The Thomas Moorman Letter ~ Comparison of the copy in A. D. Candler's 1902 edition of Colonel William Candler of Georgia, His Ancestry and Progeny, and the copy in Jones Library, Lynchburg, VA. Commentary to follow:
Commentary:
If anyone has a copy of this letter that differs from the two above, I would appreciate your bringing this to my attention.
The order of the following comments does not necessarily follow the letter. I have placed hyperlinks within the commentary that link back to the part of the letter under discussion.
I don't take issue with typing errors -- for example: the Jones' version says, "In 1765 I attended a great Safety Council..." while Candler says "In 1756..." There may be other errors in typing that I have corrected. Note on the Stamp Act. My concerns are with recollections that contradict documented facts.
The Moorman letter starts out speaking of the time between 1754 and 1758. Then it skips back to 1753 when we find William and Zed Candler surveying a royal grant for the Anthonys.
"Lining a Royal Charter for the Anthonys"
In 1760 Joseph Anthony received two royal land grants at South River Settlement right in the midst of the Candler Clan (Daniel, John, and William). However, I have strong reservations about this claim that Candlers were actually surveying these parcels. It may be that they were processioning their property with their neighbor. Let's look at the evidence for the Anthonys' living next to the Candlers, and when.
In VA Patents 33, (1756-1761), p. 667, there is a grant dated 3 March 1760 to Joseph Anthony for 153 acres on Fishing Creek. This grant shares boundaries with Daniel Chandler and William Chandler. Daniel's patent is dated 1755, and says "Albemarle County." William's grant is dated 1761 in Bedford. Daniel's grant does not cite neighbors; William's mentions Daniel but not Joseph Anthony, and Anthony's mentions both, so I'm just guessing that the chronology of survey matches this apparent order. Joseph Anthony received another grant on the same day in 1760 for 400 acres also on Fishing Creek, neighbor to Philip Morrison. These seem to be the only Anthony grants at South River per se. It is also likely that the surveys were held for a while before they were entered in the books in Williamsburg.
A note on the proximity of John Candler's homestead.
Problems
As I stated (above) I take issue with the notion that the Candler boys were surveying a Royal Charter (see note). The official county surveyor should have been doing this, not the Candler boys (who nowhere appear in the list of official surveyors of Bedford County or any other Virginia County for that matter). Bedford County did not have a surveyor in 1753 because it only existed on paper; it was not organized as a real governmental unit until 1754. In 1755, Buckner Stith became the first surveyor of Bedford County. The surveyor of Albemarle (in which county this land lay in 1753) was none other than Joshua Fry -- cartographer, mentor of Peter Jefferson (Thomas' father) with whom he made the famous Fry-Jefferson map of 1751, and former mathematics professor at Wm. & Mary College.
In 18th century Virginia, land was ultimate power.
To be made surveyor of a Virginia County at this time was a very significant political appointment. Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and of course George Washington, were all county surveyors and this position was a step toward military and political power. Surveying was not a vocation that local businessmen or young roughnecks followed. William Candler became a county surveyor in Georgia in 1771, and I suspect he moved down to that wilderness after despairing of ever receiving such a position in VA. The annals of the Virginia Royal Council abound with the political wheeling and dealing among rich and powerful men to get these few positions.
Another fault I find in this is the statement, "This was in 1753, and Zed Candler, who afterward married our cousin, Ann Moorman, was a lad some 14 years old."
DANIEL CANDLER"S WILL of 1765 (from Bedford Co, VA Will Book #1, pg. 18) dated 4th day of August 1765, probated 27th day of May 1766, says,
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... my Will is and hereby Declare it to be so that if the s'd Zedikiah Candler Shall Leave my Wife Hannah Candler Without her Consent Till he Arrives at the age of Twenty Years or Married That then his part of my Estate Given to him to be Divided Shall Remain to & amongst the other Four mentioned with him above and that he has no part nor parcel thereof... |
So, on August 4, 1765, Zed was not twenty. It seems unlikely that he was too close to twenty, otherwise why would a dying man quibble over a few months. Daniel did not want his son leaving home yet! Considering this, how does one read the Moorman letter where it says, "This was in 1753, and Zed Candler, who afterward married our cousin, Ann Moorman, was a lad some 14 years old."
If he was not yet twenty in 1765, then he was not yet eight in 1753.
The Moorman letter says that -- a great Safety Council met at South River in 1765 to Jower over the stamp act. Zed Candler had just returned from fighting Indians and settled on a royal grant. Again, we have the iron-clad documentation in Daniel's will saying that Zed was not ready to leave home and would be punished if he did so, and the Moorman letter saying that he had been gone fighting Indians and received a large grant for doing so.
