XVII. Neal – Cowden – Trimble

Thomas Neal's father and mother were WILLIAM NEAL and ELIZABETH {COWDEN} NEAL. William was born in Kentucky, possibly in Shelby County, on December 15, 1809. This date is calculated from his grave marker in the Neal-Paxton Cemetery in Paxton, Indiana, which apparently states that he was 60 years and 22 days old when he died on January 6, 1870. According to Elizabeth's grave marker¹ in the same cemetery, she was 54 years, 5 months, and 22 days old when she died on April 28, 1851. This would make her date of birth November 6, 1796, but as the next two paragraphs will explain I have concluded that the year of her birth was actually 1806. According to the 1850 census, Elizabeth was also born in Kentucky.

A date of birth for Elizabeth in 1796 would make her fourteen years older than her husband, William, and such a wide difference between their ages seems quite improbable. Moreover, there is evidence that her parents did not begin a family until after 1800: according to records in Kentucky they were married in 1802. Cowden researchers believe there were three other females born to those parents before 1810, when Elizabeth's father appears on the census with four females under 10 years of age and none at all over that age – where Elizabeth ought to be listed if she were in fact 14 years old in 1810. I believe she is one of those four female children.

What settles the matter, in my opinion, is that on later censuses Elizabeth reports ages that are consistent with her being born in 1806 and not 1796: she is 20 to 30 years old in 1830, 30 to 40 years old in 1840, and 40-something in 1850 – when the number as written is difficult to read owing to an ink blotch but upon close inspection in a digital version clearly says 45 years old. In my view, all of this points to a ten-year error on Elizabeth {Cowden} Neal's grave marker, perhaps by the stone carver. A birth in 1806 is more in line with her husband's age, the marriage of her parents, and the birth years of her siblings. ²

We do not have a date for the marriage of William and Elizabeth. This marriage could not have taken place before the mid-1820s at the very earliest, though, since he was not born until late 1809. The couple's first child was reportedly born during the later 1820s, which is consistent with the reasoning here, and the first child of theirs who lived was born in 1830. We can presume that William and Elizabeth were married in Sullivan County, Indiana, since both sets of parents seem to have been living in that county during the 1820s, but there is no documentation to support this.

William and Elizabeth can be identified in their respective parents' households in 1820 (also in 1810 in her case). By the time of the 1830 census, when they are both listed as being 20 to 30 years of age, they have begun their own household in Sullivan County, Indiana. It is not clear where they are living, but even though William Neal did not purchase public land until November 13, 1834, it would appear that they had been living on the land in question for several years: the land records include William's sworn statement in support of his right of preemption – meaning that he had been residing on the land, or at least cultivating it, for some time before claiming it. It is also possible that William and Elizabeth had been renting in the area before they could afford to buy their own land or that they had bought land from another resident. One of the two, William or Elizabeth (probably the former), can read and write, according to the census.³

The 1840 census shows William and Elizabeth Neal still living in Sullivan County (each is said to be 30 to 40 years old), where William is farming the land that he had purchased during the previous decade. They are there again in 1850, when he is 41 years old and she is – as we have just seen – four years older. In June of that year, William expanded his holdings by purchasing an additional 80 acres in an adjoining section. William Neal and his family may have been affiliated with Antioch Church of Christ in Cass Township of Sullivan County. (This church was located on the border with Greene County.)⁴

After Elizabeth died in 1851, William Neal married a widow named Charlotte G. {Moore} Bledsoe on January 13, 1853.⁵ This couple is shown on the 1860 census living near Carlisle in Haddon Township of Sullivan County. He is said to be 53 years of age, which is slightly inaccurate if he was born in 1809. Identified again as a farmer, William is said to have $1,750 in real property and $1,000 in personal property. Charlotte is shown as 39 years of age on the 1860 census.

