Samuel Varnado, I

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~lcowen/VANN/samuel_varnado...

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~pmullins/chapter01.htm

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~pmullins/chapter02.htm

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~pmullins/chapter03.htm

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~pmullins/chapter04.htm

Samuel VARNADO

Birth: 1754 Birth Recorded Giessendanner Church Records of S. C.

BIOGRAPHY: Samuel already owned land when, in 1788, he patented 181 acres about ten miles from that of his father. In 1703 he patented another 263 acres and in 1807 another 376 acres. The last tract was held in partnership with his son-in-law Vincent Reeves. All of this land was in a single block about eight miles south of Orangeburg. Samuel's neighbors included John Sally. This was probably the same man who had commanded the militia unit Samuel had served in during 1780. Samuel kept this farm for about 20 years. He and his first wife raised eight children on this farm. Soon after Leonard Vernadeau's death and only four years after patenting the last and largest parcel of land, Samuel Varnadoe Sr. either sold or abandoned his farm. Taking most of his children with him, he made a long trek to the Mississippi Territory.

Two of Leonard Vernadeau's sons, Henry and Samuel, left South Carolina soon after he died. It appears that Henry and Samuel may have left together. Henry, the older son, had seven children and a daughter-in-law when he left South Carolina. His brother Samuel left with four married children and their spouses, four younger and as yet unmarried sons and two slaves. Henry and his family traveled about 100 miles into Georgia before settling down in Laurens County. Samuel's group stopped briefly in Jones County about 40 miles to the northwest of Laurens County. They then continued westward.

When Leonard, Samuel's oldest son (and a grandson of the original Leonard Vernadeau) was 33 years old, he and his younger brother Moses left Jones County, Georgia. In 1809 they got a passport from a judge in Georgia and traveled to the newly-opened Natchez District in what later became the state of Mississippi. They had to travel some 400 miles through two Indian nations to get to Mississippi. They needed the passport to prove to the Indians that they had no intention of settling on the Indian's land, that they were only passing through. These two were the first of our ancestors to move to Mississippi.

In 1811 Samuel Varnadoe Sr., along with his four remaining sons and two of his sons-in-law, moved to join his sons Leonard and Moses in Mississippi. Samuel's entourage consisted of himself, his second and pregnant wife, his third son George and his new wife and the three remaining boys, all still unmarried. One of these youngsters, Samuel Jr., is our ancestor. Also in the party were two slaves, Samuel's daughter Arcadia and her husband and a second daughter and her husband. In all, Samuel brought seven of his children with him to Mississippi. The seventh was a baby named Pearl. The baby was born while the family waited to cross the flooded Pearl River less than 40 miles east of their destination. Two of the grown boys later returned to Georgia, but the rest stayed with their father and their step-mother in Mississippi Territory. One of the two who returned to Georgia became a very wealthy planter. When he died in 1842, his Mississippi kinsfolk inherited 27 slaves valued at $12,025. from his estate.

Samuel chose land fronting on the Tangipahoa River just north of the site of Osyka and just south of Isaac Carter's land at Chatawa. Samuel's son, Leonard, located land a half mile to the southeast and on the other side of the river. Later Leonard entered nine 40-acre lots where the Osyka-Progress road crosses the Tangipahoa River. The other children and their families chose land in the immediate area.

It is impossible to know what personal reasons lied behind Samuel Vernadoe's decision to join the Great Migration. Some possible explanations have already been mentioned. However there are two special circumstances that pertain to Samuel Vernadoe that I want to mention. The first has to do with the South's "particular institution." The census of 1790 for Orangeburg District lists 5,900 slaves and 12,370 whites. There were four large plantations in Orangeburg District that had over 100 slaves each. There were another half dozen or so with at least 50 slaves each. Without discounting these slaves, there were about two whites for every Negro in the district. Isaac Carter's family had eight whites and nine slaves. The family of William Taylor (Tyler), Ann Tyler's father, had 13 whites and 16 slaves. Both of these families had a higher than average number of slaves. Richard Simmon's family with his wife, one child and one slave, would have been about average. The large Varnadoe families, including that of Samuel Varnadoe with one slave, were clearly slave-poor. Twenty years later, in 1810, Samuel Varnadoe still had only two slaves even though he owned over 500 acres of land. In 1820 he had four slaves. Whether for reasons of conscience or poverty, Samuel never owned more than a few slaves. This circumstance may have led him to leave South Carolina.

Slavery had a way of impoverishing farmers who were not themselves slave owners. Every farmer's income was debased to that of the slave. This fact was known to the people of South Carolina. Some of the very earliest settlers of South Carolina were economic refugees from Barbados where they had been driven to bankruptcy by slave competition. If further proof were needed a Carolinian had only to watch the Quaker settlements in Georgia sink deeper and deeper into poverty because of their refusal to own slaves.

