Lydia (Lincoln) McGlamery (1748 - aft. 1830)

Born 9 Mar 1748 in Berks County, Pennsylvania

Ancestors

Wife of Benjamin (O'Bryan) Bryan — married 1769 in Rockingham County (formerly Augusta County), Virginia

Wife of Matthias McGlamery — married 1770 in Rockingham County (formerly Augusta County), Virginia

Descendants

Died after 1830 after age 81 in Vermillion County, Indiana

Problems/Questions Profile managers: Loretta Layman [send private message] and Rachelle White [send private message]

Biography

Lydia Lincoln and her sister Hannah were twins and two of the nine children of "Virginia John" Lincoln and Rebecca Flower, widow of James Morris. She first married a Bryan, probably Benjamin, who died about the time their daughter Hannah Bryan was born. Benjamin was one of five sons of Thomas O'Bryan and the only one not named in estate records as Thomas's heir, indicating that he was deceased.

Lydia married second Mathias McGlamery and bore several children more. Lydia and Mathias moved from Rockingham County, Virginia to Greenbrier County (now Monroe County, West Virginia), where Hannah and her husband, Henry McDonald a/k/a McDaniel, had married in 1788 and were now living. After Mathias's death, Lydia lived with her daughter and son-in-law Sarah and John Wray; and they followed the McDaniels to Gallia County, Ohio in 1819. Within ten years, however, they moved on to Vermillion County, Indiana, where they - Lydia, Sarah, and John - became charter members of the Hopewell Baptist Church. The last evidence of Lydia being among the living is the 1830 census, when she would have been about eighty-two years of age.

The fact that Hannah (Bryan) McDaniel/McDonald was a daughter of Lydia Lincoln and granddaughter of "Virginia" John Lincoln was first considered by Paul H. Verduin, a noted authority on Lincoln's antecedents and long-time General Secretary of the Abraham Lincoln Institute ...

1. Pointing to Waldo Lincoln's "History of the Lincoln Family" and its transcript of "Virginia" John's 1786 will (written two years before Hannah's marriage), Verduin noted that the will includes a bequest of five pounds to "my Daughter Sarah" - Sarah Lincoln, a bequest of five pounds to "my GrandDaughter Hanna Bryan" - Hannah Bryan, and bequests of only two shillings six pence each to "my Daughters, Hannah, & Lydia".^[1]

2. Verduin also directed attention to John W. Wayland's "The Lincolns in Virginia" and its discussion of documents in a lawsuit between "Virginia" John's heirs. Those documents include a 1798 note that five pounds each had been paid to "Lydaah" Mcglamery and John Dean.^[2] John Franklin Dean was the husband of Sarah Lincoln, mentioned above.

Since the bequest to "Virginia" John's daughter Lydia was less than three shillings, and all else considered, one can only think that the five pounds given to her was intended for her to deliver to Hannah. When "Virginia" John Lincoln wrote his will in 1786, Hannah was still single. She married Henry McDonald in 1788. In 1793, she was named as "my well beloved grand Daughter Hannah McDonnald" in the will of "Virginia" John's close neighbor and friend, Thomas Bryan (O'Bryan at birth) - Thomas O'Bryan. In fact, a plat for Thomas's heirs includes “30 acres cut off for Hannah Bryan now McDonald” [emphasis added], indicating that Bryan was her maiden name and McDonald her married name.^[3]

Lydia, her second husband, and their children moved to Greenbrier County, (now West) Virginia in 1783, which was five years before Hannah was married, as evidenced by several deeds.^[4] In 1799, part of Greenbrier County was taken to form Monroe County, now West Virginia. Lydia was widowed again in 1817 when Matthias McGlamery died, leaving his Monroe County land to her. His will provided also that, at Lydia's death, the land pass to their daughter Sarah (half sister to Hannah) and Sarah's husband, John Wray.^[5] In two years more, Lydia McGlamery, Sarah Wray, and John Wray disposed of the property^[6] and joined Henry and Hannah McDaniel in Gallia County, Ohio, to which Henry and Hannah had moved in 1810-11.^[7] The Wray (Ray) household - including a female the age of Lydia - appears in the 1820 census of Gallia County three households before Bryan McDaniel, son of Henry and Hannah.

