Dale LaFayette Berry (1796 - 1844)

Born 23 Jan 1796 in Whitley Co., Kentucky

Ancestors

Husband of Mary (Porterfield) Berry — married 1815 in Virginia

Died 1844 at about age 47 in Whitley Co., Kentucky

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Biography

This biography was auto-generated by a GEDCOM import. It's a rough draft and needs to be edited.

Birth

Birth:

Date: 23 JAN 1796

Place: Whitley Co., Kentucky

Note: 1795?

Birth:

Place: Tennessee

Found multiple copies of BIRT DATE. Using 23 JAN 1796

Occupation

Occupation: Lawyer^[1]

Marriage

Husband: Francis Berry

Wife: @I3674@

Marriage:

Date: ABT 1775

Place: Fincastle, Virginia^[2]

Child: John Wesley Berry

• Child: @I5573@

Eliza Adelaide Berry • LHLR-H52 (sourced) m Dixon Sharp Boyd Duncan January 1822 Whitley, Kentucky – 22 October 1904 Los Angeles CA

Child: Lewis Berry

Child: Mary Berry

Child: Benjamin Sharp Berry

Child: Elizabeth Berry

Child: Sarah Sharp Berry

Child: @I3515@

Child: Ann Berry

Child: Francis Berry

Child: @I3518@

Child: Dale LaFayette Berry

Child: Louise Berry

Child: Mary Berry

Burial

Burial:

Place: Jack's Fork Cem, Whitley Co., Kentucky^[3]

Burial Note

According to the sexton Tim Marinello of the San Juan Bautista District Cemetery in California, this is the oldest marker in the cemetery. Lafayette came back to Kentucky from Iowa to settle some property when he became ill about 1843 and died in 1844 and was actually buried in Whitley Co., Kentucky. Ardis and Eldred Hodges feel the marker in San Juan Bautista District Cemetery, was placed by his wife and children as they had all moved there and wanted their husband and fathers name where so many of them were buried.

Sources

• Source: S264 Type: Letter Media: Letter Title: Adelaide Berry Duncan to George F. Duncan Date: 11 Sep 1893 Source Locality: copy with James L. Berry Text: Sept. 11th, 1893
  
  Dear George:
  
  Your papa's grandfather and grandmother, John and Nellie Duncan, and grandfather and grandmother Frank and Sally Berry, moved from Virginia during the Revolutionary War to Kentucky. I don't know just where, but it was somewhere in the best part of the state. There was quite a little colony of them but I do not know the names of any except these two families. They took up claims of land and complied with what was necessary to secure their claims. I don't know what it was, nor how long they had been there till they were compelled to move for safety to a fort or block-house, where they were taken by British officers and soldiers who had Indians with them to whom the British gave all their household goods except two suits of clothes and two blankets to each man and the same to each woman.
  
  I remember hearing my grandmother tell how the Indians would toss the pillows in the air after they had ripped the ticking to make the feathers fly in the wind, and how they would laugh. They wanted the cloth but not the feathers. They then started their march to Detroit, where they stayed awhile, and then on to Montreal, where they stayed till peace was declared. They were liberated, to get back as best they could. There was one family along who had a young woman - a daughter who complained of a toothache for some weeks , when someone examined her mouth and found a cancer had eaten through her cheek, all but the skin. She died soon after and the officers only allowed them to stop long enough to pile up a few rocks on her body. Charles Gatliff was her father's name. He came back to Kentucky and I saw him after he was eighty years of age. I also saw his sons: Moses, Aaron, Riece, Jim and Cornelious. I also saw two of his daughters: Betsey Martin and Sally Faris. I suppose Joe remembers having seen one of his grandsons, Charles Gatliff, who moved to Missouri a short time before we left Iowa for Princeton. His wife was papa's cousin, Polly Early, and your uncle, Harvey Green Duncan, married their daughter Lillian.
  
