in any case whatever as wittness my hand & Seal this 29th of July anno Dom: 1711

      According to Edmond’s will he had one son, Joseph Boring, who was born in the early 1680s in Currituck Precinct. He inherited his father’s land in what is now Perquimans County, west of Currituck along the northern rim of the Albemarle Sound. Little else is known about him; there is no extant will or record of marriage. Some researchers believe he had several sons, one of whom was William Boring, born in 1701 or 1702. William married Elizabeth Larkin, about the same age as he, in 1722 in Currituck. A 1755 tax list has William in newly-formed Orange County, at that time a vast district in the Piedmont region near the combustible frontier between westering European settlement and the natives’ territory. There is no further information about William except attestation from friends about his dying wishes. From the Orange County court, June 20, 1768:

Then came before me William Lea one of his Majesty's Justices of the Law for the County of Orange, John Currie and James Culbertson both planters and residing (?) in said County and made Oath, Seperately that they on the 11th of this month, heard William Boring on his Death Bed then Will in favor of Charles & Joseph Boring to Charles he left a piece of gold value Sixty Shillings, also a Negro Boy which Joseph Boring may keep, or pay his Brother Charles the Sum of thirty pounds which of either he pleases, and then to be paid by said Joseph when its suits without any process in Law, to be commenced against his Brother Joseph, all the Rest of the Estate to remain in the Possession of Joseph Boring, for his own proper use & his Heirs forever. Given under my hand this twentieth day of June One Thousand Seven Hundren & Sixty Eight.

From Inventories & Accounts of Sales, 1758-1785 edited by William D. Bennett we learn that on January 25, 1770, the executor of William’s will presented an inventory to the court: “1 feather Bed and Rugg, one Copper Skillet, one warming Pann, one Hamma, 1 Rasor and Hone, one Molatto Boy named James, four DoubleLoons, Two Pistol, and one Piece of Gold Value 30 shillings.” William’s wife Elizabeth is alleged to have died not long after her husband, but it seems she was still living in August 1772 when her father Alexander Larkin named her in his will. I have been unable to locate their gravesites or pinpoint the circumstances of Elizabeth’s expiration.

Darling, how could I stay here without you,
I have nothing to cheer my poor heart,
This old world would seem sad, love, without you,
Tell me now that we never will part.

Oh I’ll pawn you my gold watch and chain, love,
And I’ll pawn you my gold diamond ring,
I will pawn you this heart in my bosom,
Only say that you’ll love me again.
—Thomas P. Westendorf

Trouble on the Frontier

      In contradistinction to the paucity of sources about his parents, Joseph Boring’s role in the Regulator movement ensures his memory is not lost to us. Joseph was born in on January 30, 1730, and married Susannah Teague around 1750. He served as a juror in Orange County in 1753, a year before the founding of Hillsborough (contemporary site of UNC-Chapel Hill) as the county seat along the Great Indian Trading Path. In 1754 his name appears on deed record in Granville County and in 1756 in Orange County. In 1764 he was appointed overseer of a stretch of road between the Hyco and Eno Rivers. The following year he joined thousands of North Carolina frontiersmen in the War of the Regulation, a revolt against colonial authorities that heralded the American Revolution.

