Isaac Burleson

Excerpts from document by John Hoyle Burleson Albemarle NC Sept 2016 (http://www.bfrg.info/bfrg/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Patti_Isaac_Mo...) containing some valuable archival documents interspersed with Mr. Burleson's interpretation in italics (from the Burleson Family Research Group)

Monroe Co. Wills Book A, pg 64

One half of farm to wife Polly and one half to son Isaac M.H. Burleson. To dau. Octavy O. the farm where Jesse Coleman lives, and some personal property. To dau. Charlotte farms where Zachariah and James Johnson formerly lived, to son William one half of farm where Sam'l Smalling lives. To son John R.D. the other half of said farm. To son Vanburen land where Edwin White lives. Exec. Holloway Giles. Wits: Arch McCray and Hugh P. Holland.

Executed 8/1/1846.

...Some Burleson researchers believe Mary Coleman was Isaac’s second wife but ... we need more info. I know Isaac was born in 1769. We learn this from his own lips in a sworn affidavit taken in 1837. The affidavit was to the Bureau of Indian affairs part of an action to prove Isaac’s half sister Kezziah Vann Maney’s Cherokee Blood. State of Tennessee

Monroe County

Isaac Burleson, aged about 68 years personally came before Peter B. Haralson one of the acting Justice of the Peace for the county and State aforesaid being first duly sworn according to law disposes and says that he was personally acquainted with Martin Maney, John Maney and William Maney, natives of the Cherokee Nation and who took each of them a reservation in what is now Monroe County, East Tennessee on the creek called Sweetwater in the Treaties of 1817 and 1819 between the United States and the Cherokees and that they the said three Maneys resided on the ceded territory some years before the Treaty above named and that they each were the heads of Indian families having a wife and children and that the said Martin Maney, John Maney and William Maney each resided on their said reservations above described until the spring of 1820 at which time the white people were moving into the county and crowding the Indians very much. The three Maneys had several fields of excellent land and the white people being hard run to get land to make a crop that spring they united against the Maneys and determined to drive them out of the country and take their fields from them which they did and take their fields from them which they did so by threatening their lives and other bodily harm. I lived in the neighborhood and was frequently at their homes and can not be mistaken. Each of their reservations was sold at the land sales at Knoxville by the authorities of the State. Martin Maney’s wife was John Vann’s daughter, a native of the Cherokee Nation of Indians, sworn to and subscribed before me this August 1837.

John and William Maney are Martin Maney’s sons and I am half brother to Martin’s wife.

Sworn to August 30th 1837.

/signed/ Isaac Burleson

P.B. Haralson, Justice of Peace, Monroe County

...He did not serve in the Revolutionary War as he was only 13 years old when the war was ended.

...

Isaac Burlison’s of Monroe Co TN father was not John Crawford Burlison. The name John Crawford Burleson does not appear in a single document in this world. You have ; John Crawford Burleson 1730 (Virginia) - 1776 (N. Carolina). This is a fictional internet name. The first Burleson to appear in documentation in Virginia was in 1746. The name John Crawford Burleson does not appear in documentation in North Carolina in 1776 or at any other time....

Isaac Burlison of Monroe Co TN father’s first name is not known, but we know his mother was Agnes Weatherford Vann Burlison. This is proven by Bureau of Indian Affairs affidavits. She was a white woman that married John Vann and had two children, Kiziah Vann and John Vann Jr. Vann was half Cherokee and was an Indian interrupter [PW: sic: interpreter] where he lived as a Cherokee. Vann left Agnes and she married a Burlison and they had numerous issues, one was Isaac of Monroe. Below are the BIA records that prove that.

SPECIAL FILES OF THE OFFICE OF INDIAN AFFAIRS, 1807-1904

NARA Series M 574 Roll 16

Special File 102: Claims to participation in per capita payments to the Eastern Cherokee 1849-57

The Maney Files

To: Hon. Wm. Medill, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Dept. of the Interior I have at considerable pains obtained an accurate list of the Maney family but could obtain very little evidence as will be seen in addition to what had already been furnished to the Department. The members composing it are poor and illiterate, preserving nothing more than a traditional account of their descent, and the ancestor though who they claim to have Cherokee blood lived at a day too distant to be recollected by the most aged whom I met. Martin Maney, the father of the present oldest members of the family and who died 25 years ago, was an Irishman he served in the war of the Revolution and in Col. Rutherford’s expedition against the Cherokees, and is said to have been pensioned by the General Government. He married Keziah Vann, who died about 12 years ago, the daughter of Agnes Weatherford, a white woman. Keziah is a said to have been begotten by John Vann, in part a Cherokee, who sometimes acted in the capacity of interpreter. He is said by the members of this family to have lived, after the Cherokee usage, with Agnes Weatherford as a wife until after the birth of Keziah and a son named John. When he deserted her for a Cherokee woman and she then married a white man by the name of Burlison, by who she had a numerous issue. They point to the fact as strong evidence in their behalf, that Martin Maney and his sons John and William obtained reservations under the Treaty of 1817-19; they refer to the testimony of Starr, a prominent man of the Nation, as rendered at that time; to the oath of Agnes said to be of file in the Department; and they deem it of much weigh that William Maney, who murdered Andrew Miller, should have been tried before the Federal Court at Knoxville, not before a State Court, which however, may have been because Tennessee had not at that time jurisdiction over the domain in which the murder was committed.

