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Note: ) Abner Wiseman. b: 1772 d: 1830 parents: Isaac Wiseman (1738-1818) Elizabeth Davis Wiseman (1738-1807) From "A History of Monroe County, West Virginia" by Oren F. Morton, B. Lit. Baltimore Regional Publishing Company 1988, Page 101: Wiseman, Abner -- of Daniel (Sarah) Neal -- 93 -- 5s -- Lick Run -- 1798, (See defination of terms in William Blanton's notes) Page 472: Monroe Voters in 1800: Qualified voters for the presidential election of November 3, 1800 had to own land in order to vote. Abner Wiseman was included on this list. Page 479-81: Residents of 1799 were placed on a tax list. This is one of the first lists of the residents of Monroe County. Abner, Isaac Sr, Isaac Jr, John, and Joseph were on this list. From Monroe County (W) Virginia Abstracts Deeds (1799-1817) Wills (1799-1829) Sim's Land Grant Index (1780-1862) compiles by Larry G Shuck. Published by Closon Press Apollo, Pennsylvania. Page 5 - Abner Wiseman was elected an elector to elect the president and vice president on 3 Nov 1800. Page 6 - 23 Dec 1800: Abner Wiseman and wife Isbel Wiseman to William Rice 93 acres for five shillings on Dropping Lick Creek adj Richard Ramsey, Jacob Miller and Clayburn Rucker. Page 6 - 21 Apr 1801; William Tennis and wife Elizabeth Tennis to Abner Wiseman 82 acres fror five shillings in the Sinks adj Robert Willey. Page 28 - 15 Dec 1807 John Mahan and wife Mary Mahan to Phillip Hall 40 acres for $1.00 part of the tract said Mahan which he acquired from James Scarbrow adj John Blanton, Enoch Bogges, LeanardFisher formerly Abner Wiseman and land said Hall bought from Michael Kounts DEATH: Death date in the book "The Wisemans", 2nd Ed 1992, by B. W. Venable is listed as 1823. buried in Cool Springs Cemetary The following information is taken from “The Wisemans” 2nd Edition, 1992. Compiled by Boyd W Venable of 2312 Branner Avenue, Jefferson City, Tennessee, 3760, a Wiseman descendant. Abner Wiseman was Isaac Jr's eighth child, born in 1772 in Berks County, Pennsylvania. He married Isabell Blanton on February 18, 1799 and lived on Dropping Lick in Monroe County, Virginia from 1798 to about 1802. Abner and Isabell are our ancestors. Their story is told more in detail farther on in this account. They moved to Kentucky around 1802. Abner was still registered as a voter in Monroe County in 1800, and his name can be found in the records of Clark County, Kentucky for 1805. They had eleven children, seven boys and four girls. Besides Isabell and her brother, all the Blantons (Abner's in-laws) moved to Kentucky later on. The total population of Monroe County, Virginia in 1820 was 5,709, including 501 slaves, 66 free Negroes, and 40 people who had no home. So far as I have been able to ascertain none of our branch of the Wiseman family were ever in possession of black slaves. Abner(Sr) and Isabell (Blanton) Wiseman are our Kentucky ancestors . Abner was born in 1772. He is believed to have been born in Berks County. Pennsylvania, but his oldest surviving son (Abner Wiseman Jr) in 1880 at age 77 told the census taker that his father was born in Maryland. Abner Sr died in 1823 in Estill County, Kentucky. Isabell was born in 1775 in Monroe County, Virginia and died in 1854 in Estill County, Kentucky. They came over the mountains to what was then Clark County, Kentucky from Monroe county, Virginia in 1801 or 1802. Monroe County is now a part of West Virginia since Union West Virginia was separated from Confederate Virginia in 1863 during the American Civil War, and the part of Clark County where Abner settled in Kentucky is now in Estill County. Abner Wiseman, the 6th son of Isaac Wisernan Jr, was only three years old when the American Revolution began in 1775 and six years old in 1778 when his family moved out west of the mountains to the frontier in Yohogania County, Virginia (later reclassified as Westmoreland County, Pennylvania) Abnerr would have been but a small child when the family went south to North Carolina, and he would have been growing up as they returned to Washington County, Maryland and Rockingharm County, Virginia. The first record of Abner as an individual apart from his father's family is in 1797 when he was 25 years old and acquired 93 acres of land on Dropping (Dripping?) Lick in the Greenbrier Valley of Monroe County, Virginia west of the Allegheny Mountains. His father and four of his brothers settled nearby with their families. Two