Catherine (LeMasters) Ferguson (1754 - 1824)

ID: I879 View Post-em! Name: Catherine Lemaster Sex: F 1 Birth: 20 NOV 1754 in St. John's Parish, Prince Georges Co., MD Death: 27 APR 1842 in Grape Creek, Magoffin Co., KY 2 Note: 3 3 3 4

d 27 Aug 1842 per Risner who also lists 3 more children - born b/n 1834-1841, seems a bit unlikely! They are John Henry, James & David Newton)

Died 27 August 1824 in Grape Creek, Magoffin County, KY per http://www.hypertree.com/lemaster/lema-ka.html

Thoughts and Notes:

Well. The proverbial kettle of fish, can of worms, and enigma wrapped up in a mystery wrapped up in a flapjack covered with riddle syrup and a side of blinking dizziness.

Katherine's parents keep changing according to the researcher, and I totally lacked any primaryish sources until on the Lemasters mailing list a kind researcher Micki Greer posted an excerpt from p8 of Benjamin Lemastes of Nicholas County, West Virginia by Ronald V. Hardway.

This book mentions a Joseph Lemasters who apparently says in his Revolutionary War Pension application that sister Cathryne married a William Ferguson. I have pondered over the excerpt (which you will see on Isaac's page, see link above) and believe this is my Katherine, whose name first came as a wife of William from Laura Brown McKenzie (see link below) then showed up in other Ferguson and Lemaster researchers pedigrees. Many of these researchers have different parents for Katherine. Laura had an Ann Scott as the mother and another Lemaster book had brothers Abraham and Isaac each marrying women with the last name of Scott. The aforementioned pension application had Isaac Lemasters and Ann Scott as the parents of Cathryne, Joseph, and others.

This is by no means proof, especially as I haven't read the application myself, but it's something for us to think about.

Katherine Adkins Lemaster Born 20 November 1754 in Fairfax County, Virginia Died 27 August 1824 in Grape Creek, Magoffin County, Kentucky Mother: Ann Scott? Father: Abraham Lemaster Married to: William Ferguson Children: Richard, Phebe, John, James, Jeneth, Alcy Here's what I can tell you: According to the GEDCOM of Laura Brown McKenzie, Ann Scott was actually Ann Leymaster, and her parents were Johann Wilhelm Leymaster and Anna Magdalena Ott. Ann is listed as having been born in Germany in 1732. Sources: GEDCOM of Laura Brown McKenzie

Catherine LeMaster: The Adkins comes from the Early Morgan County book by way of Laura Brown McKenzie.

Note: 3

Thoughts and Notes:

As promised on Katherine's page, here is the post from Micki Greer with an excerpt from p8 of Benjamin Lemastes of Nicholas County, West Virginia by Ronald V. Hardway.

V. Isaac Lemasters of Frederick and Monongalia Counties

There were two men named Isaac Lemasters in Charles County, Maryland, who were nearly exact contemporaries. One of them was a son of Richard Lemasters, Jr., and Martha Kerrick. This Isaac Lemasters left Charles County when young man and drifted west to Washington County, Maryland, where his residency during the Revolutionary War is documented. Theses scanty records in Washington County constitute the only evidence which distinguished him from his first cousin Isaac Lemasters, son of Joseph and Catherine Ward Lemasters.

Isaac Lemasters, son of Joseph Lemasters, was born around 1728. He was about six years older than his cousin Isaac. Isaac Lemasters spent the first thirty years of his life in Charles County. In 1748, he married Nancy Anne Scott, daughter of Reverend Robert and Elizabeth Scott. Anne Scott was born in 1728 in Chaptico, Maryland. Her father, Robert Scott, was an Anglican minister who had been sent to Maryland in 1724 by the Bishop of London to serve as rector of All Faith Parish, an assignment which included all of St. Mary's and Charles counties. Scott also established a school in the parish which his daughter probably attended. Anne Scott is on record as leasing a farm on 25 December 1746 at Chaptico from her mother and one Walter Burch. Anne was eighteen years old at the time.

After their marriage in 1748, Isaac Lemasters and Anne Scott settled farther west in Maryland in Prince George's County. Apprehensive over wild rumors that the Ohio Indians were shocking victory over the British and Virginian army led by General Edward Braddock in 1755, Isaac and Anne retreated to the new English army under the efficient direction of General John Forks of the Ohio, Isaac Lemasters showed enough confidence in the expected outcome of the campaign to purchase a sixty acre farm in Frederick County, then the farthest western outpost of Maryland, from an earlier settler, Joseph Flint, on 8 August 1758. Isaac was not disappointed in General Forbes. In November, Forbes directed an assault against Fort Duquesne which inspired the French to burn their own fort and flee the area, their Indian allies having already abandoned the defense.

