Jemima Wyly

=BEFORE SUBMITTING ANY CHANGES - PLEASE READ!!!!!!=

This person is RESEARCHED and VERIFIED as the DAUGHTER of Colonel Benjamin Cleveland and unknown mother. She is NOT the daughter of Col. Cleveland's son Absalom, check the dates to verify.

I will add sources as I become more familiar with GENI, which will take some time, as I am not a premium member.

Please be careful when making changes.

During the early years of his marriage, Ben fathered three children. However, only two of them, Absalom and John, were by Mary.

Colonel William C. Martin, one of Ben's close personal friends, wrote the following to noted historian Lyman Draper:

"When young, back in Virginia, Benjamin Cleveland, though married, had an illegitimate daughter [Jemima]. She married a man named Evan Edwards; they moved 'to the west' and had several children, and were poor. Cleveland asked [my] father, who knew Edwards, to ask his daughter to come to him and he would help her. I knew her in Virginia but had no idea she was Cleveland's daughter until he wrote me. I sent word to her and she came from Powell Valley to Tugaloo, where Cleveland was then living. The Indians had killed her husband, and she was in dire circumstances. I went to Cleveland and told him that his daughter was nearby, and Cleveland wept. Said he did not know what to do--that he was afraid of his wife and his son, John. John was a large and terrible man and held a rod of terror over all around him. Cleveland did tell his family though, and they said they would receive the daughter as one of their own, which they did. By then her children had been moved down, and she settled near Cleveland's home. She was quite a respectable woman, remarried, and did well."