Ancestors

Mary Lindley

Mary Lindley was born in October 1764, by the age she gave in 1850. Her father was Capt. James Lindley, a Quaker-born landowner who kept a tavern on Terrell Creek in Orange County, North Carolina. Her mother was very probably Mary Cox, his wife since 1754. Early in 1768, when Mary was three, the family moved to Reaburn's Creek in the Ninety Six District of South Carolina.

She grew up on the creek. Her father held the King's commissions as justice of the peace and militia captain, and his fortified homeplace was known as Lindley's Fort. In the summer of 1776, when she was eleven, Loyalists and Cherokees attacked it. When the Revolution came her father stayed with the King, and he was killed in the war.

Her mother took the children back to North Carolina. Mary spent five years of the war there. She came back to the Ninety Six country afterward. She was present when her sister Rebecca married David Smith, in March 1782 by her own count. On 11 July 1785 she married Colville Abercrombie in what had just become Laurens District.

She bore Colville ten children and lived the rest of her life in Laurens District. One son was named Lindley Abercrombie. Her brother Thomas, her father's heir, lived close by on Raburn's Creek, and Colville witnessed his will in 1809. Colville's own will of 21 September 1837 named her as his wife. He died in November 1847.

On 20 November 1850, aged eighty six, she swore an affidavit for her sister Rebecca's widow's pension. She signed it with her mark. It is the only record of her own words. She died later that year, in the district where she had married sixty five years before.

If Mary Lindley is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Mary Lindley (1764-1850)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/mary-lindley-1764-1850-b1b85c.