XIX. Neal

We now reach the pièce de résistance of this entire family history: the origins of Edward Neal, who married Matthew McCammon's daughter. Until very recently we knew almost nothing for certain about this man's origins and family. Before our first sighting of Edward Neal (as we have seen, a marriage bond in Jessamine County, Kentucky, in 1802), there seems to be no earlier reference to him in any document. The marriage bond indicates that he had reached maturity by the late 1790s, which might explain why we have no earlier documentation for Edward Neal. Beyond guesswork about his place of birth or his parents, though, we were as stymied as my grandfather had been half a century ago.¹

Indeed, we know little more about Edward Neal's presence in Kentucky even after 1802. The 1800 Kentucky census was among those lost when British troops burned the Capitol during the War of 1812, and Edward is not listed in early Kentucky tax records. Our only evidence that he remained in Kentucky after 1802 is the 1810 census, which shows him in Shelby County (created out of a portion of Jefferson County). Although there are plenty of Neals in Kentucky, no contemporary evidence links Edward to any one of them. Where did Edward Neal come from, and who was his father?

This mystery began to unravel in 1998, when two Neal researchers published a book on their ancestors, an Edward Neel (as he spelled it) of Logan County, Kentucky.² When this man died in 1815, his son, Benjamin, purchased portions of his father's estate from the other heirs. The book cites a document, not clearly identified but probably a deed, that names those heirs. Among the seven couples listed as heirs – five Neel males and two Neel females – are "Edward Neale and wife Jenny of Knox County, Indiana." (In 1815, Knox County included what would become Sullivan County two years later.) The book related some information about this Edward Neale of Indiana and his descendants. Some of that information was correct and some of it was not, but there was no mistaking the fact that a plausible link could be made between the man who was William Neal's father and the Edward Neel of Logan County, Kentucky.

I had seen a reference to this document, which I had discounted. First, our branch of the Neal family had no known connection to Logan County, which is located along the Tennessee border in the southwest part of Kentucky far from where our Neals had apparently resided. More importantly, the heir in question was identified as Edward Neal rather than as Thomas Edward Neal, the name by which my grandfather and other researchers of my Neal line knew William's father. I put the reference in a file where I keep a lot of quasi-useful information I have run across in the hope that it might lead somewhere, someday. This single piece of evidence was all we had to suggest that the two men were related – in and of itself not conclusive proof that they were father and son.

But the existence of this document, and what else we have learned about Edward Neel of Logan County since the book was published, did encourage descendants of both Edward Neals (the supposed father and son) to undergo DNA testing during early 2003. These tests showed a very close DNA match between these groups of descendants, establishing that Edward Neal of Sullivan County, Indiana, was almost certainly the son of EDWARD NEAL of Logan County, Kentucky.³ These results obliged us to view and evaluate the extant historical evidence differently than we once did.

To be sure, the book in question has some clearly incorrect or suspect information that gives us pause, although to their credit the authors have revised certain opinions, withdrawn certain conclusions, and corrected many of its errors and inconsistencies after coming into contact with the descendants of Edward Neal of Sullivan County, including myself. Among the initial errors that now seem to have been resolved is the identification of the wife of the younger Edward Neal (the authors thought she was Jane Wynn rather than Jane McCammon) and the listing of three earlier children for him that are unknown to researchers familiar with him.⁴ The book also estimates that Edward Neel of Logan County was born about 1750 and his son about 1763, which is very doubtful, but the authors have now revised their estimate for the birth of the earlier Edward to the more plausible period of 1740 to 1745.

For me at least, the last remaining stumbling block to accepting Edward Neel of Logan County as the father of Edward Neal of Sullivan County was the fact that the latter was remembered within our family as Thomas Edward Neal, even if documents did not show him with that first given name.⁵ How could this be? Might he have chosen to add "Thomas" to his original name of Edward, either because he liked its sound or wanted to honor someone – perhaps a relative or a friend named Thomas? Might he have used the name Thomas within the family but not otherwise? Or did someone simply remember Edward's name incorrectly? In my opinion, the last explanation makes the most sense, as all of those who referred to William's father as Thomas Edward Neal had the same source. She was one of his daughters, born in 1828, who evidently recorded his name in error – or whose account was misread by someone else.⁶ A dubious sole source that is found only as family lore must give way to unanimous documentary evidence – and the DNA findings.

With the DNA testing having resolved any questions about the name and parentage of Edward Neal of Sullivan County, let us consider what we know about his father, Edward Neel of Logan County. We believe this man arrived in Logan County, which was just opening to settlement, sometime before late 1798: on November 21 of that year, Edward bought 125 acres of second-rate land on Terrapin (or Tarpin) Creek on the south side of Pilot Knob.⁷ According to Edward's son, the Neals who came to Kentucky from South Carolina first lived in an "upper part" of Kentucky (where we assume his son Edward lived, near the McCammons, before his marriage in 1802). Based on evidence we will examine here, we can estimate the date of the move to northern Kentucky as 1795 to 1797. A search of nearly a dozen likely counties in Kentucky has turned up no documentary evidence of the presence of the elder Edward Neal in central and northern Kentucky, so his stay there was evidently brief before he obtained the grant in Logan County in 1798 and moved to Pilot Knob.⁸

Edward Neel is on the Logan County tax rolls first in 1799 (there is no extant tax list for 1798) and then every year thereafter through 1802. In most of these years he is shown with 122 acres – now described as "third rate" land – near the Red River in the tax district of Commissioner Chatham Ewing. (The Red River has several branches; most of the river remains in Logan County, whereas Neel's land was in the portion of that county that became Simpson County.) Neel had four horses in 1799 and five in years 1800 through 1802. We have no further information about Edward in Logan County, and unfortunately the 1800 census for Kentucky is lost.

