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Introduction
Reverend Samuel Swayze led his family and a number of the members of his Congregational Church in New Jersey to settle near Natchez, Mississippi in British West Florida in 1773. They became known as the Jersey Settlers. ___________________________________________
The Swayze family originally came from England and settled in Salem, Massachusetts. They intermarried there with the King family and some of them moved to Southold, Long Island and then on to Chester County (Roxbury), New Jersey. There they joined the Congregational Church where members worshipped independently and were not governed by a church bureaucracy.
As British loyalists, by around 1772, the Swayzes were becoming increasingly uncomfortable in New Jersey. At the same time, the British Crown was giving away parcels of land in their newly won territory of West Florida, which was located between the Mississippi and Apalachicola Rivers and included parts of the modern day states of Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama.
A neighbor of the Swayzes, Captain Amos Ogden, was granted 25,000 acres in West Florida in return for his service to the British during the French and Indian War. The terms of what became known as the 'Ogden Mandamus' required that within ten years the land had to be populated with one settler for every hundred acres.
Ogden offered to sell nineteen thousand acres to Reverend Samuel Swayze and his brother, Richard, and to the Kings for about twenty cents per acre. They were eager to make the purchase. The deed for the acreage north of the Homochitto River, in what is now southern Adams County, Mississippi, was recorded in Sussex County, New Jersey on April, 14, 1772. In the spring of the same year, Richard and Samuel Swayze, Caleb King, and Amos Ogden travelled to the area to survey the land.
They first sailed from New York to Pensacola where Amos Ogden met with Governor Chester, consulted maps, and chose a tract of land north of the Homochitto River where they hoped to place their settlement.
They then set off for the Mississippi River in small oar boats known as pirogues and paddled along the coast of what are now the states of Alabama and Mississippi. They reached the Mississippi River by first rowing over Lake Borgne, Lake Pontchartrain, and Lake Maurepas. From Lake Maurepas, they entered the Amite River and from there, Bayou Manchac, which led them to the Mississippi River. This route allowed them to minimize the amount of time they had to row upstream in the strong currents of the Mississippi. They rowed up the Mississippi until they came to the mouth of the Homochitto River and continued rowing for two or three days.
At sunset on the last day they landed on the north bank of the Homochitto River to encamp for the night. At this point, Samuel Swayze's son, Nathan, seized a Jacob staff, sprang ashore, and stuck the staff in the ground and declared he was tired of rowing, didn’t intend to do any more of it, and where he had stuck that staff in the ground should be one of the corners of the "Mandamus.” The rest of the company readily agreed and that spot was made a corner of the survey.
When their survey was complete, the Ogden Mandamus contained 26,750 acres located seven miles east of the Mississippi River and north of the Homochitto River, comprising present day Kingston, Mississippi.
The Swayze brothers and others in the party then returned to New Jersey to prepare to move to the new land with their families the following year.
The April 19, 1773 minutes of the West Florida Council noted that the first wave of Ogden Mandamus grant settlers, known as the Jersey Settlers and led by the Swayze brothers, were at Pensacola on their way to Natchez. There were fifteen families and seventy-six individuals, including twenty-nine adults and thirty-nine children.
The settlers were mostly successful for the next several years, but then were forced to move to a location along St. Catherine’s Creek, nearer to the Natchez Fort, for protection against the Indians. Other difficulties arose by 1779 when the area came under Spanish control. The practice of any religion other than Catholicism was strictly forbidden. Tradition has it that the Reverend Samuel Swayze took to hiding his Bible in the crook of a tree. The families managed to worship in secret until Spain ceded the territory to the United States in 1798.
Reverend Sam did not live to see the end of Spanish control. He died in 1784. After his death his family dispersed and settled north of Natchez. Nathan Swayze took up Reverend Sam’s pastoral duties and Caleb King who had married Samuel's niece, Mary Swayze, became the head of the settlement.
A provision of the original deed required that one thousand acres be set aside for a town, “parsonages, public buildings, burying grounds,” and a parade ground for public gatherings. Caleb King laid out the town and named it Kingston.
The tornado of 1840 destroyed most of the Kingston settlement and severely damaged the church, but it continued to be used as a place of worship until the present structure was built in 1856 on property deeded by Alexander King Farrar.
An organization of the descendants of the original settlers, known as the Descendants of the Jersey Settlers of Adams County, was formed in 1940 and has met at the Kingston Methodist Church every year since that time.
Jersey Settler Families included:
We now need to confirm which Samuel Swayzee from New York went first to New Jersey, then to Mississippi: Son of Samuel and Penelope Horton or son of Samuel and Hannah Beazley?
Website of The First Congregational Church of Chester, page entitled "The Jersey Settlers"
Eaton, Henry Blackburn. Descendants of the Jersey Settlers, 104 pages.
Wikipedia article, British West Florida,
See also:
Find a Grave memorial page for Rev Samuel Swayze Jr. Memorial ID 199558563, citing Kingston Cemetery, Natchez, Adams County, Mississippi, USA
Marriage to Hannah Horton, October 7, 1731 in Southold, Suffolk Co., New York. William A Robbins, Ed., The Salmon records; a private register of marriages and deaths of the residents of the town of Southold, Suffolk County, N.Y., New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, 1918, page 82
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Samuel is 23 degrees from Herbert Adair, 21 degrees from Richard Adams, 17 degrees from Mel Blanc, 23 degrees from Dick Bruna, 18 degrees from Bunny DeBarge, 30 degrees from Peter Dinklage, 19 degrees from Sam Edwards, 14 degrees from Ginnifer Goodwin, 18 degrees from Marty Krofft, 14 degrees from Junius Matthews, 14 degrees from Rachel Mellon and 18 degrees from Harold Warstler on our single family tree. Login to find your connection.
What to do about the son, Henry ? Can see if he was a son of Swayze-549.
We now need to confirm which Samuel Swayzee from New York went first to New Jersey, then to Mississippi: Son of Samuel and Penelope Horton or son of Samuel and Hannah Beazley?
The Samuel Swayze of this profile is probably not a duplicate though as there were numerous Swayzes with the same first names running around. But his birth and death data are those of the other Samuel Swayze.
edited by J. West
So that does seem to support the Mississippi brothers being son of that Swayze-11. Is there any other document(s) that specifically names Samuel and Richard as sons of Swayze-11 ?
In the meantime, I've asked the profile manager of the other profile for sources for the children of Swazey-50.
Answer from any Jersey Settlers' descendant: Is the Pope Catholic?
We have another problem now. Note the rejected match below. That profile claims to represent the same Samuel who came south. Same vitals but different parents and different son (Henry who remained in Long Island).
So we now need to confirm which Samuel Swayzee from New York went first to New Jersey, then to Mississippi: Son of Samuel and Penelope Horton or son of Samuel and Hannah Beazley?