John Brown and Elizabeth McCrary grew up in Laurens County, South Carolina. They married in 1807, then moved to Indiana. They later returned to the South, and settled in Lawrence County, Alabama. After Elizabeth's death, John Brown (who was an uncle of General Ambrose Burnside) moved to Warren County, Illinois, where he remarried, and spent the rest of his life. John and Elizabeth's descendants included doctors and lawyers, farmers and ranchers, soldiers, bankers, scientists, and engineers. Many bore other surnames-among them Dobbins, Cogdell, Wilson, Dandridge, Otwell, Davidson, and Glenn. They were a varied and mobile family, whose lives were intertwined with many major events of American history-the Gold Rush, the Civil War, the westward movement of the American population, and the nation's transformation from an agrarian and rural to a more industrialized and urban society. This book makes use of a variety of sources, including previously unpublished correspondence, to tell their story.
During his presidency, Jimmy Carter received a comprehensive analysis of his family's genealogy, dating back 12 generations, from leaders of the Mormon Church. More recently Carter's son Jeff took over the family history, determined to discover all that he could about his ancestors. This resulting volume traces every ancestral line of both Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter back to the original immigrants to America and chronicles their origins, occupations, and life dates. Among his forebears Carter found cabinet makers, farmers, preachers, illegitimate children, slave owners, indentured servants, a former Hessian soldier who fought against Napoleon, and even a spy for General George Washington at Valley Forge. With never-before-published historic photographs and a foreword by President Jimmy Carter, this is the definitive saga of a remarkable American family.
John Rutledge (1739-1800) was a wealthy planter and successful lawyer, a leader in South Carolina's colonial Commons House of Assembly, and a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses. As chief executive of the state during most of the War for Independence, he was instrumental in its defense and recovery after the British conquest of 1780. One of the leading delegates to the United States constitutional convention in 1787, he served as chief justice of South Carolina, and briefly as associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.