Joseph Hart and His Descendants
by Rev. Charles C. Hart, 1901
Condensed, Edited and Updated by Bill Anderson, 1996
Condensed further by Denise Waterworth, contact Bill for the entire transcript.
Submitted by Carole Dick
Bill Anderson
601 Pennsylvania Ave. NW # 502
Washington, DC 20004
weanderson@evergo.net
Joseph & Thomas Hart
About the year 1735, a Mr. Hart and his wife, both Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, departed from Wales to emigrate to America. They left their native land because of persecution directed against Presbyterians and Covenanters. The voyage to America took more than four months, and during that time Mr. Hart died, and his wife gave birth to a son whom she named Thomas. The widow and child landed at Bordentown, New Jersey, where the mother brought up her son until he reached the age of manhood.
The son, Thomas Hart, married a Mrs. Nancy Butler; her maiden name had been Nancy Stout; and she had two brothers, John and St. Ledger Stout. All four of them moved together from Bordentown, New Jersey to Loudon County, Virginia, where on June 16, 1761 Thomas and Nancy had a son whom they named Joseph.
Joseph was his mother's only child, and she died while he was an infant. After the death of Joseph's mother, his father placed him with a kind neighbor, and the boy lived there until he was sixteen years old. When he was about ten or eleven years old, the boy became a Christian, and his faith gave him great character which lasted throughout his life.
In the meantime, Joseph's father married again and he and his wife had three children: Isaac, Alexander and Jane. Isaac became a farmer who married, lived and died in Monroe County, Tennessee. Alexander moved to Georgia, where he became a successful cotton planter and raised a large family that eventually scattered throughout the West and Southwest. Jane remained close to her half-brother Joseph, and we'll discuss her story a little later.
In the early part of 1777, Joseph Hart's foster father was drafted into the Army of the Revolution from Loudon County, Virginia. Joseph volunteered to join the army in his foster father's place. He reasoned, "You have a family, and should you be killed, your family will have no protector. You took care of me in my childhood; I will now be your substitute in the army, for I have no one dependent on me."
Joseph Hart served in Captain Holcomb's company of the 4th VA Regiment, commanded by Col. Thomas Elliot, and also in Capt. Thomas Ridley's company of the Virginia Regiment, commanded by Col. Robert Lawson, Revolutionary War. Joseph's name first appears on the rolls of the 4th VA Regiment for April 1777, and it appears also on the subsequent rolls until he is reported "Discharged, February 16, 1778."
In September 1777, Capt. Holcomb's company was engaged in a moonlight battle with some British and Tories near Guilford Courthouse, South Carolina. In this battle, many of the privates were either killed or wounded, and the muster roll of the company was lost. It was after this battle that Joseph began serving in Capt. Ridley's company, commanded by Col. Lawson.
Joseph was wounded in the right hip by a musket ball. After the battle he was placed on a horse and along with several other wounded soldiers he was taken to a barn two miles away where he lay until morning. He wore buckskin breeches, and when the surgeon came to examine him, he found the right leg of his this garment so stiff with blood that it could not be removed until it was cut from top to bottom. The wound was so severe that Joseph was found unfit for further military service. The ball had lodged deep in his groin and was not removed; so for the rest of his life Joseph carried British lead in his body. His condition meant that he was never afterward able to do a day's hard labor, but still he was very active, even up to old age.
After his discharge from the Army, Joseph returned home to Virginia. But Joseph wasn't happy in Loudon County, where slavery existed. Joseph's Christian principles had convinced him that slavery was a wrong to his fellow man and therefore a sin against God. When he was nineteen years old, he left Loudon County, Virginia and moved to Tygert's Valley in Greene County, Virginia. When the slave-holders moved in, Joseph left the area, moving to Washington County, Virginia.
Here, in 1788 at the age of 27, he married a young lady named Nancy Shanklin, and their first son was born in 1789. But then the slave-holding planters began moving into Washington County, and Joseph started looking around for another place to live. In the hope that the colony of Tennessee would enter the Union as a free state, he made a journey to Blount County. in East Tennessee. He liked the area, so in the spring of 1790 Joseph took his wife and child and his half-sister Jane, and moved into the area that is now Maryville, Tennessee.
