The Lyon's Whelp

A great rift erupted in the Johnson and Snipes families in 1910.  Trouble had been brewing for a while.  My great grandmother was Lillie Johnson Snipes (1876-1917), daughter of Amos James Johnson, Jr. (1843-1914), the steamboat captain and entrepreneur, introduced in Part I of this series.  Lillie married my great- grandfather, Eugene Archibald Snipes, in 1902.  From what we know, Amos did not approve of Mr. Snipes.  Snipes had come from Nash County, NC, where he was a successful tobacco farmer.  He is believed to have introduced widespread tobacco cultivation to Sampson County, NC.  That wasn’t the issue.  Mr. Snipes had been previously married.  His 18 year old bride, Fannie McFarland died in childbirth, and the child did not survive either.   Lillie and Mr. Snipes were married less than 2 years later.

Prosperity did not bring peace to the Johnson household; Lillie did not have the opportunity to go to college because her older brother and sister died within weeks of each other in 1892 while attending Duke and Greensboro Women’s College respectively, of diphtheria.   After Lillie’s marriage to Mr. Snipes, there was another family shock.  When Amos’ wife and Lillie’s mother, Emily Idella Fryer, died in 1910, Amos promptly began courting Lula Merritt, a newly-made widow who was younger than Lillie.  Lillie apparently did not take this well.  Amos tried patching things up by deeding his plantation, Quewhiffle and 4000 acres attached thereto, to Lillie’s children (Amos’ grandchildren), leaving Lillie a life estate.  Mr. Johnson did NOT give Mr. Snipes any legal interest in his property.   Amos died in 1914, leaving the Clear Run farm to his second, young wife Lula.  Lillie died in 1917, and left Quewhiffle to her children, including my grandmother, Melissa L. Snipes Triplett.   Mr. Snipes would marry twice more, in succession to Irma Carter and Vivian Carter, who were sisters.   He outlived the last of his wives by almost a generation, before dying in 1958.  Papa Snipes was a tough man.  Sometime when Snipes was in his 80’s, my grandmother was visiting him, and she noticed he had this weird cloth wound dressing all down his lower leg.  She made him take it off, and she was appalled by the extent of his injury.  Apparently,  he was splitting wood in his front yard.  He missed on a swing and cut his calf deeply.  He didn’t panic or go to the hospital.  He staunched the flow of blood, sewed HIMSELF up with a needle and thread, and cleaned the wound with kerosene.   Having been living in the house owned by his own children at Quewhiffle, he moved to Delway in the 1940’s.  A son-in-law had insisted in partitioning the Quewhiffle farm, and the home went out of the family in 1953.   We’re working on getting it back.

After the death of Lillie Snipes, the Johnson descendants (including my cousins, the McLambs, who live at Clear Run) kept up with each other in part through my great aunt Emily, who did not let the events of 1910 prevent her from having a relationship with the otherwise-estranged cousins.  Back in 1999, the families reunited at Clear Run.  In 2014, we had a big barbecue to honor the 100th anniversary of Amos Johnson’s passing.  My daughter Caroline was just under a year old at the time.

Back in Part I of this series, I mentioned the various Poitevint ancestors of mine.  James (1711-1761) was married to Margaret DeVane (pronounced DeVaughn or Devahn).  Her brothers, John DeVane and Thomas DeVane, had distinguished records in the Revolutionary War, as did her DeVane nephews.  Their family founded the Black River Presbyterian Church at Ivanhoe, NC. Margaret DeVane Poitevint’s niece through her brother John was also named Margaret.  She married William King, and their son William Rufus King (below, right) would go on to be the founder of the town of Selma, Alabama, Senator from Alabama, Ambassador to France, and Vice President of the United States under Franklin Pierce.  Alas, he died only 6 weeks into his term, and was so ill that he took the oath of office in Cuba, the only VP to be sworn in overseas.  In the modern age when we can speak openly about such matters, it is interesting to note that Rufus King is believed to have been the life partner of President James Buchanan (below left), before King’s untimely death.  Both were lifelong bachelors and they lived together in a townhouse during their service in Congress.  Historians disagree on the exact nature of their relationship; Andrew Jackson called them “Miss Nancy and Aunt Fancy”.

