Unearthing a life.....

Enos M. (my g-g-g grandfather) is last ‘on record’ in Edgefield County, South Carolina, when he sells property on 3 July 1807. His wife signed (with an ‘X’) for “relinquishment of dower” rights on 2 October1807.

Twenty months later (30 May 1809) Enos is found applying for title to a fifty acre tract of land in Bedford County, Tennessee, east of the waters of Thompson Creek, a south trending branch of the Duck River. This would have been in an area six to ten miles southeast of Shelbyville, Tennessee. On the 31st of May there is a second recorded application for fifty acres with the same geographical description. Family tradition (from several sources) holds that the M.‘s were in Tennessee for ten years, by some reports, or twelve years by others. We do not know when, or under what circumstances, the family first came into contact with the Warhursts.

Martha M.’s obituary states that she was born in Tennessee in 1809….other sources have claimed 1810. She is reportedly the last child born to Enos and Nancy (Abernathy) M., though it is possible that James was the last born in 1811(?). Son Martin married an Elizabeth McDaniel early in 1810….judging from the birth of their first child, Polly, on November 10th, 1810. Was Elizabeth a daughter of one of the Pendleton District McDaniels - and a Warhurst cousin? Her parentage remains unidentified. Martin and Elizabeth’s second child, Nancy, is born November 22nd, 1811. Because of the M.’s presence in Tennessee in May of 1809 and Timothy Warhurst’s appearance in the Pendleton District, South Carolina, census of 1810, we know the M.‘s preceded the Warhursts into Tennessee. By 1811, or early 1812, Enos’s son David is married to Nancy Matilda Warhurst and their first child, Archibald A. M., is born.

The family is officially on record in 1812, still living near Shelbyville and the Duck River in Bedford County, Middle Tennessee. Both Enos and son Martin appear in the "tax list" for Richard Neely’s militia company. I’ve been told that the rosters of these militia companies raised against the threat of British invasion during the War of 1812, served double duty as tax rolls. A review of these militia rosters does not show any Warhursts. Perhaps the older Warhurst children (those married) had already moved on southward with the flow of people from Middle Tennessee who were settling in the river valleys that would shortly become the Alabama Territory. It seems apparent that Timothy’s widow, Nancy (McDaniel) Warhurst, and her younger children stayed on in Bedford County with her married daughter Nancy (Warhurst) M. ….which must have been a household ruled by Grandma Warhurst, because son-in-law David M. was no more than thirteen or fourteen years old when his son Archibald was born. Somehow they must have cooled young David’s ardor as the second son, Evan, was not born until six years later in Missouri.

This may also be the period of time when the M.‘s first came into contact with the "Christian" preacher Thomas Crawford McBride. In "Christians on the Oregon Trail", (1997), author Jerry Rushford writes "….In 1809, John Mulkey led his Mill Creek Baptist Church out of the Stockton Valley Baptist Association in southern Kentucky. Over the next two years more than half of the preachers in the Association followed his lead, including Thomas Crawford McBride, whose family later had such a strong impact on the growth of the church in Oregon. ….. The Mulkey movement was strong in southern Kentucky and throughout middle Tennessee and northern Alabama, and by 1811 it had joined forces with the Stone movement." The Rev. T. C. McBride is known to have been preaching in middle Tennessee after 1810.

We see, by this, that the Stone-Campbell Christian Reformation Movement, at least in southern Kentucky and middle Tennessee, had its roots in the Baptist Church….which was the M. family’s "church of choice" in prior generations (and to this day in many of the family lines). A Christian Church historian tells me that there wasn’t much distinction between Christian and Baptist preachers on the frontier until about 1820 and that both often preached together at Extended Meetings or, interchangeably, in the same church.

In the year 1813, Enos’s son John M. married Lovey Carey Cherry, daughter of William and Lydia Cherry (from Martin County, North Carolina). Shortly thereafter, the Cherrys removed to Stewart County, Tennessee, and John and Lovey Morgan settled there with them.

The last known official record of the Enos M. family in Bedford County, Tennessee, is Enos’s signature (as a witness) on a Deed of Ownership for nine slaves….signed June 12th, 1815. Enos was now forty-nine and Nancy’s child-bearing years appear to have slipped behind her. Their youngest, Martha, was six years old. Sons Martin, John, and David were producing grandchildren. Great-great granddad Sterling was approaching his sixteenth birthday.

It had been ten years since Lewis and Clark had returned from their exploration to the Pacific Coast and back. Settlement of Missouri was beginning to spread outwards from the former French town of St. Louis. The M.’s began to cast an eye westward towards Enos’s last leg on his part of the journey westward.

Photo: another M. branch of the M. family (Texas, if I recall correctly). Grandparents enjoying twin granddaughters. Very early 1900's.