Sand Mountain Melungeon Families: A DNA Perspective from When Scotland Was Jewish

Sand Mountain is a flat-topped extension of the Cumberland Plateau stretching over a hundred miles along the Tennessee River in the states of Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama. Its twin, Lookout Mountain, lies across the valley, where Interstate 59 runs from Chattanooga, Tenn. to Fort Payne and Boaz, Alabama, near Blountsville. In ancient times, a mixture of Cherokee, Yuchi, Koasati, Creek and other Indian tribes inhabited the area, and the Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto visited its towns in 1539/1540 (see map). In the census of 1950, Jackson County (which constituted the first white county formed in Alabama from the Cherokee Cession of 1816) had 70 persons identified as Melungeon, making it a notable location for this ethnic group. This article will survey the genealogies and ancestry of some of these families, based on the author’s own family tree, and incorporating research about to be published in a recent book titled When Scotland Was Jewish. Surnames include Adkins, Beam(er), Black, Blevins, Brown, Bunch, Bundren, Burke, Burns, Cooper, Davis, Fields, Gist, Gunter, Keys, Lackey, Lowrey, Redwine, Riley, Shankles, and Sizemore.

What a minute, you’re going to say. I didn’t know Scotland was ever Jewish. Scottish history can’t boast of having too many prominent Jews, right? Well, not until now. When Scotland Was Jewish was begun by Professor Elizabeth C. Hirschman of Rutgers University and joined by me as a co-investigator in 2001. Both of us are of Melungeon ancestry. Using the tools of modern DNA testing and clues ranging from medieval burgess lists to synagogue records, we researched a large community of Jewish and Moorish merchants and court officials who were active in the nation-building phase of early Scottish history, 1000-1300. Our book discusses, among other subjects, the Judaic origins of the Royal House of Stewart, the identity of Aberdeen’s St. Machar, and the possible role of secret Jewish religious practices in the formation of Presbyterianism. Over 150 illustrations and 15 detailed genealogies document not only the Judaic character of Scotland’s political, economic and religious history, but also an important tie-in to the Melungeons of the southern Appalachians, including those on Sand Mountain. Chapters on DNA analysis, clan genealogies, the Knights Templar, the Cabala, and the religions of Scotland conclude with an essay on Sir Walter Scott’s heroine Rebecca in Ivanhoe, bringing the story of a previously unsuspected Judaic presence in the British Isles down to the present day. In many ways, this study is the sequel to Hirschman’s Melungeons: The Last Lost Tribe in America (Mercer University Press, 2005). Jews among the Indians, a work in progress, is also co-authored by Yates and Hirschman.

My own interest in the Melungeons of Sand Mountain began in 1997, when in the course of pursuing some genealogy work on my mother’s Coopers, I encountered a very strange court record on USGenWeb. It named one of our ancestors, Isaac Cooper, rumored to have been a mixed blood Choctaw-Cherokee who married a daughter of Cherokee principal chief Black Fox (Enola, Inali, died 1811). The record presented Isaac Cooper giving a deposition in the home of James Cooper in newly-formed Jackson County, Alabama. It concerned the Great Salt Works of the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River in Wayne County, Kentucky. What in the world was going on?

of the world's first oil well (Post: HISTORY: Salt Works of the Big South Fork (BSF), Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 22:16:14 –0400, Submitter: Lanny R. Slavey).

This chance “hit” sent me on a long odyssey of exploration and self-discovery, one accompanied by not a little soul searching. I investigated the origins of the Cooper surname, the settlement of Daniel Boone’s Kentucky, and the seemingly interminable treaties and intrigues that followed the Cherokee’s defeat by the British in 1761. Both for me and for my (equally Melungeon and American Indian) wife, Teresa, a Ramey, it has led to cherished new friendships – with Brent Kennedy, with Nancy Morrison of the Melungeon Health Network, and with Dr. Arnold Mark Belzer of Congregation Mickve Israel in Savannah. But I don’t mind saying that it has also brought some less-than-friendly challenges from others. Unaccountably, opponents emerged. We learned there were people who were either so hardened in academic orthodoxy or sunk in prejudice that they were unwilling to acknowledge what seemed an ever-growing mountain of evidence about the historical roots and composition of the Melungeons.

After nearly 10 years of grappling with these issues, I am satisfied with the emerging consensus. I have only one remaining question. Where did all the money go? Seriously, I think this is a valid concern. How did our ancestors come to be dispossessed of such a splendid legacy? From a genealogical perspective, the following notes detail some of the land sales, mineral prospecting, manufacturing, trade activities, lobbying, and legal moves of these Melungeon families in an ever-shifting and increasingly complex social environment. The period ends about 1840, a time when the U.S. government (supposedly, on the strength of a one-vote margin in the Senate) removed the Indian tribes west of the Mississippi. But its background can be glimpsed in a centuries-old fight for religious freedom, self-reliance and democratic values. I am proud of this story, and I know the ancestors are proud of us to discover it at last.

Adkins

The Adkins (also spelled Atkin, Atkinson, Aiken, etc.) were multiply intermarried with my pioneer Cooper, Blevins and Burke families from Wayne County, Kentucky. Before settling as one of the leading families in Watauga, they came from Pittsylvania County, Virginia, suspected to be an important staging area for the movement of Melungeon families onto the northern and eastern boundaries of the Cherokee.

William Atkinson 200 A on both sides Pig River Survd Mar. 31 1747 at a gum on the Lower side of Pig River and thence N10E 90p. to a red Oak N65 W137p to a Beech on a branch S10 W204p. crossing a branch to a red oak S10E110p. to a red oak on Pig Riverand thence down the same & across it to the beging.

William Atkinson 150A on both sides Pig River Survd 31Mar. 1747 beginning at a red oak on the upper side driver thence N81W48p. crossing sd River to a maple on Harping Creek S89W184p. crossing sd Harping Creek & the River to a white Oak N8W96p. crossing a Branch to a pine N60E70p. to a red oak E98p to a red oak S64E70p. to a pine S10E103p to the begin.

These Adkins are traced to a James Atkinson, a Quaker who came to Philadelphia in the 1600s, probably from a Welsh port. His great-grandson William Adkins left a will dated Jan. 22, 1784, probated March 15, 1784 (D&W Bk. Vol. 11 p.136), and was buried near Cooper's Old Store, Pittsylvania Co., Va. William’s son Owen was born about 1750 in Lunenberg County, Virginia (the parent county of Pittsylvania) and died in Watauga, Hawkins County, Tennessee about 1790. He married Agnes Good/Goad, from the same family that provided the spouse of Valentine Sevier (1701/02-1803). They were the parents of John Sevier, the first governor of Tennessee, and one of his sons, Valentine, married Sarah Cooper. The Seviers go back to Don Juan de Xavier of a Sephardic family that took refuge in Narvarre during the Spanish Inquisition.

In 1836, Benjamin Adkins built a log mill on the Little South Fork of the Cumberland near Parmleysville, Kentucky, made of huge squared logs. This mill, with rifle slits on two levels, is still standing. He left a will in 1839 showing $10,000 in debts owed him and an estate of great value. Numerous family members moved first to Sequatchee (Marion County, Tenn.) and subsequently to Sand Mountain and to a hidden cove at the foot of Fox Mountain called Anawaika, or Deerhead, on the Georgia state line, about 1835, when the Trail of Tears began. Some proceeded west to Arkansas. William E. Adkins (about 1828-1862) married Susan E. (Sukie) Cooper (about 1831-1901), the daughter of Isaac and Mahala Jane Cooper, April 20, 1847, in Henry County, Tenn. Descendents filed unsuccessful applications to be enrolled as Cherokee in Indian Territory.

William Adkins enlisted in the 1st Arkansas Union Cavalry (Company M) on September

17th, 1862 in Marion County, Arkansas. His muster-in roll is dated October 1st, 1862 in Springfield, Missouri. He served under Brigadier General J. M. Schofield in the Army of the Frontier and was killed during a battle at Crane Creek, Stone County, Missouri on November 20th, 1862. His "Inventory of effect of a Deceased Soldier" signed by William S. Johnson, 1^st Lieutenant, Company M, 1^st Arkansas Union Cavalry stated: William was 5 feet 7 inches tall with blue eyes, brown hair, and a light complexion. He was

buried in his clothes where he died. Susan Adkins applied for and was granted a military pension on June 2nd, 1863.

“When I was little my Great Grandma Adkins (Virgie Stanley) use to tell me stories about my Great Grandfather's (Arthur ‘Aud’ Adkins) Grandmother. She said her name was Sukie and she was a Cherokee Indian. I later found out that ‘Sukie’ was a nickname for Susan. She also mentioned the name Mahala Blevins. --Steve Adkins, Arkansas.

Atkins (R1b DNA) is thought to be derived from “one of Aix/Aachen,” the capital of the Frankish empire under Charlemagne and an important Jewish mercantile center (WSWJ).

This name goes back to one of the first French Huguenot traders among the Cherokee, John Beamer (originally Beamour), who came to the Overhill towns in 1699 from the Caribbean and Carolina coast. He was called a Mustee (mixed breed). (Brent Cox, Heart of the Eagle, 1699). John Beamer is claimed by Narcissa Owen as the father of Oconostota, who was one of the young warriors to go to England in 1730 (The Memoirs of Narcissa Owen, 1831-1907, 1907). If this is true, it points to early admixture of the Overhill hierarchies with European traders, as well as continuing cousin marriage in the mixed breed lines, generation after generation. The origin of the name is “from Bohemia.” Grandson Thomas Beamer, born about 1756, half breed son of James Beamer of Estatoe, was an English/Cherokee interpreter for the Lower Towns.

Seven Cherokee men in St. James Gardens, London, wearing the clothes given to them by King George II, 1730. Oconostota is third from left, and Attakullakulla is far right. European admixture is evident in their features; see Donald N. Yates, “A Portrait of Cherokee Chief Attakullakulla from the 1730s? A Discussion of William Verelst’s ‘Trustees of Georgia’ Painting’,” Journal of Cherokee Studies 22 (2001) 4-20.

Black

Black is a Scottish name associated with clans Lamont, Macgregor and Maclean. About 1790, Mary Ann Black married William Davis, a Revolutionary War soldier born in Virginia in 1753 who died and was buried in Maynard’s Cove on Sand Mountain in 1848. She was a daughter of Black Fox, at that time a lieutenant in Dragging Canoe’s Chickamauga army fighting the Tennesseans.

Black Fox signed the Holston Treaty, July 2, 1791 (but not the stipulation of February 7, 1792) and delivered the funeral oration for his brother-in-law Dragging Canoe. He was originally chief of the lower town of Ustanali and became principal chief of the Cherokee after the death of Little Turkey in 1802. He signed the October 20, 1803 agreement for opening a road through the Cherokee Nation as "Principal Chief," as well as the Oct. 27, 1805, Jan. 7, 1806, and Sept. 11, 1807 treaties. On March 3, 1807, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives enacted a statute at large giving "the Cherokee chief, called Black Fox" a life annuity of $100. He sided with Chief Doublehead during the rebellion of 1806-1810 and was deposed for it, with Pathkiller taking his place. On April 18, 1810, he and others signed an act of the Cherokee Nation abolishing clan revenge. After this he was reinstated as principal chief. He last received his $100 stipend by proxy on July 11, 1810; the agent Return J. Meigs referred to him as "Black Fox Cherokee King." The chief had his nation cede 7,000 square miles of land to the government, giving a ceremonial wampum belt to Col. Meigs as a token of his faith in transferring Muscle Shoals, with its iron ore deposits. Younger chiefs forged his name to certain treaties and acts. He died in 1811 and was buried in an ancient tomb on the boundary between Cherokee and Creek lands in Blount Co., Ala. His name was carried on by the Black Fox who signed the treaty of 1828 and emigrated west. Some descendants remained in the East around his former chief’s residence at Creek Path on Sand Mountain. A sister married John Looney of the family that established the Looney Tavern, near where Black Fox was eventually entombed. There are rumors that a Black Fox changed his name to Henry White and moved from Alabama to Ohio. Black Fox's hunting camp was on the Stones River near Murphreesboro, Tenn. and is mentioned on a map of 1783.

