For those planning to visit McGruder country in Perthshire–and for those who just wish they could–I just found this website: Highland Strathearn | Papers in a Trunk, by Peter McNaughton, a Comrie native. The history is a might romantic (repeating legends as if they were factual) , but the driving tours look wonderful. Open the Table of Contents and scroll down to the Twentieth Century, at the bottom. There you’ll find routes and a travelogue for
A resource for African-American Magruders
Many thanks to James Louis Bacon for directing me to Civil War Washington, which includes a number of Emancipation Petitions from the war years. In a quick search I found several African American Magruders/McGruders, and others who were owned by, freed by, or had been sold by Magruders / McGruders or McGregors.
Choose “Texts,” where all are searchable by key words. Be sure to search under all possible spellings. The number of documents is not tremendous, but all have been transcribed, and include personal descriptions, detail about how the petitioner acquired the services of each person, and, in some cases, family relationships. Some had been brought from to D.C. from Maryland or Virginia. Good luck in your quest!
For those interested in the Magruder/MacGregor question…
Please see comments by Jim Magruder on the page (under Alexander) called “Alexander’s Family Tree.” Continuing that conversation, I have updated the page (under Scotland) called “McGruder / McGregor / Campbell / Drummond: Are you confused yet?” I haven’t changed the argument I make there, but I have added more details, some sources, and some clarifications.
To all who still believe, or want to believe, in the Magruder-MacGregor connection: your comments are welcome. More welcome still would be evidence to back up the legend.
Jim Magruder says in his comments that belief in the connection goes back to the 17th c. I know of no evidence before the 19th; and the 19th c. Magruders whose writing I’ve seen, or whose stories have been published, make no claim pointing farther back than the late 18th.
When I first started researching Alexander and all these related histories, a long, long McGruder-MacGregor tradition was exactly what I expected to find…but I didn’t. I read about Alexander’s life, and I read about Clan Gregor, and I couldn’t find any intersections between them. Likewise, when Don McGruther began researching in Scottish historical records, he expected to prove the McGruther-MacGregor connection: instead, he wound up proving that there is no evidence.
So, really, if you have older evidence from Maryland, I can’t wait to see it. And if you have evidence from Scotland, bring it on! We can start the hunt all over again.
More on Washington & May (or Mary) McGruder
I could as easily have titled this post “Do as I Say, Not as I Do.” I say to always search census records with multiple spellings, and then, if you still don’t succeed, try searching for neighbors. Apparently, I did neither of these things the first time I searched for census records for Washington Magruder and his wife May. I was also under the sway of Alice Maude Ewell’s 1931 memoir, in which she wrote that Washington and May had been free for many years before the war, and that after the war they moved to Washington.
Well, on a second try, I found them still in Prince William County, Virginia, in 1870 and 1880. So if they did “follow their children to Washington City,” as Ewell put it, they did so at a very advanced age. I found no records for them prior to 1870. In 1870, three children named McGruder lived with them, the youngest possibly a grandchild. In 1880, due to extreme fading of the ink, their name has been transcribed on Ancestry.com as “McGruden.” The only child with them at that time was seven year-old James Ward. In both years, they lived next door to Alice Maude Ewell with her parents and many siblings. Read all about it on the updated version of Washington McGruder
More on the Mullin/Mullen Family
I have just finished a major overhaul of my page about the Mullin/Mullen family, whose members were manumitted between 1803 and 1817. The first to gain freedom were “Old Basil” Mullen and his wife Ester or Easter, who were manumitted by the will of Benjamin Hall in 1803. (Benjamin Hall was the father of Eleanor Hall [widow Clark] who married John Smith Magruder.) Basil was a carpenter, and it seems he immediately set about earning money to purchase and manumit his relatives. In 1806, he manumitted his daughter, Sarah Digges, with four of her children, having purchased them from Henry Lowe Hall (son of Benjamin and brother of Eleanor Hall Magruder). In 1810 he purchased another daughter or daughter-in-law, Dolly Mullen, with one of her children, and a son, Basil, who was also a carpenter, with his wife Suck [Sukey] and one of their children. Finally, in 1814, Basil purchased his son Joseph with wife Kate and two daughters from John Smith Magruder, and manumitted them in 1817. Read more about this hard-working and loyal family and the process of “bootstrapping” to gain freedom.
More on family of William & Matilda Bowie
James Louis Bacon, a descendant of William & Matilda Bowie, is working on a family history that includes the Bowies, as well as his Jackson ancestors who were key figures in the Underground Railroad in Jersey City, New Jersey. He has very kindly shared information about the Bowies and answered many of the questions left open in my page about William & Matilda. I have updated that page, accordingly.
