Nancy Ann (Burgess) Rambo (abt. 1794 - abt. 1829)

Born about 1794 in Warren County, Tennessee

Ancestors

Wife of Moses Rambo — married [date unknown] in Warren County, Tennessee

Descendants

Died about 1829 at about age 35 in Adair Co., Kentucky

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Katt Rambo [send private message]

Biography

Moses was born in 1790, in Pennsylvania, USA. Nancy was born in 1794, in Tennessee, United States. They had 9 children.

MOSES RAMBO was born in 1790 in Pennsylvania. Shortly after 1822, he obtained a land grant of 160 acres in Kentucky, west of the Tennessee River. He married NANCY BURGESS, the daughter of Rev. Thomas and Elizabeth (?) Burgess, of Pittsylvania Co., Virginia. Nancy's father, Thomas Burgess, was a Primitive Baptist minister of the gospel and the son of Thomas and Mary (Warren) Burgess of Orange Co. The younger Tom Burgess was a large landowner in Warren Co., Tennessee when he died about 1829. Moses Rambo, acting for his wife, and other Burgess heirs in Hickman Co., KY gave power-of-attorney to John Cooksey to represent their interests in the settlement of the estate. Moses and Nancy Rambo lived in Tennessee where several of their children were born before they settled in Hickman Co., Kentucky. Nancy died before 1830. On 5 Jan 1832, in Hickman Co., Moses married JULIA GHOLSON who died before 1850. There were four Gholson families living in Hickman Co. by 1830, but their relationship to Julia is not known. The 1850 Census of Hickman Co. listed Moses as age 60, born in Pennsylvania, with property valued at $600, and living with his children Mary and David. He died sometime before 1860. Moses and Nancy had six small children at the time of her death: THOMAS H. RAMBO, b. ca 1816-18, d. 31 Jul 1866, m. Sarah Briney EZEKIEL RAMBO, b. 29 Oct 1818, d. 12 Feb 1879, m. Louisa Jones ELIAS RAMBO, b. ca 1821, d. 1877, m. Margaret Frett Hickerson MARY RAMBO, b. ca 1825, m. William Barlow DAVID RAMBO, b. ca 1827, d. by 1880, m. Eda Ellen House

Nancy and Moses was mentioned in her father (Rev Thomas Burgess' will)

Rev. Thomas Burgess Jr. was born by 1754 in Orange Co., Virginia (he is listed as over the age of 45 in the 1800 census, and witnessed two deeds on 23 August 1775 in Halifax Co., Virginia, when he had to have been at least 21 years of age). He married Elizabeth __ about 1777; she was born about 1755 (she is listed as age 26-45 in 1800), and died before 1820; she may have been the daughter of John Kirby and Jemima Bolling of Halifax Co., Virginia, and Union Co., South Carolina.

Rev. Thomas is listed as a witness with his brother Timothy on 23 August 1775 in Halifax Co., Virginia, to the sale of 135 acres by John Hodge of Orange Co., North Carolina to James Dixon of Halifax Co., and 60 acres by John Hodge to John Smither of Orange Co., North Carolina. He or his father, Thomas Sr., may be listed on the 1777 tax records of the St. Lawrence District, Caswell (later Person) Co., North Carolina (across the state line from Pittsylvania Co.). He is listed on the Pittsylvania Co., Virginia personal property tax lists from 1782-92, sometimes as “Thomas Burgess Jr.”, and on the land tax records there from 1782-85 (with 400 acres), 1786-90 (624 acres), 1791-92 (408 acres), 1793 (258 acres), and 1797-1800 (a land patent of 150 acres). He sold 150 acres on Sandy Creek in Pittsylvania Co. on 29 December 1792 (recorded on 15 April 1793) to Samuel Constable. He participated in the sale of his father’s estate to his brother William in Pittsylvania Co. on 1 April 1799. He sold the remainder of his land in Pittsylvania Co. (505 acres on Sandy Creek) on 11 November 1800 (recorded 15 June 1801, and witnessed by his brother-in-law, Martin Hardin), with Thomas being specifically noted as a citizen of the Spartanburg District, South Carolina.