It was little rougher in Tennessee than it had been in Virginia. Local Indians of the Cherokee and Creek tribes had been removed to Georgia, but sometimes a few would return to steal horses and kill any white people who happened to be around. To protect themselves, the pioneer settlers (including a man named Arthur Greer) built a blockhouse and fort--known as "Old Fort McTeer".
The Harts lived in the fort for about 5 years, and two of their children were born there. During this time Joseph bought 320 acres, 3.5 miles northeast of the fort, where he cleared land and built the first two-story frame house in Blount County. The house was located near the "Big Spring." Here Joseph planted an apple orchard, and some of the trees were still bearing fruit a hundred years after the planting. When it was considered safe from Indian raids, the family moved into their home and lived there until 1821.
In 1797 Jane Hart married Arthur Greer in the house, and the two of them lived in Blount County for the rest of their lives. They raised numerous children, many of whom were still living in Blount and Knox Counties in 1900.
Joseph Hart and his wife joined New Providence Presbyterian Church in 1796. Soon after joining, Joseph was made an elder in the church and Clerk of Session. He often "set the tune" and led the singing in the church. Because the congregation had few hymn books, Joseph would loudly read two lines of a hymn, lead the singing of the two lines, and then read another two lines and sing and so on.
Tragedy struck in 1807 when, after a short illness, Joseph's wife Nancy died, leaving him with 5 sons and one daughter: Edward, born in Washington County, Virginia in 1789; Thomas, born in the fort in 1791 (This narrative will tell much more about Thomas and his descendants); Joseph, Jr., born in the fort in 1793; Silas, born in the farm home in 1796; Gideon Blackburn, born on the farm in 1798; and Elizabeth, born on the farm in 1802.
In 1809 Joseph married Miss Mary Means of Blount County, a maiden lady 32 years of age. Her parents had left Northern Ireland about the year 1780 to escape religious persecution (they were Presbyterians), and settled in East Tennessee. Joseph and Mary had five sons: William in 1810; Samuel in 1813; James Harvey in 1815; Isaac Anderson in 1817 (died in infancy); and Charles Coffin in 1820. (Charles Coffin is the Rev. C. C. Hart who wrote Joseph Hart and His Descendants.) All were born in the family home in Blount County.
Joseph Hart was quite an industrious man. He taught the first school in Blount County at a schoolhouse about two miles from Maryville. He also owned the first four-horse team known in the county. After there was no longer danger from the Indians, Joseph became a "frontier truck driver." He used his four-horse team to carry farm-raised vegetables and other produce into the gold mining region of Georgia. There he would trade the food for cotton which he took to Baltimore, Maryland. In Baltimore he traded the cotton for manufactured goods which he brought back to the merchants of Maryville and Knoxville. The round trip took about three months.
Just as life was becoming comfortable for the Hart family, Tennessee entered the Union as a slave state and Joseph decided to leave the South altogether. In the spring of 1820 he sent his son, Gideon Blackburn Hart, west to find a suitable place for the family to settle. Gideon went to Indiana and proposed Bartholomew County, Indiana as the future home of the family. About the middle of September, 1821, the Harts were prepared for a momentous event: emigration to what was effectively a new country. The traveling company consisted of the father, the mother, Silas and Elizabeth of the first family, the four boys of the second family, and Robert McClure, a young man hired for the occasion. They were provided with two wagons, each with two horses, an extra horse with saddle (which the father rode), a large tent, and two cows which furnished milk for the journey and at their new home.
The first evening the family pitched the tent by Will's Creek, a whole seven miles from where they started. The next morning before daylight, William Trotter, a young farmer and a leader of the singing at the New Providence Church, rode out to the camp on horseback. William Trotter was engaged to be married to Elizabeth Hart, and he had promised to go to Indiana the next spring to be married there. But it took only one night away from Elizabeth for William to realize he could not bear to be away from her. He persuaded her to return to Maryville to be married that morning. Silas Hart accompanied Elizabeth and the Trotter brothers to the wedding (performed by Dr. Isaac Anderson), and the happy couple rejoined the family at the next campsite. The group never traveled on the Sabbath, and the entire journey to Indiana took about 4 weeks.