William Neal died before the 1870 census – on January 6 of that year, according to some sources, a date that seems confirmed by a newspaper notice on January 13 signed by Thomas, his son, as administrator of William's estate. According to her grave marker, Charlotte died just ten days later, on January 16. Both of them should have been listed on that census anyway, since they had been living during the census year that began on June 1, 1869, but evidently they were overlooked when the census taker came around. William Neal's inventory, dated February 9, states that his widow took her share, from which we would assume that she was alive as of that date, but it could be that the inventory was made while she was still alive but submitted in February after she had died. The partition of William's estate on March 16, 1870, does not mention Charlotte, so she surely had died by then.⁶ Both William and Charlotte are buried in the Neal-Paxton Cemetery in Paxton, Indiana.⁷

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The nearby grave marker for William Neal's first wife, Elizabeth, does not provide her family name. Several other sources show it as Cowden, however, and some of these give the name of her parents as William Cowden and a woman from the Trimble family. There is a John Cowden on the 1810 census in Washington County, Kentucky, and the next census, in 1820, shows a Sullivan County, Indiana, farmer with that same name. The chances seem good that this is the same individual – and the Cowden we should focus on because it would bring William Neal and Elizabeth Cowden together during the 1820s, when they must have been married. Presumably he is also the John Cowden who is said to have married Mary Trimble in Fayette County, Kentucky, on December 17, 1802 – information we cannot verify because that county's marriage records prior to 1803 were destroyed by fire. Where the couple lived until 1810 (when they are found in Washington County, Kentucky, just west of Garrard County) also is not known.

Most researchers interested in William Neal and Elizabeth Cowden believe that her father's full name was John William Cowden and that he must have chosen to use only his middle name during his later years. This information is substantiated by some family history memories written in 1906 by a 90-year-old woman, Eliza {Benefiel} Trimble, ⁸ who married into the Trimble family. We are probably correct to conclude that the parents of Elizabeth Cowden were this JOHN WILLIAM COWDEN and his wife, MARY {COWDEN} TRIMBLE, although as we will see the confusion over this man's given name(s) muddies the water enough to complicate our task.

In 1810, John Cowden is described on the census as being 26 to 45 years old. As we have seen, his household has four females under ten years of age. One of them is probably Elizabeth, born (if my analysis is correct) in 1806. By 1815, his first wife having died (in 1813 or 1814) and with a number of young children to raise, John William Cowden remarried – in Knox County, Indiana, out of which Sullivan County would soon be created. The name of his second wife, whom he married (as John Cowden) on November 12, 1815, was Rebecca {Richey} Cowden, a woman born in Maryland about 1772. It is she, therefore, who is listed in the Cowden household on the census of 1820. In that year, John Cowden is again described as 26 to 45 years of age, which leads us to suspect that he was closer to 26 than to 45 in 1810. In addition to a wife also 26 to 45 years old, he now has two females between 10 and 16 years old (where Elizabeth should be listed if born in 1806) and three others age 10 years or younger.⁹

After his first wife's death and his second marriage, Cowden presumably staked out property in the part of Knox that had become Sullivan County in 1817, since he (again as John Cowden) and his family were recorded there on the 1820 census. A deed in that county shows that John Cowden patented 80 acres of public land in June 1825. This patent does not appear in the database of the Bureau of Land Management, probably because it was purchased before 1820. There is also some confusion about John William Cowden's landholdings, though: the partition of his estate in 1871 refers to property in two other sections of the county – property for which we have no records at all. ¹⁰

Strangely, the 1820 census is the last one on which John William Cowden will ever appear. There is no John, William, or John William Cowden listed on any subsequent census in Indiana or any other state whose age or origins match what we know about John William Cowden. Neither do any of the Indiana Cowdens who are listed in those years have an extra male his age in their households, as they would if he was living with a relative and not in his own household. In addition, in 1850 it appears that John William Cowden's second wife, Rebecca, is living not with him but with a granddaughter and her husband in Washington County, Kentucky. In fact, the only contemporary evidence we have that John William Cowden might be living later than 1820 is two land patents¹¹ issued in Sullivan County, Indiana, for a John Cowden, and this man could just as well be John William Cowden's son, also named John.