 1768 plan of Hillsborough by Claude Joseph Sautier

      The coastal plain of North Carolina had been settled for several decades before significant numbers of pioneers began moving into the backcountry west of the fall line in the 1730s. Many of these settlers were Scots-Irish and German and adherents to the new evangelical denominations that preached individualism and local autonomy. These sectional and cultural differences were an early episode in America’s long-running East-West divide, and they generated grievances against colonial authorities, including charges of venality, corruption, a rigged legal system, and an unfair tax code. In 1765 the first of many petitions were circulated seeking restitution and by 1768 the petitioners were calling themselves Regulators as they sought to regulate their own affairs. Sheriffs and judges, as implementers of the tax and legal systems, were particular targets of popular ire, which was at first expressed peacefully but increasingly manifested in mob violence.
      In January 1771 the legislature passed and the governor William Tryon signed An Act for Preventing Tumultuous and Riotous Assemblies, and for the More Speedy and Effectually Punishing the Rioters, and for Restoring and Preserving the Public Peace of This Province. He then called up the militia and led it halfway across the colony to confront the Regulators. When the two forces met west of Hillsborough on May 16, 1771, the governor warned the Regulators to disarm and disperse before negotiations could occur, to which they replied, “Fire and be damned.” In the ensuing Battle of Alamance the insurrection was crushed, and six Regulators were afterwards hanged for treason. The governor intended to see order restored quickly and was thus liberal with pardons, issuing amnesty to all but sixteen Regulators. Our unlucky outlaw ancestor Joseph Boring was among those excluded from this June 11, 1771, edict by the governor:

Whereas, I am informed that many Persons who have been concerned in the late Rebellion are desirous of submitting themselves to Government, I do therefore give notice that every Person who will come in, either to mine or General Waddells Camp, lay down their Arms, take the Oath of Allegiance, and promise to pay all Taxes that are now due or may hereafter become due by them respectively, and submit to the Laws of this Country, shall have His Majestys most gracious and free pardon for all Treasons Insurrections and Rebellions done or committed on or before the 16th Inst., provided they make their submission aforesaid on or before the 10th of June next. The following Persons are however excepted from the Benefit of this Proclamation, Viz. All the Outlaws, the prisoners in Camp, and the undernamed persons....

      When the decree was issued all but a handful of dead-enders had sworn loyalty oaths to the Crown, so Joseph’s exclusion may be attributed to his leadership in the insurrection or his refusal to accept the movement’s vanquishment. As William Laurence Saunders notes in Preface to Volume 8 of the Colonial Records of North Carolina, a bittersweet irony of the Regulators’ defeat is that five years later many of their demands were incorporated in the new state constitution of 1776, and their rebellious spirit animated the war for independence from Great Britain. Joseph was not around to witness these auspicious developments, however, as he died in May 1775, his will having been made in Orange County on January 11, 1775:

Susannah Borin to have her living on the plantation during her widowhood, her bed, and furniture, negro Hannah to wait on her as long as they live, horse, saddle, and bridle. John Borin to have negro Jack; James Borin to have negro Caleb; William Borin to have the wagon, gears, and four horses, RAIN, BON, BUCK, and JACK; Isaac Boring to have gristmill; Joseph Borin, Jr. to have milken cow, Idom: David Borin to have 20 lbs paid to him by his oldest brother, John, the said David shall come of age. Susan Borin, Becky Borin, Phebe (FEBY) Borin, SERE (ZERE) to have divided among them all the balance of my estate and Cousin Fatsy (Patsy) Clarke. David Borin to have the plantation whereon I now live when he comes of age. Charles Stephens and James Currie to see due performance of my will.

The dowager Boring’s bereavement was curtailed by her remarriage to John Browning, a recent widower himself. On August 16, 1776, six weeks after the Declaration of Independence was issued from Philadelphia, Susannah sold Joseph’s land along a fork of the Hyco River for £100 of “Proclamation Money,” the value of which was set by Queen Anne’s directive in 1704 and was therefore nullified by the colonies’ independence. In November 1777 Susannah and John were appointed administrators of Joseph’s estate, which they liquidated at auction on April 6, 1778. Though he died before its consummation, Joseph’s legacy touched America’s quest for self-government in two ways: the aforesaid role of the Regulators’ as a catalyst of the American Revolution and his son’s participation in the war for independence, which will be discussed in the second essay.

