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CHAPTER: IV

THE GILCHRISTS IN SOUTH ALABAMA

Deeply rooted in the Gilchrists, as with others from Scotland and including the Irish, was a strongly established Celtic influence, characteristics of which were readily observable. The native Celtic bonding to the land was still very strong among the second generation North Carolina Scots who moved into the Deep South in the early 1800’s. Instead of the new environment changing this nature, it nurtured it, thereby encouraging the formation of a culture closely attached to the land. The people who arrived to claim the land established large families which would cluster in just one area or community over many generations, much as their ancestors had done in Scotland. The town of Brantley, Alabama became so filled with Gilchrists and their kinsmen in the early 1900’s that it became cause for one young lady to woefully assert that in order to find some one she could marry she had to move. The family was and would remain a major focus of the Scots and their descendents -- as well as the church. But, interestingly, the second generation Scots who moved into the South arrived before the Presbyterian Church, thus causing most to join the Baptists whose congregational form of church government as well as basic doctrinal beliefs were in keeping with most of those held by the Scots. The Scots were attracted to the Deep South for much the same reasons their parents had been drawn to North Carolina: a bountiful land that would provide an abundance of space for their families, their livestock, and for such enjoyments as hunting game. Yet, in what would seemingly be a paradox: combined with the "laid-back" nature of these people was the undeniable love for a "good fight" – an aggressiveness that for centuries had prevented the English from carrying out the anglicization of their ancestors. It would be this aggressiveness that would enable them to endure the hardships involved in carving out a place for themselves in a new land. By the middle 1800’s the South was clearly an extension of the Celtic culture that had been established by the Scottish immigrants to North Carolina in the second half of the 1700’s. It would be no mere accident that the flag agreed upon by the southern Confederacy in 1861 would bear a strange likeness to Scotland’s "Bonny Blue Flag."

 

Among the new settlers was Gilbert Gilchrist and his family. The sixth child and fourth son of his parents John and Effie McMillan Gilchrist of Robeson County, North Carolina, he was born in 1780, the tenth anniversary of his parents arrival from Scotland, which may account for why he was often referred to as "Gilbert Scotland Gilchrist." Named for his maternal grandfather, Gilbert became a planter like his father, and older brothers. He married Nancy McPherson of Cumberland County, whose father, Daniel, was a Presbyterian minister; Nancy’s sister, Mary, became the wife of Gilbert’s older brother, Archibald.

 

The family was actively involved in the Presbyterian church as evidenced by the fact that Gilbert served as an elder in the Laurel Hill Presbyterian Church in neighboring Richmond County (now Scotland County) from about 1806 until 1826. With the completion of the new Antioch Presbyterian Church, much nearer home, he moved his church membership becoming with his second wife, Mary Currie, charter members.

 

Gilbert married Mary Currie the year following Nancy McPherson’s untimely death in, it is believed, 1823. Nancy’s death had left Gilbert with nine children, the youngest of which was three years old. Mary, who it is believed was a niece of Flora McKay Currie, the second wife of Gilbert’s father John Sr., was twenty years younger than Gilbert. From this marriage would come nine more children:

CHILDREN OF GILBERT AND NANCY McPHERSON GILCHRIST

1. FLORA GILCHRIST (1808 - 1892)

She married John Little (May 6, 1802 - Jan. 26, 1848); there were nine children. Four of their sons would fight in the North Carolina infantry during the Civil War

2. EFFIE GILCHRIST (1810 - Sept. 20, 1890)

She married John M. Hughes; there were six children

3. SALLIE GILCHRIST (Oct. 15, 1811 - Nov. 20, 1905)

She married Alexander H. Currie; there were ten children. It is probable that he and Mary Currie were first cousins

4. DANIEL MCPHERSON GILCHRIST (1813 - 1902)

He married Elizabeth Williams; there were fourteen children. When his father moved to Barbour County, Alabama, Daniel was the oldest of the children to move with the family. In Barbour County he became a large landowner. Some of his descendants still live in and around Eufaula, Ala.; there are others who moved to Texas

5. MARY ANN GILCHRIST (1814 - 1855)

She married David McNeill and in 1836 moved to Mississippi. There were no children

6. MALCOLM GILCHRIST (Jan. 8, 1815 - Sept. 22, 1882)

On Dec. 31, 1846 he married Eliza Jane Head (Sept. 28,1828 - Jan. 4, 1901); there were ten children. He did not move from North Carolina to Barbour County, Ala., along with the others, arriving, instead, in 1841. He became a large landowner like his father and brothers: Daniel and John. About 1854 he moved to neighboring Coffee County, Ala., settling near the community of Bullock where two are buried

