Wm Anderson McCoy Genealogy

1764 Will of William Loung (said to have been first husband of Catherine Johnston)

Wife of Wm McCauley, Cathrin

Birth Name	Wife of Wm McCauley, Cathrin The only known documentation of William McCauley's wife is from a 1787 deed in which both William and his wife are signatories. She is named in the text as what appears to be "Cathrin", and she is named again as having signed (X) under the name "Catren". Some think that "Catren" was the "Catrin" widowed (with three children) by William Long (or Loung) in Orange County in 1764, that she had been born Katherine Johnston and that she was also a daughter of the same Charles Wilson Johnston and Martha Blackwood who were the parents of Martha, later wife of William's brother, Mathew McCauley. Among those who accepted portions of these assertions was McCauley researcher, William Burlingame, but he eventually changed his mind. Had Catherine (or Katherine) been a Johnston and a sister of Martha, it is remarkably strange that this was not mentioned in Martha's pension petition of 1837. Also, if Catrin/Cathrin been the mother of the three children of William Long (died 1764) and a Johnston, it is unlikely that she could have been a child of Charles Wilson Johnston (born 1725) and Martha Blackwood (born 1732). Another question that arises when considering the possibility that William McCauley might have married the widow of William Long concerns what happened to the widow Long between 1764 and such a marriage, given the fact that the earliest documentation of William McCauley in Orange County is from a 1777 deed and his sister-in-law's (Martha) assertion that he had been in Orange County before the arrival of his brother Mathew in 1775. Other family sources (of the mid-1800s) claim that William had been there for 1-2 years prior to Mathew's arrival. A marriage between William McCauley and the widow of William Long has no supporting documentation, except for assertions made years after William's death. The idea seems mainly too be based upon the fact that both women went by some variation of "Catrin" and that William owned land bordering that of the Longs, William and George.
Also Known As	Catrin/, Catred /C'trin/
Gender	female
Age at Death	about 58 years, 9 months, 26 days
Birth date	about 1742 (Orange, North Carolina, United States of America)
Death date	27 October 1800 (Orange, North Carolina, United States of America)

Notes

Research

How do we know that Catherine Johnston, said to be a widow of William Long († 1764), was not a daughter of Charles Wilson Johnston and Martha Blackwood and sister to Martha Johnston who married Mathew McCauley?

Most trees I have seen, and most of them are on ancestry.com, assert that she was the daughter of Charles and Martha Johnston, although I have not seen any documentation to support this.

Perhaps we assume that Catherine was not their daughter because of the contents of Charles Johnston’s will made on 9 June 1789. The will does not name her a daughter, but it also does not name any daughter. Instead it names sons-in-law as heirs, also grandsons and some other males whose relationships are not stated explicitly. And the fact that William McCauley is not named as a son-in-law while Matthew McCauley is, suggests that William is not a son-in-law.

But look at how Charles Johnston’s will is constructed with rebard to his heirs. Charles’ heirs are named in this order: his wife, his sons and sons-in-law (in lieu of his daughters) his grandsons interspersed with others without specified relationships. Specifically, these are:
1) my Dear and Well Beloved wife Martha
2) son-in-law John Freeland
3) son George
4) son-in-law Samuel Craig
5) son-in-law J(ohn?) Strayhorn
6) son-in-law Chalders Bailey
7) son-in-law Matthew McCauley
8) Charles McCauley
9) William Craig, my grandson
10) Charles Strayhorn
11) John McCauley, my grandson

Executors: my trusty and well beloved friends Samuel Craig and William McCauley
Witnesses: William, Joseph and James Blackwood

With heir #7 above, Charles comes to the end of his children and children-in-law.

Who is #11, John McCauley, his grandson? Is he the son of Mathew and Martha McCauley? He would have been 8 years old at the time the will was made. This John McCauley was certainly the grandson of Charles Johnston. Or was it John McCauley, son of William and Martha McCauley, who would have been ca 18 years old? The bequest was a two-year-old heifer.

Who was #8 Charles McCauley? His name appears among the grandsons, but he is not so named. He cannot be the Charles McCauley, son of Matthew and Martha McCauley, because that Charles was born two months after the will was made. He must have been Charles McCauley, son of William and Catherine McCauley who had been born in December of 1780. The bequest was a yearling mare.

I should probably get more information on William Craig, who was named a grandson, and Charles Strayhorn, who was not so named but certainly seems to have been a grandson.

Finally, the executors. Samuel Craig was a “trusty and well beloved friend” as well as being a son-in-law. Was William McCauley just a friend?

Because of #8 above and, to a lesser extent, the inclusion of William McCauley as an executor along with one of the sons-in-law, I think the will argues in favor of Catherine Johnston having been a daughter of Charles Johnston. But it may be that Catherine was not a daughter of Martha Blackwood Johnston. There must have been a significant age difference between Martha Johnston (b. 1760) and Catherine Johnston (whose first husband is said to have died in 1764). So it would not be surprising if they had different mothers.

