XVIII. Neal – McCammon

William Neal was the son of EDWARD NEAL and JANE ("GINNY") DOUGLAS¹ {MCCAMMON} NEAL. Right at the outset of our discussion, we are obliged to confront a fundamental and particularly nettlesome issue: the very name we should use in referring to William Neal's father. My own grandfather, in the family history materials that he passed down to me, always refers to this man as Thomas Edward Neal. Certain other members of the Neal family evidently knew him by that name as well. On the other hand, this man usually went by either Edward or Ed Neal, and on the census he is always listed as Edward. At the time of his marriage he is called Edward Neel. His grave marker lists him as Edward Neal. He bought public land as Edward Neel, and his will identifies him by the same name. Indeed, the only place he is ever described as Thomas Edward Neal is within his own family. We will return to this issue, but as we examine what we know about this man in the meantime, we will refer to him as Edward Neal.

There are, inevitably, other mysteries about this Edward Neal. One is where and when he was born. My grandfather believed, and others have often stated, that Edward Neal was born in Clark County, Kentucky (perhaps near the early settlement of Boonsboro) in the year 1763. This is improbable. The first groups of "long hunters" (men who ventured off into the uncharted wilderness across the Appalachian Mountains in order to trap and hunt for furs for many months at a time) were just exploring beyond the Cumberland Gap, gateway to the region called Kentucky, during 1762 and 1763. The long hunters did not penetrate the heart of Kentucky, where Clark County would ultimately be created in what we think of as the Bluegrass region, until 1766. Legal migration into the geographic place known today as Kentucky did not begin until after the Treaty of Stanwix in 1768. As late as 1774 there still was not a single white person actually residing in Kentucky. Boonsboro itself was not founded until 1775 (Harrodsburg, the oldest settlement in Kentucky, is a few months older), and substantial migration into Kentucky did not begin until 1779 and 1780. There was no settlement in Kentucky in 1763, and so it seems unlikely that Edward Neal was born there – assuming he was born in 1763, that is.²

For there is good reason to question that date as Edward Neal's year of birth. This is the year commonly cited, it is true, and his grave marker in the Neal-Paxton Cemetery in Paxton, Indiana, says that he was 83 years of age at his death on September 2, 1846 – born in 1763, in other words.³ The evidence is decidedly against his being born in that year, however. Edward Neal reports quite different ages on different censuses, and none of these censuses show him born as early as 1763. In both 1810 and 1820 he is shown as 26 to 45 years old. In 1830 he is described as 50 to 60 years old, and in 1840 he is said to be 60 to 70 years old. All of these listings make him anywhere from two to a dozen years younger than if he had been born in 1763. The only years that are common to all four census listings are 1775 to 1780, and that is the most likely time period for his birth. It is also worth noting that being born in 1763 would make Edward Neal at least a dozen, and probably about twenty, years older than his wife. Such an age differential is not impossible, but it does reinforce our skepticism that a birth year of 1763 is accurate for him. I have never seen any credible document in which Edward Neal is described as being born in 1763, but, for reasons we can only imagine, this is the date he himself must have cited for his birth.

If Edward Neal was in fact born a dozen or so years later than 1763, we are obliged to revisit the issue of his birthplace: he could then have been born in territory at that time generally thought of as Kentucky. The meaning of the term "Kentucky" was applied rather broadly from the 1760s through the 1780s; to some, it was everything west of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Unless early members of the family were just guessing that Edward Neal "must have been born in Kentucky" because that is where he is first observed, it seems most likely that he originated in an area somewhere east of today's state of Kentucky and that family lore remembered the area of the Kentucky as broadly defined. What we now know of Edward Neal's family and origins seems to confirm this conclusion: as we shall see, the family resided in Hampshire County, Virginia (now West Virginia), until the late 1780s and then South Carolina, arriving in Kentucky only a few years before we first sight Edward there in 1802.⁴

Edward Neal's wife Jane, or "Ginny,"⁵ was probably born in North or South Carolina but perhaps in Kentucky. (The 1850 and 1870 censuses say the former and the 1860 census says the latter.) Determining the year of her birth is also difficult. Jane was thought to have been a few days over 100 years of age when she died at the home of her daughter, Sarah Anderson, in Hadden Township of Sullivan County, Indiana. The date of her death is given variously as July 8 or 9 of 1871. Jane's grave marker in the Neal-Paxton Cemetery in Paxton, Indiana, says that she was "aged 100 years" when she died on July 9, 1871, but a newspaper account states that she died on July 8 of that year.⁶ Census information for her does not support this statement but does not yield a definitive year of birth for her, either. Jane's ages on census sheets would make her born from 1775 to 1794, but the pattern that emerges when all of her reported ages are considered as a composite suggests that she was born during the second half of the 1780s.⁷ In view of what we know about her father's movements, a birth in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, in approximately 1785 seems about right, although the evidence is inconclusive and she might have been born in South Carolina instead.⁸

Edward and Jane were married in Jessamine County, Kentucky, on or about April 12, 1802, the date he signed a marriage bond. There does not seem to be any other record of their marriage. This is in fact our very first definite sighting of Edward Neal, for there is no census for Kentucky in 1790 and 1800 and he is not listed in the extant tax records for that state. Since Jane's father (his name is written as Matthew McCamron here) appears on a tax list in Fayette County, Kentucky, in 1788 and again on July 23, 1789, it is possible that Edward Neal is living in that county then as well, but as we shall see it is more likely that he is still living elsewhere near his father, also called Edward. (We cannot be positive, in fact, that the two families even knew one another that early.) On the 1810 census, Edward Neal and Matthew McCammon are recorded side by side in Shelby County, Kentucky.

According to my grandfather, who evidently heard it from Neals before him, Edward Neal took his family (including young William Neal, just 3 years of age) from Kentucky to Indiana in 1812. Their destination was what is now Posey County in the far southwest corner of Indiana. Southern Indiana had not been fully surveyed until 1807, and much of what would become Indiana was still in Indian hands. The expansion-minded territorial governor, William Henry Harrison, was busy making purchases, but in 1809 the Indian chief Tecumseh declared those purchases invalid. This led to Indian attacks on the new settlements and Harrison's campaign against the tribes. The climax came in the famous Battle of Tippecanoe on November 7, 1811, when Harrison and a militia army attacked a confederation of Indian tribes that had been put together by Tecumseh and his brother, the Prophet. The tribes had their camp at Prophetstown on the Wabash River near what is now Lafayette, Indiana.

The Battle of Tippecanoe broke up the confederacy and encouraged those eyeing the Indiana Territory to conclude that it was ripe for settlement.⁹ President James Madison had proclaimed in March of 1811 that land sales in this section of Indiana would begin in October of that year, and these two events opening the Indiana Territory to settlement doubtless triggered the decision on the part of Edward Neal to head there. Later census records corroborate family tradition: they show that Edward and Jane's children were born in Kentucky until 1812 and in Indiana after that date.

It is possible that the Neals entered the Indiana Territory along the Buffalo Trace, an old buffalo track that connected the communities of New Albany and Clarksville (opposite the falls of the Ohio at Louisville) with Vincennes, the main town in Indiana (a French trading outpost dating to the early 1700s). This was the immigrants' most common overland route into Indiana. They may instead have traveled down the Ohio River, perhaps to Red Banks (now Henderson, Kentucky), a frequent access point for Kentuckians. Other popular disembarking places were the mouth of the Blue River (now Fredonia), and Yellow Banks (now Rockport). How the Neals actually got from Kentucky to Indiana, though, is not known for certain.¹⁰

Once they had arrived in Posey County, the Neals may have lived for a time in what is now Mt. Vernon, along the Ohio River, as it was one of the first areas settled (beginning in 1805). As we have seen, many of the families we have already encountered in this family history – the Zinks, the Starks, and others – were also arriving in Indiana at about this time. Pioneers all, they were among the very earliest settlers of southern Indiana, having reached that territory considerably before the flood of people who swept in following the end of all Indian resistance in 1815.¹¹

Soon the Neals had made their way up into what was still the vast expanse of Knox County (then well over half of present-day Indiana) but would become Sullivan County in 1817. The land here had been purchased by Harrison from the Indians in 1809 but not yet surveyed and settled.¹² In early 1812, however, the Prophet once again stirred up the region's Indian tribes – Kickapoos, Piankeshaws, and Weas – and there were attacks on settlements on the west side of the Wabash River. It was then, probably, that Edward Neal took his family back to the safety of Fort Knox in Vincennes – a flight to safety that understandably made its way into family lore that got passed down to later generations.¹³ Later in 1812, between September 3 and 16, the Indians attacked Fort Knox itself. The Neals may have been still sheltering there at that time – we do not know. Indeed, we can only guess where the Neal family was living between about 1812 and about 1816.

