52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 10- Changed My Thinking
Prompt: Genealogy is all about discovery. What is something you’ve found about an ancestor that changed your way of thinking about them? Perhaps genealogy has led you to think about bigger issues differently.
Approaching this assignment, I thought about what might have been bigger issues for my ancestors. The first thing that came to mind was the issue of slavery. One of the bigger issues of my adult life has been the cult of personality surrounding the current President. Juxtaposing those two specific issues made me wonder: how similar was the divisiveness that pervaded the country in the 1840s-1860s to that of present-day America?
In a recent post, I wrote about John Cathcart (1789-1864), my 3rd great-grandfather. I detailed how, in 1846, he and his son left their home in South Carolina to go on a reconnaissance mission to places north, scoping out a new home for the family. Ardently opposed to slavery, the family had been finding it increasingly difficult to live in a place where they were in the minority on the subject. In 1847, John and his extended family packed up their belongings and left South Carolina for a Covenanter community in Randolph County, Illinois, that he and his son had visited the year before. John’s elderly parents and his siblings remained in South Carolina.
John was one of eight children–all born in County Antrim–of patriarch James Cathcart (1763-1851.) James and his wife Nancy Beaty Cathcart (1765-1845) departed Ireland with other Scottish Covenanters to come to America. About the time of their arrival, their church became the Reformed Presbyterian Church in America. The Covenanter church had adopted a firm stance against slavery in 1800, prohibiting its members from holding slaves from that year onward. They formalized this in their Reformed Presbyterian Testimony in 1806, labeling slaveholding a sin against God. They were among the earliest American church bodies to abolish it within their ranks.
Cathcart family historian cousin Lois Eastwood Getty (1909-1988) provided the primary reference for the earlier post I linked to above. In The Kansas Cathcarts, Getty sites John and Mary’s opposition to slavery as their impetus to leave Winnsboro, South Carolina, with all of their children.
But looking more closely, I found that none of John’s siblings joined the wagon train with them. A little closer look revealed that, despite their church’s stance on the issue, all of John’s siblings were slaveholders. When the Civil War broke out fourteen years after John and family’s departure, at least two of John’s nephews fought for the Confederacy.
John and his family’s views had literally separated them from John’s siblings and their families.
This led me to reflect upon present-day America where members of families are estranged from each other because of polarizing views of the current President. For the past ten years, articles offering advice on how to survive the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with family members on opposite sides of the political divide have appeared with regularity. Had relationships between John and his siblings been similarly strained before the family’s departure? Did John and his family ever see those relatives again? Did they write letters to stay in touch?
Above, U.S. Federal Census Slave Schedules showing the numbers, genders, and ages of “enslaved persons” in the home of John’s brother Richard Cathcart (1792-1870). The record from the year 1850, above left, lists 28 total slaves; above right, the number enumerated in 1860 is 41.
Richard Cathcart must have amassed considerable wealth. In 1830, he built the imposing townhouse in Winnsboro, pictured below, to enjoy the amenities of the bustling town life away from his country cotton plantation.
When I began researching my family tree, I was not surprised to find records indicating that many of my ancestors, including these, owned slaves and fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. After all, many of them were farmers living in the South in the mid-19th century.
I refuse to “whitewash” my tree. I attach every record of Confederate service, every Slave Schedule, and every will in which slaves are listed as bequests.
To be clear, I include CSA military documents not because I am proud of my ancestors’ service. I pointedly do nothing to in any way honor or glorify those who fought for the Gray. For instance, I refuse to attach a Confederate flag image to any ancestor’s profile. I have assiduously avoided any additional visual references except for engraved images on headstones or free-standing flags or emblems left by others at burial sites.
This is my choice, but others on Ancestry.com have chosen to attach images venerating the Confederacy to some ancestors’ profiles. Similarly, one can find many heartfelt messages along the lines of “Thank you for your service,” on memorial pages for Confederate veterans on Find a Grave’s website.