Family in High Places

      Some people do genealogy to establish regal ancestry or connect themselves to grandees from the past. I think this is a frivolous and futile pursuit, and not a very good reason for inquiring into one’s roots. The English theologian Bishop William Warburton (1698-1779) commented on the ambiguous meaning of such connections: “High birth is a thing which I never knew any one to disparage except those who had it not; and I never knew any one to make a boast of it who had anything else to be proud of.” I therefore regard the following discovery, upon which I stumbled while researching an entirely separate and mundane topic, as obliquely relevant yet quite amusing: the President of the United States and I are distant kinfolk.
      Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., is my eighth cousin twice-removed on my paternal grandmother’s side. His seventh-great-grandparents and my ninth-great-grandparents were John Browning (1728-1803) and Elizabeth Demarest (1725-1774). John was born in Virginia and moved to Wilkes County, Georgia, following the death of his wife, who hailed from Delaware and passed away in North Carolina. I descend from their daughter Phebe Browning (1762-1857), and the President comes from her older brother James Browning (1745-1812). This news will scandalize some and delight others in my family, but I am confident it will be received by the White House with universal acclaim. I look forward to celebrating Christmas with my long-lost relations.

A Mulberry River Runs Through It

      The area of the Mulberry River watershed settled by Maher Shalal Hashbaz Lyle and his family is still mostly rural, its bucolic appearance interrupted occasionally by gothic scenes of idle bulldozers at the gates of failed residential developments and rusted cars in the lots of kudzu-covered body shops, relics of when the region was, according to prosecutor Floyd G. Hoard, “the hub of the stolen automobile industry in rural Georgia.” State Route 53, carrying cars between Braselton and Winder, crosses the Mulberry River, now the boundary between Barrow and Jackson Counties, around the site of the early Lyle settlement. The terrain rises into piney woods above the river, wherefrom one’s northward gaze surveys the rolling timberline of the Appalachian foothills. By the time of Maher’s 1814 interment in the hilltop graveyard that bears his name his family had put down roots in Jackson County that would keep them there for generations.

 Jackson County in 1796

A person who lives in an isolated house
        As the Lyle patriarch drew his last breaths the country for whose independence he fought was imperiled again by its former imperial master. In the War of 1812 the British armed the natives to menace the frontier, endangering the settlers in Jackson County and other areas along America’s contested western border. Georgia’s authorities acted against the threat and ordered the construction of a fort on Hog Mountain near the headwaters of the Appalachee River in present-day northeastern Gwinnett County. The outpost was completed in 1813 and named Fort Daniel. A route which we now call Peachtree Road was cut through to Fort Peachtree, another hastily-built stockade 30 miles southwest on the Chattahoochee River. Fort Daniel stood about fifteen miles west of the Lyle home and was garrisoned by the 25^th Regiment of the Georgia militia, which counted among its number Maher’s sons John and William Crawford. In the event the Brits’ native adjutants did not strike Jackson County.

Jackson is phenomenally rich in bottom lands.  The county is a system of water courses.  The head waters of the Oconee string through the county in perfect network.  There are the Pond Fork, Allen Fork, Walnut Fork and Mulberry Forks of the Middle Oconee River.  Then the trail of creeks, Sandy, Big and Little Curry, Crooked Creek, Cabin Creek, Turkey, Candler, Pond and Hurricane Creeks form the North Oconee, and these two branches of the river drain the lands for 10 miles and join just below Athens.