Was he supposed to stay at home and not use his royal grant until he turned twenty?
The last paragraph in the A. D. Candler version seems not to be in the Jones version. I can find no record of Zed ever having any land on Flat Creek, grant or purchase. There also is abundant evidence that Zed lived in Bedford County until about 1816 when he may have moved to Tennessee to be near his son(s) and daughter(s). At least his son John a daughter Mahala (Candler) Crowder had moved to Wilson/Smith County, TN by the 1820 census and it appears that he did so too. More on where Zed Candler lived.
The Moorman chronology asserts that William & Zed Candler were three years apart in age. William Candler joined the Quakers in 1754. By 1757, he was the clerk of the meeting. Therefore, the Moorman chronology supposes that William was eleven when he joined and fourteen when elected clerk. In 1760, William made a contract with Joseph Ray at Fort Lewis (present Salem, VA) to carry supplies to the solders at Fort Frederick (near present Radford, VA). This was far into hostile Indian country during the French & Indian War. It seems unlikely that a seventeen-year-old would be charged with such a mission.
How Many Candler Boys Were There?
The Moorman letter is the source (as far as I know) of the claim that Daniel and Hannah had two sons, Thomas and Henry, who died before Daniel and therefore are not in his will.
"These Candlers were all related in Ireland," says the letter. The letter also says, "They first came to North Carolina but soon moved to VA, and the old man Zack settled below us on the river."
Who is this referring to? Zachariah Candler was Zed's son; Zachariah Moorman was his father-in-law. There was no Zack Candler until the 1770's. Does he mean Daniel Candler (and Zack was written by mistake)?
Moorman speaks of all the Candler boys Zed and Thomas Candler, and mayhap Henry Candler and brother. Does this, followed by the statement that "these Candlers were related in Ireland" mean that these were not all brothers?
Here, the Jones version and the Candler version can be read as conflicting. Whereas there are ellipses in the Candler version in other spots where he left out a few words, there are none here. Which version is correct? A. D. Candler's book says that the Candlers were related to the Moormans in Ireland. The Jones copy says, "These Candlers were all related in Ireland."
Lynchburg
In the last paragraph in the A. D. Candler version, there is a parenthetic comment about Lyncburg. Lynchburg was founded in 1786, so we should assume that this is someone else's comment.
Ohio?
The statement about the Yadkin Colony breaking up "about five or six years before" I assume means five or six years prior to 1765 -- about 1759-60. Where on the Ohio were these Bickles going in 1759? The battle of Point Pleasant was in 1774. The possession of the Ohio Territory was not settled until after the battle of Fallen Timbers when Anthony Wayne defeated the Indians bringing about the treaty of Greenville. By the way, Zachariah Candler was in the Bedford militia that went to Fort Hamilton, Ohio in the early 1790's to fight that War. Sometimes, this letter reminds me more of the later generations of Candlers.
About 1769, William Candler (and perhaps not coincidentally, a number of Quakers from Cane Creek, NC) moved to Wrightsboro, GA to take up grant lands there. They named their village in honor of the Royal Governor who gave them the grant. By 1771, William Candler was the surveyor of Richmond County, GA.
Candlers In The West
Where Zedikiah Candler Lived
There was a Zedikiah Candler on the 1820 Smith County, TN federal census. This part of Smith is adjacent to Wilson County. He was over 45 years in age. I have assumed that this was Daniel's son Zedikiah, but I suppose it might be a son of his. Zedikiah Candler was in Bedford County, VA in 1816. His wife, Anna (Moorman) Candler's estate was settled (for the most part) in Bedford County, between late1804 and 1806, and Zed and most of the children were listed as residents of that County. Anna must have died in late1804.
In Allen Daniel Candler's book, the author says of North Carolina:
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In this province, William Candler's father settled, his son William (and probably another son) was born there, and soon after the birth of his son, he died there, [while] still a young man. Here we find William Candler, in 1760; here he married, as is shown by the records, and here his three oldest children were born. If he had a brother, and family tradition says he had, he was probably the progenitor of all the Candlers in North Carolina and Virginia. They trace their lineage back to Zachariah Candler, who appeared in western North Carolina about the beginning of the present century, and belonged to the first generation after the War of the Revolution. They do not know whether they are descended from the English or the Irish stock, but the fact that their earliest ancestor, of whom they have any account, lived soon after the war, in that state from which William Candler came a few years before the war, strengthens the supposition that the father of Zacheriah Candler and his brother John, who died in Tennessee in the early part of the present century, was the brother of William Candler of Georgia. |
Of course most of this is now known to be wrong, but he was correct that Zachariah Candler had a brother in TN. I traveled to Wilson County, TN this spring to search the archives. A local researcher, Thomas Partlow, had found a box in the Wilson County court house, marked for disposal, which contained the oldest remaining tax records -- 1827-1832.