Blackfox in English designates the medium-sized fur-bearing animal known as the fisher, a type of very elusive martin that lives in caves and feeds primarily on bats. The red or gray fox is called chula in Cherokee. Famously, the word enola has no meaning in the Cherokee language, and historians have been hard put to explain it, the reason, I think, being that it is Hebrew, usually a woman’s name, as in the “Enola Gay,” the flying fortress that delivered the first atom bomb, named after the mother of one of the pilots. It may have been the name of Black Fox’s mother, who married a Black. In the same way, another Chickamauga mixed blood chief, Thomas Glass, who signed the treaty of Tellico next to Chief Black Fox, was known as The Glass, or “Tunnquetihee” (Dagwadihi “Cawtaba-killer”). His was Nickajack Town opposite the end of Sand Mountain near Chattanooga. Glass is also a Scottish clan, originating in France. It is remembered for the religious sect known as the Glassites, who taught that every meeting of worshipers constituted a church in itself. Chief Glass appears to have begun life in white South Carolina and served in the home guard: Glass, Thomas (S. C.). 2d Lieutenant South Carolina Rangers,—; in service 1779 and 1780. A William Glass then bought land in Watauga near John Sevier and James and Charles Robertson; see Wash. Co. Deeds, Vol. 5, pp. 220, 223. A granddaughter, Sarah, married William L. Cooper, the son of Isaac and Mahala Jane Cooper, in Marion County, Tenn. about 1830 and they moved to Wilkes County, N.C.

On Chief Black Fox's tomb the following description was written in An Account of Some Creek, Cherokee and Earlier Inhabitants of Blount County (George Powell, "A Description and History of Blount County," Transactions of the Alabama Historical Society at the Annual Meeting in the City of Tuscaloosa, July 9 and 10, 1855, pp. 60-64):

At the time Blount was settling, we must recollect that the Cherokee Indians were the lords of all that portion of country lying between Wills Creek [in the valley between Sand Mountain and Lookout Mountain] and the Chattahoochee river.... Some years after [1820], the northeast boundary of Blount was extended to Cherokee and Creek Indians, then residing in Brown's and Gunter'sValleys....

Most of the first settlers of Blount as well as those of the adjoining counties, believed that lead mines existed in Blount and Jefferson counties, and that the Indians knew their location and obtained lead from them. Perhaps, this general belief originated from the following circumstance, which occurred in 1810:

An old Cherokee Chief, named Black Fox, died in the north of our county, and was buried in an old mound; and in digging his grave, the Indians found some pieces of lead ore. This trivial discovery was magnified and circulated in Madison Count, and many intelligent persons in the county believed a lead mine really existed, at, or near the grave of the old Chief. This opinion became so strong, that Alexander Gilbreath, who then resided in Huntsville, was induced to visit the grave of Black Fox. His search there, proving unsuccessful.... Mr. George Fields, at that time fifty or sixty years old, informed him that the Indians knew of no lead mines nearer than those of Missouri and Illinois, and gave it as his opinion, that the lead found in the grave of Black Fox, had been brought from one of those States. John Gunter, (another old inhabitant of the valley, who had been brought up among the Chickasaws, and spent all his life with the Indians,) gave the same opinion, as to the pieces of lead which had been found in different parts of the county, viz: that they had been brought by the Indians from the northern mines. These two persons informed Mr. Gilbreath, that as far back as Indian memory extended, it was the custom of the Creeks to cross the Tennessee river near Deposit, (Baird’s Bluff) and make long hunting expeditions, annually to the north, bringing with them, on their return, lead ore. - That the settling of Tennessee by the whites was a great obstacle in their way to the mines - particularly to those of Rock river. - That the Indians had then, in order to reach the mines, to bear lower down the Tennessee river, and that as the whites of Tennessee continued to extend their settlements westward, the difficulties in the way of the Creeks to the mines, were continually increasing. To this account, it may be added, that a company of Creeks, on a returning expedition of the above kind, murdered two or three white families, which led to the Indian war of 1812, at the close of which, they were finally barred from the mines by treaty.

Although it cannot be doubted, that the Indians brought lead ore into Blount from distant mines, yet this fact does not account for the pieces which have been found in the mounds....The mounds above spoken of, are heaps of earth in the form of pyramids. They are supposed to mark the burial places of the Chiefs. Some of them are very old, having upon their tops, growing trees of very large size. These mounds are to be found in thirteen different places in our county. Two or three of them are generally grouped together, or within a half mile of each other. In Murphree'sValley, there is one group consisting of three mounds, from four to seven in height. In the trough of the Locust Fork, there are five distinct groups. - In Blountsville Valley, (and near Blountsville) there is one; and in Brown's Valley one. North-west of the Mulberry Fork, there are four groups. These mounds are invariably in the valleys, on, or near the best bodies of land. This fact proves pretty clearly that the Indian settlements were in the valleys. Some knowledge of agriculture, may have led them to settle there, or it may have been the greater abundance of game and water found in such places. About these mounds, great quantities of flint spikes are found, which some persons believe were used as arrow-heads, but they seem unfit for such a purpose. The efficiency of the arrow, depends in a great degree upon its velocity; and arrows of sufficient strength to give great velocity to these spikes, would be so heavy, that all the power of the archer would fail to give them the force requisite to enter the vitals of a large animal. If we consider them as knives, there would be many uses for them: - such as skinning animals, severing the carcass, scaling fish, and cutting or sawing vegetable substances. Some of these spikes are six inches long, and weigh nearly a pound.

These placed on poles would be similar to the Mexican lance, and would be very useful against dangerous animals....Besides the mounds mentioned above, we find in different places in our county, heaps of stones, which are supposed to be graves of Indians. In many other places, numerous pieces of broken pottery are found; and near the junction of the Little Warrior and Locust Fork, we have the remains of an old fortification, (enclosing about half an acre) three sides of which are yet plainly to be seen….

It has been stated on a previous page, that the settlement of Blount might be considered as complete with the close of the year 1818. The settlement at that date, however,did not include the portion, since known as Brown's Valley. It is difficult to determine accurately, when that portion of our county was first settled by the whites. The Cherokee Indians, held a kind of possession of it until 1838, or '39. Besides the Cherokees, there was a colony of two hundred refugee Creeks settled there, and governed by John Shannon, a half-blood Creek. The Indians called him John Ogee. This colony of Creeks was brought there for protection, soon after the Creek war commenced, by Col. Richard Brown, (a Cherokee Chief who resided in the valley,) and remained there until the removal of the Cherokees, with whom they emigrated.

In 1818, Col. Brown went to Washington City for the avowed purpose of selling to the whites, or ceding by treaty, all that portion of country. He advised the Indians to hold themselves in readiness to leave the country on his return. They accordingly assembled at Gunter's Landing, for the purpose of emigrating; but the death of Col. Brown shortly afterwards, (who died at Rogersville, in Hawkins County, Tennessee,) prevented, for many years, the ratification of the treaty, and consequently the removal of the Indians. As soon, however, as it was known that the Indians had collected together with a view to emigrating, the restless whites thronged into the country which they had abandoned, and obtained such hold, that they could never be entirely driven out. Brown's Valley at this time, showed a motley population of Cherokees, Creeks, and whites. The United States troops cut down the growing crops of the whites, and burned their houses; but with all this severity, they were unable to clear the valley of their presence. This portion of territory gave great trouble to the citizens of old Blount, as it prevented the ordinary execution of the laws in many instances...It continued to annoy the people of our county until the year 1832, when the Legislature extended the laws of the State over it.

Blevins

The Blevinses were an old Welsh family who emigrated in the 1600s to Rhode Island and were later prominent in the vanguard of the settlement of Tennessee and Kentucky. William Blevins, a long hunter in Pittsylvania County, married Agnes Walling/Walden, the sister of Elisha Walling (for whom Walden’s Ridge is named), and Blevinses were among the signers of the Watauga Purchase on March 19, 1775. Jonathan Blevins (about 1763 – about 1830), like his twin brother Richard, was a Revolutionary War soldier in the Upper New River Valley. During the shift of the Cherokee population southward in the 1820s and 1830s, the two brothers bought land in Marion Co., Tenn. Elections were held in Jonathan’s house on the stage road in District 4, Cave Springs, between Sequatchie River, Walden's Ridge and Cumberland Mountain. Jonathan was married to Charlotte Muse, the daughter of Richard Muse, a wealthy land agent who disposed of over 2400 acres of land in Montgomery/Wythe/Grayson Co., Va. before settling in what became Campbell Co., Tenn. Most of Jonathan and Lottie Muse’s children avoided the Trail of Tears, though a cousin also named Richard Blevins (about 1785 – after 1850) seems to have embraced it, discarding his white wife for two Jones sisters and moving west to Cape Girardieu, Mo., finally ending up in Texas. Two sisters Lucretia (Creecy) and Mahala Jane (Linny) married two brothers, James and Isaac Cooper, but the two couples were divided in the commotions of the 1830s and 40s, with Lucretia Cooper and her family migrating to Marion Co., Ark., and Jane Cooper and her family managing to remain in the East, in Deerhead Cove. The children of Jonathan’s twin brother, Richard (about 1763-after 1839), who was married to Hannah Osbourne, changed their name to Blevans and pursued a different survival strategy, some moving west to Missouri after spending a few years in Marion Co., Tenn. and Jackson Co., Ala. Throughout all their moves, the Blevins were careful to support other members of their circle. For example, Richard Blevins served as character witness for Jacob Troxell in Marion Co., Tenn. in 1832, before Jacob too moved on to DeKalb Co., Ala., and William Blevins gave an affidavit in 1850 for his widowed sister Jane Cooper in Dade Co., Ga. Jonathan (Jont) Blevins (1779-1863) married Catherine (Katie) Troxell, the daughter of George Jacob Troxell and his Cherokee wife Cornblossom (his brother Tarleton married her sister Mary Polly Troxell), and he was the commander of road work near the Little South Fork River in Wayne Co., Ky.

During the Civil War, many of the Blevins men, most of them railroaders like their Cooper cousins, joined the U.S. cavalry of Tennessee. Afterward, they and their Cooper relatives were forced to leave Deerhead Cove and move to New Hope across the state line on the other end of Sand Mountain. The men are usually described as having been fairly tall, lean, of dark complexion, with dark hair and either blue, green or yellow eyes – a physical type similar to Moroccan Jews. Many Blevinses are buried either in Cagle Cemetery in Deerhead Cove or New Hope Cemetery on Sand Mountain.

Blevins DNA proved to be E3b, the second most common Hebrew male lineage after J and a gene type found frequently in Moorish and Berber families (WSWJ).

Brown

Brown may originally have been Pardo, a common Converso and Marrano name. “The whole business of ‘Jewish’ names is quite confusing. There was a definite tendency on the part of the immigrant Jews in those days to drop their Spanish and their German Jewish names, as they passed through England, and to appropriate English names. Thus it is that we find them in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with such names as Phillips, Brown, Rice, Hays, Henry, Laney, Simson, Jones, and the like” (Marcus 1973, vol. II, p. 249). “Saul Pardo (‘brown’) blossomed forth as Saul Brown” (vol. I, p. 35). The Jewish origins of this Cherokee family can be seen in the names they favored for their children (Alexander, Alice, Rebecca, Cassie, David, Eli, Ephraim, Goldie, Hulda, Isom, Julia, Minnie, Nely, Sarah, Silas, Sylvia, Violet, and Zachariah), as well as in their marriage partners’ surnames (Barton, Burke, Cooper, Craze, Fields, Frazier, Gilbreath, Guess/Gist, Harris, Hearne, Jean/Jane, Lowrey, Proctor, Ross, Ruth, Sizemore, Vann, White, and Yates).

A notable member of the Brown clan was Capt. John Brown, born about 1756, residence Creek Path in 1817. He was a packhorseman for the Cherokee traders, and later a Chickasaw trader and partner of Jerome Courtonne. His sister married Oconostota, the Beloved Warrior of Great Tellico. (Brent Cox, Heart of the Eagle, 1999.) Chief Brown died Oct. 24, 1861 in Sallishaw, Indian Territory.

Chief John Ross’s (1790-1866) wife was a Brown, and trader Alexander Brown married a daughter of Chief Dragging Canoe, Naky Sarah. There are at least seven Chickamauga Chief Browns, most of them associated with Creek Path. The Browns supplied so many soldiers for the Creek War that their contingent was called “Brown’s army.” After Horse Shoe Bend, they were granted extensive lands in western Alabama. They operated Brown’s Ferry across the Tennessee River near Chattanooga as well as the military road that came in later and were also involved in ironworks.

