I have been doing a lot of research lately, focusing on Magruders in Prince George’s County, Maryland, on those they intermarried with, & on those they enslaved. Though I don’t usually focus on genealogy, per se, I’ll post anything I find that seems to correct a common error, fill in a gap, disambiguate a confusion, or open up a new line of inquiry into old questions. If you want to add something, or argue for a different interpretation, it’s probably best to contact me, rather than simply post a comment. In any case, please include the sources you are relying on. I’d love to engage, but can’t do much with unsupported assertions. First posted 8 Oct 2022.
Adding one more person known to have been enslaved by Magruder descendant Walter W. W. Bowie
For those researching family among people declared by “Three W’s” Bowie in Maryland’s 1867 Slave Statistics, here is another record–and another surname–to consider. It surfaces just over the line in Washington, D.C.
Those enslaved in the District of Columbia were emancipated by the Compensated Emancipation Act of 16 April 1862. All slaves were freed immediately and slave holders had 90 days to file a petition for compensation. The website Civil War Washington has transcribed and indexed those petitions, with images of the original documents attached. When I posted about this, several years ago, I emphasized that because both owners and the enslaved frequently moved back and forth across state lines, this source should be searched for those with Maryland or Virginia roots…and here is a good example.
In 1862 one of those petitioning for compensation was a black man named Gabriel Coakley (or Cokely). Coakley had previously purchased the freedom of his future wife, Mary Calloway, and another woman, possibly his sister, Ann M. Coakley. Ann was purchased from John Larcum (or Larcombe) of Washington, D.C., in 1857, for the sum of $1. Mary Calloway was purchased in 1850 from Walter W. W. Bowie, of Prince George’s County. Petition of Gabriel Coakley
Like many before him, Gabriel Coakley’s earnings were devoted to freeing family members–an expensive but effective form of bootstrapping by which some families reached freedom. Those purchased were usually manumitted–often immediately–but ownership could also provide protection, especially in Washington, where the kidnapping of free blacks was terrifyingly frequent. Should a loved one need rescuing, proving ownership could be easier and more effective than proving freedom.
From Bowie’s deed to Coakley, it looks like Gabriel required help to get up the $350 he needed to free the woman he wished to marry, and thus protect their future children from being born into slavery. The deed mentions “current money to me in hand paid” as well as promissory notes from Gabriel Cokely and two other men. Gabriel discharged his debt to those men just one year prior to D.C. Emancipation.
More helpful to genealogists is that Bowie’s deed identifies Mary Calloway as “the same servant girl who belonged heretofore to Mary Weems late of Prince George’s County Maryland.” Mary Hall Weems was Bowie’s grandmother, through his mother Amelia Hall Weems, who married Walter Bowie.
Mary Weems wrote her will in 1840, but lived until 1849, with the inventory completed in 1850, the year Bowie agreed to sell Mary to Gabriel Coakley. The will names only a few enslaved people, and does not mention Mary Calloway, but she shows up on the estate inventory as Mary, age 21, valued at $500. From this we learn that though Bowie was not willing to free Mary for a token sum like $1, he did agree to let her go at a bargain price. What was his relationship with Coakley? I don’t know, but investigating that question might lead to more webs of family.
For Mary Calloway’s antecedents, you can take a deep dive into Mary Weems’ will and probate records, and then through her family. Vertically, her parents were Richard Bennett Hall and Margaret Magruder. Laterally, her brothers were Francis Magruder Hall and Richard Lowe Hall. You can start on my page, An Enslaved Community: Tracing Ancestors from 1867-68 Slave Statistics in P.G. County, where you will find links to key probate records and further info on how some of the enslaved were moved around among the white families–not always in ways you could predict.
By 1862, Mary and Gabriel Coakley had six children, from eleven down to one-and-a-half. Because Gabriel had never manumitted Mary, the children too were slaves in the eyes of the law. His petition for compensation thus included eight people–Mary, Ann, and all the kids–for a total of $3,300. In the formulaic language of the petitions, he describes their roles in the family.
- Ann M. is an excellent nurse and chambermaid and at this time hired by Dr J C Riley of this city at $8 per month in his family. She is a moral, and a well behaved servant, stout & healthy.
- Mary does all my cooking washing and ironing together with all my house-work [and is] moral industrious and temperate.
- Mary Ann [eleven years-old] is a good childs nurse and is employed in my family.
- All the rest of the above named servants are living in my family and I know of no moral, mental or bodily defect in either of them to depreciate their value.
