Col. Nathaniel Gist

Nathaniel Gist

A Patriot of the American Revolution for VIRGINIA with the rank of COLONEL. DAR Ancestor # A045442

• b. October 15, 1733, Baltimore County, Maryland
• d. 1796, Canewood, Clark County, Kentucky
• parents: Christopher Gist & Sarah Howard

"served as colonel, Virginia Continental Line, 1777; was taken prisoner at Charleston, and retire, 1781" - DAR lineage book, vol. 154, page 151.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/244936236/nathaniel-gist

Family

Marriage 1 Wut-teh (Wurteh) Paint Clan (Bird Clan) b: ABT 1744

Children

1. George "Sequoyah" Gist (Guess) b: ABT 1775 in Tuskegee,, Cherokee Nation

Marriage 2 Judith Cary Bell b: 1750 in , Virginia Married: ABT 1783 in , Buckingham Co., Virginia

Children

1. Sarah Howard Gist b: ABT 1784/1785 in , Buckingham Co., Virginia
2. Henry Cary Gist b: ABT 1786 in , Buckingham Co., Virginia
3. Judith Bell Gist b: ABT 1788 in , Buckingham Co., Virginia
4. Thomas Nathaniel Gist b: ABT 1790 in , Buckingham Co., Virginia
5. Anna Maria Gist b: ABT 1791 in , Buckingham Co., Virginia
6. Davidella C. (Dandella) Gist b: ABT 1793 in , Buckingham Co., Virginia
7. Elizabeth Violet H."Eliza" Gist b: 1793/1795
8. Maria Cecil Gist b: 18 Jul 1797 in Canewood, Bourbon Co., Kentucky

notes

Info added per DARs "Lineage Book of the Charter Members" by Mary S Lockwood and published 1895 stating he was "a colonel and grigadier of the Virginia Line"

Sequoyah's father was either white or mixed-race white and Cherokee. Sources differ as to the exact identity of Sequoyah's father, but many (including Mooney) suggested that he was possibly a fur trader, who would have been a man of some social status and financial backing. Based on available documentation, for decades historians believed that Sequoyah's father was Nathaniel Gist, a commissioned officer with the Continental Army associated with George Washington.

Allegiance - United States, Service/branch - Infantry, Years of service - 1755–1760 and 1777–1783. Rank -
Colonel. Battles/wars fought in - Braddock's Expedition (1755), Forbes Expedition (1758), Cherokee War (1760), Battle of Paulus Hook (1779), and Siege of Charleston (1780).

Brief Biography

Nathaniel Gist (15 October 1733 – 1812) was born in Maryland and fought during the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War. He was reputed to be the father of Sequoyah the famous Cherokee by Wut-teh. Like his father Christopher Gist (1706–1759), Nathaniel became a frontiersman and he once briefly traveled with Daniel Boone. He served in Braddock's Expedition in 1755 and the Forbes Expedition in 1758. The outbreak of the American Revolution found him on the frontier. At first suspected of sympathizing with the British, he convinced the Americans of his loyalty.

George Washington, a close friend of his father, authorized him to form Gist's Additional Continental Regiment in January 1777. Gist probably participated in Light Horse Harry Lee's Paulus Hook Raid in 1779. He and his regiment were captured at the Siege of Charleston in May 1780. After the war, he took an American wife Judith Cary Bell (1750–1833) and the couple had four daughters, one of whom married Francis P. Blair. He is variously said to have died in 1796, 1812, or at the end of the War of 1812. He is confused with his uncle Nathaniel Gist (1707–1780). He was a first cousin of Mordecai Gist.

Lineage Book - National Society of the Daughters of the American ..., Volume 36 'Daughters of the American Revolution - 1912 http://books.google.com/books?id=mmUZAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA147&img=1&zoom=3...

Nathaniel was the son of Captain Christopher Gist[, himself famous as an explorer of the West in 1750 and as guide to the young George Washington in the Ohio River Region. His personal journals are considered the bedrock of history of the West for the earliest emigrant times.

Nathaniel had a brilliant career in the southeast Indian Nation; trading in 1750's, later as Lieutenant to Major George Washington in 1755. Due to his intimate negotiations with the Stuarts, agents, and Old Hop, and other chiefs, he was suspected of being a double agent in the Revolutionary War Years, 1770's and came close to hanging; but Gist was diplomatically reunited with Geo. Washington who elevated him to Colonel of a Continental regiment. He retired in January, 1781.

• Gist Family of Baltimore
• Find A Grave Memorial # 51971154.
• "Chronicles of Oklahoma, Volume 14, No. l. March 1937" for the excellent in-depth survey of the Nathaniel Gist and Sequoyah Lives complex history; www.ok.history.mus.ok.
• http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/f/o/s/Linda-G-Fossett/WE...
• http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Chronicles/v015/v015p003.html
• Bounty Land Warrant for Nathaniel Gist
• http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=adgedge&i...
• http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~raggmopp79/Gist.html#David...

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Notes for NATHANIAL GIST:

"Myths of the Cherokee", James Mooney, Dover Publications, Inc, NY, p 108;
...by a KY family it is claimed... Sequoya's father was Nathaniel Gist, son of the scout who accompanied [George] Washington on his memorable excursion to the Ohio.As the story goes, Nathaniel Gist was captured by the Cherokee ar Braddock's defeat (1755) and remained a prisoner with them for six years, during which time he became the father of Sequoyah. On his return to civilization he married a white woman in VA, by whom he had other children, and afterward removed to KY, where Sequoyah, then a Baptist preacher, frequently visited them and was always recognized by the family as his son.

Old Frontiers, by John P Brown, 1938, Southern Publishers, Kingsport, TN, pg 158;
Nathanial Gist first appeared among the Cherokees as a messenger of Governor Dinwiddie in 1755. Following the French and Indian War he formed a trading partnership with Richard Pearis and lived in the Cherokee country for several years.During that time, he took as his Indian wife, Wurteh, sister of Chief Old Tassel, and became the father of Sequoyah.

More About NATHANIAL GIST:
Blood: Non-Cherokee