Joseph Sanders of Randolph
County, North
Carolina, wrote his will on March 18, 1803. He is recognized by the
National
Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution as a Revolutionary
War
Patriot. (Ancestor #213613, NSDAR records)
https://services.dar.org/public/dar_research/search_adb/?action=full&p_i
d=A213613
The following information
about Joseph Sanders military service is
provided in Tom Jacks’ Sons of the American Revolution
application:
Joseph Sanders was listed
as a private
in Walker’s company, Colonel James Hogan’s 7th regiment,
Joseph joined the
Continental Army in 1777 and was mustered out in
October 1777. The D.A.R. has accepted and admitted to membership a
descendant
of Joseph’s son George McGuire Sanders, who died in Jackson
County, Alabama, on
December 22, 1867 and three other memberships from descendants of
Joseph’s son,
Joseph, Jr., who was killed by bushwhackers on April 10, 1863 in
Jackson
County, Alabama. (National Numbers 878805, 1009570, 847957, and 916718).
The purpose of this article
is to
provide evidence that Mary Sanders, a daughter of Joseph who is
mentioned in his
1803 will, was the mother of Isaac Sanders, who was born in 1817 in
When Joseph Sanders, Sr.,
of Randolph
County, North Carolina, made his will on March 18, 1803, he was
evidently
deeply concerned about the future of his children, hence the provision
in the
will that if any of the children had to be apprenticed, they should be
apprenticed to Quakers. Though Joseph was not a Quaker himself, he
apparently
trusted the Quakers to do right by his children.
The children mentioned in
the will are
Rachel, Mary, Sarah, Phebe, John, George, and Joseph. Joseph’s
wife, Rebecca,
is also mentioned. In the will, Joseph gave his movable estate
(personal
property) to his wife Rebecca (or Rebekah) during her life or
widowhood, but
stated that if she remarried, the personal property was to be divided
among
Rebecca and the four daughters—Rachel, Mary, Sarah, and Phebe. He
also gave Rebecca
the use of his residence during her life or widowhood.
He gave his real estate in
equal
divisions to his three sons: John, George, and Joseph. He named his
wife
Rebecca and his sons John and George the executors of his estate.
The will was proven in
court during the November term of 1805, and
we know from this that Joseph died between 1803 when he made the will
and 1805
when the will was proven in court.
In November 1811, a
division of the personal estate was made in
court with the four daughters and Rebecca splitting the proceeds.
Though it is
not exactly clear why a division was made at this time, the settlement
reveals
that all the daughters-Rachel, Mary, Sarah, and Phebe-were married by
1811 and
three of them had husbands with the last name of Sanders. In those
days, of
course, upon marriage, the legal identity of a woman was virtually
merged with
that of her husband; hence the husbands (Joseph’s sons-in-law)
rather than
their wives (Joseph’s daughters) were listed in the settlement as
having control
of their wives share of the proceeds.
In the documents provided
after this
article, one can find a copy of the original handwritten document, but
here is
a summary of the estate settlement from the North Carolina Archives:
Joseph Sanders, 1811. Order
to settle
with executors August Term 1811. Joshua Craven and Benjamin Marmon
appointed
committee to settle. Test: Jesse Harper, C.C. C. Settlement of estate,
14
November 1811. Executors, Rebekah Sanders & George Sanders. Names:
Francis
Sanders, Peter Rich, Benjamin Sanders, Jesse Sanders, Rebekah Sanders.
From
various sources, such as census records and marriage records, we are
able to
determine the identities of the Sanders men who are mentioned in the
estate
settlement:
Francis Sanders (1782-about 1860). Francis
had married Joseph’s daughter Rachel
on August 21, 1801.
Peter Rich
(1783-1872). He was the husband of Joseph’s daughter, Sarah. For
more
information about Peter and his wife, see the material from the book Centennial
History of
Jesse Sanders (1780-about 1839). Jesse
married
Joseph’s youngest daughter Phebe about 1806. This couple later
moved to
Benjamin Sanders (about 1766-about 1849).
He married Joseph’s daughter Mary.
Though there is no marriage record on file in
This Benjamin Sanders who
married Mary
Sanders, daughter of Joseph, is sometimes confused with another and
younger
Benjamin Sanders in
From family tradition that
was passed down in Texas and recorded
in print by the first decade of the twentieth century, quite a bit is
known
about Benjamin Sanders, husband of Mary Sanders. He was by occupation a
blacksmith and gunsmith. He and Mary had numerous children.