Sometime in or before 1829, Lydia accompanied Sarah and John Wray in one last move. Settling finally in Vermillion County, Indiana, all three were charter members of the Hopewell Primitive Baptist Church.^[8] They appear in the typed extracts as John Ray, Sary Ray, and Lydia Mae Glanary with Lydia's name being a misreading of "MacGlamary" in the original, handwritten church record. On 25 July 1829, a Hopewell Church conference called for letters for them and others related to transfers of membership from another Baptist church. Church custom for a person seeking to join was to ask the last home church of that person to provide a letter confirming membership in good standing.

The year following the founding of Hopewell, Lydia was still living with John and Sarah in Vermillion County, Indiana. At the time, she would have been about eighty-two years of age. The 1830 census is the last known record of Lydia (Lincoln) Bryan McGlamery, and it all but certain that she was buried in Vermillion County, and likely at the church cemetery, now known simply as Hopewell Cemetery.^[9]

Research Notes

1. Lincoln Cemetery : A photo on geni.com and Lydia's Findagrave memorial erroneously suggests that Lydia was buried at the Lincoln Cemetery just north of Harrisonburg in what was called Linnville area on Rte. 11, where this photo was taken. While Lydia's parents, "Virginia" John Lincoln and Rebecca Flowers Morris Lincoln, are buried there, Lydia was buried in Indiana. Hannah her twin did not leave Rockingham County.

2. Kelly Greer to Lori Kerns , Letter 11699 : "The work that was done regarding proving that Lydia Lincoln, daughter of 'Virginia' John Lincoln was the woman who was married to a son of Thomas Bryan (whose name is unknown) and secondly to Mathias McGlammery was actually done by Paul H. Verduin a professional researcher and genealogist who specializes in the ancestry of Abraham Lincoln and mid atlantic Lincoln ancesty, as well as a woman who I have been in contact with via the internet for several years named Loretta Layman. Loretta recently received a National Genealogist award* for her work in 're-discovering' the Will of Thomas Bryan of Rockingham County, Virginia. I don't take any credit for what Paul and Loretta have done whatsoever. Just trying to spread the word so to speak. You wrote in your message 'There are many John & Sarah (Lydia's daughter) descendants who would love to know this.' Please feel free to spread the word as well. I think it is very important for the descendants of John &. Sarah to know of their Lincoln family ancestry."

* From Loretta : Kelly unfortunately misunderstood part of a letter to me from noted Lincoln authority Paul Verduin that was one of two letters I received from Mr. Verduin. Mr. Verduin wrote in one letter, "I am happy to recognize that you have the distinction of being a blood relative of our greatest President. I am completely satisfied with the evidence." In so writing, however, Mr. Verduin was speaking only on behalf of himself and not in his official capacity with the Lincoln Institute of the Mid-Atlantic. From a separate letter ...

3. Paul Verduin, long-time General Secretary of the Lincoln Institute and noted authority on Lincoln forebears, Letter dated 23 May 1994 to Loretta Lynn Layman ...

"The plausibility of the legend in the McDaniel family of a relationship to President Lincoln is greatly enhanced by my discovery earlier this year that a great-aunt of the 16th president's grandfather named Lydia Lincoln (born 1748) married a Rockingham County neighbor named Mathias McGlamery, and that they moved during or at the close of the American Revolution to the area west of Peter's Mountain in present-day Monroe County, West Virginia, according to tax lists.

"The relationship of Lydia McGlamery to the Lincoln clan is gleaned from surviving papers of a lawsuit among some of the heirs of 'Virginia' John Lincoln, who was President Lincoln's great-grandfather through the President's father Thomas and grandfather Captain Abraham. It is supported by information in the deed and court records of Rockingham and Greenbrier counties, by the fact that Mathias and Lydia's oldest daughter was given the very rare name of Bathsheba (the name of Captain Abraham Lincoln's wife), and by the fact that there is a strong legend among descendants of Bathsheba McGlamery and her husband, Henry Oilar (published already late in the 19th century) that she was a relative of the President through the Rockingham County Lincoln's.

