ANTHONY

       Philip Anthony, father unknown, was born 1721 near the Rhine River, Germany, and died 27 September 1796 in Lincoln County, previously Burke Co., NC. He was married to Maria Kessler. He immigrated before 1765 when he was settled in Northampton, Pennsylvania. He had property in Burke Co., NC by 1770. His children were Philip, Jr., John, Magdalene and Elizabeth.

            Philip Anthony, Jr. was born January 1754 in Philadelphia, PA and died November 4, 1838 in Henderson Co., NC. He was a veteran of the American Revolution. He was married to Mary Elizabeth (Rhodes?). She died before 1812 as a new wife, Helen, is mentioned in deeds of 1813. She died after 1838.

            The children of the marriage to Mary Elizabeth were Mary (Polly), Elizabeth, Frances (Fanny), Sarah, Milton, Hiram, Margaret, Clarissa, Malinda and Elenor.

       Hiram left many records in Tennessee: Hiram Anthony and Phillip Anthony appear in the Maury County 1818 tax list; Hiram Anthony is on the 1836 school tax list with 2 children between the age of 6 and 21 (His daughter Sarah would have been 11 that year); In the 1840 census report for that county, there is a Hiram with two daughters between 10-15 (Sarah would have been 15 that year); The 1850 Maury County census lists Hiram, age 54, with wife Lois, age 50 (Sarah had married nine years before). Hiram is not listed in the 1860 Maury County census, but he is in the one for Madison County: age 65 with wife "Louiza", age 55. This is the same county where William and Sarah Bryant had lived before her death the year before. William is also recorded there, as a widower with the infant Frances Elizabeth.

      Sarah Anthony was born in 1825, probably in Maury County, Tennessee. In 1841, when she was 16, she married William R. Bryant . The young couple was fortunate not to have suffered from the epidemic which took his father and four of his brothers and sisters four years after their marriage. In the census record of 1850, after they have been married nine years, Sarah was the mother of three children: James Josephus, 7 (named for her grandfather?); Lewis, 5; and Emily, 3. By the next census record, ten years later, William is a widow living in Madison County. Four more children have been born: Mary, 10; Ellen, 7 (named for William's sister who had recently died); Hiram, 3 (named for Sarah's father?); and Frances Elizabeth, an infant.
       William remarried soon after his wife's death. "Fanny" Bryant never knew her mother. However, her grandmother Louisa was alive and living nearby when her mother died; her grandfather Hiram lived twenty more years.