Dr. William Heth Whitsitt's, Annals of a Scotch-Irish Family:  The Whitsitts of Nashville, Tenn. Part 1 (1904)

American Historical Magazine

VOLUME IX, 1904

No. 1.---JANUARY (pg. 58)
No. 2.---APRIL
(pg. 113)
No. 3.---JULY
(pg. 231)
No. 4.---OCTOBER (pg. 352)

PART 1

Annals of a Scotch-Irish Family:  The Whitsitts of Nashville, Tenn.
BY WILLIAM H. WHITSITT, RICHMOND COLLEGE, RICHMOND, VA.


NO. 1. -- JANUARY

Nobilis hic, quocumque venit de gramine, cujus clara fuga ante alios et primus in qequore pulvis.---Juvenal VIII, 60-1

The Whitsitt family is widely extended. Persons bearing the surname and blood may be found in nearly every portion of the United States and Canada, as also in Ireland and Scotland. To treat of them all would be beyond my powers and learning. I shall therefore confine my attention to that small portion of the family with which I chance to be most acquainted, namely the Nashville Whitsitts. The best records of these have been kept by the Blakley family, of Russellville, Ky. They rest upon the industry and authority of three persons, namely, Mrs. Margaret (Whitsitt) Blakey; her son, Doctor George Douglas Blakey, and her grandson, Honorable Churchill H. Blakey, all of whom are now deceased. They were industrious chroniclers, and the family owes them a debt of gratitude.

First Entry.---The opening entry of the Whitsitt annals is expressed in the following words:

"William Whitsitt, the son of William Whitsitt, the son of Samuel Whitsitt (all of Ireland), married Elizabeth Dawson, of Ireland.  William Whitsitt, son of the aforesaid William, married Miss Ellen Menees, daughter of James Menees, who married the widow of Ranney Breathitt, formerly Miss Ellen Cardwell; died at the residence of his son, the Rev. James Whitsitt, in the vicinity of Nashville, Tennesee, July 14, 1811. Ellen Menees Whitsitt, his wife was born -------, and died at Rural Choice, Kentucky, the home of her son—in—law, George Blakey, September 13, 1818."

Here are four generations of the family. Of these the first two died in Ireland, William Whitsitt the second was the immigrant, and shortly after the year 1731 he came over the sea with his wife, Elizabeth (Dawson) Whitsitt, and their son, William Whitsitt the third, who had been born in their Irish home on the 20th of August, 1731.

The name Samuel, which was borne by the first father of the Nashville family, has persisted to some extent among his descendants. William Whitsitt the third called the second of his three sons by that name, but died without issue. The Rev. James Whitsitt, of Nashville, called one of his sons Samuel Dawson, in honor, of his grandmother and his great grandfather.

It is assumed that the Nashville Whitsitts landed in Pennsylvania along with the other Scotch—Irish immigrants; but the ship that bore them and the precise date of its arrival are as yet unknown. If William Whitsitt, the immigrant, had other children besides his son William the third, the family records take no account of them; nor does any tradition of them survive in the memories of the family.

Nomenclature.---The Whitsitts are a numerous tribe in Ireland, where they bore and still bear the name of Whiteside.  Mr. Hanna in his important work entitled “The Scotch—Irish; or the Scot in North Britain, North Ireland and North America, “ New York and London, 1902, does not mention the name of Whitsitt as occurring in Ireland, but there is quite a force of the Whitesides there. In Appendix I, Vol. II, he undertakes to indicate the location of Scottish families in Ireland, and on page 527 makes the following entry: "WHITESIDE 18—16 Antrim and Armagh," which certifies that during the year 1890 there were eighteen children born to the Whiteside family throughout Ireland, and that sixteen of them belonged to the counties of Antrim and Armagh.  Mr. Hanna affirms (vol. ii, p. 519), that the average birth rate for that year throughout Ireland was one child to 44.77 of the population. Multiplying this figure by the number of births it would indicate that in the whole of Ireland there was in 1890 a Whiteside population of 806, of whom 716 were inhabitants of Antrim and Armagh. The fact that Antrim is placed first in this enumeration would appear to signify that the Whitesides are more numerous in that county.

Scattered notices demonstrate that they are also found in other sections of the Island. Lippincott‘s “Pronouncing Biographical Dictionary" gives an account of James Whiteside, LLD., an Irish jurist and conservative statesman born in the county of Wicklow about 1806.  He studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and subsequently obtained a high reputation as a lawyer and orator.  He was one of the leading counsel in the defense of O'Connell in 1843, and also defended Smith O'Brien in the trials of 1848.  He was elected to Parliament in 1851 for Enniskillen, and in 1859 was returned for the University of Dublin.  He became about 1866 Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench in Ireland.  He has published a work entitled “Italy and the Nineteenth Century, 1849."