And yet we have two sworn statements, one from a relative and one from a Sullivan County, Indiana, court official in the mid-1860s that William Cowden (as he was called here), died intestate on September 15, 1863 – presumably in that county, since estates were administered in the county of residence of the deceased. Surely there is an explanation for this man's apparent invisibility for all these years. I even checked institutions in the event he was incarcerated or confined, but the man we call John William Cowden seemingly disappears after 1820 until we learn of his death in 1863. This lack of evidence of his very existence for more than four decades is extraordinary.¹²

Assuming the ages reported for John William Cowden in 1810 and 1820 are accurate, he was born between 1775 and 1784; according to his youngest daughter, his birthplace was Kentucky, though there is no documentary evidence to support this statement. If we accept John William Cowden as Elizabeth's father, as I believe we should, what can we learn about his origins? The absence of a census in Kentucky before 1810 is a real handicap here, but even the surviving tax rolls are not much help. There is a John Cowen listed in Bourbon County, Kentucky, in 1790, but this is too early for John William Cowden to be listed if he was born between 1775 and 1784. If we are willing to speculate that the spelling of the last name was slightly garbled, the man listed in 1790 might be considered a candidate for John William Cowden's father, but this is a slim lead indeed – and this John Cowen is listed, again as Cowen, in later records.

There are almost no sightings of a John or William Cowden in Kentucky during the last decade or so of the 1700s, and at first blush there is only one of any interest at all: a newspaper notice that a letter for William Cowden was waiting in Lexington (Fayette County), Kentucky, in early 1800 – which would place Mary Trimble's future husband in that county at around the right time for their marriage there two years later. Besides that single piece of evidence, such as it is, there is no obvious clue as to the whereabouts, or even the existence, of John William Cowden in Kentucky before 1802.

Where was this man before then? And which is the Cowden family into which he was born between 1775 and 1784? These questions will leave us just as puzzled as this man's existence after 1820 does. It is a mixed blessing that there are several clusters of Cowdens in at least four places that are likely sources of a young man in Kentucky during the 1790s: we have, perhaps, in a sense, too many possibilities without any indication any of them is better than the others. There are Cowden families in the central and southwestern Virginia counties of Augusta, Franklin, Henry, and Wythe; in the newly settled area that would become Tennessee in 1796; and in several counties in North Carolina. A John William Cowden who reached maturity and moved west into Kentucky during the 1790s could have come from any of these clusters, but none of them offers us a candidate. And there are Cowden families in Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts – all states that helped feed the rapid expansion of Kentucky during the period of time when our John William Cowden was born and reached maturity.¹³

Perhaps the most interesting of these clusters in states nearest Kentucky is the one in Rowan (later Iredell) County, North Carolina. Here a John Cowden died in 1777, leaving three sons. Two of them, Matthew and William, are found in Madison (later Garrard) County, Kentucky, during the 1790s. William lives in the northern district of this county. In 1800 he sold his land in Iredell County to his brother John, and the tax lists for Garrard County show that he was living there in 1801 and 1802 – the year when John William Cowden married Mary Trimble in Fayette County, Kentucky, which was not far from where William Cowden of North Carolina was living in Garrard County.

When this William disappears from Garrard County, it seems possible that he could be the John Cowden we see in Washington County, Kentucky, in 1810 and then in Sullivan County, Indiana, in 1820. In addition, we know that the William Cowden born in North Carolina then went to live in Tennessee with his brother John, who had moved there from Iredell County. William Cowden continues to be on the census in Tennessee through 1840. If this William Cowden were the man we are examining in this section, his move to Tennessee thus would dovetail nicely with John William Cowden's disappearance from Indiana after 1820. Unfortunately, there is evidence enough to demolish this possibility: William Cowden of North Carolina married in Tennessee in 1810, and the children shown on the censuses are not numerous enough to account for the ones we know our John William Cowden had in those same years.