President James Buchanan

Sen. Rufus King

I did find a few things to tie all these family strands together.   Patrick Murphy (1801-1874) was the grandson of the founder of Black River Presbyterian Church, along with the DeVanes and Poitevints.  He, too, is a cousin.   Murphy built the Quewhiffle house shown earlier in the post, where my grandmother lived in her youth.  Patrick’s son, Dr. Patrick Murphy (1848-1907 ran the Broughton State Hospital at Morganton and was an early advocate for improved treatment of the mentally ill.   As many African-American families try to put together family trees and are frustrated by the lack of records caused by slavery and its aftermath, I was pleased to find an article on the genealogy of Murphy family slaves.  Patrick owned 114 slaves in 1860; it may come as some small comfort to the Murphy African-American descendants that by 1910, his cousin had sawed the detached kitchen off the Quewhiffle Plantation house and moved it down the road to be used as an African-American school.   I hope to make some contacts and do more research on this important family connection.

Broughton Hospital, Morganton

Dr. Patrick Murphy (d. 1907)

While I predict many sub- posts on the various branches of the family in more detail later, I will attempt to provide a road map for amateur genealogists and my own family members who don’t know how all our family tree roots connect.

Let’s walk our way back chronologically to my ancestor Antoine Poitevin (later styled Poitevint or Portervint).  Antoine was a Huguenot immigrant who left France shortly before the Edict of Fontainebleu.  I gather he probably saw the hand writing on the wall in regards to the future of Protestants in France.  He appears in London with his children in the early 1680’s and was a member of the London linen weaver’s guild, meaning he had obtained some social standing already, and was a denizen (naturalized immigrant) of the British Empire.    In 1685, he emigrated to Charles Town, SC.  He and his sons (including my (6th great grandfather Peter) are expressly listed in Lord Craven’s Proprietary Act No. 154 of 1696, whereby they were made citizens of the colony with full legal rights in exchange for taking the Oath of Allegiance to King William I (William of Orange).  In the text of the Act, Antoine (Anthony) and his son Antoine are listed as weavers, and son Peter is identified as a planter.  Peter and his family appear in the rolls of St. Thomas and St. Denis Church, Cainhoy, Charleston County.

The baptism of their son, James (1711-1761), is recorded in the Annals as taking place on October 21, 1711.  James and his family relocated to the Cape Fear River basin in the 1720’s.  There they married into a group of planters who grew their wealth exponentially, and who regularly appear in the historical record of that part of the Colony of North Carolina.  James was a justice of the peace, judge, and highway commissioner, in addition to his required militia service.  James is my representative ancestor in the Society of Colonial Wars.   James’ son Isaac Poitevint, married Elizabeth Treadwell.  Elizabeth is in turn descended from a prominent family, one which we will cover here briefly and in more detail elsewhere.  The Treadwells are my Yankee line going back to Thomas Minor, Walter Palmer, and William Cheesborough, founders of Stonington and New London Connecticut.   (Thomas Minor came over on a ship called Lyon’s Whelp, hence the blog name, and wrote one of the earliest diaries describing life in the old Massachusetts Bay Colony, link attached).   Elizabeth Treadwell was the daughter of my 5th great-grandfather, John Treadwell, who emigrated from Connecticut, and who had a very distinguished record in the Revolutionary War.  He rose to the rank of Major, and commanded men who fought at the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge (NC), Hanging Rock (SC), Fishing Creek (SC), and Camden (SC), which those familiar with Southern military history will recall were some of the most important battles of the War.  As I promised readers of the blog, all of John’s service history can be found by using the hyperlink of his name (above).   John’s service is also interesting because he was relatively old at the time of his service, and could have almost certainly sought exemption.  John’s first cousin, also named John Treadwell, was the 21st Governor of Connecticut and a delegate to the controversial Hartford Convention, where New England states proposed secession (gasp!) from the United States when the country went to war with Britain in the War of 1812.

