|
a.
|
Note: A widow (surname unkown). Brown Family in VA and SC by Elizabeth Willis defHuff 1964 Catherine Brown, owned the pens located at Steel Creek on the Savannah, getting her first grant 5/3/1757 and increasing the pens to 400 acres by 1761. 1757-1781: �Catherine Brown's Cowpens� An extensive archaological investigation of a site on Steel Creek of the Savannah River uncovered a small dwelling and evidence of settlement and cattle-herding activities during the second half of the 18th century. The site was burned in 1781, per evidence that included a button issued to the Royal Provincial (Loyalist) regiments (marked RP), a coin minted in Ireland in 1781, and a pewter spoon handle marked �I Brown� (�J�, per initialization conventions of the time). The archaeological team called the site �Catherine Brown's Cowpens�, and connected it to a 3 May 1757 survey for a Catherine Brown, then further associated it with Bartlett Brown, because he had a wife named Catherine. They noted that a 100-acre grant to a woman was unexplained, because married women did not hold property in their own right, barring special legal circumstances. However, no other person named Brown held land in the Steel Creek region during the Colonial era. The identification cannot possibly be accurate. On 1 Mar 1757, a group of 13 persons petitioned the SC Council together for grants �on the Bounty�: a type of grant available only to �forreign Protestants� who had emigrated directly to SC. Twelve of the petitioners had distinctively-German names; the other was a Catherine Brown [Kathrina Braun?] who requested 100 acres--the amount of land for a single head-of-household at that time. Her survey was adjacent to lands of William Pinckney to her south, and to Steel Creek to her east. Under colonial SC law, Deputy Surveyors were required to identify a tract of land by the proprietary county (or township or judicial district) in which it was first surveyed/laid out, by its location on waterways, and by the names of the persons for whom adjacent properties were initially surveyed (even if never granted, or under new ownership). In practice, the surveyors occasionally identified a current owner rather than the initial surveyee, or might indicate the name of an occupant who had no legal claim to the adjacent land. When land changed hands via unrecorded transactions, a chain-of-title might be inferred via later recorded transfers, or sometimes merely implied by subsequent surveys. The 100-acre survey (3 May 1757) and grant (22 Jun 1759) of immigrant Catherina Brown is not directly referenced in the extant land records following her land memorial of 6 May 1761. However, it can be placed along Steel Creek because this was the tract immediately north of William Pinckney; that particular Pinckney tract was mentioned in later surveys. In particular, John Clayton and Thomas Vince petitioned jointly on 2 Feb 1773 for 500 acres �on Steel Creek Joining lands of Mr. Pinckney�. The 500 acre-tract was surveyed for John Clayton (only), and it identifies the relative locations of the landowners of the west side of Steel Creek downstream from its fork with Ned's Branch (currently Myer's Branch), a stretch of land extending four miles south from the fork down Steel Creek to its mouth on the Savannah River. The archaeological site named �Catherine Brown's Cowpens� on Steel Creek is two miles upstream from, and northwest of, the fork of Steel Creek and Ned's Branch. The owner or occupant of that site is not identified in extant land records. A 150-acre tract located around the fork was surveyed for John Shilling on 19 May 1768. It noted a claim of Bartlett Brown on its southeast side, although Brown did not (then) have a claim to any property along Steel Creek, and was resident at the Red Bluff of the Savannah, per the memoirs of his nephew Tarlton Brown. Bartlett Brown petitioned for 550 acres on 6 Apr 1773, land surveyed on 25 Apr 1773, completely surrounding the Shilling tract at the fork; Brown purchased the Shilling land (deed unrecorded, but Brown sold both tracts together in 1784). The land south of Bartlett Brown was surveyed for John Clayton (500 acres, 19 Feb 1773); to Clayton's south was a tract of Thomas Vince (50 acres, 18 May 1768). Below Vince was land �purchased by� John Collins (unrecorded deed); however, the John Collins location adjoined William Pinckney to his south, placing it in the exact location of the 1757 survey of Catherina Brown. The implication is that John Collins had purchased the tract, either from Catherina Brown or from a subsequent owner. The Steel Creek land south of Pinckney was surveyed for Indian-trader Daniel Clark (100 acres, 23 May 1757). From a comparison of the size and locations of adjoining tracts, property held by Bartlett Brown was over a mile south of the excavation site of �Catherine Brown's Cowpen�; the Catherine Brown/John Collins land was nearly a mile south of Bartlett Brown's land around the fork of Steel Creek. The locations can all be described as �near� one another, because Steel Creek is a short waterway. The Revolutionary War claims of Bartlett Brown Sr., and most members of his family, were submitted in Beaufort District rather than Orangeburgh. This is evidence that his place of residence remained at the Red Bluff site on the Savannah from at least 1764 throughout the Revolution. He may have used the Steel Creek fork location as a site for cattle-herding, as other settlers did. He cannot be associated with the immigrant Catherina Brown of the 1757 plat, and neither of them can be placed at the �Cowpens� dig.[ From Harriet Imery]
|