The precise location of Isaac Lemaster's farm in Frederick County cannot be determined from the description of the property in the deed from Flint to Lemasters, but it is believed that the farm lay near the present-day community of Flintsone in Allegheny County northeast of Cumberland. Isaac Lemasters lived here throughout the decade other the 1760's, but in 1770, he again felt the urge to move farther west. He sold his sixty acres back to Joseph Flint on 18 August 1770, and removed beyond the headwaters of the Potomac River into an area just beginning to attract settlers, the great basin of the Monongahela River.

Isaac selected for his new settlement a site on the Monongahela River at the mouth of a small stream known locally as Decker's Creek. Isaac applied to the Virginia Land Office for a four hundred acre land grant, but before the grant was issued he agreed to sell part of it to Zackquill Morgan who had settled in the same area two years earlier. Morgan's survey as the assignee of Isaac Lemasters was completed on 29 April 1781, and Isaac's certificate of ownership from the Virginia Land Office was issued on 26 February 1780. Morgan immediately had his portion of Isaac Lemasters's land grant, some two hundred and twenty acres surveyed into lots and established the town of Morgantown, the new county seat for Monongalia County formed in 1776. Isaac continued to live on the remainder of his land grant adjacent to Morgan's town. During the next seventeen years, Isaac acquired title to several pieces of real estate in the Morgantown area, all of which he sold before his death in 1797.

The children of Isaac Lemasters and Anne Scott may have been lost to history, mixed hopelessly among other Lemasters families living in Monongalia, Hampshire and Washington counties in the early 1800's, had it not been for a Revolutionary War pension declaration filed by one of Isaac's sons, Joseph. On 21 June 1819, Joseph Lemasters, then a resident of Maury County, Tennessee, filed an application for a pension was a veteran of the armies of the Revolution. In his declaration, Joseph Stated that he had enlisted on 26 December 1776 at Morgantown, Virginia, in a company being organized by Captain David Scott. He served in the regiments of Colonel William Crawford and Colonel John Gibson until 1 March 1780. He was discharged on the date and returned to Morgantown. Shortly afterwards Joseph Lemasters left Monongalia County and resettled in Abbeville County, South Carolina. There he married Mary Waddell and later moved to Tennessee where he was living when he filed for a pension.

While Joseph Lemasters's Revolutionary War record is interesting, of greater interest to Lemasters genealogist is the statement he made in closing his declaration. Joseph stated for reasons unknown that he was the son of Isaac Lemasters of Monongalia County and that he had four brothers, Isaac, Richard, Benjamin and Thomas and three sisters, Mary, Charity and Cathryne.

Thomas Lemasters, the oldest child of Isaac and Anne Scott Lemasters, was born in Prince George County, Maryland, in 1749. Before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, Thomas moved to Greenbrier County where he was active in local scouting companies. He was a volunteer on Dunmore's War in 1774 and is believed to have been a participant in the Battle of Point Pleasant against the Shawnees on 10 October 1774. During the Revolution, Thomas continued to serve in frontier scouting companies, and as late as 1793 he was a member of Captain Hugh Caperton's ranger company responsible for patrolling Greenbrier and Kanawha counties. In 1794, Thomas married Catherine Thornton, believed to have been his third wife, and settled on Crooked Creek in present day Mason County around 1798. He died there 1836.

Catherine Lemasters, born 20 November 1754, married William Ferguson. The Fergusons settled in Berkeley County, Virginia and Catherine died there in 1793. [Note: This does not jive with the alleged birth dates of her children, particularly my ancestor Alcy, and I would like to see a death source as well as look into other wives for William. Location also is uncertain, however parts of eastern Kentucky were once Virginia, and what was what when she died I do not know offhand.]

Benjamin Lemasters, born 15 June 1756, married Rebecca Ann Martin, daughter of John and Elizabeth Goldsborough Martin, at Morgantown in November 1779. Following the Revolutionary War Benjamin moved to Greenbrier County, eventually ending up in Kanawh County, now Nicholas County, in 1791. He lived on Buck's Garden Creek where he died 16 December 1837.

Joseph Lemasters, born 1758, a veteran of the Revolution, moved to South Carolina after the war and finally settled in Maury County, Tennessee where he died 10 August 1826

Charity Lemasters, born around 1765, has not been discovered in any Virginia records. She is listed as a sister of Joseph Lemasters in his 1819 pension declaration, but appears in no other documents.

Mary Lemasters, born around 1769, married Nathaniel Clark on 13 March 1792, in Amherst County, Virginia. What Mary was doing so far from home when she married has not been determined to any researcher's satisfaction.

Isaac Lemasters, Jr., born 14 September 1773, married a woman identified as Jane on several land deeds, but her maiden name has escaped detection. Isaac moved to Berkeley County where his sister Catherine Ferguson lived and he died there on 21 April 1844.

Richard Lemasters, the youngest child, was born in Morgantown in 1778. He also moved to Berkeley County on 21 March 1857, the last survivor of this pioneer West Virginia family