Once the Indian threat had seemingly passed for good, the Neals returned to the future Sullivan County, no doubt in the company of others who began to spread across the area from the Wabash River eastward. Land sales in this part of Indiana began during the summer of 1816, and that is when Edward Neal and his family seem to have arrived there. According to my grandfather, the Neals settled in Paxton, which is about 25 miles north of Vincennes; the location, he said, was near Busseron Creek about a quarter of a mile west of Paxton.

This is a bit puzzling, for the record shows that Edward Neal first filed for land in Gill Township of Sullivan County, which is in the far western part of the county near the Wabash River (and the Illinois border). Here he purchased 160 acres of public land near Merom on December 2, 1816. Edward Neal bought this land on credit, which was then permitted, putting one-quarter of the $320 price down. He paid another installment on July 10, 1817, but did not pay the next one until November 29, 1819 – which may indicate that the banking collapse associated with the Panic of 1819 had affected his ability to pay in specie. He did manage to complete payment on November 29, 1820, however, and received his patent on May 21, 1821. The evidence suggests that the Neals did not live on the Gill Township property for long – if at all – before they moved east, closer to the emerging center of population and commerce in the county as well as a new county seat. Perhaps my grandfather never knew about this patent and assumed Edward Neal had always lived near Paxton. There is no deed to indicate when Edward Neal disposed of this property in Gill Township; presumably the deed of sale was destroyed in either of the two Sullivan County courthouse fires, one in Merom in 1821 and the other in Sullivan in 1850, and never refiled.¹⁴

Further puzzlement comes from the statement in Edward Neal's 1846 will by which he leaves to a son (John) the northeast quarter of Section 27, which is south of Sullivan in the midst of a cluster of properties belonging to Matthew McCammon and Edward's oldest son, William.¹⁵ There is no extant deed to show how and when Edward Neal acquired this property, although because of the courthouse fires we cannot assume that there was not an earlier one. Edward Neal might have patented the land in Section 27, again before 1820 (which would explain why it does not appear in the database of the Bureau of Land Management), but a query to the Bureau revealed that two other men (one of them Edward Neal's brother-in-law, George Boone), patented land in this quarter of Section 27 prior to 1820. Thus Edward Neal evidently purchased all or a portion of the quarter-section from one of them, and the deed for this transaction must have been among those lost in the fires and never refiled.

Our confusion about Edward Neal's land holdings complicates our thinking about where he and his family actually lived after coming to Sullivan County. The 1820 census gives us good reason for thinking that he resided near Matthew McCammon at that time, since they are only a couple of names apart on the census sheet that year. It would be natural for Edward to be living near his father-in-law – possibly on land Edward was renting, possibly in Section 27, which is just a short distance from McCammon's land in Section 35.¹⁶ Another potential explanation is that Edward Neal was actually residing with his father-in-law and helping him to farm Matthew's own 160 acres. Perhaps the difficulty he had in scraping up the money to pay for the purchase in Section 3 left Edward in the position of having to accept this expedient, which then turned (as we shall see) into a long-term arrangement. Perhaps Matthew was physically unable to handle the acreage he owned and Edward and Jane agreed to assist him. We cannot be sure.

How, then, do we explain Edward's ownership of the land in Section 3? Perhaps Edward Neal bought the land near Merom entirely on speculation, never actually living on it but hoping to profit later when he thought (wrongly, as it turned out) that it would appreciate in value, since the area near Merom was before 1820 the most highly populated area in the county. Perhaps he started out living there but soon decided he would rather live closer to Matthew McCammon. In any event Edward Neal's investment in Section 3 may have proved a losing one: there is no indication that he ever sold the land there, and so he may have been forced to abandon it. Again, though, we cannot be sure that a deed of sale sometime during the 1820s through the 1840s was not consumed in the courthouse fire, so perhaps he was able to sell it at some point.

Although without more information about all these matters we cannot reach any definite conclusions about Edward Neal's land ownership, we know from the censuses that the Neals and the McCammons remained neighbors, at the least, for many years. We have already referred to the 1820 census, which also states that both households have two persons engaged in agriculture; in addition, Matthew McCammon evidently employs what the 1820 census identifies as a "free colored male," who probably helps to farm Matthew's extensive land. The 1820 census correctly shows William Neal as a young male ten years old or younger in his father and mother's household, so the second person listed there as engaged in agriculture may be a hired hand or a relative.¹⁷

Edward Neal and his wife Jane are also listed in Haddon Township on the 1830 census. There is now an older male (70 to 80 years old) in their household – undoubtedly Matthew McCammon, who is in his 70s by 1830 and is not listed separately on the census. This situation is repeated in 1840, with Matthew McCammon (now 80-90 years old) listed by name as a pensioned veteran of the Revolutionary War. It seems likely, then, that Edward and Matthew had been farming together all these years on property that the latter owned. In later years Matthew McCammon patented two 40-acre portions of the section where William Neal has begun farming, an indication Matthew was continuing to help in this way.¹⁸

Here we should consider a story that has tantalized Neal family researchers for years. My grandfather stated that his father, Thomas Neal, remembered seeing living in the home of his own father, William Neal, not only William's father Edward Neal but his (William's) grandfather as well – a man who would be of the generation of Edward Neal's father. To tell them apart, my grandfather said, these two men were called "Little Grandfather" and "Big Grandfather," respectively. The more my grandfather contemplated this, the more he was convinced that Big Grandfather was in fact Edward Neal's father, a man – possibly bearing the same name – who in family lore was reputed to be 115 years old when he died about 1840. My grandfather speculated that Big Grandfather could have been the man who, again according to family lore, was born in Pennsylvania and migrated south and west along with Daniel Boone.¹⁹

The 1830 and 1840 censuses, though, seem to disabuse us of this idea: there is no extra male in the households of either Edward Neal or his son William Neal. The only elderly male is Matthew McCammon, who resides in the former's household. The Big Grandfather of this tale was in actuality probably Matthew, who of course was also a generation older than Edward Neal. If we assume that young Thomas (born in 1832) was referring to seeing Little Grandfather and Big Grandfather during the later 1830s, he would be seeing in that one household both Edward Neal, who died in 1846, and his father-in-law Matthew McCammon, who died in 1841. One can imagine a small boy having trouble sorting out exactly how these two very old men, belonging to succeeding generations, were related to one another. Moreover, we now know that Edward Neal's father had remained in Kentucky, where he died in 1815, which means that he cannot be the older man referred to as "Big Grandfather."

Incidentally, the 1840 census sheet referred to is a rather remarkable document. This single page shows Edward Neal (as a head of household), his wife Jane, their son William, William's wife Elizabeth, their son Thomas, and Jane's father Matthew McCammon. This is four generations in all, living in close proximity if not in the very same household.

Edward Neal wrote his will on August 13, 1846, and died on September 2 of that year; the will was probated on November 9, 1846. (The original will was lost when the Sullivan County courthouse burned in 1850, but in August of the next year the court accepted testimony to its contents and declared it valid.) Edward Neal left his land and dwelling to his son John and additional land to Jane, along with the residue of his personal estate. Property left to the couple's children included either horses or feather beds – or, in William's case, enough feathers to make a bed. Edward Neal is buried in the Neal-Paxton Cemetery.²⁰

Edward's widow Jane is listed on the 1850 census, still in Haddon Township of Sullivan County; it appears that she is living with two teenaged females, probably relatives, who might be caring for her. She is shown on the census in this township in 1860 and in 1870 as well. In both years she is residing with a daughter, Sarah Anderson, but whereas the 1860 census shows that Jane and her daughter are living near Carlisle the later one states, rather curiously, that their post office is in Merom – many miles away in Gill Township.²¹

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Jane was the daughter of a man we have already met, someone we will study in detail before completing our look at Edward Neal and his origins. He is MATTHEW MCCAMMON,²² said to be a Highland Scot of the Buchanan Clan who was born in County Antrim, Ireland.²³ If so, he was in broad terms one of the numerous Scotch-Irish who formed a key element in the immigration to America, particularly during the 18th century, although most of the true Scotch-Irish who came to this county were actually lowland Scots.²⁴

Matthew's date of birth is another moving target. The censuses of 1810 and 1820 show him as 45 years old or older, dating his birth before 1765. In 1830 he is said to be 70 to 80 years of age, which means a birth between 1750 and 1760. His last census, in 1840, gives him an age of 85 years (1755). On his application for a Revolutionary War pension in 1832, though, Matthew McCammon states that his age is 75 years (1757). Although most McCammon researchers regard February 23, 1757, as his date of birth, I have never seen any documentary evidence for this particular date. Matthew died on October 6, 1841, reportedly at the home of his daughter, Jane. He was buried on the "church farm" or Milam Cemetery in Haddon Township, Sullivan County, Indiana.²⁵

