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It is believed that William Wiseman, sometimes referred to as William Edward Wiseman, was born about 1740 in England. He died in Burke County (now Avery County), North Carolina in the winter of 1822/1823.
He was a patriot for North Carolina during the American Revolutionary War. [1][Need to confirm that this is the correct William Wiseman. See RESEARCH below.]
Family lore says that he stowed away in 1751 with three friends, became an indentured servant, and invented a claw foot table with moveable feet that he sold to buy his freedom.
NEWPAPER ARTICLE by MRS. ROMULUS DUNCAN – Forest City, North Carolina, Thursday, May 28, 1931 [2]
[Need to confirm that this is the correct William Wiseman. See RESEARCH below.]
In 1780 he sold corn to troops in Rowan County, North Carolina. “State of N. Carolina, Rowan County No 348 This may certify that as Commissioner of the County aforesaid I have purchased from William Wiseman twenty five Bushels of Corn at the prices ascertained in Spanish milled Dollars by a Resolution of Congress dated the 25th day of February 1780 amounting in the whole to nineteen & a half Spanish milled Dollars, which Sum is to bear Interest at 6 percent until paid, agreeable to any act of the General Assembly in such case made By me the 16th day of October in the Year 1780 Alexander Song C.P.”[3]
William married his first wife Mary Davenport about 1763. They may have had as many as ten or eleven children before she died about 1796.
In the 1790 Census, William was reported in Burke County, North Carolina. His household consisted of 13 person and included himself and three other white males 16 and over, five females (one of which may have been his wife Mary), and four males under 16.[4] He remained in Burke County for the rest of his life.
William married his second with Lydia Bedford in 1798. They had seven known children.
William Wiseman acquired two Land Grants in Burke County, North Carolina.[5]
He died in the winter of 1823. It is believed that he and both of his wives were buried at their home on "Sunny Brook Farm" (located about five miles north of Spruce Pine, Mitchell County, North Carolina) in a graveyard established at the southern end of the garden on the property. The graves were covered over when U.S. 19-E was widened. A memorial monument was placed for William in the 1940s on the east side of the highway, about 36 feet from his actual grave.[6]. The gravestone lists date of death as 1830. [7] This is the death date provided by Robert Wiseman (see RESEARCH below).
The estate papers of William Wiseman Sr. were filed for probate in Morganton, Burke County, North Carolina, in the month of March 1823, by his wife Lydia Wiseman.[8]. Although these papers were burned in a courthouse fire, the information recorded in the court minutes survived. This information provides an approximate date of death for William Wiseman.
The will of William Wiseman Sr. was presented for probate in 1823. [Note that the appearance of Wiseman with a "y" is not a typing error. There are several records where Wiseman was spelled Wyseman - it sounds the same with an "i" or a "y". However in the case of the recorder for the information that will follow, he or she was inconsistent, for Wyseman appears twice and Wiseman is written once. Lydia didn't do as well, she was recorded as Lidia each time.] From the probate abstracts of Turner and Philbeck, appears the following:
And second surviving source for this record, reported as follows:[9]
Witness Thomas Baker, a senator from North Carolina, was one of William Wiseman's sons-in-law; he married Susanna Wiseman. William Wiseman died in the winter of 1822/23. But, he most likely died during the final months of 1822 given that most of the wills and estate papers in this era were filed several months after the death. Thus, he was eighty-six years old at that time; if one uses 1736 as the date of birth.
Family stories and available records indicated that William "Edward" Wiseman was born in England and was not the son of Isaac Wiseman and Mary Marshall (who were living in Pennsylvania in the 1740s). There is no evidence to support the assertion that William Wiseman of Burke County was the son of Isaac and Mary Wiseman.
Whilst the American records consistently have a first name of William, there is a christening record in England relating to the date 2 Feb 1741 is for an Edward s of Thomas and Elizabeth Wiseman(clearly visible in a digital image available on ancestry.co.uk)[10] There is no middle name. These records are unlikely to belong to the same person and therefore William Wiseman in America is almost certainly not the same person as Edward Wiseman christened 2 Feb 1741 in St Andrew by the Wardrobe, City of London, London, England England.Hardman-1532 12:14, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
There are a number of men with the name William Wiseman in North Carolina in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and it is not clear which of them are on each census entry listed below. The list has been made with no sources attached, so it has not been possible in a short space of time to determine which is meant by each “fact”. With the mixing of records between Rowan and Burke counties, it is not at all clear that the same man is being shown throughout. A detailed research study is required.
How did Robert Wiseman arrive at 1830 as the year William Wiseman died? A few years ago I wrote and asked Myron Houston if he could "shed some light" on this. The following was his reply:
Sept. 1, 1986 "There is no way that we can be positive as to William Wiseman's death. Uncle Robert always said that John Vance, buried on Buck Ridge, and William Wiseman died the same year of 1830. The death date was not recorded, only the year. According to Uncle Robert he was eighty nine years old when he died." My assumption is that the grave of John Vance had been marked, and Robert Wiseman was able to get the year of his death from that source. The age eighty-nine may have come from an old ballad that has come down through the years. It is believed to have been written about William Wiseman by some musical member of the family. But, keep in mind that old ballads are not required to be historically accurate. The ballad is recorded below:
Great Granddad Great Granddad when the land was young He barred his door with the wagon tongue; The times was tough and the Redskins mocked, He said his prayers with his shotgun cocked.
Great Granddad was a busy man. He cooked his grub in a frying pan He picked his teeth with a huntin' knife, He wore the same suit all his life.
Twenty-one children came to bless The old man's home in the wilderness; Doubt that statement if you can, Great Granddad was a busy man.
Twenty-one boys and not one bad, They never got fresh with Great Granddad, For if they had he'd 'a' been right glad To tan their hides with a hickory gad.
He raised them rough and he raised them strong; When their feet took hold on the road to wrong, He straightened them out with the old ramrod, And filled them with the fear of God
They grew strong in heart and hand, A firm foundation of our land; They made the best citizens we ever had, We need more like Great Granddad.
Great Granddad died at eighty-nine, Twenty-one boys he left behind; Times have changed but you never can tell, You might yet do half as well.
I had hoped sometime to get Scotty Wiseman, one time popular radio singer, to make a tape recording of the Great Granddad ballad. Unfortunately, he died suddenly in 1980. He and his wife were a team known as Lula Belle and Scotty on the National Barn Dance during the 1930' s. They made the Nashville Songwriters Association's Hall of Fame in 1971.
As the years move along more and more research material becomes available to us. Things that have been stored away have been and are being searched which present things that were never available in the past. Among these things are records and partial records from courthouses in the South that were burned when the Northern army moved through the southern states. The courthouse in Morganton, Burke County was one of those that was set in flames. But, in 1983, Grace Turner and Miles S. Philbeck Jr., went through the surviving records and prepared a book which they called: BURKE COUNTY NORTH CAROLINA, SURVIVING WILL AND PROBATE ABSTRACTS, 1770-1910. Grace Turner had the book printed (her address: 600 Lynnwood Ave., Wilson, N.C. 27893).
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