  I heard grandmother say she saw the Indians kill two children. It was very cold for part of their journey and once when a great fire of logs was burning where they camped, an Indian picked up a child that was standing near and threw it in the fire. No one dared to try to get it out. On another occasion, a woman was carrying a little babe, and she was almost exhausted, when an Indian jerked it from her arms and thrust his tomahawk in its head, threw the child to one side of the road, and drove her on.
  
  While they were in Montreal, the men were made to repair the British ships, and the women cooked and washed for the English officers. On one occasion the men found a cask of wine in the ship and drank the wine. The officers put them in prison or a guardhouse, and my grandmother Berry went to the guardhouse and begged for their release until they were released. I don't know what their punishment would have been.
  
  I don't know if any of the young men were put on the British ships to make them fight against their own country or not, but your grandfather Duncan and four other young men were going to be put on a man-of-war in the morning and your grandfather's oldest sister baked bread and fixed up some provisions. They stole a canoe and crossed the St. Lawrence to the American side and got away. They traveled through the hostile Indian country till they reached the settlement in Pennsylvania. In the outskirts of the settlement, they found a deserted place, an iron pot and a potato patch. I heard your grandfather tell how they boiled potatoes and ate with such appetite. Your grandmother Duncan told me that their friends did not know till after peace and they returned from Montreal, whether these young men were drowned in the St. Lawrence, whether they were killed by Indians, whether they were lost in the wilderness and perished, or whether they were safe. She did not know the name of a single one of her husband's companions, and I never heard her say who they were. I am very sorry that I did not ask your Uncle Harve Duncan for he may have known. I do not know whether there was any fighting at the fort or not, in Kentucky, or whether they surrendered to the greater number without fighting.
  
  All the way I can approximate the time they moved from Virginia to Kentucky - my grandfather Berry fought in the battle at King's Mountain, and he also was a scout before they moved to Kentucky. After my papa got to practicing law. He got a pension for a Duncan McFarlain, who was a scout with my grandfather. I remember how the hair seemed to stand on my head as I lay in my trundle-bed and listened to McFarlain tell papa of their exploits. At one time he and Charles Miller ran, with the Indians after them, thirty miles to a blockhouse.
  
  As the prisoners were leaving Canada, they crossed some lake in a ship which was very crowded and manned by French-Canadian sailors. A storm arose and the sailors got frightened, and quit work. They started to pray, and cross themselves, when an Englishman, perhaps an officer, came on them and cursed and swore and ripped and tore around and kicked them, and made then get to work. Finally they got safely to land. I remember hearing my father tell of hearing his father laughing about it. Grandmother said there were piles of feathers floating in the eddies on the lake shore that looked like houses - the shedding of many waterfowls on the lake.
  
  My uncle Lewis Berry was born in Montreal. He died in the American army in the War of 1812. As our ancestors were coming home they passed near Niagra Falls. All heard the roar and some of the men went to see it but the women and children were too weary to go. They went back to Kentucky to where they had been captured and found men on their claims. Both your great-grandfather John Duncan, Sr. and Frank Berry sued at law for their claims but lost the suit. Berry's long tongue made him say the Judge was a perjured scoundrel. The Judge sued him for slander and got judgement for eight hundred dollars.
  
  Then the poor weary souls went back to Virginia where they had lived before they went to Kentucky and they raised their families there. Quite a number of their children afterwards moved to Whitely County, Kentucky, where your papa and I were born and raised and married. My grandmother Berry, in her old age, came there and died in 1834.
  
  I only remember of having seen your grandfather Duncan twice. Alec Laughlin, your papa's cousin, married in Whitely County, and moved to Tennessee where his daughter Eleanor Litton was born. He came back on a visit and stopped at his uncle's and they both came to Watt's Creek where my papa and your papa's uncle, Thanny Laughlin, lived. They stopped at our house, and it was a hot day, and your Aunt Candace and I had taken off our dresses and were running around in our Chemises, which were long and long-sleeved. They came on us unaware and we went to the back of the house and sat on a chest, while they laughed at us. I remember how your grandfather's shoulders shook. He was very much the make and size of your papa but his hair was black and I think his eyes were blue. I afterwards saw him riding past our house on a white horse. He wore a high bell-crowned hat, and a blue jeans frock coat. (I have seen the hat and coat after I was married and have ridden the white mare, it was, whose name was Ginger). He was a dear nephew to my grandmother, and I know she loved him, and I know my papa loved him.
  
