Person:James Duncan (68)

Information on James Duncan

Letter from grandchild of James Duncan:

"Jessamine (KY) Journal" Friday, November 2, 1888, front page (from Lexington, KY, library, from John A. Duncan 10/1984 with permission to share with others) (MAD: Edenton is in Chowan Co. NC; use with caution, unable to verify from other records)

           GENEALOGICAL -- One of the Old Jessamine Families
           The Duncans -- Ancient and Modern -- Here and Elsewhere.
     To the Editors of the Jessamine Journal:
     More than a month since I received the following interesting letter from an unknown kinsman, Charles C. Duncan, of North Carolina, who it appears is a great-nephew of Rawley Duncan, my great-grand-father. As the letter contains many interesting facts which have never been known to any of the living descendants of Rawley Duncan, scattered over the Southern and Western states, I don't think it out of place to request you to give it a place in your paper.
     My grand-father, James Duncan, and his brother, Charles Duncan, settled in the present limits of Jessamine county early in the fall of 1788. Charles Duncan was born in Culpepper county, Va., in 1762. He was the father of the late William Duncan, Esq., and the grand-father of Robert and Benjamin Duncan. Charles Duncan died in Washington county, Ind., about the year 1831. My grand-father was also born in Culpeper county, in 1764, and was killed near the mouth of Paint Lick in Madison county, Ky., Nov. 7, 1792, in the twenty-eighth year of his age, leaving a widow and three small children. In 1781 he ran away from home and in company with Nathaniel Harris enlisted in the rebel army under Gen. Greene; was at the battle of Guilford, C.H., and at the siege of Yorktown. Nathaniel Harris afterwards became one of the most distinguished Methodist preachers of the olden times in Kentucky. He was for more than sixty-five years a preacher in the Methodist church in Kentucky, and died in Versailles in 1849, being eighty-four years of age.
     I never knew before that my grandfather had two sisters, and a brother named Edward, and that my great-grand-father was in Braddock's defeat in 1755, and enlisted in the American army during the Revolution to resist the invasion of Virginia by Lord Cornwallis and Gen. Arnold. Such facts have never been known to any of their descendants in Kentucky.
                 S.M.D.

From "Duncan Family" by Donald Linville Duncan, Pismo Beach, CA, 1982 (loaned by Laura Jones 7/16/83):

James Duncan was born in Culpeper County, Virginia in 1764. He was the son of Rawley Duncan and Sallie McLane. At the age of seventeen he ran away from home ... [From Willard H. Duncan; sources: "notes of Dr. James Armistead Duncan, 1872; letter from Samuel McAfee Duncan, Nov. 12, 1891; letter from George Alsop Duncan, M.D., Sept. 10, 1874, to Samuel M. Duncan of Nicholasville, KY; all collected and compiled by Samuel S. Sargent] (MAD: see Rev. Wm. Bible from June Rickets for info on James Duncan, their son.)