The only evidence I had found prior to this time was an affidavit, dated 1814, that was sent to Bedford County Court by John Candler of Wilson County, Tennessee.
Looking through the Partlow transcriptions I found several citations for John Candler and his neighbor Winston Candler. This was a shock because descendants of Winston Candler had been contacting me wondering if I could make the connection between their ancestor and the Virginia Candlers -- they could not.
After more research in the Wilson/Smith County, TN area (and DeKalb County which separated from Wilson in the 1840's or so), I turned up more data on John Candler. I found that he and Martha Candler had joined the Salem Baptist Church in 1812 and 1810 (respectively). In fairness to Allen D. Candler I must say that I re-read the section of his book where he is speaking of the Tennessee Candlers, and noticed that he did say that John Candler had a wife named Martha.
DeKalb Co., TN records refer to this John as John T. Candler. Was he John Thomas Candler? No evidence so far.
"Henry" was a common name among the Candlers. Col. William of Georgia named a son Henry, b. c1762, who was a major in the Revolutionary War. John of Virginia had a son, Henry, b. 1769. There is no record that Zed had a son named Henry, but I'm beginning to suspect that he did. Thomas was not such a common name.
Henrys Who Are Not Sons Of Daniel & Hannah
After learning of the Candlers of Wilson County, Tennessee, I recalled this datum: 1793, CANDLER, HENRY, Wilkes County, NC, p.290, Medlocks District, Tax list, NC Early Census Index
I could never figure out who this Henry was. I believed there to be only one choice, but now there may be two. Zedikiah Candler may have had a son named Henry. John Candler (c1730-1802) had a son, Henry, whose birth, 1769, is given in Quaker records and who was disowned by Friends in late 1798 for bearing arms. I had concluded that it was probably he that had sojourned in North Carolina.
However, beside the names of John and Winston Candler in the 1832 Wilson County tax lists, Mr. Partlow shows Henry Candler -- just this year. There is no further record of him.
As stated above, John Candler, Sr. (c1730-1802), brother of Zed's, had a son named Henry who was born in 1769. He is not the Henry of the Moorman letter (but he may be the Henry in North Carolina records). John's son, Henry, died in 1806 (Campbell Co, will inventory, and inheritance citations among his siblings). Therefore, he was not the Henry in TN in 1829 either. I suspect that Zed Candler and Anna Moorman had more than two sons and that Henry of Wilson County was a third.
The Moorman letter says that in 1754 "quite a muck of folk" left South River for land on the Yadkin. Quaker records say that William Candler received a certificate to travel to the Quaker meeting at Cane Creek, NC in May of 1755, and another to travel to New Garden in June of 1756. His sister, Elloner, received a certificate to Cane Creek and New Garden in May of 1756, a month before her brother. (I wonder if she was considered one of the "motley gang." In 1763, Elloner married Byrum Ballard who was a Cane Creek Quaker before his parents moved up to Virginia.
This is not making the Moorman letter any clearer.
NOTES:
For the record, John Candler's land was on Rock Castle Creek and Lynch's Creek which are very closeby. Fishing Creek Valley is the sight of the original South River Settlement. This is where the Candlers, Lynches, Johnsons, Cafferys, and Moormans lived in the 1750's. A large mountain defines the eastern side of this valley and from the late 1760's it has been called Candler's Mountain. A smaller ridge runs from Candlers Mountain westward into present Lynchburg. To the north of this ridge is Fishing Creek, to the south is Lynches Creek. Daniel's and William Candler's land was on the north of this ridge and John's was on the south. At the other end of this ridge from Candler's Mountain is Chestnut Hill and nearby stands the Quaker Meeting House.
Surveyors and Statesmen, Land Measuring in Colonial Virginia, by Sarah S. Hughes, ©1979 The Virginia Surveyors Foundation, Ltd. & The Virginia Association of Surveyors, Ltd.
The Kentucky Gazette mentions Zachariah Candler, age about twenty, as being at Fort Hamilton before January of 1793.
The Stamp Act was passed in 1764. In May of 1765, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed a strong resolution, sponsored by Patrick Henry, protesting the act.
Here is a very good commentary on the characters in this letter. This was written several years ago and the author and I have discussed this subject a good bit since then. I'm sure that a few of hid ideas have changed since then, but still this is a gem in helping one to understand who's who. http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~lksstarr/reports/dougcand.txt