—1886 Jackson County Edition of The Weekly Banner-Watchman, Athens, Georgia

      William was born on December 21, 1770, in Virginia and married Elizabeth Boring, born on October 29, 1784, in North Carolina, on March 25, 1803, in Jackson County. Proximity may explain their matrimony: Elizabeth’s parents, Isaac Boring, Sr. and Phebe Browning, lived east of the Lyles along the Mulberry River. William was a farmer whose strict piety forbade labor on the Sabbath. The 1850 census discloses the value of William’s real estate was $2,500; in 1860 it was $4,000, and his personal estate was assessed at $10,804. The 1860 agricultural census shows his farm produced fifteen bushels of sweet potatoes, 75 pounds of butter, 35 bushels of wheat, 250 bushels of Indian corn, and 8,000 bales of hay. In the autumn of that year William died, two months shy of his 90^th birthday; Elizabeth passed on September 17, 1863. The Battle of Chickamauga raged 150 miles to the northwest as her family was in mourning. William and Elizabeth had twelve children, born between 1804 and 1827. The firstborn was Dilmus Johnston, named for William’s brother Dilmus. This uncommon name comes from Catalonia, a region of eastern Spain, and means “a person who lives in an isolated house.” Dilmus Sr. inspired several successive generations of Lyles and associated families to use his name, yet it is surprising that William chose it because family lore recounts that they didn’t even get along. Dilmus Sr.’s métier as a purveyor of spirits may have had provoked his ire.

When the English arrive they build a house, when the Germans arrive they build a barn, and when the Scots-Irish come they build a distillery.

—Appalachian saying

      Dilmus Sr. lived along the Mulberry River where in addition to operating grist and saw mills he ran a whiskey distillery whose product was so admired by the locals they begged him not to leave for the War of 1812 and thus deprive them his home brew. When the war ended in 1815 and the British blockade was lifted, Dilmus Sr. ordered from Nova Scotia two pairs of flint millstones, which arrived at Charleston harbor and were transported overland to the Mulberry River with great difficulty. Dilmus Sr. used the millstones for the next 32 years until in a macabre instance of peripeteia one of the massive granitic discs fell onto his foot and crushed it. Naïve to lethal infection and far removed from any competent practitioner of medicine, his family took him home, where he succumbed to gangrene on November 1, 1847.

Mulberry train depot, ca. 1910

      Dilmus Sr.’s son Dilmus Reid was born on December 3, 1815 in Jackson County and operated the mill after his father’s demise. In early 1861 he served as one of three delegates representing the county of his birth at the secession convention in Milledgeville, where he voted in favor of Georgia’s departure from the Union. He had been the postmaster at Mulberry since April 4, 1838, and at the South’s defeat was dismissed from the position and denied a presidential pardon due to his service under the Confederate government. This prompted Dilmus Reid to appeal to President Andrew Johnson in a letter dated July 26, 1865, the text of which reads:

Sir: I held under the Government of the Confederate States the appointment of Post Master at Mulberry Jackson County Geo – a small country Post Office remote from any City – or Town. This office I held for the convenience of the surrounding community & certainly not for the honor or profit of the position. But the fact of having held it excludes me from the pardon & amnesty offered in you excellency’s Proclamation of May 29th 1865. I therefore, herewith humbly and respectfully submit to your Excellency my Special application for Pardon from the pains and penalties now imposed upon me by the Laws of the United States. I have taken and Subscribed the prescribed Amnesty Oath, which I shall observe and keep in good faith. My property is worth less than twenty thousand. Being above the Conscription age I have had no connexion with the Military Service in the Confederate Armies except a few months service in the State Militia under a Law of the State. It is my intention & purpose to be a loyal and useful citizen for the U.S. From that Government I expect protection and to that Government I give my Allegiance. I am Somewhat advanced in life with a large family mainly to raise and educate. With these responsibilities and duties resting upon me I cannot feel indifferent to the loss of what means I possess. The thought of living under the ban of the Government is deeply mortifying to me. I therefore appeal to your Excellency for the exercise of that clemency towards me, which has so signally characterized the official conduct of your Excellency towards so many others and invoke pardon from all the penalties to which I am now obnoxious. No proceedings have been instituted to confiscate my estate. All of which I have the honor most Respectfully to Submit As in duty bound &c &c

Dilmus Reid affirmed his support for the Constitution and the emancipation of the slaves in a loyalty oath signed in Athens on August, 14, 1865, witnessed by Major Matthias S. Euen, who filled in the blanks on the printed form: “The above named has florid complexion grey hair, and blue eyes; is 5 feet 9 inches high, aged 49 years; by profession a merchant.” The provisional governor of Georgia recommended a pardon, citing his position as “only a Country postmaster,” and passed on the application to the United States Attorney General. Mail to the Mulberry office was discontinued on September 28, 1866, but when it was reestablished in 1872 he was restored to his former position, which he held until his death in 1889.

