Matthew Kuykendall
Matthew Kuykendall was born in North Carolina. His grandsons gave the year differently: about 1760 in one account, about 1763 in another. Family charts give 9 February 1758. A family statement makes him a son of Captain Abraham Kuykendall of Tryon County. That rests on the family's word and a DAR lineage, not a record. Abraham's wife in 1754, when she joined him in selling land in Anson County, North Carolina, was named Elizabeth. No record names another wife of his before 1800, so she was probably Matthew's mother.
He is easily confused with another man. A Matthew Kuykendall born on 24 October 1758 in Mecklenburg County fought at Cowpens, married Margaret Hardin, drew a Revolutionary pension in Butler County, Kentucky, and died there about 1845. Many charts give that man's birth date to this one. They were different men with different wives and children.
This Matthew married Nancy Johnson, by family tradition on 11 May 1780 in North Carolina. They had eight sons and four daughters, according to their grandson W. J. Kuykendall. The children named by two grandsons were Rebecca, Mary, Elizabeth, Mildred, William, Abraham, John, James, Matthew, Abner, Jacob and Absolem, the youngest, born in Tennessee on 25 August 1814. Two of the sons, John and Jacob, became doctors of the Thomsonian school, which treated the sick with herbal remedies.
The family lived in Franklin County, in middle Tennessee, where a deed of 1816 bounds on "Mathew Kuykendall North West corner." In 1816 he signed, with Rebecca Johnson and her sons, an agreement in Rutherford County, Tennessee, that a Johnson family history takes for the division of the estate of Nancy's father, William Johnson. Nancy died in Franklin County in September 1825. Matthew married a second wife, Mary.
Several sons went on to Texas. Abner left Franklin County in March 1831 to join Stephen F. Austin's colony. Abraham and Absolem followed in the 1830s.
Matthew moved to DeSoto County, in northwest Mississippi, where he was counted in 1840. He made his will on 4 June 1839 and signed it with his mark. He left his wife Mary a side saddle. Everything else was to be sold and the money divided equally between her and all his children. He asked that the enslaved family he owned be sold together if possible, and that "Bill & Epsey are not to be separated." He named his sons William and James executors.
He died on 15 August 1841, according to his grandson. The will was proved at the September Term 1841 of the DeSoto County probate court. The appraisers valued the estate at $4,202.12, and the court set aside a year's provisions for the widow: ten bushels of corn, a barrel of flour, two hundred pounds of pork, ten pounds of coffee, twenty pounds of sugar and half a bushel of salt. Among the buyers at the estate sale were his son John and William C. Grimes. James finished the settlement in 1844; William had died in the meantime.
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Cite: Heirology, "Matthew Kuykendall (1758-1841)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/matthew-kuykendall-1758-1841-3541fb.