In 1803, however, SARAH Neel is shown as the head of household – which had no adult males in it – at this same location, which suggests that her husband has died since the 1802 tax list was prepared. There is no tax data for 1804, but in 1805 this same property is listed under the name of Moses Neel, a son of Edward and Sarah. It is likely, therefore, that Sarah did not survive her husband for more than a year or so, but because these tax lists did not record the presence of any females unless they were heads of households we cannot be sure of this.⁹

The 1799 Logan County tax list indicates that there was one black male over 16 years of age in Edward Neel's household, but this person is not listed on subsequent tax lists. It is possible that Edward rented someone else's slave or hired a free black man to help him put his new land into farming, but that is only speculation. It is also possible, as some family lore recalls, that Edward Neel brought a slave with him from South Carolina to Kentucky. The South Carolina census for 1790, however, does not show any slaves in what appears to be Edward's household.

We have no further evidence of Edward Neel in Logan County, except perhaps for the 1810 census (the census for 1800 having been lost). The authors of the book on Edward suggest that he is the David Neill who is listed – among several of Edward's sons – on the 1810 census as 45 years of age or older, because there is no known David among the Neel clan there. In view of the younger age of the female in David's household, I think it is more likely that if Edward Neel were still living in 1820 he would be one of the two males 45 years old or older shown living with his elder son, Thomas, or his daughter, Nancy Stone. But given the sequence of names on the tax rolls, I believe it is much more likely that Edward died about 1803.

Family tradition is that Edward Neel was buried in Crab Orchard Springs Cemetery, Simpson County, Kentucky, but there is no record of such a cemetery. It is possible that he was buried in a crab orchard on his own property at Pilot Knob, or perhaps in some other cemetery unknown to us. One candidate is the cemetery of Pilot Knob church,¹⁰ which has outlived the church itself; near Edward Neel's property, it would have been a logical place for his burial if his family chose an established cemetery. We have no information whatsoever about his date of birth, but the evidence presented in this section suggests it was sometime during the 1740s.

We now turn our attention to Edward Neel's trail before he migrated to Kentucky during the 1790s. We start with South Carolina, where we know that a group of Neals (often O'Neals here) lived in Camden District – the same district, it should be remembered, where Matthew McCammon seems to have lived before moving to Kentucky during the 1780s. In South Carolina (where Edward's son Benjamin says he himself was born), we find evidence that a Thomas O'Neal owned property "on the Charleston Road" and on Fishing Creek – again, where some of the McCammon family is known to have resided. A plat map for this area during the mid-1790s shows Thomas O'Neal's property, which is adjacent to land owned by families with whom we know Edward Neal's siblings intermarried. There is no Edward Neal listed on this plat map, and neither is there any deed for him in any of the relevant counties (York, Chester, Lancaster, and Fairfield) that were later formed out of Camden District, and he is quite possibly the man who will later live in Logan County, Kentucky. There is, however, an Edmund O'Neal on the 1790 census in Fairfield County, Camden District, and he is probably the Edmand Oneel whose name appears on a property adjoining a plat surveyed in the Cedar Creek area of this county in 1791. Although there are other Neals and O'Neals in South Carolina at this time, they do not seem to be part of the family we are studying.¹¹

We will return to the South Carolina data when it comes to figuring out who Edward's father was, as this involves untangling a couple of men who might be the Thomas O'Neal living on Fishing Creek and creating a credible timeline for Edward Neal's life before he was in South Carolina. One thing we can be quite sure of is that he lived in Virginia from 1791 to 1794. Here – as a resident of Henry County – he bought 140 acres on both sides of the north fork of Spoon Creek (a location then in Henry County, out of which Patrick was created in 1791) from Jacob Adams, Jr., on April 5, 1791. Edward Oneal is not on the tax lists in Henry County in 1790 or earlier, which supports the belief he had arrived there in late 1790 or early 1791.

Edward's land was originally part of 458 acres patented by John Barker, whose surveyor's map for his patent is quite helpful in identifying its location today.¹² Edward is also on the tax list in Patrick County in June 1791, and in October of that year he assented to the marriage of his daughter in that county. There is no additional evidence about his time in this county until a deed of sale for the 140 acres dated September 4, 1794. This deed, on which Edward had made his mark, was recorded in March 1795. We presume Edward Neal left the county at that time, but again we will need to examine additional information before we can establish where he went in early 1795.

Here we arrive at a roadblock, for we have no information for this man for five or six years before 1791, and so we must skip those years for now and take a detour north. Our next earliest sighting of Edward, in 1782, locates him in Hampshire County, Virginia (now West Virginia), in the northern part of the state, where abundant family lore says that he and his children lived. We also find here several other Neals, in addition to Edward, and this information will be quite helpful when we come to considering the identity of Edward's father. The other Neals in Hampshire County include a Benjamin, a Hugh, and a Thomas. There is no deed in Hampshire County to show that Edward owned property there. But he is on tax lists in Abraham Hite's district between 1782 (the first year for which these lists exist) and 1785, after which he never appears again. This man appears to have several children, which is consistent with what we know about the Edward Neal who later lived in South Carolina and Kentucky. There is no other sign of Edward Neal in the records of Hampshire County or Frederick County, Virginia, from which (along with Augusta County) Hampshire County had been formed in 1752.¹³

Thus we can place Edward Neal in two counties in Virginia from about 1782 until 1785 (Hampshire) and 1791 to 1795 (Patrick), then in Kentucky from sometime during the mid-1790s through 1802. After studying the evidence, I believe Edward went to South Carolina with his father, who was most likely named Thomas, in 1785 and remained there until 1791, when we know he moved to Patrick County, Virginia. He probably left there for Kentucky after the weather broke early in 1795 – although we cannot discount the possibility that he returned to South Carolina for a few years after selling his Patrick County land in March 1795 but before departing a year or so later for Kentucky. Hence we must examine what we know about Thomas Neal before we can satisfy ourselves we can both fill the gap in Edward's known movements and identify a plausible father for him.

