At first glance, you wouldn’t think that Cindy and I are related. She’s tall; I’m small. She’s blonde; I’m brunette. She was raised in the Midwest; I grew up in the South.
We lived next door to each other in the dorm at Sewanee this summer, and one afternoon she told me she was heading to North Carolina when our summer semester was over. She wanted to look up some property records of Quaker ancestors in Randolph County. I mentioned I had Quaker ancestors in Guilford County, right above Randolph, who had migrated there from Nantucket.
She told me the surname was Milliken, sometimes spelled Millikan or Millican. The name wasn’t familiar to me, but I had a hunch our family trees intersected somewhere. I spent about five minutes on ancestry.com and discovered the link.
My great-great-great-great-great grandmother was Sarah Millikan Mills, born in 1748, and Cindy’s great-great-great-great-great grandfather was Sarah’s brother, Benjamin Millikan, born in 1755. Their sister Hannah Millikan Blair played an impressive role in supporting the fight for American independence.
Hiding Patriots in corn cribs and feather beds
Although Quakers honor the testimony of peace, which forbids them from bearing arms, many North Carolina Quakers found ingenuous ways to plague the British and support the Patriots. Hannah, who was pregnant and gave birth every single year of the Revolution, regularly carried food, medicine and messages to the Patriots hiding in the woods near her home.
At least twice, she hid Patriots from the Tories roaming the countryside. Once she hid them in a corncrib and sat outside shucking corn while the Tories searched her farm. Another time, she ripped open a feather bed to hide a soldier inside. When the Tories burst into her home, she sat calmly stitching up the ripped seam, reportedly telling them, “Thee may search as thee please.”
Our mutual ancestor William Millikan
Cindy and I both, through our ancestors Sarah and Benjamin, are descended from their father William Millikan. He had followed a typical Scots Irish immigration pattern of the time, from Ireland to Chester County, Pennsylvania and then down to North Carolina around 1750. Although William was probably raised in the Presbyterian Church, he seems to have joined the Quaker faith as an adult. The monthly meeting records show that his children were all what was called “birthright Quakers.”
By 1782, William Millikan was one of many North Carolina patriots targeted by David Fanning. (Fanning exerted considerable energy raising hell all over North Carolina, burning things and hanging people in support of the Tories. He reportedly had a tough childhood, but still.) Millikan’s farm at the time was in the northernmost part of Randolph County, near Back Creek, on the upper left of the map above. While he was out driving his cows, Fanning and his men rode in and set fire to his house. William’s wife Jane tried to save a feather mattress, but Fanning’s men threw it back into the fire and taunted her as she watched the flames consume their possessions. The house, barn and other buildings were burned to the ground. Some documents suggest that William and Jane then moved in with Hannah and her husband Enos just over the county line in Guilford.
What happened to Sarah and Benjamin?
Courageous Hannah is often cited as one of the unsung heroes of the Revolution. But what about her siblings Sarah and Benjamin? Benjamin remained in the Back Creek area of Randolph County where his parents deeded him 460 acres in 1788. In his will dated 1834, he left his wife his 283 acres for her lifetime, (I’m assuming he sold some land or gave some to his children along the way) along with three hogs, two ewes and lambs, the Barshear plow, one ax, and one hoe. He left his youngest daughter Rebecca one red-hided heifer. The rest of his estate he divided among three children, Mary, Samuel and Benjamin. To several other children (the oldest ones, I believe) he left one dollar and the same to several grandchildren.
Sarah, according to the Quaker minutes of the New Garden meeting in Guilford County, married neighbor John Mills. Their daughter Jane married into my Nantucket Quaker family in New Garden. She and her husband John Davis eventually moved from North Carolina to Ohio. (Prior to the Civil War, many North Carolina Quakers who opposed slavery moved to free-soil states Ohio and Indiana.)
Circling back on the story
Oddly, one of the short stories I was working on at Sewanee, and am now revising for my fiction workshop, is loosely based on one of Jane and John Davis’ sons, also named John Davis. He was a North Carolina Quaker who was an early pioneer in southwest Georgia. In the story, which takes place prior to the Civil War, he opposes slavery in a place where most white men are slaveholders.
How much of our DNA do we share with those who lived generation upon generation ago? You could say Cindy and I have nothing in common, or that we share a great deal. At the very least, we can both tell the stories of the ones who came before.
