Unearthing a life.....

In ‘Part 9’ we left the Enos M. family breaking sod on their several new farms in Chariton County, Missouri. Before progressing further with these westward moving M.‘s, let’s return to Edgefield, South Carolina, and look in on the Aunts, Uncles, and multitude of cousins left behind.

Uncle Abiah and Aunt Nancy (Pace) M. have established a respectable family. From John Evan M. (born 1789) to little Tabitha (born in 1813), they have produced nine children.

Uncle Ozias and Aunt Elizabeth (Quarles) M. have five children.

Aunt Olive and husband David Quarles had five children before David died at about the time that Enos left Edgefield for Tennessee. Olive remarried (in 1809) to the Rev. Thomas Norris and bore him four children ending with Lucinda Ann in 1818.

Uncle Eli and Aunt Phobe (Glover) M. had three children between 1805 and 1809. By August, 1821, Eli was remarried to Ann Sybil Tillman and they had four children between 1832 and 1840. There are some suspicious time-gaps in this ‘Eli info’, but this is what I have in my records, so I’ll go with it for now.

By 1815, Ozias M. had acquired most, if not all, of the lands originally belonging to his father, Evan M. The Carsons were still his neighbors. Old James Carson was getting on in years and his son Robert (of Ozias’s generation) was assuming ownership and responsibility for the Carson lands.

Robert Carson was married to Mary Burnett by 1811. Mary Burnett’s mother (deceased in 1800) was Mary Quarles, a sister of Ozias M.’s wife and Olive (M.) Quarles’ husband - making Mary (Burnett) Carson a niece of Ozias and Elizabeth (Quarles) M.

The Thomas Burnett family had lived over on Chavers Creek - a few miles east of the M.’s and Carson properties. Tom Burnett died in the Fall of 1796, leaving wife Mary with six (possibly seven) dependent children. The youngest, William Burnett, was born the year his father died. Mary (Quarles) Burnett soon remarried to Ephriam Ferrell, but died soon after. Mr. Ferrell relinquished all claim to Mary’s properties, and Mary’s brother, William Quarles, was made administrator of the Thomas and Mary Burnett estate. William Quarles held an estate sale on November 24, 1800. Three weeks prior to the sale, he paid out $5.12 to Thomas Burnett, Jr. “for Brandy”.

I’ve seen several of these estate accounts where there is an initial liquor expense. I don’t know how much brandy $5.12 would have purchased - perhaps a small barrel? - but I have come to suspect that it was common practice to ply the bidders at estate sales with enough spirits to embolden their bidding and loosen their purse strings (i.e., the ten slaves owned by the Burnett estate were appraised at a total value of $2240 and sold for $3120).

In addition to the slaves, the sale moved 5697 pounds of tobacco for $233.53 and 450 bushels of corn for $250.25. Sale of livestock, tools, and furniture brought the final sales total to $4560.42.

Of the six identified Burnett children (the estate was divided into seven shares), five were apparently still minors and were “boarded out” to various relatives and/or guardians. Judge Joseph Hightower, a Burnett and Quarles neighbor, assumed guardianship of the older boys (Jeremiah and Thomas, Jr.) and was instructed to “bring up Jeremiah and Thomas Burnett handsomely.” Mary and Nancy Burnett appear to have lived with their uncle James Quarles. ‘Accounts paid’ show board, clothes, and schooling payments for young William Burnett in 1800 and 1811, but gives no indication of who received the payments (it may have been William Quarles, as administrator, making payments to himself).

Uncle William Quarles bought out the property shares of five of the older Burnett children in 1811 and the share of young William Burnett when William ‘came of age’, July 1, 1817. William Burnett received $775 for his share of the property … and he may have gotten a monetary settlement from the estate sale back in 1800, but I’ve seen no evidence of that. Perhaps that money had been consumed for his support over the intervening seventeen years.

At this point, I’m going to digress into the subject of Judge Joseph Hightower’s suicide in 1811. By this time, his ‘wards’, Jeremiah and Thomas Burnett, Jr. had come of age, married, and moved on to homes of their own. This account is included because of where Judge Hightower committed the act:
[As published in the Columbia State Gazette - no date on my source.] “On Friday morning, the 7th inst. A most horrid act of suicide was committed in Edgefield distict, by Joseph Hightower, Esq., one of the Representatives in the Legislature of this state from that district. This appears to have been a premeditated act, as we learn he had but a short time before had his will formally executed. He went to his bed the night before the fatal day, as usual, but rose the next morning rather earlier than common; his wife observed to him not to get up so early, and requested him to lie down again, to which request he made an evasive answer, refused and immediately walked out of the house, and when he had got about half way between the kitchen and the dwelling-house, where he committed the act, his wife heard him make some uncommon noise, and immediately ran out to him, when to her utter astonishment she discovered his throat completely cut, but was still standing up; she called to a gentleman that was in the house, who immediately ran out, took hold of him and led him to the steps of the dwelling-house door, where he fell and soon after expired. What drove him to this rash act we have not been able to learn. His standing in society was respectable, and his pecuniary circumstances easy and independent.”

This account caught my attention because I had just read, in Larkin’s (1943) “The Reshaping of Everyday Life 1790 - 1840,” that: “Americans south of PA, responding to their warmer climate, customarily built kitchens as separate structures.”

Building kitchens separately, as a response to warmer climate, must have been a tactic to remove the kitchen’s added heat from a dwelling that was often over-heated by the weather alone. Kitchens may also have been the source of a high percentage of early day house fires and separating them from the main dwelling would make good sense in that regard. End of digression.

Young William Burnett lived for an additional four years and three months after selling his share of inherited land to his uncle William Quarles. During that time, he married Martha (surname not in record) and had a son, Thomas J. Burnett. He paid $1800 for a 285 acre plantation on September 7, 1821, and two and a half months later the ‘estate’ was being appraised due to his demise.

Named as administrators of his estate were his wife, Martha, and his cousin? Archibald M. (Ozias M.’s oldest son). In June Bork’s (1993) “The Burnetts and Their Connections,” she refers to Martha as ‘Martha M.’ (Archibald’s sister?), but offers no evidence of that surname - and in one instance follows it with a “(?)”.

Ozias’ daughter Martha was of an appropriate age to have married her cousin William Burnett. That would provide motive for Archibald M. being named administrator of the estate and guardian of the infant Thomas J. Burnett (as the child’s uncle, rather than simply one of many cousins of the child’s father). It is certainly possible that William Burnett’s wife was his cousin Martha M. - but that remains a speculation. Martha M. did marry Sampson Sullivan about 1830, when she was in her late twenties. He was a widower with prior children. The Sullivan family bible refers to her only as Martha M., not as Martha Burnett.