Category Archives: Maryland

When AI Transcription Fails, Try Another Site

If you search on Ancestry for the sons of Haswell Magruder (1736-1811) in the 1810 census, you will probably find only Fielder (1780-1840) and William (1773-1842). Paging through the census images will reveal the other brothers, Samuel (abt 1765-1826) and Edward (1778-1842)–both quite readable, by the way.

Haswell’s daughters are also there, under their husbands’ names: James Moran, husband of Hester Beall Magruder (abt 1764-1832) and Adam Crawford (or Crauford), husband of his Sophia (abt 1771-1836). (Honestly, it looks like the girls just married the nearest man. Their choice or their father’s?)

All are in the “Scotland Ocean & Bladensburgh Hundreds.” The “hundreds” were the original districts, a terminology held over from colonial times.

But even knowing they were there, no amount of searching and no search engine trickery would cough up a result for Edward or Samuel.

…Until a big duh moment today, when I recalled the very different format on Family Search. It opens up a sidebar for transcriptions instead of a separate page, so you can scroll through both simultaneously. All I had to do was find Fielder and Haswell, on p. 53, and then scroll back to p. 50, where I knew the missing brothers were lurking. Both cleverly concealed, it turns out, under the transcriptions: “Ewd Maginden” and “Saml Maginden.”

When I entered those names on Ancestry, up they popped. I’ve entered alternate names for both, so hopefully future searches there will succeed.

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9YY1-9YB4?view=index&action=view
Family Search link to p.50, Edward & Samuel — free
https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/91784:7613?tid=21996598&pid=1166242063&queryId=91e69e0f-145b-4239-a0f8-c8c129c6d69e&_phsrc=Gzo3198&_phstart=successSource
Ancestry Link to “Ewd Maginden” — requires a subscription

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.

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.

Magruders & allies in P.G. County

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.

Sarah Magruder, wife of Samuel

Another piece for the continuing conversation about the identity of Sarah Magruder (d.1734), wife of Samuel Magruder (d.1711), son of Alexander the Immigrant…

Today I was trawling through Maryland Land Records & came on a deed of gift from Sarah to her son Nathaniel, dated 26 November 1716. She gives to Nathaniel an enslaved boy named Charles, about three years old, the son of “negro Sue.” She signed the deed by mark (indicating that she was illiterate) and the clerk of the Prince George’s County Court (Robert Hall) recorded her name as “Sarah M. S. Magruder.” This appears to be more circumstantial evidence for the belief that her birth name was Mills. I can’t link to it, b/c of how MDLandRec site works, but you can look for yourself.

Go to MDLandRec.net. Choose Prince George’s County from the drop down menu. Click on “Jump to new volume,” then enter E for the book & 563 for the page. If you don’t have an account for that site, you’ll need to create one, but it’s free.

Re: Sarah’s possible lack of literacy… I have not seen estimates for her generation, but in Alexander’s only about half of all men who wrote wills signed their names, the others signing by mark.

Magruder-McGregor family papers

The Huntington Library–in San Marino, California, by Pasadena–has scanned and made public a small collection of papers from the family of Roderick McGregor. This is the younger Roderick, son of Nathaniel M. McGregor and Susan Euphemia Mitchell, and grandson of John Smith Magruder, who in 1820 changed the surnames of his children to McGregor in the mistaken belief that Alexander Magruder the Immigrant was a member of Clan Gregor in Scotland. I have written elsewhere on this site about Nathaniel’s brother, the first Roderick McGregor, and other members of the family, and of those they enslaved. (See John S. Magruder & McGregor Slaves, under Slavery’s Legacy.) The elder Roderick lived on and farmed their father’s plantation in Prince George’s County, MD, while Nathaniel was a businessman in Washington, D.C.

The heart of the Huntington collection is a group of family letters from 1860-1862 (+ one each from 1857 & 1864). By that time, the elder Roderick had died and Nathaniel’s family was living at the plantation. Nathaniel himself went back and forth between “home,” as he calls it in the letters, and his official residence in a business district of Washington, D.C. Nathaniel’s son, the younger Roderick, was attending the brand-new Maryland Agricultural College, now the University of Maryland, and his absence from home occasioned the exchange of numerous letters with this father, mother, and siblings. The few surviving letters are deeply interesting, containing snippets of family life, with mention of a few of the family’s enslaved laborers, house servants, and runaways (including some identified elsewhere in family wills and estate papers). Here, too, are the various anxieties of wartime–approach of the war, efforts to find a political compromise, Union troops in the neighborhood, closed bridges and check-points, unrest among the enslaved, and, finally, a prediction that the plantation will yield no harvest as slaves begin leaving and Emancipation approaches.