I should perhaps say that I could see no trace of the Indian in any one of the numerous family with the exception of John Maney Senior and in him it was to be found more in the his manner, general carriage and more of riding upon horseback than in his complexion, though that is dark, while a very large number of them plainly show their Irish descent.

As there is no written history as I said before in this family, and the most aged persons whom I met had no recollection of the father of Keziah Maney, unless there is evidence of file sufficient to identify him as Cherokee, thus entitling them to Cherokee privileges, or grounds to warrant them rejection altogether, I am at a loss what suggestion to make, unless it be that something may be obtained in the West.

From the old members of the Tribe there, or from the records of their Councils; before which it is said these people and their matters, especially in the murder of Miller by William Maney, have been subject of action and discussion.

/signed/ A. Chapman

--------------------------

Agent Alfred Chapman

May 29, 1849

Sir;

In response to your references to me as late Special Agent and for report of the cases filed in the Office of Indian Affairs with my note of the 15th instructions, I have the honor to state: 1. That the list of the Maney families numbering 26 individuals in all was forwarded to me by Felix Axley Esq. of N. Carolina in February of last and was then accompanied only by affidavit of Mr. Axley himself which follows said list in which was asserted the right of the persons names to a participating in the benefits of the law of 29 July 1848; but upon examining the Cherokee Census of 1835, and that of 1840-41

In the files I found a batch of affidavits relating to these several claims, in all of which the matter of Indian rights of these parties is referred to the affidavit of Caleb Starr, an aged Cherokee citizen or “Countryman” (as a white man married to a Cherokee and living in the Nation was called) states that at the time the Maneys took their reservations prior to 1819 there was a great deal of dissatisfaction among the Cherokees about the matter, some alleging that they were not entitled – that the Agent Return Meigs) examined an old woman, Agnes Vann, the widow of John Vann, a Cherokee, who proved that the Maneys were of Cherokee blood and the affiant of the said Agnes Vann (the affiant represented as about 100 years old at the time she was sworn) states that John, William, and James Maney as the children of her daughter Keziah Vann, who was married to Martin Maney and that the said Keziah Vann was the daughter of John Vann, a Cherokee and the husband of the affiant. The affidavits of Burgess Witt, John Shelton, John Grigsley, Isaac Burlison, Stephen Davison and Rob Rhea, all on file, also set forth that the affiants were personally acquainted with the Maneys that they were heads of known families, were part Cherokee and were entitled to Indian citizenship.

Agnes’s own affidavit of 1837

State of Tennessee 1837

Cocke County This day came Agnes Vann before me James Bantas, justice of the Peace for said County and being duly sworn according to law on her oath made the following affidavit, the wit, that she is about one hundred years of age, that she is a native of the Cherokee Nation, that she was married to John Vann, formerly living at the Long Island of Holston in the Cherokee Nation for many years, that she had by said John Vann Senior, John Vann Junior and Keziah married to Martin Maney. Nancy, married to Absolom Metcalf, John Maney, William Maney and James Maney all four of the children of Keziah and Martin now living, but Martin Maney is dead leaving Nancy, John, William and James the said children alive and that Keziah the widen is still living. She had no other children. That she Agnes was examined on oath by Col. Return J. Meigs the then Indian Agent at Calhoun at the time that he made the entries of Martin Maney, John Maney, and Wm Maney for reservations in the Indian Nation near where the Town of New Philadelphia now stands, and they each of them took their reservations on Sweetwater at and near the Big Spring where the town now stands. That they, Martin, John and William each the head of Indian families there residing on their reservations and continued to do so until the Spring of 1820 when they were driven away by the whites, assisted by some of the Indians as she was informed and believes and this despondent said wit.

/signed/ Agnes Vann

Birth: Oct. 7, 1759 Death: Sep. 18, 1840

I found an Isaac Burleson in DAR in Co. B, NC Militia in Capt. Charles Polk's Co. but he died in NC and had different dates given for birth and death.

Monroe Co. Wills Book A, pg 64 One half of farm to wife Polly and one half to son Isaac M.H. Burleson. To dau. Octavy O. the farm where Jesse Coleman lives, and some personal property. To dau. Charlotte farms where Zachariah and James Johnson formerly lived, to son William one half of farm where Sam'l Smalling lives. To son John R.D. the other half of said farm. To son Vanburen land where Edwin White lives. Exec. Holloway Giles. Wits: Arch McCray and Hugh P. Holland. Executed 8/1/1846.

Family links:

Parents:

 Sarah Eliza Burleson (1733 - 1768)

Spouse:

 Mary Coleman Burleson (1810 - 1885)

Children:

 Isaac M. Howard Burlison (1832 - 1916)*

 William Jackson Burleson (1836 - 1912)*

*Calculated relationship

Burial: Burleson Cemetery Ballplay Monroe County Tennessee, USA

Created by: Joy Record added: Mar 23, 2011 Find A Grave Memorial# 67319396