Margaret 'Peggy' Brown - evergreen frontier matriarch

Billy Kennedy reports on the trials and tribulations on the 18th century Tennessee frontier.

American frontier women did not come any tougher and hardier than Margaret 'Peggy' Brown, who was born in Co Antrim in April 1701 and died in Middle Tennessee in September 1801, aged one hundred years, five months and 17 days.

  Margaret was a real American pioneer, a matriarch, who, when she was 84, braved the perils of the frontier with her family and in-laws in a journey of hundreds of miles over mountains, through forests and across dangerous Indian country from North Carolina to a new settlement on the Cumberland River in Middle Tennessee.

 The journey was to have very tragic results for the wider Brown family.

 Family records show that Peggy Brown's father, Joseph Fleming, was a land owner of substance in Ulster and as a teenager she married William Brown, a farmer from Londonderry, where the couple lived for a number of years and where six of their seven children (four sons and three daughters) were born.

 Members of the Brown and Fleming families defended Londonderry for the Protestant Williamite cause during the famous Siege there in 1688-89.

 William and Peggy Brown sailed for America in 1745, landing at New Castle, Delaware, settling over a period at Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.

 The Browns moved to North Buffalo Creek in Guilford County, North Carolina to take up a land grant of 411 acres from the Earl of Granville, acting on behalf of King George II, but William did not live long to enjoy the newly-acquired land and he died in December, 1757, aged 70.

 His wife Peggy was 14 years younger and, with the family gathered around her, she doggedly maintained the frontier farm land, instilling a determination within the family circle to resist any danger that came their way, from hostile Indian attack.

 Colonel James Brown, a son, moved with his wife Jane Gillespie after the Revolutionary War from Guilford County in North Carolina to Maury County in Middle Tennessee.  He had been given a certificate payable in western lands for his military service and the move had tragic consequences for the family in May 1788.

 James made a preliminary trip to the region to select a track of land and, while he returned to round up the family for the journey to new territory, two sons Daniel and William were left to prepare a clearing and build a log cabin.

 A large boat was built on the Holston River and two-inch planks placed around the gunwales had holes for firing and the vessel was equipped with a small swivel gun to ward off hostile Indians on the dangerous river journey along the Tennessee River to Middle Tennessee.

 The party that set off included James Brown, wife Jane (Gillespie), four sons James, John, Joseph and George; three daughters Jane, Elizabeth and Polly, five other young men and a black woman.

 Five days after leaving the Holston River region, the Browns were "befriended" at the Tennessee River just west of present-day Chattanooga by Indian chief Cotetoy and two of his tribesmen from the Tuskagee River reservation.

 Other Indians were alerted and 40 of them arrived in a fleet of canoes, hoisting a flag of truce.  They said they wanted to trade, but hidden under their blankets were rifles.  Unwittingly, James Brown allowed them to board the boat, with tragic results.

 In a bloody assault James Brown's head was cut from his body and thrown into the river.  Two sons James and John and the five young men who had joined the family were also killed in the massacre and the surviving members - wife Jane, and five children - were taken captive.

 One son was detained by the Shawnee tribe for five years and Jane Brown and one of her daughters were forced to march hundreds of miles to Ohio.  They returned to settle at the Duck River in Maury County and the county's first court was held in the log cabin home of a son Joseph, one of those held captive by the Indians.

 Jane Gillespie Brown, whose Gillespie family had emigrated from Ulster at about the same time as the Browns, lived at Maury County until her death in 1831.  She was 48 when the massacre occurred.

 In September 1794, the Brown sons Daniel, William, Joseph and George obtained revenge for the massacre of their brothers when they wiped out the Indian settlement at Nickajack.

 Before they left on his expedition, Jane Brown said: "The Brown women will wait while their men folk ride off.  We've waited before, and we can wait again.  It is the lot of women to wait.  We'll be here when you come home."

 On Jane Brown's tombstone in a disused cemetery off the Main Street in Columbia, the county capital, is an inscription relating to the facts of the May, 1788 massacre and carrying a tragic footnote: "The reason I tell you these things O reader is so that you will know at what cost this liberty which you enjoy today was won for you.  People lost their lives and liberty in obtaining this good land that you enjoy."

 A few months before the Brown attack three frontier surveyors Captain William Pruett, Moses Brown and Daniel Johnston were killed by Indians and, in another  incident, leading frontiersman Anthony Bledsoe lost his life.

 These attacks were avenged by the local militia force, led by James Robertson, one of the heroes of the Battle of Kings Mountain and a leader of the Watauga settlement in East Tennessee.

 The Brown massacre and other Indian killings had a devastating effect on the Scots-Irish settler families in the region and tensions remained high for several decades until peace treaties and population movement of the tribes brought the violent hostilities to an end.

 Peggy Brown, the family matriarch, spent her later days with her youngest daughter Jane, who married Reese Porter, son of an Ulster-born couple Hugh and Violet Mackey Porter.  Peggy is buried at Springhill Cemetery near Nashville.

 Hugh Porter was a justice of the peace at Orange county, North Carolina and he owned 293 acres of land close to the Brown homesteads in Guilford County.  Reese served with his father in the militia and in the Revolutionary War he was at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse.

 Family records claim Jane Porter infiltrated through enemy lines during the War to free her husband, who was being held captive in a log cabin, and for his military service, Reese received land grants of 3,640 acres at the Tennessee, Elk and Duck Rivers in Middle Tennessee.

 The problem with this land was that Cherokee Indians still had the legal rights to it, and during the twenty years of a protracted wrangle Reese Porter and his family lived at Nashville (Fort Nashborough).

 His wife Jane died just before they were given the go-ahead in 1806 to move onto the land and the family plantation on Reese's death extended to more than 2,500 acres.

 Grandsons of William and Peggy Brown fought with General Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812: Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Brown, commanding the 27th Infantry Regiment and serving alongside his cousin Lieutenant William Porter.

 The Browns and the Porters, who were also connected through marriage with the Pillow and Sterrett families from Ulster, were strong Presbyterian stock, closely identified with congregations in various American frontier regions where they settled.

Women of the Frontier by Billy Kennedy. Published by Ambassador International, Ardenlee Street, Belfast BT6 8QJ and 427 Wadehampton Boulevard, Greenville, South Carolina 29609. £9.99 and $15. Website: www.emeraldhouse.com.