Back to Isaac and Elizabeth (Treadwell) Poitevin(t).  Isaac and his father ran a gun factory for the State of North Carolina on the site of their plantation at Clear Run, North Carolina.  I am proud to say that our family (the McLamb cousins) still have a farm there, and the site has been excavated by archaeologists.  It is on the National Register, and there is a roadside marker describing the farm complex placed there by the State of North Carolina.   Due to a rift in the family dating from 1910,  (to be explained elsewhere!) we did not know the McLamb cousins well until the past decade.  But boy do we love them now.  Here’s a hyperlink to my cousins Amos and Josh playing bluegrass at the Clear Run Grocery on the Clear Run historic site, as portrayed by Our State magazine a few years ago.

Isaac and Elizabeth Poitevint had a daughter, Zilpah, who married John Robinson (no relation to my dad’s Robinsons).  Their daughter, Elizabeth Robinson, married Amos J. Johnson, Sr. (d. 1873), and their son, Amos J. Johnson, Jr. (1843-1914), is my  great-great grandfather and one my heroes.  In the aftermath of the War Between the States, Amos, whose wealth was pretty much wiped out, built a whole new fortune.  Amos built and ran a cotton gin, a furniture factory and store, the Grocery and a post office (he was postmaster for a while), and perhaps most surprisingly, owned and captained two steamboats.  Clear Run also happens to be the most inland navigable point on the Black River, and for that reason, they had a steamboat landing.  Amos’ two steamboats, the Lisbon and the A. J. Johnson, plied the Black River between the 1870’s and 1914.  In 1914, the A.J. Johnson sank in a storm, and her wreck remains in the waters of the Black River adjacent to Clear Run Plantation.  By then, the steamboat trade was surpassed by rail and decent roads.  The last remnants of a bygone era.

The physical record in the lives of ordinary people usually just fades away after a few generations.  Thanks to the electronic age, it is possible to chronicle life and the physical histories of families in a much easier manner.  My childhood friend, Jay Hughes, is a professor of American Studies at UGA.  Having completed his undergraduate degree at Alabama, he must be in quite a quandary in anticipation of the coming College Football National Championship (as far as I am concerned as a Clemson man, anyone who beats Alabama has my admiration).  Jay interviewed my Grandmother, Ethel D. Robinson (still with us at almost 92) a few years back on the historians’ technique of photo elicitation.  His scholarly article is appended.  Photos evoke new and previously uncovered stories of living history in the recesses of the mind of our elders.  Photo Elicitation Interview

I recently had the above photo scanned and “cleaned up” digitally.  Depicted are my father, Jerry W. Robinson, and his grandfather, F. Sumter Robinson (born 1896)  about 1955.  This was shortly before Sumter died.  With the “cleaned up” photo, I was able to clearly see the cane in Sumter’s hand.   This indisputably resolved yet another family mystery.   I am fortunate to have inherited this cane from my grandmother a few years back without having any knowledge of its history or provenance, other than the fact that  my grandfather used it before he died in 1983.  Here’s the cane, held by JER, Jr..  Note that it bears a carved “F” (middle image below).  I am 90% sure that this is not Sumter’s doing, but is instead the initial of his grandfather in turn, Eli Franklin “Frank” Robinson (1819-1908), husband of Cicely Kirkpatrick, the impetus for starting this blog.   When my father was gifted the subject photo of himself and Sumter some years back, he did not recall the photo being made, but did recall that despite a childhood bout of polio and a resulting withering of his leg, he was an excellent baseball player, at the shortstop position, and proudly served in the US Army Medical Corps in World War I as a horse ambulance driver.