Matthew McCammon is said to have sired three sets of children, eighteen children in all. Who his wives were, and in what order he married them, is not clear. Family tradition is that Matthew married a woman named Mary in Ireland. It is also a family tradition that at least one of Matthew and Mary's children succumbed during the ocean crossing and was buried at sea. Mary herself evidently died sometime after the McCammon family arrived in America, but we have no idea when. Matthew's second wife is thought to have been a Scotswoman named MARY {DOUGLAS} MCCAMMON – Jane's mother, surely, judging from her family name. Her marriage to Matthew would have occurred sometime between about 1770 and about 1785. We do not know when this woman was born or died, or indeed anything more about her than her name, but I think she must be considered Jane's mother.²⁶

A book on Matthew McCammon and his descendants suggests that by about 1800 he had married his third wife, a woman named Martha {Galley} McCammon. Some Galley researchers state that Matthew married a Martha Whiteside, the widow of Benjamin Galley, about 1794, but a Samuel Galley of Jessamine County did have a daughter named Martha.²⁷ We do know that it was Matthew and Martha McCammon who in 1802 gave permission for Jane to marry Edward Neal, with two men named Galley serving as witnesses. There may have been a fourth wife as well: some McCammon researchers believe that Matthew married a Martha Trimble from Kentucky, the marriage being performed in Indiana, and there is evidence that seems to support this viewpoint; other researchers believe that this woman's given name was Flora instead of Martha.²⁸ There is not enough evidence to determine whether Matthew McCammon was married to all these women or if some of this information is inaccurate, in part because the early (pre-1803) marriage information from Fayette County, Kentucky, was destroyed by a fire.

The first evidence we have that Matthew McCammon is in North America is a reference in his application for a pension, written more than half a century later. Here he states that he was drafted into the militia in South Carolina in 1779. He did not say how long he had been in that colony before then. If Matthew was in fact born in 1757, already married, and a father before he came to America, it is unlikely that he could have emigrated from Northern Ireland (also known as Ulster) before the mid-1770s. The five-year period ending in 1775 (when the onset of the American Revolution interrupted most immigration to America) saw the heaviest influx from Northern Ireland. That influx was largely due to economic conditions in Ulster – particularly the decline of the linen industry – but also to religious and political reasons. In general many of the Scotch-Irish who came to America were farmers, but others had toiled in the linen industry or were weavers. An unfavorable change in England's trade policies after 1698 provoked the beginnings of a long wave of Scotch-Irish immigration to America, though, and the collapse of the linen industry during the 1770s produced a powerful surge of people eager to escape. Virtually all those who came from Ulster in 1772 and 1773 were linen workers. Sharply increased rents, notably in County Antrim, also helped to feed the large migration that took place between 1770 and the start of the American Revolution.

But family tradition also tells us that Matthew McCammon and several members of his immediate family came to America as a group, with as many as five brothers and perhaps their parents as well making up that group. We have evidence that at least two men named McCammon were in Mecklenburg County of North Carolina by 1767, but if Matthew came to America with these McCammons, he would not yet have reached his teens and thus would be unmarried. Because Matthew first appears in South Carolina, I am inclined to think that he was part of a second and perhaps more numerous McCammon group, probably related to those in North Carolina, that arrived in South Carolina by the mid-1770s. The first record of any McCammon in South Carolina – other than military service – does not come until 1782, but at least four other McCammon males served in South Carolina units during the American Revolution and it is reasonable to suppose they would have been residing in the colony before immigration from Ulster ceased about 1775. An arrival for Matthew during the 1770s does not in itself verify the family tradition regarding his marriage and children, but at least it does not conflict with that tradition as a supposed arrival during the 1760s does.²⁹

Whenever they did make that ocean voyage to America, the McCammons, like most other Scotch-Irish, probably departed from a County Antrim port such as Belfast, Larne, or Portrush, although Londonderry cannot be ruled out. We do not know for sure where this extended family landed. The emigrants from Northern Ireland came into many ports: Charleston, South Carolina; New Bern and Wilmington in North Carolina; Savannah in Georgia; Philadelphia and Chester in Pennsylvania; New Castle in Delaware; and New York City. Given what we know about Scotch-Irish immigration at this time, the McCammons' most likely port of entry was either Philadelphia or New Castle. From there they were drawn into what was at that time the Pennsylvania frontier (areas on a broad arc north and west of Philadelphia) and then gravitated down the interior valleys – including the Shenandoah Valley, of course – until they found congenial territory. An overland journey from Philadelphia or another northern port southward would have taken weeks or months. Perhaps the McCammons, like so many others, did not make this long journey all at once but tarried in certain places en route for awhile – how long is impossible to say – before resuming the trip southward.³⁰

By the 1760s, the most congenial territory for the Scotch-Irish had become the Piedmont area of the Carolinas: this upcountry region had opened up after the Cherokee wars that concluded in 1761, and the South Carolina colonial government was now offering to settlers bounties and public land free from taxation for ten years. The Camden region was first settled during the early part of the 1770s, just about when we believe the McCammons arrived there. Unlike the eastern, lower, and more intensively planted sections of South Carolina, the upcountry area including Camden had very few plantations – and slaves, too. By the 1770s there was already a sizeable Scotch-Irish population in the Carolina upland area called "the Waxhaws" after an Indian tribe of this name that had lived there. The area straddles the border between North and South Carolina and was the birthplace of Andrew Jackson; born in 1767, he was Matthew's contemporary.³¹

The McCammon cluster living in South Carolina appears to have been concentrated on the west side of the Catawba River and the north side of the Main Fishing Creek, which eventually merges with the Catawba. This area was in what was called after 1769 the Camden Judicial District. (South Carolina did not create counties until later. When it did so during the 1780s, seven counties, including York, Chester, Lancaster, and Fairfield, were created out of Camden District.) Likely candidates would be Hugh, William, and James McCammon, all shown on the 1790 census for Fairfield County in Camden District, but none of these men have living with them additional males more than 16 years old. Perhaps he is working for a neighbor or someone else, identity unknown. In the records of this and the other three relevant counties that replaced the Camden District, therefore, there is no evidence of Matthew's existence. Only his pension application tells us he was there. ³²

Thanks to that application, which he dictated to a commissioner in Sullivan County, Indiana, and signed with his mark on August 13, 1832, we know an exceptional amount about Matthew McCammon's military service.³³ He is not the only man in this family history who served under arms, but we know the most about his military service – limited as it was and confusing as the application itself is.³⁴ We must be mindful that what Matthew related in his application may not be entirely accurate. His account, after all, was prepared more than half a century after the events themselves, and some of the names and dates in particular seem to be erroneous when compared to other sources of information. No doubt some of the evident errors can be attributed to the fact that he was dictating his recollections to an Indiana official who had to guess at the actual names and their spelling, and McCammon's poor command of written language precluded him from making corrections before the application was submitted.³⁵ Nevertheless, the narrative of his replies to the application's prescribed questions about his service seems generally credible and certainly helps us to understand his military experiences during the early 1780s.

McCammon's application begins by stating that he was drafted for four weeks in Camden District, South Carolina, in 1779, but a look at the original document suggests that he was actually drafted for four months.³⁶ The British, having reached a military stalemate with Washington's army in the North, opened a second front in the South in 1778 and 1779 by capturing key coastal cities (including Savannah and, later, Charleston) in preparation for occupying the upland areas. In response, the Southern states hurriedly raised militia companies to augment the small Continental army that was resisting the British, and McCammon's service was part of this mobilization. In South Carolina, militia forces were produced by counties as needed. Service in these units was legally required of all men (usually with exceptions for certain occupations) within prescribed age cohorts (sometimes expanded in response to needs), although hired substitutes were permitted and those opposing independence often refused to report for duty.

The counties, sometimes given a quota they had to meet, filled their militia rolls first with volunteers and then by drafts. Terms of service were typically short, so the available males rotated through the militia at intervals – three or six months was a common length of service. Sometimes credit for longer service was given to attract volunteers who would be dismissed after a shorter period. The reputation of most militia units was not high: they were poorly clothed, equipped, trained, disciplined, and led. Most commanders did not count on them to stand and fight, or to fight very well.

The war in the Southern back country was a swirl of organized military campaigns and small-scale partisan (today we would say "guerrilla") raids. There was considerable pro-British sympathy in the Carolina hinterlands in particular, in part from resentment of the wealthy coastal leadership that had supported American independence, and so the British created a number of loyalist regiments to help them pacify Georgia and the Carolinas. Both sides used brutal reprisals against noncombatants, destroyed the property of their antagonists, and summarily executed adversaries and even prisoners – often their neighbors and former friends. Loyalties sometimes shifted as the fortunes of war changed, but most of the Scotch-Irish like the McCammons could be counted upon to side with those resisting British authority.

