(a) Mary married John M. Jackson but left no children.

(b) Joshua married Rachel Craig of Abingdon, Virginia, moved to Rose Hill, Lee County, and there resides until after 1840 when he took his family to Missouri.

The following letter will assist to see that this is correct:

                                                                                               Knoxville, Tenn. August 3^rd, 1897

Mr. William A. Ewing,                                  

National Military Home, Ohio.

My Dear Sir:

            I have written to my grand-aunt at Rose Hill–or Ewing, as the station is now called, in Virginia, for the purpose of finding who was the wife of Joshua Ewing (bro. of my g. g. father Samuel). I have her letter today in which she says, ‘My Uncle Joshua married Rachel Craig, of Abingdon, Virginia. After his marriage they moved to Rose Hill, Va., and settled and raised a large family of children. His wife died at Rose Hill and was buried there. In 1840 he and his family moved to Missouri, and he and his family are all now dead.

            This statement is perfectly trustworthy, because my Aunt, while very old, is a woman of fine ability, and is thoroughly in possession of all her faculties. You will see that she states these matters clearly and there is absolutely no room to doubt what she says. This will go far to clear up the confusion created in your mind by the letter of Mr. James V. Ewing, referring to which I find that he says, ‘The wife of Samuel was a Craig; their children were Samuel, Joshua, Margaret, Jane and Nancy.’

            My Aunt, whose statement I quote to you above, personally knew her Uncle Joshua; this Joshua being the brother to my great-grandfather, Samuel.

            You ask me in the end of your letter to give you the wives of Capt. Patrick’s two sons, Joshua, born in 1763, and Samuel, born in 1772. Undoubtedly, Joshua’s wife was Rachel Craig, and Samuel’s wife was Mary Houston.

            I am glad to be able to settle this point for you beyond any question. I am, Yours very truly,

                                                                                                      (signed) Joshua W. Caldwell.

Col. Ewing was at the time able to write little, so he replied at the bottom of Mr. Caldwell’s letter, saying:

Please excuse pencil. My hand is very lame. You will see that I was originally misled by statement in James V. Ewing’s sketch where for the first time I had any information as whom your g. g. father married, & he is plainly wrong! Joshua m. Rachel Craig.

Aug. 28, 1897.   Wm. A. E.

This Joshua, the uncle of Dr. Joshua, the son of Samuel, as were the Ewings generally, “was a strict Scotch-Irish Presbyterian,” writes one of his collateral relatives. One Sunday morning a neighbor, in Powell Valley, Lee County, named Martin, carried his razor to Ewing with the request that it be honed. Ewing kindly but firmly declined, explaining that he regarded it as sin to shave or to do any work on a Sabbath. A few Sundays later Martin, riding by Ewing’s barn, located on the road side, heard a noise, and on investigation beheld the good Presbyterian elder cutting, in a machine then much used by farmers and called “a shaving knife,” sheaf oats for his stock. Impromptu Martin exclaimed:

Joshua Ewing, a man of grace,
Should be an example to all his race;
Not long ago I heard his (sic) say
It was a sin to shave on the Sabbath day;
But now, on a Sabbath cold and raw,
I pass his barn and find him shaving straw.

The family of Joshua Ewing, the brother of Samuel the influential civil officer of Lee County, Virginia, was partly charted by Col. William A. Ewing in 1897. He sent this chart to Hon. A. B. Ewing of Tennessee. I have seen a number of copies of it, scattered here and there, most of them entitled, “A. B. Ewing Account pp. 139-247.” For some time I engaged in strenuous efforts to locate the “A. B. Ewing Account.” A. B. (Alvan Brown) Ewing, now deceased, was a son of Joseph Preston Ewing, who was a son of Samuel (II), this Samuel, as we have seen, having been born in Virginia in 1752, and having died in Georgia in 1809. Miss Olivia Davis (in 1920) of Lewisburg, Tennessee, is a daughter of Kittie Ewing, the daughter of Alvan Brown Ewing, who married Scott D. Davis, as also seen. Miss Davis says that in his life time her grandfather, A. B. Ewing spent much time in gathering data for an account of his branch of the family. But unfortunately after his death no trace of his work could be found. It is known that at one time he had an extensive manuscript on the subject. His family believe that before his demise he destroyed all but copies of the William A. Ewing chart, additions to which were made by him. As further extended by the distinguished Dr. Arthur E. Ewing of St. Louis, this chart, as prepared by William A. Ewing (then of Dayton, Ohio) begins with “William Ewing, in the siege of Londonderry, Ireland.” It has some inaccuracies as to the children of this William, who should be given as has been shown in a previous chapter. Then the children of Joshua Ewing are given, without indicating that this Joshua was the oldest child by the second wife of his father, William. This chart says this Joshua’s wife’s name was Jane; and that he died in Cecil County August 16, 1753. Then, after showing the children of Captain Patrick, 1737-1819, one of the sons of this older Joshua, the chart discloses that Patrick’s son “Joshua, born September 25, 1763, married Rachel Craig of Abingdon, Virginia; (and that) he was a government surveyor; removed to Rose Hill, now Ewing, Virginia; moved to Missouri and there died subsequent to 1840.” Then as the children of this Joshua, A. B. Ewing has added: (a) Samuel, (b) Joshua, “married Mary Jones, six sons and three daughters;” (c) Margaret, married George Ewing; (d) Jane, “one daughter, Sallie, who married Frick;” (e) Nancy, “who married Isaac Hayes, six or seven children.”

