52 Ancestors #10: Revolutionary War Capt. Micajah Bullock (1745-1828)

I'm writing about my ancestors for the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge.  Please join me in taking a moment to appreciate some of the people who helped me be here today!

The flag pictured above was purported by the Bullock family to have been brought home by Captain Micajah Bullock of Granville County, NC from the 1781 Battle of Guilford Courthouse during the American Revolution.  The Guilford Courthouse Flag, as it is known today, now belongs to the North Carolina Museum of History, an affiliate of the Smithsonian, and is not without controversy.  While a Smithsonian textile expert, Grace Rogers Cooper, concluded in the 1970s it was more likely to predate the War of 1812 rather than the Revolution, one of the museum's curators, Al Hoilman, has provided his own argument supporting the Bullock family tradition.  It is certainly known to have belonged to the Bullocks, as it was donated by Capt. Bullock's son Edward to a Freemasons' lodge, who in turn gave it to the museum in 1914.

Micajah Bullock was born in 1745 in Hanover, Virginia, son of Edward Bullock of New Kent County, Virginia.  By 1769 he was in Granville County, North Carolina, where he married Frances Pryor on the 21st of June of that year.  He held various posts in the county including entry taker, sheriff, surveyor, and bondsman. He is listed among North Carolina captains during the Revolution and was also a veteran of the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge in February 1776.  Later that year, he wrote a letter to the company's colonel, Ebenezer Folsome, regarding disputes over company pay and requesting the colonel's assistance in settling the matter. After the war, he went back home to resume his life among his family as one of the prominent landowners of the county.  He died in either 1827 or 1828, and is memorialized by a marker in the burial ground of Bullock United Methodist Church in Creedmoor, North Carolina.  His name lives on in a Raleigh-based DAR chapter and in the church his family founded in 1832 on a tract of land originally granted to Micajah.

Micajah's daughter, Nancy Ann Bullock, was my 4x great grandmother.  She married Knight Dalby of Granville County and with her sons went on to found the town of Dalby Springs in Bowie County, Texas.

Guilford Courthouse flag photo courtesy Artifacts Collections of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources

O'Malley v. O'Reilly

Today's notes come to us courtesy of the 19th century Dublin papers, relating to the probate case of O'Malley v. O'Reilly, wherein a surviving brother of James O'Reilly, Esq. of Dundrum sued the executors of his brother's estate.

Freeman's Journal, 15 May 1873

COURT OF PROBATE.

(Before the Right Hon. Judge Warren and a City Special Jury.)

O'Malley v O'Reilly -- This suit, which has been at hearing since Thursday, was resumed yesterday and concluded.  It was instituted to establish the will of the late Mr James O'Reilly, of Mount Alban, Dundrum, county Dublin, which bore date the 4th November, 1871.  The testator died in November following, leaving property to the amount of about 9,000l.  He was formerly a gentleman farmer in the county Meath, but had lately retired from business, having invested a good deal of money in funds and stock, consisting chiefly of bank and railway shares.  He died unmarried.  By the will referred to the testator left over 4,000l worth of shares in the Royal Bank to the mother of the plaintiffs, who were distant relations, a small legacy to their brother, the Rev John O'Malley, one of the clergymen of Westland row Chapel, and the residue principally to the plaintiffs themselves, and to his brother, the Rev Mr O'Reilly.  The testator died at the age of about sixty years.  The plaintiffs, who are young men, lived with their mother and sisters near Santry, in the county Dublin.  The will was contested by Mr Laurence O'Reilly, M D, of Ratoath, county Meath, a brother of the deceased.  He disputed it partly on the grounds of undue influence, partly upon the alleged circumstance that the testator, on the 5th of November, eleven days before his death, came to the office of the solicitor who prepared the will and tore his signature off it.  A codicil, dated the 4th of May, 1872, was also relied upon by the defendant as revocation of the will, and which disposed of his property otherwise.  This codicil the plaintiffs disputed on the grounds of incapacity and undue influence.
Counsel for plaintiffs -- Sergeant Armstrong, Mr Falkiner, QC; and Mr Murray, instructed by Mr Plunket.  Counsel for defendant -- Mr Macdongoh, QC; Mr Hemphill, QC, and Mr Curtis, instructed by Mr Rooney.
The jury returned a verdict for the plaintiffs, establishing the will. 

I have a few more clippings related to this case, which I will post individually.

52 Ancestors #9: Levi Albert Bitterman (1834 - 1913) - Lost and Found

I'm writing about my ancestors for the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. Please join me in taking a moment to appreciate some of the people who helped me be here today!