years later, on February 18, 1799 when he was 27 years old, Abner married Isabell Blanton there in Monroe County and continued to farm at Dropping Lick until he sold out and moved to Kentucky in 1801 or 1802. Abner and Isabell walked 300 miles over the mountains to Winchester, Kentucky, and on south to a site on the east bank of the Kentucky River in what was then Clark County. Isabell would have been pregnant with her second child William while her first child, Thomas was still an infant during the trip. Depending on when they made the move, William could have been born in either Virginia or Kentucky, possibly en route. Abner was still a registered voter in Virginia in 1800 and his oldest son Thomas was born in Virginia, September 30, 1800. Abner Jr, the 3rd son, was born in February of 1803 in Kentucky, so they made the move between those two years in 1801 or 1802. Kentucky the first state west of the Allegheny mountains to be admitted to the Union, had been a State for but 10 years in 1802, and was still a raw and undeveloped country when Abner and Isabell arrived. In Winchester, Kentucky (a very old town - Clark County records there date hack to 1793). there is on record a deed dated l/23, 1806 from Aquilla White of Madison County, Kentucky to Abner Wiseman of Clarke County for 335 acres of land “on the waters of Kentucky river, it being the land said Wiseman lives on.. (legal description )“. From the Estill County records: On 7/29, 1807 Abner Wiseman bought 250 acres of land ���in Clark County on Waters of Kentucky” from David McKinney. The tract purchased was a part of 500 acres previously patented by McKinney. That location would have been in the vicinity of Cal1oway's Crossing of the Kentucky River in what was later to become Estill County. The following year (1808) Clark and other counties were redivided to form, among others, Estill County. Clark County was named after George Rogers Clark, who commanded frontier volunteers in the West. (now known as the Midwest) against the British and their Indian allies in the Revolutionary war. (Clark was older brusher to William Clark of the famous Lewis and Clark exploration of 1804 - 1806 across the Louisiana Purchase to Oregon). Estill County was named after Captain James Estll who led a punitive party against Wyandotte Indians after a raid on Boonesborough, and who was killed near Mount Sterling when the Indians wiped them out. In January of 1819 Abner bought another 200 acres from Chilton Allen “above the mouth of Calloway's Creek on the north side of the Kentucky River” for the price of $150. He also bought another 722 acres on White Oak Creek from Chilton Allen for $160, in a deal that was consummated with the Wiseman heirs 4/20,1825, a year and a half after Abner died. That made a total of 1457 acres, including the present site of Estill County High School and the site on the river where the Southeastern Coal Company now operates a coal preparation plant. Those land prices sound cheap today, but we have to understand that cash was hard and scarce (by hard I mean gold and sliver coinage, also known as specie). Abner also bought an interest in some downtown city lots in the nearby town of Irvine, which General Green Clay was then developing. Abner sold 100 acres to Jeremiah King for 100 pounds sterling in 1809, and Lot No.12 in Irvine to Moses Price for $400 in 1818, and some property on the river for $50 to Joel White in 1823, all without Isabell's signature on the deeds. And there was some river property sold to Littleberry Abney in 1819. Isabell sued for her dower rights on all those deals later on after Abner died in 1825. In those days the men of the family could usually read and write, but the women could not. That would have been a serious disability to a widow such as Isabell. When Abner and Isabell Wiseman came from Virginia to Kentucky, it was a major move for them, and must have token close to a month on the trail. In those days the roads through the Appalachian Mountains were mostly mere pack trails, although some had apparently been widened enough to accommodate wagons. They had three options as to a route: (1)The southern trail by way of The Wilderness Road, (2)the Kanawha River Valley Trail through the Appalachian Mountains and Plateau, and (3) the Ohio River route. Most immigrants to Kentucky came the southern route by way of Daniel Boone's wilderness Road because it was safer from hostile Indians than the Ohio River