Tag: Pioneers

March 28, 2013 Dennis Ayers

Note: This is a new post inserted in January 2021.

While Capt Isaac Depew migrated to East Tennessee after serving in the Revolutionary War, some of his siblings took a different route, choosing to migrate westward in the early 1800s. Two took up homesteads in Kentucky, two went on to Indiana Territory, and two went even further into Illinois Territory. They traveled the Wilderness Trail through Southwest Virginia and the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. Those who ventured further went across the Ohio River at Louisville into Indiana, and then some on to Illinois.

This was a dangerous time as these lands were still part of the old Northwest Territory, and heavily populated by the Confederacy of Indian Tribes lead by Tecumseh. The Indians were not happy about new settlers coming to their lands and began resistance efforts. They increased their attacks against American settlers and against isolated outposts, resulting in the deaths of many civilians. US militia forces lead by William Henry Harrison battled with them, but the land was not totally safe in which to live until Tecumseh’s death in 1813 and the Indian Confederacy ceased to threaten the settlers.

Our ancestor, John W. Depew, Jr. was one of those brave souls who took his family all the way to Illinois after first stopping for periods of time in both Kentucky and Indiana. Back in Botetourt County, VA, in 1792 he married Mary “Polly” Seagraves, the daughter of Samuel Seagraves a Revolutionary War soldier. John and Polly had three children by 1810 and sometime after that began their travels westward. Apparently they spent several years in Kentucky, perhaps waiting for the Indian matter to be resolved. The family finally settled in Fayette County Illinois around 1821 where they lived the rest of their lives. In Fayette County, John was a Methodist minister and the first Methodist meetings were held at his house. As a Justice of the Peace, he married many couples in the county, but was unsuccessful when he ran for other offices. Since there is no estate record for John, it appears he had given everything he owned away before his death.

January 2, 2012 Dennis No comments exist

When Burke County was formed in 1777 at the edge of the Appalachians about 75 miles below the Virgina line, it was North Carolina’s western frontier. The early settlers were Scotch – Irish and German Palatines, also known as Pennsylvania Dutch. They were from southeastern PA and NJ, and had migrated down the Appalachians into the North Carolina back country. They came with little but the clothing on their backs and had to make everything. They built log cabins and the tables, chairs and beds that went into them. The German settler was described as “robust, law abiding, industrious and scrupulously honest”. “Their farming habits were model for others. They were good citizens, participating actively in church, family, and communal affairs, rarely questioning authority, yet due to their language barrier, taking little interest in politics or public life.”

 

The Derreberrys, as it was spelled by then, were among the first settlers to claim this new land in Burke County, make improvements to it and file for land grants.  Grants of typically 100 acres each were obtained by several Derreberry men between the years of 1778 and 1784 on Silver Creek in the area just south of Morganton, the county seat. They may have been already on the land as early as the 1750s as the grants often mentioned improvements to the land which indicates these Derreberrys were homesteaders and not newcomers on the scene. They had made improvements by clearing forests and building cabins, sheds and rail fences on their property. Those persons who had settled on the land without due title were still entitled to register their land through the grant system. In other words, squatters were allowed to register their land as much as someone who had obtained a previous grant. The early Derreberry settlers were named Michael, Adam, John Jr., and Jacob and they were probably brothers. One being named John Derryberry, Jr. leads to the assumption that there probably was a John Sr. Since the name John is Hans in the German form, John Sr. may have been the illusive Hans Michael Dürrenberger, whose wife’s name was believed to be Anna.

 

The Derreberry families firmly established themselves in Burke County and by 1790 there were six households shown in the census.  Adam, Jacob, Michael, Andrew, Anne, and Hanna. It is believed that Anne was the widow of John Sr. and Hanna was the widow of John Derreberry Jr., our ancestor.  John Derreberry Jr. and Hanna had three sons:  George William, Michael (Micah) and another John.  Everyone was a farmer.