A Thomas Neal received a Northern Neck grant for 312 acres in Frederick County, Virginia, (out of which Hampshire would later be created) on October 14, 1774. Thomas Neal thus must have been born no later than the early 1750s and probably earlier. Records in Hampshire County mentioning Thomas exist for 1778 and 1779. He also appears on Abraham Hite's tax lists here for the years 1782 through 1785 – the same years as Edward appears on them. Based on the data on these lists, Thomas has fewer children than Edward but a larger contingent of horses and cattle, which seems to confirm that he is an older, well-established man whose children have left his household. The valleys of Hampshire County played a major role in Virginia's burgeoning cattle industry by fattening up the cattle before their sale for consumption north and east.

Thomas Neal and his wife Hetty sold their Hampshire County property, which adjoined that of Hite, sometime between May 8, 1784, and April 1786 – the documentation is unclear as to the exact time when the property changed hands. Hite's property extended from around the mouth of Mill Creek near Petersburg to the beginning of the unusual geological feature called "The Trough" on the South Branch of the Potomac River, and Thomas Neal's must have been near here. It is described both in 1779 and now as being located on Flag Meadows and Twin Mill Run, neither of which can be positively identified today.¹⁴

Thus we see a Thomas Neal who seems to live in – and leave – Hampshire County at about the same time Edward Neal does. Could this be a father and son combination? Are these two men still associated in South Carolina? Thomas Neal apparently obtained his land on Fishing Creek in January 1785, when 102 acres was surveyed and platted for him. It is this property that is shown, with Thomas O'Neal's name on it, on a modern plat map describing landowners and their land parcels in this area during the mid-1790s. Meanwhile, a Thomas Neal purchased 89 acres in this same area in 1793, then in 1797 sold both it and the parcel of 102 acres that Thomas had obtained in 1785. After selling these properties, this Thomas Neal went to live near Edward Neal in Logan County, Kentucky.

When this man sold the 89 acres in 1797, his wife Esther was also listed on the deed. This suggests her family had earlier held an interest in the property (was it a wedding present?), and this is confirmed by the fact that the couple sold it to a member of her family. The woman was Esther Murray, who in 1787 had married a Thomas Neal, identifiable as a man born in Hampshire County, Virginia, in 1767 – in other words, an older brother of the Edward Neal who married Jane McCammon in 1802. Clearly this Thomas was too young to be the man of that name who had obtained the 102 acres on Fishing Creek in early 1785. He must have accompanied his (and presumably Edward's) father named Thomas, when the Neals relocated from Hampshire County to South Carolina about 1785.

Because another document dated July 1785 refers to "Mrs. Neel's line" on this part of Fishing Creek, it would seem that the elder Thomas Neal from Hampshire County died in 1785. His wife may not have survived him long, as there is no sign of her on the 1800 South Carolina census, but she might be living with a relative and so not listed by name. Perhaps it was her death about 1790 that led Edward Neal to leave South Carolina for Patrick County, Virginia, the next year. If the younger Thomas inherited the 102 acre parcel he could sell it as well in 1797 – and without his wife's agreement.¹⁵ Confirming this explanation, we see in South Carolina records a reference to the estate of Thomas Neel in mid-1785, though this man has "Jr." after his name.

To sum up: my conclusion is that the patriarch of this family, Thomas Neal, and several of his sons, including Edward and several of his brothers, departed Hampshire County for South Carolina in late 1784 or early 1785. Thomas died in the latter year, presumably not long after arriving in South Carolina. Edward remained in that state, probably living with or near his mother and perhaps some of the younger brothers, including Thomas (who was 18 years old in 1785). Young Thomas then married (1787) and purchased land (1793) with the help of his new wife's Murray family. After the late Thomas Neal's widow also died, sometime not long after the 1790 census, her son Edward decided – for reasons unknown to us – to relocate to Patrick County in 1791. Here he remained until March 1795, after which, I believe, he went directly to northern Kentucky. (Although it is possible that Edward Neal and his family returned to South Carolina for a short time before traveling to Kentucky, this seems improbable to me.) This scenario accounts for both Edward and his father, Thomas, and also for Edward's brother named Thomas – who is found in Logan County, Kentucky, after he and Esther sold both Neal properties: the 89 acres they had bought in 1793 and the original Neal parcel of 102 acres.¹⁶

We now turn to the period before Thomas and Edward Neal first come to our notice in Hampshire County, Virginia. In view of the fact that long before the 1780s several men named Neal are observed in the area that would ultimately become Frederick County and then Hampshire County, Thomas himself could have been born there during the first half of the 18th century. A Hugh Neal, who bore a name often found later in our Neal line, was living here at least from 1744 through 1748 and died in Frederick County in 1751, and he would seem to be a viable candidate to be Thomas's father. But, lacking additional information, we can only speculate about whether or not Edward and his own parents lived in this part of Virginia during the first half of the 1700s.

Earlier documentary evidence that might identify the line of Edward Neal and his father is even more scant, unfortunately, but the book on the Edward Neal of Logan County cites some family lore that might focus our guesswork. One tradition is that Edward was originally from Middleton Township in Pennsylvania. There is no such township in Pennsylvania, but there is a Middletown Township in Bucks County just north of Philadelphia. Not only is this area a plausible source for the Neal family, especially if it came to America as part of the 18th-century Scotch-Irish migration, but the tradition is consistent with the one in our branch of the Neal family that our ancestors were "from Pennsylvania." Other Neals in southeastern Pennsylvania during the first half of the 1700s seem to be concentrated in Chester County. They include a William Neal in Londonderry Township (1750s and 1760s), an Edward Neal in West Nantmeal Township (1753), and a Hugh O'Neal in Uwchlan Township (also 1753).