For greater detail about
Benjamin
Sanders’ life and children and the family tradition, see the
following copies
of documents that follow this article:
D. Leon Sanders, History of
Texas and Texans, 1914, Francis White
Johnson, American Historical Society, volume 5, p. 563.
Levi
Lindsey Sanders obituary 1917.
Though Benjamin married
Mary and his brother Francis married her
sister Rachel, Y-DNA testing has shown that Joseph, the father of Mary,
belonged to a different Sanders line from his sons-in-law. Apparently,
the two
Sanders families were just neighbors, with brothers of one Sanders
family
marrying the sisters of another. That
Mary and her husband were not cousins from the same Sanders line
marrying each
other is evident from a chart at the Sanders/Saunders FTDNA Y-DNA
project page.
https://www.familytreedna.com/public/SandersDNA?iframe=yresults
This chart reveals that
Benjamin Sanders’ line is Group 17,
whereas Joseph’s group line is Group 2. There are sufficient
participants from
the male Sanders line of Joseph and the male Sanders line of Benjamin
to leave
no doubt about the two lines having different DNA markers.
Benjamin and Mary had many
children, but there are only two we are
concerned with here: John and Isaac.
John was born in 1822 in
When the Civil War began,
John remained
loyal to the federal government, and led a group of men who left the
county in
order to join the Union Army. He joined an
John’s uncle, Joseph
Sanders, Jr., who was seventy years old at
the time, was killed by bushwhackers as he was plowing his field near
his home
in 1863. For more about this killing, see:
https://renegadesouth.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/gary-b-sandersconfederate-conflict-in-jackson-county-alabama/
John himself survived the
war and several years after returning
home to
Among those was Carroll
Jackson Brewer. As Johns Sanders’
neighbor, friend and relative by marriage, Brewer was well acquainted
with the
dynamics of John Sanders’ family tree.
Brewer states,
“I
married a half-niece of claimant, but I am not in any way interested in
his
claim.” [Roll 14, 329 (302) February 16, 1878]
Brewer’s wife was
Mary Lucretia Sanders
(born 1833), who was the daughter of William Sanders, born in 1793.
Before her
marriage to Brewer, Lucretia appeared on the 1850 census in the
household of
her father. William was, therefore, John Sanders’ half-brother.
Since William
was born in 1793 and John in 1822, William was a son of the first wife
and John
a son of the second wife of their father Benjamin.
From further testimony of
Carroll J. Brewer, we can see that the
second wife of Benjamin and the mother of John Sanders was a sister of
Joseph
Sanders, Jr. (1793-1863).
roll 14, image 335-336
(308-309):
“I
knew him [John Sanders] about twenty-five
years for all that time and live about three miles from him at Mainard
cove,
PO,
The “Joe
Sanders” in this reference, of course, is Joseph Sanders,
the brother of Mary Sanders, both of whom are mentioned in their
father’s 1803
will in
If we look further at the
children of Joseph, Sr., we find that
that Mary is the only one who could have been the parent of John
Sanders. As previously mentioned,
John’s male
descendants and other descendants of his father Benjamin have taken
Y-DNA
tests. These tests show John’s descendants belong to FTDNA
Y-Group 17, whereas
male Sanders descendants of Joseph Sanders belong to Y-DNA Group 2. The
DNA
evidence, therefore, rules out John Sanders’ being a son of one
of the brothers
of the Joseph who died in 1863. John Sanders has to be a son of one of
the
younger Joseph’s sisters: Rachel, Mary, Phebe, or Sarah.
And, as we have seen with
the female children of Joseph, Sr.:
Sarah married Peter Rich
and this couple
moved to
Phebe married Jesse Sanders
and they
moved to
Rachel married Francis
Sanders in 1801and this couple moved to
Jackson County, Alabama, just as did Benjamin and Mary.
So, could Rachel, rather
than Mary, be
the mother of John Sanders? There are many reasons based on family
traditions
and census records to rule out Rachel as the mother of John Sanders,
but one
crucial bit of evidence is John’s testimony to the Southern
Claims Commission
that he moved to
The 1830 census, of course,
only lists
the head of household (Francis), but it is evident that the couple on
the 1830
census of Jackson County is the same couple who appear on the 1840
census of
Jackson County and the 1850 census of neighboring DeKalb County because
in
1830, 1840, and in 1850, the wife (Rachel) is shown as having been born
a few
years earlier than her husband (1779 and 1782 in 1850). Furthermore,
it’s
unlikely that Francis and Rachel would have left a son back in
A further reason to reject
Rachel as the mother of John Sanders is
that later in life John Sanders applied for a pension based on his
Civil War
service, and, after his death, his brother Alfred Head Mashburn Sanders
signed
an affidavit in February 1897 in support of the widow’s
application to continue
the pension. Alfred stated he was seventy years old and had never lived
more
than five miles from his brother. Although “Uncle Mash,” as
he was known to the
family, was illiterate, his statement of his age coincides with the
available
census records of 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, and 1910 (Alfred died
in 1918).