A large ironworks had been established by Daniel Ross and Company, in Hawkins Co., Tenn., in the heart of the Watauga Country near the present-day community of Rotherwood. John Ross was captured by the Chickamaugans in Francis Mayberry's boat on the Tennessee River in 1785. John McDonald, the British Indian agent, a Scotsman from Inverness, retained him to help start a trading post and he afterward married McDonald's daughter, Mary, whose mother was a halfblood Cherokee, the daughter of the former interpreter. His son John Ross was McDonald's heir. McDonald and Ross moved from Sequatchie Valley to what became Rossville, Ga. at the foot of Lookout Mountain around 1800 (John P. Brown, Old Frontiers).

Bunch

The first Bunch in Melungeon territory (various spellings) was apparently “Trader” John Benge, born about 1735 in Albemarle Co., Va., died about 1800 probably in Georgia. Benge had both a Cherokee and white family, like many of the Coopers, Gists, Beans, Blevinses, Wallings, Wards, Stuarts, Martins and other Jewish merchants of the time. His son by Wurteh (Gurty, a nickname for Margaret), the daughter of Great Eagle, or Willenewah, of Tasagi Town, was the outlaw Chickamauga chief Bob Benge, who probably was responsible for the entry of the word “binge” into the English language. Also known as Captain Bench, and The Bench, he was born in Toqua Town and died on April 9, 1794 in Stone Gap, Va., after being tracked down by a local posse. Wurteh went on to marry Nathaniel Gist, the father of George Guest (Sequoyah, born about 1771 near Fort Loudon). Benges married into the Brown, Lowrey, and Watts families around Chattanooga.

Bundren

The original form of the name was Bondurant, from a southern French family documented in the area about Narbonne and Avignon back to the 1400s. Claibourne Peter Bundren (1774-after 1850) was the first to change the spelling to Bundren. All persons in the United States with these names trace back to a single emigrant founder, Jean Pierre Bondurant (1677-1734). Born in a small village in the south of France, Jean Pierre was a Protestant who escaped to Switzerland at age 20 in 1697. He reached Jamestown with about 100 other Huguenot refugees on the "Peter and Anthony" from London in 1700 and settled in Manakin Town, a deserted Indian village on the James River just west of Richmond. He had been trained as an apothecary and practiced medicine in Virginia. He is said to have received 400 acres of land from King George I of England, confirmed in 1725. He and his wife Ann were members of the King William Parish church and had five children. His grave site is located on Birdsong Lane, Spencerwood West, Midlothian, Virginia. It is surrounded by an iron fence and has a marker placed there by the Bondurant Family Association in 1990.

The Bundrens of Sand Mountain raised several large families near Henegar before packing up, lock, stock and barrel, and moving to Kansas in the 1880s. Their original land purchase goes back to Claiborne’s purchase in DeKalb Co., Ala. Aug. 19, 1842 (Section 14, Twp. 9, Range 10E; see Lebanon Land Office Receipt SG 4535). Before leaving Tennessee for Alabama, James Bundren, born 1810 on the James River in Virginia, married Sarah Redwine in the McMinnville home of the Coopers – a clue to religious practices. They are the author’s great-great-grandparents. Because of their dark complexions, the Bundrens were accused by many on Sand Mountain of being black.

Burke

The Burkes were French Sephardic Jews who settled in Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Kentucky. John Burke emigrated from Cork, Ireland, to Pennsylvania and his descendants proceeded south to Virginia and North Carolina and west to Kentucky. Their name may come from Burgos, the city in Portugal. The Burke coat of arms shows a French name DeBurque with a knight and a panther with a chain around its neck. A Benjamin Burges is mentioned in trade documents of S.C. in 1751, and a James Burges appears in Hawkins around 1797. James Burke, born in County Limerick, Ireland, about 1705, discovered Burke’s Garden located in Tazwell Co, Va. in 1753, and is frequently mentioned in local histories of that region. John Burke signed a petition from North of Holston against the so-called Fincastle Petition in 1777. Benjamin Burke (1765-1828) married Elizabeth Troxell (1752-1851), the sister of trader/spy George Jacob Troxell (1758-1843, DeKalb Co., Ala.), and they are buried in the Smith-Kidd Cemetery, Great Meadow Community, Rock Creek, McCreary Co., Ky. Surnames of favorite marriage partners include: Anderson, Bane, Brown, Blevins, Byatt, Coil (Coyle), Davis, Gregory, Hatfield, Lewellan, Millican, Orr, Smith and Steele.

Cooper

The annals of this Melungeon family would fill volumes, and it is one of the most common surnames today in the Tri-State Region surrounding Sand Mountain. Though Coopers are generally aware of their “Indian blood” – one living male Cooper with no other Indian bloodlines tested seven percent American Indian in the original studies undertaken for WSWJ, which would place the generation of full-bloods in his ancestry approximately in the early 18^th century – few know the whole story. It begins in medieval Norman France and becomes linked with the fortunes of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, and Lord High Chancellor of Britain, in the 17^th century. Before that, the Coopers were country gentry in Herefordshire closely allied with the Ross (Rowse, Rose) family and known for their cattle breeding and exemplary public life (Ross, 1932). After Shaftesbury’s fall from grace and exile in the Netherlands, Cooper cousins concentrated on commercial and mercantile activities in London, Sussex, Amsterdam, Long Island, Philadelphia, Barbados, and Norfolk. The Cooper line of the author’s mother, Bessie Louise Yates (born on Sand Mountain, October 22, 1917 in Langston, Jackson Co., Ala.), descends from William Cooper, the guide and scout for Daniel Boone, and has been tentatively traced to Robert Cooper, a London goldsmith and ship’s surgeon, who died at sea in 1691.

Cooper R1b DNA matches Stewart, Ramey and other lines identified as French Levites (WSWJ).

As the list below demonstrates, Coopers were well connected and active constantly in the frontier movement, sometimes becoming quite wealthy, other times forced to abandon their trading posts and land holdings and move on to regroup. A rather high proportion of them appear to have been murdered. The last earl of Shaftesbury, a very visible member of the British aristocracy, disappeared in the south of France in November 2004. French authorities are investigating his estranged Tunisian wife and her brother. The body has not yet been found.

Cooper, Benjamin (about 1755-1814), married Sarah Esther Burton and lived in Kentucky. Son Cooper, John (born 1784, Loudon Co., Va., died 1841, Nelson Co., Ky.), married Mary (Pollie-Mollie) Duncan.

Cooper, Benjamin (born about 1772 in Granville Co., N.C.), first justice of the inferior court, and organizer of a Cherokee school, Gilmer Co., Ga. Married Temperance Simon Lemar of Anjou, France (died about 1809 in the Cherokee Nation East), and later a Cherokee woman called Pretty Girl (U-Wo’-du-a-ge-yu’-tsa). The family received reservation #92 in 1817, reaffirmed in 1819, subsequently canceled. They then emigrated west, arriving in Indian Territory on May 30, 1834, with seven slaves. Died June 26, 1852, Flint District, Cherokee Nation West.

Cooper, Cornelius (born about 1774, Granville Co., N.C.). Married Jane Wood of Maryland. Died October 01, 1855, Slidale, St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana (outside New Orleans) and was buried in the Cooper Cemetery in Sun. First settler of Bogue Chitto, La., with Henry and William Cooper neighbors. The family was long involved in manufacturing stakes and wagon poles.

Cooper, Cornelius Benjamin (1801-1886), Georgia state senator (GEORGIA by John Ward; Papers of Senator Cooper). He and his family came to Texas about 1840 and settled in Rusk County near Henderson, Texas. He was eight or nine years old when his mother, Temperance Lamar, died. The area they lived in was part of the Cherokee Nation in what is now Gilmer County, Georgia. Many of the Cherokees moved to Rusk County, Texas between 1840 and 1865, in order to get away from the fighting going on among the Indians favoring moving to the Indian Territory (Oklahoma) and those who wanted to stay in Georgia, led by Chief John Ross. After the move west, many of the opposing “Treaty Party” were killed by the Ross group. The ones who moved to Rusk County, Texas, were mostly Treaty Party supporters that were facing great danger in Indian Territory (Oklahoma) than in Texas. Most of them returned to Oklahoma after the Civil War. (Based on notes by Paul Sarrett.)

Cornelius Benjamin Cooper (1801-1886) and his wife Rutha Ann Weems Cooper (1804-1890). The son of Benjamin and Temperance Simon Lemar Cooper, he was one-eighth American Indian through his Cooper line, a combination of Choctaw and Nansemond, or Saponi, for he was the great-grandson of William and Malea Labon Cooper of the Watauga Country. From a family photo.

Cooper, Cornelius C. (about 1740-1808), planter and merchant, labeled Free Person of Color in the Fishing Creek District, Granville Co., N.C. tax list taken by Zacharias Higgs, 1786. Lord Granville Land Grant. Rev. Book C., pg 77-79, mentions “sundries furnished & cash to the Militia of N.C., Va., and S.C” during the Revolution. Listed as a Patriot of the American Revolution. See ACCOUNTS OF THE UNITED STATES WITH NORTH CAROLINA, WAR OF THE REVOLUTION, book C, Pages 77-79. Died and left a will in Franklin Co., Ga. Son William Cooper was born in Granville County, N.C. between 1770 and 1775. His children were Solomon, June, Sarah, Benjamin, and Joseph, all born in Franklin Co. Ga. between 1801-1811. Son John Cooper was born about 1761 in Granville Co., N.C. and married Abigail White, Dec. 1, 1784.

Cooper, Gaines (1833-1870), railroader, another son of Isaac and Jane Cooper, bought land in Fractional Township in DeKalb Co. on Sand Mountain, Sec. 10, Twp. 5S, Range 9E, July 15, 1854. Gaines comes from the Blevins family and is a form of Goins (from Hebrew goyin “impure, Christian, convert”).

Cooper, George Frederick, R. S. (1758-1841), son or foster son of Jacob and Lydia (Chase) Cooper of New York, said to come from Holland. Went to Kentucky with Daniel Boone and became founder of Cooperstown, near Monticello, Wayne Co. Married Dorothy Call (Kahl).

Cooper, Harmon S(olomon) (1811-1886). Harmon Cooper lived next door to his sister Nancy and brother-in-law Jonathan Burke on the Little South Fork of the Cumberland River, near Nobusiness Creek. Later, this area was cut out of Kentucky and made part of Tennessee. Thus, in later years, he was counted in Fentriss Co., Tenn. Without moving, Harmon Cooper lived in four different counties and two states (Harmons Cooper & Moses Slagle of Wayne County, Kentucky & Iowa & Their Descendants, by Rosalie L Cooper Leavelle, 1983). Harmon is buried in the Cooper Adkins Cemetery in the Mt. Pisgah area. It is a small cemetery in a pine woods. A sign says that it is maintained by descendants of Benjamin Adkins and Harmons Cooper. "Harmon Cooper dressed like a southern gentleman of the 1800's. His dress was usually of dark material and his waistcoat was cut just below the hips with trousers to match with narrow cut legs. His hat was wide brimmed and he wore boots almost to his knees. Harmon married his first wife and they had 15 children. Wayne Co., Ky. was of Union persuasion during the Civil War and was surrounded by Confederate sympathy. Confederate soldiers hanged Harmon, and after they left, his women cut him down. He survived to marry a second time and sire 6 more children." His three wives were Mary Ann Atkins, Mahala Jackson, and Martha Pile. The names of his children were: Meecie, Talitha Leanne, Luida, Catherine, Isaac, Lucinda Jane, John Granville, Benjamin Turner, William H., George Washington, Artemellia (Artie), Milly, James, Cansada, Alvin, Alfred, Victoria, Silas, Rosa, and (youngest) Joseph.

