Thomas Holt (1753-1834)

Thomas Holt (1753-1834) was a Revolutionary War volunteer from Virginia. Note: The majority of this biographical profile was written by me at another website. I would say which one, but, I honestly am not sure they would want me to. I wanted to save my work which is the reason I am posting it here, and I will be rewriting, editing and updating in due time. EB 

Thomas was born on 8 Jul 1753 Amelia Co, Virginia, the son of David and Elizabeth Holt.^[1]

Descendant of Charles the Great, Charlemagne, Patricius Romanorum.

Thomas Holt served with a Virginia militia regiment under the command of Capt. William Randolph sometime after June 8, 1775 during the American Revolution. Later he was in the 1st Virginia Regiment which was formed in October of 1775 at Williamsburg and commanded by Colonel Patrick Henry.^[2]

After his service was up he married Charlotte Blackbourn on October 12, 1780.

An interesting story that Thomas related was that in 1781 when General Lafayette was fighting the British in Virginia he stayed at the house of his father David Holt using it as his Headquarters.

The house was located in a corner of Chesterfield Co., very near Petersburg.

Thomas' wife Charlotte spoke French fluently and when she happened to meet Gen. Lafayette they easily spoke to each other in French. One day, she admired the sky blue plume that he had in his hat. So, he promptly plucked it out and presented it to her as a gift. The Holt family held onto the plume for many years after.

Thomas was offered a position on the General's staff, where he would have served as a quartermaster, but he declined being weary of service and wanting to return home to his wife and baby son Peter C. Holt.

It appears that Thomas may have briefly been a member of the Williamsburg Freemasonic Lodge from March 1782 to January 1783.^[3]

Later, in 1789, Thomas and his family moved to Bardstown, Kentucky.^[4] A few months before his death he filed for a Revolutionary War pension on October 11, 1834. He passed away 20 Dec 1834 Union Co, Kentucky at his son Henry's home.^[5] Although his son continued to push for a pension it was rejected because he was deemed to have only participated with militia companies during the war and not a properly organized unit.

Here is a list of Thomas and Charlotte's children:

• 1. Thomas Blackbourne Holt (b. c 1781)
• 2. Peter C. Holt (1782 - 1861)
• 3. Kennon Holt (1784 - 1868)
• 4. Harrison Holt (1787 - 1848)
• 5. Elizabeth Holt (1794 - 1833)
• 6. Henry Holt (b. 17 March 1787 - 1837)

Research Notes

"The date and place of birth comes from Thomas himself as stated in his deposition for a pension as a patriot of the Revolutionary War which he filed for 11 Oct, 1834 while living with his son Henry Holt, whom he names in his deposition. Thomas was in such poor health at the time of his deposition, that the court official came to him at his son Henry's home. Thomas application for a pension based on service in the Revolutionary War was rejected due to his not having served the necessary time in a regular militia as required by the law enacted by Congress in 1832."

"Thomas named his father as David Holt who was residing in Chesterfield Co, Virginia at the time of the Revolutionary. Thomas does not mention other children or the name of his wife, but does say she spoke French fluently. He also tells a story of General Lafayette being quartered in his father's home. The story can be found on his Find A Grave memorial page."^[6]

"His son Henry tried to pursue the application for pension as a child of Thomas after his father's death, and the date of death is given in Henry's deposition."

"In the 1830 census you find Peter C. Holt, Harrison Holt, & Henry Holt all listed on the same page. Harrison is listed just above Peter, and so they were neighbors, but it is hard to tell how far apart they were. There is one name between Harrison and Henry Holt who was named in Thomas' deposition for his pension application. Also if you look at the members of Peter C. Holt's household, you will find a male in the age range of 70-79, which would be the correct age range for Thomas Holt. Thomas would have been 79 in 1830 and in 1834 when he applied for his pension he says he is 81 years old and that would correspond with his age in 1830."^[7]

"While Thomas did not name other children you can make some logical assumptions based on things like the 1830 census where it is logical to presume that the male of 70-79 years in Peter's home is Thomas and most likely then Peter is the son of Thomas. Also the fact that Peter and Harrison are living next door to each other with Henry only one household away, and being a named son of Thomas, it is logical to assume that Harrison Holt is also a son of Thomas Holt."^[8]

"There are several others that I believe are children of Thomas Holt, though I can't document them all at this time.