Matthew McCammon declared in his application that he served in the company of Captain James Knox, part of the South Carolina Regiment of Colonel "E. Cushaw" (whose name was actually Eli Kershaw). Kershaw's unit was part of the command of General Thomas Sumter. Sumter had commanded rebel forces earlier in the war but then fled to western South Carolina when the British burned his plantation. He did not resume his military career until 1780, and McCammon's regiment probably was one of the units Sumter took command of when he did. Sumter became the foremost leader of the South Carolina militia during the Revolution. He attracted men largely from the upland sections of South Carolina, including many Scots who were said to be angry at the British for burning Bibles that had been translated into Gaelic.³⁷ Sumter operated primarily as an independent command and is regarded by some scholars as something of a freebooter who was not above pillaging the countryside for its own sake. (It is he after whom Fort Sumter was named.)

Continuing, Matthew's application states that after nine weeks he was released from military service and sent home. This must have been during the first part of 1780, when the conflict in the Carolinas had also evolved into a stalemate. He says he was drafted again in 1780, this time for three months, and we can imagine that his resumption of military service was part of the renewed recruitment of militia companies in South Carolina in response to the offensive into the back country that the ruthless British Colonel Banastre Tarleton launched after the British capture of Charleston in early 1780. Tarleton and his forces arrived in the Waxhaw area in late May of that year and wiped out a Virginia regiment commanded by Colonel Abraham Buford. McCammon says that he served about six weeks in Captain Henry Bishop's company before being released halfway through his term of enlistment. (He does not say whether he had been promised such an early release.) Bishop's company was also part of the South Carolina Regiment, now commanded by Colonel Richard Winn (spelled Wyne in the application), which remained part of General Sumter's overall command.

McCammon's application does not specifically mention his being in any engagements during this period, which began with a disastrous defeat for the American forces at Camden (August 1780). One major engagement took place on Fishing Creek, near where the McCammon clan lived. The British then set up a u-shaped chain of forts ranging from the coast through the interior of South Carolina, then back to the coast again. These would enable them to pacify the state and ensure adequate supplies for their soldiers. With the state seemingly lost to the rebel cause and becoming pacified, these were difficult times for those who supported independence. Soon, however, the fortunes of war turned: American victories at Kings Mountain (October 1780) and the Cowpens (January 1781) rallied the patriots again. By then, however, McCammon's short enlistment presumably would have been over.

According to McCammon, he resumed his military duties by enlisting in "the United States service" on April 15, 1782. This date cannot be correct and surely must be April 15, 1781, instead: the actions he describes next took place during 1782, and he gives the date of his ultimate discharge as April 15, 1782. It is interesting that the Waxhaw-area militia suffered a serious military setback on April 9, 1781, and McCammon may have rejoined after the militia there intensified its recruiting efforts.³⁸

Matthew goes on to state that on this occasion he served – as a private, he says – for ten months in what was called the South Carolina Cavalry. He identifies the officers of his company as Captain John Mills, Lieutenant John Miller, and Ensign Alexander Brown. This company was part of Colonel Henry Hampton and Colonel Wade Hampton's South Carolina Regiments of Light Dragoons (which meant that they were mounted forces, what we would call cavalry).³⁹ McCammon's ten months of service was evenly divided between the regiments the two Hamptons commanded.

There is no reference in McCammon's application to anything other than South Carolina units, and I can find no evidence that he was enrolled as one of the "Continentals" (soldiers, paid by the Continental Congress, whose enlistments were for eighteen months to three years). Unless we find such evidence, we probably should hypothesize – as the events to be recounted shortly lead us to believe – that the South Carolina units he belonged to fought alongside, or perhaps temporarily as part of, the Continental units in the army in the South, and that McCammon regarded this as being in "the United States service."

This phase of McCammon's war service was his most active one. He says that he was present at the capture of "Fort Congaree" in South Carolina. This is most likely Fort Granby on the Congaree River, now the town of Cayce in that state and part of metropolitan Columbia: the entire, heavily Scotch-Irish settlement in that area was sometimes called Congaree. Fort Granby was one of the chain of garrisons American troops captured in 1781 (on May 15 in its case). McCammon also stated that he was at the capture of Fort Tompson, "alias Boccades" or Buckhead. (The application document uses both names.) Here it is possible that he was referring to Fort Motte, which was sometimes called Buckhead Hill. Fort Motte (also on the Congaree River) was near Orangeburg, where McCammon states he was engaged in fighting; it was captured on May 12, 1781. The fighting at Orangeburg itself that Matthew mentions could have been one of two incidents in 1781, one on May 11 and another extending from July to November 14 of 1781, but from the context we are probably right to think he is referring to the first of these clashes.⁴⁰

McCammon thus was a participant in the campaign of the new American commander, General Nathanael Greene, to retake the Carolina back country from the British by destroying the forts they had established a year or two earlier. Greene calculated that this would deprive the British of the supplies they needed for their army and force them back to the coast. Most of this fighting was done by partisan units, including Sumter's, under the command of General Francis Marion – better known as "the Swamp Fox." Greene kept the bulk of his Continental forces intact in hopes of engaging the British army in a decisive battle but did lend to this campaign a body of dragoons led by General Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee, the father of Robert E. Lee.

Whether Matthew McCammon was a member of the Continental Army may be a matter of definition. In the Battle of Cowpens, in early 1781, the Continental dragoons were augmented by both South Carolina state forces and militia recruited for this purpose, and presumably this process occurred at other times during 1781; in addition, at Cowpens some South Carolina state dragoons were assigned to their Continental counterparts as guides, and the success of this collaboration might have led to its being repeated. Thus McCammon might have been in the South Carolina Cavalry throughout the period he has just described, but even if he was not officially enrolled as a member of the Continental forces he might have thought himself part of a United States army because the units to which he belonged also included Continentals – and in any case he was a member of a force that was carrying out General Greene's orders. Nowhere, however, is he listed on the rolls of Continental soldiers – only on South Carolina's state rolls.⁴¹

Next, Matthew's application says, he was involved in a skirmish with the "famous Tory, Simon Girty," after which he took part in the more substantial Battle of Eutaw Springs on September 8, 1781. (We will examine this encounter with Girty shortly, after concluding McCammon's account of his military service.) Greene finally got his chance to bring the British army to battle and advanced along the south bank of the Santee River toward Charleston. A British force under Colonel Alexander Stewart blocked the road at Eutaw Springs, about forty miles above Charleston. Most of the fighting here fell to Greene's Continental brigades from Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, but four small militia units from the two Carolinas (approximately 150 militia and 250 rangers) were in the front lines and the South Carolina Cavalry was paired (as at Cowpens) with the Continental cavalry commanded by Colonel William Washington. Each side had something over 2,000 soldiers.

Greene attacked the British camp at dawn on a hot, humid day, and the fighting lasted for four hours. The militia fought very well on this occasion, and they and the Continentals drove their surprised opponents from their camp. Most of the Redcoats fled, leaving their uneaten breakfasts and their camp, but Washington's combined cavalry encountered substantial opposition from one British contingent on the left flank and was severely cut up. The underfed and poorly clothed American foot soldiers, meanwhile, paused to plunder what their opponents had abandoned and eventually were driven from the battlefield when the British regrouped and charged. According to McCammon's statement in the application, he received during this battle a slight flesh wound – "in the act of charging," he seems eager to say – and so was among the 375 American soldiers who were wounded that day.⁴² He must have been wounded during Washington's cavalry charge, although we cannot be positive about this.

The Battle of Eutaw Springs – the bloodiest battle of the American Revolution in the South and one of the bloodiest battles of the entire war – became the climactic event in Greene's effort to harass the British forces in the South. Although it was tactically another of a series of setbacks for the American forces, in strategic terms the outcome of the battle was to force the British – short on provisions and men – to retreat to their small coastal enclaves. What happened at Eutaw Springs thus brought to an end the British military presence in most of South Carolina (excepting the enclaves, which they abandoned in 1782) and, indeed, the entire lower South. They never left the coast to do battle again, and six weeks following the battle General, Lord Cornwallis and his army were confined to Yorktown, Virginia, where they were forced to surrender. Slight as Matthew McCammon's war record may appear to be, we can take satisfaction from the fact that he was present at a key turning point in the War of Independence.