Gideon Blackburn was still in Indiana--around Vincennes--and when he learned that the family was moving, he followed the military road opened by Gen. William Henry Harrison, Governor of the North West Territory, from Vincennes to the Tobacco landing on the Ohio River, near Leavenworth, Indiana. From there he went to Kentucky and met the family in the region of the Cumberland Gap, and accompanied them to their destination, near Clifty Creek, five miles east of Columbus, Bartholomew County, Indiana. The travelers arrived at Clifty Creek on October 8, 1820.
In those days, the government held claim to much of the land and would not sell an individual less than 160 acres--1/4 section--on which to settle and build a farm. The price of the land was $2 per acre. But for half the amount--$160--a settler could get a "certificate of entry" and have five years to pay the remainder of the debt. In addition, no taxes could be collected during those five years. At the end of the five years, when the rest of the money was paid, the government would issue a deed for the land. Joseph chose his quarter section in Bartholomew County and sent his son Gideon with $160 in silver to the land office at Jeffersonville, Indiana, about 100 miles away. Gideon entered the land according to law.
Gideon, Silas and McClure cut the logs for a cabin, carved boards for the roof, and split the puncheons for the floor. A neighbor, Mr. Elijah Sloan, used his team of oxen to haul timbers to the building spot. The neighbors came together and built the cabin and put the roof up in one day. The next day they laid the puncheon floor, built the chimney, put the window and door in place, and by evening the family moved into their new western home. The neighbors were very helpful; the cabin was built quickly and cost no money.
The cabin measured 16 x 18 feet, and had the common outdoor "mud and stick" chimney, one window and one door. The window had nine 8 x 10 panes and two sash. There was no sawed lumber except the sash and the window frame, and these were brought from Tennessee. No nails were used except a few made by a blacksmith in Tennessee and brought along on the trip. The nails were used in making the door, the hinges and fastenings, which were formed of hickory. From the time of arrival until moving into the cabin (about six weeks), the family lived in the tent and the wagons. Silas, Gideon and McClure dug a well, built a stable, cleared and fenced twelve acres of land and had it ready for planting by May 1, 1821. Silas and McClure remained with the family for a year, and in early May 1822 they took one of the wagons and two horses and returned to Blount County, Tennessee.
Deer, foxes, raccoons, opossums, squirrels, turkeys, quail, pheasant and other wild game were plentiful in the forest surrounding the cabin. Occasionally the family also saw wolves, bears and panthers lurking among the trees. The creeks and rivers abounded with fish. Joseph, however, was opposed to hunting because he thought it encouraged an idle, shiftless manner of life. He refused to have a gun in the house.
There, in their cabin, by a blazing fire of beech and hickory in the winter evenings, and in warm weather by the light made by the dry bark of the great poplar trees, Mary spun flax on the "little wheel" or engaged in knitting, while Joseph and the boys memorized Bible verses and the questions and answers of the Shorter Catechism. Afterward, the boys would engage in simple play while Joseph would sing hymns from memory, such as "How Firm a Foundation Ye Saints of the Lord," "When I can Read My Title Clear," "There is a Fountain Filled With Blood," "Am I a Soldier of the Cross" and many others. Once a week one of the boys would read aloud the Cincinnati Journal, a newspaper, while everybody paid the strictest attention. Every other week the family shelled a "grist" of corn (two and a half bushels) that was taken by horseback the next day to be ground at a nearby mill.
Often traveling preachers would stop by for a visit, notably Rev. John M. Dickey, and would examine the boys as to their knowledge of the catechism. Also, because the cabin was the only preaching place in the neighborhood for several years, when a preacher arrived the neighbors would be notified and they would all leave their work and come to the cabin tohear a sermon.
