Jonathan Pierce
by Sheila Spencer Stover
Joseph Brant, with Sir William Johnson (his brother-in-law), had been back and forth to North Carolina doing business with the Governor and other political allies. His entourage always included Mohawk, Seneca, Delaware and other Indians. The Revolutionary War was brewing, firing up. A higher percentage of Indians sided with the British, rather than the Colonials--the British made reasonable promises, were kinder, over-all, than the Colonial People.Chief Brant was always in need of people, forces--his loyalty to the English was well known, documentable. Isabel Kelsey’s work on Brant is considered definitive (I have her book in my collection).
Johnson was a statesman with few his equal. Born in Ireland, young in the Colonies, he was on the side of the Indians, often referred to as the “Mohawk Baronet.” He married Molly Brant and fathered children with her. She entertained heads of state and rulers from around the world in their home.
Brant was a “mixed blood." Our families (the Dutch, Palatine Germans of the Hudson River valley) had been mixing it up with many of the ruling Mohawk families--Brant, Hendrick, Powels/Powles, et. al.) for generations. They kept bouncing off one another--history books fail to mention--Indians lived like anyone else in the neighborhood once settlement took firm hold. The "Noble Savage" didn’t, and doesn’t, exist.
During Revolutionary times, many Southern Indians went North, fleeing to Canada when the “handwriting was on the wall” to join with other forces.
Due to the Tuscarora migration out of NC (their Northward movement was heavy), Jonathan Pierce headed North, perhaps due in part to the Tuscarora movement. It didn’t happen overnight--like most Indians, tribes, what didn’t get absorbed in white society, or black, hid, or moved out.
Jonathan’s wife was Mary or Marie Emanuel, commonly Mann in the Northern sectors (mixed usage down here). His son, Henry, also was married to a Mann/Emanuel, Hannah. It may be reversed, Hannah for Jonathan, Marie/Mary for Henry. it‘s certain the two women were related, either aunt/niece or cousins. The Tradition of the family has always been that the Manns were Tuscarora. The Ramapo Mountain Indians of New Jersey are loaded with Manns. They never saw me in their life until I went to work for them--they knew the same things I’d heard, pieced together.
Chief Earl Pierce of the Meherrin Tribe in Hertford Co., NC never heard of me but when we talked, he knew exactly who I was, who the family was. He had heard the same bits and pieces.
Jonathan and his family, no doubt largely grown, made their way North and settled in North Jersey, then Southern Tier NY: Ulster County. Jonathan fell at the Battle of Minisink, June 1779, fighting with Brant’s forces against the Colonials. I learned three years ago that Jonathan is buried in a common grave in Goshen, NY. For an Indian to be buried off his land base is not a good thing, but, I have no way to bring him home. His dust is mingled with that of his friends, foes, strangers.
Ironically, his name is on the Minisink Monument, put there by his grand-daughter, Hannah Pierce Kellam, who helped, along with others in her community, to get the monument erected. Back then, about 1833, your word would've been good enough--she got his name on that monument. Of course there is no record of his fighting with the “winners.” And don’t think she didn’t know EXACTLY what she was doing. Jonathan’s name is there--an Indian who was on the “wrong” side.
(Deliverance Adams name is there, also, but, he DID fight for the Colonies. More on him later.)
Hannah Pierce was born in Sept., 1800, in New York State. She married Jacob Kellam, himself born in New Jersey. Her father was Henry Pierce (the history books of Wayne, Pike and Monroe Counties, Pennsylvania states Jonathan was her father--erroneous, of course--it was this bit that sent me digging hard back in the early 1970s. A man dead 21 years does NOT father a child. At least back then.
I have little to no information about Henry, his mother, or his wife--he had brothers, probably sisters. Two of Henry's brothers, Job and Reuben landed with the Stockbridge-Munsee in Wisconsin. They can be found on lists there in the 1830s & 40s.
These names are still among the People today--Job, Reuben, Jonathan and Israel Pierce. Chief Pierce told me this in 1994 and 1995. Henry is said to have gone to Canada in the 1820s, settling at Brantford, named for Brant. He may/probably had kin there. Hannah is the ONLY person in this group who can be tracked forward, having married Jacob Kellam, as stated above.
The biographical sketch on Hannah and Jacob, is lengthy. It states nothing about her parents, siblings, place of origin, etc--goes on ad infinitum about Jacob Kellam and his family and children. Her obituary is long. It extols all her virtues and mentions her children but says NOTHING about her siblings or her parentage at this time.
My great grandfather, Timothy Kellam, about 17 when she died, knew her well. But, the family has NO info on Hannah. When people don’t talk, there is a reason. Great Grandpa Tim set great store by a book Larry Kellam gave me. Larry is the son of Lawrence Jeptha Kellam, his wife, Ruth Manning, and a grandson of Tim)--”Tom Quick the Indian Slayer”--it’s gross, has long since been disproven---but, it held clues--not the killing of Indians, altho we certainly may have lost a few to these non-Indian radicals who put on war paint, killed who they wanted, washed up and blamed it all on the Indians.
The "Wyoming Valley Massacre," historically attributed solely to Brant and his men has also been disproven--documentable (it was whites and rebel Indians, who perpetrated this)---you won’t see the correction in the History books. We lost Ancestors to that debacle--on the Slocum/Aylesworth line. (See that chapter later.)
Trying to learn why the book was important to Timothy Kellam (grandson of Jacob Kellam and Hannah Pierce, via their son, Jeptha) was part of what started the trail to Jonathan. My feeling/belief --this small book was important because it mentions the Minisink Monument, is, in the light of racism, hatred, a thumbnail history of how settlers treated each other in that period., was a constant reminder of why the Indian heritage had to be kept “under wraps”.
Hannah and Jacob are buried at Long Eddy, below Hancock, NY. I took my children there when we visited in Rileyville, over in Wayne Co. PA Photos are in the Kellam book.
I ‘ve never found existing photos of Hannah--altho she, and Jacob, survived well into the picture taking era, and our family has always had a habit of getting our faces into photos. Jacob did have his picture in the History book, which you have seen- indicating there was a portrait of him, at one time. The only thing I did hear from some older people down around Lordville, French Woods, environs, (1987/88) Hannah was dark, “handsome” “looked pretty Injun”. The former historian from Hancock, who died well into her late 80s, said “it was a terrible sin so many of the old families had destroyed records so no one would find out about “all the Indians”. (letters on file in the ADAMS folders, stated the same to Lola Nielson of Maryville, MO Missouri, in her late 80s- a descendant of Bos’n Parks-peripheral kin to us-- yet another person who always knew of the Indian connections)
“Blood quantum” (a government designation-not one dreamed up by Indians, or the non-Indians they married)--Hannah was probably full blood--in the “legal” sense. (She was b. 1800-d. 1877) altho she certainly had non-Indian ancestry.
Jacob Kellam, estimated--about half, maybe as much as 2/3. I’ll be writing him up separately, also. May have just heard a bit more on his Maternal Sanders grandparents out of New Jersey. This research never stops.
7 December 1997
(all rights reserved by Sheila Spencer Stover -- "Firehair"
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