Just as unfortunately, the collapse of this theory leaves us without a single good candidate for the man who married Mary Trimble. Our only lead, and it is a faint one, is a Samuel Cowden who was involved in a land trial in Fayette County, Kentucky, in 1808. This man is (judging from the 1809 marriage bond in Scott County for the widow of a Samuel Cowden, which refers to a number of minor children) a contemporary of John William Cowden, perhaps a brother, and if we could identify Samuel's parents we might find that they were also the parents of John William Cowden. My search for a set of parents for Samuel was also fruitless, however.

Even if we do find a plausible candidate to be Elizabeth's father and identify a plausible Cowden family for him, we may never solve our puzzle about his name and why he disappeared from sight for several decades between 1820 and his death in 1863. Was he named John William at birth? If so, why did he use each of these given names at various times? Perhaps he simply preferred (or disliked) one name when he was younger and another when he was more mature. Perhaps he began using his middle name of William when his son, also John William Cowden, reached maturity. As to his disappearance, did he simply refuse to cooperate with census takers? Did he change his name altogether, unbeknownst to us? For now at least, he will have to remain mostly a mystery to us.

Although there are several histories of Cowdens in America, and their origins in the British Isles, there is conflicting evidence about which of them settled in Virginia and North Carolina, the most likely sources of John William Cowden's line. We know that a Matthew Cowden born in Ireland about 1707 arrived in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, area in 1728 or 1729, and it was his children who went to Rowan (later Iredell) County in North Carolina. But another group of Cowdens, including brothers Walter, Robert, Samuel, and possibly William, moved first to Augusta County, Virginia, and then to Mecklenburg County in North Carolina sometime after 1754. There does seem to have been contact between these two Southern Cowden families, so a distant relationship is likely.

These brothers were the sons of James Cowden, born in Londonderry, Ireland, in 1695. He came to America in 1728 and lived in what was first called North Worcester, Massachusetts, where he bought a home in 1731. This town renamed itself Holden in 1740, and Holden it is today. James Cowden died there on October 1, 1748. His wife's name was Polly {Connor} Cowden. This James Cowden was himself one of three sons (the others being William Matthew and William – note the use of a brother's given name as a middle name) of a man originally named Thomas MacCowden, born in Scotland, who relocated to Ireland about 1688 and dropped the prefix from his name.

James Cowden had enough sons (perhaps as many as seven) and grandsons who migrated to North America, so he might be the source of all of the Cowden offspring who found their ways to North Carolina, but Cowden researchers are not agreed on this point. The ancestral home of James Cowden was at Manor Cunningham near Londonderry, on the road to Letterkenny; a "Cowden house" is said to stand there yet today. The Cowden family is described as the wealthiest family in the area, so it may be that Thomas MacCowden went to Ireland in order to manage estates that his family or other families owned.

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Without more evidence about the Cowdens, we can proceed no further. Let us see what success we have with the Trimble¹⁴ side of Elizabeth {Cowden} Neal's ancestry. Some researchers believe that her mother, Mary {Trimble} Cowden, was born about 1779 and died between 1810 (when she is on the census with John William Cowden) and about 1814 or 1815 (when John William Cowden married for the second time). Mary could have been born in Virginia, where there are numerous Trimbles, but she is more likely to have been born in Kentucky if we accept some family lore about her father that we will consider in a moment. Her father's name, if we accept Eliza Trimble's recollections, was probably JAMES TRIMBLE. (Eliza herself was uncertain about his given name.)

According to what Eliza had heard from her husband's family, James Trimble was born in Ireland or Scotland in about 1760. (He is said to have been a Roman Catholic, which argues for Ireland.) En route to America, the Trimble family lore goes on, James Trimble's merchant ship was captured by pirates and he was pressed into service with them for awhile. When the pirate ship was captured, James was able to persuade the authorities that he was an involuntary pirate and so was not punished along with the real ones.