7. MARGARET GILCHRIST (About 1816-17 - 1857)

She married John Quattlebaum; there were no children

8. ISABELLA GILCHRIST (About 1818-19 - 1840’s)

9. CATHERINE GILCHRIST (Dec. 25, 1821 - 1901)

She married Samuel Deloach of Georgia; there were four children, two of whom died in infancy

 

THE CHILDREN OF GILBERT AND MARY CURRIE GILCHRIST

1. C. H. GILCHRIST (1825 - 1864)

It is believed that he remained in North Carolina and was reared by one of Gilbert’s three older daughters. There is virtually no information concerning this individual, nor is he named in Gilbert’s will, causing some to question whether he existed. Nevertheless, his name is one listed in THE LUMBER RIVER SCOTS

2. JOHN MCINTYRE GILCHRIST (Aug. 28, 1827 - 1887)

He moved with his parents to Barbour County, Alabama where he later married Dorinda Calhoun, a great-niece of John C. Calhoun of South Carolina; there were twelve children. Following his father’s death in 1857 he moved his family and mother to Butler County, Ala. , settling near Greenville. He enlisted in the Confederate army and was promoted to the rank of captain. He was a plantation owner and a legislator. He and his wife are buried in the Bethel Cemetery near Greenville

3. CAROLINE ISABELLE GILCHRIST (July 23, 1829 - Sept. 13, 1864)

She married James W. Blakely; there were four children

4. NANCY MCPHERSON GILCHRIST (July 19, 1831 - Nov. 7, 1888)

She married Joseph Thigpen; there were no children. They later moved to Texas, and she is buried in the Bullard Cemetery near Tyler

5. ANGUS JACKSON GILCHRIST (Aug. 24, 1833 - Jan. 14, 1888)

He married Kate Douglas; there were eight children. The family moved to Texas settling near the community of Wills Point. The eighth child, Gilbert (Gibb) Gilchrist, served for two terms as Chairman of the Texas State Highway Commission before becoming Dean of the School of Engineering at Texas A.&M. University in the 1940’s. The small community of Gilchrist, located on the Texas coast outside of Galveston, is believed named for this individual

6. GILBERT SCOTLAND GILCHRIST, II (Jan. 12, 1836 - 1912)

He was the first of his parents’ children to be born in Barbour County, Ala. He married Zilpha Ann Blow; there were eleven children. Following his father’s death in 1857 he moved to Smith County, Texas, settling near Tyler. During the Civil War he served in Company C., Texas Cavalry. After the war he moved to Cherokee County, settling near Mt. Selman. He is buried in the Bullard Cemetery near Tyler

7. ADOLINE MARTHA GILCHRIST (Mar. 22, 1838 - July 28, 1913)

She married John Hook; there were four children. They are buried in Panola, Ala

8. AMANDA GILCHRIST (May 30, 1840 - 1843)

9. JEMIMA GILCHRIST (Sept. 9, 1842 - 1843)

 

Following the death of John Gilchrist, Sr. in 1802 his substantial landholdings were, according to the terms of his will (See: Chapter: III), divided among his wife, Flora, and three of his sons - including Gilbert. The "upper plantation," referred to as "Lowry’s Place," was provided his son Malcolm for a period of four years, after which it was to pass to Gilbert. Gilbert maintained ownership of the property for five years, then beginning in July of 1811 he sold ten separate parcels, totaling an estimated 1,000 acres to Malcolm Peterson for 750 dollars.

The Gilchrist family, including: Daniel M., Margaret, Isabella, Catherine, John M., Caroline I., and Nancy M., set out for Alabama in about 1833 following the lure of abundant and available farm land. Traveling by wagon the family very likely followed the Great Wagon Road – a pioneer trail that led to Augusta, Georgia. From there they rode southwestward to Barbour County which had just been created from Pike County the year before. As the family crossed Georgia, Angus Jackson, the fifth child of his parents’ was born; the year of his birth being 1833 gives indication of the year that the family moved. Gilbert Scotland, II, born three years later in 1836 would be the first child born in Alabama.

In 1836-7, a small war erupted between the Creek Indians and the new settlers of Barbour County and surrouding areas during which Gilbert served in Boyd’s Company of General William Welborn’s Mounted Alabama Volunteers. This confrontation became another cause for President Andrew Jackson’s decision to move the Indians westward and open their lands in southeastern Alabama and southwestern Georgia to settlement. This move now brought a flood of North Carolina Scots south to Barbour County with most settling on a section of the Pea River in the southwest part of the county. For many years thereafter this area, located near the little town of Clio, was known as "Little Scotland."

Gilbert with his family had settled in the northern part of the county near the small town of Batesville. Once again the Gilchrists’ unique ability to acquire an abundance of excellent land would be evident. Gilbert with his sons: Daniel, Malcolm, and John would in the course of a few years become among the largest land owners in the upper part of the county. Malcolm, who did not move with his father, joined him eight years later in 1841. By 1850 his holdings which lay just north of present U.S. Highway 82, was valued at 1,200 dollars.