"What would be of special interest to the McDaniel clan is that among the papers of the lawsuit among the children of 'Virginia' John Lincoln on file in the courthouse in Staunton, Virginia (and published in John W. Wayland's book THE LINCOLN'S IN VIRGINIA (1946), (compare references of Hannah Bryan and Lydia (Lincoln) McGlamery on pp. 35-36, 128, and 139) is evidence that Lydia (Lincoln) McGlamery obtained from her brother Jacob Lincoln -- the principal executor of their father 'Virginia' John's will -- at some time on or before June 13, 1798, Hannah Bryan's 5-pound legacy, which her grandfather had directed be given to her when she came of age. The fact that Jacob Lincoln entrusted to his sister Lydia McGlamery the cash inheritance due to Hannah Bryan strongly suggests a very close relationship between Lydia and Hannah. It suggests, but does not quite prove, that Lydia was probably Hannah's mother. The Hannah Bryan of Greenbrier/Monroe County who married Henry McDaniel would have reached the age of 21 around 1788-1790. The oldest known child of Lydia Lincoln and Mathias McGlamery, their daughter Bathsheba was born about 1770-1771.

"My hypothesis is as follows: That Lydia Lincoln (born March 9, 1748), the daughter of 'Virginia' John Lincoln and sister of Captain Abraham Lincoln (1744-1786), married about 1766-68 a man by the name of Bryan, a son of one of the Bryan brothers (Benjamin, Cornelius, Thomas, John) who owned land bordering that of the Lincolns, and that this first husband of Lydia died leaving Lydia with their only child, Hannah Bryan. I hypothesize that Lydia quickly remarried. The evidence that Lydia's husband from about 1770 onward was her neighbor Mathias McGlamery seems now to be beyond a reasonable doubt, given the abundance of evidence supporting it. I hypothesize that when Mathias and Lydia McGlamery moved to Greenbrier/Monroe County a few years later, they took with them as a matter of course her young child from her first marriage, Hannah Bryan. This would explain how Hannah came to live in the same mountain valley west of Peter's Mountain as young Henry McDaniel. Mathias McGlamery's land was about ten miles northeast of that owned by the McDaniels. Both families were oriented toward the Baptists."

Sources

1. ↑ https://archive.org/stream/historyoflincoln00illinc#page/94/mode/1up : Lincoln, Waldo, A.B. : "History of the Lincoln Family. An Account of the Descendants of Samuel Lincoln of Hingham Massachusetts", Worcester, MA (1923), pp. 94-96
2. ↑ Wayland, John W. : "The Lincolns In Virginia", Harrisonburg, VA (1946), p. 128
3. ↑ Rockingham Co., VA Court : Heirs of Thomas Bryan, 25 August 1796 Plat for land in Rockingham Co., VA (also, a photocopy in the Bryan family folder at the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society Library)
4. ↑ Shuck, Larry G. : "Greenbrier County [W]Va Deeds 1780-1814", vol. 5, (1992) : 1798 deed from Mathias McGlamery and wife Lydia McGlamery
5. ↑ Monroe [formerly Greenbrier] Co., WV Will Book 1, p. 390: 1817 Will of Matthias McGlamery
6. ↑ Monroe Co., WV Deed Book G, pp. 124, 125: 1819 deeds from John and Sall(e)y Wray and Liddy or Lydia McGlamry
7. ↑ https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GYBM-9MNT?wc=3L7F-826%3A1586985003%2C1586985375%2C1586985380%3Fcc%3D1803955&cc=1803955 : 1820 Census of Walnut Tshp., Gallia Co., OH, p. 59
8. ↑ Smith, Patricia J. : "History of the Hopewell Primitive Baptist Church and Cemetery Records 1829-1968" (1970), pp. 3,11,14
9. ↑ https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GYYY-WKV?i=43&wc=35YH-L24%3A1588469004%2C1588470408%2C1588469601%3Fcc%3D1803958&cc=1803958 : 1830 Census of Vermillion Co., IN, p. 226