In their Scottish home the Whitesides appear to have been a sept of the Bell clan of Annandale.  Mr. Hanna in the work above cited supplies (vol. ii, p. 438) a couple of lists of the Border clans, one for the year 1547 and the other for the year 1597, in both of which the Bell clan appears.  In the year 1685 John Bell, of Whiteside, seems to have been at the head of this clan, and the following notice is taken of his death: “Sir Robert Grierson, of Lagg, having the command of a party of Claverhouse‘s troop, and Strachan’s Dragoons, surprised John Bell, of Whiteside; David Halliday, portioner of Mayfield; Andrew McCrabit, James Clement and Robert Lenox, of Irlintoun, and barbarously killed them after quarter, without time allowed to pray.  When John Bell, of Whiteside, begged a little time to pray, Lagg answered: 'What the devil have ye been doing?  Have ye not prayed enough these many years in the hills?' and so shot him presently, in the Parish of Tongland in Galloway, February, 1685."  (Hanna, II, 258.)

Into whatever regions and perils the Scotch—Irish of America went abroad, the Whitesides and the Whitsitts have traveled with them.  Owing to the fact that they made their advent in Pennsylvania, they are perhaps more numerous in that State than in any other, but they are represented in almost all the States of our country and in Canada likewise.  One is liable to encounter them in any section of the Western country. The county of Whiteside in the northwestern portion of Illinois was named in honor of General Samuel Whiteside, who led the troops of the commonwealth in the campaigns of 1831 and 1832 against the Indian chief, Black Hawk.   The United States Postal Guide shows The following list of post offices that have been named in honor of the various members of the tribe:   Whitsitt, Fayette County, Pennsylvania; Whitsett, Guilford County, North Carolina; Whitsett, Dooley County, Georgia; Whitsett, Crawford County, Missouri; Whitsitt, Hale County, Alabama; Whiteside, Marion County, Tennessee; Whiteside, Lincoln County, Missouri; Whiteside Cove, Jackson County, North Carolina; Whiteside Corners, Saratoga County, New York

In addition to the above, Mt. Whiteside is a distinguished feature of Sapphie Country in North Carolina.

In the "Official Register of the United States, Containing a List of the Officers and Employees in the Civil, Military and Naval Service," two vols., Washington, 1901, one may observe that they are scattered in all sections of the country, and fond of the public service, as also successful at finding positions in it.  There likewise appears in this Register a considerable diversity in the spelling of the name.  Most of the employees of the Government spell it Whiteside, but Colonel Samuel Marmaduke Whitside, of the regular army, illustrates one of the processes by which it must have been shortened to Whitsitt, and Mr. W. H. Whitesitt, postmaster at Paragon, Morgan County, Indiana, illustrates another.  Nearly all of those who have contracted the name from Whiteside prefer to spell it Whitsett, but the Nashville family have always insisted upon the form Whitsitt.

II.

Albemarle Period. ---I have no definite knowledge of the Whitesides in Scotland and Ireland, or even in Pennsylvania.  My researches begin with their advent to the colony of Virginia in the spring of 1741. Following is a list of Royal Patents issued to persons of the Whiteside name in Virginia:

1.  William Whiteside, March 15, 1741, 400 acres. Vol. XX, p. 162.
2.  Thomas Whiteside. Dec. 1, 1748, 400 acres. Vol. XXVII, p. 50.
3.  William Whiteside. April 4, 1753, 300 acres. Vol. XXXII, p. 55.
4.  William Whiteside, July 25 1768, 181 acres, Vol. XXXVII, p. 272.
5.  William Whiteside, April 6, 1769, 160 acres, Vol. XXXVIII, p 517.

Except the last, all of the above estates lie within the present limits of the county of Albemarle, and in that section of it which was occupied by the Scotch-Irish settlers.  The last named was entered across the Blue Ridge in what was then Augusta, but is now Rockbridge County.  It is capable of proof that the first and fourth Patents were issued to William Whiteside, the immigrant founder of the Nashville Whitsitts.  Nothing is known of the degree of relationsship that existed between this William Whiteside and Thomas Whiteside.

The early records of Albemarle County were destroyed by the British Colonel Tarleton, who raided the town of Charlottesville in June, 1781.  In his valuable work on Albemarle County, Charlottesville, 1901, Rev. Edgar Woods, D.D., says: "The gap thus occasioned reaches from 1748 to 1783, a period of thirty-five years, and one intensely interesting in the history of the county at large....Many references to this event are met with in subsequent proceedings of the County Court.  In 1794 it recommended John Key, George Divers, Thomas Garth, Thomas W. Lewis, Garland Carr, Thomass Bell, Robert Jouett, W. W. Hening and Cornelius Schenk as Commissioners to reinstate such records as had been lost or destroyed."  P.25.

 


WORK IN PROGRESS
Ronald N. Wall
Copyright © 2004. All rights reserved.
Modified: 07 June 2011