 This remarkable photograph is on display at the Crawford W. Long Museum

in downtown Jefferson. It portrays three of William Crawford Lyle's

sons; one of them is believed to be Dilmus Johnston Lyle.

Miles of Lyles 
      William and Elizabeth’s oldest son Dilmus Johnston Lyle was born on January 4, 1804, in Jackson County. On February 21, 1828, he married Sarah Polly Green, born on February 15, 1801, in Spartanburg, South Carolina to John Green and Jane Bickerstaff. His wife, known to her family as Sally, gave birth to eight children between 1829 and 1842. Dilmus seems to have been a farmer of limited means. The 1860 census gives the value of his personal estate as $560, in 1870 as $100; in none of the censuses does he claim to own any land. Dilmus is listed in the 1880 census, conducted on June 10, as the head of household with Sally and two of their children. It is believed he died later that year as no further records can be found. Sally died on November 21, 1893. Her obituary reads:

      Sarah Jane Lyle was the second child born to Dilmus Johnston and Sally, on November 8, 1830. She can be found living with her parents in the Mulberry settlement in the censuses of 1840, 1850, and 1860. On December 9, 1860, she married William Henry Potter, a carpenter born in Rhode Island. Nothing is known of his parents or when he came to Georgia, except that he was previously married to Permelia Nixon on August 10, 1825, with whom he had eight children before her death in January 1860. According to the 1850 census he was born around 1795, yet the 1870 census lists his birth year as 1810. It is possible he lied about his age to Sarah Jane and her family, as he was about 35 years older than her and even older than her father. In the 1860s they had two daughters and two sons, the youngest of whom was trusted with the old family name Dilmus. In 1870 William listed the value of his land as $300 and his personal estate as $200. There is no further record of him, and the time and nature of his death and his place of burial are unknown.

 Sarah Jane at Doster Cemetery: “She died as she lived a Christian”

      Sarah Jane was just entering middle age when her husband died. According to subsequent censuses she was occupied as a farmer and was the head of household in which some of her children and grandchildren lived and worked as farm laborers. In 1910 Sarah Jane’s newborn great-grandson and my future great-grandfather Edgar Lee Tate lived with his family not far from her home west of Jefferson. They were farmers in an area known for corn, oats, hay, peas, and syrup, and the harvests were so plentiful and the climate so inviting that Jackson County’s population reached 30,000 that year—a sum not surpassed until 1990. The wild frontier Maher Shalal Hashbaz Lyle settled had changed in a century to a landscape of fields, pastures, mills, and railroads—a transformation witnessed and helped along by the Lyles and finally bookended by Sarah Jane Lyle Potter’s death on June 17, 1913, for which her grandson and my great-great-grandfather Alvin Crawford Tate penned this tribute:

The Jackson Herald, July 3, 1913

The Emerald Lyle

      The story of our branch of the Lyle family begins in Scotland in the 1600s and terminates a century ago in Jackson County, Georgia, with my grandmother Bettye Widener’s great-great-grandmother. This essay chronicles the first part, up to 1814. It is a multigenerational concatenation of people at the mercy of historical forces like migration, religious persecution, and the vagaries of pre-modern agriculture. The Lyles faced such an array of challenges that it brings to mind Eliphaz’s speech in the Book of Job: “Although affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground; yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward” (5:6-7). The Lyles may not have pondered the provenance of their problems as these verses do, but they probably coped as best they could, such that a retrospective of their lives reads like a saga.

