Capt. Abraham Kuykendall
An Abraham was baptized on 18 October 1719 in the Dutch church at Kingston, Ulster County, New York, son of Cornelis Van Kuykendaal and Marretjen Westvaal. The witnesses were Jan Van Etten and Jannetjen Roosa. His great-grandfather Jacob Luursen had come from Wageningen in Gelderland.
A generation later an Abraham Kuykendall was a leading man on the North Carolina frontier. On 29 March 1753 he was granted 570 acres on the south fork of Fishing Creek, on the south side of the Catawba River, in what was then Anson County. He and his wife Elizabeth sold it by lease and release on 16 and 17 May 1754, as "Abraham Kuykendall and Elizabeth his Wife of ye County of Anson." The buyer was William Adear and the price thirty-six pounds in Virginia money. Both sealed the deed, and John Kuykendall, Joseph Harden and Charles Dunlap witnessed it. In December 1758 Abraham witnessed the sale of 400 acres on the north branch of Fishing Creek by John Kuykendall and his wife Rebecca to Peter Kuykendall. In 1763 he took a grant on Fishing Creek in what became York County, South Carolina, beside Peter and James Kuykendall. He held land in the part of Tryon County that became Rutherford County in 1779, and sold and bought land there into the 1790s. In 1787 "Abraham Kuykendall of Rutherford Co. N.C." sold 400 acres on Great Limestone in Washington County, now in Tennessee, with a James Kuykendall as witness. A younger Abraham Kuykendall was in Rutherford County by 1790.
The 1919 Kuykendall family history gathered his public offices from the Colonial and State Records of North Carolina. On 26 July 1775 he was a committeeman for Captain Kuykendall's company on the Tryon County Committee of Safety, the local body that took over government from the Crown as the Revolution began. He was named a commissioner to build the Tryon courthouse, prison and stocks and to run the line between Tryon and Mecklenburg counties. He was a justice of the peace in 1778. A county history by C. W. Griffin, cited in his descendants' DAR papers, has him a captain of Tryon militia, on duty after July 1776.
That this Carolina captain was the child baptized at Kingston is the judgment of family historians. The 1919 history put it this way: he "was most likely the son of Cornelius Kuykendall." The Daughters of the American Revolution have accepted that lineage. A 1971 family compilation said of this stretch that "very little of it has been proved and documented." No record has been found that joins the two.
A great-grandson's family statement names him as the father of Matthew Kuykendall, who went to Tennessee and died in Mississippi in 1841. It was written down by Andrew Briggs Kuykendall of San Antonio from his father's account: "My great great grandfather came from Holland. His name was ABRAM and he served in the Revolutionary war as Captain. My great grandfather's name was MATTHEW." The family had spoken Dutch in Virginia and the Carolinas, which the 1919 historian thought was why later generations believed their grandfathers came straight from Holland. His death date is not settled. The DAR lineage has him dying after 12 December 1778; a local tradition gives 1812.
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Cite: Heirology, "Capt. Abraham Kuykendall (b. 1719)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/capt-abraham-kuykendall-1719-ee768f.