(a) “Samuel was a school teacher. He married Mary (Polly) Davis, daughter of James Davis of Washington County, Virginia, probably at the old Davis home four miles from Abingdon, on the road between there and Russell County, where the only sister, Mrs. Oliver Hughes, of this Samuel Ewing lived. Grandfather Davis was an Irish Presbyterian (probably Scotch-Irish) and was in the Revolutionary War. He was well off, having perhaps twenty slaves. He sold out and moved to Platt or Marion County, Missouri–William Ewing.”

This William thus quoted in this chart is one of the children of Samuel Ewing and his wife Mary Davis. This William lived in California. The quotation was added to the chart by Dr. Ewing of St. Louis, who had it from his uncle. As there given, the children of this William and Mary Davis Ewing are (a) Sallie, “who married Thomas Mills and lived at Well Pole, West Virginia, four boys and two girls;” (b) James D., who married Miss Harles of Washington County, Virginia, “three boys and four girls.” One of the girls married a Garrett. Two of the boys were killed or died in the U. S. Army in the war of 1861.” (c) Nancy, who married John Sevier–“four boys, Douglas, Alexander, Charles, William and James and one girl. They lost slaves by the emancipation of the Negroes. Lived on Goose Creek, six miles above Manchester, Clay County, Kentucky.” (d) Rebecca, “married Skidmore Munsey, four boys and one girl. Three of the boys became physicians, and another boy lived at Muncie, Indiana;” (e) William who married Rebecca Brand. This William Ewing “was licensed to practice law at Sacramento, California, in 1855. Became district attorney there; and was district attorney in Solano County in 1860-1861. Radical Southerner; twice married, the second time in 1880. Lived at Pendleton, Oregon. He left Harvey Samuel, Buckly, Washington; William, Morrow County, Oregon; Coke, Pendleton, Oregon; and Sallie, who married Robert I. Miller of Buckly. (f) Whitley Thomas Ewing, born December 28, 1823; married Hannah Jane Pettingill in St. Louis, Missouri; died at Gadsden, Alabama, in 1891. Was a physician. (g) Margaret, who married Christopher Jordan. He died in the war of 1861, and she remarried and lived at Yorktown.”

(f) This Whitley Thomas, who married Hannah Jane Pettingill, left (1) Arthur E. Ewing, born April 25, 1855, the highly successful physician of St. Louis (1921) who has children. One of his daughters artistically executed and colored for me a copy of the Ewing arms, also claimed by her family. (2) Munhetta (Minnie) Jane, who married W. P. Shanhan. They lived at Attalla, Alabama. (3) CharlesWhitley, who married Mollie Lay. He was born August 3, 1863, and died September 9, 1915, at his home in Gadsden, Alabama. (4) Thomas Gale, who married Harriet Line, and lived at Gadsden, Alabama; and (5) Stella May, 1862-1910, unmarried.

Though not shown on any copy of the Dr. A. E. Ewing chart, it is said this Joshua Ewing and wife (Craig) left at least two other children, one, William Smith Ewing, was the grandfather of Joshua A. Graham of St. Joseph, Missouri, who gave me the Ewing-Miller story related elsewhere. This William Smith Ewing married Sallie Fulkerson, of Lee County, Virginia. Their daughter, Jane Hughes Ewing, married Thomas P. Graham, son of Hugh Graham, of Tazewell County, Tennessee. Another was James Ewing. He served in the war of 1812-1814 with the rank of captain: and was mustered out at Richmond. Unable to obtain transportation, he walked about 400 miles to his home in Lee County. He moved to Missouri and there, according to family tradition, served in the legislature in 1840-1845. He married Belenda Niel of Lee County, Virginia. Mrs. Todhunter of Lexington, Missouri, is a great-niece, and kindly verified some of this information.

