ISAIAH DANIEL COLEMAN by J. P. COLEMAN
(He was the son of Allen Coleman and his wife, Sarah. He was the grandson of Robert Coleman, died 1809.) Born on Storm Branch of Beaver Creek, waters of the Broad River, Fairfield County, S. C., December 20, 1811. Died at his home about two miles south of Fentress, Choctaw County, Mississippi, April 8, 1889. Buried, Concord Cemetery, 6 miles Southwest of Ackerman, Mississippi.
Isaiah Daniel Coleman was a brother of Williams Charles Coleman, Elizabeth Coleman Gladden, and Rebecca Coleman Gladden. These sisters were twins. The first available public record of his life shows that on November 26, 1833 (Book Z, Page 382, Chester County, S. C.) he purchased 84 acres of land on the South Fork of Rocky Creek from Robert Brown. In the same year, when he was twenty-two years of age, he also bought land from John Gladden.
His first wife was Agnes Ferguson. Their first children were born and died September 10, 1839, when he was twenty-eight. Agnes died November 1, 1847. He married again on September 2, 1852. In the meantime, his mother died May 27, 1839 and his father died June 21, 1848.
On August 2, 1853, for $4,287.25, he conveyed to Alexander B. Douglas 408 1/2 acres of land on which he then lived. Part of this was land on which his father lived and died. This was about two years before the railroad came to Blackstock. (On February 22, 1865, General Jefferson C. Davis, commanding the 14th Corps, U. S. Army, had his headquarters "at the Douglas house, near Blackstock." Page 157, McMaster's History of Fairfield County).
MISSISSIPPI
Isaiah Daniel Coleman first settled in Mississippi at a place on the Betheden Road about six miles northeast of Louisville, Winston County. On February 6, 1854, (Land Deed Book N, Page 64) for a consideration of $3,000 "to us in hand paid by Isaiah Daniel Coleman, of Chester District and State of South Carolina" Reese Perkins and Mary Perkins sold to "the said Isaiah D. Coleman" the West 1/2 of Section 15 and all of Section 16 (960) acres of Township 15, Range 13, Winston County, As this was near the lands of Williams Charles Coleman, his brother, it would appear that possibly Williams [sic] selected the land and made the transaction for Daniel in advance of the removal to Mississippi. In 1856, according to the personal assessment roll of Winston County (now on file at Archives and History in Jackson), I. D. Coleman owned 52 slaves under 60 years of age. Apparently, he made five crops on this plantation, northeast of Louisville. Then, on December 15, 1859, for $6,758 cash, he purchased the 1,763 acre plantation of William Ragsdale (Buck) Coleman, but he was not to obtain possession until October 1, 1860. Presumably, he made the 1860 crop at his original location, and moved to the new place just in time to see the secession of Mississippi, which occurred January 9, 1861. ...
... On November 11, 1861, with the War Between the States in full swing, Isaiah Daniel Coleman (Book S, Page 33) for $5,000, sold to E. G. Eiland the same land he purchased from the Perkinses. ...
... The next public record we have of Daniel Coleman is found in the personal assessment roll for 1863. He was assessed with one pleasure carriage, 1 watch, 1 clock, 80 head of cattle, and 76 slaves under 60 years of age. We are told that Daniel never gave up his belief that the Confederacy would win, and continued to buy slaves at Columbus right up to the end of the War. Of course, when the war was over he was left with nothing but his land, his home, his water mill on Yockanookany Creek, his gin, and his brick kiln, with no labor with which to operate them. It seems, however, that he continued to farm extensively for a number of years, with his former slaves as share croppers. Later in life he himself plowed on land formerly cultivated by his slaves. The War, and all its tragic losses would appear to have come at an extremely unhappy time for him. He was fifty-four years of age when it was over, and lived for twenty-four years afterward.
On May 29, 1866 (Book S, Page 385), Daniel Coleman borrowed $800 from Wiley W. Coleman, due January 1, 1867. To secure the repayment of this debt he gave a deed of trust on all his land, 13 mules, 40 head of cattle, 70 hogs, 2 wagons, 1 carriage, 1 gin, 1 thrasher, 500 bushels of corn, 6000 lbs. fodder, 4000 lbs. of bacon, 24 sheep, and 25 plows. Hard times! This Wiley W. Coleman was Daniel's first cousin (son of Wylie Coleman and Sarah Ragsdale).
