I'm descended from John Carrick (1712 - 1812) through his son John [Jr.]
Lately I've been working hard on the mystery of the well-known Reverend
Samuel Carrick's parentage. What follows amounts to thinking out loud.
Can any of you catch me in errors of fact or logic? More importantly,
has anyone ever found a birth or christening record which would settle
the issue?
Arguments against the Reverend Samuel's being John Carrick Sr.'s son:
A researcher named Lowell S. Thomas has included in his tree a Samuel,
the son of John Sr., born about 1734 in Marsh Creek, York County, PA.
This information is posted to a Mac/McPherson family tree at
Ancestry.com. There is also a 1785 date for a cemetery lot being
allotted to him. Try this URL:
http://awt.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=seadragon5&id=I... .
Other mentions on the Internet say that Samuel had property near
Emmitsburg, Maryland and that Carrick's Knob, a small mountain near
there, I think, was named after him. Complicating matters, you will see
that Mr. Thomas gives this Samuel a son named John N. The Reverend
Samuel had a son John N. Are there two John N.'s? In this family, it's
very likely.
Lots of records, on the other hand, give a 1760 birth date and an 1809
death date for the Reverend Sam, apparently including his tombstone in
Knoxville, Tennessee.
We know that the Reverend Samuel was married twice: to Elizabeth Moore
in Virginia and to Annis McClellan in Tennessee. The family tree I link
you to above has Samuel, the son of John Sr., marrying a woman named
Rachel.
I found the record of Reverend Sam's marriage bond to Elizabeth Moore
online in Rockbridge County, Virginia, dated Sept. 21, 1779. If you
don't have this, go to
http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/va/rockbridge/images/1779/1779-032.jpg
. We know that Rev. Sam studied for the ministry in this part of
Virginia at an academy which later became Washington and Lee University
(which is definitely in the right place). I know that John Carrick Jr.,
born about 1736 in Marsh Creek, was in the Rockbridge County area of
Virginia before 1784, when his son Stephenson (also called Stephen) was
born there. (He later moved along to Caldwell County, Kentucky.)
I have also found two 1760s references to a Samuel Carrick in the
Frederick County Md/York County PA area at the Maryland State Archive
Online. One of these records has him requesting reimbursement for costs
associated with provisioning troops in the last war (meaning the French
and Indian War). The Reverend Samuel would have definitely been too
young for that--probably not even born yet. I don't have handy the full
URL for this item, but you can search for "Carrick" and find it at
http://www.mdarchives.state.md.us .
All this had led me to believe that the Rev. Samuel may have been
Stephen's brother and John Jr.'s son. For a while, I've been quite happy
with this theory. The older Samuel, under this theory, would be John
Sr.'s first son and John Jr.'s oldest brother.
On the other hand: Arguments for the Reverend Samuel's being John
Senior's son:
Last night, however, my husband said something that made me reconsider.
He said that he would really expect that anyone, in writing a will,
would list his children in their order of birth. I agree, and we know
that John Jr. is the first child listed in John Sr.'s will and that
Samuel is the last. This would make sense if the Reverend Samuel were
John Sr.'s youngest son and the much younger brother of John Jr. Samuel
could still have moved to Virginia with his brother John Jr. If he went
specifically to study for the ministry, it is even possible that his
older brother agreed to go to Virginia with his family (he had several
children born in MD/PA) for the sake of being a chaperone/guardian for
the young Samuel. If that's the case, who could the Samuel be who was
considerably older and still back in MD/PA near John Sr.? Well, the
obvious answer is that he could be John Sr.'s younger brother.
Historians who have studied Scotch-Irish emigration have noted that they
tended to emigrate as family groups and not as individuals.
One more argument in favor of this theory: Have you noticed that John
Sr.'s will leaves more to his son Samuel than to every other child?
Could this be because John was proud of Samuel's distinguished career in
the ministry and wanted to help support him in his work? Then too, he
would have known that no matter how distinguished, a minister at that
time would never have made much money and could undoubtedly have used
monetary support for his family.
It seems to me that the only way this will ever be decided is with a
birth or christening record for one of these two Samuels--it does seem
clear to me that we are dealing with two Samuels. At this point, I think
my intuition tells me that the second theory is nearer the truth, and
that the Reverend Samuel is John Sr.'s son. Surely any man who lives to
be 100 is not unlikely to have a son at about the age of 48. Or...(new
thought) the Reverend Samuel could be the son of the older Samuel. (I'm
unhappy to find the possibilities increasing like this.)
Help, please!