On the themes of physical objects that tie us to our families’ past, I have one last anecdote to tell.  Shortly after graduating law school, my mother gifted me the mortal remains of my grandfather John Marice Triplett’s Wittnauer wristwatch (last image below).  The watch had not seen the light of day since at least his death in 1981.  I had the watch expertly restored and brought to operating condition.  Shortly thereafter, I was on a trip to visit relatives in Western North Carolina when our house was burglarized.  The thieves took many objects, including this watch.   I was heartbroken and assumed I would never see it again.  Fast forward three years; when visiting my brother-in-law in Atlanta, GA, we went to the Scott’s Expo antique mart out by Hartsfield International Airport.  Among a football field’s area of exhibits, I happened upon a vendor selling only watches.  Among the hundreds of watches, I saw what appeared to be a Wittnauer in the exact same model as my grandfather’s.  My curiousity piqued, I had the vendor retrieve it.  Upon examining it, I knew by Providence that Reese’s watch had returned to me.  The telltale was the fact that his watch had a non-matching  replacement base metal back that I assume was added at some point by my grandfather or a machinist at DuPont where he worked.  The curve of the backing on the edges does not match the contour of the gold case.  It was (and is) indeed the same watch, and I am glad to have bought it back.  (Coda- after I paid cash for the watch, no questions asked, I had the vendor pull the information he had on it.  It was bought in a pawn shop in Savannah.  Talk about a one-in-a-million chance of return!)

A Happy New Year to you from John E. Robinson’s Family and the Lyon’s Whelp archive.  In keeping with our themes, here’s a picture of “The Great Charleston Blizzard of January 3-5, 2018”.  Depicted here, yours truly, CABR, and JER, Jr.  Photo courtesy of Sallie Robinson.  Not shown, MERS (sleeping!).  

From childhood, I learned of my long-deceased great-great-great grandmother Cicely Kirkpatrick.  Somewhere in the recesses of my mind and in scrawled notes from a family member, she lived on.  Prior to the massive wave of digitization of family records that occurred a few years ago, I hit a wall when researching the Robinson family line.  Cicely’s husband, Eli Franklin Robinson (1819-1902) was somewhat elusive because of how his name was styled in public records.  Reference to Cicely first came up in a public database when I received a transcription of the tombstones of New Hope Methodist Cemetery, Baton Rouge Community, Chester, SC.  Listed was “Cicely Robinson, wife of E F Robinson”.  Suddenly ,the old reference in my memory was jogged, and I happened upon Melvin Kirkpatrick’s A Kirkpatrick Genealogy – The Family of James Kirkpatrick of South Carolina (2nd Edition; 1995), available in pieces and parts online.  A review of the book showed that James Franklin Kirkpatrick had a daughter, Cicely, who married “unknown” Robinson.  It was easy to put things together from there.

Cicely’s grandfather and great uncles must have been among the fightingest familes of the South Carolina Backcountry.  The progenitor of the Kirkpatrick family in South Carolina was James Kirkpatrick, who was born in Wallace’s House, Dumfrieshire, Scotland, on or prior to 1710.  He held various land grants in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and South Carolina.  He was awarded a 1350 acre tract of land by the Governor of North Carolina in what is now Chester, SC, on the east bank of the Broad River, and from what I am able to garner, was the westernmost settlement of white men in South Carolina at that time.

The Kirkpatrick founders had suffered various depredations at the hands of the British Crown; I will endeavor to add sources related to lore around the Kirkpatrick brothers arriving in the New World.  One of the stories tells of a middle-of-the-night crossing of the Irish Sea by the Kirkpatricks, followed by an unhappy exile in Ulster.  Needless to say, the Kirkpatricks, like so many Scotch-Irish (we will discuss why this is, or should be the proper term along with Ulster Scots later) wanted to get as far away from the constraints of the British Empire as possible.

Born to James Kirkpatrick in Scotland, Ulster, and America were Francis Kirkpatrick (my 8th great-grandfather), Robert Kirkpatrick, Agnes Kirkpatrick, James Kirkpatrick, John Kirkpatrick,  Jane Kirkpatrick, and Thomas Kirkpatrick.  All would be Revolutionary Rebels and Patriots.  Some would be Indian fighters.  At least two would sacrifice their lives for the cause of independence.  Their story is also one of the “prime movers” of this blog.  In an age of incessant assault on the very fabric of America, they deserve a voice.  For without them, I would not be here in the United States of America telling their story.