Don’t that road look rough and rocky?
      The etymology of “Lyle,” like numerous other surnames in the British Isles, can be traced to the Norman conquest of England in 1066. William the Conqueror ordered a census in 1085, compiled the next year as the Domesday Book. This document references a man of the name Hunfridus de Insula, “de Insula” being Latin for “of the island.” The French translation reads “de l’Isle,” and after Norman rule ended in England the “de” was dropped and its spelling gradually evolved into innumerable variations, one of which was “Lyle.” An early Scottish exponent of place begetting name was Ralph de l’Isle, who built Duchal Castle at the confluence of two rivers, dug a moat connecting them, and sealed off his residence as an island fortress. His name first appears in an 1170 grant to monks in nearby Paisley as the Latinized “Radulphus de Insula, Dominus de Duchal.” The castle fell in the 1500s, by which time “Lyle” was a common name in the area.
      The authoritative text on Lyle genealogy, Oscar K. Lyle’s 1912 study Lyle family: the ancestry and posterity of Matthew John, Daniel and Samuel Lyle, pioneer settlers in Virginia, locates our Lyle ancestors in western Scotland on the Kintyre Peninsula, a narrow landmass 30 miles long that stretches southward into the North Channel towards Ireland. In 1606, the Lyles left Kintyre to settle in Ulster, the northern province of Ireland. The reasons for this migration reach back several decades and reinforce the British historian G. M. Trevelyan’s dictum that the interaction between Scotland and Ireland is “a constant factor in history.”
      For most of the Sixteenth Century the English fought to establish hegemony over Ireland. As they encroached into Ulster in the 1590s they ignited the resistance of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone. In the Nine Years’ War (1594-1603), O’Neill and his Irish allies battled to halt the invasion of their territory and were defeated by a large English army. Both sides employed such devastating scorched-earth tactics that Ulster was left a howling wilderness, depopulated and famished. A treaty was signed on March 30, 1603, six days after the death of Queen Elizabeth. She was succeeded by King James, a Scot, whose ascension unified the crowns of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Hugh Montgomery, a Scottish aristocrat and friend of the new sovereign, saw an opportunity to consolidate the English position in Ulster by resettling tenants from the crowded Scottish Lowlands. Along with James Hamilton, secret agent to the crown, and Conn O’Neill, an Irish landowner who had to be broken out of jail and granted a royal pardon, Montgomery submitted the scheme to King James. He accepted the deal in April 1606 and divided between the three men vast holdings in Counties Down and Antrim, on the eastern shores of Ulster. Thanks to Montgomery and Hamilton’s robust recruitment, the first wave of settlers reached Ulster the next month.

The Scots are a middle temper, between the English tender breeding and the Irish rude breeding and are a great deal more likely to adventure to plant Ulster than the English.
—King James I

      As this sweeping policy was enacted the government punished another rebellion by the earls in western Scotland by expropriating and evacuating their lands. Oscar K. Lyle’s book asserts the Lyles were made refugees by this punitive action and resettled in Ulster on Randall MacDonnell’s land. MacDonnell, the son-in-law of the Earl of Tyrone and a Catholic, joined his fellow Irishmen in the Nine Years War but halfway through switched sides, for which treachery he was rewarded 333,907 acres. The Scottish refugees to Ulster crossed the Northern Channel from Kintyre to County Antrim, points just thirty miles apart and within sight on a clear day. It was a short journey as migration routes go, but its effects would resound into the New World.