At Christmas in 1887, an Ohio woman named Leah Kirchner received the photograph that accompanies this post.  The man pictured is Leah's brother, Levi Bitterman, my great-great-great grandfather.  Levi was 53 years old, and Leah - and the rest of the Bitterman family - had not laid eyes on him for nearly forty years.

They were not to see him in person for another seven years, when the following notice appeared in an Indiana newspaper¹:

Levi Bitterman Comes to Akron, Ohio, to See His Brother

 Akron, O.. July 13 -- Forty-four years ago Levi Bitterman, then aged 16, ran away from home.  He was never heard of and was long since considered dead.  He returned to the home of his brother George in Cuyahoga Falls today.  He is now a prosperous merchant in Newestown, Tex.  Bitterman was in the rebel army, and after the first day of the Battle of Chickamauga, after the Union forces were driven from the field, he found his brother Daniel, a Union solder, dying.  They had not met for nineteen years, but recognized each other.  The wounded man died in his arms.

Born on the 4th of July, 1834, in Stark County, Ohio, Levi was christened in a Lutheran church², though family tradition holds that just a few generations previous the family had been Jewish.  His father, Joseph, was an immigrant, and according to Levi's older sister Mary Ann's branch of the family, he had come from Alsace and the original spelling of their name was Biedermann.  A letter from one of Mary Ann's sons, Ezra, to his cousins in Texas, recounts some of the history of the family as far as he knew it and can be found in the pension file Levi's widow received from the state of Texas³.  One of the things Ezra repeats in his letter is the story that Levi had run away from home as a teenager after a disagreement with his mother.

So just what had he been up to all those years he was missing?  Apparently he joined a railroad company, worked on boats on the Great Lakes for a while, almost became a gold prospector, and finally went back to the railroad.  By the beginning of the Civil War he had ended up in Texas, where he married into a French Creole family at Liberty, the Rachals, who had left their native Natchitoches to come to Texas in 1844.  He joined a Texas regiment with his in-laws, and after the war moved to Nuecestown (located in part of what is now Corpus Christi), where he variously tried his hand at farming, ferrying, cotton ginning, and running a general store.  He was successful in all of these endeavours, and an article published in his hometown paper gives the impression that he just couldn't sit still for too long at any one thing⁴.  In fact, he only retired completely in 1906, 7 years before he died in 1913 at the age of 78.

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1 "Turns Up After 44 Years." Goshen Times 18 July 1895.^↩
2 Powell, Esther Weygandt. Stark County, Ohio: Early Church Records and Cemeteries. Akron, OH, 1973.^↩
3 #49919, (Mrs) Levi Bitterman, Confederate pension applications, Texas Comptroller's Office claims records. Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.^↩
4 "Began Railroading at Age of 14 Years." Evening Independent [Massillon, Ohio] 14 Mar. 1912.^↩

Letter, Rev. Bernard O'Reilly to the Bishop of Meath, 1823

The other day in my post on my 3x great grandfather, Laurence O'Reilly, I mentioned some other O'Reillys who seem to be connected to his family.  One of these was Rev. Bernard O'Reilly, an Irish-born priest who taught in France.  A letter from him to Patrick Joseph Plunkett, the Bishop of Meath, can be found in the third volume of Dean Anthony Cogan's The Diocese of Meath, a history of the diocese compiled between 1862 and 1870.  Cogan's sources have since been lost, and his compilation is all that remains of the early records of the diocesan archives.

Seminaire de St. Sulpice, September, 1823

My Lord,

I trust that the motives which induced me to your Lordship will justify the propriety thereof.  It's to inform you that the Bishop of Perigeau [sic - Périgueux] has written to the superior of this seminary, requesting of him to send him an ecclesiastic qualified to profess theology in his seminary, and that I have been elected to fill that situation.  Although I have no doubt of your granting me permission to accept of it (particularly as I want three years of age for priesthood), still, I considered it a duty incumbent on me to inform you of it, and to request your sanction and approbation.  I shall be comfortably situated, and be worth about a thousand francs per annum.

I should think that your dimissories to Mr. Duelax, superior of St. Sulpice, will be sufficient for me there ; but in case any other should be required, the bishop shall write to you about them.  The death of my uncle has exceedingly affected me ; but it gave me peculiar satisfaction to learn that he died regretted by his flock, particularly by the widow and the orphan ; which gives me room to hope that he has exchanged this world for a better.  Dr. Kearney, superior of the Irish college, inquires for you incessantly, recalling with pleasure the happy days which you both passed together in this capital.  All your subjects at Paris are well, and join me in best respects to your Lordship.  Wishing you many happy years to govern the diocese of Meath,

I remain, with veneration,

Your Lordship's most obedient and humble servant,

 BERNARD O'REILLY.