We learn, too, that Roderick was nearly killed in some sort of accident in 1857; that one of his sisters was thrown from an overturning carriage; that his mother Susan (who had given birth ten times, with seven living children aged 12-31) was often unwell; that one young woman in the family’s social circle was “the most affected creature” ever seen; that the parents were religious and worried that Roderick was not; that Nathaniel generally frowned on the theater, but allowed his daughters to attend an adaptation of Sir Walter Scott’s Rob Roy; and that Uncle Alerick (another of Nathaniel’s brothers, a school teacher) “has recovered from his frolic.” Sadly, we never find out what that frolic included, only that a man of his age should have known better.

I am working on updates to Magruder’s Landing, and will include some excerpts and analysis of the contents of the letters, but in the meantime you can read them yourself, right here: McGregor Family Correspondence.

Names in the letters include: Nathaniel Mortimer McGregor; his wife Susan Euphemia Mitchell McGregor; their children Helen Woods McGregor Ewell (Roderick’s oldest sister, married to her first cousin, John Smith Magruder Ewell), Margaret Eliza McGregor (married to her first cousin John Ridout “Ridy” McGregor, son of Alerick McGregor & Martha Potts Key); Susan Euphemia McGregor; Isabella “Bell” McGregor (later married to Thomas Somerville Dorset); Roderick Mortimer McGregor (later married to Margaret Elizabeth Bowie, d/o Richard Bowie, a relative); Agnes Woods McGregor (later married to Thomas Trueman Somerville Bowie, another relative); John Francis McGregor (later married to Frances Ellen Wallace); Susan E.M. McGregor’s brothers William Mitchell and John Mitchell (Uncle William & Uncle John); John Ridout “Ridie” McGregor; various neighbors and acquaintances; enslaved men Jack Bowie, Ned [Dodson], John Henry, George, & Sam; enslaved woman Bity or Bittie.

The collection also includes some later family material (up to the 1980s), a photograph of Roderick, and two of his report cards from the MAC.

Samuel Magruder’s Patuxent Tobacco Ship

Duncan McGruther sent a message a few days ago:

Alexander the Immigrant left an eighth share of the ‘Patuxent Tobacco ship’ in his Will. Has anyone come across this vessel? Or details of where it berthed, or the other shareholders? I assume it was not seagoing and confined its activities to collecting and accumulating tobacco from growers on the Patuxent, but if so where was its home port and where did it deliver to for onward transmission across the Atlantic.

I don’t know of any record pertaining to the tobacco ship, which appears in the 1710/1711 will of Samuel Magruder, Alexander’s oldest known son. He appears to have owned a one-fourth interest in the ship, as he bequeathed one-eighth each to his sons Alexander and Nathaniel. We know Alexander the Immigrant owned the tobacco landing (shipping point) for which this website is named, and it’s likely that business accounted for much of his prosperity, as he made money there even when the (notoriously unstable) price of tobacco was down. That business-sense seems to have passed to his wealthy oldest son, who owned town lots in Marlborough as well as numerous plantations.

The Patuxent is silted in & shallow these days, but in the 17th c. was both wider & deeper, navigable for ocean-going vessels. They anchored mid-channel & sent smaller boats to the landings to take on hogsheads of tobacco. I have not read much detail about those operations, but always assumed the ships used their own small boats. It could have been the opposite, I suppose, with each landing sending out its own boat. However, since his shares of the “Pertuxson Merchant ship” were named & bequeathed as an item in Samuel’s will, separate from any real estate, my assumption would be that he owned it jointly with other growers/shippers & that it collected tobacco up & down the Patuxent for transport to Magruder’s or other landings. It is also possible the ship transported other commercial goods.

A tobacco warehouse stood at the Magruder site until it was burned down by the British in 1814, during what we Americans, for some reason, persist in calling The War of 1812. Was the Patuxent already silting up Samuel’s time, so this river-going ship was needed to transport tobacco and other produce down to the river mouth?

Can you answer that question, or do you have other detail about the operations of the tobacco landings and transatlantic ships? If so, please get in touch via the Contact tab on any page of this site.

[This post was corrected after I checked the wills of Alexander & his son Samuel, confirming my recollection that it was Samuel, not his father, who owned shares in the ship.]

A review of Trafficke…and what came next

I am happy and impressed when anyone takes the time to actually read Trafficke, much less review it. I was exceptionally pleased when I learned Jon Curley had reviewed it on Galatea Resurrects, an outstanding venue for engagements with poetry books and projects. Jon brings great historical depth to his review, and writes more eloquently than I do about why and how the method and poetics of Trafficke matters. I was so pleased by his words that it took me a couple of times through to realize that our family’s 200 years of slave holding–the book’s ultimate ethical challenge–was never mentioned. Take a look at the Galatea page now and read the ensuing comments and discussion. Sean Pears (a brilliant young writer now working on a PhD in Poetics) took the lead; Karen Branan chimed in; Jon responded with generosity and insight; and I added my thoughts. Taken together, this is an outstanding way to review a book and to keep bringing hard truths to consciousness. We all have to learn, and sometimes we have to learn in public. I’m grateful to Jon, Sean, & Karen, and to Galatea Resurrects for providing the forum. http://galatearesurrection26.blogspot.com/…/trafficke-by-su…