Few petitioners received the full amount they requested–Congress had budgeted a million dollars, and commissioners had to parcel that out amongst claimants–so we should not assume that Gabriel got anything like $3,300. Even so, whatever sum he received can be looked at, however ironically, as a form of reparation.
Which is where this story began, for me, with an episode of Trymaine Lee’s podcast, Into America, “Uncounted Millions: The Power of Reparations,” in which he and family members explore what Mary and Gabriel Coakley’s descendants have accomplished, and continue to accomplish, through “the legacy of service and Black Liberation.”
Most emancipated people started with nothing, so it didn’t take much to get a leg up. Be it capital, literacy, or land, a family that received something–anything–got a running start at freedom. Lee’s podcast helps us imagine what might have been, had all freed slaves received…anything at all. Find it wherever you get your podcasts.
Most former slaves in D.C. left their enslavers immediately, and by 1870 70% of those emancipated had left the city. So even if your family has no known connection to D.C., I urge you to take the time to search these petitions. They are cross-indexed, with names of both enslavers and enslaved, and supporting documents are attached. In addition, each petitioner had to explain how they came into possession of each person–a researcher’s goldmine.
James Longstreet
For those who don’t know, the Confederate general James Longstreet was a descendant of Alexander Magruder. His descent as I know it is (1) Alexander Magruder + Elizabeth [maiden name unproved, possibly Hawkins] > (2) Alexander Magruder (II) + 2nd wife Susannah Busey > (3) Alexander Magruder (III) + 2nd wife Elizabeth Howard > (4) Alexander Howard Magruder + Jane Truman > (5) Nancy Anne Magruder + Thomas Marshall Dent > (6) Mary Ann Dent + James Longstreet > (7) James Peter Longstreet.
(If you’re wondering about all those 2nd wives…yes, maternal mortality was high in Colonial Maryland.)
When the Civil War started, James Longstreet was a professional soldier with twenty years service. An 1842 graduate of West Point, he fought in the U.S.-Mexico War and in campaigns to displace indigenous people in the western territories. Having been raised in Georgia among states-rights advocates, at the outbreak of the war he immediately resigned his commission and offered his services to the Confederacy.
Robert E. Lee called Longstreet his “Old War Horse” and “the staff in my right hand,” but promoters of the Lost Cause narrative vilified him after the war for accepting command of a bi-racial state militia in Louisiana under the Grant administration and embracing the Republican agenda for Radical Reconstruction.
Before that, however, Longstreet had already made two mistakes that harmed his reputation in the South: 1) he argued with Lee at Gettysburg, and 2) he was right. The frontal assault known as Pickett’s Charge was a disaster for the Confederacy, and those who revere Lee would rather blame Longstreet for foreseeing it than Lee for ordering it. In fact, Longstreet was skeptical about Lee’s second invasion of the North in general, and right about that too.
I’m posting because you might be interested in a new biography that examines Longstreet’s life in all these contexts, Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South by Elizabeth Varon (Simon & Schuster, 2023).
If that’s too much reading, there’s a good bio sketch at The American Battlefield Trust, or have a look at Kevin M. Levine “James Longstreet, the Lost Cause, and the Original Cancel Culture,” from his online newsletter, Civil War Memory.
Missing comments
I just discovered that messages asking me to Approve or Disapprove a comment have been going into my Spam folder. This is a new problem, and I wasn’t aware. I was only able to recover messages back to 27 Dec 2023, so it you posted a comment before that and it hasn’t shown up, please comment again. I don’t know if any “Contact” emails have been lost, but anyone who has written to me through the Contact tab and not received a reply: please forgive me and try again.
William Thomas Magruder, again
Since first posting about William T. Magruder (my great-great-grandfather’s first cousin) I have gone far, far down the rabbit hole, and (with the help of a few colleagues and collaborators) have been pulling together a narrative of his life. There are errors in my original post–not my own errors, except in the sense that I took sources at face value and now recognize the false assumptions they contain. Let it be a lesson in the basics of research! Find every possible source, compare them, and slowly sift the wheat from the chaff.
William did graduate from the military academy at West Point (in 1850, 11th in a class of 44), and he did change sides during the Civil War. As a U.S. Cavalry captain he fought in the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, but not at First Bull Run/First Manassas in 1861, as I said in my previous post.
His letter of resignation from the U.S. Army was written on 11 September 1862 and his resignation became official on October 1st. By October 27 he was in Richmond, offering his services to the Confederacy. He died the following July in the Pickett-Pettigrew charge at Gettysburg. William was not an officer in the 26th North Carolina, as claimed by the National Park Service site I previously linked to, but, rather, a staff officer for Brigadier General Joe Davis, nephew of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy.