 

April 8, 2011 Dennis No comments exist

Men never get lost…or at least that’s what they think!  Well, apparently this is not just a modern-day phenomenon, as it seems to have been true over the centuries. Take for example the story about the legendary wilderness pioneer and scout, Daniel Boone. When Boone was 85 years old, he was asked by a writer if he ever got lost in his long wanderings after game.  He said “No, I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.“

April 7, 2011 Dennis Ayers No comments exist

As can be clearly seen from stories up to now, our Ayers ancestors possessed a pioneering spirit that kept urging them ever onward to new lands of promise and hope.  Nathaniel Ayers in North Carolina was like those before him.

 

Up until the mid 1700s, the French had control of land west of the Appalachian Mountains, and essentially kept the English settlers hemmed in the East by playing the Indians against them, and by relying on the seemingly insurmountable mountains.  However, after the British defeated the French and Indians in 1763, the French conceded all contested lands to the Mississippi River. This initially was a cause for celebration for the settlers wanting to move to the new frontier lands. However, the royal proclamation of 1763 did much to dampen that celebration as it in effect closed off the frontier to colonial expansion, ostensibly to calm the Indians and regulate trade and settlement.

 

Daniel Boone, the legendary wilderness scout, was born in Pennsylvania and raised as a Quaker. Like the Ayers family from Maryland, Daniel’s family was one of the many that migrated southward, settling in western North Carolina in 1750.  As a young man, he was known to be fearless and for taking long hunting expeditions into Indian territory.  The region beyond the settled borders of Virginia and the mountains was called Kentucky and it was a total wilderness. Despite the proclamation and some resistance from American Indian tribes such as the Shawnee, in 1775 Daniel Boone blazed his Wilderness Trail through the Cumberland Gap in the Appalachian Mountains over into Kentucky.  He pushed even further into the state beyond the mountains and founded the Fort Boonesboro settlement in the fertile central region.  See map at the end.

 

After the colonists finally defeated the British in the Revolutionary War, all the land to the Mississippi was then ceded to the Americans, and some adventurers began traveling there. However, in the early years, many travelers fell victim to hostile Indians. Soon though, with this new opportunity to homestead and a new route through the mountains marked by Boone, more than 200,000 settlers migrated to the Kentucky frontier by 1800.  Nathaniel Ayers and his family from North Carolina were among these early pioneers.

 

It is believed Nathaniel’s wife was Mary Leake and they had at least one child in NC about 1794, named Bailey Ayers. Kentucky was admitted as a state in 1792, and the Wilderness Trail was widened to accommodate wagons pulled by oxen.  It is difficult to pinpoint, but it is believed the family relocated to the new state around 1800.  We know for certain though, that by 1810 they were living in Wayne County, KY, a mountainous area near the border with Tennessee. The family had 3 males and 6 females.  It took hardy souls to homestead in this area, which was nothing but wilderness, and still occupied by scattered Indians.  At this time there were less than 800 families in the county. Settlers lived within riding or walking distance of each other and they had large families, with their children and grandchildren inter-married into each others families. This area today is part of the Daniel Boone National Forest.

 

Nathaniel Ayers is mentioned as helping with a land survey in 1808 in Campbell County, Tennessee, and in county court records in 1815 and 1818.  At that time Campbell County was larger than today and the western part of it was just across the state border from Wayne County, KY.  Did he actually move to TN for a time?  I think the answer is probably not because he apparently lived in an area close to the border between KY and TN which was in dispute and not officially settled until 1820.  So, the border moved around him.

 

Nathaniel then disappears from all other records until he applied for his Revolutionary War pension from Laurel County, KY in 1836.  It must be assumed he was living with the family of one of his daughters and was not a head of household.  It is also assumed that he died sometime after 1836 in Laurel County which is a short distance northeast of Wayne County.

 

When Nathaniel Ayers first came into Kentucky, why did his family settle in the mountains instead of pushing further into the central area of KY where the land was certainly more amenable to farming?  One strong possibility was that he already knew other family or friends who had previously relocated there.  Another reason is that all the best lands had already been settled on before he arrived.  The actual reason is unknown today.  Whatever the reason, the mountain way of life he entered set the course of history for the next five generations of Ayers families.

Daniel Boone’s Wilderness Road