If it is true that Catherine was a child of Charles Johnston, this would open other possibilities that may need further exploration. (Those possibilities include William and Catherine marrying in Ireland, also meaning that Charles Johnston came to America from Ireland (Ulster).)

Events

Event	Date	Place	Description
Property	1 March 1787	Orange, North Carolina, United States of America	100 ac on the New Hope
Property
Birth	about 1742	Orange, North Carolina, United States of America
Birth	Note Catherine's origins and fate are unclear. She is said to have been a Johnston who married William Long in Orange County, North Carolina, was widowed by his death there in 1764, leaving her with three minor children, and was later married to William McCauley by whom she had several more children. There is no known primary documentation for any of that. In fact, there is no significant secondary evidence either. There is but one bit of primary evidence that a woman named Catrin/Cahtrin was the wife of William McCauley. That is a 1787 deed in which William granted title to 100 acres along the New Hope River to a Thomas Crabtree. William's wife was a signatory, named initially as Cathrin and signed (X) as Catrin. There is a chance that discovery of the family graveyard of William McCauley, evidently located on his old plantation and for which there is documentary evidence, now overgrown and long forgotten, might throw more light on Cathrin and other family members. This line of thought seems more likely to be true than that a headstone for "C Mc" in the old cemetery at New Hope Presbyterian Church represents the wife of William McCauley Esq.
Death	27 October 1800	Orange, North Carolina, United States of America
Death	Note A burial in the Old New Hope Episcopal Church cemetery for a C Mc[Cauley] gives a date of death of 27 Oct 1800. Probably because there is also a Wm McCauley also buried there, this has been taken to be Catherine "Catred" McCauley. However, the 1800 census, taken on 4 August, does not include a female to fit Catherine. From email of 3 October 2018 from William Burlingame: "Katherine [Catherine] died in 1800, and her gravestone at New Hope [Presbyterian Old Cemetery] was a small piece of slate with very basic information carved on it. Her burial is attested to by several data items and is hardly remarkable." [See media item "William's Burial Site.pdf"]

Families

Family of McCauley, William Esq. and Wife of Wm McCauley, Cathrin

Married

Husband

McCauley, William Esq. ( * September 1738 + 20 December 1825 )

Event	Date	Place	Description	Sources
Marriage
Marriage	Note Where and when this marriage occurred is unknown. There is no known documentation of it. [Early Orange County NC documents have been lost due to burying them to protect them from capture by the British and then forgetting where they were buried.] What is known comes from the 1837 pension application of William's sister-in-law. the widowed Martha McCauley, who states "This Declarant first became acquainted with the aforesaid Mathew McCauley in the year of 1775, when the said Mathew came to New Hope in the aforesaid County and lived with his brother William McCauley, esq., who was neighbor to the Declarant's father, Charles Johnston." Since the best evidence indicates that William had several children prior to 1775 (and probably at least 2 before 1766), it's clear that his wife Catherine and children James, Jane and John (and possibly Mary "Polly") were present with him in that year in Orange County. Also, since most trees for this family indicate arrival in North America in the 1770s, this strongly suggests that a marriage and births of the first two (or more) children occurred in Ireland. So it is possible that Catherine was also of Ulster, married William there, came with him to America and is the mother of all of his children (and was, therefore, not the wife and widow of William Long or, probably, a Jonston). Or she may have been as described above. ________________________ There is a conjecture that this William McCauley married a Nancy Jacobs, who had previously married one Isaac Craig. This is based upon "A Historical Sketch of New Hope Church, in Orange County, N.C." written in 1891 by a Rev. Craig, who lists these marriages without providing dates for them. The abstracts of marriage bonds in Orange County NC (Holcom, Brent H. Marriages of Orange County, North Carolina, 1779-1868. Baltimore, MD, USA: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2001), does indeed show an initial marriage of Nancy Jacobs to Isaac Craig and a subsequent marriage of Nancy Craig to William McCauley. However, the first marriage occurred in December of 1838 and the second in March of 1861, both long after the death of this William McCauley.

Children

Name	Birth Date	Death Date
McCauley, Jane	between 1756 and 1765	before 14 March 1826
McCauley, John Sr.	about 1770	1833
McCauley, James	1771	between 3 April 1818 and 31 December 1818
McCauley, Mary “Polly”	January 1774	about 1847
McCauley, WmMc Daughter	about 1775	before 1818
McCauley, Matthew	1776	before 1830
McCauley, Catherine	1780	1818
McCauley, Charles	28 December 1780	21 April 1829

Wife of Wm McCauley, Cathrin

Notes

Research

Events

Families

Family of McCauley, William Esq. and Wife of Wm McCauley, Cathrin

Media

Other media: videos, pdfs...

Pedigree