Another family tradition the book reports is that Edward Neal was a veteran of the 1st Pennsylvania Regiment during the American Revolution, during which time he was wounded at the Battle of Green Spring Plantation, an important clash near Williamsburg, Virginia, on July 5-6, 1781. Because he died three decades before Congress enacted the first pension statute, we do not have the benefit of any information Edward Neal himself would have submitted with his application to verify this tradition or to flesh out the remainder of his service during the American Revolution.¹⁷

Surviving records do show, however, that an Edward O'Neal served as a private in what was called the Pennsylvania Continental Line, specifically the 1st Pennsylvania Regiment under Colonel James Chambers and Major James Moore, at least from October 1776 through January 1, 1783, and, it would appear, also in the 2nd Regiment from then until November 3, 1783, when he received a gratuity Congress voted to soldiers who had served through the end of the Revolutionary War. An Edward O'Neal is also listed as a private in the 2nd Pennsylvania Regiment, no dates being shown, but the fact that Moore transferred to the 2nd Regiment on January 1, 1783, makes one think that O'Neal also joined that regiment at the same time. An Edward O'Neal, possibly this same man, was placed in the Invalid Regiment under Colonel Lewis Nicola for a couple of months in late 1783 because he was unfit for normal service. The Invalid Regiment was drawn from the hospitals and camps from Philadelphia and its environs and served as a home guard.

We can only speculate whether or not this Private Edward O'Neal was the same man as the one from whom our Neal family derives, but because that possibility exists we should pause to summarize this war veteran's long and impressive record during the American Revolution. The 1st Pennsylvania Regiment was recruited in areas west and north of Philadelphia. The company of Colonel Chambers himself was formed in the part of Cumberland County that later became Franklin County; other companies were raised in counties ranging from York to Northampton (created out of Bucks, where as we have seen tradition places our Edward Neal). Edward O'Neal would have joined his regiment more than a year after it had taken part in the American siege of British forces in Boston during the summer of 1775 and then, the next summer, in the disastrous Battle of Long Island. We do not know which of the 1st Regiment's eight companies he served in, and because he was a later recruit he could have been residing in some other section of Pennsylvania when he joined.

O'Neal's first taste of combat probably would have been the October 1776 Battle of White Plains, New York, which occurred the same month his term of enlistment began. The next month the 1st Regiment fought at Fort Washington and some of its men were captured. That Christmas O'Neal crossed the Delaware River with Washington's army and with his colleagues played a key role in defeating the Hessians at Trenton. His unit fought next near Princeton. Then, after wintering at Morristown, it was engaged (as part of General Anthony Wayne's division) in April 1777 at Piscataway, Somerset Court House, and New Brunswick, New Jersey. That September, the 1st Regiment served at Brandywine and Chadd's Ford in Delaware, then at Paoli and Germantown outside Philadelphia (October) and at Whitemarsh before going to winter quarters at Valley Forge. The regiment spent most of 1778 near the New Jersey-New York border, then had another battle (June) at Monmouth Court House. It spent the winter of 1778-79 at Middlebrook, and during the first half of 1779 the regiment remained in New Jersey except for accompanying General Wayne on his successful attack at Stony Point, New York, in July of that year.

Meanwhile, one of the 1st Regiment's companies – it might have been O'Neal's – had been detached twice, once to be part of General Daniel Morgan's reinforcements that took part in the Battle of Saratoga in New York and then to form part of General John Sullivan's expedition against the Iroquois in the same state; that campaign ended with Sullivan's victory at the Battle of Newtown Creek (Elmira) in August 1779. That fall, the regiment as a whole formed part of Wayne's garrison at West Point, after which it wintered again at Morristown. During early 1780 the regiment took part in an attack on a British-held blockhouse at Bull's Ferry (Bergen Heights) on the Hudson River. Ordered to withdraw without having taken the stronghold, the 1st Regiment impetuously disobeyed and resumed the hopeless assault. The significant loss it suffered by disobeying orders led General Washington to describe their performance as "intemperate valor."

That September, the regiment accompanied their Commander-in-Chief when he marched to Hartford, Connecticut, to meet the French troops that had recently arrived to assist the American cause. Heading south in advance of his men, Washington learned of Benedict Arnold's treason. He ordered the 1st Regiment (among others in General William Irvine's brigade) to join him at Tappan, New York, so that he could defend the vital post at West Point if the British made use of the intelligence they had gained and chose to attack it. A remarkable forced march – sixteen miles in four hours – brought Irvine's units to the rescue. (During this time, Edward O'Neal's service records state that he was "sick in the huts" during September and October 1780, so he may have sat out some of these movements.)

On January 1, 1781, however, the 1st Regiment was among the Pennsylvania Line's units that mutinied because they were not given the discharges they had earned with their years of service and had not been paid. Most of the soldiers, in fact, intended to re-enlist and get the incentives now being offered new recruits. They marched on Philadelphia, where Congress sat, but the mutiny was swiftly put down and the discharges were granted; more than half of the veterans then left for home. As a result, the 1st Regiment (along with the others) was all but disbanded and became little more than a paper organization. Those veterans who remained in the army were formed, irrespective of their official assignments, into three provisional battalions that would soon be sent to fight in the South in order to counter a British offensive that was underway. O'Neal thus found himself back under Wayne's command, and – after another short-lived protest over pay by the Pennsylvania Line at York, Pennsylvania – also found himself helping Wayne to harass Lord Cornwallis's army as it moved from Charlottesville, Virginia, toward the coast. It was during this operation that O'Neal was wounded at the Battle of Green Spring Plantation, just west of Williamsburg.

