BRYANT family

The list I have of SE Indian names lists Bryant. No tribe is designated. I guess that means that it occurs in families with no clear ties, or too many to settle on any one. Don’t know if that’s any help.

Hello All the name Bryant is fairly old in the SE , I was told that the Cherokee translation for this name is “Crow on a Hill” or CrowHill, I do not know if that helps but it’s a fairly easy name to trace. My English Grandfather is a Bryant, right off the boat!

all the best Tom

Wow Brenda!!!

You are probably familiar with Henry Clay Ragland’s HISTORY OF LOGAN COUNTY. He is not altogether reliable as most of his informants were probably the grandchildren of his subjects. However, this is what he has to say about David Mounts, my Blackfoot & Cherokee (per my late grandpa Harry Steele of Beech Creek)4th great grandfather. By the way, Ragland hated Indians.

“The daughter of Peter Cline, Sr., whose name was Margaret, married David Mounts, a young man who came to the Tug Valley a short time after Cline had settled there. It is not known where he came from, but it is believed from the name that he is a descendant of a Portuguese family by the name of Mounts, which settled in South Carolina about 1750, and some of whom served under Sumpter in the War of the Revolution.” David’s children marired into the Blankenships, Steeles, Spratts, Clines, Charles, Christian & Hurley families of the Tug River Valley.

I have NEVER been able to ID David’s exact Mounts family, although I have found some interesting Mounts at the edge of the early frontier. One line has legends that they are French, but I feel pretty comfortable that they are descended from an Indian Trading family that came with the New Sweden Colony and was in Cecil County MD (near Chester, PA) before moving on with the frontier. I did find a George and a Barnabus Mounts in old Ninety Six District of South Carolina no township listed about 1779. Ninety Six was a trading center and on the trading path. The other thing that strikes me about the 1750 date is that it is about the time some old traders from PA including Morgan Bryan moved to the trading ford at the forks of the Yadkin in North Carolina. The “Carolina Cradle” settled is formed by the Yadkin & Catawba. The customers/suppliers/Indians had been moving out of the Susquehanna area for some time, first to the Potomac area, and then to the Ohio lands…..wonder if they had customers/suppliers in the Yadkin? I think there was a general migration out of Virginia around 1750 or so, however, for various reasons. (Perhaps the Fairfax suits??? Opening hostilities with the French & Indian war? I’ll have to check the dates.)

According to heresay, David was born in the Clinch River settlements around 1785. His PURPORTED sister , Sarah Mounts Wilson, wife of James Wilson (children married into Balls & Lamberts, I believe) who settled in the Wayne County area of WVA was reportedly born in Maryland some years earlier. They were purportedly in the TN/NC area for a short while, too. There is talk that they were in the Jackson River settlement in the Bath County, VA area for awhile, too. There were some Mounts in the Clinch river area early 1770’s, but records are scanty. (John, Mathias, & Absolum. I think at least one of them might have moved over from the Otter Creek area. It looks like they may have gone on to Kentucky.)

The first real documentary evidence of MY David Mount’s existence is his 1809 marriage bond in MONTGOMERY COUNTY, VA to marry Margaret Cline. A James Addair who ran a ferry over the NEW RIVER around the Radford or Narrows area signed as David’s surety. Many folks say James Addair, who was in the New River area at least by 1773, was David’s guardian. I am not sure about that. This James Addair was born abt. 1750 and is NOT the famous James Adair, Indian Trader and author of ADAIR’S HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS, 1775. That Adair was in NC & SC & b. abt 1709…Descendants of this James Addair of New River have a tradition of Cherokee in this line…not sure if its James Addair or Kirby line his daughter married into. His descendants have been unable to find his parents/family of origin, as well.

When you say MONTGOMERY COUNTY, I think THE NEW RIVER AREA. Some interesting folks around there at that time, such as Richard & George Pearris(spelled various ways) & Hugh Caperton. All heavily involved in the Indian Trade. Richard Pearris brought the Cherokee on the Sandy Creek expedition, worked early in the Winchester area, & then was seated in South Carolina, I believe…. He had an Indian family and was given land down there by the Cherokee.

Supposedly David & Peggy Mounts went to the Tug area as soon as they were married, but the first record I pick up is a FLOYD COUNTY KENTUCKY land grant in 1821. Very soon after that, David’s land records start showing up in old Cabell & then LOGAN COUNTY VIRGINIA. This is probably just across the river. His land appears to be along the river….and finally on our BEECH CREEK of Tug River.

Up the river a ways in Wayne County in the late 1890’s Sarah Mounts Wilson’s grandson’s, Hiram & Jackson Wilson, petitioned the Cherokee Nation for membership naming Sarah’s Cherokee relations as ‘Old John Mounts, Woodall, & Raincrow.” While the petitions were discovered in the Wayne County Courthouse, no other record or disposition of the Wilson brothers’ Cherokee claims has been found.

Not many records for Logan County prior to 1850 or so. I have been watching Mounts/Mountz/Mounce folks on the frontier for awhile and I have yet to get any solid evidence of David Mounts family of origin. Many researchers have been combing around for orphan’s bonds, etc. with no luck. Just lots of stories so far….

I did find an AOFP in 1790 census of Cecil County, Maryland by the name of Alexander Mounts. Alexander is a common name among David’s descendants. This was in Octoraro Hundreds and he was surrounded by a host of AOFP. I don’t know what Octoraro Creek was like in 1790, but early on it was a site for the old Susquehanna Fort & then in the early 1700’s the site reputedly of a Shawnee village. By the mid 1800’s I have been told that it was heavily populated by blacks. I lose this Alexander after 1790. An Alexander posp up in Fleming County KY about 10 years later.

Yes, your pattern does look familliar to me!!!!

Hi Brenda Sampsel,

My Mounts (marr’d into at least two of my lines) and Morgans (g-Grandmother) came out of central Ky in early 1800s but their origins are yet to be discovered.

Note: By the mid to late 1800s, Virginia had dispensed with the “mulatto” and “other” terms and listed everyone who was not “white”, as “black”, hence all the “blacks” that took over that village you mentioned. In some areas of Virginia, there were census takers less agreeable with that “white power” concept, who left the race column blank (“Monacans and Miners”, Samuel R. Cook, c.2000, Univ of Nebraska Press – available from Continuity Press).

In Horace Rice’s “The Buffalo Ridge Cherokee”, he contrasts the surnames found in Amherst Co., Va., among people calling themselves Cherokee in the Buffalo Ridge area, to surnames found on various Cherokee Rolls and lists. Then, Rice goes on to say that he didn’t interview any of the Buffalo Ridge people. Cook did interview numerous Bear Mountain people, living next door to Buffalo Ridge and they consistently claimed to be Monacan, eastern Sioux. One really needs to read “Monacans and Miners” and Waddell’s “Annals of Augusta County Virginia” for a convincing reason why these Buffaloe Ridge people came to believe they were Cherokee and draw your own conclusions. My take is that Waddell didn’t know the early Native history of that area and Rice got the tail to wag his dog – I think the Amherst people who were Monacan, went south instead of Cherokee going north to settle. Yes, I’m aware of the Big Sandy expedition and also aware that these Cherokee are reported to have gone back south. (Yes, there are always stragglers, but there were no females in the group so this doesn’t refute known facts.) Something to consider, nevertheless.

Bill