Edmund Rutter Rodgers (1797-1846)
My Maternal 3rd Great Grandfather, married Mary Phillips (1798-1867)
Edmund Rutter Rodgers, the only son of William Caldwell Rodgers and Betsy Rutter, was born in 1797 in Washington County, Kentucky. He married Mary Phillips and had six children that lived to adulthood. Their first born child William Chenault Rodgers, my ancestor, was born in Kentucky. Their second child in Tennessee and the last four were born in Missouri. The genealogical trail that’s left of Edmund’s life is mostly a series of disturbing sales transactions.
[Image: Edmund Rutter paying off a loan with two mares and a child.]
In 1827, Edmund paid off a $400 loan from his father-in-law by giving him a seven year old mulatto child named Eliza and two mares. In 1840 he sold a 34 year old woman named Justine and her three year old daughter named Roseann for $800 as security for debt. The same year he sold an eleven year old named Martha, a nine year old named Adelaine, and a six year old named Henry for $1,000 as security for debt. In the 1840 tax list in Henry Tennessee, Edmund was listed as owning 100 acres of land valued at $500 and one enslaved person valued at $500.
[Image: Edmund Rodgers in his dry goods store in Kentucky in 1840s]
Edmund returned to Kentucky where he opened up the first dry goods store in Graves County. In 1845 he entered into a sales transaction involving six enslaved persons, also as security for debt. He died less than a year later in 1846 at age 49, leaving his widowed wife Mary with six children.
Edmund’s daughters seem to have done well for themselves. Ann Elizabeth (1821-1892) married an attorney, William Bradley. Sarah Moseley (1824-1906) married a merchant and stable keeper named Thomas L Morse. When she died at age 85 her obituary was entitled - “A Good Lady Dead,” and she was credited with having spent her whole life doing kind acts. Margaret Ann (1830-1896) married an Irish born surgeon named Andrew Wright, and she stayed by his side during the Civil War to assist him. Though she was born in Missouri and died in Texas according to Margaret’s obit “it was to the old Kentucky home that her memory most fondly reverted.” The obit went on to say: “during the civil war she was sometimes thrown in with the Yankees soldiery and sometimes with the starving confederates and she met whatever fate befell her with the fearless courage, indomitable will and energy which characterized her whole life. Only the few that knew her most intimately were aware that for years her physical suffering had been almost unbearable. A less courageous spirit would have fainted under the burden long ago, but the unspeakable tenderness which she lavished on her family, the love she had for the sunshine and flowers, long kept the brave soul lingering in her frail little body.” Whoa. Too bad her sister hadn’t found the same person to put pen to paper.
[Edmund’s Daughter, Margaret Ann, assisting her surgeon husband during the Civil War]
Edmund’s son Harrison B. was born in 1835 and served as a captain in the Civil War in the 2nd Kentucky Infantry. He was wounded and carried off the field in July of 1862 at the Battle of Murfreesboro in Tennessee. He recovered and nine months later he was killed in action in the battle of Chickamauga.
Edmund is buried in Maplewood Cemetery in Mayfield Kentucky, next to a mystery grave with no name and the dates 13 February 1796 to 26 October 1861 and his son William Chenault Rodgers. William Chenault Rodger’s story is told in a separate blog.