Rev. Thomas moved to the Spartanburg District in 1792. He purchased 114 acres of land there on the Pacolet River from Edward Stubblefield for twenty-five cents on 9 October 1795, and an additional 486 acres of land on the south side of the Pacolet River from Stubblefield there on 23 August 1799—and then sold 50 acres back to him on 9 October 1800. He sold another 24 acres to John Morris on 24 April 1802. Thomas is listed there in the 1800 census, with one son aged 16-26 and one aged 10-16, five daughters, and a wife aged 26-45.

The history of the South Carolina Baptists, 1670-1805, by Leah Townsend (1935), notes that Thomas helped reconstitute the Boiling Spring Church in 1792. He was one of two ordained Ministers serving the Buck Creek Church from 1793-94, and again from 1796-97, and served as Pastor of the Goucher Creek Church in 1794-95. He was asked by the Cedar Spring Baptist Church in 1795 to share his ministerial services, but replied: “We are cramp’d in the same place that you are. Our Minister has his appointments laid out so as to fill up every Saturday in each month, and cannot alter his monthly meetins [sic] at present….” He served as Presiding Minister of the Boiling Spring Church from 1797-1801, of the Greens Creek Church from 1801-02, and of the New Salem Church in 1803. He issued a circular letter, “Intemperance: A Prevailing Vice,” in 1801/02. He was formerly dismissed from the Boiling Spring Church with a letter of recommendation in 1806, indicating that he would depart shortly thereafter.

On 5 February 1807 he filed a power of attorney to Samuel Gilbert in Spartanburg District to “rent or sell his land…. Thomas Burgess is about to leave Spartanburgh [sic] District.” Gilbert then sold Thomas’s remaining 130-acre farm on the Pacolet River on 1 June 1818 to John Nolen.

(Rev. Thomas is not the same person as Thomas Burgess of Campbell Co., Virginia [a neighboring county to Pittsylvania Co.], a Pennsylvania Quaker who was a son of Joseph Burgess, and is listed there in the deed records from 1803-07. He is also not the same person as the Thomas Burgess Sr. who lived from 8 February 1815 just north of the Falling Water River in White [later Putnam] Co., Tennessee; this later Thomas [1776?-1830] is known to be a descendant of William Burgess of King George Co., Virginia [please see that family]. However, the Thomas Burgess Jr. listed in the 1830 census for White Co. remains unidentified—he cannot be the Falling Water River Thomas’s son, Thomas, who is underaged at this time, and Rev. Thomas’s son, Thomas H. Burgess, is already listed in Hickman Co.)

Although he does not appear to have served in the Revolutionary War, Rev. Thomas purchased a military bounty warrant (#824, also called #431) and filed it on 27 June 1793 with the State of North Carolina, claiming 640 acres of land on the Caney Fork River in Sumner Co., North Carolina (later Warren Co., Tennessee). He recorded a power of attorney in Spartanburg Co. on 25 February 1795 to Alston Edney of Davidson Co. of the “territory south of the Ohio River” [Tennessee] to get title to the 640 acres and to make Thomas Huggings a title to 320 acres of it.

However, Warren Co. was not settled by Europeans until 1806, the year before Thomas left South Carolina. On 8 August 1808, his son, Thomas H. Burgess, is listed as a witness on a land survey. His daughter Jemima wed Thomas Stuart in the same year; he stated in a published notice on 1 September 1809: “I was married on the 4th of December [1808] to Jemima Burgess, the daughter of Thomas Burgess of Warren County, Tennessee. After eight months of marriage, I have has [sic] nothing but trouble, distress, and uneasiness of mind. I am no longer responsible for debts of her contracting.” Jemima remarried John Cooksey by 1816.

Rev. Thomas, or possibly his son, Thomas Henry, was elected Sheriff of Warren Co. in 1809. Thomas also established one or more Baptist churches there. He appears on the 1812 tax list for Warren Co. with Warren Burgess, his presumed second son, having been appointed to take the levy in his district; and is also listed there in the 1820 census (the 1810 census for Warren Co. having been lost), with two boys under the age of 10 and no females; these are presumably two of his grandsons.