His death certificate in 1918 does give his age as ninety-eight but
this is an
anomaly; to accept that as accurate, we would have to ignore six census
records
and Alfred sworn affidavit in 1897.
Although these records vary slightly, they center around the
year 1827,
and in no census record is he shown as having been born before 1826 or
after
1829. If we look at the 1830 and 1840 census records for the household
of
Francis and Rachel Sanders, they do not have male child born who was
born
between the years 1825 and 1830. Therefore, Alfred’s being a
brother of John
and being born about 1827 is a second reason Rachel cannot be the
mother of
John Sanders. (To avoid confusion, it is necessary to mention that
there was
another and younger Francis Sanders living in Jackson County in 1830
and 1840;
this second Francis is a son of Francis who married Rachel).
Hence, since Sarah, Phebe,
and Rachel cannot be the mother of John Sanders of Jackson County and
John is
the nephew of Joseph Sanders who died in 1863, Joseph’s daughter
Mary Sanders
who married Benjamin Sanders must be his mother.
In his Southern Claims
commission testimony in 1878, roll 14,
image 312 (285), John Sanders stated:
“I was born in
He
also mentioned [roll 14, 316-317(289-290)], when asked whether any of
his
relatives had supported the Confederacy, that he had a brother named
Isaac:
"I have a brother said to
be in the
Confederate army. I did not see him. Isaac Sanders, forty-four or five
years of
age on entry the Confederate army in
According
to census and family records, Isaac Sanders was born in 1817. He
married a
woman named
Isaac and Elizabeth do not
appear on the 1850 census but in 1860,
they are living in
Although Isaac did join the
Confederate
Army in the early days of the Civil War, he later switched sides and
served in
the Union Cavalry in 1864. His enlistment record shows that he was born
in
In 1870, Isaac’s
family had moved to
In conclusion, this article
proposes the
following:
The
1803 will of Joseph Sanders identified a daughter named Mary and a son
named
Joseph and George.
The
D.A.R. accepts that the younger Joseph and his brother George moved to
Jackson
County, Alabama.
The
1811 estate settlement of Joseph Sanders indicates that Mary’s
husband at that
time was named Benjamin Sanders.
Benjamin
moved his family to Jackson County, Alabama, according to land and
census
record from 1830, 1833, and 1840.
Carroll J. Brewer stated in
his 1878
testimony to the Southern Claims Commission that Joseph Sanders, Jr.,
of
Jackson County, was the uncle of John Sanders. We know from other
records this
John was born in 1822 and died in 1896.
John
Sanders cannot
be the son of one of the junior Joseph’s brothers because FTDNA
DNA tests
reveal that Joseph’s line is not the same Y-DNA line as that of
Benjamin.
Hence, John can only be a nephew of the junior Joseph as a son of one
of the
junior Joseph’s sisters. Two of those sisters lived in other
states; the
remaining sister, Rachel, cannot be the mother of John because she and
her
husband were in
Further, John Sanders also
testified
that he had a brother named Isaac who lived in
--Gary B. Sanders
March 10, 2023
Revised May 16, 2024
PDF files of supporting
documentation
mentioned in
this article:
Carroll
J. Brewer testimony, Southern Claims Commission, roll 14, 335336
(308-309),
1878
Carroll
J. Brewer testimony, Southern Claims Commission, roll 14, 329 (302),
1878
D.
John Sanders
testimony,
Southern Claims
Commission, roll 14, 300 (273), 1878
John
Sanders testimony, Southern Claims Commission, roll 14, 312(285) and
316(289),
317(290), 1878
Joseph Sanders of
Joseph Sanders of
Levi Lindsey Sanders
obituary, The
Canton (
Peter Rich, Centennial
History of
Although only excerpts from
the Southern Claim Commission file of John Sanders are presented
here, the
complete
file of Roll 14 can be ordered from the National Archives. John
Sanders’ claim
is found on the following images:
Southern Claims Commission,
roll 14, John
Sanders 289 (262) through 351 (324)
On the Internet, see also
this article about Joseph
Sanders, Jr., who died in 1863:
https://renegadesouth.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/gary-b-sandersconfederate-conflict-in-jackson-county-alabama/
For more information about the different branches of this Sanders family, see my Web site: https://sandersgenealogy.net/RandolphMontgomery.html