Cooper, Harmon (1830-1879), railroader, married Maliah (Delia) Francis, the great-great-great-granddaughter of trader David Francis and Isaqueena, sometimes called the Carolina Pocahontas. Malea is a Hebrew name meaning “ripe, sweet.” Died of scrofula at the age of 49, in Shellmound, Marion County, Tenn., whereupon Malilah and family moved to East Texas. Harmon is a form of Hiram, the name of the Levite builder of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Cooper, Henry Labon (about 1745 – after 1830), wainswright, planter and land developer. During the Revolution, Henry served as a private in the 2^nd Corps D’Elite of Green’s Virginia Militia from the Watauga Country, under the name Henry Laban. Afterwards, listed as Enrico Labon Cooper (p. 26) his name appears in the "Mobile Names" of San Esteban de Tombecbe (Tombigbe, St. Stephens), and he was one of the North Carolinians on the surrender list of 1781 when the Spanish established control of the hinterlands of Mobile (Enrico Cooper), along with a William (Guilielmo) Cooper: Archivo General de Indias in Seville, previously Havana Cuba (Papelas de Cuba) 2359: 417-18. He took an oath of allegiance and served as corporal together with another Enrico, probably Houston Cooper, his son, and Samuel and William (Guilielmo), brothers, all appearing on a 1787 Spanish census of Second Creek (p. 105, Anglo Americans in Spanish Archives. Lists of Anglo-American Settlers in the Spanish Colonies of America. A Finding Aid, by Lawrence H. Feldman, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1991). In 1789, Henry, Samuel & William Cooper were tobacco growers in Second and Sandy Creek, now TN/AL/MS tri-state area (List of Tobacco Growers, Spanish Natchez District, 1790). In one season alone, they grew 21,200 pounds. This became the Tri-state Mussel Shoals area between Corinth, Miss., Florence, Ala. and Waynesboro, Tenn. It is interesting that the Coopers seemed to choose ambiguous areas on state lines to settle; another such area favored by them was the Chattanooga area, and yet another was the Little South Fork area in Tenn./Ky. Before this he lived in Bute Co., where he was a member of the Masonic Temple, and Caswell Co., N.C., where he was overseer of roads and a wheelwright.

Henry Cooper is listed in Davidson Co., Tenn. Register of Deeds 1798-1802 Vol. E (A-G): he was a resident of Sumner Co. and bought 640 acres on the west side of the Harpeth River at the mouth of the South Harpeth from John Nichols. Henry's granddaughter Delitha Cooper later married Wilson Nichols. Henry paid John Nichols $900 cash; the deed included "all advantages, ways, water courses, mines and minerals." Henry's daughter Nancy married a Nicholas, perhaps the same surname. Both Nichols and Nicholas are Sephardic Jewish and Melungeon surnames. There is a Nicholas Springs on Copper Ridge near Clinch Mountain. Grants south of Green River, DEED BOOK 1 p. 324, 325 Francis WYATTE to Henry COOPER 1795 Agreement. Later in life he moved to Wayne Co., Ky. where he patented 80 acres on Buffalo Creek. Still later, he hid with his grandson James in Rutherford Co., Tenn., near Black Fox's camp. He may have managed to flee with other family members to St. Tammany Parish near New Orleans.

Cooper, Huston (about 1767-1833), plantation owner on the Harpeth River in Davidson Co., Tenn. Married to “a quarteroon Indian woman” (Nancy Cooper v. The Choctaw Nation, 1902). He died shortly before the Trail of Tears. Son Huston Cooper (about 1790- 1860) continued to hold the plantation, which owed its origins to grandfather William Cooper’s service to the Cumberland Settlement (state of Tennessee).

Cooper, Isaac (born about 1700 in Norfolk, Va., area), Quaker, married Tabitha Millay. Son Isaac Cooper married Prudence Dunn and they were members of the Wrightsboro Monthly Meeting near Augusta, Ga. (land grant in 1774 at Wrightsborough Twp., Parish of St. Paul, Province of Georgia). Sons moved to Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana.

Cooper, Isaac (about 1775 – about 1845). A son of Henry Cooper, Isaac is first attested in the List of Taxes and Taxable property in the bounds of Capt. (William) Bean's Company, returned by William Stone, Esquire, 1799. This was in Cherokee country along the Holston River and Clinch Mountain in Tennessee, later Grainger County, also known as the Watauga Settlement, or State of Franklin. William Bean Sr.'s was the first white cabin in those parts. 1800 May 20: Grainger Deed from Elizabeth Bean and Robert Blair for one hundred acres proven in open court. Let it be registered for Isaac Cooper. (WPA) Grainger County Court Minutes 1796-1801, p. 170. The original indenture is dated Oct. 11, 1799 and was registered July 9, 1800 (Grainger Register of Deeds, Vol. A-B: Sept. 1796-1811, Vol. A, p. 273). It conveyed 100 of an original parcel of 200 acres adjoining his land on German Creek to Isaac Cooper. This was near the second Bean's Station on the saddle of land leading over the ridge of Clinch Mountain called Copper Ridge (prob. after William Cooper, Isaac's grandfather). Two years later, Isaac resold the land to Stephen Brundige (Bunch?) at a handsome profit (Vol. A, p. 259). Elizabeth Bean was the widow of William Bean, Jr. who died in Grainger Co. in 1798. Her maiden name was Blair; she remarried to a Shaw. Capt. William Bean was a son of the famous Mrs. Lydia Russell Bean whose life was saved by the Beloved Woman of the Cherokee, Nancy Ward; his first marriage was with Rachel Ball. He married Elizabeth Blair in Tennessee in 1782. The Bean-Blair-Cooper deed was all "within the family," as these are related Sephardic Jewish and Melungeon lines. By 1810, Isaac had moved again. He is listed in the Wayne Co., Ky. 1810 census: COOPER, Isaac 21010-21010-00. In 1814, he was granted a certificate that later entitled him to 4x50 acres (200 total) of land in Wayne County, Ky., pursuant to the treaty with the Cherokee Indians at Tellico (Treaty of Oct. 25, 1805). The land was on the Little South Fork in Tellico Bounds, on Lonesome Creek. The survey for his tract was dated June 10, 1815. Beginning about the same time, he gradually bought parcels of land in Sumner Co., near Gallatin. In 1820, as the Cherokee continued to be squeezed south, he left Wayne County, Ky. for Jackson Co., Ala., and in 1830 he is found living on the Sumner Co. land. None of these stratagems worked out, possibly because of Nancy, his wife, a full-blood and the daughter of Chief Black Fox. The paper trail Isaac and Nancy chose over the Trail of Tears ends in Monongalia Co., Va./W.Va., 1834-45, where he was involved in a series of land transactions and then disappears from view.

Cooper, Isaac (about 1804-1847) was a mixed blood Cherokee-Choctaw and Jewish railroader from Kentucky who died during the Mexican War in Vera Cruz, Mexico. He is probably buried in or near the Church of San Francisco, built 1775, once part of a Franciscan convent, then used as a hospital by the American army during the 1847-1848 occupation of Vera Cruz. It is located in the port area, near the Plaza de la Reforma. He married Mahala Jane Blevins of the Long Hunter Blevins family, and she received a widow’s pension.

Isaac Cooper bought 50 acres of land on Beaver Creek in Wayne Co. around 1824. The survey was dated Jan. 29, 1824. He then bought land in Marion Co., Tennessee, in the 1830s. He had moved there about 1825. He is counted in the 1830 census on page 58. There were seven in his household: 3 males under 5, 1 male 5-10 years old (Jackson Cooper?), 1 female under 5 and his wife 20-30 years old (Jenny Blevins?). He is mentioned as a landholder on Sequatchie Creek, Marion Co. Deed Book, p. 319. In 1831, he sold land in district four to Mary Porter and her family for $100. About 1838, he settled in Deerhead Cove, Dade County, Ga., on the Alabama line (DeKalb Co.)

Isaac Cooper also evidently served in the Cherokee Wars during the latter part of the 1830s. There is a private by that name in Dossett's Company of 3rd Battalion of the Tennessee Infantry, also in Powell's Co. of Lindsay's Regiment of 1st Tennessee Mounted Volunteers. Many "friendly" Indians and halfbreeds joined the army and helped remove the Cherokees, often as scouts. Isaac would probably have been considered a Choctaw quarter-breed and not a Cherokee. See Index to Volunteer Soldiers in Indian Wars and Disturbances 1815-1858, by Virgil D. White (1994), based on NARA Microfilm M629 ("Cherokee War 1836-1839").

In 1833, while her husband Zack was away at war, Mrs. Cooper, said to be extremely beautiful, was raped while at her job by the railroad foreman, a McDaniel. Mariah Ann Cooper was born nine months later and raised as the Coopers’ own daughter. In the Civil War, Mariah Ann was sent for safety to Ashe Co., N.C. She never married. She died in 1927 and is buried in Bondtown Cemetery, Coeburn, Va.

In 1840, Isaac Cooper appears to have been in Muscogee Co., Ga., perhaps in Columbus, a railroad hub. The household consisted of 1 male 10-15 years old, and 4 females ranging from under 5 to 15-10 years old, together with a female 30-40 years old (=Linny Blevins Cooper). He is listed as part of a whole page of men engaged in manufactures and trades; three of his household apparently worked for the railroad, which must have included his wife, Mahala Jane.

Isaac Cooper bought land on cash sales from the Lebanon land office in Dekalb Co., Ala., Sec. 27, Tsp. 3S, Range 10E (next to James Blevins, apparently right across the state line from Deerhead Cove, Dade Co., Ga.) on two occasions: June 1, 1845 and April 10, 1847 (80 and 40 acres). In August of 1847, he enlisted in the army.

According to Billie Groening, Isaac Cooper joined the army August 5, 1847, in Dade Co., and was a private in Calhoun's Battalion (D Company, Calhoun's Mounted Battalion, Georgia Infantry--his brother William was in the same outfit as a scout). He may also have served in Company J 1st Tennessee Mounted Infantry, enlisting in Alexandria and being discharged in New Orleans in 1847. Evidently, he was part of the gunnery, because of his metal-working and mechanical skills. He entered the hospital in Vera Cruz November 7, 1847 and died December 23, 1847. Gen. Winfield Scott, the conqueror of Mexico, was from Kentucky.

On the Mexican War, in an interview, an Isaac Cooper of DeKalb Co., Tenn., who was one of the survivors of Captain Goodner's company, said: "I joined Company I, First Tennessee Regiment of Mounted Infantry, for service in the Mexican War about the time I reached my majority. Our colonel was Jonas E. Thomas, while our company was organized at Alexandria and sworn in at Nashville. Our uniform was gray and was made at home. We went to Tampico and crossed the Gulf to Vera Cruz. A fourteen days' storm overtook us, and we had to throw overboard the horses of Colonel Thomas and Major Waterhouse. The other horses followed on transports. After the battle of Vera Cruz we fought at Cerro Gordo, then marched to Jalapa across the mountains, I being one of the guards of four wagonloads of gold and silver from Vera Cruz to Jalapa. On our return home we took ship at Vera Cruz for New Orleans, thence by boat to Nashville. The government bought our horses at Vera Cruz, and I received about $700 for my absence of twelve months and eight days from home."

According to Isaac’s grandson Peter Cooper, "My grandmother Jane Cooper always said that the Indian Chief Fox always claimed to be akin to Grandfather Isaac Cooper" (Peter Cooper ECA docket). Peter Cooper also said, "They, Father and Grandfather, were recognized as white folks when they lived. They lived with white people. Never heard of them living with the Indian tribe except that they were in this state when the Indians left. They did not leave when the Indians left. I don't know why the Indians left." (Peter Cooper Testimony in care of George A. Cooper #41086 supplementing Application #19589, July 1, 1908). Isaac was called Zack by the family, and his wife, Linny. Peter Cooper’s ECA was rejected, appealed, and rejected again.

Cooper, Joel (1766-1858), married Elizabeth Jobe, January 20, 1788, Washington Co. (Watauga), Va./N.C.

Cooper, John, Capt. (about 1771-1839), plantation owner and captain of the Choctaw Indians. He lived in Perry, Davidson and Lincoln Co., Tenn. He also lived on Knappa Creek, Miss. (in 1831), on the north side, and frequently visited relatives in Tishomingo Co. In 1836, he lived in Perry County on the west side of the Buffalo River near Linden in Tennessee. His family went over the Trail of Tears several times.

“A man who cultivated his land, raising food for his family and livestock, Captain Cooper was surprised and shocked when the soldiers came in midwinter, January of 1836, and commanded an immediate removal of his family to the Indian Territory. They had only time to gather and pack a few necessities which the soldiers allowed to be tied on their horses' and mules' backs. They rode away toward their new home leaving behind their house, a structure of four rooms, a verandah separating the house from the smokehouse. They also left six cribs of corn and other important foods for their survival.