This battle came as General Lafayette was pursuing General Cornwallis in the latter's retreat that would become his surrender at Yorktown. It occurred just above the entrance to Jamestown Island, mostly between the plantation and Powhatan Creek. The Pennsylvania Line under General Wayne, some 750 strong, engaged Cornwallis on July 5, met the brunt of Cornwallis's attack on the next day, and charged the much larger British forces near the Harris Plantation before retreating. General Lafayette and others praised the fighting of Wayne's outnumbered units. Edward O'Neal was one of his provisional battalion's five casualties (three of them privates) in the battle, during which the three battalions had lost a total of seventeen killed, wounded, and captured.

Not knowing the nature or seriousness of O'Neal's wound, we cannot say whether he accompanied Wayne further south after Cornwallis surrendered (in October). During this later campaign, Wayne forced the British garrisons out of Savannah and then Charleston. If Edward O'Neal was involved, and if he is the man who later married Matthew McCammon's daughter, it is striking to realize that he and McCammon were not so far apart geographically at this time. This Edward O'Neal's wartime service in South Carolina might also explain how it happened that our Edward Neal came to live in that state just a few years later.¹⁸

Edward O'Neal (assuming the several soldiers with that name listed above were all the same man, since the dates of service do not overlap) appeared in a register showing payments made for active service during 1780 through 1783. The amount paid him, for which he signed in person on November 22, 1783, was approximately $291 – not including another $9.63 paid in shillings for the time during March through May 1781 when he was sick at Yorktown, plus interest on these amounts calculated from various dates. Other records indicate that Pennsylvania deemed Edward O'Neal eligible for what was called "donated land" in the northwestern part of that state (to be given to ex-soldiers in lieu of payment for their military service); there is no indication in the records, however, that Neal ever actually claimed any such land, which was distributed by lottery during the mid-1780s and later.

In the end, whether this Pennsylvania soldier named Edward O'Neal is in fact the Edward Neal of Logan County we are studying in this section cannot be determined on this evidence alone. On the one hand, this soldier seems to have been still on active (or, briefly, invalid) duty when we think that the Edward Neal of Logan County is living in Hampshire County, Virginia, and he also personally signed the receipts for his payment in November 1783. On the other hand, Neal could have relocated his family to northern Virginia – not so far from Philadelphia via the Great Road – while the war was winding down (the climactic event occurred at Yorktown in October 1781 and Edward is first seen in Hampshire County, Virginia, in 1782), and he remained in uniform in order to receive the full amount due to him, after which he joined them there. The timing – it was not long after Private O'Neal's final payment that the similarly named man in Hampshire County decided to pull up stakes and move further south – would be consistent with his use of Hampshire County as a sort of temporary residence. Did payment of back wages from his Revolutionary War service in fact give Edward the capital with which to make such a move further south?

There is no inherent conflict between Edward Neal's military service and his fathering the second five of his ten known children between 1776 and about 1785, when his last child is thought to have been born. If the family was still living in Pennsylvania, he could have returned home on furloughs and impregnated his wife then. Alternatively, she could have been a camp follower (not necessarily a derogatory term in those years) from time to time who provided various services – principally cooking, laundering, and mending of clothes – to the army both while it was in permanent camp and when it was in the field. Still, it would appear that Edward Neal's military service overlapped somewhat with the civilian life he would resume after the war was officially over.

Looking at how the victorious American army was being dissolved during this same period shows us, though, that Edward Neal might have been "on duty" in name only during much of 1783 and into 1784. From the beginning of 1783, the new Congress was demobilizing and disbanding the small permanent military force it had eventually authorized during the Revolution when volunteer militia units alone proved inadequate to win the war. Contributing factors in this elimination of such a "standing army" were its costs to a new national political system as yet unable to secure adequate income and the continuing worries that such a professional army might pose a threat to liberty and to democratic government.

From the start of 1783, therefore, the new American government decided to seek no new enlistments and not to extend any existing enlistments. The relevance to Edward Neal's situation was that nearly all serving soldiers whose terms did not run into 1784 were furloughed during the previous year and were sent home without any expectation that they would return to duty. By June 1784, when the threat of Indian warfare in Ohio caused a reversal of this course, the permanent United States Army had been reduced to just 55 artillerymen at West Point and 25 infantrymen at Fort Pitt. Thus Edward Neal, while nominally on "active duty" but furloughed during 1783, might well have been enjoying the freedom to move his family south, returning to Pennsylvania late that year to sign the receipts for his payment.

According to another tradition passed down in a part of his family, Edward married a woman named Sarah D. Ege, reportedly from North Carolina, perhaps sometime during the 1760s. Many modern researchers (including the two authors of the book we have been discussing) now doubt this tradition since there is no record of such a marriage and the known women bearing that name can be accounted for. In addition, no scenario we can imagine would place Edward Neal anywhere near North Carolina during the 1760s. (It bears noting that Patrick County, Virginia, borders North Carolina, but of course Edward Oneel is not found in that county until three decades later, long after the younger Edward Neal was born.) There is no documentary evidence to indicate whether or not this woman actually was the mother of Edward Neal of Sullivan County, Indiana, but the possibility bears inspection here.

I myself could find no record of any woman named Sarah Ege, but an Ege researcher called my attention to a German family that bears inspection. Bernhard Ege and his family arrived in Philadelphia on September 20, 1738, from Württemburg via Rotterdam on the Nancy and Friendship. Jacob, at 25 years of age evidently the eldest son in this family, would soon marry Maria Dorothea Scheerer, daughter of a general, Nicholas Scheerer, who with his family arrived in Philadelphia a few days after the Eges did. The Scheerers, Dorothea and her betrothed Jacob among them, almost immediately set off for the upper James River area of Virginia owned by William Byrd.