Of note here is the mention that Bernard lacks "three years of age for priesthood".  If the canonical minimum of 25 applies, this puts Bernard's age at 22, making him born about 1801.  The other tantalizing item of note is the mention of an uncle who has died.  The mention of a flock would suggest the uncle was also a cleric, but if that is the case then the mention of "the widow and the orphan" seems to be figurative.  But who was he?  Clearly he was someone who had died recently, and whose death the bishop knew about.  Unfortunately, as Bernard didn't name him in the letter and these archives no longer exist, I may never know the answer to that question.

Bernard is mentioned twice more in a catalogue of additional letters held by the Meath archives.  Unfortunately Cogan did not reproduce these letters in their entirety, so the originals are now lost, but the catalogue entry does provide us with useful information nevertheless.

1825, May 29th.  Letter from Alexander, Bishop of Perigueaux, to Dr. Plunket, passing encomiums on Rev. Bernard O'Reilly, a native of our diocese, who had been recently appointed Professor of Theology, in the College of Sarlat.
1825.  Letter of Rev. Bernard O'Reilly to Dr. Plunket.

 We learn that Bernard's post is at Sarlat - the same place mentioned in a list of contributions provided for "the continuance of the public sympathy" (probably famine relief), published in the Cork Examiner on 22 March 1848.  "The Rev. Bernard O'Reilly, Professor of Divinity in Sarlat, France, per L. O'Reilly M.D., Radoath" provided £12.  L. O'Reilly M.D. of Radoath (sic) could only be Dr. Laurence O'Reilly of Ratoath, who was proved to be a brother of James O'Reilly of Mount Albion House through the probate of James's will.  It would appear that Bernard was another sibling (very likely the Rev.O'Reilly who received a bequest from James), and the likelihood of there being more than one Bernard O'Reilly from Meath who became a theology professor at Sarlat stretches credibility.  I propose that Bernard O'Reilly who wrote to the bishop and who was represented in the Irish donations by Dr. Laurence O'Reilly are the same individual, and that he was Dr. O'Reilly's brother.  Given the educational backgrounds and financial situations of these O'Reillys, it also seems likely they were from a family of some standing in the county.  There were at least three different O'Reilly families with significant property in Meath, however, so it will take some more time and research to figure out which one was the likely origin of these brothers.

52 Ancestors #8: Laurence O'Reilly, Dubliner

I'm writing about my ancestors for the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge.  Please join me in taking a moment to appreciate some of the people who helped me be here today!

Some time back I wrote a post detailing the search for my great-great grandmother Adelia's family.  With more than a little luck o' the Irish (and even more perseverance) I was able to trace her parents in Ireland.

Adelia's father, Laurence O'Reilly, was born around 1820, possibly in County Meath.  What I have been able to establish is that he had some sort of connection to three brothers who came from Meath a generation before, although I have not yet figured out the precise relationship.  The eldest of these brothers (and the only one I have not yet ruled out as my Laurence's father) was another Laurence, who was born about 1794 and was a medical doctor who received his qualifications in Scotland in 1817 before returning to Ireland and becoming the Dunshaughlin district medical officer at Ratoath, Meath.  Another brother, Bernard, became a priest and theology professor in Sarlat, France, so would not have been my Laurence's father.  The youngest I have on record, James, was a gentleman-farmer at Clooney, Meath, before retiring to Dublin to a house called variously Mount Albion or Montalbin Lodge or House.  This James was stated in the Dublin newspaper reports on the probate of his will (which his eldest brother Dr. Laurence O'Reilly contested due to some dispute with the executors) as having been a lifelong bachelor and thus also an unlikely candidate to be my Laurence's father.  What is known is that this James did provide railroad and bank stocks for a minor named Charles O'Reilly (my Laurence had a son named Charles under the age of ten at the time of the will's execution in 1873; this Charles was baptized in Aghamore, Mayo, in 1865 with a James O'Reilly as godfather and on the 1901 and 1911 census appears in Dublin with his income source given as stock annuities) and that James's former home, Mount Albion House, was home to my Laurence's family from at least 1874 until about 1877.  It is, of course, also possible that Laurence's father could have been another brother entirely who has not yet been linked to these three, but the connections to James seem likely to me that he was probably my Laurence's uncle.

I know virtually nothing about Laurence's early life, only that he married Bridget Treston, a Mayo native, sometime before 1852.  The earliest baptism date found for one of their children on record is 1854, when their son James Thomas O'Reilly was baptised at Bekan, Mayo, although the oldest children, Laurence and Anne, have not been found in the baptism records.  1868 seems to mark the last of their Mayo-born children, Francis, and in 1875 their youngest son, John Joseph, was born and baptized in Dublin.

