REYNOLDS H'cTOR!CAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION GENEALOGICAL TABLES of the DESCENDANTS of ROBERT McCORMXCK of “WALNUT GROVE” ROCKBRIDGE COUNTY VIRGINIA BORN 1780 — DIED 1846 UofiJLtv 1727476 DESCENDANTS OF ROBERT McCORMICK “// is not the least debt that zee ozee unto History that it hath made us acquainted with our dead ancestors, and out of the depth and darkness of the earth de¬ livered us their Memory and Fame ” ^ ^ ^ jjc Sir Walter Raleigh, quoted by the President of the United States in an address at William and Mary College, Virginia, on October 20th, 1934. I i I A A v e... 'rov Privately Printed 1934 TO THE AFFECTIONATE MEMORY OF A SUPREMELY GIFTED AND GENTLE MAN THE DESCENDANTS OF ROBERT AND MARY ANN HALL McCORMICK * NOTE The words “First” “Second” “Third” “Fourth” Cousins at the sides of the tables are intended to convey the relationship of each generation of each table to the same generations of the remaining tables. The names of all persons deceased are underscored. The names of descendants are in each case followed by the initial letters of their family name to enable more rapid identification. Names in square brackets are those by which familiarly known. CONTENTS PAGE Foreword __:- xi Account of Robert and Mary Ann McCormick_ 1 Table of Cyrus McCormick Line_ 15 Table of William McCormick Line_ 17-20 Table of Leander McCormick Line_21-24 Table of Shields Line_ 25 Table of Adams Line_ 27-30 List of deceased descendants of Robert McCormick with ages at time of decease_ 31 List by date of birth of living descendants of Robert McCormick_ 33 List of birth places_ 37 Present places of residence_ 41 Concluding Note___’_ 43 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Robert McCormick_Preceding page 1 Mary Ann McCormick_Preceding page 3 “Walnut Grove”_Preceding page 5 The old Shop and Mill_Preceding page 7 Old Providence Graveyard_Preceding page 11 FOREWORD R. LEANDER J. McCORMICK of Chi¬ cago in 1896 published a “Family Record and Biography” tracing the lineage of the descendants in America of Captain James McCormick, one of the prominent de¬ fenders of Londonderry in the famous Siege of the year 1689 in which the Protestants of that city were beleaguered for some three and a half months by the Royalist forces of James II. As a matter of family record it has now been thought desirable to bring up to date the information collected by that fine old gentleman in so far as it particularly concerns the descendants of his distinguished father, Robert McCormick. The compiler wishes it had been possible to include biographical mention of those members of the family not already noticed in his grandfather’s volume, but many other claims on the available time have prevented pursuit of the matter thus far. The plan followed in presenting the data is the simplest that could occur to the compiler. The five tables represent respectively the lines of descent from five out of the eight children of Robert and Mary Ann (Hall) McCormick. The second child, Robert Hall, and the third, Susan Jane, died in early youth, and the seventh child and fifth son, John Prestly, died at the age of twenty-eight without having married. The making of this little work has been a labor of love. As the compiler has already pleaded in a companion gene- xi alogical work relative to the family of his maternal great¬ grandfather, he must ask forgiveness for the manner in which his relatives near and far, known and some hitherto unknown, have been called upon for what has amounted to the revival of long-forgotten details. But it is hoped that many of the “victims” will be secretly pleased, since do we not all appreciate being reminded occasionally that the course of Humanity is never-ending, that we ourselves should not be here but for those who have gone before: % Jfc * * * To many of my kin I owe a very deep debt of gratitude for their assistance in supplying the dates of births, mar¬ riages and deaths in their branches of the family. Those to whom words of special acknowledgement are due are my cousins Cyrus H. McCormick, Robert H. McCormick, Chauncey McCormick, Amanda Adams Tracy, Anna Chap¬ man Dunn, Robert McCormick Adams (son of Robert McCormick Adams, 1st), Carolyn Shields Cheney and Genevieve Lewis Sheridan. The short accounts given of Robert McCormick and his wife Marv Ann Hall have been compiled chiefly from a brochure published in 1910 jointly by my Uncle, the late Robert Hall McCormick, and my cousin, the late James Hall Shields, and from Professor William T. Hutchinson’s life of Cyrus Hall McCormick, published in 1930 by the Century Company. I shall always feel grateful to my relatives for any addi¬ tions or corrections they may be in a position to make. * * * * * L. McC-G. “Sine