George Killian

From George Killian (1740-1830) by Ed R. Killian, from the August 2008 Killian Family Newsletter:

http://www.andreaskillian.com/newsletters/2008Aug.pdf

"This is the second installment of the history outline of the Killian descendants of Andreas Killian through his son George Killian, 1740-1830. George left North Carolina in 1781-1782 following his Patriot service in the Revolutionary War and, sailing down the Holston, Tennessee, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, took his family to The Natchez District, an area on the Spanish frontier of the newly forming United States of America. Originally settling on two Spanish Land Grants of 1000 acres near Natchez, Mississippi, at age 64 George Killian moved south to the Spanish West Florida Province where he and two of his sons achieved 4000 acres of Spanish Land Grants."

George's grandson, John, ran the U. S. Land Office in Greensburg and became the first mayor of Clinton. John had widespread business interests up and down the Mississippi River and a large family. John Killian applied for a land grant that encompassed the Killian Wharf and sawmills but the patent was never finalized because yellow fever killed John and two of his children in 1853, leaving his redheaded wife and six daughters to fend for themselves.

Killian Crossroads was a busy thoroughfare for wagons headed south to the Spanish government center at Springfield and on to Killian's Wharf. About 1820, the Killians established a cemetery on the northwest corner of the crossroads near where the elder George lived. In 1891 Killians founded and built a Methodist Episcopal Church adjacent to the cemetery.

The Killian sons in St. Helena were vigorous and Killians were plentiful in number. George, Jr. left St. Helena and served in Captain Alpuente's Regiment of Louisiana Militia in the War of 1812. Serving with several compatriot brothers named Hooter, George, Jr. later married, in 1821, Barbara Hooter of Avoyelles Parish, which is west of the Mississippi River and West Feliciana Parish's St. Francisville and Bayou Sara. He settled for a while in West Feliciana Parish and then returned to St. Helena, working on the courthouse conversion. When 'Barbary' Hooter died in the first year of their marriage, he remarried in 1822 to Mary Mcrae and raised a small family. Joseph remained on his grants near Montpelier and raised a large family. Of George's sons, Joseph, the eldest, was the most involved with his father in matters of business and farming. Mary Ann and Prescilla Ann married farmers and raised their own families in East Feliciana and St. Helena Parishes. Meanwhile, in the Natchez area, some of George and Anne's daughters prospered and one son met death early in life.

Nancy Ann had married, at age fifteen, Abraham Galtney and they raised a large family while running a successful farm on the 300 acres that George had deeded to them at Natchez upon their marriage. Following Galtney's death, Nancy Ann remarried the widower Abram Buckles (aka Buckholtz, or Buckholts). After Buckles died, Nancy Ann moved to Street near Liberty in Amite County, Mississippi and lived out her final years at Beechgrove Plantation near her son, James Ranalson Galtney, and several Buckholts stepchildren.

Sara Ann married George Lawing and for a short time they lived in the town of Washington five miles east of Natchez. Washington became the territorial capitol and later, for a brief period, it was the state capitol of Mississippi. George Lawing and Sarah may have died, or otherwise departed the area about 1805. No other record of Sara's presence after 1805 has been found.

George's second eldest, John, had married Elizabeth in Natchez and moved to Claiborne County about 1791, farmed and raised his small family near Carpenter on the Claiborne/Copiah County line. David married Nancy Ann Hughes, the sister of his older brother Joseph's wife, Mary Ann Hughes, and started his family at the time his father and two brothers had left for Spanish West Florida. He died young unexpectedly in 1812, leaving a young wife and five children. The eldest of these, George III, cared for his younger siblings after he reached his majority then later married Mary Parrot in Adams County and moved to Port Gibson, Claiborne County, Mississippi.

While George Senior was moving his family south because of the incentive of free Spanish land, his grandson George III, son of David, moved north from Natchez and founded his own plantation near Port Gibson, Mississippi about 1820. George III established a successful cotton plantation and speculated on buying and selling open government land in Mississippi and Louisiana. Then, just as the Mississippi plantation vitality began to wane in the 1860, the Port Gibson Killians prepared to move to their new farms located west in Louisiana. Before they could finish moving the entire operation westward over the Texas Road from St. Joseph, Louisiana, General Ulysses S. Grant's army landed at Bruinsburg, just nine miles west of the Killian Plantation and began its sweeping envelopment of Vicksburg. Following the Union army's pillaging of his plantation, George Killian III fled in the middle of the night by horseback and wet forded the Mississippi River to escape capture and imprisonment as a Confederate sympathizer. From the new Louisiana farm, he and his son Joseph built a new life with a cotton gin, a grist mill and a ferry for those who needed to cross the Bayou Macon.

George Killian, Senior, son of Andreas Kilian, died at age ninety (according to family legend and census) in 1830 and is buried in Killian Chapel Cemetery at Killian Cross Road near Montpelier. Beside him lies Anne, his wife of over forty years, his eldest son, Joseph, and his wife with twenty other Killian named descendants from three generations of his family.

The number of Killian males in the Florida Parishes declined over the generations and by 1920 there were no Killian households recorded in the St. Helena Parish Census. The last Killian surnamed individual living in the Parish was Mary Starns Killian, wife of Dock Saunders Killian. She passed at age 92 in 1956. Today the name is limited to the creeks, the crossroad, a church and a small riverside town in the adjacent Livingston Parish from which the Killians shipped timber and cotton to New Orleans in the 1800s.

As for the northern Louisiana branch of Killians, there are still Killians in and near Crowville and Killian's Ferry in Franklin Parish, Louisiana; land is still held by Killian family members, area businesses bear the name and local cemeteries hold many descendants of George(3) and his son Joseph.

George Killian Senior's direct descendants in Mississippi and Louisiana are numbered in excess of 4,800 individuals. Living descendants of his children, namely Joseph, David, Nancy Ann, and Mary Ann Killian have been identified.

GEDCOM Source

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints "FamilySearch Family Tree," database, FamilySearch Name: (https://www.familysearch.org);

GEDCOM Source

accessed 12 Jun 2018), entry for George Killian, person ID L62T-JR3. 3

GEDCOM Source

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints "FamilySearch Family Tree," database, FamilySearch Name: (https://www.familysearch.org);

GEDCOM Source

accessed 12 Jun 2018), entry for George Killian, person ID L62T-JR3. 3

GEDCOM Source

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints "FamilySearch Family Tree," database, FamilySearch Name: (https://www.familysearch.org);

GEDCOM Source

accessed 12 Jun 2018), entry for George Killian, person ID L62T-JR3. 3

GEDCOM Source

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints "FamilySearch Family Tree," database, FamilySearch Name: Name: Name: (https://www.familysearch.org);;;

GEDCOM Source

accessed 12 Jun 2018), entry for George Killian, person ID L62T-JR3. 3

GEDCOM Source

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints "FamilySearch Family Tree," database, FamilySearch Name: Name: Name: Name: (https://www.familysearch.org);;;;

GEDCOM Source

accessed 12 Jun 2018), entry for George Killian, person ID L62T-JR3.

GEDCOM Source

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints "FamilySearch Family Tree," database, FamilySearch Name: Name: Name: (https://www.familysearch.org);;;

GEDCOM Source

accessed 12 Jun 2018), entry for Honoré Boudrot, person ID K244-QGY. 3