Richard Tidwell
Richard Tidwell was born in South Carolina in about 1774. A memorial gives 28 November 1774 in Fairfield County, on the Wateree. Tidwells had held land on the Wateree's branches since the 1760s, and a brother of his, Hardaway, once had a house there beside the McCrary and Goodrum lands.
His parents are not proven. The likeliest are an elder Richard Tidwell and his wife Rachael. That Richard received three royal grants on the Wateree between 1764 and 1769, among them 100 acres on Hog Fork in 1768. He sold land at the end of 1788 and seems to have died by 1790. In 1790 Rachael Tidwell of Fairfield County headed a household with no man in it, two boys under sixteen and three females. Richard and Hardaway, born in 1774 and 1775, fit the two boys.
On 1 January 1795 Rachael sold the Hog Fork land to Bird Owens, and Richard witnessed the deed with his mark. Four days later she sold Richard her enslaved woman Nell, with a mare, a cow and a feather bed, for £100. In 1797 and 1798 Richard was suing in Kentucky for an enslaved boy belonging to Hardaway, called Hardy, under a power of attorney from him. No record calls Richard her son. Fairfield had more than one Richard Tidwell, and a "Richard Tidwell Senr" was still named as a neighbor there in 1797.
By 1820 he was in Maury County, Tennessee. On 14 July 1820 he paid Thomas Goodrum $500 for a hundred acres, part of a 5,000 acre survey granted to James Kendrick. He farmed there for more than forty years. By 1857 his home place came to about 225 acres, with a small tract on the waters of Silver Creek, and he held slaves.
He had at least ten children: Thomas, Darling, Francis, Rosanna, James, Caroline, Lewis, Greene B., Lucinda and Richard. His son Francis, born in 1803, lived near him in Maury County in 1831 and later moved to McNairy County in the far southwest of the state.
In 1850 Richard was seventy six. Two grown sons were still at home, and so was his brother Hardy, seventy five. There was no wife in the house.
On 19 February 1857 he made his will. He listed what he had already given each child, and it was the same for all ten: $1,235. He wanted his slaves valued by three neighbours and divided among the children without sale, and everything else sold and shared. "My desire is to make all equal in the final devision." His brother Hardaway was to have his clothes, his trundle bed and $150. His son Greene B. was named executor.
Richard died in 1863, during the Civil War. The will was proven on 6 July 1863. A memorial gives 20 June 1863 at Culleoka and a box tomb in Fountain Creek Cemetery there. Hardaway had died before him. The estate took years to settle. In 1868 the administrator was still paying out tenth shares of $8,891 and trying to learn "who are the legal representatives of Francis Tidwell Deceased," who had died in McNairy County at the end of 1867.
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Cite: Heirology, "Richard Tidwell (1774-1863)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/richard-tidwell-1774-1863-ffbcb1.