(c) James P. Ewing, according to his father’s will, appears to have been in Cecil County, Maryland, in 1811, but I have no subsequent trace of him. Neither have I any record of (d) Robert; or of (e) William certainly; or of (f) Andrew. (g) Regarding Samuel see subsequently. (h) Putnam, brother of Samuel the sheriff of Lee County, Virginia, born April 22, 1776, married Jane McClelland (G. C. Ewing, Attorney, Owingsville, Kentucky, letters July 22, 1913, and August 17, 1921) of Maryland, a cousin of Gen. Geo. B. McClelland (Letter Oscar R. Ewing, New York, Oct. 8, 1920). After part of their children were born in Maryland they moved to Bath County, Kentucky. Children: Robert, Patrick, Joshua, Samuel, James, Andrew Jackson; and daughters, Ann Eliza, Polly and Jane Elinor. All of these boys, says G. C. Ewing, “lived and died in Bath County, Kentucky, except Patrick, who emigrated to Decatur County, Indiana about 1830.” George M. Ewing, a brother of the triplets mentioned below, says this Patrick went to Indiana in 1826. (Letter of July 28, 1913.) Oscar R. Ewing, an able attorney of New York, a grandson, says Patrick’s deed to his Indiana land is dated 1826; “although his first child was born in Bath County, Kentucky, October 22, 1827.” Joshua married Elizabeth Conner, and to them were born three boys and two girls: Henry Harrison, Penrose Putnam, George McClelland, Desdemonia and Adelia. George McClelland was the only one of these boys who married, it is said. By the first wife, who was “Mattie” Ewing, apparently a daughter of Dr. Joshua Ewing, who married Rachel Fulkerson. In his will Dr. Ewing names a daughter as Mary H. This must have been “Mattie.” G. C. Ewing says his father’s first wife, Mattie Ewing of Rose Hill, Lee County, Virginia, had a brother named Cecil and that her father’s name was also Cecil. But he also says: “She had a sister who married a man by the name of Cleage, and her descendants are living in Knoxville, Tennessee. … My father’s first wife’s father was doctor and practiced medicine.” Mrs. Cleage, as elsewhere shown, was a daughter of Dr. Joshua Ewing of Lee County; and Mary H. is the only daughter for whom I cannot account unless identical with “Mattie,” of Rose Hill, Lee County, Virginia. The children were Joshua and Kittie, both of Bath County. His second wife was Jennie Gilmer of Missouri, and they had Mattie and George Conner, a prominent attorney of Owingsville, Kentucky. Kittie married William C. Lyons of Surgoinsville, Tennessee, and they have children.

Adelia Ewing married Charles C. Leer of Bourbon County, Kentucky, and they have children.

Robert (last above) had one son, Putnam, who left no descendants.

Samuel and James (above) never married.

Andrew Jackson (above) married Lydia Conner, and had one son, Felix McClelland, who never married; and daughters, Julia, Jane Elinor, Serepta, Mary, Lillian, Elva, Elizabeth and Annie.

All of these girls married and brought up families who are in Bath, Bourbon, Fayette, Clarke and Montgomery Counties in Kentucky.

In his letter to me, G. C. Ewing wrote:

Tradition has it that Putnam Ewing and two of his brothers left Maryland at the same time; and that one of the brothers went to Virginia and the other to Ohio.

The brother who went to Virginia, as seen, was Samuel, who became a distinguished citizen of the section now within Lee County, and whose family is given in another place. Subsequently Joshua, another brother, also went to Lee County, as elsewhere seen. He left Lee in 1840 and went to Missouri, and this Joshua is the ancestor of Dr. Ewing, of St. Louis, Attorney Graham of St. Joseph, etc. G. C. Ewing for many years had no knowledge of Samuel’s and Joshua’s families, which illustrates the reliability of much of the tradition found in our family.

