Tracing back the Breazeale name has been a fascination for many with this surname in their family tree. On the early end, in the late 1600’s we can be confident there was a Henry Brazell in Virginia. Starting in 1850, we have a more detailed Census with places of birth. But between then, we have relatively few primary sources. There are some land records and wills, but we’re limited in what we can know for certain. My curiosity for this project comes mainly from George Washington Breazeale. We know he was in South Carolina and given land in his father’s will, but his residences, marriages, and children become quite a tangle after that. The problem is compounded because there are so many men named George Washington at that time and when I find records, I don’t know if they’re attributable to him. I’m going to use this project to try and pin down where he was during this time frame.
Methods
I used the record search feature at Familysearch.org to compile my lists. I used the last name variants Brazeal, Breazeale, and Brezeal in my search terms, limiting my search results to just a particular year’s Census. For 1790-1840, I kept all results since only head of household was notated. The 1850 data was tough, I ended up cleaning 1306 individuals down to 329 households. In the majority of cases, I kept the oldest male in the household when all members shared the same last name. There are also records (like my ancestor Sarah Breazeale) where one or two Breazeale’s lived in the household of another person’s surname, I kept the Breazeale last name in the data. The location data uses the county where the information was collected. This means there are some inaccuracies in exact location, for example Pendleton District in 1790 includes Pickens, Oconee, Anderson and Pendleton counties.
If you have more questions or would like a copy of the database I compiled, you can find me on WikiTree and in the Facebook group Breazeale Kin in America.
I’ve labeled this map after my ancestors, but I also want to acknowledge this migration is also part of the forced removal of Indigenous peoples. Our ancestors directly benefitted from the forceful displacement of the people who already lived there, and I benefit today from that generational wealth. I grew up on Cherokee land near the town of Keowee, and I know of one ancestor who actively participated in the kidnapping and removal of Cherokee people and I’m sure there are more.
I say this to make the point that Indigenous land rights is not a past tense term, Indigenous people are still here and still fighting to keep their land. Hopefully one day in 200 years, my descendants will look me up on the 2020 Census. When I learn about the Keystone Pipeline or McGirt v. Oklahoma and form my opinion based on the information I have in 2021, I wonder what my descendants will think of me and how I relate to my time in history.
Genealogy research is a hobby with a lot of layers. I was able to make quick progress initially, and I’m very grateful to the diligent genealogists who conducted their research before the internet and the early adapters who digitized sources for making a lot of my work fairly easy for me. What’s become interesting to me is finding my ancestors among the historical events and examining how history shaped their lives and how their lives shaped history.
Here I’ve circled two areas relevant to the Breazeales in the seventeenth century: Jamestown, Virginia and the intersection of Cherokee, Muskogee, and Catawba land that was to become north-western South Carolina. We are certain that Henry Brazell was a property owner near present-day Richmond in 1679, and we’re pretty sure his father Henry Brassell immigrated through Jamestown in 1643. His son (yet another Henry) moved to South Carolina in 1764, and with him we move to the next map.
This Henry Breazeale received a grant of 200 acres on Long Cane Creek (circled in black) in what was then called Ninety-Six District, and although it’s anachronistic I think of him of the first of the Pickens Breazeales. I’ve circled the town of Ninety-Six in red, to my reading it’s the only place in the area that’s still a town in 2020. Long Cane Creek was on the boundaries with two other nations, the Cherokee to the north and the Creek (Muskogee) to the west. Just four years before in 1760 it had been the site of a Cherokee attack, known as the Long Cane Massacre. Catherine Calhoun, among the twenty three killed was grandmother of John C. Calhoun was killed there.
Examining the history of this time is like a nesting doll of armed conflicts amongst the settlers, Cherokee, British, and French. The Anglo-Cherokee war is dated 1758-1761, but it occurred within the timeline of the the French and Indian War in which the Cherokee allied with the British and they constructed Fort Prince George near the Cherokee town of Keowee (area circled in blue) where 23 Cherokee hostages were killed in 1758. I’ve seen no source comparing the two events, but I can’t help but see the symmetry in 23 deaths. These events are so minor in textbook history they may not even be footnotes, but for my ancestors and others I see the germs of experiences resulting in national and international policies that shape our world today.
