From Virginia Through the Southwest:Information about Abraham Cantrell
Abraham Cantrell (b. 1744, d. 1814)
Notes for Abraham Cantrell:
Abraham Cantrell was born about 1744 in New Castle County, Pennsylvania (now Delaware) and diedabout 1814 in Spartanburg County, South Carolina.He was the son of John Cantrell and his first wife, Miss Brittian.Abraham was the eldest child in a very large family.He had 16 brothers, four half-brothers, and two half- sisters.There were several twins in the family, and Abraham and his brother Isaac are said to have been twins.
The family was still comparatively small (only seven or eight boys) when Abraham’s father decided to move from Delaware to North Carolina.Abraham was about ten years old when his family along with several of his uncles, aunts, and cousins journeyed south together with their wagons and livestock making a sizable caravan.By 1755 Abraham’s father was living in Orange County, North Carolina on what was then the frontier. Their relatives lived nearby in Orange County or just across the line in Rowan County.The Cantrells settled on Wolf Island Creek, which is now in Rockingham County, for the next 20 years or so.
The Cantrells grew practically everything they ate, plus cotton, flax, and wool from which thread was spun, then woven into cloth, and made into clothes.Abraham's mother died about 1768, having borne 17 sons in twenty-five years of marriage.
Abraham’s father married his second wife soon after, and Abraham himself married about this time.His wife's name is unknown but they probably married in 1769 or 1770.Their first known child, Richard Cantrell, was Born March 10, 1771.Two more sons were born by 1780, and there may have been other children who died in infancy.
Abraham Cantrell served in the Revolutionary War at this time. His name is listed on the pay roll of North Carolina soldiers.Tradition says that he was a captain, and received more pay than others on the list.
About the time the Revolution ended, Abraham’s first wife died about 1782, leaving him with three young sons. Abraham probably married again by 1785 probably to a Miss Watson (Lucy or Malissa?).Malissa Watson was a sister to Nancy the wife of his twin Brother Isaac.It is uncertain just where Abraham married his second wife, as he and his family moved from Rockingham County, North Carolina, to Spartanburg County, South Carolina, in about 1785 where he lived until his death.Abraham Cantrell had three sons and three daughters born to him by his second wife.
His father, several brothers, cousins, and other members of the Cantrell family and their relatives also moved to Spartanburg County and settled on Buck Creek and the Pacolet River. The land in this area is shown on Mills’ 1825 Atlas of South Carolina as "poor level land."
Abraham Cantrell and most of the other Cantrells were definitely not a wealthy family.While they were not desperately poor, they could not afford to buy the best land.In 1792 Abraham Cantrell bought 192 acres on Buck Creek, paying 40 pounds (about $135), or less than a dollar an acre.He may have bought more land later; there are more deeds to an Abraham Cantrell.However, since he had a son and a nephew both named Abraham and both living in Spartanburg County, it has been difficult to tell which is which.
Abraham’s homes, and those of his neighbors, in both North Carolina and South Carolina would have beena log house of no more than two or three rooms.In Spartanburg County, in 1804, practically every building was a log structure.In 1807 a deed shows Abraham Cantrell bought 170 acres on the south side of Buck Creek by"the School House Branch."This was likely where the Cantrell children attended school.Sons Richard, Abraham, and Watson were educated and each later served as church clerk of Bildad Church in Tennessee.
Abraham Cantrell’s family attended church, which was something that many of their neighbors did not do.In 1825 Spartanburg County had a population of 16,000 with less than 2,000 church members.About three-fourths of these church members were Baptists, as were the Cantrells, who belonged to the Buck Creek Baptist Church.Of Abraham Cantrell’s nine or more children, of whom only five are definitely known, five were later active members of the Bildad Baptist Church in Tennessee.
Baptist churches were very strict about the behavior of their members and did not permit drunkenness. However, many of their neighbors in Spartanburg County used whiskey and brandy very freely, as noted by several travelers. One of them found some of the people in Spartanburg County about 1800 to be "respectable," but many to be "truly ignorant and much attached to ardent spirits- many beastly so."Abraham’s children apparently escaped addiction to drinking, but some of his grandchildren did not.His grandson William Riley Cantrell (1809-1885) grew to young manhood in Spartanburg County and later moved to DeKalb County, Tennessee.According to a family member who knew them well, William Riley and most of his sons drank excessively, and seven of the eight sons "filled a drunkard’s grave."
Life in Spartanburg County was difficult. Michael Gaffney, who settled there in 1802, found the land "poor, sandy, rocky, and hilly."Most of the people were poor, but he found them quite independent. "Every farmer or planter is his own shoemaker, tanner, tailor, carpenter, brazier, and, in fact, everything else. Everything comes by the farmer and his family.It is the business of the wife and daughter to pick cotton...pick it from the seed, spin it, weave it, and make it ready for your back. Some of the girls made very handsome cloth. The women in this country live the poorest lives of any people in the world...here they must do everything from cooking to ploughing, and after that they have no more life in them than Indian squaws. They hardly ever sat down at the table with their husbands, but wait on them like menial servants."
Abraham Cantrell twice was left with small children to see after; his second wife died before 1800.His daughter Elizabeth was about eight when her mother died; probably she could manage much of he household work by then until her marriage to Tilman Potter in 1809.
Abraham Cantrell is said to have died in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, but the exact time is uncertain, possibly died around 1814, when he was about seventy years old.His known children all moved from South Carolina to what is now DeKalb County, Tennessee.
Source: Thomas G. Webb, DeKalb Co. Tennessee Historian.
More About Abraham Cantrell and <Unnamed>:
Marriage: Abt. 1769
Children of Abraham Cantrell are:
- +Richard Cantrell, b. March 10, 1771, Guilford Co. North Carolina (now Rockingham Co.), d. 1835, Franklin Co. Illinois.
- +John Cantrell, b. October 25, 1772, Guilford Co. North Carolina (now Rockingham Co.), d. Aft. 1850, Warren Co. Tennessee.