1. Paulina Holt: I have a marriage bond/license dated 13 Nov 1816 for Paulina Holt marrying a Dr. John H. Duncan, and Thomas signing consent for the marriage 11 Nov 1816. A comparison of Thomas' signature for Paulina to marry with signature on his RW pension application shows the signatures to be the same. (Observation, not formal comparison.)^[9]

2. Elizabeth Holt married Joseph R Given. Apparently Peter C Holt raised Elizabeth's son James from the time he was 7 years old until his 18th birthday.

3. Thomas Blackburn Holt

4. Kennon Holt.

If you look at naming patterns it adds to the evidence supporting that these are children of Thomas. I use as an example Harrison Holt. He named sons Peter & Henry, and a daughter Elizabeth. I continue to look for documentation on this family." - Respectfully submitted by Betty Gail McKee Wollenberg (1948-2017) - 30 June 2016

DAR MEMBERSHIP It appears that bad genealogy has ruined the chances of Thomas being an acceptable ancestor to claim for entrance into the Daughters of the America Revolution. His father David is now the ancestor for entry because he signed an "Oath of Allegiance."^[10]

Thomas' pension claim was denied on the basis that he was not in a properly formed unit or some such thing during the Revolutionary War. Personally, I don't think there is any doubt that he was in regiments during the war.

Sources

1. ↑ Revolutionary War Pension File for Thomas Holt
2. ↑ Revolutionary War Pension File for Thomas Holt
3. ↑ The article in the footnotes lists him as a son of William Holt the merchant, but, his children seem well documented in other sources and at the time the article was written the Holt family was not completely understood. Thomas' father was David Holt a merchant and hatter. William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Papers, Volume 1, page 22.
4. ↑ Historic Black Settlements of Ohio, David Meyers, ‎Elise Meyers Walker, 2020
5. ↑ Revolutionary War Pension File for Thomas Holt
6. ↑ Thomas Holt Find A Grave Memorial
7. ↑ 1830 United States Census
8. ↑ 1830 United States Census
9. ↑ Paulina Holt-John H. Duncan Marriage Record
10. ↑ https://services.dar.org/Public/DAR_Research/search_adb/?action=full&p_id=A057223

The Owl and the Mouse

 

Once upon a time there was a small patch of forest where every creature did their part. There was an owl and a mouse, and a fox and other creatures. The mouse was happily going about cleaning up the forest floor and organizing it's food supply when the owl swooped down and warned the the mouse that it wasn't doing its job properly. "How so? Why not?" asked the mouse mystified, "Because I say so," said the owl.

"But wait, are you blind? Everyone else is doing it this way?"

"How dare you! I'm an owl! I could eat you. Who are you to question me?"

The mouse kept its head down and avoided that owl. And some months went by. When suddenly a fox came into the mouses' area. The fox began sniffing around the mouses lair and soon was digging up its garden, seeds and nuts were strewn all over the formerly nicely kept garden.

The mouse, seeing that it was a strong and mighty fox doing the damage, was reluctant to say anything, after its experience with the owl but then decided it would. "Stop this! This is my garden, I've worked for months on this. Please stop!"

The fox stopped digging and indignantly looked at the little mouse. "What!? You are going to tell me what to do!? One swipe and you'd be dead!"

"You've ruined all my hard work! Why are you doing this?"

The fox paused a moment, "Because I can," it said slyly, "after all I am bigger than you, more powerful and have been here longer than you! Look at all the holes I've dug." And it pointed broadly at all its handiwork.

