“Yeah, this is Spade… That’s right, like the tool you use for digging up dead relatives…. Yeah, I do missing persons cases…. Rhoda Craig?[i] I’ve heard the name. She was the wife of Jeremiah Rankin, youngest son of the Adam Rankin who died in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1747.[ii] Jeremiah and Rhoda had four little Rankin boys before he got killed in an accident at his mill near Greencastle in 1760, or at least that’s what they said happened to him…. You want to know what happened to Rhoda after that? Well, I can find out, but it’s going to cost you. My retainer is $100 plus a bottle of Cutty Sark…. Well, it’s a deal then!”
Missing persons cases aren’t always the easiest, especially when the missing person is the wife of a fellow who died under dubious circumstances. But in this case, I had a fair amount of information to work with. Rhoda’s four kids were named Adam, the eldest, born in 1755, followed by William, Thomas and Jeremiah. They’d all ended up living near Lexington, Kentucky, and Adam was pretty well known as the founder of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in Kentucky.[iii] “Crazy Adam”, we Rankin researchers call him because he caused a schism in the church over what hymns you could sing, and because he preached that slavery was God’s gift.[iv] How hard could it be to track down his mom?
I dug out a dog-eared copy of a letter written in 1854 by Crazy Adam’s son, John Mason Rankin, that contained just about all the information anybody had on Rhoda Craig. After Jeremiah’s untimely passing, she “married a man named English, by whom she had several children, some of whom settled near Lexington and adjoining counties. One of his daughters married a Walker and one I think a Faris.”[v] Piece of cake.
I started out looking for a “Rhoda English”. Maybe I’d get lucky. Sure enough, I found a Greene County, Tennessee, marriage record from 1796 for a Rhoda English and John Kincaid.[vi] That seemed a little late to be Rhoda Craig getting into a third marriage, but it might have been her daughter. I did a double-take when I noticed the name on the marriage record two lines down: Esther Dunwoody. Jeremiah Rankin’s sister Esther had married a man named William Dunwoody. This might be a daughter or granddaughter. I was on the right track.
Rhoda and John Kincaid lived in Bath County, Kentucky for more than 30 years – John was there on the 1820 and 1830 census – but then were in Decatur County, Indiana, by the 1840 census. They were living practically next door to the children of Crazy Adam’s brother Jeremiah Rankin.[vii] The Rankins and Kincaids were even buried in the same cemetery, with Rhoda not far from Nancy McClelland Rankin, Jeremiah’s widow.[viii] Rhoda’s daughter Rebecca married Joseph K Rankin, one of Jeremiah’s sons.[ix] If Rhoda was Jeremiah’s half-sister, that would have been a first-cousin marriage. That wouldn’t necessarily have raised any eyebrows back in those days, but it didn’t quite make my case.
Digging through the Green County probate records, I hit paydirt… The will of Rhoda Kincaid’s father, Andrew English![x] He’d left “Rody Kinkade” $200, and the same to his daughter “Mary Robison” and the children of his daughter “Elizabeth Walker”, presumably deceased, plus $50 to the heirs of his son Andrew. His son Alexander got the farm, and his wife Sarah got to stay in the house, plus got a bed and “all the bed covering that she had made since she has lived with me”.
That “since she has lived with me” bit told me she wasn’t Andrew’s first wife. I stumbled on a manuscript by a guy who said he’d talked to a woman in 1900 who was the daughter of a man who might have been a grandson that said Andrew’s first wife’s name was Rhoda, and that she died in Greene County, Tennessee, on 29 Oct 1798.[xi] You don’t get much more solid evidence than that. I asked around if anybody knew this Rhoda’s maiden name, and everybody told me it was “Hammitt”, not “Craig”. I wasn’t buying it. With one of the daughters in Andrew’s will being named “Elizabeth Walker”, this was the smoking gun that tied right into John Mason Rankin’s letter.
I started running down the kids in Andrew English’s will. Alexander, the youngest, had lived long enough to make it into the 1850 census for Greene County.[xii] He listed his birthplace as Pennsylvania in about 1776. He was living next to a couple of other Englishes who must have been his sons: Andrew, born in Kentucky about 1805, and Milton, born in Tennessee about 1817. So now I had another Kentucky connection: Alexander must have moved there, then come back to Tennessee to farm the land his dad left him.
The pieces were falling into place. After Jeremiah’s “accident”, Rhoda got hitched to this Andrew English and had at least 6 kids – Mary, Elizabeth, John, Andrew, Rhoda and Alexander – all before they left Pennsylvania.
But I needed more if I was going to collect my fee. How about that Elizabeth English who married a Walker? I sniffed around and found an 1815 Bath County, Kentucky, marriage record for an Elizabeth English and a Joseph Walker.[xiii] Too late to be the woman who’d had at least two kids and died by the time Andrew English wrote his will in 1817. Then I noticed the surety on the bond: Alexander Feris. That surname could not possibly be a coincidence. I now had an English, a Walker and a Faris, all living in Kentucky in a county adjoining Lexington’s. I poured myself a stiff shot of Cutty in anticipation of my fee.
