Photo, Carrie
Most histories throughout time have truly been HIS-stories, but clearly they couldn't exist without HERstories. The women who hold up history in this and all sagas usually did so by simply surviving-- wilderness, childbirth, war, constant and back-breaking labor. And by writing letters. The early Magruders in Maryland were incredible letter writers, and no doubt would have been on social media in another era. But I digress.
By the time Lloyd, our unlucky Magruder ancestor, met his fate in the Bitterroot Mountains in 1863, his wife, Caroline Pelham Magruder, had long ago left the comforts of a wealthy home in Batesville, Arkansas, and traveled by wagon train with her and Lloyd's four year old daughter to join the Gold Rush frenzy. They settled in Marysville, California, where two sons and a second daughter completed the family.
While Lloyd's business and political pursuits convey importance and prosperity, he was beset by bad luck and chronic indebtedness. We get the picture in this excerpt from a letter to his brother Thomas in Washington D.C.
"Thus I was situated at the time of the conflagration of the little Town where I was located which consumed for me at least ten Thousand Dollars worth of property which placed me in such a position that I could not give my attention to those who were indebted to me and thereby I lost some fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars from this and the fire left me in a Beautiful situation, a family to support and ten thousand dollars behind."
In 1860 the family's possessions were put up at public auction to satisfy the debt. So Lloyd made another start, leaving daughter Sallie at school in Marysville and with Carrie and the other children heading to Lewiston, Idaho, where new gold finds in Montana Territory were creating opportunities for merchants outfitting miners. Lloyd led a pack train through the Bitterroot Mountains, setting up shop in Montana wilderness with a colleague where, in a matter of days, they transacted an estimated $30,000 in gold dust and notes.
As described in the earlier post about this chapter in history, Lloyd was brutally murdered on the return back to Lewiston--the fortune never recovered--where Carrie suddenly faced destitution. I think I would have hightailed it back to Arkansas. Not Carrie.
I reflect on Carrie's other loss, her first-born daughter, Sallie, left behind in Marysville where she was attending school. Carrie had to believe that her daughter's education was worth the sacrifice of separation. Carrie left Lewiston, moving to Oregon with her three younger children, where she began anew. She remarried, and died in 1900 at the age of 69, burying with her fragments of Lloyd's skull.
But now I am taking advantage of Carrie's story to introduce you to her ancestors: witnesses to the American Revolution and noteworthy artisans and musicians, the amazing Pelhams. They add a lot of class to the family.
Peter Pelham II - 1700-1751 - Caroline's Great Great Grandfather
Peter II was the eldest of four. His parents were Peter and Penelope Howard who married on December 31, 1965, in London. Peter married Martha Guy when he was 19 and they had five children, four boys and a girl. Martha died soon after the youngest son, William, was born, whereupon Peter took the three youngest sons, Peter III, Charles, and William, to America in 1728. Baby William was christened in 1729 in Boston.
Peter was an engraver by trade and made some of the first engravings done in America, of Colonial "influencers" like the Reverend Cotton Mather. Some of his engravings hang in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Peter married in 1734, but his wife Margaret died, and he married a third time, in 1748, to the widowed Ireland-born Mary Singleton Copley of Boston, mother of the well-known Colonial artist John Singleton Copley. Peter and Mary had a son, Henry, born in Boston in 1749.
Henry Pelham - a very distant uncle - and John Singleton Copley
Henry and his half-brother John were close and corresponded throughout their lives. Their letters, written 1739 to 1776, bear witness to the turmoil of the American Revolution. The young artist Copley honed his skill by painting his family members--stepfather Peter, step brother Charles and half-brother Henry were all his subjects. Henry, in particular, is rendered in a rather famous painting that hangs in the Boston Museum. It is Boy With Squirrel, painted in 1765 to be submitted to the spring 1766 exhibition of the Society of Artists in London. It did receive critical acclaim in London, albeit with slight condescension for the "handicap" of being an colonial artist. The painting is marvelous:
Boy With Squirrel
Henry also took up the family "business" of engraving, combined with civil engineering. Of course, Boston at this time was in turmoil, and one's politics could determine one's destiny: loyalist to the Crown, or agitating for revolution? The Copley-Pelhams were decidedly loyalist, and frictions probably entered into cultural and business ventures then as they do today. But sitting on the sidelines was impossible, and so Henry, keen to practice his trade, witnessed first-hand the historic Boston Massacre, and made this sketch:
Sketch, Boston Massacre
Look familiar? Perhaps seeing an opportunity to see it published (akin to a photographer selling an image to the media), Henry lent it to Paul Revere, who used it to make perhaps the most famous engraving of the Boston Massacre not to mention American Revolution, and gave neither credit nor payment to Henry. He wrote a furious letter to Revere, accusing him of copying the sketch and taking credit for it. A smoking excerpt:
"Sir, when I heard that you was cutting a plate of the late Murder, I thought it impossible, as I knew you was not capable of doing it unless you coppied (sic) it from mine and as I thought I had entrusted it in the hands of a person who had more regard to the dictates of Honour and Justice than to take the undue advantage you have done of the confidence and Trust I reposed in you," he begins, and several accusations later, ends, "If you are insensible to the Dishonour you have brought on yourself by this Act, the World will not be so. However, I leave you to reflect upon and consider of one of the most dishonorable Actions you could well be guilt of. H. Pelham.