William & Matilda and three of their children were manumitted by the will of Roderick McGregor. (Two older sons were not included in that manumission.) One of their grandsons (William A. Bowie, son of Nathaniel Bowie) was co-founder of a bank in Washington D.C. and prominent in the black community. Considering that Nathaniel was 15 when he was manumitted, that his parents were illiterate and that he himself received little formal schooling, it is truly impressive that his son William achieved so much. I am very grateful to Mr. Bacon for sharing this information and pointing me to articles and advertisements in the Washington Bee (a black newspaper in D.C.) that detail William A. Bowie’s career. I look forward to reading the history of his family, on both sides.
I also have new information about slaves inherited by Roderick McGregor’s wife, Ann Eleanor Eversfield Berry (widow Eaton), in 1832. I’ve not yet had time to update the page on the slaves of Roderick McGregor, but will do so soon.
Anchovie Hills Wildlife Sanctuary
As some of you already know, Anchovie Hills–Alexander Magruder’s home at the time of his death–is now under permanent protection from development. Originally patented at 400 acres, the plantation was subdivided several times among heirs and remained in Magruder ownership at least through the early 19th century. It has been in the family of the present owner, Mary Cross Zoeter, for about 150 years. The present property is 171 acres, privately owned but protected by two conservation easements–one ensuring it will never be developed, the other specifically protecting its wildlife from hunting and trapping.
Anchovie Hills is located on Croom Road in Brandywine, Maryland, close to the original Magruder’s Landing, at the location now called Magruder’s Ferry Boat Ramp on Magruder’s Ferry Road. The boat ramp is public, but Anchovie Hills itself is private land with no public access.
You can read about the Anchovie Hills Wildlife Sanctuary and watch a short video on the website of the Humane Society’s Wildlife Land Trust. Please consider making a donation.
Your comments & a new year
Well, it’s a new year, with all its resolutions…. but I still have only a little time to devote to Magruder’s Landing. Thanks to all who have encouraged me to continue. I will! I HAVE had time for some new research, and will add that to the list of topics pending.
I was surprised when I got the year-end summary by how many people have come to this site–several hundred, though few have left any trace of themselves behind.
And speaking of that…I just found out by browsing through the comments, as stored on the web provider, that I haven’t been receiving emails every time someone posts a comment. That’s how it’s supposed to work, and sometimes it does…. So if you didn’t see your comment appear, and I didn’t respond, I hereby apologize. I have just approved the ones I missed, and will start checking regularly to make sure I’m on top of it.
Directions to Belliclone Farm
For Liz, who is cycling around Crieff and Perthshire…traveling vicariously for us all…here are directions to Belliclone Farm.
I took this this partly from memory (from two previous visits) and partly from someone else’s typed directions.
Belliclone is east of Crieff on the old Perth-Crieff road. You can come from that direction, or reach it off the A85 east of Crieff. About 6 miles from Crieff is an unnumbered road on the right that leads in about a mile to the ruins of Inchafray Abbey. You’ll see them on your right, not very large, across a field. There’s a private house there but the owner let myself and friend in to see the ruins in ’99. His electronic gate says Inchaffray Abbey. To find Belliclone, keep going on that road past Inchaffray about 2.5 miles to a paved road, which is the old Perth-Crieff road. Turn right. There are new houses along that road, in case you have to ask directions. The typed directions say it’s about a mile from there to the Bellyclone road on the right, a private road. I recall that it was or seemed farther. Once you turn right on the Bellyclone road it will run north a short way then hook back to the right (east) and you’ll see Belliclone on the right, if new houses haven’t been built in front of it. The tenants in ’99 were reasonably friendly toward our visit. Because of the plaque placed on the house by American Magruders in ’75 they weren’t too surprised to see strangers at the gate.
If you look at the outbuildings, you’ll find a partition wall between two sections where the stonework looks markedly older than the rest. It is visible from the outside where the end of the partition wall forms part of the exterior wall. This is said to be stonework dating from Alexander Magruder’s time, though I don’t’ know how this was established, nor what kind of building it is supposed to have been.
Also nearby is Maderty Church & cemetery.
Good luck, Liz!
McGruder / McGregor / Campbell / Drummond : Are you confused yet?
The more I learn about the McGrouther/McGruther/McGruder family in Scotland the more outlandish it seems to imagine they were part of Clan Gregor or that Alexander ever identified himself as a MacGregor. The Drummond family, to whom the McGruders were connected for many generations, were closely allied with the Glenorchy Campbells, with whom the MacGregors feuded bitterly. And, more particularly, the Drummonds and McGruthers had a powerful reason to feud with Clan Gregor themselves. See the new page I’ve just put up, with the same title as this post, under the heading Scotland.
Magruder's Landing 