In March, before his death in April, 1889, the sixteen room, two story home, erected by William Ragsdale Coleman, in which Daniel had lived for twenty four years, burned to the ground. He was living in the house at the time, with his youngest son, Henry Jonathan Coleman, and his daughter-in-law, Estelle Bruce Coleman. He had become quite inactive, but continued to read a great deal. He would chew tobacco and use papers for a cuspidor. Johnnie Coleman had been plowing that day in the "flat" in front (West) of the house. At noon time, when he came in from plowing, he gathered up all the soiled newspapers and threw them in a fireplace on the ground floor. The chimney soot became ignited, but it was not thought that the flames had spread. Johnnie went on back to his plowing, but about two o'clock his wife noticed that the roof was on fire. There were no ladders long enough to reach to the second story roof. The March wind was high. The old home and nearly all its furnishings were totally destroyed. Daniel had to be forcibly detained from entering the flames. In less than a month he was dead.
Here, in some respects, was a man with an interesting personal history. In some ways it could be said that he was a strange man. He belonged to no church, although his second wife is known to have been a devout Baptist. He would not allow his photograph to be taken, saying that he did not wish to leave any graven image behind him for others to look upon. His wife, however, had her photograph taken, of which several copies are still in existence. He seems to have been a very frugal man. I have heard it said that while riding horseback down the road he would dismount and pick up loose ears of corn lost by others in the roadway. He was a small man in physical size, which seems to have been characteristic of the Colemans of that generation. He is reputed to have been a hard taskmaster with his slaves, which was not commendable.
Many years after the end of the War, he was plowing one day when Mr. J. P. Blackwood, then a young man, who had been burning a newground, came across the field. He was black with soot and, pretending he was a Negro, he began a sassy conversation with the old man. He laughed all his life about the energetic manner in which Daniel chased him out of the field. If rain "set in" while he was plowing he would wrap a blanket around his shoulders and plow on until it became too muddy to plow.
I am indebted to Hon. Clarence E. Morgan, former District Attorney, of Kosciusko, for the following story. Under the Slave Code of 1857, a slave could not leave his master's plantation without a written pass in his possession. Violations were punishable by thirty-nine lashes. One morning Daniel caught the negro butler of Col. Potts, a neighbor, in the Coleman "quarters" without a pass. He tied a rope on the luckless negro and marched him back to Col. Potts' residence, where he demanded of the Colonel that the Negro be given the prescribed thirty-nine lashes. The butler was a favorite of the Colonel's and he did not want to punish him, so he used diplomatic means to avoid it. He first invited "Mr. Coleman" in to breakfast, but he said he had already had breakfast. Then the Colonel suggested other refreshment of a more potent type, to which "Old Daniel" assented. They tied the offender to a convenient tree and proceeded to the refreshments, at the close of which both men agreed that under all the circumstances three licks would be sufficient punishment. And it is not known whether that three were ever in fact administered.
Here was a man who for many years knew prosperity and plenty. He knew misfortune, too. His first wife died when she was only 32. His second wife died when she was forty-seven, and after a long illness, which seems to have been what was then known as "dropsy." He knew adversity, after the war, including the loss of his home. On the afternoon of April 8, 1889, he was at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Bruce. He was attempting to eat an orange, and strangled to death. This ended his earthly career.
I think he must have been loyal to his father, because he did not leave South Carolina until six years after Allen Coleman's death. Daniel was made one of the Executors of Allen's will. His brother, Williams Charles, had been in Winston County, Mississippi, for nineteen years when Daniel came. He was eleven years younger than his first cousin, William Ragsdale Coleman, and outlived him eight years. William Ragsdale had been resting for that long in North Grove Cemetery, Hallettsville, Texas, when the house of his construction went up in flames and Daniel, a few weeks later, went to his long home at Concord Cemetery. He was buried by his second wife. His first, and their twins, lie five hundred miles away in the rock walled burying ground, east of Blackstock.
He was born in the eleventh year of the Nineteenth Century, while James Madison was serving as the fourth President. He was twenty-one years of age when Jackson was elected to his second term: He was still living in South Carolina at the death of John C. Calhoun. He was well established in Mississippi on the date of Dredd Scott decision, March 6, 1857, and was there at the time of John Brown's raid of October 16, 1859, the very day of the birth of his tenth child, Henry Jonathan. He died one month after the inauguration of Benjamin Harrison as the 23rd President. His lifetime covered the entire Nineteenth Century except for its first eleven years and its last eleven years. He lived during the administration of 19 Presidents. He lived through the Civil War and Reconstruction. Yet he seems never to have been an aspirant for public office. Of his political beliefs and affiliations we are left not a line of evidence.
Mr. Richard A. Moss, of Ackerman, Mississippi, who was born in 1872 and still alive and active in 1962, told the writer that he could remember Daniel Coleman well. That he was a tall, raw-boned man. He wore a big black hat and always rode a big gray horse. He would ride at such speed that the wind would blow the wide brim of his hat back against the crown. Daniel Coleman always flatly refused to allow a photograph to be made, so these memories of Mr. R. A. Moss are all we have in the way of a personal description.
TABLE OF DESCENDANTS ...