Alas, Henry was on the wrong side of history. Unable to earn a living due to the Revolution, Henry along with other loyalists left the colonies in 1776 for London, where Copley was already established. He later settled in Ireland, married, and drowned while overseeing the construction of a Martello tower on an island in the River Kenmore.
Peter Pelham III - 1721-1805 - "the modern Orpheus - the inimitable Pelham"*
My favorite Pelham came with his father and brothers to America when he was seven. He grew up in Boston amid the talented artists and musician friends cultivated by his father. He learned to paint, dance and play the flute. At 13 he was sent to New Jersey to study for three years with Charles Theodore Pachelbel, son of the famous German composer, Johan Pachelbel. There he learned to play the organ and harpsichord, to compose and improvise, and to install organ pipes. He followed Pachelbel to Charleston, South Carolina; then in 1744 he became the organist of Trinity Church in Boston.
Henry married Ann Creese in Boston in 1746. They would have 14 children, including Charles ... Caroline's grandfather! As Pachelbel's protege, he had access to wealthy colonists in the Virginias. In need of sufficient income to support his family, he moved to Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1755. There he conducted a small musical ensemble and helped install the pipe organ at Bruton Parish Church. This led to being hired as church organist, a position he held for the next 44 years, until 1802. He would have played for the founding fathers, including Washington and Jefferson.
By all accounts he was a beloved and colorful personality. Unable to make ends meet on his church salary, he was appointed keeper of the Williamsburg Gaol (jail). The family lived in the jail's second story. Legend has it he would borrow prisoners to work the bellows on the church organ. Legend also has it he liked to drink, and might be distracted from his duties enabling prisoners to escape. He eventually lost his eyesight, leaving Williamsburg to live with a daughter until his death in 1805.
Visitors to Williamsburg can see an actor assuming the role of Peter Pelham, possibly playing the Minuet in D, his composition.
* Alexander Macaulay, a Scot who visited Williamsburg, wrote about Peter III, "There's the Church fam'd for its noble Organ of one hundred tones, touch'd by the modern Orpheus -- the inimitable Pelham." Charles Pelham - July 11, 1748 - 1829
Peter's second son, Charles, was a Revolutionary War hero. He enlisted in February 1776 as 1st Lieutenant in Patrick ("Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death") Henry's First Virginia Regiment. He fought at Valley Forge, the battles of White Plains, Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth, rising to rank of Major before becoming a prisoner of war on May 12, 1780, when General Benjamin Lincoln surrendered Charleston to the British. His captors paroled him until the end of the war, after which he received a land warrant for 6,888 acres. He married Isabella Atkinson in North Carolina in 1784, and the couple moved to Virginia's western frontier an area soon to become Mason County, Kentucky, where in 1786 the Commonwealth of Virginia granted him 4,468 acres of land along the north fork of the Licking River. Her he had a gristmill and raised his family of at least 10 children.
Charles Hollis (C.H.) Pelham, June 30, 1790 - October 10, 1855
Charles' namesake (and Caroline's father), known as C.H., was born in Mason County Kentucky but was attracted to new territories across the Mississippi and followed the Ohio River to the Mississippi and on to the new frontiers of Arkansas Territory. With his wife, Sarah Wallace, and two sons, he reached Batesville by 1819 where he worked as a surveyor and served as colonel of the local militia (home guard against Indian threats), from which service he retained the honorary title "Colonel" for the rest of his life. Two daughters were born in Batesville--Isabella, and the youngest, Caroline, born in 1830.
Caroline would have been quite the eligible young lady, born into a family of wealth and political prestige. Also gaining prominence in the Arkansas Territory were members of the Magruder family, on the move after the family homestead, Locust Grove, was sold. They were making a new start, farming, and had the labor of the enslaved workers they brought from Maryland to give them credibility in the new frontier. Thus, the Magruders were deemed acceptable husbands for the Pelham daughters. Isabella wed Charles, and when Lloyd arrived on the scene after serving in the Army, he and Caroline wed.
Their daughter Sallie was born July 14, 1848, in Batesville. Lloyd's future looked bright--160 acres of land a bounty claim from his military service; prosperous in-laws; and a law profession. Settling in Batesville as a county squire might have been an attractive option. Possibly Caroline wished it would be so. Or perhaps she set her sights on a more adventurous, pioneering, future.
Notes:
Nancy Britton, "The Magruders of Early Batesville, The Independence County Chronicle, Independence Historical Society, Vol. XXX, No. 2, January 1989
Genealogical record of Pelham family, Independence County Historical Society
Carrie Deboran et al., John Singleton Copley in American, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Parke Rouse, Jr., "Peter Pelham Was the Music Man of Williamsburg," Daily Press, VIrginia, June 24, 1979
Letters and Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham, 1739-1776. The Massachusetts Historical Socity, Vol. 71, 1914.
Nancy Britton, "Colonel Charles H. Pelham," The Independence County (Arkansas) CHronicle, Vol. 27, Nos. 1-2, October 1985-January 1986