Following the Battle of Eutaw Springs, McCammon apparently served for a length of time not known in an outfit usually called the "South Carolina Tories," although the unit is not identified as such in his application for a pension. His commander was a Major Bleauford.⁴³ These South Carolina Tories may have been Scotsmen, sometimes termed Tories because as a group they were preponderantly loyal to the British crown during the American Revolution. Or they might have been forces originally loyal to Great Britain who had later switched sides and fought against them in order to prove their loyalty to the new regime. McCammon's presence in this Tory unit does not necessarily mean that he was one himself, or that he had ever sided with the British: he might have been an experienced – and loyal – soldier brought in to assist the officers. McCammon's record shows that he, like most of the Scotch-Irish (including his four brothers), was consistently on the Patriots' side of the conflict.⁴⁴

Even though Cornwallis had surrendered in October 1781, fighting continued in the South for months as the Patriot forces sought to mop up the remaining bands of Loyalists in the Low Country area and to isolate the British in their Charleston stronghold. Under Major Bleauford's orders Matthew marched from South Carolina into Georgia, where he says in 1781 or 1782 (from the evidence, probably the latter) he was involved in an engagement with the British within eight or ten miles of Savannah, and in another with the (presumably pro-British) Indians within twenty or twenty-five miles of Ebenezer, Georgia, a town on the river above Savannah. His account matches the known facts quite well, for a group of Sumter's mounted forces was detached for service in Georgia at about the time McCammon said he was there and there were actions in these places in February and March of 1782. Following this engagement, McCammon continues, he served briefly as a guard for captured Indians who were escorted back to Ebenezer. After waiting there a week, and with his enlistment having expired, he was marched back to Orangeburg and discharged with instructions to appear on the Congaree River on April 15, 1782, in order to receive his regular discharge. When he appeared on this date as directed, no one was there to give him his discharge and so he simply went home.⁴⁵

Matthew McCammon's answers to the several questions the pension law required, a friend's attached testimony, and the application of one of Matthew's nephews provide some useful supplementary information that sheds more light on McCammon's military experiences. These documents mention McCammon's service in a brigade of the Light Horse Troops commanded by General (Benjamin) Lincoln, who headed the American forces in the Carolinas until he was captured in Charleston in May 1780. The surrender – of more than 2,000 South Carolina militia, a like number of Continental troops, and huge stores of arms and supplies – was one of the most embarrassing events of the war for the rebels. Matthew also included in his replies to the Indiana commissioner the additional comments that he had served under General Wayne and a Colonel Gill. (General "Mad" Anthony Wayne had been the commander in campaigns during early 1782 to drive the British out of Savannah and Georgia, where as we have seen McCammon's application said that he had seen action.)

McCammon does not mention serving before 1779, and one wonders if these men confused Lincoln with William Washington or Henry Lee, under whom McCammon might have served at the Battle of Eutaw Springs or elsewhere. On the other hand, it is possible that McCammon did serve with Lincoln and perhaps was captured at Charleston (and then paroled, as was common) but did not mention this incident in his application years later because it was such a painful memory. Such a circumstance might also help to explain why McCammon stated that he had been in "the United States service."

The documents of Matthew's friend and nephew mention some other officers under whom he is said to have served, including a Major Doyle and a Colonel White, as well as to a battle at "Purens Burg" (this is Purysburg, on the bank of the Savannah River) in Georgia, which occurred on April 29, 1779.⁴⁶ The application of the nephew cites the experiences of his father, who also fought in South Carolina under General Sumter during two other engagements – the Snow Campaign (late 1775) and the Battle of Hanging Rock (August 1780) – that are better known than the Battle of Eutaw Springs, and the nephew implies that Matthew McCammon also participated in these battles. Because Matthew himself is silent about them, we can only wonder. It does seem possible, though, that McCammon's war experiences were actually rather more extensive than his pension application alone would indicate – that he mentioned in it only what he recalled, or included just enough to support his application. All in all, these documents provide some fascinating glimpses into his service but may not be the most comprehensive and reliable account of them.

Let us return to McCammon's reference to a clash with Simon Girty. The reference is intriguing in part because of Girty's very notoriety but also because when and where it occurred raises some interesting questions about where McCammon might have been during the 1780s. Girty was a Pennsylvanian who after initially supporting the Patriot cause opted in 1778 to join the British instead. He fled his home in Pittsburgh for British headquarters in Detroit and became a ruthless and for that reason rather infamous instigator of frontier Indian tribes on behalf of the British and Loyalist causes. He was active mainly north and west of anywhere McCammon was engaged in the actions he relates in his application, however, mostly in Ohio but occasionally also in Kentucky. As a British agent, Girty encouraged the Indians to make raids south across the Ohio River on settlements in northern Kentucky. These raids – often accompanied by numerous atrocities – took place during the summer of 1782, before the peace treaty with Britain was signed.⁴⁷ McCammon could have been involved in this fighting if he had moved to Kentucky as early as mid-1782, but he places his reference to Girty in sequence between his references to Orangeburg and Eutaw Springs – events that took place in 1781 – and seems to be living in the Carolinas as late as 1785.⁴⁸

How can we account for McCammon's reference to having fought Girty? Might Matthew and other South Carolina militia forces have been sent to assist the Kentucky settlers fending off Girty, after which those militia returned to South Carolina? If this is the explanation, perhaps it was McCammon's brief visit to Kentucky then that sparked his interest in moving there. I have found no solid evidence to substantiate any such assistance, and it is likely that McCammon would have mentioned the circumstances in his application had he been sent to Kentucky for this purpose. A better explanation for the reference comes when we learn that in September of 1786 more than 500 Kentucky residents crossed the Ohio River in order to attack Indians stirred up but not actually led by Girty. These Indians were encouraged by the British, who were using the Indians to delay having to turn the Old Northwest over the new United States as the Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolution specified they would. If McCammon had already relocated to Kentucky by 1786 – as we will see in a moment that he probably had – he may have participated in this skirmish but mistakenly placed it out of sequence in his narrative.⁴⁹

Thus we cannot positively identify the specific encounter with Simon Girty that McCammon mentions in his application. We may in fact be dealing with a case of mistaken identity altogether. Girty was "seen" at many battles and raids in which he did not personally participate; his reputation was so formidable and terror-producing that he was frequently given credit for battles and raids even though he had nothing to do with them. He became a kind of bogeyman for Americans (especially westerners), a symbol of the cruel and capricious Indian savagery that so frightened settlers, and it was natural that they would assume this turncoat was behind every clash with Indians in the West. It is possible that McCammon drew upon Girty's enduring reputation as a way of characterizing, for an Indiana official, the sort of pro-British groups against whom he and others fought in South Carolina more than a half-century before. In the end, we cannot know whether McCammon actually did face Girty across a battlefield or only thought he did.

As we have seen, Matthew McCammon's last military enlistment expired on April 15, 1782. From the book on Matthew and his descendants, we learn that he was still living in the Camden, South Carolina, area in early 1784, for he attended an estate sale there on March 9. On October 1 of that year the state of South Carolina awarded him pay and bounty due him for service in Mills's Troop, H. Hampton's Regiment, Sumter's Brigade, for service through April of 1782, plus interest through October 1, 1784. Court records in that same state link McCammon to South Carolina from 1783 to 1785, and another document confirms that he was living in this state through at least mid-1785.

On June 17, 1785, Matthew sold his award of pay and bounty from the state of South Carolina to James McCammon, possibly his brother of that name. Although this transaction was formalized before a justice of the peace in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, the sworn statement describes Matthew as a "planter" (farmer) from Camden District of South Carolina. James McCammon resided in Mecklenburg County at this time, and it may be that he was a member of that county's McCammon cluster, which dates at least to 1766. Although we cannot rule out the possibility that Matthew and his family were living in North Carolina in 1785, it seems more likely that he would have traveled to his relative's county to make this transaction – it was Matthew who was seeking money from James, after all. Matthew accepted half of the amount due him, probably in preparation for his departure for Kentucky either later that year or early the next. It is interesting to observe that Matthew swore at the same time that the horse and saddle he had used during his military service had been his own property; in addition, he stated that he had not received any previous remuneration for his service, except for a pair of overalls and a hat. ⁵⁰

What we can be sure of is that Matthew McCammon and his family, probably including baby Jane, had by 1788 crossed the mountains and entered Kentucky – whether by way of North Carolina or Tennessee we cannot say.⁵¹ In that year and the next, 1789, he is shown paying taxes (as Matthew McCamron) in Fayette County, Kentucky, which surrounds Lexington. This was a time of turmoil in Kentucky, for there was considerable intrigue surrounding possible alliances with France or Spain, rumors of military expeditions of various sorts, and even talk of an independence movement for Kentucky. In this connection it is interesting to see that Matthew McCammon received a commission in the Kentucky militia on December 18, 1789. There is no evidence he was involved in or sympathetic with any of these political movements, or that he was opposed to them for that matter.

