Mary (Dawkins) Bookter (1765 - 1815)

Born 1765 in Newberry, South Carolina

Descendants

Died 1815 at about age 50 in St. Helena Parish, Louisiana, United States

Biography

Mary (Dawkins) Bookter was a South Carolina colonist.

On March 23, 1785 Alexander Bookter bought a Negro slave named Kent from Joseph Brown in the Ninety-Six District of South Carolina for 32 pounds sterling. This transaction was entered in the Newberry County deed abstracts and is the first record we have of Alexander Bookter's financial dealings. During the next nine years he prospered and bought at least eleven slaves in South Carolina. His wife, Mary Dawkins, inherited another thirteen slaves from her Father (George Dawkins) and Brother (Joseph Dawkins). Although we have no record of Alexander's activities during the Revolution, we can safely bet that he was on the winning side. The Loyalist didn't fair so well after the war. Many of them left the colonies and went back to England. In 1792 a judgment was rendered against Alexander in the Newberry District of South Carolina. We'll hear more of this later. This Judgment might have been a factor in his decision to move to Spanish West Florida which was, at that time, not subject to U. S. courts. Of course this is purely conjecture. There were many other reasons that German and Irish emigrants might have decided to leave South Carolina at the turn of the century and migrate to Louisiana.^{[citation needed]}

Research Notes

Maintenance Category: Added "Needs Sources" & removed Category: Needs Footnotes.

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• A father's death date (Dawkins-33 died Jan 1761) should not be more than nine months before one of his children's birth dates (Dawkins-351 born 1765) .

Sources