| Notes |
- In Memory of James and Deborah Lindley Newlin
James, son of John and Mary (Pyle) Newlin, born in Pennsylvania 27-IX-1747, died in this community 15-X-1813; married 22-I-1772 Deborah, daughter of Thomas and Ruth H. Lindley born 28-VI-1755. In 1823, Deborah moved to Indiana.
Their children: Mary 1772
Ruth 1775
John 1776
Sarah Katherine 1778
Hannah 1780
Elanor 1785
William 1786
Deborah 1787
Jonathan 1789
Thomas 1790
Nathaniel 1791
The following information on James and Deborah Lindley Newlin is quoted from "The Newlin Family: Ancestors and Descendants of John and Mary Pyle Newlin" (1965) by Dr. Algie I. Newlin and Harvey Newlin, double descendants of James and Deborah (pages 45-48):
James Newlin, the oldest of the children of John and Mary Pyle Newlin, was almost twenty one years of age when Concord Meeting sent his certificate for membership to Cane Creek Meeting in North Carolina, along with certificates for other members of his family. Whether his father was in North Carolina, making preparations which would enable the family to begin life there with a fair degree of comfort or had gone back to Pennsylvania to help the family make the long journey over the forest roads to the new home, James must have carried a major responsibility for the family during their last years in Pennsylvania and on the road. Hannah and John were old enough to contribute much to the family endeavors and their mother must have been a very capable person.
It was a difficult journey over the roads of that day, stretching to the south for more than four hundred miles, along forest roads, fording streams and camping out at night. The journey could have taken at least three weeks and possibly longer. The new home was approximately two miles east of the home of Thomas Lindley, whose daughter, Deborah, would become the wife of James Newlin.
James Newlin and Deborah Lindley must have met for the first time in this new community in the southern part of what is now Alamance County. When Deborah was born it was a part of Orange County, established the previous year. A century later, in 1849, this community was included in the area set off as Alamance County. In tracing the history of the families of James and Deborah back through the generations immediately preceding them, one finds striking similarities. Their ancestors had migrated from England to Ireland, from there to Pennsylvania, and then to North Carolina. Both families had been prominent in the Society of Friends and in the economic and political life of their respective communities.
Deborah (Lindley) Newlin, like her immediate ancestors and some of their descendants, was a captive in the spirit of migration and ready to move on to new lands when a promising chance came. She was born in the province of North Carolina, possibly only a few weeks after her parents, and eight older brothers and sisters, had set up their new home in the valley of Cane Creek. She is believed to have been the second white child born in the Lower Cane Creek Valley. Two years earlier, in 1751, Mary Laughlin, daughter of Hugh Laughlin, Thomas Lindley's partner in Lindleys Mill, was born in that area. Seventy years later Deborah moved with her son, Thomas, and family five hundred miles into the West, to the Lick Creek community in Southern Indiana.
Her father, Thomas Lindley, was born in 1706 in County Carlow, Ireland, about twenty five miles southeast of Mountmellick, the ancestral home of the family of her husband. Her mother, Ruth Hadley Lindley, daughter of Simon and Ruth (Miller) Hadley was born in the Mote Meeting community, in County West Meath, some fifty miles northwest of the birthplace of her husband, Thomas Lindley. These three inland communities, Carlow, Mote, and Mountmellick are west and southwest from Dublin on a radius of approximately fifty miles from that important city. Could the three families have known each other before leaving for Pennsylvania? The Newlins left Ireland thirty years before the Hadleys and Lindleys, but the Lindleys arrived in North Carolina more than a decade before the Newlins.
All of Deborah's grandparents died in Pennsylvania. It seems quite likely that the Hadleys reached that Province in 1713, the year of the arrival of the James Lindley family. At that time Ruth Hadley was a babe in arms and Thomas Lindley was nearly seven. Just forty years later they made the overland journey of more than four hundred miels, to start a new home in the colony of North Carolina.
James Lindley was born 16-IV-1681, and Eleanor (Parke) Lindley, daughter of Robert and Margery Parke, was born in County Carlow, Ireland, 2-I-1684. The Lindley grandparents of Deborah had twelve children, four of them born in Ireland.
