Agness Ramsey

1727-1797

Born 1727

Died 1797

Children include Alexander

Agness Ramsey was born in 1727, by the age on her gravestone. Her brother was Robert Ramsey, a trustee of the Waxhaw Presbyterian church in 1758, who held land with her husband on Cane Creek. Her parents are not known.

About 1751 she married Alexander Nisbet, four years her junior, and they settled on his grant on Cane Creek, east of the Catawba River in the Waxhaw settlement. She bore nine children over twenty one years: Martha in 1752, William in 1753, Margaret in 1756, John in 1759, Alexander in 1762, James in 1765, Benjamin in 1768, Joseph, and Isabella.

Alexander died on 23 July 1773, the day he made his will. Agness was left with eight children at home and a ninth on the way. The will gave her the use of the plantation while she stayed a widow, the household goods, a sorrel horse and her saddle, two work horses, six cows with their calves and six sheep, and "the whole management" of the farm. It charged her to school the young children as far as the estate would allow. She never remarried.

The Revolution reached the Waxhaws in 1780, when British troops occupied the backcountry after the fall of Charleston and the Waxhaw meeting house was burned. Her sons William, John and James served in the war, and all of her sons came home from it. Alexander and Benjamin, the younger two, stayed on the farm with her.

In 1790 the census taker listed her as the head of a household of four grown men and herself, most likely her unmarried sons. In November 1795 her youngest child, Isabella, died at 22. Her son Alexander and his wife Mary lived with her on the farm in her last years, and three of their children were born there. Agness died on 6 August 1797, aged 70, and was buried beside her husband in the Old Waxhaw churchyard under one stone with him. It names her eight surviving children.

Children

Alexander Nisbett Jr. 1762-1841

Sources

Old Waxhaw Presbyterian Church cemetery, Lancaster County, South Carolina; Find a Grave memorial 10224677, photograph added 2024.

Will of Alexander Nisbet, 23 July 1773, Charleston wills, vol. 16, Book A, page 45, and South Carolina will book 1774 to 1779, pages 72 to 74, as printed in Newton Alexander Nisbet, Nisbet Narrations (Charlotte, N.C., 1961), chapter X (archive.org nisbetnarrations00nisb).

First Census of the United States, 1790: Heads of Families, South Carolina (Washington, 1908), page 24, Camden District, Lancaster County; National Archives microcopy T-498, roll 3; archive.org populationsc17900003unix, leaf 101.

Gravestone of Alexander and Agness Nisbett, Old Waxhaw Presbyterian Church cemetery, Find a Grave memorials 10224677 and 10224678; will of Alexander Nisbet, 23 July 1773, as printed in Newton Alexander Nisbet, Nisbet Narrations (Charlotte, N.C., 1961), archive.org nisbetnarrations00nisb; Find a Grave memorial 10224673 (stone of Isabella Nisbett, 1795); Find a Grave memorial 25666213 (stone of Major John Nisbet, 1829); First Census of the United States, 1790: Heads of Families, South Carolina (1908), page 24, Lancaster County (National Archives microcopy T-498, roll 3; archive.org populationsc17900003unix, leaf 101)

If Agness Ramsey is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Agness Ramsey (1727-1797)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/agness-ramsey-1727-1797-b59054.