Patrick Ewing, who went from Kentucky to Indiana about 1826 to 1830, as seen above, married Lydia Morgan. Children: Sarah Jane, Eliza Mary, Putnam, Abel, Joshua (triplets born September 8, 1832), Robert, Cortez, Lydia Ann, Samuel, James K., Geo. M. (living in 1913), Martha Caroline, Morgan J., and Alice Jane Elinor. (See the Baltimore American, 1903.)

About two years ago I saw a photograph of these triplets taken in their prime and at a time when their combined weight was 716 pounds, so I was informed. Yet they were not merely “fat”—they were men of proportion and muscle. Many of our family are of medium size; yet there is a large per cent of men more than six feet, muscular and powerfully built. My own father belonged to this latter class.

I have a newspaper clipping from a local Indiana paper, written in 1911, which says, in part, in reference to these triplets:

Seventy-five years ago today, September 8, 1833, Abel Ewing and his brothers, Putnam and Joshua, were born near the site of the present Ewing station on the C. H. & G. railroad in Clay township. He is the last of the triplets living. Joshua spent his life on a farm and died March 3, 1891. Putnam Ewing was elected recorder of Decatur County … being at the time of his death, January 20, 1903, cashier of the Third National Bank. …

Abel Ewing, while distinctively a farmer, is also a blacksmith and made a specialty of Peacock plows in an earlier day. He spent eight years in official positions of importance.

Mr. Ewing has always held his residence in Decatur County and has never missed an election on any account. He is today in good health, active in mind and body, and takes a keen interest in what is going on about him, and has a speech to make on the liquor question whenever he can find an audience. ‘Abe” Ewing, after more than three-quarters of a century spent in the county, is called a good citizen, the highest encomium that can be bestowed on any man.

Edwin E. Ewing, of Rising Sun, Cecil County, Maryland, sent me a photograph of these triplets, December, 1912. On the back was pasted a damaged clipping which Mr. Ewing says was written many years ago by his father. The article appears to have been published in either The American or The North American, at some date I cannot decipher. Speaking of the triplets, the article says:

These Ewing brothers are a branch of the Ewing family of the eighth district, this county (Cecil County, Maryland), and cousins of the writer. Their names are Abel, Putnam and Joshua. Their grandfather, Joshua Ewing, emigrated from the old homestead, one mile west of Porter’s Bridge, about the latter part of the last century (1700), or the beginning of the present (early in 1800), to the wilds of Kentucky, where older members of the family had gone years before.

Then the article relates an interview between Joshua, the immigrant, and the distinguished General Putnam, of the Revolution; and says that in return for some courtesy shown him, Ewing thanked “the general and promised to name a son for him, which he did, whence the name of Putnam in the Ewing family.”

Then the article says:

In those days Kentucky was a primitive wilderness, and the ‘dark and bloody ground’ was full of Indians. The journeys between civilization and the ‘backwoods of Kentucky’ were all performed on horseback. Putnam Ewing’s last visit to the old homestead was about 1828 or ’30. He made the journey in the saddle.

The father of the triplets was named Patrick. He started on a prospecting tour when a young man, crossing the Ohio River from Kentucky into Indiana, going about sixty miles into Decatur County, near (what became) Greensburg, where he saw forests of heavy black walnut timber, and concluding that the land must be very rich, he determined to purchase a small tract and settle, very much in opposition to the folks at home. In 1854, when the writer of this sketch paid the family a visit there were thirteen children, and the parents were both large and muscular, healthy people. The triplets were then fine-looking young men, rather spare and slender … (but they) have enlarged mightily since that day.

Now this is an interesting bit of first-hand information, and very conclusive as to identification. But the writer got his names and his generations slightly mixed—quite easy to do. Joshua Ewing, as we have seen, the immigrant, was the great-great grandfather of the triplets, and Captain Patrick, of Cecil County, Maryland was their great-grandfather. Too, the writer must have been in error regarding “older members” of the family, having gone earlier to Kentucky. I think he had in mind the kindred who settled in Southwest Virginia, in what is now Lee County, whose homes were within less than five miles of the Kentucky-Virginia line.

(i) Jane Elinor, as we have seen, married Nathaniel Ewing, son of Alexander Ewing, of Bald Friars Ferry, Maryland (as shown by Patrick’s will). For some reason the Captain did not like his son-in-law, Nathaniel, and carried that feeling into his will. But after all, he must have been a man of some kindliness of heart, for in the same will he provides for the freedom of a Negro boy slave when he reached the age of thirty, requiring that if the Negro behave well until then he should have “a good course set of freedom clothes.” He refers in the will to the estate of his father-in-law, James Porter, and to the testator’s son-in-law, James P. Porter. This will is dated February 26, 1811, and was probated May 25, 1819.