In Pennsylvania they were in good standing among Friends and were prosperous farmers. In "10 month 1725" a nephew of Eleanor (Parke) Lindley wrote to a sister in Ireland, "Unkle James Lindley family is well and Thrives exceedingly, he has 11 children and Reaped last harvest about 800 bushels of wheat, he is a thriving man everywhere he lives, he has a Thousand acres of land, A fine estate." (Quoted in Myers, "Immigration of the Irish Quakers," p. 78). Their twelth child was born a year after this letter was written.
The exact date of the arrival of Thomas and Ruth Lindley and their eight children, to start life anew in the interior of North Carolina is shrouded in as much uncertainty as the date of arrival of Deborah's future husband more than a decade later. The Minutes of New Garden Friends Meeting (in Pennsylvania) for 31-III-1753 contains the information that: "Thomas Lindley requested a certificate for himself, wife, and children (first names not given) to Cane Creek M.M. in North Carolina." One month later, 26-IV-1753, the certificate was approved but Thomas did not present it to Cane Creek Meeting until 6-X-1753, more than five months later. The Cane Creek records indicate that Deborah and a younger brother were born in Orange County, North Carolina, and that the eight older children were born in Pennsylvania. The date of Deborah's birth is given as 28-VI-1753. The family could have reached North Carolina before the certificate was issued.
Thomas Lindley bought a large tract of land on the north side of Cane Creek watershed and built his home about one mile from the creek. He died in 1781 and was buried in the cemetery of Spring Friends Meeting, barely a quarter of a mile from the home of the Lindley family and a few rods from the boundary of his land. His wife Ruth Hadley Lindley died in 1785 and is presumed to have been buried beside her husband.
Deborah Lindley Newlin was reared in a family whose members were closely identified with the public life of the community in which they lived. In Pennsylvania her father had served in the Provincial Assembly. In 1756, possibly three years after moving to North Carolina, he and a neighbor, Hugh Laughlin, built Lindley's Mill, on Cane Creek, two miles from the Lindley home. In 1768 he was moved by the evidence of a miscarriage of justice to identify himself with the Regulator movement which shook the communities across the Piedmont sections of both North and South Carolina and which in 1771 exploded in the War of the Regulators. During the early period of the movement he was looked to as one of the local leaders. When Deborah was fifteen years old her father was evidently a member of the Regulator committee appointed to wrestle with the problem of freeing the people of these interior counties from the abuse of their rights and the exploitation of their resources by officials of the colonial Government. A meeting of the Committee, appointed to convene at the Lindley home was not held because of the arrest of some of the leaders of the movement. There is no evidence, extant, that Thomas Lindley ever had any sympathy for the resort to military action in the Regulator Movement.
Three of her brothers and one sister defied what they must have considered the rigid marriage rules of the Friends and were disowned by their meeting. The War for Independence, which began four years after her marriage, was a terrible ordeal for the Cane Creek people as well as for the whole nation. The Lindley family did not escape the tragedy of that ordeal. It was during the second war with Great Britain (1812-1815) that James Newlin died.
The home in which James and Deborah Newlin lived and reared their children overlooked Cane Creek from the north side and in clear view of the point where Highway 87 now crosses that stream. Over a period of years James enlarged his land holdings, farm by farm, and on both sides of Cane Creek, until he possessed nearly a thousand acres. He invested money in a transportation company whose purpose was to develop water transportation on the nearby rivers. It was a commendable but ill-fated attempt to break the natural barriers to trade which cut off the Piedmont region from essential markets and made much of that part of North Carolina one of the most isolated regions of the United States. He had money to lend. His Meeting appointed him to services which indicated that he was held in high esteem by Friends. These suggest something of the industry, thrift, vision, and moral stamina of the man.
James and his brother, Eli, died before the westward migration of Newlins got well under way, but Deborah and three of their five sons took the emigrant trail to Indiana.
James Newlin died at the age of sixty-six. Three months before his death he made his rather long and detailed will. His first concern was to make specific and ample provision for the care of his wife, Deborah.
"In the first place as a provision for my faithful and well beloved wife, Deborah, I will and bequeath to he rone horse, two cows, her choice out of my stock, 2 beds of furniture, my clock, one table, her choice my candle stand and such part of my kitchen furniture as may with the advice of my executors be sufficient for her to keep house. Also the following books, Collins Bible, Chakley's Journal, Elwood's Life, Piety Promoted or Dying Sayings...I will and bequeath to my son Thomas all the land on which I now live on the North side of Cane Creek supposed to contain about three hundred acres to him and his heirs forever, in fee simple on these expressed conditions that he support his mother comfortably, find her material for clothing, food for two cows and one horse herein left to her and this during her natural life..."
