Person:Robert Cunningham (27)

Page 19.--19th May, 1767. Charles Kilpatrick's will: To son Roger Kilpatrick, 5 sh.; to son-in-law, Jno. Hogshead, 5 sh.; to son-in-law, Robt. Cunningham, 5 sh.; to son Alexander, plantation; to wife, Elizabeth; to daughter, Elizabeth. Executors, wife Elizabeth and son Alexander, Gardens, Jno. McKenny and Roger Kilpatrick. Teste: Jno. and Wm. McKenny. Proved, 18th August, 1767, by the witnesses. Elizabeth refuses to execute. Alexander qualifies, with Jas. Hogshead, Pat. Cunningham.

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Information on Robert Cunningham

From "Annals of Augusta county, Virginia, from 1726 to 1871", by Joseph Addison Waddell:

Appleton's American Biography says : Robert Cunningham, loyalist, born in Ireland about 1739 ; settled in District Ninety-Six, S. C., in 1769, and soon became a judge. He opposed the cause of the colonies, and in 1775 was imprisoned in Charleston. After his release he joined the British forces, and, in 1780, was commissioned Brigadier General. He first was placed in command of a garrison in S. C., and the following year served in the field against General Sumter. His estate was confiscated in 1782, and, having left the country, he was not allowed to return, although he petitioned to be allowed to do so. The British Government gave him an annuity. He died in Nassau, in 1813.

From Ancestry.com post:

The Cunningham family, struggling for religious freedom, immigrated from Scotland about 1681, settling in Virginia and Pennsylvania. In 1769 Patrick and Robert Cunningham (born in the Colony of Penna.) arrived in South Carolina. Robert settled at the Indian Island Ford area on Saluda River as his main plantation, yet he had large land holdings elsewhere. They were a family of great influence in the back country.4

The Cunningham men were four brothers: John who was a planter, David who was a deputy surveyor, Robert who was the first magistrate of Ninety-Six District and Patrick who was deputy surveyor of the General Province of South Carolina.4 These men were loyal to the English Crown.

There was also their cousin William Cunningham who in 1775 at the age of 19 years became a follower of the Whig Party. There was also an Andrew Cunningham of the Ninety Six District in the Province of South Carolina. He was a Loyalist but I do not know if he was any relation to these other Cunningham men.

Robert Cunningham was the first proprietor of the Indian Island Ford Ferry, granted in 1770. However he lost the franchise when the Revolutionary War broke out because of his loyalty to the Crown. Lord Campbell, Governor of South Carolina, promised the Cunningham men rewards and commendations for their loyalties.5

On July 17, 1775, Robert and Patrick Cunningham (Tory Officers) seized a large amount of ammunition at Ninety Six. They jailed Major Mayson on the charge of having stolen the ammunition from the King's Fort. (Major, then Colonel, Mayson was given Robert Cunningham's plantation and Ferry Rights when war was declared and Tory properties were confiscated). After the war Robert and Patrick Cunningham petitioned to be allowed to live in South Carolina. Robert, being refused, settled in Nassau and received 1,080 Pounds Sterling from the British for restitution of losses due to war. Part of that loss was Peach Hill Plantation on the North side of Saluda River and Island Ford plantation on the South side of the Saluda River.

The oldest daughter of Robert, Mrs. Elizabeth Brownlee, wife of John Brownlee of Charleston, died July 15, 1805 at forty one years of age. Robert Cunningham died around 1813.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~eurovol/CaldwellGenealogyPages/SouthCarolinaConnections/Disk8Chp116.htm

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Biography of General Robert Cunningham (by E. Alfred Jones, 1921):

Robert Cunningham, born in 1741, was the son of John Cunningham, a member of a Scotch family which settled about 1681 in Virginia and removed early in 1769 to the district of Ninety-Six in South Carolina. (E. McCrady, The History of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1775-1780, p. 88.) Robert Cunningham acquired a plantation of his own at Island ford on the Saluda River and by energy and industry became a man of wealth and influence.

From the dawn of the Revolution Robert Cunningham displayed the most uncompromising spirit of loyalty. (Hist. MSS. Comm., Report on the MSS. of the Earl of Dartmouth, Vol. II, p. 355.) The treaty of neutrality made between that urbane and easygoing loyalist, Colonel Thomas Fletchall, and William Henry Drayton, September 16 1776, provoked his bitter opposition and brought forth his refusal to be bound by it, in a letter to Drayton, dated October 6 following (see Drayton, Memoirs of the Revolution, Vol. I, p. 418). So dangerous a foe was not permitted to remain at large and on November 1, while holding the rank of captain in the loyal militia, Cunningham was committed to Charleston jail on a charge of committing high crimes and misdemeanors against the liberties of South Carolina, having, according to a letter written from Savannah on the 19th, been seized by a party disguised as Indians. He was detained a prisoner until February 1776. (Force, American Archives, Series IV, Vol. 8, p. 1606; ibid., Vol. 4, p. 29; iv; McCrady, The Hist. of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1775.1780, p. 86; A. S. Salley, Jr., Hist. of Orangeburg County, 1898, pp. 804-7; Moultrie, Memoirs, Vol. I, p. 100.). His brother, Major Patrick Cunningham, with a party of loyalists made an unsuccessful attempt to rescue him from the hands of his captors.

The British Government awarded him compensation to the amount of £1,080 from his estimated loss of £1,355 for his South Carolina property confiscated by the State. (A.O. 12/109.) Brigadier-General Cunningham at the conclusion of the war in his own Province set sail for the Bahamas with other compatriots and settled at Nassau in the island of New Providence, so aptly named as the harbor of refuge for the distressed loyalists. In this new home Robert Cunningham settled on the tracts of valuable land which had been granted to him for his services in the American Revolutionary war. Here he died, 9 February 1813. On his tombstone in the western cemetery is inscribed: " ... exiled from his native Country in the American Revolution for his attachment to his King and the Laws of his Country." His wife, Margaret, survived him only a few weeks, having died 26 March at the age of 76.

Four children were left by Robert and Margaret Cunningham, namely, John, who married, 5 March, 1795, Ann Harrold; Charles; Margaret, who was married, 22 June 1790, to Richard Pearis, son of Colonel Richard Pearis, a loyalist from South Carolina; and Elizabeth, who married, 1 May 1792, Robert Brownlee, a loyalist. In his will are mentioned, in addition to his wife and children, the following family connections: John, natural son of John Cunningham by a woman named Hannah Ridley; his sister, Margaret Cunningham, and her son, Robert Andrew Cunningham; his cousin, Jean, daughter of Thomas Edwards; his cousin, Robert Cunningham, son of David Cunningham, to whom was bequeathed 300 dollars for his education; and his two cousins, Margaret Fenny and Elizabeth Brown, daughters of Joseph Jefferson.

Patrick, David, and John Cunningham, three loyalist brothers, remained in South Carolina after the war. (A.O. 12/3, fos. 8-10; A. O. 12/48, fos. 215; A. O. 12/92; A. O. 12/109; A. O. 18/97; A. O. 13/127; Sabine, Loyalists of the American Revolution, Vol. I, 346, 349; A. T. Bethell, The Early Settlers of the Bahamas Islands, 1914, pp. 21-23.)

William Cunningham, known as “Bloody Bill,” was a cousin of Brigadier General Cunningham. He was only nineteen at the beginning of the war, and was lively and jovial, openhearted and generous, and a remarkable horseman. (E. McCrady, The History of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1780-1785, pp. 467-476.)

Source: http://sc_tories.tripod.com/robert_cunningham1.htm

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Category: Early Settlers of Old Augusta