In 1799 and in 1800 McCammon is listed (once as McCamron) on tax records in Jessamine County, Kentucky. Given what little we have been able to learn about his movements and land dealings, it seems likely that he lived from 1788 on in the part of Fayette County that became Jessamine County in 1798; we can say that there are no tax records, deeds, or other indications that he lived elsewhere during this decade. In Jessamine County he is taxed for 100 acres of "second-rate" land (a tax assessor's valuation) that had been entered by John Curd; this property was located where the Dix River empties into the Kentucky River. ⁵²

We should probably assume that like most of the others in this heavily rural and agricultural region⁵³ he was busy growing corn, hemp, or (increasingly after 1787) tobacco – and probably making liquor or growing hogs with the corn since that was the easiest way to get this crop to market. But Curd also operated a ferry across the Kentucky River, and it may be that he would employ a fellow former Revolutionary War veteran to operate it. While he was living in Jessamine County, Matthew gave permission for two of his daughters to be married, one of them to Edward Neal. We do not know exactly when McCammon obtained his land (actually 92 1/4 acres) from John Curd, as there is no deed of sale to him, but we do know that he sold it to Daniel Curd on January 19, 1807.

By then, on September 25, 1806, McCammon had purchased 90 acres in Shelby County, Kentucky, which is between Frankfort and Louisville. This property was on the waters of Bullskin Creek and Fox Run.⁵⁴ As we have seen, Edward Neal and Matthew McCammon are shown next to one another in Shelby County on the 1810 census. It may be that McCammon continued to live in that county until late 1815, when he had to get a court order to finalize his purchase of the property he evidently had been living on since 1806. (The seller, William Hinton, had died before completing the sale.) But it is also possible that McCammon went north with his son-in-law Edward in 1812 but did not sell his Shelby County property until 1815, after which he entered public land in Indiana in October 1816. The fact that Matthew gave assent to another daughter's marriage in Shelby County in May 1813 suggests that he did not accompany Edward and Jane to Indiana right away, but since the court order in October 1815 describes him as a resident of Knox County, Indiana (Sullivan county there had not yet been created), we are probably correct to date his move to Indiana between mid-1813 and mid-1815.

About Matthew McCammon's Scotch-Irish family in County Antrim we have little specific information (to be described later in this section) but a broad understanding of the larger movements of which they were a part. If the McCammons were indeed Scots who had gone to Ulster as colonists, they could have been among the impoverished tenant farmers from the lowlands who were sent to Northern Ireland at any of three times: early during the 1600s (during the reign of King James I, beginning in 1607), after the rebellion of 1641, or during the 1690s. County Antrim was actually colonized slightly earlier, however, and since the McCammons were reputed to be Highlanders they are more likely to have been planted in Ulster when the Highland Scots arrived beginning in 1605. (After 1610, the Roman Catholic Highlanders were excluded from being planted in Ulster.) Even though most of the Highlanders were Roman Catholics, after a few generations among the Protestants surrounding them they often became Protestants themselves.

The Scots newcomers were put onto land confiscated from the Irish by England landowners as a way of pacifying this troublesome (to the English) area and in order to establish the linen trade there. There was very little intermarriage of the Scots and the native Irish. The Scots eked out modest livings as tenants, but they found themselves caught between their absent landlords and the resentful Irish; in turn, the Scots resented the English landowners who made them pay tithes to the established Anglican church and they considered the Irish they were displacing lazy, ignorant, and savage. Without roots in Ulster, they were attracted by an America where land was plentiful and where there were no absent landlords and their tithes – nor Irish. It is estimated that as many as 250,000 of the Ulster Scots left for America between 1717 and 1775.

It is possible that the McCammon family was not one of the families deliberately planted there but got to Ulster independently. (Only twenty miles of water separate Ireland and Scotland.) One McCammon researcher contends that the family probably came from Argyllshire, an area in Scotland just above the line that separates lowland from highland Scotland, so we cannot be positive about which group of settlers in Ulster they accompanied. Beyond this, I have seen speculation that the McCammon family actually originated in southern France as Huguenots named Calmon who fled to Ireland when France began to persecute the Huguenots, but I know of no evidence that supports this particular idea.

The one glimmer of information about the McCammons in Ulster comes from a survey of the religious affiliations of householders taken in 1766. Much of the original documentation was destroyed in a fire in 1922, but fragments and transcripts for County Antrim do exist. Among the householders in Ahoghill Parish, Diocese of Connor, were McCammons (of various spellings) named William, Matthew, James, and Hugh. These men could very well be the same persons with those names found in South Carolina a decade later, although we cannot be sure of that. (The first two were listed as dissenters, meaning Presbyterians, and the others were listed as Catholics. This might reflect the fact that the McCammons were in transition in their religious affiliations, or it might simply be incorrect information.) It is interesting to note that John and William Douglas (or Douglass) are also listed on this survey of householders, along with several Neals and McNeals. Additional information from 1740 for the baronies of Toome, Kilconway, Cary, Dunluce, along with the town and liberties of Coleraine – most or all of which were part of Ahoghill Parish, show a William and Martha McCammon in the same parish. Given the time frame, they might well be the parents of some or all of the several McCammons listed in 1766.

We have no way of knowing whether these are our McCammons, but it is tantalizing to think they might be the family that migrated to America a few years later. (It is interesting, too, that a wave of lawlessness afflicted Ahoghill Parish beginning in 1771. This might have caused families like the McCammons to consider leaving for America.) One problem with this information is that Matthew McCammon would be too young (only 9 years of age) to be listed as a householder in 1766, but the Matthew on that year's list might be an uncle after whom he was named. Certainly more evidence is needed before we can state with assurance that we have found the home of the McCammons in County Antrim, but we have at least some basis for hoping that we have.

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rev. 7/14/10

Notes

¹This name is sometimes spelled Douglass. Return to text

²Harrodsburg (then called Harrodstown) was settled in March 1775; Boiling Springs and St. Asalph were settled soon afterwards. As late as June 1775 there was not a single woman living in Boonsboro, and there were probably few if any elsewhere in Kentucky. The population of Harrodsburg in 1777 was 198 men, 24 women, and 70 children; the only other two Kentucky towns had, together, even fewer residents. (Interestingly, the party that settled Harrodsburg was composed mainly of young unmarried men who came down the Ohio River from Pennsylvania, where the Neal family is said to have originated.) Indian attacks in 1777 drove so many persons out of Kentucky that only about 150 people remained, in just a handful of outposts. It would be possible, though a very long shot indeed, that Edward Neal was born in Kentucky in September of 1773, when six families led by Daniel Boone tried and failed to penetrate Kentucky. They retreated to North Carolina in the face of an Indian raid in which Boone's own son was killed. Edward Neal's being born in these circumstance would tie together several threads: Kentucky, Boone, and a year ending in the numeral three, but surely the singularity of his being born during this well-known incident at the very dawn of settlement of Kentucky would have been passed along in family lore together with the bare facts as we do have them. Return to text

³See slide 07155 for a view of his grave site and marker as of 1994 and slide 12032 for a similar view in 2006. This stone was restored and straightened later in 2006. Return to text

⁴ For example, there was a Neal's Station (or Fort) at the mouth of the Little Kanawha River, where Parkersburg, West Virginia, now stands – one of the stations created to form a defensive perimeter for the new settlements in Kentucky. Founded in 1785, it was named after a surveyor, James Neal. It is conceivable that Edward Neal was born and raised somewhere in this area of what was then Virginia during the 1770s and then made his way down the Ohio River into Kentucky as we know it today sometime during the 1790s. A book on Matthew McCammon (Edward Neal's father-in-law) and his descendants gives Edward Neal's birth year as 1783, without explanation, but this is probably nothing more than a typographical error. This book, though not without its errors and omissions, is in my view the single best resource on not only the McCammon family but that of Edward Neal as well. Return to text

⁵There is considerable confusion about this woman's name. She is called Ginnie at the time of her marriage and Virginia on the 1860 census but Jane on the 1850 and 1870 censuses – as well as in Edward Neal's will and on her grave marker. Her children evidently called her Ginny or Jennie. It seems possible that she was originally named Virginia but that over time this name was transformed by usage into Jane. I have chosen to identify her as Jane because her husband and grave marker call her that.

⁶See slide 07148 for a view of her grave site and marker in 1994 and slide 12031 for a similar view in 2006. This stone was straightened and restored in late 2006.

⁷In 1810, Jane is listed as 16-26 years old; in 1820, as 26-45 years old; in 1830, as 40-50 years old; in 1840, as 50-60 years old; in 1850, as 65 years old; in 1860, as 80 years old; and in 1870, as 93 years old. This last census describes her occupation, rather delightfully, as "retired life."

