Agnes (Craighead) Alexander (1736 - 1796)

Born 1736 in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Ancestors

Wife of John Alexander — married 1758 in Cumberland, Pennsylvania

Descendants

Died 1796 at about age 60 in Leesburg, Washington, Tennessee, United States

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Biography

The Agnes Craighead Parentage Conundrum

Posted 27 Jan 2013 by John Paul Baremore:

For some time, Agnes was credited as the daughter of (Reverend) Alexander Craighead (1707-1766), probably due to Alexander's descendants living amongst Agnes's descendants in East Tennessee, a sure indicator of close relationships in nearly every other instance; however, this theory has fallen into disfavor and through process of elimination, she is now popularly attributed as the daughter of John Craighead (1713-1773), though it's an uncomfortable fit (see a discussion of the issue online at http://www.concentric.net/~pvb/GEN/tc.html).

Both the Alexanders and the Craigheads were "New Side" Presbyterians and probably all attended the same services, which necessarily must have drawn upon a larger area than in non-schism years, so John's family traveling to Lower Marsh Creek for the noted services given by his Brother to that congregation, which included the Alexanders, is not such a great leap. But the greater John Craighead family has no discernable connection to Agnes. John's youngest, Robert, tantalizingly fought under a Captain John Alexander in the Revolutionary War, but that John Alexander was buried in Carlisle, not Tennessee. John's other children generally stayed put in Pennsylvania and out of the affairs of their putative Sister, Agnes, who did not name any of her children after John's Wife, his parents, or his children (excepting Elizabeth, but nearly every family had an Elizabeth). However, a Pennsylvania origin would explain why J.G.M. Ramsey, who wrote of the Alexander family, did not mention her in particular as he was presumably only familiar with those Virginia Craigheads who migrated to East Tennessee.

The best evidence for the connection seems to come from a well-documented row between John Craighead's parents when he asked his Father’s permission to live with him at the Head of the Pequea. His father readily assented but his mother “refused to live in peace in the same house with her Daughter-in-Law” (see Gilbert Ernest Swopes, History of the Presbyterian Church Newville 1737-1898 (Willow Bend Books, Westminster, Maryland, 2001) at page 143), which in turn led to his Father refusing his Mother church privileges, which resulted in his Father’s dismissal from that Church in September of 1736 (see above), all of which did not cease as an issue until his Father accepted that “his Son John and family must no longer continue to live with him” (see James Geddes Craighead, The Craighead Family A Genealogical Memoir of the Descendants of Reverend Thomas and Margaret Craighead (Philadelphia, 1876) at page 38). If one reads a child into the word "family", John would need a son or daughter that would precede any of his other attributed children, in which case, Agnes makes a particularly good fit. Other abstracts of the minutes of the Donegal Presbytery (held by the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia) have less encouraging verbiage, thus a focused review of those documents may glean a better understanding, though William Thomas Swaim, in his Origins of Convenience History of the 1730s in the Cumberland Valley, states that those records contain no silver bullet.

Sources

• Brightwell, Newton Edward II, "Dewoody Records," (Baltimore, MD: Gateway Press, Inc., 1989), pp.131-132, 137.

• http://www.concentric.net/~pvb/GEN/tc.html).

• Source: #S-923559106: Page: Ancestry Family Trees: http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/AMTCitationRedir.aspx?tid=7179083&pid=88693535

Acknowledgements

This person was created through the import of Smith-Hunter.ged on 10 March 2011.

This profile was created through the import of Stacy Murr family tree.ged on Oct 4, 2012 by Stacy Krout.

See the Changes page for the details of edits by Stacy and others.