Timore>) “Without Fear”* •Generally acknowledged motto of the McCormick family in the United States. The crest is a “dexter hand holding a spear in pale ppr”. The motto is given to the Irish lamily of the name in Burke’s General Armory but to the Scottish family in Fairbajrn’s Crests. This authority gives no motto for the Irish family but from another source the Irish motto has beei stated to be: “Prius mori quam fidem fallere” —“Rather die than break faith”. The Scottish McCormick crest is a martlet (i. e. a martin, type of swallow) poised on a rock. Xll Robert McCormick ROBERT McCORMICK N SPITE of the considerable amount of effort which has been expended in tracing the ancestors of Robert McCormick prior to Captain James McCormick of London¬ derry fame, it is not possible to choose satisfactorily between the two lineages so far evolved by investigators. The one asserts that Robert’s ancestors descended from remote Irish stock allied with the illustrious King Cormac (and so “Mac Cormac”) who died in A. D. 260 and, more particularly, from one Donogh Mac- Cormac who lived at the beginning of the fifteenth century; the other that they migrated to Ulster at some period or other from Scotland. This period is sometimes said to have been the years following the flight from Ireland of the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell in 1607, upon which James I of England inaugurated the so-called “Plantation of Ulster” by Scottish Colonists. It appears, however, to be established at least that Captain James’ father was Thomas McCormick, born in 1610, and that Thomas’ father was Hugh McCormick, born in 1570. But the Irish descent from further generations back, as at present worked out, involves the use of the variant “Mac Cormac” and the customary use of essentially Irish baptismal names such as Donogh, Reagh and Manus instead of such essen¬ tially Scotch names as Andrew and Ellin (two other chil¬ dren of Hugh) and of Anglo-Saxon names such as Richard, James and Thomas. On the other hand, if James’ grand¬ father was Hugh, born in 1570 in Ireland, the family existed there forty years before the “Plantation of Ulster” 2 DESCENDANTS OF ROBERT MCCORMICK and, if Scottish, must have migrated thither some time before that event. In view of the many unhappy troubles in Scotland this might easily have happened. It is certain that there was a large Scottish settlement in the middle of the sixteenth century in Antrim where Hugh McCormick, born in 1570, resided at a place with a Scottish name, Dunmakelter. The form of the name itself, McCormick, savours more of Scottish origin than Irish, but, again, a recently extinct Irish title of MacCormac carried the McCormick motto “Sine timore,” thus pointing to a com¬ mon Irish origin. The subject appears to require further study. So far as the McCormicks of Scotland are con¬ cerned, we know that they were, and still, presumably, are, a “sept,” i.e. a division or subordinate branch, of the Clan Maclaine of Lochbuie. Whatever the truth regarding the descent of the family prior to Captain James McCormick, one of the Ulster folk among the many who emigrated to America in the middle decades of the eighteenth century and settled to a large extent in Pennsylvania in the country of the Susquehanna river, was Thomas McCormick, son of the aforementioned Captain James. Thomas crossed the Atlantic in 1735 at the same time as his elder brother Hugh. The two brothers at first settled in the country east of the Susquehanna. After an interval of years Thomas removed to what is now Cumberland County on the west or right bank of the river. Here Thomas and his wife resided on a good-sized farm which still remains in the ownership of the Harrisburg branch of the McCormick family, descendants of Thomas Mc¬ Cormick’s second son James. Thomas’ fifth son was Robert the elder, born in America in 1738. On reaching middle-age Robert with his next eldest brothers William Mary Ann McCormick DESCENDANTS OF ROBERT MCCORMICK 3 and Hugh moved northwest to Juniata County, Pennsyl¬ vania, and resided there till 1779, when he sold his own property and took his wife (Martha Sanderson) and family down the Shenandoah Valley to the borders of Rockbridge County, Virginia, where he purchased a plantation of 450 acres and called it “Walnut Grove.” Here his youngest son Robert, the subject of the present work, was born on June 8th, 1780. Little unfortunately is known of Robert’s life during his first thirty years, i.e. until about 1810 and we can only guess that he had advantage of the somewhat simple educational facilities available and that he played a normal part in assisting his father on the plantation and in participating in the activities of the surrounding district.