Ancestors

James Madison Piggott

James Madison Piggott was born on 1 January 1829 in Conecuh County, Alabama, in the settlements along the Sepulga River and Duck Creek that had been opened little more than ten years before. Family accounts make him a son of Thomas Piggott, a South Carolinian who had married Nancy Catherine Ward in Darlington County in 1809 and come west with the first settlers.

Benjamin Riley's History of Conecuh County, printed in 1881 while James was still living, names Thomas Pigot among the early householders of the Fork Sepulga settlement, beside Drury Dean, Jesse Cone and the Methodist preacher Joshua Calloway. "A grist mill was the first public enterprise," Riley wrote, and "Thomas Pigot was the first to meet the public demand in this particular. He constructed a mill upon one of the branches of Duck creek. He subsequently added to his original enterprise a cotton gin."

On 24 February 1856, according to family accounts, James married Sarah D. Mims in Monroe County. She was sixteen, the daughter of Henry Mims, who had died in Texas, and Caroline Grace. Their children were born over more than twenty years. When the census taker reached the household at Fork of Sepulga, in Beat 1 of Conecuh County, in 1870, Jas. M. Piggott was given as 45 and Sarah as 33. With them were Nancy C., 13, Mary E., 12, Georgia E., 10, Thomas N., 8, Amanda, 6, Monnie M., 4, Edney, a boy of 3, and James, a baby born that March. A young man of 24, Thomas Cowart, lived with the family. Hettie followed in 1879, and a daughter named Helen, who married a Dean, also counted James and Sarah as her parents. When James Henry died in 1924, his death certificate named his parents as James M. Piggott and Sarah Mimms.

A note passed down in the family says that during the Civil War he worked as a blacksmith and was exempt from military service, though he was carried on the rolls of Company I of the 65th Regiment, a county militia unit. The same family notes say his father changed the spelling of the name from Piggotte to Piggott after leaving South Carolina, and that some of the children went back to Piggotte. The family's own stones and records use both.

James Madison Piggott died on 8 January 1901, aged 72, and was buried in the family burying ground known as the Piggotte Cemetery. Sarah was buried there beside him ten years later. His stone opens with "In memory of J. M. Piggott" and closes with a verse: "Although he sleeps, his memory doth live, and cheering comfort to his mourners give."

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Cite: Heirology, "James Madison Piggott (1829-1901)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/james-madison-piggott-1829-1901-b24050.