 The Glens of Antrim

Don’t that sea look wide and deep?
      The Scottish tenants set about cultivating the land, which even in 1575, decades before the most recent spasm of rebellion and conquest, Sir Sydney Smith described as “all desolate and waste.” Fortuitously for this risky enterprise, there was a bumper crop in 1606 and another the next year, at which time occurred the Flight of the Earls. For reasons still subject to historical debate, many Irish nobles who were vanquished in the Nine Years War and yet were treated leniently nonetheless feared English persecution and fled to Spain. The section of MacDonnell’s colossal bounty on which the Lyles settled was southeast of the Glens of Antrim, a region of uneven agriculture and breathtaking natural beauty. In the parish of Larne in the town of Browndodd the Lyles lived and farmed and worshipped as Presbyterians and around midcentury Samuel Lyle was born to parents of unknown appellation or avocation.
      Samuel became a landholder in Browndodd and in 1680 married Janet Knox of Knoxtown, daughter of John Knox and Sally Locke. Oscar K. Lyle describes their idyllic home in his 1912 book:

A lane leads to the house, which is still standing and occupied by one of his descendants. It is of stone, two stories of height and has now a slate roof. In earlier days the roof was thatched, as was the method of the Scotch…. In it is the cradle in which were rocked three of the four Lyle pioneers to Virginia and the father of the fourth one. This cradle was in service for seven generations.

This cradle was built by James Lyle, one of Samuel and Janet’s six children. In 1700 he married Margaret Snoddy, also of Scots-Irish extraction, possibly at Raloo Presbyterian Church, where it is believed the family worshipped and are buried. Three of their sons would immigrate to America, but the oldest, Robert, remained in Ireland. He married Ann Jane Locke and according to Oscar K. Lyle’s book worked as a “linen lapper at Larne bleach-green, one who takes charge of the linen and sees it packed up.” They lived on his wife’s farm in Toreagh and later on her father’s farm called “Pullendoes” and, when John Wesley toured Ireland, he preached an open-air service at their home—much like the preaching he and his brother Charles had done under the moss-draped live oaks on St. Simons Island years before.

…the young men of Ireland who wish to be free and happy should leave it and come here as quick as possible. There is no place in the world where a man meets so rich a reward for good conduct and industry as in America.
—John Dunlap, in a letter home to his brother-in-law

      Drought, poor crop yields, rising rents, and the Penal Laws of 1704, which targeted Catholics but also disadvantaged Presbyterians, triggered massive Scots-Irish immigration to America. Between 1717 and 1776 as many as 200,000 Scots-Irish crossed the ocean, lured by letters from family and reports in newspapers, both of which insinuated cheap land and limitless possibilities. Against this tumultuous backdrop David Locke Lyle, son of Robert and Ann, married Mary Blair in Larne on December 27, 1735. Over the next decade his brother Samuel and their uncles Matthew, John, and Daniel immigrated to Virginia and settled on Timber Ridge near the Shenandoah Valley. David and Ann arranged passage to South Carolina with their two young children and set sail in 1746. Some researchers have conjectured they were passengers aboard the Good Hope that sailed from Dublin to Charleston, but the vessel's name would be the cruelest of ironies: when the ship dropped anchor in Charleston harbor Mary was the widowed mother of two fatherless children, the hapless head of household having died at sea.

The Lyle House in Browndodd, ca. 1912

A New Life in America
      Tragedy did not end with the loss of David Lyle. Soon after their arrival one of the two children, a daughter, died, leaving Mary to look after her only remaining son Robert, named for his grandfather. Robert was born on March 14 of 1736 or 1737 in County Antrim—a quarter of a millennium before my own birthday. Mary and Robert appear to have joined their kindred in the Virginia backcountry following these tragic losses. For reasons about which researchers have only speculated (such as a religious epiphany), Robert changed his name before his 21st birthday to the longest name in the Bible: Maher Shalal Hashbaz Lyle. He drew this moniker from the Book of Isaiah:

Moreover the Lord said unto me, Take thee a great roll, and write in it with a man’s pen concerning Mahershalalhashbaz. And I took unto me faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah. And I went unto the prophetess; and she conceived, and bare a son. Then said the Lord to me, Call his name Mahershalalhashbaz. (8:1-3)