Once he was in America, Eliza's story continues, Trimble joined the fight for American independence in a location she did not specify. He was taken prisoner by Indians and remained in captivity for a long time. Eventually he and a comrade escaped and made their way, suffering many deprivations, to a fort on the Kentucky River.¹⁵ Here they were nearly shot by some of the understandably edgy defenders of the fort but were able to convince these defenders that they were not Indians. Trimble and his colleague then resumed their service to the cause of independence.¹⁶

The fact that the events that Eliza related are said to have occurred before James Trimble was married (and fathered Mary about 1779) would seem to date them between 1777 and 1779, when there was in fact considerable fighting between settlers and Indians in Kentucky. I could find no evidence that a James Trimble served in the Revolutionary War in any capacity that matches these details, but of course those records are far from complete.¹⁷

Trimbles were among the earliest settlers – and surveyors – of the Virginia frontier and so of Kentucky, and men named Trimble are surprisingly numerous in Kentucky during the last part of the 19th century (there is even a Trimble County). If Eliza's story is accurate, though, the James Trimble we are trying to find had no direct connection with them because he came to America as a teenager and directly from the British Isles, probably at about the time the War for Independence began. Was he one of the numerous Trimbles found in Kentucky after that war? A James Trimble is listed on the militia list¹⁸ for central Kentucky in 1786, for instance, and there is a man with that name on the Kentucky tax rolls in 1790; the latter is particularly interesting because he lives in Fayette County, the county where Mary Trimble lived when she married John William Cowden.¹⁹ A James Trimble is listed on the militia list for central Kentucky in 1786, for instance, and there is a man with that name on the Kentucky tax rolls in 1790; the latter is particularly interesting because he lives in Fayette County, the county where Mary Trimble lived when she married John William Cowden. A James Trimble about the right age (26 to 45 years old) continues to reside in that county in 1810, and in 1820 a man over 45 years old lives very near the man we think is John William Cowden and his wife in Sullivan County, Indiana. He is no longer there in 1830.

Land grants, some of them for large areas, bring to our attention other men named James Trimble. (The situation is even more confused by the fact that there is a well-known James Trimble in Kentucky at this time. Like the one we are trying to find, he was captured by Indians – but in 1770. Like Mary's father, he fought in the Revolutionary War, but as a captain of militia. Nothing in his biography argues for him being the man we think sired Mary the wife of John William Cowden.)

The truth of the matter is that there is no evidence whatsoever definitely identifying the James Trimble who is supposed to have been the father of Mary Trimble. We do not know where her father lived, or when he died, and neither do we know anything about this man's wife. He is an even deeper mystery than John William Cowden. Without Eliza's recollections, we would know nothing at all about him, and there is enough of the fantastic – piracy, capture by Indians – there to make us wonder how much she heard was fact and how much was a good yarn the Trimbles told one another.

And with these multiple mysteries still ringing in our ears we must abandon the Cowden and Trimble lines, and with them our investigation of the families of Elizabeth {Cowden} Neal, William Neal's wife. We now turn for the final time to the Neal family, where what is perhaps the largest mystery of all lurks in wait for us.

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rev. 7/10/10

Notes

¹William Neal's headstone in the Neal-Paxton Cemetery in Paxton, Indiana, is located between those of his two wives. In 1994 (see slide 07149) it was broken; in early 2006 (see slides 12029 and 12033-34) the tablet was lying face up slightly below the surface of the ground. A repair in late 2006 restored the stone to an erect position on a new base, but damage to the stone while it was on the ground makes it impossible now to read his age at death if that was originally inscribed on the stone. A report from 1956 states that William Neal was 60 years and 22 days old at death. Later accounts, written perhaps after the stone was damaged, state that he was 61 years old at death. It is possible that the 1956 account is in error: Elizabeth's life span, it will be noted, includes "22 days," and perhaps the person who recorded William's age at death mistakenly repeated the "22 days" in the account referred to. Elizabeth's grave marker does not give her family name; I have determined it by other means. See slide 07147, taken in 1994, and slide 12028, taken in 2006. Return to text