The mouse shook its head. It had had enough of this type of treatment. The mouse called a meeting of the little creatures and complained about what it felt was an abuse of power by the larger and more powerful creatures of the forest. The other mice and rabbits and creatures listened but said little.

"No dissent! We're not allowed to question their actions or authority," said one scared little rabbit. "Why not?" asked the mouse. The rabbit shrugged.

"If you want to keep living here you won't," said another mouse. "Yeah, it's against the rules," said a frightened chipmunk.

A supercilious mouse boldly came forward and stated, "Well, I have no problems with them." "No?"

"Nope." "Well, what do you do when they steamroller right over you and dig up your garden and are rude to you and criticize you with no explanations and then when you try to contact them they just ignore you?"

"Nothing," said the mouse smugly. "And everything is fine!"

After the meeting the mouse was upset and perplexed and soon was visited by the owl.

"Your meeting notes violate the rules of this forest! You must destroy them."

The mouse's mouth fell open indignant at the arrogance of this owl. The stuffed owl flew off, but, the mouse knew it's eyes would be peering out from its little corner of the forest soon enough.

One thing the mouse did notice was that some of the little creatures that it used to know and who did some great work in the forest seemed to be missing. It soon discovered that some of them had left due to the pressure of the elite animals of the forest, sadly others had been eaten.

The mouse realized that no matter how polite it was there was always going to be a fox and an owl and any of an assortment of other higher up creatures that were going to throw their weight around. And it realized that it would always stick up for itself despite what the higher ups might like because the mouse considered itself equal in worth to these other creatures and wouldn't be intimidated by them. In the end the forest would still need to be tended to. If the fox or the owl ate the mouse, well, that could happen. The mouse might choose to leave as well. The forest will still be tended to and the angry creatures who believe they run the forest will still be going after the mice, but, the forest might not be tended quite as well as it used to be. The End

Nancy Hart - Update!

I previously reported that there wasn't any "John Hart" listed in the 1810 Census who was living in Henderson Co., Kentucky. I stand corrected.

 

Apparently, there is a John Hart listed in Henderson Co., Kentucky in the 1810 Census, but his name was indexed as "Hast" over at familysearch.

 

What is even more interesting is that listed beneath him is "Anna Hart" which under the circumstances can be none other than the person known as Nancy Hart.

 

There is a problem however. Strangely, only one male person is clearly marked. There may or may not be the remains of a "1" for over 45 in the female column but it is very faint and partially obscured if it even was there at all.

So, if we assume that this is indeed Nancy Hart than she did not pass away until after 1810.

 

However, in the 1820 Census there is an "Ann Hart" listed as living in Henderson Co., Kentucky and being over 45. Under her listing is a listing for a Thomas Hart.

In John Hart's will filed in Henderson Co., Kentucky, in 1821, John listed a son Thomas. Presumably, the Thomas listed in the 1820 Census is his son.

What we now have is possible evidence for the belief that Nancy Hart under her actually name of Ann/Anna did live in Henderson County until at least 1820.

To Merge or Not to Merge...

Communal genealogy is not a good idea. I joined wikitree which is a free genealogical website. Unfortunately, just like wikipedia, anybody and I do mean anybody, can pretty much edit anything they want. You can add perfectly good information with sources and some idiot is going to mess it up. Recently, a woman was fishing for family and asked to "collaborate" I never heard of her ancestor and after checking all my files, I told her that I found nothing on him.

The next thing I know, literally a few days later, I am getting messages that a profile of mine needs to be merged with a profile she just created. This really ticked me off because I knew exactly what she was trying to do. She was trying to merge my ancestor, William Rhodes, that I spent a lot of time working on with someone else's profile for a person with the same name that was totally wrong. I had tried working with the profile editors of that page in order to get them to choose which William Rhodes it was about, but, they were having none of it. So that William Rhodes was definitely NOT mine since mine didn't emigrate to South Carolina and die, I created my own page. I already had forestalled one of these Merger people some weeks before and I knew that's what this new one wanted to do.