When they arrived at the Mississippi River the ship or boats which they had been promised in writing were not there to take them across this very cold water. The soldiers, who were driving them had not been told of this promise. They used their only means of crossing, riding their swimming animals across. Many of their party drowned and they also lost most of their food and other necessities.

“[Capt.] Cooper's wife [Nancy Ann Piles], who was ill when forced to start on the perilous journey, was physically unable to continue. A few miles from the Mississippi River in the state of Arkansas, the soldiers permitted the sick woman and their old mother [probably Molly Huston Cooper, wife of Henry Cooper] to be left in the wild and rugged country with her two daughters, Delitha and Narcissa. Gen. [sic] Cooper and his son and sons-in-law were made to continue their journey westward, driving their remaining cattle. There remains today a crossing in southeastern Oklahoma called Cooper's Landing, which was named for the courageous and faithful Choctaw husband and father. As soon as possible they escaped from the soldiers and made their way back to where the old mother and daughters were left. The mother had died two days after being abandoned. Delitha and Narcissa had survived by eating bark of trees and other plants and animals.

“John Cooper was an educated Indian - spoke and wrote the English language. He fought in the war of 1812 with Andrew Jackson. The two men made a gentlemen's agreement that the Choctaws of Perry and Maury County, Tenn. were not to be moved to the Indian Territory until the spring of 1836. The two men continued to correspond and Andrew Jackson verified ‘their promise in writing.’ Our grandfather, John Cooper was deceived by this Democrat. He asked [page torn: that no one in the family would every vote for a Democrat again. They became staunch Republicans.]” (Pioneers of Oklahoma, Oklahoma Hist. Socy.).

Daughter Nancy J. Cooper (born about 1838 and died before 1909), Choctaw Dawes no. 1418, blind, never married, plaintiff in Nancy Cooper v. The Choctaw Nation, a case which under Indian law awarded citizenship and benefits to more than 100 surviving family members of Capt. John Cooper, but which was arbitrarily overturned by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in 1909.

(Capt. John Cooper was enrolled posthumously, then “unenrolled.” He is the author’s 4^th-great-granduncle. The others are all cousins. Some are duplicates.)

Testimony of William Thompson age 60. Lived in Ark. 51 years. I lived in Davidson Co., Tenn. until one years before my father left for Ark. and that year I lived in Williamson Co., Tenn. just across Harpeth River. I knew a man named William Cooper and Berry Cooper said to be his brother. They said their father was named John Cooper. I knew a man named Houston Cooper, who looked like he was sixty-five or seventy years old, when I was about nine years old; he was said by my father and William Cooper to be John Cooper's brother. I did not know any of these parties in Tenn. except Houston Cooper. I knew the others of whom I have spoken in this, Pope Co., Arkansas... I know Billy and his family and Mrs. Taylor and her family well as close neighbors. Well, now they were different in general appearance as between Billy Cooper's and the Taylor family and Mrs. Nichols and her family... Narcissa Taylor was dark-skinned and jet black eyes and hair; and Mrs. Nichols was even darker in skin that the others, and she was very dark indeed. She looked like if she had been in the Choctaw and Cherokee and Chickasaw Nations, that she might have been taken as one of those tribes." --Nancy J. Cooper v. The Choctaw Nation, 1895.

Cooper, John (1847-1905). John Cooper bought 80 acres of land in Jackson County, 2 October 1885, E1/2 of NE1/4 of Section 29 T4S R9E, 7 acres residue part of SE1/4 of SE1/4 and 37 acras part of NE1/2 of SE1/4 of the same section, altogether 124 acres, plus on the same date a residue in S30 of DeKalb Co. On March 20, 1886 he bought more acreage in Sec. 30 Tsp. 4S Range 9E. All this lay between Rosalie in Jackson Co. and Pea Ridge in DeKalb. Some of the land was apparently purchased under the Homestead Act; Cooper's certificate was #3967. He deeded 40 acres to his son James J. Cooper on November 4, 1901. His neighbor was Daniel Shrader. Other land owners were Zilmon Williams (his son's brother-in-law), William B. Kerby (his step-son) and Henry Blevins (cousin). This area was called Fractional Township and straddled the county line. Shrader's mill was located there, near the source of Bryants Creek, which flowed into Johnson Creek in nearby Pisgah, and the Wills Valley Railroad came through after the Civil War. Rosalie was the closest "place." It was a combination of meadow land and sandy loam, perfect for farming. On August 20, 1894, John Cooper deeded 80 acres in DeKalb County for $100 to his wife, Nancy E. Cooper (E 1/2 NE 1/4 S30 T4S R9E --Reverse Deed Book 3, page 69). Nancy Cooper had bought 40 acres in the same Section on June 2, 1884, and other land there under the Homestead Act on Nov. 20, 1884. John Cooper had entered into ownership October 2, 1885 (certificate 3967). She died shortly after the reverse deed. In 1891, some, if not, all the Cooper land was repossessed by the government (Suspended Land Entries vol. II, page 2284--78 acres Sec. 20 Tsp. 4N Range 9E).

Cooper, Jackson (1824-about 1879). According to Lily Wigley, nee Cooper, in 1907, "Grandfather Jack Cooper was enrolled, so I am informed. He, it is said, was of Cherokee blood." John Floyd Sizemore, Mary Ann Cooper's brother, mentions Jackson Cooper in a letter written to William C. Sizemore from Camp Springs, Tennessee, May 7, 1863: "Tell Stoner and Jackson Cooper to write to me and not be so dull no more." Jackson Cooper cannot be found in the 1860 census, though his large family does appear in the Alabama 1866 census, living in Fractional Township 4, Range 9 E in Jackson County (Sand Mountain). They were also counted in the same township in DeKalb County as J. Cooper. Their neighbors were Henegars, Thompson, Sizemores and Schraders. Their land straddled the county line. Lily Wigley’s ECA 42035, along with those of her siblings and cousins, was denied. Jackson Cooper lived with his wife Mary Ann Sizemore and others, including Blevinses and Holloways in Shellmound, Tenn. He is listed as blind on the 1870 census.

Cooper, James (b. England, d. 1735 Southwark Parish, Surry Co., Va.), a plantation owner on the south side of the James River who raised and sold tobacco for Benjamin Harrison and other factors. He made his will Feb. 28, 1729/30 when he fell ill and died around October 1734, and it was probated by the court November 20, 1734. At that time Surry Co. stretched 100 miles southwestwardly and formed the western frontier of the James River colony. The Occaneechi trading path began here and eventually wound its way to the Yadkin and New Rivers in North Carolina, from there to Cherokee country. His widow, Elizabeth, was probably Native American or “mulatto.”

Cooper, James (b. about 1750). Another son of William Cooper mentioned in Spanish census of 1790, 1792 on Second and Sandy Creeks. Previously in Davidson Co. outside Nashville (Tax List, 1787).

Cooper, James (father: Robert Cooper from Pennsylvania), lived in Hawkins Co., Tenn. and started the first store in Watauga, later known as Carters Store, outside Rogersville. 1794 Washington County List of Taxables, A list of the Taxable Property of Capt. Carriger's Company for the year 1794.

Cooper, James (about 1795-1848) Isaac and Nancy Cooper’s first-born, considered to be Cherokee-Choctaw of the Paint Clan, but moving primarily in the white world, deposed his brother Isaac Cooper on October 8, 1821 at his home in Jackson Co., Alabama. At that time, the Tennessee River formed the boundary with Cherokee Lands, which included Sand Mountain. His home and improvements "on Wills Creek across the ridge from Copelands Mill" adjoining Eli Cooper was assessed in the fall of 1833 or spring of 1834 in accordance with the 1828 treaty with the Cherokee Nation. It consisted of 1 house (18 x 16) made of hewn logs with a board roof and plank floor "neated sealed with boards nailed on inside...1 door well cased and faced with plank, small window faced, joists and board loft...chimney well walled with Stone and Stone hearth." Outbuildings included a log kitchen, smokehouse, corn crib, two other cribs, hog lot, yard lot and garden lot "well fenced" (Valuations under the Treaty of 1828, Special Collections, Library, University of Tennessee Knoxville, No. 44, pp. 355-56). In the meantime, James Cooper received 50 acres on the Little South Fork of the Cumberland River, Wayne Co., Ky., March 12, 1823, augmented by 50 more acres, Feb. 2, 1825. His daughter Jenny was born in Kentucky in 1824; she later married John Andrew Craze of a family that lived near the Keyses on Craze Bend in the Fabius area of Sand Mountain. In 1832, he was in Marion Co., Tenn. and by 1833, Rutherford Co., where Edith, his daughter, was born, after a brief stay in Meigs Co. Previously, he had been authorized "to hawk and peddle" in Campbell Co. in 1823 (--Acts of Tennessee). Also, he had been appointed in Campbell Co. to the Powells Valley, Jacksborough and Knoxville Turnpike Co. (174.16). His daughter Martha G. Cooper, who married Granville C. Carter, son of Charles Wesley Carter and Hannah Berry, was apparently born in Virginia, in 1836. In the early 1840s, James Cooper was deeded land by Gaines Blevins, his brother-in-law, on Sand Mountain, where he and Creecy’s youngest child, Julia Cooper, was born about 1842, but this was later sold or forfeited. James Cooper moved to the Limestone area of Marion Co., Arkansas with the Adair family about 1843, their route westward taking them through Kentucky, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, and died there about 1848, leaving a widow and six children.

Cooper, James (born 1822, Wayne Co., Ky.) married his brother William's wife after William died. The Burkes were related through Nancy Cooper, daughter of Isaac Cooper, Sr. James Cooper was a member of Company C in Dekalb Co., Alabama, called the Sulphur Springs Company. He appears to have died in the Civil War, for his children are found living with his mother Jane Cooper in Shellmound during the 1870 census (Gaines, Polly A., and Minnie).

Cooper, Jasper Newton (1822-1863), miller in Duck Springs, from North Carolina, buried in Boaz, Ala.

Cooper, Jemima (Mima) H. (1830-1875), married John H. Holloway (Alloway), June 28, 1854, DeKalb Co., Ala. and in 1870 was living near her mother Jane Cooper in Shellmound.

Cowper, John, of St. Michael’s Court Cornhill (died March 6, 1609), Sheriff of London.

Cooper, John (about 1723-1768), older brother of William Cooper the scout, land developer, married Lucretia Andrews (Andrus). Will Abstract in Lunenberg Co., Va.: 113. Cooper, John 2-7-1767; 4-14-1768; W.B. 2/322. Witnesses: John Williams, Peter (his X mark) Andras, Abraham (his X mark) Andrews.

Cooper, John, Capt. (about 1824 – after 1886), 3rd Arkansas Union Cavalry, married Susannah (Dockery) Sizemore in DeKalb Co., Ala., September 6, 1869. This was in keeping with Jewish Levirate law as she was his widowed sister-in-law. They then moved to Arkansas. They may have kept their marriage secret in order not to complicate Susannah's widow's pension on behalf of her deceased husband William Sizemore. Probably the John Cooper of John Cooper Associates who had previously bought land in S 10 T5s R4E (Sand Mountain) in Oct. 9, 1852. John Cooper was known in later life as a Baptist minister who, according to Steve Adkins, performed marriages for many of Ezekiel Adkins' children. He was still alive in April 30, 1886 when the Yellville (Ark.) Mountain Echo reported from the Hampton Creek community: "J. C. Cooper, by an accident, had most of his fence destroyed by fire the other day." Suffered from deafness.

Cooper, John Wesley Monroe Dolphus (1881-1960). J.W. or Dolphy was a farm worker in early life for Dee Vault in cotton and corn in the Ft. Payne/Valley Head area of Alabama. In later years he worked for the railroad and did sharecropping. Unlike the other Coopers, he never managed to own land. He did woodworking and carving on the side and made fiddles, banjos, and cedar chests, among other things. He had blue eyes and jet-black hair. On June 22, 1907, he filed an application that was docketed with the Sizemore family to become enrolled as a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (Guion-Miller Roll No. 42018). He gave his age as 26 and usual place of residence as Henegar, Alabama, at present, Long Island, Alabama. All the Sizemore applications were rejected.