route and less mountainous than the Kanauha Trail. I think Abner, Isabell, and their party took the Kanawha Trail. It would have been a hundred miles shorter for them because of their starting location west of the Alleghenies. However, the following historical account of the Wilderness Road is worth noting as background in visualizing conditions of the times. The Wilderness Road The Wilderness Road which Daniel Boone laid out for Judge Henderson and the Transylvania Company in 1775 when they bought most of Kentucky and part of Tennessee from Cherokee Indians was only a packhorse trail until 1796 when it was enlarged so wagons could get over it. Bishop Asbury described it in 1803 as “Certainly the worst on the whole continent”, and even after a tollgate was installed in Cumberland Gap in 1805 to help pay for road maintenance, it was described twenty years later in 1825 as being intolerable in most seasons of the year. Long stretches were still almost impassable. In those days people were used to poor roads, if they said a road was bad, it really was. Most immigrants to Kentucky came over the route I have just described. It started at Sycamore Shoals, North Carolina (now Kinqsport, Tennessee), then went back north into Virginia on the present route of U.S.Highway 58, crossing the Holston, Clinch and Powell Rivers, due west along the southern border of Virginia to Cumberland Gap where the borders of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee meet at a point. Then back north again through central Kentucky to Boonesborough on the Kentucky River. If Abner and Isabell had gone this way it would have been somewhat roundabout because they would have had to back track over the Alleghenies to Lexington, Virginia, then go south on the Warpath following the present route of U.S. Highway 11 to Sycamore Shoals before starting on the Wilderness Road into Kentucky. The total distance would have been more than 400 miles to Calloway's Crossing that way. The Transylvania Company In January, 1775 (before the Revolution, and in defiance of King George's edict of 1763), on behalf of his Transylvania Company partnership, Judqe Richard Henderson of North Carolina agreed to pay the Cherokees $10,000 in trade goods for all the land between the Cumberland and Kentucky Rivers Kentucky and Tennessee. At the Sycamore Shoals negotiations he threw a big party with plenty of food for all the Cherokees who came, and gave them six wagonloads of trade goods in payment. Rum was withheld until after the negotiations were concluded, for obvious reasons. Oconostota, Principal Chief of the Cherokees, and Attakullakuila (Little Carpenter), the Cherokees Ambassador to the King of England, agreed to the deal. Dragging Canoe, a subchief, refused to agree, and was hostile afterward. As soon as the deal was concluded, Daniel Boone took a company of men and chopped out a packhorse trail over Cumberland Gap into Kentucky so settlers could get into the area. Henderson then sold many tracts in Kentucky to sett1ers and claimed title to land sold by others who were coming in by other routes, so there were overlapping claims and enduring title conflicts. All told, Transylvania sold about 560,000 acres. The going price was 13 -1/2 cents per acre, with mineral rights 50% retairted by Transylvania. During the Revolution, in 1776, the Virginia Assesmbly voided the Transylvania Company title, except for land already sold and occupied. In 1778, as recompense to Transylvanin that company was awarded title to 200,000 acres of wilderness along the Ohio River in northwest Kentucky (now Henderson, Hopkins and Union Counties), across the Ohio River from what is row Evansville, Indiana and Shawneetown, Illinois. Henderson afterward sold real estate in French Lick (now Nashville, Tennessee) and died in North Carolina at the age of 49. The Abner Wiseman property was on the east side of the Kentucy River, so probably out of the original Transylvaniia Company claim. Fort Boonesborough, Transylvania Company headquarters, has recently been reconstructed on the original site, and maintained and staffed by the State of Kentucky as a historical display. The Kenawha Trail The Kenawha trail, which was taken by our ancestors Abner and Isabell Wiseman in 1801/1802, ran from Lexington, Virginia to Lexington, Kentucky, over the Alleghenies through the present site of Covington, Virginia and White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia over the