Capt. James Lindley
James Lindley was born on 22 September 1735 at London Grove, Chester County, Pennsylvania. His father was Thomas Lindley, a Quaker miller born in County Carlow. His mother was Ruth Hadley, of a Quaker family from Moate Meeting in County Westmeath. The family moved to the Cane Creek country of North Carolina in 1753. The next year James married Mary Cox, daughter of William Cox of Cox's Mill on Deep River.
He did well in North Carolina. By 1761 he held 1,170 acres on Terrell Creek and kept a tavern in his own home. Early in 1768 he moved his family to Reaburn's Creek in the Ninety Six District of South Carolina. There he held the King's commission as a justice of the peace and a captain's commission in the provincial militia. When the Revolution came, he stayed with the King. The National Register nomination for Lindley's Fort says he "held at least one meeting of Loyalists at his home."
He was captured at the Great Cane Brake in December 1775 and released on parole at Charles Town. In July 1776 his own fortified homeplace on Raburn's Creek, Lindley's Fort, held out against a night attack by Loyalists and Cherokees. His commission papers were found in the raiders' abandoned camp. He was captured again at Kettle Creek in Georgia in February 1779.
How he died is told two ways. The state biography and the histories of the Ninety Six trials say he was tried for treason and hanged at Ninety Six in April 1779, one of five men executed. A Lindley family genealogy says he fled to North Carolina and then Virginia, "trailed by two men from Chatham Co., N.C. who captured and murdered him at New River, Va. 1780/81." Both accounts agree that the war killed him.
His children said so under oath seventy years later. In 1852 his son Jonathan, then eighty one, swore in Cobb County, Georgia, "that my Father was killed in the Revolutionary War." Jonathan and his sisters Rebecca and Mary were sworn brother and sisters in the pension file of Rebecca's husband, David Smith. His eldest son Thomas sold part of his land in 1785 as "Son and heir of James Lindley," and in 1803 Thomas was still answering in court as administrator of his estate.
His widow took the children back to North Carolina. Mary Lindley was living in Orange County in 1790. Their daughter Mary spent five years of the war there, then came back to the Ninety Six country and married Colville Abercrombie in 1785.
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Cite: Heirology, "Capt. James Lindley (1735-1779)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/capt-james-lindley-1735-1779-f402f6.