Cooper, Joseph and William, Indian traders and merchants in Charlestown and Keowee (fl. 1730). In 1698, William and Joseph Cooper, a guide and linguister, respectively, from the Carolinas, began the first regular trade with the Cherokees. James Adair, History of the American Indians (1775), names Joseph Cooper as one of the first traders among the Cherokee in 1730-35 (p. 238n.). Joseph is commended by the trade commission in Charleston as a linguister (Letter to Capt. William Hatton at Keowee, June 17, 1717). Joseph was William's older brother. They had a trade house in Charleston about 1710, as the Board of Commissioners of the Indian Trade met at "Mr. Cooper's." They helped Sir Alexander Cumming win "The Crown of Tanasi" and bring the Cherokee delegation to England in 1730; see William O. Steele, The Cherokee Crown of Tannassy, John F. Blair, Winston-Salem, N.C., 1977. Joseph had a trading house at the Lower Town of Keeowee, near where their mother also lived. After the failure of the Cherokee mission to London under Cumming, the Cherokee revolted and burned and looted the Coopers’ trading post. Joseph died and was buried in Savannah, March 29, 1735. That same year, a Mrs. Mary Cooper is recorded as a landholder who rented out the first housing in Savannah (Colonial Records of Georgia 2:185).

Cooper, Nancy Frances (born about 1840), married Josiah Francis, her cousin, and in 1870 was living in Marion Co., Tenn., Shellmound, in the household of Jane Cooper, her mother.

Cooper, Malachi (1762-1843), son of David and Elizabeth (Wilder) Cooper of South Carolina. He is buried in Pleasant Run Cemetery, Rushville Twp. Rush Co., Indiana. Enlisted in the Army under General Nathaniel Green in North Carolina at the the age of 13 in 1775, serving until the close of the war. He was at the Battle of Guildford County Courthouse (Revolutionary Army Accounts Volume IX, page 113, folio 4 in North Carolina Dept. of Archives and History). Lived for a time on Fishing Creek in Wayne Co., Ky. Brother Edward Cooper also lived in what became Pulaski Co., Ky. In 1830, he migrated west. Son James Cooper, born 1785, was one of the first pastors of the Oil Center or Fishing Creek Church and Hopeful Church in Pulaski Co., Ky.

Cooper, Mary (Polly) (1797-1862), eldest daughter of Isaac and Nancy Cooper of Wayne Co., Ky. Married 1) Benjamin Bookout, a Quaker from Parmleysville who abandoned her in 1820 and moved to Mississippi (evidently for reasons of miscegenation or fear of Indian removal), and 2) John Lovelace (Wallace), with whom she had six children. They married Youngs, Burnetts and Scotts.

Cooper, Mary (about 1809-1834), married Thompson Sinard, great-grandson of fullblood Cherokee woman known as Leek and James Sinard of North Carolina, a descendant of the Huguenot religious dissenter Chevalier de Sinard, who came to America via Ireland. The Sinards were lapsed Quakers and among the first settlers of Buncombe Co., N.C. James Thomas Sinard died in Collinsville, DeKalb Co., Ala., about 1850. Harriet L. Sinard married William Henry Atkins. There was a connection with the namesake for Big Wills Valley outside Valley Head, and Little Wills and Little Wills Creek, both the north branch and the south branch, which meander across Little Wills Valley and through the town of Collinsville. William Webber, also called Redheaded Will, was the son of a Cherokee woman, the mother also, by Kittegunsta, of Ostenaco, and a British officer named Webber. He came from Nequassee in North Carolina. His half-sister was Margaret Siniard, who married a Lamb. Some researchers have Margaret as the daughter of Anawaika (Deerhead). His brother may have been Archibald Webber, and he was somehow related to Blackheaded Cooper, Mary Cooper’s father, also recorded as a Chickamauga chief. The Webbers intermarried with the Vanns, too. Sarah Webber married John Brown. Chief Will’s daughter Betsy Webber married Chief John Looney. Their daughter Eliza Abigail Looney married Daniel Rattling Gourd. Another daughter, Eleanor, married Gen. Elias (Stand) Watie. Yet another daughter, Rachel, married John Nave, the grandson of Daniel Ross and Mary McDonald.


Chief Ostenaco drawn from life in London by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1769.	Chief Dragging Canoe in modern rendering by Ray Smith.

Cooper, Nancy (1803-1880), third daughter of Isaac and Nancy Cooper of Wayne Co., Ky. Married Jonathan Burke, separated in 1850, widowed in 1876. "In the 1880's Peter Burke [Nancy and Jonathan Burke’s son] loaded an ox wagon and took his mother Aunt Nancy and went to Oklahoma. They were nine weeks on the road. Aunt Nancy rode through on a little bay mare whose name was Teen. I can't forget how she looked when I last saw her. Her last words to my mother were, and I quote, 'Farewell, we'll meet again.'” (W.H. “Huse” Blevins, 1869-1964). Nancy never made it to Indian Territory, where they had Choctaw relatives. She is believed to have died and be buried in the town of Temple, Bell Co., Texas.

Cooper, Peter Isaac (1843-1914), railroader, disabled Civil War soldier. Discharged April 5, 1862 at Yorktown, Va. because he lost a leg. He lived on the old Sellars Place on Sand Mountain five miles south of Long Island and was a sharecropper in Cherokee Co., Ala. and in Jackson Co., Ala. for Ike Hembree. Married Malinda (Lindy) Elizabeth Sizemore, who lived to be over 90 years old and served as midwife for Sand Mountain families (including the author’s mother’s).

Cooper, Robert, merchant, died 1657 in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk (Calendar of Wills in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury 1657-1660, 530).

Cooper, Robert (Rueben), 1673, citizen and goldsmith of St. Peters Cheape, London. Married Elizabeth Gislingham, daughter of Lady Joane Gislingham, St. Bartholomew’s the Great, London, or St. Vedast parish, June 24, 1673. Patented 200 acres forfeited by Francis Skipper in Lower Norfolk Co., April 20, 1682. Died at sea 1691. Probably the grandfather of William Cooper (about 1725-1782).

Cooper, Samuel (born about 1745 in Granville Co., N.C.), smith, received a Spanish land grant on Sandy Creek dated Feb. 24, 1795. He returned with Absalom Griffin in 1805 and claimed William Cooper's land based on a Spanish grant of Jan. 1, 1793. His will was dated Sept. 18, 1777 (during the American Revolution) and was probably made as a safeguard in case he was killed. Son Samuel Cooper, born about 1765, is the second Samuel on the Spanish censuses. His will does not mention a Christian burial. He is apparently the Samuel Cooper mentioned with the children of Choctaw chief Moshulatubbee (Kings) in Adams Co., Miss.

Cooper, Sarah (1800-1874), second daughter of Isaac and Nancy Cooper of Wayne Co., Ky. Married John Adair, born Adair’s Station near Knoxville, Tenn., Aug. 13, 1794, the son of John Adair, Beaver Creek landholder, Revolutionary veteran, and owner of the storehouse for provisions for the Cumberland Settlement under James Robertson, who had come to Baltimore with his father about 1771. Of the Antrim Adairs (Hebrew Adar), who included James Robert (Robin) Adair (died 1783, Robeson Co., N.C.), Scottish trader and adventurer among the Chickasaw and Cherokee who was also author of History of the American Indians.

Cooper, Simon, “the first of the name to become noted in official affairs in England, being appointed Sheriff of London in 1310. This was in the fourth year of the reign of King Edward II. He was the acknowledged ancestor of the great and widespread family of the name in the British Isles. His son, Robert Cooper, became groom of the bed chamber to King Henry V. Descending through several generations, various members of the family have held high positions in official life in Great Britain. Sir John Cooper was the member of Parliament fro the Borough of Whitechurch, Hampshire in 1586. One of his daughters married Robert Baker, envoy of King James to the Spanish throne. His son, John, was created a Baronet July 4, 1622. He married Anne, daughter of Sir Anthony Ashley and through her acquired practically all of the vast estates of the Ashley family” (William Ross Cooper, History of the Cooper and Ross Families of England, Scotland, Ulster & America, 1932). The Ashleys were probably also Jewish in origin, <Heb. Asher, "Assyrian."

Cooper, Thomas (1733-1796), William Cooper’s younger brother, clerk of court living in east Tennessee in Nolichucky or Watauga country near Joseph Martin, the son-in-law of Nancy Ward. Later moved to Georgia. Had a white wife and two Cherokee wives, sisters named Mary and Rebecca. The grandparents of the white wife, Sarah Anthony Clark, were Penelope Bolling (a granddaughter of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, Lord High Chancellor, and Lord Proprietor of the Carolinas), Christopher Clark (son of Edward Clark, a trader, and Diana Howard, of the same family as the dukes of Norfolk), Isabella Hart (of an old Jewish trading house), and Mark Anthony (Marrano of Amsterdam). Pittsylvania Co., Va.. tax list, 1767. Named executor of John Goode's will in Henry Co., Va., 1779. Thomas Cooper acquired a large tract on both sides of Beaver Creek "adjoining Lomax and Company," July 26, 1791, and in 1793, land on Reedy Creek adjoining Murphey's Line. On Oct. 20, 1779, he had bought 159 acres on Beaver Creek adjoining Shelton in Pittsylvania Co., Va. Henry Co. was cut out of Pittsylvania, and the Coopers had been in the same place (Beaver Creek) all the time. Died in Hancock Co., Ga.

Cooper, Thomas T. (about 1750 – 1821, Pendleton District, S.C.), carpenter and blacksmith, served three years in the Virginia Line, Capt. Nathaniel Reid's company, 14th Regiment, Col. William Davis, during the Revolution.

Cooper, William fl. 1655, mentioned as administrator of Justinian Cooper's will (Albert Wallace Cowper, The Cowper family of North Carolina, 1971).

Cooper, William (lived in Norfolk, Va. circa 1700) patented 142 acres on the south side of Daniel Tanner’s Creek in Lower Norfolk Co., June 5, 1678, apparently a tradesman from the West Indies, hence his wife of color, Ann Bailey (“mulatto”). William and Ann Cooper may be buried in England and are possibly the same as a couple named in an old Franciscan burial record from Warwickshire. William Cooper was christened March 02, 1654/55, St. Phillips, Barbados, West Indies.

Cooper, William, cordwinder, St. George’s, Southwark, London, married Elizabeth Lawrence, daughter of Robert Lawrence, a merchant of London, Oct. 27, 1696, St. Katherine by the Tower, Middlesex, London. He witnessed wills in Surry Co., Va., during the 1670s, and after 1700 came to the Americas, adopting his brother Robert’s orphan children and later his nephew James’s orphans. Grandson David Cooper, son of Markham and Sarah Cooper of Warwickshire, England (1725-1792), was a mineral prospector in South Carolina. One of his sons was John Cotton Cooper (1758-1829), a Mississippi plantation owner. In a typical transaction, on Nov. 19, 1751, David Cooper bought 100 acres in Edgecomb Co. from Joe Wilder and sold it in 1755 with profit of 23 pounds. From Nancy Cooper and The Proprietors of Carolina, by William S. Powell, 1963: "Cotton, John, owned the original Anthony Ashley-Cooper share in Carolina in 1729 when the charter was surrendered to the crown. Cotton, who lived in East Barnet near London, was an attorney and a member of the Middle Temple. He acquired his Carolina share in 1727 from his son-in-law, Sir John Tyrell, who had purchased it in 1725 and vested it in Archibald Hutcheson in trust for Cotton. ... Sir John Tyrell of Heron and Woodham Mortimer, Essex, purchased the original Anthony Ashley Cooper share in Carolina from Maurice Ashley prior to May 28, 1725. In 1727 he vested his share in Archibald Hutcheson in trust for John Cotton (whose daughter Elizabeth he had married about 1725).” Cotton was also an antiquarian who endowed Cambridge University with the famous Beowulf manuscript among many others.