The second circumstance that may have influenced him to leave South Carolina has to do with Samuel's role in the Revolutionary War. Unlike his brothers, Samuel had not taken up arms on the rebel side. His only military service had been with the Loyalist militia. He was a Tory as were many of his neighbors. The War in South Carolina was, in reality, a civil war. Wounds may have been slow to heal. 4,000 British sympathizers left Charles Town with the British fleet in 1782. 50,000 colonists from the northern colonies migrated to Canada in 1783 and 1784. Thousands of Loyalists from the southern states crossed into British West Florida or moved to the West Florida Parishes north of New Orleans. Others moved to the Natchez District whose inhabitants had remained neutral during the Revolutionary War. It is probably impossible to know how many of these colonists were fleeing political persecution or, more importantly, if Samuel was included among them. It is true that Samuel remained in South Carolina until 1809 but it is also possible that he stayed only because his father wanted him to. This same line of reasoning may apply to other migrants to Pike County as well. In the same company of loyalist Orangeburg militia in which Samuel and Henry Vernadoe served was a William Tyler. William Tyler may have been the father or a brother of Ann Tyler Simmons.

A third circumstance was not unique to Samuel Vernadoe. Land speculation was the driving force of the American's movement westward. Samuel, and the majority of his new neighbors in Mississippi Territory, may simply have sold their holdings in South Carolina so they could buy better land further west while the newly available land was still cheap. Maybe Samuel was just another land speculator who rushed to claim new lands as soon as it was wrested from the Native Indians.

Whatever drove Samuel Varnadoe Sr. to leave South Carolina drove his neighbors as well. It is worth repeating that these pioneers did not leave their friends and relatives behind. A high percentage of Samuel Varnadoe's neighbors came with or followed him to Mississippi. Once in Mississippi they choose farm sites within ten or twenty miles of each other. A few families, such as the Varnados and the Simmons, stayed on these farms for the next five generations. Other pioneer families, such as the Mullins left the area within a few years for regions further west and north. The primary motivation for this steady movement westward was the availability of cheap, public land and a ready market for already developed farms.

There is little in the family traditions about the journey from South Carolina. We know when Samuel Varnadoe made the journey because until 1830, when Congress passed a bill abolishing the Indian nations east of the Mississippi River, the Choctaw and Creek Nations were technically foreign countries. When the US government recognized these so-called Civilized Indian Nations in 1786, it assumed the responsibility of regulating those American citizens living or traveling in the Indian nations. US citizens traveling to Mississippi Territory from the eastern states were required to have passports. The Varnadoes obtained their passports from a judge in Jones County, Georgia. The two elder sons of Samuel Sr. held passports issued in October 1809. A younger son, who accompanied his father to Mississippi, got a passport in March 1810. A year later Samuel Sr. was issued a passport for himself, his wife, his seven children and two slaves. Samuel's group made the trek to Mississippi in the spring of 1811.

In those early days the wagon roads were barely more than footpaths. No improvements were attempted outside of what the users themselves made. There were no bridges and so fording rivers and streams was a dangerous and eventful part of the journey to Mississippi. The crossing of streams are memorialized by both the Samuel Varnadoe and the Richard Simmons families. Varnadoe family tradition says that Pearl Varnado, the first child of Samuel Sr. by his second wife, was born while the family waited for the swollen Pearl River to subside in the spring of 1811.

(Excerpts from Tim Mullins paper "The Ancestors of George and Hazel Mullins")

MILITARY:

Tory - Revolutionary War Jun 14-Dec 14 1780

Of the six living sons of Leonard Vernadeau, only Samuel, our ancestor, and one other failed to leave a record of military service on the rebel side during the Revolutionary War. This is not to say that Samuel Varnadoe escaped the fighting. He did serve in the militia for six months from June 14 to December 14, 1780. However, the militia unit he belonged to was on the losing, the British, side of the war. He served, along with his brother Henry, in Captain John Salley's company of the Tory or loyalist Orangeburg militia. He was stationed near home, in Orangeburg and in the fork of the Edisto River. This was the only military service our ancestor saw.

The children of Samuel Varnado Sr are listed in STR(8)2 and STR(8)11:

           #1        Leonard Varnadoe married 1) Rachel Shilling

#2 Elizabeth Varnadoe married Leonard V Reeves
#3 Arcadia Varnadoe married Samuel J Dougharty
#4 Mary Varnadoe married David Herlong
#5 Sarah Varnadoe married John J Amaker
#6 Moses Varnadoe married Nancy Ward
#7 George Varnadoe married Prudence L Corey
#8 Nathaniel Varnadoe married 1) Ann T Jones
#9 Samuel Varnadoe Sr married Keziah Newsome
#10 Isham Varnadoe married Charity
#11 Pearl Varnadoe
#12 Henry Varnadoe
#13 Clarissa Varnadoe married Henry Strickland
#14 Rachel Varnadoe
#15 Washington Varnadoe

GEDCOM Source

@R-1681150341@ Ancestry Family Trees Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com. Original data: Family Tree files submitted by Ancestry members.

GEDCOM Source

Ancestry Family Tree http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/AMTCitationRedir.aspx?tid=52259556&pid...