2. WILLIAM MCCONNELL, b. Cir 1722,d. Nov 1772 in Salisbury, Rowan Co., NC., married Elizabeth Tate, a daughter of John Tate of Augusta County, Virginia, was born in 1722 in Ireland and married a William McConnell.The date of their marriage is unknown but the place of their marriage was probably Augusta County, Virginia.
Augusta Co., VA records show that in 1751/52 William McConnell petitioned for a road to connect nearby properties to the Great Wagon Road, which ran through Augusta Co. to Salisbury, NC and Rowan Co. No further mention of William is found in Augusta. A reference of the same era -- although the year was torn -- showed Elizabeth McConnell, William's first wife, entered a lawsuit there, but it was later dropped because of her death.
Augusta deeds show that a James McConnell bought an Augusta Co. farm in March 1755 and sold it in May 1759.He is probably a brother of William.
The period through 1760 included the last great Cherokee wars on the NC frontier amid the French and Indian War. Whites had started the fracas when a Virginia expedition against the Shawnee had soured, and the settlers' Indian allies, the Cherokees. had lost spirit and headed home, after their horses were killed.When they happened upon and captured wild horses, frontiersmen descended and killed between 14 and 40 men, including prominent Cherokee warriors.
The Cherokee reprised, and the South Carolina Gazette reported that in the planting season of 1759, at least 22 settlers were killed on the upper Yadkin River of NC. The sheriff of Rowan Co. was terrorized in his own cabin, and Daniel Boone, then living in Rowan (now Davie) Co. took his family several times to Ft. Dobbs, 20 miles west of Salisbury, NC for safety. In 1760, Ft. Dobbs was attacked, and the Boones moved well north to Culpepper Co., VA. The McConnells later owned farms near Ft. Dobbs, which developed into Statesville, the county seat of modern Iredell County.On Nov. 19, 1760, peace came to the NC frontier.
William McConnell appears in the Rowan Co. tax list by April 23 and 24, 1762 when he bought 701 acres in Rowan Co., NC and a town lot in its county seat, Salisbury, from a land speculator Hugh Montgomery.By the next January, William gained a license to operate a tavern at the intersection of Salisbury's two main streets along with Peter Johnson (whose family married into the McConnell line in Missouri). The tavern was housed, at least originally, in William's home. With the Great Wagon Road bringing thousands of Ulster Scot, German and Quaker settlers south to NC, SC and GA, William had the chance to meet and profit from a broad cross-section of the new frontier population.
In 1764, William was named overseer of Salisbury's roads and was allowed to draft local residents to work on them.James McConnell surfaced as a witness to a land deed in Salisbury on July 17, 1764 in Rowan Co., NC.By Oct. 12, 1764, James McConnell had died, and William was named as executor of James' will (since lost) in a court case in Rowan Co.
William and Jane sold off their 701-acre farm on Second Creek to Col. John Frohock, a land speculator and county clerk, and they divested most of their town holdings in the 1760s. But William was still operating his tavern in Salisbury in 1771 and had purchased the farm improvements that Robert Bell had made on unregistered property west of Salisbury on Bell's Branch in what became Iredell Co; during this period, the colonial land office was closed, and no one could buy any new lands.
As a tavern- and innkeeper in the seat of Rowan Co., which at the time contained 27 modern NC counties, William became a prominent citizen of the entire western half of the state, owned entire blocks of Salisbury and appears frequently in the official records. He was particularly close to William Temple Coles, another innkeeper, lawyer and later sheriff of Rowan Co.; Coles became administrator of McConnell's estate when he died in November 1772 with no will.
County records suggest William died in the fall of 1772: on Nov. 4, the county court cited his farm home in a road order; on Nov. 6, the court granted letters of administration on William's estate to William Temple Coles. Coles filed an inventory of William's estate in early 1773, but the distribution has not survived; the guardianship of his minor son John is extant.
William was married first to Elizabeth Tate , who was the mother of his oldest sons, and then Jane, who became the mother of at least three younger sons including Alexander. Jane was likely the sister of John Dobbins Sr. of Rowan and Iredell Cos., who lived beside her sons in the area of Rockey and Hunting Creeks in the late 1700s. Jane was still alive in 1781 when her son John returned from military service; if she was the mother of the older Carruth children, she was still living in 1786.
As a tavern- and innkeeper in the seat of Rowan Co., which at the time contained 27 modern NC counties, William became a prominent citizen of the entire western half of the state, owned entire blocks of Salisbury and appears frequently in the official records. He was particularly close to William Temple Coles, another innkeeper, lawyer and later sheriff of Rowan Co.; Coles became administrator of McConnell's estate when he died in November 1772 with no will.
County records suggest William died in the fall of 1772: on Nov. 4, the county court cited his farm home in a road order; on Nov. 6, the court granted letters of administration on William's estate to William Temple Coles. Coles filed an inventory of William's estate in early 1773, but the distribution has not survived; the guardianship of his minor son John is extant.
Children:
3. i. James Archibald McConnell b. Abt 1744.
ii. William McConnell b. Abt 1750.
iii. Alexander McConnell b. Abt 1755.
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