Greenbrier River to Muddy Creek and the Meadow River, then down the Meadow through Rainelle and up onto the Appalachian Plateau to reach Ansted. From Ansted the trail apparently looped around via Rich, Twenty Mile, Bell and Kelly's creeks so as to cross the Gauley River upstream, then back down to Cedar Grove on the Kenawha. From Cedar Grove they tollowed down the Kenawha River valley to where the city of Charleston row stands. Then west across rolling hills to the Kentucky border where the Big Sandy river debouches into the Ohio at what is now called Kenova. The trail then crossed the Big Sandy and continued on over the Licking River and through hill country to Lexington, Kentucky by way of Winchester. Most of that route is now followed by U. S. Highway 60 and is designated a scenic route called the Midway Trail. There is not a lot of literature about pioneer use of this trail, but there is evidence of early use. The record shows that 20,000 hogs weredriven over the Kenawha trail in one year of the early 1820s, so the trail rnust have been passable. In the same year 70,000) hogs were driven to market over Cumberland Gap. The total. value of those hogs was $660,000. The Kanawha Trail to Calloway's Crossing would have been about a 300 mile trip for Abner and Isabel1 considering their starting point and destination. Since that route would have been shorter than the Wilderness Road route, I think they came the Kanawha way. The Kenawha River of West Virginia is the same one called the New River in Virginia and North Carolina. It is an ancient river which flows northwest out of North Carolina instead of east to the Atlantic Ocean. Its waters have cut the New River Gorge right through the Appalachians to the Mississippi drainage by way of the Ohio River and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico. Its flow pattern was altered in West Virginia by glaciers of the Ice Ages. Three hundred miles over the mountains on a pack trail with a one year old child and another on the way must have been a rough way to go, but probably no more difficult than the Wisemans roundabout migration from Pennsylvania to Greenbrier earlier. Today we can drive the Kenauha Trail, now known as the Midway Trail, from Lexington, Virginia to Lexington, Kentucky in a day, following the ��scenic route” over U.S. Highway 60. It probably took Abner and Isabell close to a month walking or on horseback with a string of pack animals or a wagon. The Ohio River route wasn't as much in use at that time, as noted before, because of the threat of hostile Indians on the north bank. That situation continued until alter the War of 1812 was over in 1815, however some hardy settlers did come to the new state of Ohio before 1810. Abner Wiseman's older brother, Samuel Wiseman, for one. Abner and Isabell Wiseman lived in Estill County in the valley of White Oak Creek, on property now owned by Orville Meade. White Oak Creek is located east of the Kentucky River and about three miles by State Route 89 northwest ot the town of Irvine. The “old home place” is about two miles northeast of Route 89 on paved County Road 1705 up White Oak Creek. The house still existed in a derelict condition until recently, but it has since burned down. Only the two tall brick fireplace chimneys now remain (see photo). The Cool Springs Cemetery where Abner Wiseman Sr. his wife Isabell and others of his family are buried is nearby, southwest of “the old home place”, above the southeast bank of the creek and a hundred yards or so behind the White Oak Church of God. Besides Abner and Isabel, William Wiseman (Abner's 2nd son) and his wife Docia (Abney) are buried here along with some of their descendants. William E Wise, who lives in the nedrby town of Ravenna, is one of William and Docia's descendants. The marker stones of the older graves are not inscribed, but there are several more recent ones that are. They include one stone marker at the grave of Charlotte Becknell Wiseman, Abner Jr's first wife who died in 1831 at the age of 21. A graveyard immediately behind the Church of God has Wiseman grave markers of more recent date. Just across the road and up the hill in the woods to the southeast is the McDowell graveyard where our ancestor Elizabeth Wiseman McDowell is buried along with her husband Samuel McDowell. A John Wiseman is buried there also. There are three other Wiseman graveyards within a few miles. One is on the Calloway Creek Road overlooking the