He was also a husband and the father of a wee boy. Despite his short life, William T. Magruder has many descendants.
In an unexpected convergence, I have also found William T. Magruder nearly on my doorstep.
From 1851 until 1858 William was a dragoon officer on the frontier, though rarely “Indian fighting,” as some summaries of his career may claim. As of 1853 he had taken part in just one actual fight, a skirmish with the Chippewa near his post at Ft. Snelling, Minnesota, in which he is said to have killed a man. In 1854 he was transferred to Ft. Union, New Mexico Territory, where he served on the regimental staff. In March and April of 1855 he took part in two expeditions against the Muache Utes and Jicarilla Apaches right here in southern Colorado (then New Mexico Territory), with some events not more than a few miles from my cabin in the Wet Mountain Valley.
What I don’t yet have is insight into William’s character, personality, or motivations. If you are a descendant or have any connection to his family, I would love to hear from you. According to sources I have seen, there is a William T. Magruder archive preserved in the family. As of 2015 it seems to have been in the possession of Sam Magruder.
Here is a little of what the internet tells me about his family.
William married Mary Clayton Hamilton in 1860, in Baltimore. Their only child, also William Thomas Magruder (1861-1935), was raised by Mary & her second husband, William F. Lewis, an Episcopal minister in Catskill, NY. Educated as an engineer, William T. Maguder (II) ended his career as chair of the Mechanical Engineering department at the Ohio State University. He married Ellen Fall Malone, of Nashville. Their children were:
- William Thomas Magruder Jr. (Dec 1892-Jan 1943) (I know, he’s the third one, but apparently he was called Jr.) who married Eliza Warren (1893-1989). Their children were Anne Warren Magruder (unmarried); William Thomas Magruder III, who married Sammie Polson; Samuel Warren Magruder, who married Carolyn Warner Sterry; Ellen M. Magruder, who married Liston Nicholson, and later (apparently widowed) lived in Tucson, AZ.
- Thomas Malone Magruder (Nov 1896-1948) an engineer, who married (1) Ellen Dunn Trabue. Their son Thomas Malone Magruder Jr. was born April 1930 & Ellen died a month later. Thomas Sr. then married (2) Elizabeth Mccarroll.
- Thomas Malone Magruder Jr. (1930-2009) was an Episcopal minister and married Carol Ann Schnitzer. He died in Nevada.
- I have names of grandchildren & great-grandchildren. Other family names include Cornes, Farnsworth, and Wildman.
If this is your family, I’d be grateful if you would write to me via the Contact tab at the top of every page on this site.
Got £550,000? Nether Bellyclone, Alexander’s birthplace, is for sale
Many thanks to the reader who sent word that Nether Bellyclone–the Perthshire farm where Alexander McGruder, the Immigrant, was born–was put on the market last September. After poking around online I can confirm that it remained unsold in early February.
The house and farmyard have been severed from the surrounding cropland, and now comprise just over an acre, called by the developer “Lot 1, Nether Bellyclone Steading.” The buildings have fallen into disrepair. In photos, it looks like someone stripped out the interior of the house for renovation, but left the job unfinished.
Permitting has been obtained to renovate the house, convert two of the outbuildings to houses, and knock down the rest to make way for a newly-built house west of the old one. A tract of adjoining farmland, called “Lot 2, Nether Bellyclone”, was put on the market for development.
The realtor’s site has multiple photos and a video tour of the house’s interior. Photo 5 shows a plaque placed on the house by the American Clan Gregor Society in the 1970s, memorializing Alexander’s birthplace. Photo 10 shows an outbuilding that incorporates some of the oldest stonework on the farm.
Alexander McGruder/Magruder was born about 1610, when Belliclone was a small estate in the Drummond family domain. His mother, Margaret Campbell, was the widow of Andrew Drummond, 4th of Belliclone, and held a lifetime right to the estate, after which it would pass to her eldest son.
Sometime before 25 May 1605, she married the elder Alexander McGruder, who served as Chamberlain to James Drummond, brother of the Duke of Perth. James Drummond had been created the first Lord Madderty, and also held the titles Barron of Innerpeffrey and Commendator of Inchaffray Abbey (a secular title–the abbey was long gone). Margaret and Alexander had at least two children, James McGruder, who became Chamberlain to the Duke of Perth, and Alexander, our ancestor.
