The third daughter, Jane, married Patrick Calhoun who by a second wife, a Miss Caldwell of Abbeville, became the father of the renowned John Caldwell Calhoun.
The sister of Rev. Alexander Craighead, named Jane or Janet, married the Rev. Adam Boyd, October 23, 1725, and their son, Rev. Adam Boyd (born November 25, 1738, died in Natchez, Mississippi, 1800) was the true friend of the liberties of our colony; he became editor of the Cape Fear Mercury, and one of the Committee of Safety in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1775. Could the copy of the Cape Fear Mercury, loaned from the Rolls Office in London, to Mr. Stevenson, the United States Minister, as mentioned by the author, be found, it would either give us the original text of the Davie-Williamson copy, or show that the royal governor considered the copy of the whole proceeding as good as the original declaration, or in his own language, as "declaring an entire dissolution of the laws."
A nephew, Colonel George Craighead, born May 10, 1733, lived near Wilmington, Delaware. He was a man of great wealth, and in the Indian War, prior to the Revolution, equipped his own regiment for that service.
He was the intimate friend of George Washington, "dining at the same table, and calling each other by the familiar name of George."
The oldest son of Rev. Alexander Craighead, the Rev. Thomas B. Craighead, was born in Mecklenburg county, in 1750. He was a graduate of Princeton, 1775, and admitted to the Presbyterian ministry in 1780. Subsequently he removed to haysborough, Tennessee, six miles east of Nashville, and there established the first Presbyterian church, in the middle division of the State. He married Miss Elizabeth Brown of Frankfort, Kentucky, and so became allied to a family distinguished for high social standing, intellect, and national reputation. The descendants of this marriage are still numerous in Tennessee, and in several other States of the South and Southwest. In 1785 he became the first President of the Board of Trustees of Davidson Academy. Among the board were Senator Smith, General Robertson, and General Andrew Jackson. This academy became merged into the Cumberland College in 1806. In the latter part of his life he had some difficulties that hindered for a time, his usefulness, but which served to draw forth the friendly influence and unqualified approbation of General Jackson.*
* Parton's Jackson, II p.
655.
This friendship is accounted for, by Dr. Ramsey, as
influenced by a sense of gratitude as well as affection toward all who
bore the name; for when he was taken prisoner at Waxhaw, after Buford's defeat
by Tarleton, and carried to the prisonship in Charleston harbor, his mother
found a refuge, and home, and kind friends, in Mr. Craighead's father's
congregation, at Sugar Creek, North Carolina, and when Mrs. Jackson visited
Charleston to see her son, she was accompanied by Mrs. Nancy Dunlap, who had
married again after the death of her first husband, Rev. Wm. Richardson. She was
the oldest daughter of Rev. Alexander Craighead. The General's mother died of
fever at the Quarter House, six miles from Charleston, and was cared for to the
last by Mrs. Dunlap. The kindness shown his mother by the family, in this trying
period, was never forgotten by General Jackson, and was the motive assigned to
the writer by President James K. Polk, for the strong personal regard and
attachment which existed, and for the fact that when Mr. Craighead was arraigned
by the Synod of Kentucky, Jackson appeared as his Judge Advocate.
Further, the General was
descended from the same Scotch-Irish stock, born in the southern part of
Mecklenburg, as the line is now established, spent his boyhood in this county,
and began the practice of law at Salisbury. His mother was a member of Waxhaw
church, and had her son
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