Jacob Ege became a silversmith in the Shockoe Bottom area of Richmond, where his house is now the Edgar Allen Poe Museum, and his and Dorothea's descendants lived in other parts of Virginia and further south as well. A female among their own children, assuming they began having them during the early 1740s, could have been the Sarah D. Ege who is said to have married Edward Neal during the mid-1760s. Explaining why this Pennsylvanian would venture into Virginia during those years and then return north sometime before the onset of the American Revolution presents some challenges that seem pretty daunting, however.

Another son of Bernhard Ege and his wife (whose name is unknown) bore the name George Michael, who was 23 years old in 1738; he remained in Philadelphia and sometime later changed his last name to Wood. A third son, Adam, resided in Amwell Township of Hunterdon County, New Jersey, but apparently had no issue. A final Ege brother, Martyn, is listed among the residents of Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1757, but since he was not yet a teenager in 1738 he would not be a potential father for a female who would marry Edward Neal only a few years later.

If Edward Neal did indeed meet and marry a woman named Ege (presumably, based on their children's ages, during the mid-1760s), it seems almost certain he would have done so somewhere in southeastern Pennsylvania. Here George Michael Ege, before he changed his name, would be the only viable candidate of this Ege family we have been looking at, but the little we know about him does not encourage our hopes we have found how Edward Neal happened to have a wife named Ege. If George Michael Ege was in fact Sarah's father, though, we might have a clue why Edward and his wife would move south after the Revolution, as Ege relatives in Virginia and further south might have encouraged them to.

It may be, of course, that Sarah was the daughter of another Ege male whose existence we are totally unaware of; after all, many persons arrived in America but left no records of their arrivals. But in light of the parsimony of Ege evidence of any kind, it seems prudent to wonder if the woman in question was actually a member of an Edge family instead. This name is considerably more common than Ege, and the two are easily confused. Edges can be found in southeastern Pennsylvania as early as 1702. At least three Edge males were transported to America during the 1700s and thus could be ancestors of Sarah Edge. One of the Edge families lived in Philadelphia County, which at that time adjoined Chester County, where we know several Neal families resided. In addition, members of one of these Edge families can be found in western Virginia at about the time Edward Neal and his wife relocated there (sometime around 1770, perhaps), and it seems plausible that he might have met and then married an Edge female in either place.

I find especially intriguing an Edge family of Orange County, Virginia, from which Frederick County would be formed between 1738 and 1743, when the first county court was held. The road orders for Orange County show that in 1741 there was a road near Opequon Creek that ran from John Neill's Mill Branch to Spout Run near Edge's cabin and thence to the King's Road from Joist Hite's place to the Shenandoah River. This description would place Mill Branch in what is now Frederick County and so would position an Edge family reasonably close to where Edward and Thomas Neal (and perhaps others) would appear during the 1760s or 1770s: Hampshire County, just west of Frederick County. Whether or not this Edge family remained in that area is unclear.

In sum, we see a man, probably born in Pennsylvania during the 1740s, who – perhaps after serving in the War of Independence – lived in western Virginia (possibly with his parents) before he headed further south. This scenario would place Edward Neal in Hampshire County at about the time when his son Edward might have been born there, and then places him and his family in the same part of South Carolina as Matthew McCammon and his children, including Jane. It is possible, therefore, that the Edward Neel-Jane McCammon marriage in Kentucky in 1802 was the result of an interfamily relationship and not just the start of one.

What of the ancestry of Edward Neal – or O'Neal, as we should probably think of him in light of the fact that the earliest references we have to him almost always show his name to be O'Neal? According to more family lore also included in the book referred to, he was the son of the Neal male – still bearing the name O'Neal at that point – who crossed the seas from County Antrim in Northern Ireland to North America sometime during the first half of the 18th century. This earlier Neal's given name is not known but may have been, the lore tells us, either Charles or Edward. The lore also relates this boy's abduction as an 8- or 12-year-old in Ireland and his subsequent service as a cabin boy (or perhaps midshipman) aboard a ship before a term of indentured servitude in America. Other family legends describe this Neal's link to Irish royalty, his kidnapping by Spanish pirates, and his brief stay in Kingston, Jamaica, en route to the North American colonies. Such legends are so common among immigrant families, though, that they cannot be regarded as trustworthy without additional evidence. (In truth, there were plenty of Neals in America from as early as 1620, and we cannot be entirely sure that our Neal line did not actually derive from one of these early American Neals.)

It is even conceivable that the McCammons and the Neals had known one another in Ulster before either family came to America. We know that there were plenty of Neals and O'Neals in Northern Ireland, both among the Irish and among the Scotch-Irish and English who were planted there.¹⁹

What of the ancestry of Edward Neal – or O'Neal, as we should probably think of him in light of the fact that the earliest references we have to him almost always show his name to be O'Neal? According to more family lore also included in the book referred to, he was the son of the Neal male – still bearing the name O'Neal at that point - who crossed the seas from County Antrim in Northern Ireland to North America sometime during the first half of the 18th century. This earlier Neal's given name is not known but may have been, the lore tells us, either Charles or Edward. The lore also relates this boy's abduction as an 8- or 12-year-old in Ireland and his subsequent service as a cabin boy (or perhaps midshipman) aboard a ship before a term of indentured servitude in America. Other family legends describe this Neal's link to Irish royalty, his kidnapping by Spanish pirates, and his brief stay in Kingston, Jamaica, en route to the North American colonies. Such legends are so common among immigrant families, though, that they cannot be regarded as trustworthy without additional evidence.²⁰ (In truth, there were plenty of Neals in America from as early as 1620, and we cannot be entirely sure that our Neal line did not actually derive from one of these early American Neals.)²¹

One surviving historical document, however, makes us wonder if there is some truth in what has been passed down within the Neal family. This document tells us that an Edward Neal from Ireland began a four-year term of indentured servitude to Richard Bevan on June 5, 1746, after arriving in Philadelphia aboard the Delaware. Not only does this historical fact dovetail with one of the family legends about how the immigrant Neal got to America but it puts a plausible father of Edward Neal of Logan County in Pennsylvania during the decade when Edward was born.

