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Elijah Teague was born 1 May 1726 in Saint Mary Anne's Parish, Cecil, Maryland.[1][An additional primary source citation is needed for this date and location]
He married Ailsey Davis in 1745, Maryland or Fredericks, Virginia.[citation needed] Their marriage produced the following children:
Elijah Teague served as a captain in the French & Indian (Seven Year) War. He was commissioned in Rowan County, NC (commission issued Apr 17, ?) for 1760-1764.[3]
Following the French & Indian War, Elijah and his brothers, including Joshua, became involved with the Regulator movement in North Carolina. Elijah was a Baptist, and apparently it was not at all uncommon for Baptists in North Carolina to be involved with the Regulators. It is likely that he and his family moved to South Carolina when the Regulators were being hunted down and executed in NC.[4]
Elijah settled on a grant of land in what is now Newberry, South Carolina, namely 250 acres on February 22, 1771, "under the hand of the Honorable William Bull, Esq., Lieutenant Governor & Commander in Chief, in and over the State of South Carolina."[citation needed]
Census records and civil service records show Elijah living in the Ninety Six District, South Carolina in 1778,[5] 1779[6] and 1780[7]. It is common to see this called the Ninety-Sixth District but that is an error. There were only six districts created and Ninety Six (no hyphen) referred to a geographic location and not a numbered entity.
An exact date for his death is nowhere recorded. According to the Annals of Newberry[8], Elijah Teague was murdered by Tories, "One day they [Tories] were seen approaching the house, when a puncheon was lifted and [Samuel] was hidden under the floor. The Tories came in and by their terrible demonstrations so frightened his sick father that he rose from his bed and ran across the adjoining lot. The Tories shot him down, hacked him over with their swords and so stripped the house of everything in the clothing line that Samuel had to take the shirt from his back to bury his father in."
In the biography written by his granddaughter, Susannah Brooks Johnson[9], Elijah's murder is given a slightly different description, "One day when none of his family were at home but his wife, eight villainous-looking fellows came upon him as he sat at his fireside, and without stopping to ask or to answer questions, seized him and conveyed him by force to the front lawn of the house. ...they fastened a rope about his neck, swung him to a tree, and completed their bloody and dastardly work by sending half a dozen balls through is body before life was extinct." Johnson continues by stating that all but one of the men responsible for this was hunted down and shot.
Another account of Elijah Teague's murder by Tories is found in "Quakers in South Carolina Backcountry, Part II - Bush River" by Williard C. Heiss, 1969.
Research shows Elijah only had one wife. It is believed a second wife sometimes seen as Alice Leavell is simply a corruption of his wife Ailsey (a well-known patriot) that has crept into records over time.
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Featured National Park champion connections: Elijah is 12 degrees from Theodore Roosevelt, 19 degrees from Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger, 14 degrees from George Catlin, 11 degrees from Marjory Douglas, 18 degrees from Sueko Embrey, 13 degrees from George Grinnell, 23 degrees from Anton Kröller, 14 degrees from Stephen Mather, 20 degrees from Kara McKean, 14 degrees from John Muir, 15 degrees from Victoria Hanover and 22 degrees from Charles Young on our single family tree. Login to find your connection.
edited by T Stanton
Profiles will be edited for consistency