Oh, she claimed her creating a "new" profile of one of mine was just an accident, but, then how did she find out that her person's profile matched mine, if she had no idea mine existed? And how did she find my William Rhodes if little 'ol her didn't see the profile for one of his daughters?

I removed all the profiles she wanted to merge, so no merging had to take place. I didn't want to share a profile with some guy who merged three William Rhodes' together and then acted like a real jerk when I tried working with him.

This woman then wrote that three different people were all globbed together in the William Rhodes and then she wanted to "glob" mine into it too. Then she said that it now represents the same William Rhodes as mine! How so? Why wasn't that William Rhodes turned into the William Rhodes who died in SC? Or the William Rhodes that died in Mecklenburg Co., VA? Why was that William Rhodes turned into my William?

So even though my Rhodes ancestor goes through William Rhodes, that connection is now removed because there is another profile of a guy with the same name as my ancestor who is attached to the new and improved William Rhodes. Yay! And this one died in GA. Mine, the correct one, died in North Carolina. Soon some fool will suggest a merge between my ancestor and the one who died in Georgia.

Me thinks wikitree has a merging problem. So, yeah, wikitree is really starting to suck. Beware people fishing through your lines looking for a connection to their own!

Nancy Hart Challenge!

As I wrote in my last posting, I just recently learned of Nancy Hart, so whether she is a great aunt or not does not really matter all that much to me. What does matter more is genealogical and historical accuracy.

There is no doubt that Nancy Hart lived. And it seems certain that tradition has it correct that her maiden name was Morgan. There also seems to be no doubt that Benjamin Hart was her husband. Whether she did all that was attributed to her over the years is another matter.

What does seem problematic is her parentage. Although most of the early sources (books, genealogies, and articles) seem to agree that her parents were Thomas and Rebecca (Alexander) Morgan I have been unable to find any primary sources yet to back this up.

Instead, just the opposite, I have found records attached to my direct ancestors Mark and Sarah Morgan that seem to confirm that Anne was, in fact, a daughter of theirs. 

Writing to some people who descend, or claim descent from Nancy hasn't been productive either in obtaining primary records that she attaches her in any way to a Thomas Morgan.

For instance, I have read that the Hart family moved into the area of Orange Co., North Carolina around 1760. Presumably, this is where Anne Morgan was living when she met and married Benjamin Hart.

Checking the 1755 Tax List for Orange County, I could find no Thomas Morgans. So if there was a Thomas Morgan he either had no taxable goods or he wasn't yet living there. There is a Thomas who witnesses a will I believe in about 1764 in Orange County, but, he doesn't appear once in the court records during this same timeframe.

I will layout the records that I have found that appear to draw Mark Morgan and his wife Sarah into a relationship with Benjamin Hart and his wife Anne aka Nancy Hart.

So, the challenge is this... Please present some primary source material that connects Anne Morgan the future wife of Benjamin Hart who would become known as Nancy Hart the Patriot with Thomas and Rebecca Morgan.

The Daughters of the American Revolution has done some great work in preserving the past and honoring Patriotic heroes, but, sometimes their old published books have information that has been proved inaccurate.

Ann "Nancy" (Morgan) Hart... When did she die?

To be honest I just found out about the Georgia heroine Nancy Hart back in September 2019. I discovered her when searching for more information on my ancestor Mark Morgan of Orange Co., North Carolina.

Mark Morgan, himself, was an interesting character in his own right. Apparently, most of the earlier sources for Nancy, claimed it was a Thomas Morgan who was her father. One researcher, however, a Bob Lackey pointed out at the old Genforum website that Sarah Morgan, Mark's widow actually listed an "Ann Hart" as her daughter. That pretty much does it for me, although it may not be absolute proof.