⁸Jane could not have been born in North Carolina any later than 1788, nor in Kentucky any earlier than 1786. See below for more about where Jane's parents might have been living at this time.Return to text

⁹Posey County was established in 1814. The entire area was in 1812 called Knox County, which took in most of southwest Indiana at the time. Return to text

¹⁰There are some remarkable parallels between the migration of the Neal family and that of the Lincoln family, which entered Indiana from Kentucky in 1816. Abraham Lincoln spent more time growing up in Indiana than he did in Illinois, and books about his early years help us to understand what living conditions were like for the Neals in Indiana at the very same time. It is also interesting to note that the Lincoln family was in the Shenandoah Valley at about the same time some of the families we have studied – the Zinks and Funkhousers – were there. Return to text

¹¹Indiana had fewer than 25,000 inhabitants in 1810 but within five years this number had grown to about 64,000. Then, in the year 1816 alone, some 42,000 persons came into the state, nearly all of them into the southern part; northern Indiana was virtually unpopulated except for Indians. Return to text

¹²Another large purchase, the New Purchase in 1818, opened much of central Indiana to settlement by 1821.

¹³There have been several Fort Knoxes in Vincennes. During the years between 1809 and 1813, Fort Knox was located about three miles upstream from today's Vincennes. Today it is called Fort Knox II and is a park. See slides 11973-76 for views of the area of the fort in 2006. Return to text

¹⁴Edward Neal's property was the southeast quarter of Section 3, Township 7 North, Range 10 West. See the 1876 atlas and the USGS map for Merom/Indiana. This purchase is not in the Bureau of Land Management's database because it came before 1820, but I have a copy of the document in my files. See Appendix II for a description of how public lands were surveyed and sold by the United States government. Edward Neal paid a total of $310.98 for the land near Merom on credit, having received discounts of $8.92, $.05, and $.05 for early payments of the three later installments. Edward Neal's property in Section 3 has for years been part of a large power-producing complex; see slide 11967 for a somewhat distant view of this land in 2006. By the 1830s the western section of Sullivan County had become overshadowed by the areas to the east, and in 1838 a new county seat – originally named Center, later Sullivan – was being laid out on unoccupied land in the very center of Sullivan County. By the 1840s the Merom area had become an isolated one. Return to text

¹⁵The Neal-Paxton Cemetery would be established in the northeast quarter of the northeast quarter of Section 27 in 1841. Return to text

¹⁶Matthew McCammon purchased his land on October 4, 1816, for $2.00 per acre. He bought on credit, which was then permitted, but did not make his down payment of $80 until over a month later (November 7, 1816). On March 17 of the next year, though, McCammon completed his purchase by paying $182.40 in cash, receiving a discount of $57.60 for early payment. His total cash outlay for this land thus was $262.40. McCammon received his patent on January 23, 1818. Matthew's land was the southwest quarter of Section 35 of Township 7 North, Range 9 West. In early 1821, Matthew transferred 40 of his 160 acres to a son, Hugh, and presumably another 40 acres to a second son at the same time. (The deeds for these transactions evidently were destroyed in the fire at Sullivan County's first courthouse, in Merom, in November 1821, but Hugh refiled his deed later.)For a view of this property, see the USGS map for Sullivan/Indiana and slide 12022, taken in 2006. This land is just below the Neal-Paxton Cemetery. See slide 07150 for views of this cemetery in 1994 and slides 07150 and 12023 taken in 2006. Also see the USGS map for Sullivan/Indiana. As noted earlier, David Shake's property was very near to the ones described here. My grandfather also remembered that Edward Neal built a schoolhouse on his property, naturally called "the Neal Schoolhouse," so that his younger children would not have to walk three miles to school as William had been forced to do. Return to text

¹⁷There is family lore that Matthew McCammon owned slaves in South Carolina and brought at least some of them to Kentucky and then Indiana with him. Whether or not he actually emancipated them in Kentucky, as the lore suggests, any of these people who accompanied Matthew to Indiana would have become free according to the terms of the Northwest Ordinance. The lore also speaks of former slaves being buried – in a separate section – in Sullivan County's McCammon Cemetery. Whether the existence of this man in 1820 helps to confirm this story or actually gave rise to it cannot be determined. Return to text

¹⁸Matthew McCammon's later purchases were as follows: on March 24, 1837 (patent received on August 1, 1839), he bought 40 acres comprising the southeast quarter of the northwest quarter of Section 26 in Township 7 North, Range 9 West; on August 17, 1839 (patent received on May 25, 1841), he bought 40 acres in the northeast quarter of the southwest quarter of that section. These purchases were $50 each. This gave Matthew McCammon a total of 240 acres, quite a large chunk of land. FOr views of these three properties, see slides 12019 through 12021, taken in 2006. It is worth noting that McCammon's later purchases adjoined Edward Neal's Section 27 and not his own Section 35. In 1840, the census taker was sloppy in putting Matthew's name on the second page of the census form, where veterans of the American Revolution were to be listed by name, and Matthew's name is not well aligned with that of Edward Neal. But the enumeration of individuals shows that a man Matthew's age was indeed living in the Neal household – and not in any of the adjacent ones. Matthew McCammon's patent dated May 25, 1841, is an interesting document. General Land Office clerks placed on each patent the "signature" of the president of the United States. It is not uncommon for patents issued around the time of a change of presidential administrations to have the signature of the outgoing president crossed off and that of the new president inserted in its place. But Matthew's patent has Martin Van Buren's signature, which is crossed out, and that of William Henry Harrison (inaugurated in March 1841), which is also crossed out. The third signature is that of John Tyler, who became president when Harrison died in April 1841. I expect that only a few patents have this collection of three signatures. Return to text

¹⁹See Appendix II for an extended discussion of this topic. Return to text

²⁰Edward Neal's will mentions the northeast quarter of Section 27, Township 7 North, Range 9 West, including a dwelling on the west part of the property. Jane was allowed the west end of this land. Return to text

²¹Jane is shown with $100 in real property (identity and location unknown) in 1850. By 1860 she is reduced to $20 in personal property. On the 1850 census and again in 1870 she is said to be unable to read or write; that category is blank in 1860, probably an omission on the part of the census enumerator. Return to text

²²This name is another one spelled various ways, from McCalmont to McCamant. Some McCammon researchers believe that most of those persons with such names, including the McCammon family of which Matthew was a member, descend most immediately from a Thomas MacCollman born in Argyllshire, Scotland, about 1740, and ultimately from a Thomas MacCollman who was born about 1641. I have not seen any convincing evidence that supports this idea.

²³Other sources state that the McCammon Clan came from Stirling Shire in south-central Scotland (just east of Loch Lomond, or, perhaps from a small island in Loch Lomond itself), which is where the Buchanan Clan originated.

²⁴The term Scotch-Irish is in actuality something of a misnomer. Within a few generations of having been planted in Ulster, most of the Scots probably thought of themselves as Irish, in fact, and they were typically described that way in America. This term Scotch-Irish came into use more frequently after the arrivals, following 1850, of great numbers of emigrants from the south of Ireland – emigrants with whom the earlier arrivals did not want to be confused. Return to text

²⁵This cemetery is described as being on the Owen Ridgeway farm near an old ice pond south of Paxton on a slight rise of ground at the base of an old black oak tree. The author of the book on Matthew McCammon was unable to find his gravesite there. I was unable to find even the cemetery. Return to text

²⁶Perhaps Mary died during a serious smallpox epidemic in the Carolinas, which from evidence found in McCammon Revolutionary War pension applications seems to have hit the family at about this time. Recent research has shown how widely the South Carolina militia spread smallpox. Return to text

²⁷Her name was possibly spelled Galey. She evidently was the daughter of Samuel Smith Galley, a native of Ireland. Martha was born around 1774.