Perhaps the Lyle formerly known as Robert saw in this prophetic name an homage to the country he left behind, as “Maher” is an Irish surname meaning “kindly” or “generous.” Perhaps he understood the Hebrew translation of the name, “The spoil speedeth, the prey hasteth,” and identified with its immediacy. Or perhaps this was an instance of reinvention and self-fashioning of the sort that has given America a reputation as the place to start over as a self-made man. We will never know the motivation for this change, only the life he lived under its banner.
      Maher’s name is found on a record in Bedford County, Virginia, in 1756 and as witness to a deed in Halifax County in 1763, the same year he married Elizabeth Gibson (she was called Betty), born on February 15, 1741, in Virginia to parents of Scots-Irish origin. Within a few years Maher purchased 166 acres on Cheese Creek in what became Campbell County, south of present-day Lynchburg. Between 1764 and 1784 they had twelve children, the last several born during the Revolutionary War. The Scots-Irish had a pivotal role in securing America’s independence from British rule, which had oppressed them in their former country and now in their new home. The Sons of the American Revolution have recognized Maher a Patriot for selling on credit 275 head of cattle to the army and for serving under George Washington in the Virginia Lines of the Continental Army when Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. The stock from whence Maher came had settled the wilds of the Virginia frontier before the war and persevered through the following crucible such that Washington remarked, “If defeated everywhere else, I will make my last stand for liberty among the Scots-Irish of my native Virginia.”
      In September 1782 Maher was compensated for supplying the American army, and on November 6, 1783 he and Betty sold their land to John Ward Sr. for £150. Per the indenture the Lyles lived there another year, after which they moved to upstate South Carolina. Betty’s family lived on an adjacent lot. Researchers have drawn attention to an apparent fracas between the families: on June 2, 1794, Maher and one of his sons brought suit against three of the Gibsons for breach of the peace. The matter was resolved in court when the defendants agreed to “a promise of good behavior toward the Lyles by the Gibsons for a period of twelve months and one day.” In 1799 Maher served on a jury in Union District and the 1800 census records him as the head of household. An unlikely bonanza drew them to Georgia before the ink had dried on the census form.

      According to a story supposedly carried in an Atlanta newspaper in the 1930s, Maher’s son Dilmus traveled to Jackson County, Georgia to survey land and water suitable for building a mill. When he returned he announced to the family he had instead found gold. His spellbinding tale and the lure of precious metal convinced the family to make haste to the site of the incipient goldmine, but Dilmus failed to locate the jackpot he had left just months before, dashing their hopes of easy riches. He reverted to his original plan and built the first grain mill in the area. Maher and Betty and many of their children settled along the Mulberry River, a tributary of the Middle Oconee River known to the Cherokee as Kuwa yi and the Creek as Tishmaqgu that rises near Braselton and weaves southeastwards between Hoschton and Winder. Maher and Betty lived with their son William and in the tax digest of 1809 owned a single slave.
      Maher Shalal Hashbaz Lyle died on January 30, 1814, in Jackson County; Betty followed on January 15, 1831. They are buried in Lyle Cemetery in a section shaded and overgrown by the woods, kith and kin nearby in eternal sleep. Two years ago Maher’s descendants conducted a 21-gun salute in his honor. A community called Mulberry grew where the Lyles first settled and in 1884 became a stop on the Gainesville, Jefferson, and Southern Railroad, later part of the Gainesville Midland Railroad. Though frontiers of geography and technology shifted and progressed and left Mulberry and the Lyle homestead behind, the inimitable Scots-Irish spirit endured. It was this spirit that animated the Lyles as they crossed the seas and settled the frontiers and shaped America into an empire of liberty unfolding across a whole continent.

Troubles and trials often betray those
Causing the weary body to stray
But we shall walk beside the still waters
With the Good Shepherd leading The Way.

Going up home to live in green pastures,
Where we shall live and die never more.
Even The Lord will be in that number,
When we shall reach that heavenly shore.

—H. W. Vanhoose, “Green Pastures”