The Curious Mr. Kidd-Part Two

As mentioned in the first part of the Kidd story, James has lived an interesting life. He was born in Virginia, fought in several key Revolutionary War battles, and managed to evade imprisonment as a tax debtor. Leveraging his service in the Revolutionary War, Kidd returned to Oglethorpe and Gwinnett counties in 1831 through 1833 to file for a pension for service. In these trips to his old haunts he enlists Elisha Winn.

Elisha Winn’s house would have hosted the first sheriff’s sale in Gwinnett County (in which Kidd was on the debtors end), but he also plays a greater role in Kidd’s story. Among the requirements to obtain a revolutionary war pension was to validate the identity of the claimant with two sworn witness who knew the applicant, one of whom was to be a clergyman. In Kidd’s application for pension a clergyman does not appear, but rather two persons who sworn to have known him for some time Benjamin Ivie and Elisha Winn. To fully understand this we look at the sworn documents for information. There is an asterisk at the end of the statement that explain that Mr. Kidd now lives in DeKalb County and that a clergyman could not be produced without great inconvenience and expense to the court. So although living in DeKalb County, Kidd had returned to Gwinnett County to obtain the necessary witnesses. Knowing the location of Elisha Winn’s house and that he made an oath in court to knowing James Kidd for some time we can further draw that Mr. Kidd’s store was probably close to the Fort Daniel location. Another two facts worth mentioning are that travelling between Fort Daniel and Elisha Winn’s house could be done without crossing any streams. This would be of importance for anyone who travelled with the purpose of purchasing good to be transported home. The second clue to consider is that Winn’s daughter Philadelphia married Maltbie who operated a store at Hog Mountain. In 1820 Maltbie and Winn were listed as neighbors on the census role. It could be a possibility that Maltbie took over Kidd’s store or at least filled the business vacuum Kidd created when he departed for DeKalb County.

Benjamin Ivie was the second person listed as a witness to Kidd’s identity. Benjamin, his brother, and son were listed in the 1832 gold lottery as receiving land in the area. Benjamin also appears in the Bogan District in the 1830 census. Perhaps the best evidence of Benjamin Ivie’s connection come from an interview with the Reverend William Ivie published in the Gwinnett Weekly Herald on February 3, 1875. Reverend Ivie stated in his interview that his father Benjamin,

“…settled on Beaver Ruin creek in 1817. His family and his brother John's were the only white families then living west of the Apalachee. The location of their cabins is not certainly known now, but it is believed they were near the road that runs by Daniel J. Liddell's, and on his land. Faint evidences of old house places, I am informed, may be seen near the creek, and these probably are where the cabins of Benjamin and John Ivie were built fifty-eight years ago. Upon the organization of Lawrenceville, a few years after, the father and son moved to the new town…”[1]

Given this information and using the location descriptions it can be surmised that Benjamin Ivie lived on the trading path that became Peachtree Road near present day Norcross. This would further endorse Mr. Kidd’s store location at being near the Fort Daniel site as it would have been the closest trading post for the Ivies to do business. Given that Peachtree Road crossed no streams between the Ivie residence and Fort Daniel, and that a waterless trail also existed between Elisha Winn’s home and Fort Daniel, a solid case can be made that Kidd’s Store was somewhere near the fort at the current crossroads of Georgia Highways 124 and 324.

Also mentioned in Kidd’s Pension papers is his brother, William Kidd. As noted in part one, William Kidd moved to Georgia in 1799 almost 15 years after James Kidd arrived in the state. By all evidences William put down roots in the Lexington area. His Revolutionary War pension states that he has resided for almost all his time in Georgia in the area of Lexington. He established a life for himself and even served in the militia in the War of 1812 and indicated by his wife’s application for a widow’s pension in 1871. Although the connection has not been determined, both of the Kidd’s brothers had some connection to the Hurricane Shoals in Jackson County. Some newspaper evidence puts both in that area with business interest and William’s War of 1812 Pension lists Hurricane Shoals as an address. James Kidd had his Revolutionary War pension sent to Hurricane Shoals for collection. This would have been a long distance for him to travel and collect coming from DeKalb in the 1830s, but given his history of tax debt perhaps he had found a haven where the money would come to him safely. This part still has yet to be uncovered.

After the Revolutionary War filings for pensions, James Kidd’s trail goes dark. The last evidence discovered this far is the government paying his final pension check in the year 1840 which usually indicated death. What we can say for sure is that in 1812, with heightened tensions on the frontier and the nation at war, Hog Mountain was a place where frontier settlers had a reason to be nervous about their lives everyday as evidenced by the incidents at Mr. Kidd’s Store. Non-native settlements were expanding rapidly through the Hog Mountain area in route to points west. The allocations of land and pensions to war veterans were driving people in this westward direction and as a result the research is a wild paper chase of people, times, and locations. There is more to the story, more to be discovered, more to be answered, but this comes with time.

[1] “Rev. William Ivie Interview” Gwinnett Herald, February 3, 1875, 3.