Dan,
Thanks for finding that reference to Daniel McClaren. I tried to find it the other day and wanted to post it,so people wouldn’t think I was telling something that wasn’t true.
Dan, no I have never been to any of the battlefields or historic sites. This is Mr. Parker’s biography of Daniel McClaren:
Daniel McClaren was born on 17 May 1749, apparently the son of Daniel McClaren. The McClarens immigrated to Virginia from Kilmadock Parish, Perthshire, Scotland. He removed to what is now York County,South Carolina and about 1769 married Mary,eldest daughter of John and Jean Stephenson, who had settled before 1762 on Stephenson Branch of Bullocks Creek. About 1772 Daniel bought Captain William Byers’ 275 acre plantation on Buck Horn Fork of Bullock’s Creek,three miles north of the present town of Sharon. In 1775 he was one of a large number who protested to King George III, of Great Britain the new boundary line between North and South Carolina which placed their lands in the latter State. He and Mary lived there until 1778 when he sold it to the widow Jane Meek,who in 1794 willed it to her sons Major Adam and Captain James Meek.,both sons -in- law of Captain Byers. Daniel immediately bought a 60 acre island in Broad River,but soon moved to what is now Cherokee then Spartanburg County.
By this time the Revolutionary War was going badly for the British in the North and in their effort to subdue the American colonies,the scene of war was shifted to the South. On 3 Aug 1780, Daniel joined the Spartan Regiment of Horsemen, under Colonial John Thomas, Jr.,as a supernumary junior officer .The skill and valor he displayed at the battle of Cowpens, 17 Jan 1781, earned for him a lieutenancy which he held until July of that year. Colonel Benjamin Roebuck succeeded to the command of the regiment and McClaren was promoted to Captain. Before the war ended he had attained the rank of major.
With the coming of peace McClaren began the acquisition of more than 5,000 acres of land, including a grant from the State in 1803 of the Cowpens Battleground. He paid the surveyor’s fee in gunpowder. Now a man of affairs he was not long in becoming entangled in various legal difficulties. One John Web filed a complaint against him and his son Robert, charging them with having made an assault upon him at Spartanburg Court House and Daniel countered that Bell “Did beat, wound, ill- treat, and imprison them for a long time without any reasonable cause and against the laws and customs of the State.” The case was called in March 1805, but Bell failed to appear and prosecute his suit and the charges were dropped.
In 1807 Major McClaren was indicted on a charge of having attempted to bribe,”one John Wood, a witness for the State to give evidence against one Abraham Champion against whom a bill of indictment was faced for negro stealing.” Daniel was convicted and sentenced to begin a term of six months imprisonment and to pay a fine of $300, but Governor John Drayton reduced the fine to $100 and pardoned him in 1809.
Son John McClaren had financial difficulties and was sued for debt by Thomas Allison, a merchant. The merchandise, which John bought on credit, consisted principally of whiskey,wine, rum, shot, gunpowder, bridles, pipes, shirting, lace, tape, buttons, stockings, sleeve buttons, molasses, sugar, salt and pepper. A fifa was levied on 200 acres of his land on Broad River.
Meanwhile, Daniel had sold his lands, including McClary’s island in Broad River which he had held for 30 years, and he had moved to Bedford County,Tennessee in 1808. Much of his property was sold to Wilson Nesbit who built on it Nesbit Iron Foundry, one of the first such establishments in the Up Country. Nesbit gave in payment a promissory note, but defaulted on it and McClaren brought suite. Nesbitt failed to appear in Court, being at the time in Washington attending the first session of the Fifteenth Congress, of which he was a member, and the Court awarded the plaintiff a judgment in the amount of
$3,924. The sheriff attached 7, 500 acres on Sarratt’s Creek, on which Nesbitt had built his iron furnace. Nesbitt then paid the Sheriff in U. S. copper cents, but McClaren refused to accept them on ground that they were not legal tender, fighting it all the way to the Constitutional Court at Columbia where he won a favorable decision. Nesbit subsequently went bankrupt.
McClaren’s eldest daughter Mary married John Rickman, a native of Baden in Germany, who had come with his parents to Rhode Island about 1770, fought and was wounded at Bunker Hill, moved to Virginia,and about 1800 to Spartanburg County. Rickman obtained more than 1000 acres in grants from the State, but eventually sold them and moved to Hickman County, Tennessee.
In the Blackwell- Joyce Cemetery near Chapel Hill in Marshall County(created from Bedford in 1836) is a tombstone on which was carved “Sacred to the Memory of DANIEL McCLAREN Born on the 17th of May 1749 and Departed this Life—.” To insure that his grave would be marked old Daniel may have prepared this stone, hoping that after his death the date would be added and it placed at his grave. It is doubtful, however, that it marks his burial place, for he apparently died in Hickman County, Tennessee in 1844, at the age of 95.
Daniel and Mary had a number of children–John, Mary, Daniel, Robert– but no complete list of them had been uncovered.
The use of both forms”Daniel McClaren” and “Daniel McClary,” in single deeds and other legal instruments prove that they refer to one and the same person. All documents were signed invariably “Daniel McClaren,”” and the use of “Daniel McClary” was by persons other than himself, thus showing that he was generally called and known by the name “McClary.” It seems that the latter was the Scottish pronunciation.
Reference:
Article written and researched for this edition by Elmer O. Parker, 5012 Circle Drive, Columbia,S.C. 29046.
It is thought that Nancy McClaren who married John Atkinson of Marshall County and Elizabeth McClaren who married John. C. Lewis of Marshall County were daughters of Daniel McClaren.