sawmill, where there is a Henry B Wiseman grave, but that is not Abner Sr's son Henry B, but another Henry B of a later generation. There is another Wiseman graveyard at Wiseman Crossing near Tipton's farm, but no close kin of ours are buried there. Aso, there is an old Wiseman cemetery at Wisemantown, two miles southwest of Irvine, where Abner Wiseman Jr. his wile Sophia (Brown), and their descendants are interred. This cemetery is maintained by Leonard Farthing, who lives just across the road from it. Abner and Isahell Wiseman had eleven children. They were: Thomas B, born 1800 in Virginia; William, born 1802; Abner Jr. born 2/5, 1803 in Kentucky; Isaac(4), born 1809; Elizabeth (Betsy), born 1810; Jacob, born 1/1811; Jane, born 1812; Diannah (Anna, Dianner), born 1814; Isabell Jr (Ibby), born 1816; Joseph, born 1818; and Henry B, born 9/21, 1821. Abner Wiseman Sr died in Estill County, Kentucky in 1823 at the age of 51 . There is no direct documentation of his exact date of death, but in the county records at Irvine there are several filings by Thomas Wisewan, administrator of Abners estate. The earliest of these is dated March 11, 1824, which would imply that Abner died about six months earlier, around September, 1823. There is also a 7/21, 1824 billing against the estate by Benjamin Sluyk, contractor, regarding an Auqust 18, 1823 deal between Sluyk and Abner Wiseman, which states that Abner had “departed the life” since then, and seens to verify the latter part of 1823 as Abner's date of death. I have no way of knowing his cause of death. Abner Wiseman had lived a hard life, what with his nomadic travels all over the east, crossing the Appalachian mountains at least three times, farming and building and raising a family of eleven children (he didn’t live long enough to finish raising them.) He was a farmer and livestock raiser, a building contractor, speculated in real estate, and was partner with John Bennett in a saloon in the town of Irvine after that town was laid out by General Green Clay in 1812. Abner was also Estill County Commissioner and a trustee of Estill Seminary, a private school (There was no free public schooling then. Abner donated the land for it). The Estill County Middle School now stands on the site (see photo). Abner Wiseman was a pioneer who helped settle the American frontier. Born a subject of the British Crown in eastern Pennsylvania, he lived to see an independent United States of America extend all the way from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains (but not yet to the Pacific Ocean) . Three wars punctuated his lifetime, two of them with England (the American Revolution 1775-1781 and the war of 1812-l815). The other war took place far away from Kentucky, the Barbary war in the Mediterranean Sea between the United States and the Barbary States of North Africa starting in 1801 when the Pasha of Tripoli ordered the flagpole of the American consolate chopped down. The U.S. had been paying $83,00 for protection against pirates (Corsairs), and the Pasha conluded the payments were too niggardly. That War took place, off and on, from 1803 to 1815. What were then known as the barbary States are now Libya, Tunisia and Algeria. A small army led by seven U.S. Marines captured the town of Derna in Tripoli (now Libya), which accounts for the reference in the Marine Corps Hymn: “From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli”. The recent bombing of Colonel Khadhafi's tent in Libya reminds us of those long ago events. Other than`those wars, the four most important national events that took place during his adult years were: (1) Inflation of the currency after the Revolution. The Continental Currency which financed the Revolution lost its purchasing power because the Continental Congress had no taxing power to back it up. (Eventually redeemed during the Jackson Administration at one cent on the dollar, hence the expression “not worth a Continental”). There was a second bout of inflation 1811 - 1816. That one was caused by unregulated banks creating money. (2) The Louisiana Purchase in 1804, when Napoleon Bonaparte sold all of France's claims west of the Mississippi River to the United Staes for a price of $15,000,000, mostly in bonds. That during Thomas Jeiferson's Presidency, doubled the size of the United States. It included a vast area Which was defined by the drainage of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers at their