But even if we do positively identify Edward's father and mother, there will always be their ancestry to challenge us: ultimately, research on each family in one's heritage inevitably reaches the same (one hopes, temporary) "vanishing point," and so the work is never done. The true story of my Neal family is not yet fully known, and the odds seem against our learning much more about it – although a determined researcher never gives up hope! Complicating matters is the revelation, from recent DNA testing, that the DNA of our line of Neals does not match the O'Neal haplotype – or that of any of the Neal families in Scotland. The working hypothesis that seeks to explain this phenomenon is that a man with a different surname evidently fathered a child with a Neal/O'Neal woman, whose surname the child and his descendants continued to use in future generations. Further DNA testing may clarify this situation or, perhaps, even identify the haplotype and surname of this unknown male, though it is unlikely we will ever be able to put our fingers on when this event occurred.

For now, however, we reach the end of our tale. Picking up where my grandfather left off in 1956, I have learned a great deal. I have made progress, verifying existing information and discovering new information – whole new families, in fact – that none of us ever knew about. Even though I have finally achieved the immediate goal that my grandfather set out to reach half a century ago by identifying the father of the man he knew as Thomas Edward Neal, there is still much – for me, or for my own descendants if they wish – to work on. So be it.

Those things which came under the notice of my own observation, I have been explicit and just in a recital of. Those which I have gathered from report, I have been particularly cautious not to augment, but collected the opinions of the several intelligencers, and selected from the whole the most probable and consistent account.

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7/16/10

Notes

¹There are plenty of Kentucky Neals who might be thought candidates for Edward Neal's father. The Virginia tax rolls for 1787, for instance (which include some areas that later became Kentucky), list more than fifty men with the name Neal – however spelled. Several of them bore the first names of Thomas or William or Edward, the most likely names of Edward Neal's father. The first Neal I have encountered in Kentucky is a Barnet Neal, one of 88 persons, mostly from Harrodsburg, who had bought land from the Transylvania Land Company. He signed a petition in 1776 protesting the actions of the company and asking Virginia to absorb Transylvania. Return to text

²It was about the time of Edward Neal's move to Kentucky, judging from a contemporary family Bible in which the letter "O" in O'Neal names had been erased, that these O'Neals began to call themselves Neals. Return to text

³It remains possible, although quite unlikely, that both men named Edward Neal were themselves descendants of a common ancestor, but the other evidence in this section argues against this possibility. Return to text

⁴ Two of those putative earlier children – all three of whom grew to adulthood – bore names virtually the same as two offspring we know Edward and Jane later did have, which seems unlikely. Even more significantly, none of the three earlier children appear in Edward and Jane's household on the census in 1810 or 1820. It is difficult to imagine Edward Neal having a first family totally unaware of his later second one and vice versa. As it turns out, there is no firm evidence linking these other children to the younger Edward Neal, and the authors now concede that they may well be children of a sibling instead. Return to text

⁵ In addition, it seemed noteworthy that William Neal named his first son Thomas, which often (though not always) indicated the name of the boy's paternal grandfather.

⁶ It may be significant that this daughter's next-oldest sibling was Thomas Neal. Born in 1824, this boy died in 1841, just a few years before his father. Perhaps this is how the confusion arose. Return to text

⁷This area is now part of Simpson County, Kentucky. Terrapin Creek is now called Spring Creek, and Edward Neel's property lies on the upper reaches of one branch. (It is interesting to note that James Bowie was born on Spring Creek in 1796, perhaps about the time Edward Neel arrived there.) The act that authorized Neel to receive the land in Logan County was meant to encourage settlers on the south side of the Green River; it was enacted in 1797. Neel's "second-rate" land would have cost him $50. See the USGS map for Auburn/Kentucky for the location of his property near Pilot Knob and slides 12945-50 (2008) for views of Edward Neel's land.

⁸Knowing that Matthew McCammon and his family, including Jane whom the younger Edward Neal would marry in 1802, had left for Kentucky by the mid-1780s, we wonder if young Edward (then barely in his teens) might have accompanied them. This was as much as a decade before Edward's father and most of his brothers seem to have made the same journey, which in their case led them to a part of Kentucky some distance south and west of the more mature and populous part of Kentucky where the younger Edward was living. Does this early departure from South Carolina explain why the younger Edward lived in central Kentucky rather than near his father and brothers, and then, perhaps alone within his family, moved to Indiana while they remained in Kentucky? Did he elect to accompany the McCammons out of a sense of adventure, because he was unhappy living with his parents, or because he did not want to risk losing to another suitor Matthew's daughter Jane whom he would marry in 1802? These are questions we cannot answer with the present evidence. Return to text

⁹The authors of the book on Edward suggest that on the 1810 census is the David Neill who is listed – among several of Edward's sons – as 45 years of age or older, because there is no known David among the Neel clan there. In view of the younger age of the female in David's household, I think it is more likely that if Edward Neel were still living in 1810 he would be one of the two males 45 years old or older shown living with his elder son, Thomas, or his daughter, Nancy Stone. But given the sequence of names on the tax rolls, I believe it is much more likely that Edward died about 1803. Return to text

¹⁰See slide 12951 for a 2008 view of the Pilot Knob Church cemetery. Return to text

