| Notes |
- NOTES ON HARDWICK (HARDRIDGE), KINCHELOE,
McCARTY, McCONATHY, CROOK, DAWSON,
LAWSON AND RELATED FAMILIES.
BY ARTHUR LESLIE KEITH, NORTHFIELD, MINN.
The following notes consist almost wholly of unpublished records.
They are quite fragmentary and incomplete, but through fear of the
accidents of time I am led to put them in permanent form. While I
cannot vouch for their entire accuracy, I believe they are substantially
correct.
Several years ago Thomas McCarty Murdock, of Davidson, Harrison
County, Ind., loaned me some old papers that had been in his family
for many years. The oldest of these papers was a letter written on the
two sides of a foolscap paper, the upper half of w hich is lost. Of
the remaining half, part is undecipherable. It is signed by William
Hardwick (sic) and one page is apparently intended for his sister,
Susanna McCarty (grandmother of Mr. Murdock) and the other half for
her husband, Cornelius McCarty. I shall quote the significant portions
with my own comments in brackets:
"Your stepfather [William Turley] whom your mother [the word your
suggests that her mother was not his; perhaps they were only half-
brother and sister] married moved up to goose creek near Rectortown
[Virginia]. On my return I found you, brother John and Sister Elizabeth
playing in the negro house which was the first time I ever saw you
[somewhat confirms the conjecture that he was an older half-brother].
I lived with William Turley that winter and in the spring of the year
I parted with you and our poor brother John -- who is no more and in
the year 1783 in the faul (sic) was the last time I ever saw you.
Neither did I hear that you were married [interesting as showing how
effectually distance divided in thos days; his sister had been married
twenty-four years] until Ellen Kincheloe wrote to me last winter and
as our stations are so far apart I
Page 183.
expect that I shall never see you again. Our niece Ellen Kincheloe
[Elizabeth Hardwick mentioned above married a Kincheloe] informed me
* * * We have five sons and four daughters, been married 35 years the
26th day of next June [the date of the letter is lost but was probably
1811, as I make it out below, hence William Hardwick probably married
in 1776-7] and have never had a death in our family. Old Sarah the
negro that nursed me is still with me * * * 500 miles separate us [she
in what is now Meade County, Ky., and he near Louisville, Georgia]
* * * I pray for my two sisters that is (sic) parted from me."
The other page is intended for his brother-in-law, Cornelius
McCarty. "that you had moved from Fauquier County,Virginia to Kentucky
in Harden (sic) near Elizabethtown [Meade was later formed from
Hardin] and that you with your wife and one of your children had
embraced religion * * * I became a Methodist in 1788 and in 1792 went
into the ministry and for nineteen years [whence I infer the date of
the letter as 1811] have been trying to persuade sinners. My son
William P. Hardwick (sic) having business in Kentucky * * * is a
good surveyor but makes no pretension of religion -- I have directed
him to hand you this letter * * * Methodist Church flourishing in
Georgia. We live near Louisville near our eldest son Garland Hard-
wick (sic) * * * if we cannot get acquainted personally [had probably
never met his brother-in-law] * * * ."
The William P. Hardwick mentioned in the above letter is undoubtedly
identifical with the great-grandfather of the Hon. Thomas W. Hardwick,
member of Congress from Georgia, who gives me the following data.
"My great-grandfather was William Park Hardwick who lived near
Louisville, Georgia. He married Sarah Baker Cheatham about 1820. My
grandfather was Thomas William Hardwick who married Mary Elizabeth
Davis in 1848, and my father was Robert William Hardwick who married
Zemula Schley Matthews in 1870."
http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/schools/wmmary/famnotes.txt
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