But If this Elizabeth English Walker wasn’t Andrew and Rhoda’s daughter, then who was she? The answer came in the form of a Bath County survey assigning a tract as dower to “Elizabeth Walker, late Elizabeth English widow and relict of Andrew English dec’d”.[xiv] OK, I hadn’t found Andrew English’s daughter, but maybe I’d found his son, who I knew from the will had already kicked it before his dad.
Sure enough, there was another Bath County marriage record from 1822 between a Rhody English and Presley Moore, with consent granted by Rhody’s mother, Elizabeth Walker.[xv] Bingo! Andrew Jr had named a daughter after his mom. This was definitely the son of Andrew English and Rhoda Craig.
As if that wasn’t enough, I soon dug up an 1802 deed in Fayette County, Kentucky, from Alexander and Hannah McConnell to Crazy Adam himself.[xvi] The witnesses: Andrew English, Jeremiah Rankin and Joseph Walker – Adam’s half-brother, his full brother and… well… What exactly was Joseph Walker? He clearly already had a relationship to the family 13 years before marrying the widow of Andrew Jr. Could he have been the husband of Andrew Sr’s daughter Elizabeth? Could he have married two different women named “Elizabeth English”?
A Greene County, Tennessee, tax assessment showed that a Joseph Walker already had land there by 1783.[xvii] In 1789, a Joseph Walker bought tract of land adjacent to James English, the brother of Andrew Sr.[xviii] This had to be the guy. And by the way, I know damned well it was still North Carolina until 1790, but if I said “Greene County, North Carolina, it would just confuse everybody, not least of all me.
The widow of Andrew English Jr had not been Joseph Walker’s first marriage – he had a batch of kids from an earlier wife. Running them down, I found a James English Walker, the oldest, and an Adam R Walker. I grinned. That “R” could only stand for “Rankin”. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind now that Joseph Walker had married Elizabeth English and named a son after her half-brother.
To be continued …
[i] Rhoda Craig can be found in the big LDS tree at FamilySearch.org. The LDS tree can be useful, but should be viewed with skepticism since it is subject to frequent modification by people who don’t really know what they’re doing. Significant work has been put into cleaning up the portions related to this story. This descendancy view of Rhoda may be helpful in following the characters. RRW comment: you will need a membership in FamilySearch.org to access the tree, as well as sources cited in other footnotes in this article. Membership is free and gives you access to millions of original records, the majority of which have vastly more credibility than online trees. <grin> https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/pedigree/descendancy/G4CN-396
[ii] Adam Rankin d. 1747 has been well-covered in this blog. A good starting point is this article can be found at this link.
[iii] History of the Presbyterian Church in the State of Kentucky (1847), by Robert Davidson, Chapter III discusses the “Rankin Schism”. See it here.
[iv] A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1853), by Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. 154. Story of Lewis Hayden, slave of Adam Rankin.
[v] Letter of John Mason Rankin to Henry Newton Rankin dated 13 Sep 1854.
[vi] Greene County, Tennessee, Marriage Records, p. 77. The note Rhoda’s father wrote giving his consent to the marriage has also been preserved.
[vii] John Kincaid appears on page 339 of the 1840 census for Clinton, Fugit and Salt Creek Townships; Adam and Joseph K Rankin appear on page 341. The letter of John Mason Rankin also describes how the family of his uncle Jeremiah moved to Indiana after his death, and mentions that “Aunt Nancy” was still living, though in fact she had died shortly before. See link at note v.
[viii] Find a Grave memorial for Rhoda Kincaid; and memorial for Nancy Rankin.
[ix] Bath County, Kentucky, Marriage Bonds 1786-1965, at this link.
[x] Greene County, Tennessee, probate records. See it here.The transcript is taken from an original obtained from Greene County and transcribed by Susan Mohr.
[xi] English-Robertson Families in America, by Arthur Leslie Keith, p. 4.
[xii] Greene County, Tennessee, 1850 United States Census at FamilySearch.
[xiii] Bath County, Kentucky, Marriage Bonds 1786-1965. See it here.
[xiv] Kentucky Probate Records, 1727-1990, Bath County, Mixed Records, 1811-1831, Vol. A-B, image 319 of 513. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L9DP-GSF5.
[xv] Bath County, Kentucky, Marriage Bonds 1786-1965. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:9398-3HS9-Y
[xvi] Fayette County, Kentucky, District Court Deed Book D, 1802, p. 91. At FamilySearch.org,
[xvii] Tennessee Early Tax Records, 1783-1895, p. 5.
[xviii] Greene County, Tennessee, Deeds, 1787-1802. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CS4Y-Q6HX
This is great! I totally failed to find Rhoda and her English husband.