About 1840, Gilbert began to divest himself of most of his land holdings. In that year he prepared a will that provided his children in Alabama with his twelve slaves, three horses, four mules, fifty head of hogs, thirty head of cattle, and three hundred acres of farmland that he had acquired in Macon County near the present city of Tuskegee. To his son-in-law, Alexander H. Currie of Robeson County, North Carolina, Gilbert, in 1842, sold his remaining North Carolina land – 1,000 acres for 1,000 dollars. This was land that he had acquired from the McPhersons. He now retired to a farm near Mount Andrew in the western part of Barbour County where he lived until he died in 1857. Following the death of her husband Mary Currie Gilchrist moved with her second son, John, and his family to near Greenville in Butler County where she died in 1879. Gilbert’s gravesite has never been found, being probably located on the old family farm as was often done in this time.

Click here to view a full size image of Gilbert's possible burial site

On December 19, 1853, four years before his father’s death, Malcolm, sixth child and second son of his father’s first marriage, sold his Barbour County land holdings for 1,600 dollars and moved with his wife and young family westward to Coffee County, Alabama. He was born in Robeson County, North Carolina on Jan. 8, 1815, and after moving to Alabama he married Eliza Jane Head on Dec. 31, 1846. Born Sept. 28, 1828, she was the daughter of Barbour County Justice of the Peace, William Head, who had moved from Georgia; he died the same year (1857) as did Gilbert.

Malcolm became the first of the family to depart from the Presbyterian church, joining instead the Baptist church. The family continued to build on a foundation of strong Christian principle as well as an appreciation for education and love for the family that could now be traced back four generations. There were ten children born to Malcolm and Eliza Jane Head Gilchrist

THE CHILDREN OF MALCOLM AND ELIZA JANE HEAD GILCHRIST

1. WILLIAM GILBERT GILCHRIST (Oct. 12, 1847 - Nov. 11, 1923)

He married HARRIET ANNETTE WRIGHT (Nov. 20, 1848 - Dec. 26, 1930); there were eight children, including twin sons who died at birth and are buried in Bullock, Alabama. He was a planter and cotton warehouseman in Brantley, Alabama where are both are buried

2. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN GILCHRIST (Nov. 22, 1848 - Oct. 8, 1914)

He married MARGARET M. (MAGGIE) STRIPLING (Mar. 8, 1867 - Aug. 26, 1957); there was nine children. He was a planter who lived near Brantley, later moving to within two miles of Opp, Alabama. She lived for many years in Opp and is buried there

3. NEAL MOSES GILCHRIST (Mar. 8, 1850 - July 24, 1924)

He moved from Brantley, Ala., in the 1870’s to east-central Texas, settling near the Brazos River between Navasota and Hearne. He lived there for nearly two years during which time he married MATTIE MCALPHIN; he worked as a carpenter and farmed. After spending about four years in San Saba County where their first child died, the couple moved to San Gabriel community about five miles from Thorndale in Milam County. In Sept. of 1882 Mattie died leaving Neal and a six year old son named Malcolm. About 1889 Neal married ELIZABETH LEE (Nov. 17, 1861 - Dec. 12, 1957). From this marriage would come five children. Neal and his two wives are buried in the Locklin Cemetery in San Gabriel. The cemetery is bounded on three sides by the old Gilchrist farm, which remained for many years in the family

4. JOHN MALCOLM GILCHRIST (Dec. 5, 1851 - Sept. 5, 1852)

5. NANCY JANE GILCHRIST (Mar. 10, 1854 - July 23, 1928)

She became the first of Malcolm and Eliza Jane Gilchrist’s children to be born in Bullock, Ala.; those older were born in Barbour County. On Oct. 14, 1869, she married HARRIS (BUD) BRANNEN and in 1874, having lived in Bullock for about five years, they moved to Navasota, Texas, where they established a farm along the banks of the Brazos River. In 1879 they moved to Holly, Texas in Houston County where they purchased 1,200 acres of land and introduced the first Hereford breeding cattle into that part of Texas. In 1906 the family moved still further west to Stonewall County in the lower part of the Texas Panhandle; here they acquired land near the community of Peacock. They came to be regarded as among the most prosperous farmers and cattle breeders in that part of Texas. In 1914 the family began work on their third Texas home in the town of Peacock. On Mar. 7, 1914 Bud died; Nancy, however, continued the work and completed the house. The couple was buried in nearby Aspermont, Texas. They had thirteen children

6. DANIEL WEBSTER GILCHRIST (Aug. 20, 1855 - May 7, 1923)

He married ELIZABETH DRIGGERS (May 18, 1865 - Aug. 25, 1929) in 1887; there were six children. He was for a time a planter living near Brantley, Ala., but later moved into Geneva, Ala., where he became owner- operator of a dry goods store. They along with most of their children are buried in the old Geneva Cemetery