¹¹Fishing Creek can be found on a number of USGS maps, principally the ones for Catawba/South Carolina, Edgemoor/South Carolina, and Rock Hill West/South Carolina. In my judgment, the most likely location of Thomas Neal's land is where the last of these three maps shows Robertson Road crossing Fishing Creek. William Neel served in Wade Hampton's South Carolina Regiment at the same time Matthew McCammon did, a Charles Neale fought at the Battle of Eutaw Springs, and there are other Neals among the Scotch-Irish in South Carolina. Any of these men might have been related to the older Edward Neal. See digital images 00842-00854 and 00866-00868 for views of Fishing Creek in 2010. See digital images 0759-00863 for 2010 views of the Cedar Creek area. Return to text

¹²See the USGS map for Stuart/Virginia and digital images 00786-00798, taken in 2010, for the area of Spoon Creek where Edward Neal's property lay. Return to text

¹³Hite's district ran from the mouth of the South Fork up the South Branch of the Potomac River to the county line. An Edward Neal of Southampton County, Virginia, is on the 1787 tax list for Hardy County, Virginia, but this is probably another man. Return to text

¹⁴Thus Thomas Neal lived not far from where Abraham Vanderpool had lived three decades earlier. This area was making the transition from Hampshire to Hardy County in 1785; some of it is in Grant County today. Return to text

¹⁵If Thomas Neal died soon after arriving in South Carolina, this may explain the confusion about the date of sale of the Hampshire property. The sale was said to have been made in May 1784 but a second document gives the date as April 1786. Return to text

¹⁶Searches in more than twenty counties in Virginia and the Carolinas have turned up a few other Neals during the 1760s through the 1780s who conceivably could fit into the line we are exploring but seem to be long shots. One was an Edmund who received two large land grants in Rowan County, North Carolina, in 1778 and 1779; oddly, these grants were arranged by Martin Ring, also an ancestor of ours. Another was a miller named Thomas Neal, of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina (1762). There is even a Thomas/Edward father and son in Montgomery County, Virginia, from 1777 to 1790; Edward was in the militia, and payments for his service were to be made to Thomas, which appears to indicate there was a father/son relationship. There were also numerous other Neals living along the Broad River in South Carolina's Ninety-Six District, south and west of the Camden District, but their given names and physical movements do not seem like the right ones for the Neal family we are studying. A Thomas Neal of Chester County, South Carolina, sold one acre to the Sandy River Baptist Church in 1803, but this may be after the Thomas Neal discussed in the text had left for Kentucky and so may be the action of a different man. Return to text

¹⁷An Edward Neal in the Third Pennsylvania Regiment was on the payroll for Byles's Company, under Colonel Lambert Cadwalader, in Philadelphia on February 24, 1780. The notation "French Church" may be where the regiment was camped. Colonel James Chambers commanded the 1st Regiment from April 12, 1777, until he retired on January 17, 1781. Major Moore served from September 20, 1777, through December 31, 1782, when, as noted in the text, he transferred to the 2nd Regiment. Return to text

¹⁸Other officers under whom O'Neal is said to have served include Colonel D[aniel]. Brodhead and Colonel Richard Hampton. The former was primarily associated with the Eighth Pennsylvania Regiment, but one company of the 1st Regiment did accompany Brodhead's force that marched up the Allegheny River from Fort Pitt, destroying Iroquois villages during the summer of 1779, and so it is possible this is when O'Neal served under Brodhead, who was not associated with the 1st or 2nd Regiments themselves. Hampton's association with the 1st or 2nd Pennsylvania Regiments cannot be verified. Return to text

¹⁹These English families came from the counties between London and Wales, as well as from the northern counties of England. A large number of them were planted in County Antrim. Return to text

¹⁸My limited research turned up plenty of early Neals, of whom the following are examples. A Captain Neal came to New Hampshire in 1620. John Neale, a merchant, arrived in Virginia in 1632, and Jonathan Neal was transported to Virginia in 1635. Several Thomas Neals were in Virginia during the 1730s and 1740s, and there was even a Thomas Neall living near the Chastains in Manakintown, Virginia, around 1720. It bears notice that the Edward Neal of Sullivan County, Indiana, named his first son William, and that at least three men named William Neal arrived in Philadelphia between 1725 and 1760. Return to text

¹⁹These English families came from the counties between London and Wales, as well as from the northern counties of England. A large number of them were planted in County Antrim. Return to text

²⁰The supposed Neal link to royalty is based on a will that Edward Neal is said to have received while he lived in Logan County, Kentucky. This will, no trace of which exists today, was reported (by an 18th-century Neal who claimed to have seen it) to have shown that Edward was the son of Sir Daniel O'Neill and heir of "The Great Hugh," Prince Hugh O'Neill of Ulster. This will is further said to have stated that Edward Neal was abducted at age 8 years old and taken to America. Additional legends state that the family lived at Strawberry Hill at Castle Ridge in County Antrim, places I have been unable to locate. All these legends are very old within the family and may hint at the actual circumstances of how Edward Neal or his father arrived in America, but without documentary evidence we cannot do more than speculate about their accuracy. Other Neals have similar stories, it should be noted, including links to The Great Hugh and to an Irish castle (Shane's Castle, in one instance).

²¹ My limited research in early records turned up plenty of early Neals, of whom the following are examples. A Captain Neal came to New Hampshire in 1620. John Neale, a merchant, arrived in Virginia in 1632, and Jonathan Neal was transported to Virginia in 1635. Several Thomas Neals were in Virginia during the 1730s and 1740s, and there was even a Thomas Neall living near the Chastains in Manakintown, Virginia, around 1720. It bears notice that the Edward Neal of Sullivan County, Indiana, named his first son William, since at least three men named William Neal arrived in Philadelphia between 1725 and 1760. Return to text

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