Between 1775 and 1816, there’s significant variability in the maps of the region, specifically with the town of Keowee alternately being part of the US and Cherokee nation. In those 59 years, there were 21 treaties between Cherokee nation and the United States. The town of Keowee was largely razed during the Anglo-Cherokee war. Whatever artifacts or archeological understanding we could have had of when the Cherokee left the area permanently was submerged by Duke Power’s damn in 1970-71. The site of Fort King George were excavated before the damn was built, the site Keowee was not.
In 1820, we enter into a bit of a gap in our knowledge of the Breazeales and relatively few primary sources. We have the will of Henry Breazeale who died about 1767 and references a younger son, Willis Breazeale, who we see again in the 1790 census in Abbeville. The next Breazeale I’ve found in primary sources is Lucinda Breazeale, so far my most mysterious ancestor and our break in the patrilineal chain of Breazeale. In 1840, she is listed as the head of her household and lives with her mother and her children, with no male above 18 in the household. In 1850, she is on the census with her husband Robert Scott, her mother, and her children from before 1850 who keep the surname Breazeale. Presumably her father is George Washington Breazeale, who died in 1859 but was not living with his wife and daughter in either 1840 or 1850.
It’s in this period I confidently place my ancestry on land near the Twelve Mile River, near and likely including the land my parents live on today. Several other branches of my family settle to the west of Pickens during this time including the Bakers, Murphrees, Allgoods, and Bowens, many of whom are buried in Baker Cemetary.
Skipping over some significant familial and national history, we jump to our next map in 1900. My great-great grandfather Samuel Perry Breazeale and great-grandfather Edward Thomas Breazeale are living, and a spur railroad has been built from Easley to Pickens and manufacturing entered the history of Pickens. My family kept up farming through the 1960’s but began adding manufacturing as a source of income.
The final map is from the US Department of Agriculture in 1977. By this time my grandparents were retired, still living in their farmhouse. My dad was working at the timber mill, sending lumber down the Pickens spur line. It’s here I can clearly see the intersection of geography and history played out in my ancestry. The British in the eighteenth century and the Americans in the nineteenth century sent settlers to the edges of their borders with the Cherokee nation. Whether by gumption, a sense of manifest destiny, or happenstance the Breazeales settled on the westernmost boundaries. Pickens is a town in the foothills, and you can see the farmland begin to fade to white, giving way to rocky, thin Appalachian soil.
I’ve wanted to go camping for years, but the timing has never been quite right. A silver lining of COVID-19 quarantine is I had a great opportunity to take a solo backpacking trip to Cumberland.
I was camping at Hickory Hill, a 5.5 mile hike in from the sea camp dock. I disembarked from the ferry about 12:30 and after checking in with the rangers and making a final indoor plumbing pit stop for the next few days, I set off.
I arrived at Hickory Hill around 3:30. The campsite is informally defined, there are signs off the trails indicating its general area but it’s up to you to find your preferred patch of woods. When I arrived, two other groups were setting up camp and one group appeared to have been there a night already. I was a little thrown off at first, I’d been imagining complete solitude and quickly realized I had 5-6 people within earshot. But through the weekend, I realized we all had different enough schedules that I rarely saw anyone.
I was so proud when I finally got my hang bad up, aside from using a cathole it was the part I was most nervous about on this trip.
Traveling alone is definitely more work, but it’s incredibly rewarding. It’s humbling to realize as you’re setting up and breaking down camp that you can carry everything you need to survive on your back. There’s an increased pressure and an increased feeling of liberation in knowing your decisions, actions, and consequences are entirely your own. If I skip hanging up my food to take a nap and a raccoon eats everything, I have no one to blame but myself. My schedule is also entirely up to me, and it lead me to be in tune with my body and energy levels. I didn’t plan any mindfulness exercises, but when eating, drinking, eliminating, or going to a different location are all time and labor intensive activities you have to be mindful of your current state.