²⁸One difficulty with the notion that Matthew married a woman named Trimble is that the source for this information also states that his third wife was a "Miss Neal," which does not match anything that we know. Return to text

²⁹The North Carolina McCammons lived northeast of Charlotte along the Rocky River and several of its tributaries: Buffalo Creek, Coddle Creek, and McKee's Creek. Return to text

³⁰The Scotch-Irish who landed in Wilmington went up the Cape Fear River into the interior to what is now Fayetteville (then called Cross Creek), then fanned out over numerous routes to the areas straddling the North and South Carolina borders where we first encounter the McCammons. Such a trip would of course have taken less time than one from New York City, Philadelphia, or one of the other ports and the overland travel that would have followed arrival. Return to text

³¹See the USGS map for Van Wyck/South Carolina-North Carolina for a general view of the Waxhaws. Ironically, this is the very area in which my sister lived during the first years of her retirement, certainly without realizing beforehand its connection to our family. During the period discussed in the text, there was confusion about the demarcation between the two colonies, and it was not until years later that the present border was agreed upon. In the meantime, parts of this area were originally in North Carolina (which had issued land grants for it) but ended up in South Carolina. Some of the McCammon properties were in this area between the two jurisdictions. Return to text

³²Fishing Creek can be found on a number of USGS maps, including the ones for Catawba/South Carolina, Edgemoor/South Carolina, Great Falls/South Carolina, and Rock Hill West/South Carolina. Also see digital images 00842-00854 and 00866-00868 (taken in 2010) for views of Fishing Creek, which drains a large portion of northeast South Carolina. We will discuss it again later in connection with the Neals. Interestingly, James McCammon, one of those who lived on Fishing Creek, was described in his deed as a weaver. Return to text

³³The act under which Matthew McCammon applied for a pension was approved by Congress on June 7, 1832. It was intended to recognize the (presumably few) Revolutionary War veterans still alive. The number of applicants far exceeded expectations, however, which led to the taking of a special census of those veterans in 1835. This census confirmed that the high response was legitimate. McCammon is shown on the special census in 1835 and also on a tally of Revolutionary War veterans taken along with the regular 1840 census. I have not been able to find Matthew McCammon's Revolutionary War service record at the National Archives, so we have only his pension application and the South Carolina records to verify his service. The fact that a Rev. James Love endorsed McCammon's petition – the petition required such an endorsement from a clergyman – leads one to think that McCammon attended Love's church, which appears to have been a Church of Christ, but the two men may only have been neighbors (as they were in 1820) and acquaintances. It is likely that William Neal and his family would also have attended this same church; and, since my grandfather later became a Church of Christ minister, perhaps the entire Neal line in Indiana was affiliated with this denomination. McCammon, having applied for a pension on August 13. 1832, supplemented his application in January of the next year with an affidavit that he had no documentary evidence to support his claim.

³⁴Adam Rickabaugh's service during the War of 1812 is fairly well documented but also quite brief. In addition, we should not forget Aaron Stark, James Trimble, Christopher Shake, the Stark brothers, and Adriaen Post – all of whom were involved in military or quasi-military activities. (Even Abraham Verplanck might qualify.) Still others (John Crooks, Lemuel Blevins, and William Hughbanks) might have served in uniform – we cannot be certain. Undoubtedly others too contributed in ways we do not know about to the wars they lived through. Most of them undoubtedly served in the militia in their communities, as we have seen in some instances, since men 18 to 45 or 50 years old (except state officials and ministers) customarily were required to enroll in the militia and generally mustered twice a year, at least until the 1830s or so. There were other contributions as well: during the Civil War William Neal paid $10 in newly imposed Federal income taxes on his stallion in 1863, 1864, and 1865. This was not an insignificant sum at that time. When the national draft was imposed during the Civil War, Thomas Neal and William R. Zink registered as required. Henry Rickabaugh was too old and Samuel Green Vanderpool was too young. A Thomas Neal is listed in the records as a married farmer in Vermillion County, Indiana, but his age is given as 26 years old on July 1, 1863, when the Thomas Neal in my family was 30 years old; this is probably a different Thomas Neal altogether, therefore. William R. Zink is described as a married farmer in Jackson Township of Owen County, Indiana, and his age is given as 24 years old as of July 1, 1863 – which is correct even though, as a note attached to the record says, he refused to state his age. Both men were rated Class I: eligible for service. The Civil War divided many of the families we have examined, since some branches remained below the Mason-Dixon line while others had migrated to Indiana or elsewhere above it. Vanderpools, Starks, Chastains, and others served on both sides of the conflict, although those in the Confederate ranks were rather more distant lines than those who fought for the Union. Three of Samuel Green Vanderpool's brothers served in the Union infantry, and one of them was captured.

³⁵McCammon's pension, $53.33 per year, was approved on March 21, 1833, to begin on March 4, 1834. Presumably he received the annual payment until he died. He was also awarded payment of two years in arrears to cover the period between his application and the first scheduled payment. The 1835 special census reports that Matthew had received $159.99 by the time of that census. McCammon's military experience parallels the experience of that other Scotch-Irish resident of the Waxhaws who fought in some of these same engagements: Andrew Jackson. One wonders if they ever crossed paths. Return to text

³⁶ The clerk who transcribed the application originally wrote "three months" and then corrected this to "four weeks." Since Matthew says he served for nine weeks, the clerk probably meant to write four months instead. Return to text

³⁷The New Testament was first translated into Gaelic in 1767, which makes this story plausible. Return to text

³⁸The editor of a book describing McCammon's record (among many others) cites the date as 1781, so he must have agreed with my analysis. Return to text

³⁹ Wade Hampton was the grandfather of the more famous man with that name who was prominent during the Civil War. Mills, Miller, and Brown (along with McCammon himself) are listed as members of the Hampton regiments. Mills served only from April through September of 1781, which helps to verify that McCammon's service was in that year and not in 1782. Return to text

⁴⁰For a view of the approximate location of Fort Granby in 2010, see digital images 00857-00858. Alternatively, McCammon might be referring to the original British fortification named Fort Congaree, built in the early 18th century, which was located on the Santee River. Although there is a small settlement called Fort Motte where Fort Motte once stood, nothing seems to remain of the fort itself. Return to text

⁴¹According to the pension application of a man who enlisted at this time and must have served with McCammon, the enlistees were promised 100 pounds and land but received neither. Return to text

⁴²The Battle of Eutaw Springs also resulted in 138 dead and 41 missing American soldiers. Unfortunately, the actual site of the engagement is now covered by the waters of the artificial Lake Marion. Return to text

⁴³This officer's name is variously given as Blanford, Blewford, Bleuford, and even Bleanford, but Bluford appears in some later histories. I cannot identify him, unfortunately.

⁴⁴Since the Scots who settled in the Carolinas tended to remain loyal to Great Britain, there was often bitter fighting between the two groups of immigrants. Return to text

⁴⁵McCammon's application gives the date for his appearance on the Congaree River as 1783, but internal evidence in the application shows that the correct year must have been 1782. McCammon evidently was not present at the earlier battle at Ebenezer (sometimes called New Ebenezer), which occurred on March 3, 1779. His account places the engagement he was part of closer to Savannah and later in time. Return to text

⁴⁶White may have been Henry White of the South Carolina militia (1779-82), and Doyle might have been Daniel D'Oyley. The officer named John Miller, whom McCammon himself named (see above), was captured in February 1779. This could indicate that he did indeed serve in the militia that early. Return to text

⁴⁷The culminating conflict was the Battle of Blue Licks on August 19, 1782, in which the Kentuckians were defeated. Fortunately, news of the peace came soon thereafter.

⁴⁸Girty may have been involved in a raid on two Kentucky stations in June of 1780, and there was a clash along the Kentucky-Indiana portion of the Ohio River in mid-1781 in which he might have participated. From August to October of that year, Girty was recuperating from an injury he received in a fight. Return to text

⁴⁹Troubles with Indian tribes in the Old Northwest continued for almost another decade after 1786, and Girty was involved right up until the end. On November 3, 1791, for instance, Girty led Indians on a raid on General Arthur St. Clair's regulars and Kentucky militia. On August 20, 1794, the Indian hegemony was finally brought to an end at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Here, near present-day Maumee, Ohio, General "Mad" Anthony Wayne defeated the Indians decisively. Return to text

⁵⁰If Jane was indeed born in North Carolina, this, then, is about when and where her birth would have happened. The document in which Matthew relinquished his rights to the back pay passed through the hands of at least five other persons before it was finally redeemed by the state of South Carolina. Return to text

⁵¹There is a McCammon Creek in present-day Laurel County and Jackson County, Kentucky. There may be no connection whatsoever to Matthew McCammon, but as this is on a path to where he lived in Kentucky it is at least possible that he and his brothers tarried long enough in transit to lend their name to this creek. Return to text

⁵²The Dix River was originally "Dick's" River. The second of these tax records is dated August 29, 1800. For the location of McCammon's property in Jessamine County, see the USGS map for Wilmore/Kentucky and slides 12972-79, taken in 2008. Curd was a well-known figure and has a historical marker on his property. McCammon's property adjoined it. During the 19th century, a landmark railroad bridge – the highest in the United States – was built across the river at this point, and it is still in use.Return to text

⁵³Lexington, then the largest city in Kentucky, had just over 1,500 residents, and the other "cities" had about 500 inhabitants at most. Return to text

⁵⁴See the USGS map for Simpsonville/Kentucky for the location of McCammon's property in Shelby County and slides 12884-45 (2008) for the area where Bullskin Creek and Fox Run come together. Return to text

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