  He died from dry salivation by taking a dose of calomel measured out on a case knife blade by an old woman who had more confidence in herself than good sense. I remember when word came that Johnny Duncan was dying, my papa hurried off and took a handful of nails. Mama asked him what he did that for. He said to put in the coffin. Years afterwards I learned that was an old country superstition but its meaning I never heard. He got there in time to write his will before he died, and he moved him after his death. He had been dead six years when I and your papa were married - that would make his death to have occurred in 1832. Your papa and I lived with your grandmother Duncan the first year after we were married and she loved to talk about him. She said he was a remarkably strong man for his size. When he was a young man, it was the custom for the neighbors to all unite and help each other cut the small grains with sickles and the young women would do the cooking, and sometimes they would go to the fields and use the sickles to good purpose. Then at night they would have a dance. Your grandmother said your grandfather worked all day, and danced all night, for two days and two nights, without any sleep. I don't believe his sons or grandsons, or great-grandsons could do that, even if they can ride a bicycle.
  
  I don't know whether the Gatliff family moved from Virginia or Tennessee to Kentucky, or not. I only know that they were together in their captivity. I don't know whether the British gave them any money to get home or not. My grandfather Berry never paid that eight hundred dollars. He somehow got a farm in Sullivan County, Tennessee, where his family were raised, but it was always in the name of Billy King, grandmother's sister's husband.
  
  My papa said your grandfather Duncan was so near gone when he got there that he was in no condition to make a will, but your uncles Harvey and Joe Duncan said for your grandmother's sake, to have it done, to not add to her distress by breaking up her home, by taking two-thirds of everything and dividing it amongst the children, as they knew your uncle Joe Sullivan would insist on doing if there was no will. So the will was written, giving your grandmother everything - the farm, the Negroes, and everything else, as long as she lived, and at her death all to be divided equally amongst the children. I guess it was pretty hard for Sullivan to not to try to break the will, for after I was married I heard your Aunt Narcissa say: "The children ought to have had the little that was coming to them a long time ago." But he knew that your Uncle Harve and Uncle Joe would not give him any child's play if he undertook the law with them. They were the executors.
  
  If I were back to ten or twelve years of age, and knew more than I did then, how I would ply my grandmother and parents with questions. I guess I will close my pioneer stories. Nellie Duncan and Sallie Berry were sisters - Sharp was their name before they were married.
  
  Much love to all.
  
  Mother
• Source: S265 Type: Web Site Author: John Lee Sharp Title: Ancestors of John Lee Sharp URL: http://www.familytreemaker.com/users/s/h/a/John-L-Sharp/GENE5-0037.html
• Source: S478 Type: Gedcom File Title: Lafayette Berry.ged Date: 26 July 2002 Submitter: Ardis and Eldred Hodges
• Source: S9 Type: Gedcom File Title: King Family Date: 4 May 2000 Submitter: Anne B. King, MD E-Mail Address: doctoranne@triad.rr.com

1. ↑ Source: #S264
2. ↑ Source: #S263
3. ↑ Source: #S265 Page: http://www.familytreemaker.com/users/s/h/a/John-L-Sharp/GENE5-0037.html

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Theresa Dennis for creating WikiTree profile Berry-3912 through the import of family.ged on Aug 25, 2013. Click to the Changes page for the details of edits by Theresa and others.

Thank you to Jim Berry for creating WikiTree profile Berry-4637 through the import of Sarah_Sharp_Berry.ged on Dec 26, 2013. Click to the Changes page for the details of edits by Jim and others.