7. EDMOND PARMENUS GILCHRIST (Jan. 12, 1857 - Mar. 18, 1900)

He married MARTHA A. THOMPSON (April 5, 1866 - Oct. 13, 1927) from Hot Springs, Ark.; their eight children. He was a planter who moved in the late 1800’s from Bullock, Ala., to the small community of Hix, Texas, very near the Brazos River between the towns of Gause and Caldwell. He is buried in Hix very near the family farm and shi is buried in Dallas, Texas, her last place of residence

8. RICHARD MONTGOMERY GILCHRIST (June 10, 1859 - Aug. 15, 1938)

He married MARY FRANCES (MOLLY) SHORT (Feb. 20, 1868 - Jan. 13, 1954) of Bullock, Ala.; there were ten children. He was a planter, the owner-operator of the General Mercantile Store of Brantley, and a director and stockholder in the First National Bank of Brantley. He was a deacon in the Baptist church and was actively involved in the community life of Brantley. Both are buried in the old Brantley Cemetery

9. ROBERT MANSFIELD GILCHRIST (Nov. 25, 1868 - Nov. 16, 1947)

He was a Brantley merchant who married MINNIE DORA ELLIS (Nov. 8, 1876 - Oct. 21, 1904); there was one child. Both are buried in nearby Bullock

10. EPSIE GILCHRIST (July 7, 1862 - Mar. 5, 1936)

She married WILLIAM HENRY WHALEY (June 5, 1856 - Mar. 23, 1924); there were seven children. He was a farmer and they lived in the community of Hephzibah near Troy, Ala., in neighboring Pike County. They are buried in the Good Hope Cemetery located on the Dozier Highway a short distance from Troy. Several of their children are also buried in the same cemetery

 

In moving to Coffee County, Ala., Malcolm purchased on Jan. 14, 1854 forty acres of land approximately ten miles east of the town of Brantley and near the community of Bullock. It would be this section of Coffee County that would become part of the new Crenshaw County in 1866.

 

On Sept. 15, 1856, Malcolm purchased slightly more than forty more acres, with this being good "bottom land" along the Conecuh River. His new purchase now moved him to about six miles north, northwest of Brantley. Of considerable significance, another planter, James Willborn Ellis, had one month earlier purchased nearly eighty-one acres of adjoining land, thereby permitting a relationship to develop between the two families that would continue to this day. On two occasions Gilchrist sons would take Ellis brides.

 

Possibly inspired by his influential father-in-law, Malcolm became a Justice of the Peace in Crenshaw County. In October 1871 he performed the marriage of Enoch Eiland, a young minister, and Roxie Anna Davis, daughter of the minister who had performed the marriage of William Gilbert Gilchrist, Malcolm’s oldest son, and Harriet Annette Wright. Later, on Aug. 20, 1897, William Richard Eiland, the oldest of the Eiland children, and himself a Baptist minister, married Malcolm’s granddaughter, Epsie Lee Gilchrist.

 

Malcolm Gilchrist died on Sept. 22, 1882 at the age of sixty-seven; Eliza Jane lived for another nineteen years, dying on Jan. 4, 1901. The two are buried in the old Friendship Baptist Church Cemetery in Bullock, Alabama.

As evidence of a lingering Celtic influence the children of Malcolm and Eliza Jane Gilchrist would place a very strong influence on the church, education, and the family. Nearly all would derive their income from the land. And, five of the children would marry and rear their families in or near Brantley --- thus creating the "cluster effect" that would extend over three generations. Of the remaining children, one died in infancy and the other three settled in different sections of the state of Texas, which would in time, owing to poor communication and distance, all but end contact between the family groups including the Texas families.

 

Following World War I the Gilchrists of Brantley, Alabama began holding an annual "Gilchrist Reunion" on the fourth Sunday in June. One such gathering held at the Brantley High School brought nearly two hundred of the clan together. Later the reunion was moved to the city of Opp in Covington County where it has continued. But, with the passing of years and each new generation becoming more removed by distance, the bond that once was so strong in this family has weakened.

 

If a word of admonition could be heard from the members of these bygone generations who established such a reputation for integrity, perseverence in the face of great sadness and difficulty, wise counsel, respected leadership, a good work ethic, it would be don’t forsake the family, and above all don’t forsake the Lordship of Jesus Christ. TO THE MEANING OF YOUR NAME BE TRUE.

"The Lord will command the blessing upon you in your barns and in all that you put your hand to, and He will bless you in the land which the Lord your God gives you . . . if you will keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and walk in His ways."

-- Deuteronomy 28: 8 & 9

 

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