Hacienda Circle: Tombstone Tuesday

20 October 2009

Tombstone Tuesday

My 3rd great grandparents, Robert Cresap (21 Sept 1767 - 4 Sept 1827)) and Susannah Stull Swearingen (4 Aug 1773 - 8 June 1851), first cousins who married 9 May 1795, repose 3 miles south of Cresaptown, Allegany, Maryland, Rte.200-S, Rawlings. Near the "Wilson" farm, beside the railroad tracks and the Potomac River.

I come from the youngest of their 11 children, James William Cresap, who went south to New Orleans and married a beautiful creole woman, Martha Bauduc.

Sheriff George Swearingen, Susannah's nephew, said he and his family were on their way to visit Aunt Susannah on 8 Sept 1828 when his wife's horse stumbled and she was killed. But their toddler, Mary, said daddy hurt mommy and officials who exhumed Mary Catherine (Scott) Swearingen's body agreed. George fled with his mistress Rachel Cunningham who he had scandalously kept in Hagerstown, but he was recognized and apprehended on a flatboat entering New Orleans and was returned to Maryland. After an 8 day trial he was convicted. On 2 Oct 1829 over 6,000 came to see George on the gallows on the west side of Will's Creek. He had been one of the most popular men in (then) Washington County, Maryland. I'm betting our James William Cresap, 15, came to watch his 1st cousin, George, 29, hang.

*George Swearingen's confession is printed in full in Chris H. Bailey's The Stulls of Millsborough--a Genealogical History of John Stull "The Miller" - Pioneer of Western Maryland. Publisher Chris H. Bailey, 31 Prospect St, New Hartford, CT, 06057 (Mar 6, 2000).
**On 15 June 2005 I read the original transcript of his trial dated 25 Sept 1829 at the Washington County Historical Society, 135 W. Washington St. Hagertown, Maryland 21740

5 comments:

dustbunny8October 20, 2009 at 2:36 PM
Great information and story!I think you could use this one for Black sheep Sunday too!
ReplyDelete
Replies
UnknownOctober 20, 2009 at 8:31 PM
Hi Vinnie,
A well-told, if kind of gruesome, story. I wonder what it must have felt like to discover that about your kin....!
ReplyDelete
Replies
Lavinia Grace Gilbert SchwarzOctober 21, 2009 at 3:40 PM
Thanks to both of you. If you're familiar with the TV show Deadwood, you know our kin Al Swearingen was kind of a complicated guy, too. Definitely black sheep.
ReplyDelete
Replies
PalmsRVNovember 30, 2009 at 5:09 PM
Aren't Cresap and Swearington are pretty well known historic names? Just out of curiosity I looked in the historic deeds for George Swearington in Allegany & Washington Counties. He and his wife Mary signed deeds for the Chesapeake & Ohio canal on 5 July 1828. In retrospect it was kind of eerie knowing that Mary was going to die in the following September.

My blog post about Maryland deeds online is: http://indeeds.blogspot.com/2009/02/maryland-deeds-online.com

Really enjoyed your post.

Cathy Palm
ReplyDelete
Replies
Lavinia Grace Gilbert SchwarzDecember 1, 2009 at 9:06 AM
Thanks, Cathy. I think Cresap and (Van) Swearingen (spelled many different ways)should be even better known! But I've come lately to the history world.
I'm eager to see your blog, but I can't make the url work -- could you send it again? I could spend days looking at Maryland deeds.
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

I am not responsible for any comments made by contributors in the Comments section. However I will exercise my right to moderate and edit comments which are deemed to be offensive, childish or just plain outstandingly dumb.

Note to Gilberts

All the ancestors posted on this blog belong to us all. Hacienda Circle lives. It is a place of our present with Jack & Roxanne there now, and it is a window into our past.

We are true American mutts -- a mixture from England, France, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, and Germany.

Our DNA will, no doubt, reveal more counties of origin. I'll be adding information about this as I gather and understand it. but we already have two 37 marker matches (one with a Frank M. Cresap -- no surprise there!).

1. Thank you, Jack, for doing our Gilbert DNA.

2. Thank you, Karen (Cresap) Bach, for having your late father, Andrew Bruce Cresap, Jr., do our Cresap DNA.

3. Thank you, Maurice Walton, for doing our Walton DNA (via Granwilla's maternal grandfather, James Walton's line).

4. I did our mitochondrial DNA back through Mom, Pi, and our direct female line back. This line is also included in a family finder project at https://www.familytreedna.com/. This works by comparing our autosomal DNA to that of other people who have taken the test through FamilyTree. Our relationship with a match is calculated based on sharing linked segments of DNA. Although any two people from the same population may have some of their DNA in common, as a matching segment of DNA becomes longer and we share more segments, it becomes more likely that the sharing is due to a recent common ancestor than a chance match. Thus far we have five people who we are probably 4th cousins with, but we haven't figured out the exact connection.

Happy ancestoring!