Thomas Kirkpatrick was born in 1741 or 1742.  Most of what we know of him is through his documented combat record, and through affidavits of those later seeking to obtain a pension.  I have incorporated, and will link, the various Revolutionary War Pension Applications associated with Thomas.  From the primary documents, we know that Thomas fought in the Cherokee Campaign of 1776 as a Lieutenant serving under Col. Thomas Neel and Col. William Bratton, as well as the Snow Campaign and Battle of Fort Ninety-Six.  Later, he campaigned as a Captain in 1779, and was at the Battle of Fairforest Creek (Union, SC), and the Battle of Briar Creek, GA.  Here Thomas’ whereabouts, but not ultimate fate, become murky.  His widow, Margaret Dodds, claimed he was captured at the Battle of Briar Creek in 1779.  However, testimony of at least one of his fellow soldiers states that he was, in fact, captured by Captains Adamson and Huck at what would have been immediately before the Battle of Williamson’s Plantation (Huck’s Defeat), as the pension application of John Black states that Black volunteered under Kirkpatrick and Bratton in May, 1780.

Another account states he was captured at or immediately before the Battle of Cowpens.  We do know that Thomas was ultimately captured at one of these engagements and sent to a prison ship in Charleston Harbor (or he may have been held at Sullivan’s Island); near death, he was transferred to Mt. Pleasant or the City of Charleston, where he ultimately succumbed to his illness.

His death notice was read from the pulpit of Bullock’s Creek Presbyterian Church in the Summer of 1782.  He left his wife, Margaret, and one son.  Margaret quickly remarried and removed to Illinois, where in the 1830’s, she would seek a pension in her deceased husband’s right.  Fortunately, her very extensive efforts resulted in the affidavit of one Isaac Gillham (or Gilham), who also served with Kirkpatrick and ended up in Illinois after the war.  At the time of Margaret Dodd’s pension application, Gillham was one of the oldest Revolutionary War veterans in the State of Illinois, and his examiners stated his memory of events 60 years distant was both remarkable in clarity and consistency with other known official information about Kirkpatrick.

Thomas is buried somewhere in the greater Charleston area, in a (presently) unknown location.  To honor him, I applied to the Order of the Indian Wars- US in his right, and was accepted as a member in the summer of 2017.

There is some anecdotal evidence that Thomas served in many more battles; the units he was associated with spent time at the defense of Ft. Sullivan (June 28, 1776), the Battle of Camden, and other major campaigns.  As I come across these unit histories, I will post them or link them to the blog.  Scoggins paper on Kirkpatrick Brothers Rev service

While I was interested in my ancestry from the early years of childhood when I listened to stories of events that had happened more than a hundred years ago, it was not until I reached adulthood that I sought to know who I really was.  This site will be an exercise in accurately documenting my ancestry not just for my own benefit, but for all those who can derive some positive use of the information presented.  Since 2007, I have collected voluminous genealogical documents and materials.  I have become the repository of my family for these things.  No one in my family took the time to write these things down before, so I have taken it upon myself and (hopefully) create a lasting record to benefit posterity.

When documented family history, I became exasperated by a lack of primary documentation for what could best be called “family lore”.  Additionally, I stumbled upon errors in numerous “authoritative” published works.  While I do not guarantee the absolute accuracy of all the information I post here,  I will qualify the information I present and rate its reliability for the benefit of those who come after me.

A note on the title- Lyon’s Whelp was the name of the ship on which Thomas Minor, one of 2400 ancestors of his generation in my family arrived in the New World.  While Minor is not my most prominent ancestor (although he was a founder of the towns of Stonington and New London, CT, was a chronicler of early colonial life in MA, and probably heard John Winthrop give the “City on a Hill” sermon), the name of this vessel speaks to his lived experience as well as mine.  “Judah is a lion’s whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up?”- Genesis 49:9.

While this site is primarily dedicated to genealogical and historical information related to some early pre-Revolutionary families that are antecedents of the author, we may occasionally make detours for current goings-on and the author’s other extracurricular activities.  I started this today to honor the birth of my third child, Mary Elisabeth Read Robinson, born Sept. 16. 2017, at Charleston, SC