Anyway, since discovering that Nancy Hart was most likely a great grand aunt of mine, I began reading up on her. It seems to be an accepted fact that she moved with her son John Hart to Kentucky and died in about 1830 in Henderson Co., Kentucky where she was buried at what is known as the Book Cemetery in that county. In the 1930s a grave was erected for her by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

The only problem is that when I looked up the 1820 census record for John Hart she was not listed on the record. There was only one woman 45+ which would have been John's wife Patience. The story of Nancy's last years further claimed that she stayed with her daughter-in-law Patience after her son's death. There is an 1830 census record listing Patience as the head-of-the-household, but no record of another elderly female. Of course, some might say that was because she died before the 1830 census was taken. That could be true, but, why wasn't she found in the 1820 census?

There is an interesting tidbit of information from an article written by E. Merton Coulter in the 1950s entitled Nancy Hart, Georgia Heroine of the Revolution: The Story of the Growth of A Tradition. In the article he reports that, "A descendant of Nancy's wrote in 1901 that at the time of the funeral there was a total eclipse of the sun, and that it ought to be easy to find the exact date by determining when the eclipse took place. He thought it was 'about 1815 or 1820.'" This information came from the November 1, 1901 edition of the Hartwell Sun.

I could not locate any John Harts in Henderson County in the 1810 census. I did find two Johns in Kentucky that could have been the same John Hart but there is no evidence that either was the right one. Neither had another woman listed though who could have been Nancy Hart. But, let's just assume that Nancy did live with John and Patience in Henderson County. Could it be possible that she died sometime between 1815 and 1820? And could it be true that she was buried during a total eclipse?

There only seem to be two total solar eclipses that would have hit Kentucky around this period. One was June 16, 1806, and the other was November 30, 1834. There were no total eclipses within the 1815 to 1820 timeframe.

Maybe it was just an eclipse and not a "total eclipse." Let's see what other eclipses there were that might be the one referenced by one of her descendants. There were several annular solar eclipses between 1809 and 1831. An annular eclipse is when the moon covers the sun's center and there is something like a ring of fire revealed around the edges.

So, the dates in which these eclipses happened were April 14, 1809; August 27, 1821; February 21, 1822; September 28, 1828; and February 12, 1831. Of course, since I am not an expert some of these eclipses may or may not have been seen from the Henderson County area.

If the descendant's comments are to be believed on when she died and that there was a solar eclipse of any kind then the two closest dates for an eclipse were 1821 and 1822. Of course, there is still the problem of the census of 1820 for the only John Hart is living in Henderson County and it does not register his aged mother on the schedule.

If the story, that she lived with her son John is true, and that she moved with him and his family to Kentucky, could she have possibly died in April of 1809?

Considering how sometimes people's memories can fail them, more information needs to be gathered to give too much credence to either the descendant's pieces of information or the stories of Nancy living until 1830 and as some claim even 1840!

The truth is Nancy was a real person and she does seem to have resisted the Loyalists who were prowling the countryside of her neighborhood of Elbert Co., Georgia during the American Revolution.

As far as when and where she died, that storyline still needs to be worked on.          

LINEAGE NOTE
Many years ago Ransdell researcher Bob Moore seemed to have put a nail in the coffin of Sanford Ransdell b. 1781 being the son of Sanford Ransdell of Orange Co., Virginia. Moore pointed out that the older Sanford Ransdell when he made his will in Mercer Co., Kentucky in 1830 didn't mention having a son named Sanford. He further stated that it was likely that Sanford had no children at all. When confronted with the Sanford Ransdell and Sanford Ransdell, Jr. listing in the 1803 Mercer County Tax Record he said that that didn't always signify father and son, but also simply older and younger.

However, for the first time I have actually looked at an online scan of the actual page. For 1803 there are three lists that have rough alphabetical listings. The second list for 1803 has Ransdall, Sanford and Ransdall, Sanford, Jr. one on top of the other. They were listed on July 6th 1803. There is a "Rowland" recorded above them and a "Robertson" beneath them and those were recorded on other days. After examining this record, I now have little doubt that they didn't just share the same name, but were actually father and son, since there weren't anymore Ransdells on that list, which means these Sanfords were living near each other.