The elder Alexander McGruder died before 1 May 1617, date of the first reference to Margaret Campbell with her third husband. After his father’s death, we think our Alexander was taken a few miles away, to Craigneich, to be raised by his McGruder family.
In Maryland, Alexander named one of his plantations “Craigneich,” most often recorded as “Craignight.” Knowing that in Scotland “inch” is pronounced “anch,” we can see how “Inchaffray” became in America “Anchaffray Hills,” and then “Anchovie Hills”–the plantation where Alexander was living when he died. A third tract he called “Dunblane,” for the cathedral town where he may have been educated. He called a fourth tract “Alexandria,” after himself, and another simply “Good Luck.” He did not name any property for Belliclone, which he left no later than his seventh year.
Tracing Ancestors from the P.G. County Slave Statistics, part 2: Lewis Magruder, Edward Magruder, Thomas B. Beall, & Henry Phillips
Two months ago I posted confirmation that Susannah Beall Magruder, who in 1828 married Henry Phillips, was the daughter of Fielder Magruder Sr., making her the only sister of Fielder Jr., Lewis, Edward E., and William T. Magruder.
The addition of Phillips to this family brought additional depth to the through-lines of enslaved families from the 1867-68 Slave Statistics back to four Magruder probate records of the 1840s and 1850s. An Enslaved Community: Tracing Ancestors from 1867-68 Slave Statistics in P.G. County, Part 2, published today, includes two brothers, Lewis and Edward E. Magruder; their brother-in-law, Henry Phillips; and Thomas Birch Beall, the husband of one of their cousins, Jane Beall Magruder.
My project is to identify the multiple pathways by which an enslaved person might have become the property of a particular Magruder or related slaveholder in the statistics, with the hope of helping descendants push their family trees back another generation.
The four men in this family acquired slaves from the estates of four Magruders who died between 1840 and 1852.
Fielder Magruder Sr. (d. 1840) and Matilda Magruder (d. 1849) were the parents of Lewis, Edward E. and Susannah B. Magruder.
Fielder’s brother, Edward Magruder Sr. (d. 1842), was the father of Jane Beall Magruder; Oliver B. Magruder, who died young in 1852, was her brother and Edward’s son.
The records known as the Slave Statistics were created after the Maryland legislature passed a resolution asking the Federal government to reimburse the “loyal citizens” of Maryland for the loss of their enslaved laborers. That ship had sailed, but it’s lucky for us that many slaveholders were optimistic enough to visit the county court and “declare” their lost laborers, including in most cases their full names, with ages as of 1864, when Maryland’s new constitution abolished slavery in the state.
The Slave Statistics are incomplete–filing was voluntary, and open only to those who had been loyal to the Union–but they comprise the single most important source for linking ancestors to their last enslavers in Prince George’s County.
An Enslaved Community: Tracing Ancestors from 1867-68 Slave Statistics in P.G. County, Part 2 includes a downloadable database of everyone I have been able to identify who was enslaved by this small extended family, with a second page showing the most likely connections from probate records to the 1867-68 lists. Most are surnamed Semmes, Wright, Crawford, Edmondson, and Brown. One man, William Magruder, is likely the son of one of the white Magruder men.
I’ve provided links to most of my sources, including the original 1867-68 declarations and Magruder family probate records.
William Thomas Magruder, killed @ Gettysburg
Here is a brother of Susannah B. Magruder Phillips, another son of Fielder Magruder Sr. I kept seeing references to William T. Magruder dying at Getttysburg, though none said which side he was fighting for. Turns out he was one of four West Point graduates who switched sides during the Civil War, resigning his commission and joining the Confederate army after fighting for the Union at the first Battle of Bull Run and the Peninsula Campaign (1862). He was killed while trying to rally troops during Pickett’s charge. He had spent the years since his 1850 graduation fighting indigenous tribes in Minnesota, Kansas, New Mexico, and California.
The first of these links takes you to a basic biography. The second is part of a National Park Service course. If you search “Magruder” on that page, you’ll find an eye witness account of his death.
https://www.ohiocivilwarcentral.com/entry.php?rec=1553
https://www.nps.gov/articles/choices-and-commitments-soldier-at-gettysburg.htm
Susannah B. Magruder Phillips, an overlooked daughter (or two?)
For Magruders seeking white ancestors, or folks with a DNA match that fizzles out when you look at the published genealogies, here’s a wee discovery. An upcoming post will include how this and related discoveries may impact the search for enslaved ancestors in Prince George’s County, Washington, D.C., and possibly even Baltimore.