Cooper, William (about 1725-1782), North Carolina trader, guide, scout and commissioner for Daniel Boone and Gen. James Robertson. He raised a corn crop in 1775-1776 on the left bank of Otter Creek above Clover Bottom near Boonsboro, said to be the first corn raised in Kentucky (Kentucky State Historical Register, vol. 21, p. 97; Revolutionary War Pension #W3001, Filson Club, Louisville; Deed Books "C", "G" pp. 272 & 374, and "M" p. 134, Wayne Co. Kentucky County Clerk's Office.) Employed by Richard Henderson to assist Boone and others in clearing the Wilderness Road (Record of the Tax, Paid for the paying of, the Militia employed in cutting the road and escorting families from the town and of Clinch Mountain to the Cumberland Settlements August 25th 1789, Part I, by Linda Carpenter, Compiled by E. James Keen, 1997). William Cooper died in the defense of Ft. Nashborough and on Jan. 12, 1783, "The heirs of William Cooper deceased obtained a preemption of 640 acres of land lying on the north side of Cumberland River on the second branch above the mouth of Gasper's Lick Creek about 2 miles up said branch, including a spring and tree marked thus R E running down said branch for compliment" (The Preemptors. Middle Tennessee's First Settlers, Vol. 1, by Irene M. Griffey). On May 10, 1784 the legislature voted a grant in Sumner County to his heirs for the defense of Nashville. Heirs were represented by Henry Labon Cooper, James Cooper, William Cooper, John Cooper and Huston Cooper.

Cooper, William (about 1750 – bef. 1810), old resident of Wayne Co., Ky., married Sarah Green. His mother appears to have been Lydia Chase of New York City.

Cooper, William (1753-after 1820), son of William Cooper, the guide for Daniel Boone, lived mostly in Spanish West Florida among the Choctaw relatives of his mother, Malea Labon. First found in 1787 on the Spanish census of Second Creek district. In 1790, he was back in North Carolina. He took a Choctaw wife (unnamed) about 1800. Their son William Cooper married Susan King, the daughter of Chief Moshulatubbee, and they eventually emigrated to Leflore District, Indian Territory (Choctaw-Chickasaw Citizenship Court Case Files, Case 39. 7RA324, Roll 13). Another son, James Cooper, resided in Tishomingo Co., Miss. with a household of eleven next him in 1837 and also on the 1840 census (p. 232) and in the 1845 state census (that is, he managed to stay in the East and not be removed). William Cooper the father was a partner of the Choctaw trading company Turnbull & Associates. He seems to have left his Choctaw children with their mother Susan, for a William Cooper married the widow Polly Banks Warner and was justice of the peace in Washington Parish, La. (1806). He next entered a land claim in Spanish West Florida (1809). William Cooper is last mentioned as a widower farmer from North Carolina in Spanish Pensacola, Oct. 20, 1820.

Cooper, William, R.S., (about 1725 – 1782) was born in the James River section of Virginia and married Polly Harrison, then moved to Granville Co., N.C., and finally Union Co., S.C. He explored Kentucky with Daniel Boone, who recorded his name as Cook; his family refused to move to Kentucky, however (Leonardo Andrea Papers Roll 80, South Carolina Historical Society, letter from Mr./Mrs. Adlai Robin Yates of Bogalusa, La., Dec. 4, 1955). Parentage unknown.

Cooper, William Labon (1805-1860), second lieutenant, Capt. Fulton's Company D Mounted Georgia Volunteers, in the Mexican War where he served as scout. Married Sarah Glass, daughter of Thomas Glass and granddaughter of Chief Glass, and the family moved to Wilkes Co., N.C. After his brother Isaac’s death, he took care of widow Mahala Jane Cooper in Anawaika. On one of his trips to visit her, he was shot and killed in July 1860 in Dade Co., Ga. (Mortality Schedule).

Cooper, William (1807-1859), son of Thomas Cooper, R.S., born October 19, 1762, in Chester Co., Penn., and Mariah Burton of Fentress Co., Tenn. Campbell Co., p. 218, 1100010000000 000001010000. The female b. 1770-1780 in William's household in Campbell Co., Tenn. 1830 is probably his mother, Thomas' widow, half Cherokee. Joined other Coopers in Anawaika, Ala./Ga. and is listed on the DeKalb Co., Ala. 1840 census. In 1850, he was acting justice of the peace. He was murdered in 1859 (Mortality Schedule, 1860). Son James Cooper, married to Lucinda Hawkins of McMinn Co., Tenn., was elected DeKalb County constable in 1884. He and his family were living in T4 10E of DeKalb County in the 1866 Alabama state census.

Cooper, William (about 1820-1847), first-born of Isaac and Jane (Blevins) Cooper. The military records show that Pvt. William Cooper, Co. K, was killed in action at the battle of Cerro Gordo, Mexico, April 18, 1847. He was in the Second Division under Gen. Twiggs, Colonel Harney's First Brigade Mounted Rifles. His widow, Susan Burke, then married his brother James back in Deerhead Cove, Ala., another example of Levirate law.

Cooper, Zachariah (about 1783-1855), son of John Cotton Cooper. Moved from York District, S.C., to St. Clair Co./Lawrence Co., Ala., where three of his children married into the Looney family.

Davis

William Davis was born about 1753 in Hanover Co., Va. He fought in the Revolution and filed for pension, cert. #31986, issued by the Alabama agency, Sept. 18, 1842, under the act of June 7, 1832. In 1787, he signed the State of Franklin petition as William Daves, and he appears on the 1790 tax list in Hawkins Co., Tenn. Around that time, he married Mary Ann Black, a daughter of Black Fox, who had briefly been married to a trader by the name of Pogue. Gen. John Sevier, governor of Tennessee, 1796-1801, mentions "Davis" as a prominent Chickamauga chief. His son William Alexander Davis also became a chief, marrying the daughter of Chief Arthur Burns about 1830. On William Davis' tombstone in Proctor Cemetery, Maynards Cove, Jackson Co., Ala. is: Alabama Pvt Lindsy's Va Regt. Rev. War. According to secondhand information, "In his pension application William Davis stated that he was acquainted with Col. James Lewis in Albemarle County, Va., who resided later in Franklin Co, Tenn. A letter from Col. Lewis stated that he and William Davis were boys in the same neighborhood. The history of Albemarle County, Va. gives the location of Col. James Lewis' residence as being on the western part of the present University of Virginia. William Davis also stated in his pension application that he lived in Albemarle County, Va. at the time of his enlistment." William Davis lived to be 95.

Fields

The progenitor of this large Sand Mountain family came from England. In 1837, when most of the Cherokees around Creek Path were forced into a stockade in Fort Payne, Richard Fields’s farm was evaluated at $2611.00, as published in the acts of Congress, p. 13 (277). He had married Susannah Emory, a mixed blood descendant of Ludovic Grant, one of the first Scottish traders in Cherokee country (1725). Grant’s “morganatic” marriage to Elizabeth Tassel of the Long Hair Clan is said to have been the first intermarriage between a British officer and chief’s daughter. Susannah’s sister, Elizabeth, married 1) Robert Due, 2) John Hellfire Rogers, 3) Tahlonteeski, and 4) Chief John Jolly, the adoptive father of Gen. Samuel Houston.

Jewish-Turkish Gist Family (from When Scotland Was Jewish)

Samuel Gist was a Virginian, partner of George Washington, and one of the first admiralty insurance brokers in London. He lived for nearly a hundred years, helped start Loyd’s of London, and owned the first stud racehorse to come to America. An “Arabian Turk” (like himself ), Bulle Rocke was foaled about 1718, and out of him sprang some of the most valuable of all U.S. native thoroughbred racing stock. In The Fabulous History of the Dismal Swamp Company (Royster 1999), Gist is called “an old Jew.” By blood or marriage, he was related to the Smiths, Andersons, Coopers, Ashleys, Howards (dukes of Norfolk, originally Norman Hereward “guards of the Army”), Boleyn/Bollings (Hebrew “bath keeper”), and Masseys (Maxey), an Edinburgh and Aberdeen mercantile family.

The origin of this unusual name, borne by several prominent colonial Americans, including the land agent, spy and military guide Christopher Gist (1705-1759) and his grandson George Guest (usually identified with the inventor of the Cherokee syllabary Sequoyah), is most instructive. It appears to come from Altaic Turkic GWSTŢ/Gosţaţā, Heb. גּוֹסּטּטּאּ, the name of a line of Khazar rulers who embraced Judaism (Golb and Pritsak 1982, pp. 35-40). The Byzantine form was Κώστας. The same dynasty later led the migration of the Khazar converts to Kiev and the Ukraine, where their name was rendered in Latin letters as Gostou-n/s as early as the eighth century. In Spain, after the ninth century, the family adopted the name Da Costa, which they derived from “God’s rib.” Acosta is a variant. This became Kist in Ashkenaz (Ger. “coast,” through a pun on costa, which could mean “rib” or “coast” -- Daitch-Mokotoff s.v. and “Lista…Pere Bonnin” ). From Golb and Pritsak’s account, then, it appears likely that the Da Costa and Gist families of Spain, Italy, the Low Lands, and the British Isles were originally non-Semitic (Khazar Turkish) converts.

The same name occurs in the Ragusan/Croatian/Venetian Gozzi family of traders, explorers, admirals, tax farmers and physicians in Elizabethan London and the Ottoman Empire. Argo: “Merchant vessel of the largest size, especially one from Ragusa-Dubrovnk, whence the name” (Eterovich 2003, p. 75). Many of the seamen and most of the Ottoman admirals came from Croatia (p. 29). “In the years 1544 to 1612, nine grand viziers came from Bosnia, and Bosnia gave to the Empire most of the twenty-four grand viziers of Croatian ancestry in addition to many pashas, sandiak-begs, beger-begs, and other dignitaries” (p. 23). Moreover, “[A] majority of the mariners and pilots on the [English] king’s ships at this period were foreigners – Ragusans (listed first), Venetians (Slavonians), Genovese, Normans and Bretons…[as] noted by French Ambassador Marillac, writing in 1540” (p. 62). Many of the ship’s captains were also Jewish, e.g. Nikola Gucetich (Gozzi, Gast, Gass, Goss, Gist, Guest, and Guess in English -- Daitch-Mokotoff), who came from the Sephardic Da Costa family and lived in Tower Ward, later the home of Joseph Gist, the partner of George Washington, and one of the first admiralty insurance brokers in London (pp. 65ff.; see also The Great Dismal Swamp Company). It is instructive that one of the Templar priories in Suffolk was named Gislingham; we believe this name is related and shows the Gists were in England probably as early as the 12^th century.

The epigrapher Gloria Farley in the forthcoming second volume to her In Plain Sight suggests that Sequoyah came from a Mediterranean people and his writing system (together with some lost gold tablets) was based on the Cypriot syllabary (personal correspondence with the authors, Nov. 12, 2003). Contemporary references to Christopher Gist, Deputy Indian Commissioner to Gov. Edmond Atkin in Maryland, and agent of the Ohio Company, describe him as exceedingly tall, dark-complexioned, and hairy, with a full beard. George Guess’s sister, Maria Cecil Gist, married Benjamin Gratz of Lexington, Ky. (1792-1884), a son of the frontier merchant Michael Gratz who helped endow the Spanish and Portuguese synagogues in Philadelphia and New York and establish communities in Lancaster and Lexington (Stern 1992, pp. 64-65; Birmingham 1971, p. 146; Jacobs 1973 II, pp. 12-20). The Gratz family had come to Philadelphia from Inquisitorial Spain where their name was Gracia, or Garcia, via Silesia (Germany). They intermarried with the Hayses, Howards, Frankses, Ettings, and Levys. The only portrait of George Guess, or Sequoyah (?), shows him in a Turkish turban and distinctly Mediterranean clothing (Panther-Yates, June 2002). He was a silversmith, a rare occupation for an American Indian at that time.

1717: Born in place unknown, raised as an orphan until age 15 in Bristol Hospital, where he wore the traditional blue uniform and was hence in latter life called a “blue boy,” (probably an indication of illegitimacy).

1739: Went to Virginia, where he was an indentured servant, and later factor-storekeeper, on John Smith's Gold Hill Plantation, Hanover Co.

1747: Married Smith’s widow, Sarah (or Mary) Massey, the daughter of Thomas William Massey and Sarah Walker; see Figure J.2 for connections.

1765: British Creditor Lists: Samuel Gist, (Kellock, London debt claimants of 1790, appendix, p. 123). Became a London tobacco merchant and rose fast and high so that in 1773-1775 he was next to Lydes in tobacco taken from the Upper James Naval District, and in January 1775 he was one of three men appointed to represent Virginia trade on the committee to draw memorials to Parliament.