The family's food and clothing were very simple. Clothes were made almost only of wool and flax; they had several sheep to supply wool, and they raised a "patch" of flax every year. The wool and flax were spun, woven and made into garments at home or by exchanging work with some neighbor. Joseph made the shoes for the family. Hats for summer were made of rye straw or splits from buckeye trees. Their food consisted almost entirely of cornbread, mush and milk, and vegetables, with a limited amount of pork, eggs, chickens, fish and wild game caught in traps. Tea and coffee were almost unknown. They raised some buckwheat and ground it in a corn mill. For the first five years they raised very little wheat, because the area had no mill that could grind it into flour. There was no fruit until seeds they had brought from the old home in Tennessee could grow into fruit trees. Every spring the settlers made sugar from the sap of the sugar maple trees that grew abundantly in the area.
Joseph Hart stood five feet eight inches in height and he weighed about 130 pounds. He was always clean and neat. He never had a pair of boots, and he never wore suspenders. He wore a low hat with a broad brim. His letters, written to his children from 1825 to 1838, were very lengthy, correct in spelling and grammar, and clear and concise in composition. Joseph's handwriting was a marvel too; the paper he used was large and unlined, but the text was as straight as if written on ruled paper. The letters were well-formed; every "i" was dotted and every "t" was crossed. Postage for each letter was 25 cents.
In September 1839 Joseph suffered a stroke which left him paralyzed in his right side, and he never completely recovered. About a year later he had another stroke which left him almost helpless. During his final illness, Joseph's granddaughter, Mary E. Braden of St. Louis, Missouri served as his faithful attendant during the day. At night his son Gideon was his nurse. Gideon's wife Hetty was also most helpful.
C. C. (Charlie) Hart visited his father five weeks before his death. Joseph told Charlie, "My son, I shall live but a short time. When you hear of my death do not put on any outward sign of mourning; it will be a time of great joy to me." Joseph died on the morning of June 20, 1841.
Thomas Hart
As previously stated, Thomas Hart, second son of Joseph and Mary Hart, was born in the Blockhouse at Maryville, East Tennessee on October 26, 1791. He was brought up on a farm three miles north of his birthplace, with the usual experiences of a boy of that day. Being a son of Joseph Hart, he had a good example to follow, and good influences about him. As his father was a teacher, Thomas had good educational opportunities; he was very fond of reading and he had an excellent memory. He enjoyed conversation, but he was a modest man and he preferred to listen rather than to speak. He kept his home in Tennessee for a number of years after his father Joseph and other members of the family moved to Indiana. He was 5'10" tall and weighed 165 pounds.
Thomas became a soldier in the War of 1812. He enlisted in Blount County, Tennessee, May 31, 1821 in Capt. Samuel C. Hopkins' Company, 2nd Regiment U.S. Dragoons, under Col. James Burns. The command marched to the north and joined the Northwestern Army, under the command of Gen. William Henry Harrison. In passing through northern Ohio they frequently marched in water from three to sixteen inches deep, chopped down timber and bivouacked in the brush.
Thomas participated in the siege of Fort Meigs, where he was wounded in the heel by an Indian concealed in a treetop. Because of this wound, for the rest of his life he was slightly lame. Thomas was in the battle of River Raisin, and many other engagements under Gen. Harrison. He remained in the service until January 17, 1814 when he was mustered out at Watertown, New York.
During his life, Thomas witnessed major changes in the US. While in the army he walked all the way from Tennessee to Canada through an almost unbroken wilderness. By the time of his death, this area had grown into a densely populated and thrifty land of schools, churches, cities, railroads, telegraphs and homes with the comforts and luxuries he never knew in his youth. This was a never ending source of interest to him, and he often noted society's progress and compared the differences between the various periods of his life.
Early in life Thomas joined the New Providence Presbyterian Church of Maryville, and he was a faithful Christian. He was greatly distressed by the division of the Presbyterian Church into the New School and the Old School, but as he was an opponent of slavery he remained a firm New School man. It was a great joy to him when the Church reunited in 1869.