Rev. Thomas received 100 acres of land on Mountain Creek and Caney Fork in the First District of Warren Co. from the State of Tennessee (Grant #3740) on 17 February 1812, adjoining a 200-acre farm that he already owned. He witnessed a deed in neighboring White Co., Tennessee on 18 January 1816. He sold the 100 acres granted to him by the State of Tennessee to John Holland on 1 April 1819 in Warren Co. The small town of Chismsburg (which no longer exists) was founded on his land in 1819.

Together with his son, Thomas H. Burgess, Rev. Thomas purchased 140 acres in White Co. on the north side of Caney Fork from Henry Neill on 12 April 1819, but on 6 September 1822, he sold his 70-acre share of this land to his son, Thomas H. Burgess, with John Cooksey, Philip Kirby, and Peter Burgess witnessing the transaction. In 1824 he is noted as being a slave owner in Warren Co. On 31 May 1824 he filed a survey in Warren Co. (Entry #89) for a 50-acre plot on Caney Fork with “said Burgess’ house, at the foot of a large mountain, with meanders of said mountain, including the house & improvements whereon said Burgess now lives”; his son, Peter Burgess, acted as witness. Another survey dated 2 January 1826 (Entry #1170) mentions “Burgess’ fish trap, near an old house built by John Cooksey, corner of the tract the said Thomas Burgess now lives on.” Other surveys mention “Burgess Creek” in Warren Co. An 1826 plat record mentions Thomas’s 140-acre tract on Pine Creek.

Rev. Thomas died in Warren Co. by late 1828—his estate inventory, which was filed in court on 3 April 1829, mentions two notes due on 15 November 1828, plus a will that was apparently never probated. On 26 June 1829 six of his surviving heirs—Thomas H. Burgess, Peter Burgess, and his daughters and/or sons-in-law Polly Fore (i.e., Mary Burgess Fore, widow of Peter J. Fore Sr.), John Cooksey or Cooksie (husband of Jemima Burgess), Philip Kerby (or Kirby) (husband of Sara Burgess), and Moses Rambo (husband of Nancy [probably originally Ann] Burgess)—filed a deed in Hickman Co. giving their power of attorney to John Cooksey to represent their interests before the Warren Co. Court in the probate of Thomas’s estate; evidently, they didn’t trust John Martin, the court-appointed executor. This deed was amended and refiled in Warren Co. on 25 November 1833, appointing Broomfield L. Ridley and James P. Thompson as their attorneys, but without Polly Fore’s participation.

This may not be a complete list of Rev. Thomas’s surviving heirs; these six individuals just happened to be living in Hickman Co., Kentucky at the time, where they are all listed together in the 1830 census (the census also indicates that Nancy and Sara had died by 1830). The 4 October 1834 settlement of Thomas’s estate in Warren Co. fails to mention any payouts—only that a $950.65 estate had been reduced through the executor’s expenses to just $273. Rev. Thomas had at least three sons and five daughters:

• 1. Thomas Henry Burgess I (1778?-1839?) of Van Buren Co., AR

2. Warren Burgess I (1784?-1815?) of Warren Co., TN; he is listed in the 1812 tax list for Warren Co. with his father, and served in the War of 1812 in the 2nd Regiment, West Tennessee Militia, from 20 September 1814 to 31 December 1814; he appears to have died before 1820 (probably by 1815); his heirs, if any, are unknown, but could conceivably include some of the children now recorded under his brother, Thomas Henry I

• 3. Peter Burgess Sr. (1790?-1837?) of Hickman Co., KY

4. Nancy Burgess 5, Sarah 6. Jemina

Sources

• The book "The Rambo Tree" by Ronald S BEATTY

https://sites.google.com/site/rambofamilytree/Home/RamboTextWithoutEndnotes%282%29.txt?attredirects=0&d=1

http://www.burgessdna.com/index.php/burgess-surname-dna-project/ancestral-families/178-thomas-burgess-sr-of-pittsylvania-co-virginia