I see very little difference between those who chose to secede from and then wage war against the United States and those who perpetrated violence upon our nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021. I have zero tolerance for “Lost Cause” or “heritage” arguments or any sentimentality about the customs and traditions of the South before 1865. As much as I love the acting and the cinematography, I have trouble watching Gone with the Wind for that reason as well.
This, then, is an example of how discoveries I have made researching my family tree have not changed my mind on a bigger issue. In spite of finding out that I have close ancestors who fought against the Union and were slaveholders, my views are unchanged. Quite simply, it is my belief that these ancestors were on the wrong side of history.
Having recently made the discovery that John Cathcart was alone among his siblings in leaving the South well before Civil War broke out did, however, change my thinking about him, his wife Mary Harper Cathcart (1789-1873), and his four daughters and five sons.
As I mentioned in the earlier post I referenced above, I already had a tremendous respect for this family having undertaken such a laborious relocation. But when I learned that their views on slavery had not aligned with the majority of their close family—and they resolved to leave anyway—my admiration of John and his family has grown even more.
I found no records indicating that the Illinois Cathcarts worked directly for the Underground Railroad. However, there are numerous references to Covenanters and those of other denominations in southwest Illinois having done so.
Wilbur H Siebert states in his book The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom that Covenanters had already begun assembling such an operation in Randolph County, Illinois, before the Cathcarts arrived. Rev. Robert Love Ramsey (1820-1884)–a fellow Covenanter and relative–first engaged in such work in Eden, Illinois, in 1840. He continued to do so through the war.
Siebert also mentions the individuals Rev. William Sloane (1786-1863) and the brothers Thomas McClurken (1816-1898) and Rev. John Johnston McClurkin (1813-1907)–fellow Covenanters and relatives–among those who worked on the Railroad in Washington County, Illinois: the very next stop on that Railroad route.
Eden was also the home of a man named William Hayes (1795-1841). Hayes, who is my relative by marriage, was also a Covenanter. Historically, he is one of the most well known of those who worked on the Railroad in southwestern Illinois. This is primarily because in 1842, a local angry slaveowner whose slaves Hayes and his wife had harbored took him to court. (While Illinois was technically a free state, slavery still existed there in places where legal authorities were sympathetic to slavery.)
Hayes lost the court case and an appeal as well. He died shortly after the case, leaving his widow and children destitute from his loss of income and his legal fees. Accounts of this particular case are detailed on the Randolph Society website, and the books The Underground Railroad in Western Illinois by Owen W. Muelder and Escape Betwixt Two Suns: A True Tale of the Underground Railroad in Illinois by Carol Pirtle.
Ramsey and Hayes were both members of the same congregation that the Cathcarts joined: Bethel Reformed Presbyterian Church in Sparta. Their pastor, Rev. Samuel Wiley (1790-1872) spearheaded the formation of the Railroad in the area. Considering the level of commitment to the Underground Railroad by fellow parishioners and their pastor, it is likely that the Cathcarts aided these efforts in some way, even if their home was not a “station” on the Railroad.
Regardless of the Cathcarts’ level of involvement, all of the above makes clear that the Reformed Presbyterian Church in southwestern Illinois in the 1840, 1850s, and 1860s was a community of people with similar convictions as the Cathcarts, possessing the same dedication to living in accordance with those principles.
I already held John Cathcart in high esteem as evidenced in my earlier post. But my admiration for him has grown even more since finding out that he refused to be a slaveholder even though all of his siblings were and that he acted in opposition to this by moving his entire family to a free state to start a new life surrounded by those whose ethics aligned with his own.
“The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” —Harper Lee
Loved this piece! It ties in well with work I have done. The S. Carolina problem was that farms not using slaves were at an economic disadvantage to the slave using plantations and forced a “join them or leave them” decision. There was also the very real possibility of violence not only from slave using farmers but the slaves themselves that were prone to kill white people indiscriminately when rebellions surffaced. It was the ultimate toxic workplace.
Yes, this is true. I elaborated in another post about the economic disadvantages to those who were not slaveholders. I’m sure that, for the Cathcarts and others, it was not a purely ethical decision.