(j) Of Katherine Elizabeth I have no information.

(k) Elizabeth married John McCorkle. Patrick and Elizabeth were both baptized by the Rev. Dr. John Ewing, of Philadelphia.

(l) Patrick (II) married Isabella Polk, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She was born August 5, 1797, and died May 19, 1864. It appears that this Patrick under the will fell heir to and acquired the old home place and the bulk of his father’s Maryland estate. Patrick and wife Isabella had:

(11) Edwin E. Ewing, of Rising Sun, Maryland.

(12) Theodore, who long resided on the Joshua Ewing farm in Cecil County. The old house built by the immigrant was not razed until 1835.

(13) William Pinckney, who married Emma Pike, professor of domestic economy, and widely and favorably known for her cook books.

(14) Jane Ann P.

(15) Rebecca F. M., who married William J. Evans, and had Mary Rebecca, who married M. E. Kirk; Sidney C., who died young; Clara I, who married the successful Dr. Charles E. Turner; and Catharine P., now living in Manasquan, New Jersey, and in New York City, to whom the author is indebted for help regarding the Cecil County family.

(16) Elizabeth C., who married John N. Black, of Charleston, Maryland, 1893; and

(17) Margaret, who married James Evans.

In a letter to me, dated December 17, 1912, Mrs. Clara I. Turner, of Cecil County, says that when she was a girl she heard her mother speak of a visit paid to the Ewings of Cecil County by Miss Harriet Ewing, of Lee County, Virginia, and that her mother said Miss Ewing, then well advanced in years, was related to Mrs. Turner’s grandfather, Patrick II. She was a niece of that Patrick (the second). She made the trip on horseback, a distance of more than one thousand miles, as the wagon road then ran. Mrs. Turner also says, speaking of her memory as far back as 1871: “I heard my mother say that some of grandfather’s half-brothers went West.” This is the more important because those half-brothers were in Lee County, Virginia, which shows that up to a rather late day that section of Virginia was the “West” to the people in Northern Maryland.

Another son of Joshua Ewing (of Cecil County) was Nathaniel, one of the brothers of Capt. Patrick, and uncle of Samuel, the first sheriff of Lee County, Virginia. Born in Cecil County, Maryland, this Nathaniel, early in life, located on the frontiers of North Carolina, joining the advance picket line of kindred Ewings reaching along the borders of civilization from Pennsylvania to Georgia. He married Rebecca Osborne, daughter of Adlai Osborne of Rowan County, North Carolina. From Iredell County, North Carolina, Nathaniel moved to Christian County, Kentucky, and was there probably during 1816-’20.

To this Nathaniel and wife were born Alexander, 1816; James, 1818; Adlai, 1820; Nancy, who married Hampton; Ann, who married Moses Stephenson; and Jane, who married a McClellan.

Adlai married Sophia Wallace in North Carolina, and to them were born John Fielding, who became a distinguished minister of the Gospel; Alexander; Rebecca, who died without issue; Eliza, who married John T. Stevenson; Isabelle, who married W. W. McKenzie of Kentucky in 1839, and Katherine, who married Dr. T. F. Warrell.

To Eliza and John T. Stevenson were born Sophia E.; Adlai Ewing Stevenson, and Thomas W. Stevenson.

Adlai Ewing Stevenson was born in Kentucky, October 23, 1835. He became a distinguished lawyer and astute statesman; and was elected Vice-President of the United States for the term 1893-97. He died recently at his home in Bloomington, Illinois.

In a letter to me dated September 3, 1911, Adlai Ewing Stevenson says:

I am one of the Ewing family. My mother, Eliza Ewing, was born in Iredell County, North Carolina, October 28, 1809, and was married to John T. Stevenson in Christian County, Kentucky, April 26, 1832. She died in Bloomington, Illinois, March 26, 1900. Her father, Adlai Ewing, was a North Carolinian by birth. He died in Christian County, Kentucky, in 1820. His father, Nathaniel Ewing, my great grandfather, was a native of Cecil County, Maryland and emigrated to North Carolina some years before the Revolutionary War.

Another distinguished member of this family, who comes readily to mind, is Hon. James S. Ewing, a lawyer of much power, a cousin of A. E. Stevenson. This Ewing is a resident of Bloomington. His published addresses are substantial and worth reading.