He divided his land among four of his sons; Jonathan, Nathaniel, Thomas, and William. To his son, John, he willed his stock in a transportation company and the money which was already in John's possession, possibly as a loan. In the designations of money and property to his daughters, that alloted to Mary, the oldest child, excites a bit of wonder. He willed her the pittance of five shillings and her share of the books which were not specifically mentioned and were divided among all the daughters, but in dividing the "residue" of the estate and the household furniture, not included in the specific bequests, five of his daughters were named to share equally but Mary's name was not mentioned. However, in each instance a share was left to be disposed of at the discretion of Deborah: Did this give Deborah a chance to give Mary an equal share with her sisters?
Three of James' sons: Jonathan, Thomas, and William left Orange County, North Carolina, to settle in Orange County, Indiana. It is quite possible that Jonathan and William never lived on the land inherited from their father's estate. The former left for Orange County, Indiana in 1816 and the latter in 1817. Of the seven children who chose to remain in North Carolina only Hannah lived more than two miles from the old homestead.
At the death of James, five of his children were unmarried. Thomas, the youngest of the five, to whom the care of his mother was entrusted, was the last to be married. In 1823 Deborah (Lindley) Newlin, her son Thomas, and Candace (Love) Newlin and their child moved to the Lick Creek community in Orange County, Indiana. Neither the place nor the date of Deborah's death is known, but in the United States Census reports for Orange County, Indiana, for the year 1830 is the following significant entry:
"Thomas Newlin
Males under 5 years of age---2
5 and under 10--2
of 40 and under 50--1
Females
under five years of age--1
of 20 and under 30--1"
It is quite obvious that the oldest male between 40 and 50 was Thomas and the oldest female, "20 and under 30," was Candace. The most obvious fact is that there is no record of a person of Deborah Lindley Newlin's age, who at that time would have been 77. She left North Carolina in 1823. The assumption is that she lived with Thomas until her death, since James had stipulated in his will that Thomas should care for her during the remainder of her life. The records of Lick Creek Meeting show that she reached that community. She must have died there between 1823 and 1830, though no record of her death has been found.
On the 11-XII-1852 New London Meeting (north of Indianapolis, Indiana) received a certificate of membership from Lick Creek Meeting, for Thomas and Candace Newlin and their eight unmarried children.
Among the children was Deborah, who at that time was seventeen years old. The New London Meeting records give the date of the death of a "Deborah Newlin" as 3-X-1853. She was buried at Honey Creek. Since one record says that Deborah Newlin, the daughter of Thomas and Candace, died at an early age, one can be sure that this is the grave of a younger Deborah Newlin.
There has been considerable uncertainty about the number of children in James and Deborah's family. Was there a Sarah, and a Katherine, or was there a Sarah Katherine?
The records of Cane Creek Meeting (NC) give the name and date of birth of each of the first five children, with "Katherine" (sic) the fourth, born 25-V-1778. No other reference to Katherine has been found. The date of the death of Sarah is known but not the date of her birth. When the monument to the memory of James and Deborah Lindley Newlin was erected in Spring Cemetery, eleven children were listed on the bronze plaque with "Sarah Katherine" as the fourth child. This seemed a safe assumption at that time.
A study of available evidence now gives support to the belief that there were twelve children, with Katherine in the fourth place and Sarah the twelth child. Sarah's husband, Joseph Marshall, was born 22-IV-1794. He would have been nearly sixteen years younger than his wife had she been Sarah Katherine, born 1778. The will of James Newlin gives the names of six daughters in two places. In each instance the first five are given in the chronological order of birth with Sarah following in sixth place. Katherine is not mentioned in the will. Katherine's birth is given in the Cane Creek records but in view of the fact that she is the only one of the twelve not mentioned in her father's will it seems safe to assume that she died without heirs before the will was made. It is possible that she died at an early age. These considerations warrant the assumption that there were twelve children, with Katherine the fourth and Sarah the twelfth.
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1747 - 1813 (66 years)