tributaries. Napoleon needed the money to finance His wars in Europe. Later on, some of the Wisemans, including our ancestor, Isaac Wiseman V, settled in Iowa, which had been a part of the Missouri Territory portion of the Louisiana Purchase. (3) The depression beginning in 1819. and (4) A failed filibuster in 1806 led by former Vice President Aaron Burr, General James Wilkinson and financier Harman Blennerhasset, whose purpose, it is said, was to detach Kentrucky from the Union and combine it with Mexico and Louisiana to form a new nation west of the Appalachians. The War of 1812 settled several important matters between the United States and Great Britain. The issue of impressing seamen from United States ships for British warship crews which orginalIy brought on the war was not mentioned in the peace Treaty of Ghent in 1814, but the practice was nonetheless stopped. The British burned the Capitol at Washinqton D.C. , the White House, the War and State and Treasury Buildings, but spared the Patent Office after the Superintendent stood out front and demanded a stop to the vandalism. The White House was looted by local riffraff in the short interval between President and Dolly Madison's departure and the arrival of British officers. Dolly saved the Presidential silver by carrying it off in her handbag, and the Stuart portrait of George Washington was also saved. Though they burned Washington, the British were unable to reconquer the nation because of its vast size and hostile population. An army of 7000 Kentucky volunteers attempted unsuccessfully to take Canada from the British and their Indian allies led by Tecumseh. That campaign pretty much settled the location of the Canadian border in the midwest from then on to the present time, and also put an end to Indian raids stirred up by the British. The U.S. and Britain have been at peace ever since. Also, the Battle of New Orleans put an end to British imperial rights of navigation on the Mississippi River. Two other significant events took place late in 1811 . One event was when the first paddlewheel steamboat reached the mouth of the Ohio River. The other, at the same time, was the strongest earthquake ever to rock the United States. Its center was near New Nadrid, Missouri, on the Kentucky border. A series of shocks rolled all the way across Kentucky like mighty waves, reversing the flow of the Mississippi River brief1y, and rippling the ground like waves in water. Five thousand square miles dropped an average vertical distance of ten feet, swamping bottomland farms and forming Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee. Effects of the War of 1812 included an acute shortage of money. Transactions were then conducted in “specie”, which is gold and silver coinage. Treasuries of both the Kentucky and United States governments were practically empty from expenses connected with the War of 1812, and they hadn't yet learned how to manage government deficits by collecting taxes. Paper money was issued by banks, but devalued by the public, and some 46 banks failed in Kentucky in 1819 as a result. Depression followed as prices fell for lack of buyers with cash. Corn, for example, sold as low as ten cents a bushel. Another casualty of the War of 1812 and the Bank Panic of 1819 was the conservative Federalist political party, which then disapeared. The political parties in Kentucky became the Relief and Anti-Relief parties. The Relief party supported debtors who couldn't get their hands on any hard money to pay their debts, and the Anti- Reliefs represended lenders, who wanted to foreclose. Debtor-relief bills were enacted in 1820, making foreclosures more difficult. Abner Wiseman was a proximate contemporary of Andrew Jackson, the old Indian fighter who was elected President of the United States in 1828. Jackson was born five years earlier than Abner and lived 22 years longer. Napoleon Bonaparte was another contemporary. The first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean (the Savannah) made its maiden voyage in 1819, four years before Abner died. In 1959 the first atomic powered steamship was named the Savannah in honor of that early voyage. Abner Wiseman died in Estill County, Kentucky in 1823 and is buried in Cool Springs cemetery. His wife Isabell lived on for another 31 years until she died in 1854.
Note: BURIAL: Wiseman Cemetery, Estill County, Kentucky. (Find A Grave.com
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