1776: Although his step-daughter played the piano at the wedding of the outspoken Patrick Henry, Gist was loyal to the Crown. On the dawn of the American Revolution, Gist placed his vast holdings into his step-daughter's hands until the King could regain control. Gist proved to be a very good business man. His investments included thousands of acres in Virginia and even a slave ship.

1789: He valued his Virginian place at £23,000, but the title was vested in his daughter, who had married William Anderson of Hanover County. Gist was not counted friendly to America in 1769. A Virginian woman then in London complained to Thomas Jefferson in 1786 about being in debt: maybe Gist could relieve her. Gist was still in the tobacco trade after 1790. He left his counting house in Savage Gardens for one in 10 America Square, and had a house in Gower Street, Bloomsbury. He claimed a pre-war debt in Virginia of £34,000.

1816: By his death, his holdings also included 274 slaves. In his will, Gist manumitted his slaves.

1818 Feb. 10: Will of Samuel Gist: [VSL] ...late of Gower St; Parish of St. Giles in the Fields; Middlesex Co., Province of Canterbury, England. At London, before Worshipful Samuel Pearce Parson, Doctor of Laws and Rt. Honorable Sir John Nicholl. Will and 4 Codicils: Admr: Martin Pearkes and Francis Greggs are 2 surviving executors. Wm. Fowke: also surviving exec. when he shall apply. Pay just debts. Bury in vault I had built under church at Warmington, in County of Gloucester with name and date, age in bluestone to be placed on north wall within chancel of the Church at Warmington. Cousin James Gist who went to India ca. 40 years ago £100. To Thos. Darracott of Va.; my gold watch chain and seals by Mudge and Dutton.

The manumitted slaves of Joseph Gist were granted land in Ohio and went there en masse, becoming the so-called Brown County Melungeons. A message on the Internet:

Looking for former slaves of Samuel GIST of VA (formerly of England). When Mr GIST died in 1815, his will set his slaves free. In 1819 his slaves were sent to Brown County, Ohio. Each ex slave family was given a plot of land, a cabin and were told to choose a surname. Some of the names chosen were HUTSON, TOLLER, & LAWSON.

LOOKING FOR INFORMATION ON SLAVES THAT WERE FREED IN SAMUEL GIST WILL IN 1815. THE SLAVES WHERE IN HANOVER, AMHERST AND GOOCHLAND COUNTIES IN VIRGINIA. BECAUSE OF THE LAW IN VIRGINIA AT THAT TIME THE FREED SLAVES HAD TO LEAVE OR BE PUT BACK INTO SLAVERY. THERE THE FREED SLAVES FROM THE GIST SETTLEMENT WERE PLACE IN HIGHLAND, ADAMS, BROWM. ERIE, NEW VIENNA COUNTIES IN OHIO. THE NAME I'M PARTICULARLY INTERESTED IN IS ANDERSON. POSSIBLY FROM GEORGETOWN, OHIO. THE OTHER

HUDSON, WALLACE, BURR, SMITH, CUMBERLAND, GIST, BAKER, TURNER, JOHNSON. ANY INFORMATION WILL BE GREATLY APPRECIATED

Samuel Gist's ultimate heir was an obscure cousin, Josiah Sellick, who adopted the style of “Samuel Gist Gist of St. Marylebone” and inherited his city and country estates in 1827. He had married the Hon. Mary Anne Westenra, daughter of William, Lord Rosemore, in St. George, Hanover Square, 1824. He became Samuel Gist Gist, Esq., of Dixton.

Sources: The Fabulous History of the Dismal Swamp Company, by Charles Royster (1999); Wills from the Burned counties of Virginia 1670-1838, by William Lindsey Hopkins (Will of John Smith, Jr., written 7-20-1769, proved 3-4-1773 in Hanover Co., Va.); “Darley Arabian,” by Anne Peters, available online at http://www.tbheritage.com/Portraits/DarleyArabian.html.

Gunter

Guntersville and Lake Guntersville are named after this Scottish trading family who intermarried with the Cherokee and resided in Creek Path. Samuel Gunter married Katherine Ghi-go-ne-li of the Paint Clan, and his brother Edward (Ned) Gunter (died 1843, Tahlequah, I.T.) married 1) Elise McCoy, and 2) Letitia Keys. Like the Keyses and Coopers, the family became split between the east and the west during Indian Removal. Augustus Gunter (1815-1894) was agent for the N.C.& St.L. Railroad in Bridgeport. According to the Cherokee Advocate, 19 Oct. 1844, George Washington Gunter had erected a cotton gin at his place on the Arkansas River, 15 miles from Ft. Smith, the first in the Cherokee Nation.

Keys

The Keys/Kee family was evidently Sephardic Jewish in origin. Many were noted as "bright mulattoes," or "other free" in Virginia and North Carolina records of the 18th century. They appear to have been early mixed with Indian. In 1817, when a choice was given to the Cherokee to settle on a reservation in the east for life or emigrate west, Samuel Keys and his three sons Isaac, William and Samuel received reservations on Sand Mountain. Isaac Keys was married to Elizabeth Riley, William, to Sally Riley, and Samuel, to Mary Riley. The Riley sisters were all granddaughters of Chief Doublehead (Chuqualatague) through the two sisters Ni-go-di-ge-yu and Gu-lu-sti-yu Doublehead. During Indian Removal, some Keyses managed to stay in Alabama, others went on the Trail of Tears. Richard Keys (Chapman Roll 1686) lived for a while in Fabius on Sand Mountain before moving to Indian Territory with his large family. He died February 6, 1892, and was buried in Paw Paw Bottoms, Muldrow, Sequoyah, I.T. He is the Dick Keys named as a character witness on Peter Cooper’s ECA. Richard Riley Keys (1813-1884), a brother of Letitia Keys, who was married to Minerva Nave, served as Judge on the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court. Samuel Riley Keys, born 1819, Fabius, married Mary Hannah Easter, a Choctaw.

Lackey

John S. Lackey was born in Iredell Co., N.C. in 1814 and moved to the former Cherokee Nation around 1840 with his growing family. His wife was Lucinda Martha (Patsy) Weaver, the granddaughter of a Cherokee woman and trader Enoch Jordan. In 1866, the Lackeys were living in Twp. 6 R8E next door to the Wilson Fossetts (a Quaker family) in what was then called Rawlingsville, now named Rainsville, Sand Mountain. John Lackey had also bought land in S1 T10 R7 in DeKalb Co., August 25, 1852 (the same month John Cooper bought his land on Sand Mountain). Jim Lackey (1861 -1952) was later the descendant on the land and a friend of Dolph Cooper. He is buried in Harmony Church Cemetery on the mountain. The Lackeys were a numerous clan, originally from a barony in Sterling, Scotland, on the north side of the Lennox Mountains, and it is not surprising to find many of them settled nearby. William Lackey, b. 1753 in Lancaster, Penna., married Elizabeth White, a Cherokee, and settled in Iredell Co., N.C., then moved to Lawrence Co., Ala. William Lackey, born in N.C., 1794, married Nancy Spears, later Lavinia Smith, and died 1884 in DeKalb/Etowah Co., Ala. Lovina (Dovey) Adeline Lackey married Samuel G. Shankles, and they are the author’s great-great grandparents. An Adam Lackey was also in the area. Lucinda Lackey is reported to have died by being flung into the Mississippi River.

Melmuth Lackey (1839-1905) served in the 9th Alabama Cavalry, Company "F" (formerly Co. "B," 2nd/19th Battalion), with four Sizemore men, several Lowreys, Henegars and Davenports, Richard Blevins, Milligan Fossett, Abner Palmer, Richard Potter, and Jesse Shankles, among others. Captain Davenport was the highest ranking officer. Melmuth was in Malone's Confederate Cavalry before joining the Vidette in the Fall of 1863. Notice the Melungeon “skunk strip,” high cheekbones and rangy frame. The Davenports were among Sand Mountain’s First Families. Robert Rodolphus Davenport came to Valley Head from Tennessee and built a much-admired home designed by an English architect, Oak Lawn (Elizabeth S. Howard, A Partial Who Was Who in DeKalb County, 1978). Courtesy Lackey Family.

Maj. George Lowrey, Jr., also known as Rising Fawn, Agin'-agi'li (1770-1852), Assistant Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation and member of the Executive Council. He was a courier, banker, soldier, translator, law enforcement officer, planter, breeder, and political leader. He wears a turban, saltire sash, and medal he received from the President of the United States, holds a wampum belt symbolic of his high office in tribal government, and has silver nose and ear ornaments of a Sephardic Jewish design, probably workshop of Francis. His father came from Scotland and his mother was the daughter and granddaughter of Echota Cherokee chiefs. Attributed to George Catlin. Gilcrease Institute.

Lowrey

George Lowrey was born in Scotland about 1740 and married Nannie Watts, daughter of Ghi-go-neli (father: Oconostota) and Rising Fawn (Agiligina Kenoteta). He was a trader, miller and man of many far-ranging activities who made his home in Battle Creek valley in the Sequatchie Country, which housed the fleet of war canoes of the Chickamauga Nation. Their daughter Aky Lowrey married Chief Arthur Burns. Another daughter, Jenny, was the wife of Chief Tah-lon-tee-skee. Yet another daughter married a Sevier. In fact, it can be said that none of the marriages in the Lowrey clan were taken lightly. Col. John Lowrey married Elizabeth Shorey, and Maj. George Lowrey married Lucy Benge. As in the case of the Browns and Keyses, some Lowreys remained in the Valley Head area without being forced west. They were known for maintaining a “free loan association” to aid poor farmers, widows and other needy individuals.

Riley

The Riley family of Sand Mountain has been traced back to Sean O’Reilly of Northern Ireland in the 1500s. The emigrant Samuel Riley (about 1720-1792) married Nell Wallace in Maryland. Their children were named Samuel, Eliphas, Elizabeth, David Moses, Milcah, Margaret, Darby, Susanna, Edward, George, and James. Samuel Riley, Cherokee Indian merchant and interpreter, married two daughters of Chief Doublehead and received a 640 acre reservation on south side of the Tennessee River opposite Southwest Point, Roane Co., “by right of wife” in 1817, but when Tennessee took back all Indian reservations, he moved to Sand Mountain in Alabama. Doublehead had important connections with the area around Yahoo Falls on the Cumberland River in Kentucky. He was born in Stearns, in what is now McCreary Co. Tuckahoe Doublehead, his son, married Margaret Mounce, and he himself took as one of his wives Nannie the Pain Droomgool, the daughter of Scots trader Alexander Droomgool, whose extensive possessions appeared on the list of valuations as published by an act of Congress, 1837. Many years later, Alexander Droomgool’s descendant, a Nashville journalist, invented, or at least popularized, the term Melungeon at a time when her cohorts among New York travel writers were inventing “hillbillies” (Benjamin Albert Botkin, A Treasury of Southern Folklore [New York: Crown Publishers, 1949], pp. 85-86). She placed the last remnants of the Melungeons on Newmans Ridge in Tennessee, oblivious of their migrations to other parts of the country during Indian Removal.

Riley is a corruption of Raleigh/Ralegh and is French Jewish in origin (WSWJ).

Redwine

Frederick Augustus Redwine (1767-1859) moved from Rowan/Montgomery Co., N.C., where he was counted in the 1790 and 1800 census in Salisbury District, to the Lexington, Kentucky, area around 1814, when he and his family (including son Wiley and wife) were apparently counted in the census (also in 1820). The Russell Co., Va. tax list has a Frederick A. Redwine in 1810. The family originally came from Prussia to Pittsburgh and was named R(h)eutweil/R(h)iedweil. In 1805 the family was in Sequatchie (across the river from the northern part of Sand Mountain), where Frederick was the third settler to penetrate the cornbrakes of that fertile valley. It is believed that his wife was from that region; she is the only American Indian in the family before 1800 and has been claimed to be Tihanama. In 1812, Wiley moved to Powells Valley, where he volunteered in the War of 1812. He served in the military from 9-23-1813 to 1-1-1814, enlisting in Jacksboro, Tenn. He was in Capt. Doak's regiment. After the war he moved to Lexington, Ky., and later to the headwaters of the Kentucky River. In 1823 Wiley moved to the Cumberland Mountains and settled near Grassy Cove where he died and is buried, with his wife, Avis Morrely, or Pickard. Wiley Redwine was thus a soldier in the Cre