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Related
- Person:William Cowan (42)
Analysis
From Terry Cowan August 2012 ti WMWillis personal communication
Proof of the children of William and Sarah.
- They sold out in NC in late 1784 and moved to the Bethsalem community in Wilkes (now Oglethorpe) County, Georgia.
- Beginning in the early 1790s, members of the family began moving north into newly-formed Jackson County, Georgia.
- By 1807, all but one son had relocated there (or moved elsewhere in 1 case.)
- A prospective list of children can be constructed from tax, deed and marriage records in the 2 counties. Deed records are especially instructive. To take one example, there is Jackson County Deed Record Volume E, Page 278, in which James Cowan conveyed his interest in a tract of land to Joseph Cowan, with George Cowan and Stewart Cowan witnessing the transaction. There are many others.
- There is one deed which covers most, if not all, the bases. This is Jackson County Deed Record Volume E, Page 444 (yes, the property was in Oglethorpe, but the deed recorded in Jackson.)
- By 1807, Sarah Stewart Cowan was deceased, and all of her children signed off on a deed for the remaining 100 acres they still owned in Oglethorpe County, Georgia. With one exception, the list of sons would be exactly the same as the list one would assume just looking at all the other Jackson County deed records, etc. That one exception was William, Jr., who never moved to Jackson County, and was something of a shadowy figure in Oglethorpe County. The 3 daughters’ names are not listed—but the sons-in-law are. Their presence in other Jackson County document are thus explained, and in the case of one sister, Mary, there is a recorded Jackson County marriage record. There is a reference to a marriage of Sarah Cowan to Robert Simpson in Oglethorpe County in 1795, but not an exact date, for some reason. The name of the 3rd daughter, Lydia, appears only from researching her husband’s family. In short, the names of 7 of the 8 sons, and all 3 sons-in-law, appear in differing combinations in the deed records of Jackson County, GA between 1793 and 1815. But back to the “proof” deed—from that, we ascertain that the children were (in approximate order):
- 1. James Cowan
- 2. George Cowan (b. 1763)
- 3. Thomas Cowan
- 4. Mrs. Thomas Poage (Lydia)
- 5. Mrs. Robert Simpson (Sarah, b. 1770)
- 6. William Cowan, Jr.
- 7. Joseph W. Cowan
- 8. Stewart Cowan (b. 1774)
- 9. Isaac Cowan
- 10. Mrs. John Crockett, Jr. (Mary, b. 1779)
- 11. Moses Cowan (b. 1787?)
An Elijah Cowan appears in the same area in Ga as William and Sarah, however...
From Terry Cowan, August 2012, personal communication to WMWILIS
Elijah Cowan. In my early research, I assumed he was a son of William and Sarah simply on the basis of his being in Jackson County, Georgia early on. But once I delved into the records, I found no overlapping connections of any sort between the Elijah Cowan family and the William Cowan family—as there were among all the other Cowans in Jackson County, and as we find in Rowan County, NC before, and as we found in Lancaster County, PA before that. Then, he was not listed among the Cowan heirs in the Volume E, Page 444 of the Jackson County Deed Records. Finally, I believe it is “Cyndi from Baltimore” who is a descendant of this Elijah Cowan, and in the last couple of years she finally found a YDNA participant who proved she belonged in another grouping.
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