On September 30, 1773, some three years before the American Revolution, a man named Thomas Shannon is documented among the early settlers in an area known as the ‘Ceded Lands’ of Georgia. This was an area located several miles above Augusta, Georgia along the Savanah River recently acquired from local native tribes in payment for trading debts. This was on the very edge of the southern colonial frontier. In 1777, this area became incorporated as Wilkes Co., GA.
This documentation stated that he had a wife and four children, three sons and one daughter, between 17 and 9 years of age. No one other than Thomas himself is named. We don’t know which of the children was younger or older, and we don’t know where they were born. We can infer that he and his wife began their family in the 1750’s. A 17 year old on the date of the document would have been born between October 1, 1755 and October 1, 1756.
This would tend to indicate that by 1773, his wife was past her child bearing years. So, this isn’t a young couple venturing out to a new frontier. The property Thomas acquires seems to be well located, secure between two local forts and on the river. He does not seem to be coming from a poor background, but well funded with knowledge and preparation well established.
Thomas Shannon died in 1793/94 leaving a will recorded in Wilkes Co., that included his wife Eleanor, sons John, Owen and Thomas, grandchildren Elizabeth Ward and her brother John, the children of Lewis Salman, already deceased by that time, grandchildren Thomas and Mary Paxton and daughter Hanna Owen.
This makes a total of six children with the three sons and one daughter, Hanna, along with their mother Eleanor still surviving as of 1794. Two daughters, along with their husbands, had already passed away. It is difficult to determine the ages of the grandchildren because the first four US censuses for Georgia, 1790,1800, 1810 and 1820 are largely lost. At least one of the granddaughters, Elizabeth Ward, is already married by 1794. Mary Paxton is probably still underage at that time, but a marriage record from 1797 has her marrying a Robert Peacock with permission from her grand-mother, Eleanor. This relatively small number of grandchildren would seem to indicate the death rate of children on the frontier at that time.
A marriage record in 1770 Pittsylvania County, Virginia mentions Margaret Shannon, daughter of Thomas Shannon, marrying Lewis Salmond, son of John Salmond. A record from 1767 in that same county lists Thomas Shannon and Daniel Casey paying taxes in that same county. The name Daniel and Roger Casey also appear in records associated with the Shannons in the Wilkes County area.
This serves to document that this is the same family in Virginia that settles later in Georgia. We have them confirmed back to Pittsylvania Co., VA in 1767 and 1770, and then in Georgia in 1773. These are the earliest confirmable records we have.
So, we have documentation that gives three sons and three daughters. The three daughters were old enough to have grown children by 1794, and we know that John and Owen had children by that time. Two daughters were apparently already married when the family arrived in Georgia, Margaret, and Hanna. The three sons and one daughter were still underage in 1773.
Based on later records in Texas, Owen was reportedly born in 1762 and would have been 10 or 11 in 1773. He marries Margaret Montgomery in Wilkes co. Georgia in 1792.
John was born between 1755 and 1765, based on later census records, so he could be the 17 year old in 1773, giving his birth year as 1755, or the 9 year old if born in 1764. There are records which give both John and Owen as serving in the Revolution as early as 1781 (on the British side). Owen would have been at least 19 in that year and a nine year old in 1773 would have turned 17 that year, so both were old enough. However, I think there are good reasons to place John as older.
Records indicate that Thomas Sr. held 280 acres in Franklin county after the war which isn’t listed on his estate records. John receives only 10 shillings in the estate while his brothers get 200 acres each of the Wilkes country 400 acres. This indicates that John had already been given the Franklin County property before this. He is well established enough immediately after the war to marry and begin having children. He is listed as having more land in 1785 than Thomas or Owen. He is independent and more well established earlier than either Owen, who still appears in records with his mother in the 1790’s, or Thomas Jr. who is still making shoes and keeping his father’s books when Thomas, Sr dies circa 1793.
On the other hand, if John had been 17 in 1773, he would have been well over 30 when he began his family by 1785. Even with a Revolution going on, it seems improbable that he would not have been married and having children well before that. For all these reasons, I believe John was probably born about 1759 or so and was the oldest son.
This would leave Thomas as the nine year old in 1773. So, given this scenario, the family had three older daughters, Margaret, Hanna and Eleanor, and then three sons, John, Owen, Thomas, who survived to adulthood.
Given naming traditions at the time, the oldest son was named for his paternal grandfather, a younger son for the maternal grandfather, while another younger son would often be given the father’s name. So, this would seem to indicate that Owen is named for his maternal grandfather while Thomas Sr’s father was named John. Of course, reading too much into given names is problematic because there is rarely a way to know the children who didn’t survive to adulthood. Still, Owen is a strange name to simply appear out of nowhere for one of the older sons and was not one of the more common names at the time, so it is a clear indication of an older generational name.
Putting all this together indicates that Thomas Shannon Sr. began his family in the early to mid 1750’s. This means that he was probably in his early 20s sometime around 1753 or so, which in turn means he was probably born in about 1730.
The other interesting thing about Thomas Sr. is that he seems to be more well integrated into colonial English culture than that of a more typically Scots-Irish culture. The families the Shannons married into for several generations are all English and associated with the Anglican/Episcopalian religious context. This is very different from most Scots-Irish who were almost universally of the Presbyterian or similar mainline protestant denominations and typically intermarried with other similar families.
So, Thomas seems to be quite disconnected from any sort of classical Scots-Irish cultural context, he is acting much more like an English colonist, than a Scots-Irish one. The question of when this association begin seems to be an interesting one for the purpose of understanding deeper family history and cultural history of early America.
Was Thomas the original colonial migrant in our family history? If so, when did he migrate? No documentation has been found to record his departure or arrival here. He simply first shows up in verifiable records in 1767 on the Virginia frontier, and possible as early as 1755 given the unverified Delaware records. The French and Indian War caused a sharp decline in emigration between 1754 and 1763, so we can assume that Thomas emigrated just before or just after those dates.
The only family oral history we have on migration is from a published family history from the descendants of Aaron Shannon (1796-1865) who state that John Shannon, Aaron’s father, migrated to America ‘just prior’ to the American Revolution. We know that John was still a juvenile in 1773, 17 or younger, in Georgia, and probably no older than 8 in Virginia in 1767.
If John was born in Ireland than the family arrived probably after 1763. If the entire family had migrated after 1763, they certainly were not indentured, and that would suggest Thomas must have been of considerable economic means to bring an entire large family across the Atlantic. Such a family would be expected to leave some kind of record of its existence before departing for North America. Embarking on a hazardous venture into a howling frontier after such an investment also seems odd. Was that a plan, or was Thomas just blindly following opportunities as they became available?
So, therefore, I think the best guess we can make is that Thomas migrated either as an individual sometime shortly before 1754, got married and started a family here, or came over with a family after 1763. I tend to believe the former, but don’t know. Either case conforms to ‘just prior’ to the Revolution. I think the most valuable information from the oral history of the Aaron Shannon lineage is that Thomas was a late arriving colonial emigrant, either with children or without, and does not seem to have been part of a larger extended family group on arriving.
Bad Genealogy Rant: Thomas Shannon (1730-1794) and descendants. 