In 1874 the O'Reillys were certainly resident at Mount Albion House.  It is from that address that Laurence registered a dog, a brown terrier, while his son Laurence registered a brindle greyhound from the same address.  In December of 1876 a notice was published of Laurence's bankruptcy (unfortunately, the newspaper provided no details of how he arrived at this situation) and announced a sale of his property, although six months later the obituary of his daughter Kate still gave Montalbin House as the O'Reilly address.  Laurence and family left the house sometime before 1880, by which point his obituary in July of that year gives his residence as Joanna Cottage, Crumlin Road.  He was buried in the St. Bridget's section of Glasnevin Cemetery.

52 Ancestors #7: Julien Rachal - An Unconventional American Patriot

I'm writing about my ancestors for the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. Please join me in taking a moment to appreciate some of the people who helped me be here today!

When Americans think of the Revolutionary War, most will immediately think of places located within the 13 colonies and the residents of those colonies fighting in the Continental Army against the British.  They didn't fight the war alone, however.  They had allies from Spain and France, and many might be surprised to know those allies included inhabitants of Louisiana, then under Spanish government.

My French Creole ancestor, Julien Rachal, was one of those soldiers.  Born at Natchitoches in 1760 to Louis Rachal dit Blondin and Marie Louise LeRoy¹, Julien was a member of one of the oldest and most influential families in the area, and his wife, Marie Louise Brevel, was the daughter of a leading citizen of the parish.  As a member of the local militia, Julien served in the Galvez Expedition to Pensacola under Spanish governor Bernardo de Gálvez in a successful bid to push the British out of Spanish Florida and give their beleaguered allies further north respite from the threat of invasion from the south.  Due to this service, Julien and other soldiers like him who were not Americans* nevertheless count among the veterans of the American Revolution and even count toward eligibility for the American Revolution-based lineage societies.

For those interested in tracing a potential qualifying ancestor in a non-English colony, the Northwestern State University of Louisiana's Creole Heritage Center has a listing of names from the Natchitoches militia available in PDF form on their website.  Another good resource I found online is this collection of research by Dr. Granville Hough on Patriots from Spanish America.  While Spain was the administrating government from this period, the records include many names of French and German extraction.

*Julien died in 1810, seven years after the Louisiana Purchase.  Although not born an American, he technically died one.  His death is recorded as occurring on August 5, 1810.²

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1 Mills, Elizabeth Shown. Natchitoches, 1729-1803: Abstracts of the Catholic Church Registers of the French and Spanish Post of St. Jean Baptiste Des Natchitoches in Louisiana. Westminister, MD: Heritage Books, 2007.^↩

2 Riffel, Judy. "Natchitoches Burials, 1807-1813." Le Raconteur XXXI.4 (2011): 250.^↩

52 Ancestors #6: Josiah Dotson - A Museum Piece

I'm writing about my ancestors for the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge.  Please join me in taking a moment to appreciate some of the people who helped me be here today!

Growing up, I always heard a story that there was an antique Civil War era rifle in the family that had been passed down through several generations and had been given to a museum by my grandfather's oldest brother.  As it turns out, the story is true!

Pictured is that Civil War rifle, and it currently resides at the Stone Fort Museum on the campus of Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, Texas.  It was passed down through the generations from Josiah Dotson, my great-great-great grandfather.  Josiah, originally a native of Bledsoe County, Tennessee, became a Texas resident in about 1850 and served in the 18th Texas Infantry during the Civil War along with two of his brothers, Jeremiah and Milo.  According to the museum's information, the rifle has "Dotson" carved into the stock.

Josiah and Amanda (Leverton) Dotson

Josiah was one of ten children born to William and Margaret (Stewart) Dotson, who were both originally from North Carolina.  All but one of the Dotson children were born in Tennessee, while Josiah's youngest sister Margaret was born in Georgia.  In 1850 the Dotsons can be found residing in Chickamauga, Walker County, Georgia, and later that same year Josiah married Sarah Amanda Leverton in Murray County, Georgia.  Shortly afterwards the extended Dotson family moved again, settling first at Houston County, Texas, where my great-great grandfather Detroit was born.  Some stayed there, and some moved on to Cherokee County, settling around the area of New Summerfield, where they were still living when the country went to war a decade later.

Josiah and his brothers all survived the war and Josiah returned to farming at New Summerfield, where his grandchildren and great-grandchildren continued to live.  Josiah and his wife, Amanda, are buried among many of their family members at McDonald Cemetery in New Summerfield.