On December 15, 1814 Thomas married Miss Elizabeth Duncan of Blount County, Tennessee. Miss Duncan was born in Rock Ridge County, Virginia, December 17, 1796. She was a member of new Providence Church, and a daughter of George Duncan, a well-to-do farmer, a noted gunsmith of that time, and a mechanical genius generally. He was the son of Scotch parents who early emigrated to Virginia. He was also a soldier in the Revolutionary War. His wife died early in life, and his 12-year-old daughter Elizabeth, or Betsy as she was known, took charge of the house and the youngest children. She performed her duties well, giving the children all the love and care of a mother, teaching them morals and manners and giving them religious training. Her father remarried some years later, and the new stepmother, upon coming into the household, said that she was surprised to see a girl so young exhibit such capability.
Thomas and Elizabeth Hart were the parents of eleven children; ten daughters and one son. Their names were Lavina, Nancy, Angeline, Mary Ann, Elizabeth, Eleanor Jane, Benjamin Franklin, Harriet Newel, Marth L., Frances C, and Frances Juliette. Two of these children died in early childhood, Frances C. and the only son, Benjamin Franklin.
Something mysterious happened to Thomas and Elizabeth, just a few years after the death of their only son. One day a strange woman, with a male child about 18 months old, came to their house and said that as they had daughters and no son, she wished to give them her child. She would not reveal her own name or that of the child's father. After some persuasion and a promise never to come to see the child, Thomas and Elizabeth agreed to take the little boy and raise him as their own, which they did, and the mother never returned. The child received all the care and affection of a son, and was known as Jim Hart. When he came to manhood he married a Miss Blessing in Bartholomew County, Indiana. He andmhis wife moved to Carrollton, Missouri, where for several years he worked as a carpenter. By the year 1900 he had become a farmer.
The home of Thomas and Elizabeth Hart was warm and loving. To people accustomed to the luxuries of the present day, their lives may seem hard and bare. But their children had many bright memories of happy childhoods in East Tennessee. Elizabeth taught her daughters to cook, and she also taught them knitting, spinning, weaving and sewing. Some of the older girls attended school to learn needlework, writing and singing. They learned to sing "Hail Columbia," "My Country 'Tis of Thee," and "The Star Spangled Banner." They studied the Shorter Catechism and read only good books. They took advantage of everything they could to acquire education and useful knowledge.
At one time bands of roving Indians were sometimes seen near the family's home in East Tennessee, but the Harts were never molested. Once, though, when Thomas and Elizabeth were away at a weekly meeting, the children left at home were badly frightened by the sudden appearance of three or four Indians at the front door. The Indians entered and looked all about the house, but took nothing. They lifted the lid off the pot where the dinner was cooking, turned the cover down and took a peep at the babe asleep in the cradle. Then they nodded, grunted, and left--much to the relief of the children.
One serious accident befell Thomas. On his way home from church with his wife one Sunday, a temperamental colt, which he was riding, became frightened and ran away, throwing Thomas against a stump. Thomas' nose was almost completely torn off, remaining attached to his face by only a shred of flesh. A good surgeon, with God's assistance, reattached the nose, and although the injury was noticeable, it was not disfiguring to a great extent. It did alter Thomas' voice, though.
In the fall of 1846, Thomas Hart with all his family, 3 of whom were by then married, moved to Indiana. The journey, which took 5 weeks, was pleasant in the autumn weather. They brought with them both horses and cattle. They settled on Clifty Creek in Bartholomew County near the home of Thomas's father Joseph, and both Thomas and Elizabeth lived here until their deaths. Thomas became an elder in the Presbyterian Church of both Columbus and Sand Hill, and he held these offices until he died on July 28, 1865 at the age of seventy-four years.
For several years Thomas and Elizabeth, being too feeble to live alone, made their home with their son-in-law, William McDowell. After Thomas died, Elizabeth continued to live there until she too died on July 7, 1868. They both lie buried in Sand Hill graveyard by the side of Joseph Hart, brothers and many of their children and grand children.
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