²A history of the Matthew McCammon family gives Elizabeth's birth as 1806 but bases that on an incorrect reading of her grave marker: it says the marker reads 44 years when it clearly says 54 years. Although I have concluded that a ten-year error on the grave marker is the culprit, there is another possibility. It is that Elizabeth was a relative (perhaps a younger sister, or a niece?) of either her supposed father or her supposed mother who lived with them, perhaps because she was an orphan, and was reared as the Cowdens' own child. Or, she might have been the child of her father and an earlier wife. As we shall see later, there is some evidence to give this explanation credibility. Any of these circumstances would explain Elizabeth's birth in 1796, some years before her presumed parents were married, as well as the apparent gap between herself and her presumed younger sisters. It would not explain why she reported younger ages on the censuses cited, nor the distribution of younger females in the Cowden household. I think the chances are greater that the stone carver made an error, but we cannot rule out this other explanation. Return to text

³William Neal received a patent for the southwest quarter of the northwest quarter of Section 26, Township 7 North Range 9 West on October 1, 1835; this was the land for which he had filed the statement in November 1834 (affixing his mark, incidentally, not a signature). The second purchase, made on June 20, 1836, was for the northwest quarter of that same quarter, but evidently William did not claim it under preemption. The patent for this purchase was issued on September 7, 1838. The total of 80 acres cost William and Elizabeth $100. See the USGS map for Sullivan/Indiana and slides 12017 and 12018, taken in 2006. See Appendix II for a description of how public lands were surveyed and sold by the United States government. William and Elizabeth's property (see the land ownership atlas of Sullivan County) seems to adjoin or perhaps incorporate what is today the Neal-Paxton Cemetery. The agricultural census for 1850 shows William Neal with 160 acres, 35 of them improved, so he must have obtained another 80 acres from someone else unless his father-in-law, Matthew McCammon, had given him some land. Cash values were $490 for the farm, $100 for implements, $175 for livestock, $50 for homemade manufacturing, and $56 for slaughtered animals. He owned 6 horses, 4 milch cows, 5 other cattle, 28 sheep, and 16 swine. The previous year, he had produced 50 bushels of wheat, 12 bushels of rye, 300 bushels of Indian corn, 20 bushels of oats, 50 pounds of wool, 18 bushels of Irish potatoes, 120 pounds of butter, 1 ton of hay, 35 pounds of flax, 3 bushels of flaxseed, and 100 pounds of maple sugar. William's farm passed from the family after his death. My grandfather recalled visiting the area about 1890 and finding little trace of his grandfather's home – only some newer buildings and an old orchard. William's son Thomas, my grandfather's father, moved north to the property in Hamilton Township and Cass Township we have previously discussed. Return to text

⁴See the USGS map for Linton/Indiana for the location of this church. William and Elizabeth have one child in school in 1840. William Neal's later purchase was the west half of the northeast quarter of Section 22, Township 7 North, Range 9 West (June 13, 1850). A William Neal is also shown purchasing lot 2 (75 acres) and part of the north half of the northeast quarter of Section 28, Township 7 North, Range 9 West, on September 14, 1867, but as this property is not in William Neal's partition it must have belonged to another man with the same name. Return to text

⁵William and Charlotte were married by Levi Woodward, a justice of the peace in Sullivan County. She was Charlotte G. Moore, daughter of Robert Moore and Drucella {Miles} Moore and widow of Isaac Bledsoe. Robert Moore was reputedly a half-brother of Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abraham Lincoln. Return to text

⁶I did a name-by-name search of the entire township without finding either William or Charlotte. In the partition of William Neal's estate in March 1870, Thomas Neal's share was lot 10 (7.5 acres) in the south part of the northwest corner of the west half of the northwest quarter of Section 26, Township 7 North, Range 9 West.