Fielder Magruder Sr. (1780-1840, s/o Haswell Magruder & Charity Beall) and his wife Matilda Magruder (~1789-1839, d/o Dr. Jeffrey Magruder of Montgomery County) are commonly reported to have four sons—Fielder Jr., Edward E., Lewis, and William T. (who was killed at Gettysburg), but no daughters. Both Fielder and Matilda died intestate, eliminating the most common source for verifying parentage.
Sales from Fielder Sr.’s estate turned up the name Henry Phillips, so I looked at land records for him, and discovered that his wife, Susannah B. Phillips, was Fielder’s daughter. A marriage record for 1828 confirmed her maiden name as Susannah B. Magruder.
The key deed is from 1846, clearly stating that Susannah B. Phillips is the daughter of the late Fielder Magruder. This deed, and another from 1844, record the sale of land by Henry and Susannah to her brother Lewis, and refer to the parcels as land that was distributed to Susannah by the court, at the division of Fielder’s property. So far, this deed is the only record I’ve found that states that she was Fielder’s daughter.
Find this deed in Prince George’s County Court (Land Records), Liber JBB 4, p.768, which you can access on MdLandRec.net. You’ll need to create an account, but it’s free. If you need help getting started searching that site, click my Contact tab & shoot me a line. (Please do not request help by commenting on this post.)
What a handy illustration of why you should read and compare all the sources you can find. I haven’t made an exhaustive search for Susannah, so maybe there is something I’ve missed? Let me know, and please include your sources.
Some have proposed another sister, Ida Magruder, living with Fielder Magruder Jr. and his wife, Ann Truman Greenfield Young, in 1850 and 1860. The entries for her age are inconsistent, but would place her birth in 1822 or 1825. I have looked at her only superficially, but it is a confusing case.
Some identify her as both Fielder Jr.’s sister and the Ida Magruder who married Jeffrey Phillips in 1864, and have identified Jeffrey as the son of Henry and Susannah B. Phillips. This would mean Ida married her nephew, when she was 39-42 years old and he was 29. However unlikely, it’s not impossible. Others, however, have identified the Ida who married Jeffrey as the daughter of Matilda Magruder’s brother Lewis.
Neither the 1850 nor the 1860 census recorded each person’s relationship to the head of household, so it has only been assumed that Ida is Fielder Jr.’s sister. If this Ida is actually his cousin, daughter of his uncle Lewis, his mother’s brother, her marriage would look far less strange.
It is unclear if all census records for Ida Phillips are for the same woman, or same couple. In 1870, we have an Ida born about 1828, and just five years older than her husband Jeffrey, a farmer in Bladensburg born about 1833. His personal property is recorded as just $560, with no real estate. In 1880, this or another Ida Phillips is born around 1830, and ten years older than her husband Jefferson, a farmer in Marlboro born about 1840. Values for property were not recorded in that census year, so can’t be compared. The Ancestry transcription says this Ida and her parents all were born in Pennsylvania. The census image clearly says Henry and his parents were from Pennsylvania, with faint ditto marks for Ida and her parents. If that is accurate, this is almost certainly a different couple. Notice, too, the creeping birthdates. It’s plausible that because she was older than her husband Ida sometimes misrepresented her age, but we would need some hard evidence to reconcile the Pennsylvania births with origins in the Magruder and Phillips families we’ve been looking at.
Have you done a thorough search to identify Ida and her husband? I’d like to say start with the probate records of Matilda’s brother Lewis, looking for the name Jeffrey Phillips. However, Lewis and his wife, Rebecca Duvall (also a Magruder descendant), appear to have died before Ida’s marriage. You could start with records left by their children, siblings of the Montgomery County Ida.
Miss Lucille & the Alabama Black McGruders win an Emmy!
Way to go, Miss Lucille! And congratulations to everyone who took part in bringing this story to the screen, especially Juan, Marie, Gwendolyn, J.R., & Jill.
Here’s a link to those 9 Emmy-winning minutes of Soul of a Nation.
And if you’re wondering…it’s true, as Lucille’s mother said, that black McGruders in Alabama would almost certainly be related, but the caption-writers at ABC got a little carried away when they swept up nearly all black McGruders into this family. There are black Magruders & McGruders elsewhere, each with their own history to explore. Check out the two Facebook groups: Magruder/McGruder Family Genealogy & African American Magruders/McGruders. Lots of people belong to both, and everyone is welcome.
Magruder's Landing 