⁷For Charlotte's headstone, see slide 07149 (1994) and slide 12030 (2006). She was born on October 2, 1822. Return to text

⁸Eliza (1816-1907) married a son of Joseph Trimble, a son of the James Trimble who is identified as Mary {Trimble} Cowden's father below. Return to text

⁹Interestingly, on the 1820 census there is a female between 16 and 26, where Elizabeth would be if she had been born in 1796, but this is probably the eldest daughter, Henrietta, who is thought to have been born in 1803. We should also take note of a James Cowden in Scott County, Kentucky, who has several daughters in 1820 – including one who would be in the right age category for Elizabeth whether she was 14 or 24 years old in that year. I doubt he is the man we are looking for, but he may be related somehow. Return to text

¹⁰John Cowden's patent, dated June 1, 1825, was for the east half of the southeast quarter of Section 30, Township 7, Range 8. It may be notable that the deed was not recorded until 1911, perhaps because of the Sullivan County courthouse fire in 1850 but perhaps because the property had remained in the family for all those years. The property in the 1871 partition includes lots in the west half of the southwest quarter of the southeast quarter of Section 11 and in the northwest quarter of the northeast quarter of Section 14, both in Township 9 North, Range 9 West. How Cowden obtained this land is not known, but it is quite possible that his deeds of purchase were also destroyed in the fire at the Sullivan County courthouse in 1850. Return to text

¹¹Dated November 7, 1837, and October 1, 1840, they were for the northeast quarter of the southeast quarter of Section 32, Township 7 North, Range 8 West (40 acres) and the southeast quarter of the northeast quarter of that same section (also 40 acres). See the USGS map for Dugger/Indiana. Return to text

¹² John William Cowden is probably buried in Booker Cemetery in Haddon Township of Sullivan County, Indiana, which was begun by a daughter. This cemetery is near the Cass Township line. See the USGS map for Dugger/Indiana. The file for William Cowden's administration includes a list of Cowden's thirteen children but does not refer to a widow. Each of the principal heirs received $16.32, this sum being divided equally among their own heirs if the principal was deceased – as six of them were. Among the heirs of the deceased children are those of Elizabeth {Cowden} Neal, who had died in 1851; each of her seven heirs received $2.33. Two of Cowden's daughters stated in 1866 that five of their father's offspring had gone to Texas many years previously and had never been heard from again. The census for Texas in 1850 and 1860 does not list any of these individuals – and neither does it list John William Cowden. The document partitioning Cowden's real estate in April 1871 does mention the heirs of Cowden's second wife, Rebecca, so we can be certain she was deceased by then. Return to text

¹³It is interesting to note that in 1742 a William Cowden obtained a land grant just south of Staunton, Virginia, very near the property of a James Trimble. (If the James Trimble we are seeking did in fact come to America during the 1770s, though, this other Trimble male would be irrelevant for our purpose here.) Return to text

¹⁴Some Trimble researchers suspect that their family's name evolved from the name Trumbull. Return to text

¹⁵From the description, the location was probably either Boonsboro or Harrodsburg, both of which were near the river.

¹⁶Needless to say, Eliza's account is much more colorful. It shows signs of having been told and retold over the years, which may have led to some exaggeration. Return to text

¹⁷There was a surgeon's mate in 1775 and a captain of militia in 1778, both of whom were named James Trimble and served in Virginia, which would include Kentucky. Return to text

¹⁸James Trimble was in Captain Cave Johnson's company.

¹⁹There is no James Trimble in Fayette County in 1800, however, but there is one in Woodford County, a new county adjacent to Fayette County. There were two other men named James Trimble in Kentucky in 1790, one in Breckinridge County and the other in Livingston County. The locations of these two counties makes them unlikely candidates to be Mary's father. Return to text

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