Wm Anderson McCoy Genealogy

This transaction is noted in an 1788 deed in which William McCauley sold this land to a William Andrews. "...being part of a Tract of land granted to Thomas Loyd By the Erle Granville by Deed Bearing Date the 11th day of May 1757 and since Conveyed by the said Thomas Loyd to Thomas Brown by Deed beat Date 31 day of January 1763 and since Conveyed by the said Thomas Brown to William McCauley by deed Bearing datew the 9th day of February 1774...."

Appointments of officers of the courts were made during the Fifth Provincial Congress of North Carolina in Halifax NC. Those appointed for Orange County were:

Alexander Mebane, Senr., Lawrence Thompson, John Hawkins, John Butler, Eli McDaniel, John Hogan, **William McCauly**, Charles Abercrombie, Richard Binningham, Robert Abercrombie, Junior, James Hogg, William Johnston, Thomas Hart, Nathaniel Rochester, Alexander Mebane, Junr., James Freeland, William Rainey, James Scarlet, John Paine, Richard Holman, Robert Parks, Thomas Rice, George Moore, John Atkinson, James Saunders, William Moore, William Hubbard, John Douglass, Junior, Thomas Taylor, Joseph Allison, Robert Blackwell, Spill Coleman, Jeremiah Poston, James Rice, George Jerot, Esquires for the County of Orange

This seems to be the first appearance by either William or Mathew McCauley in the records of Orange County, North Carolina. 500 acres on New Hope Creek.

This deed traces the history of the land and refers to a 1774 deed (no longer extant) in which William McCauley acquired the land, possibly the first mention of William in America.

Letters written by William J McCauley (grandson of Mathew and Martha McCauley) in 1896 to a cousin state that William was the first of the two brothers to come from northern Ireland to the American Colonies and that he did so 1-2 years before Mathew emigrated.

A letter from recent passengers of a ship (including Matthew McCauley) was published in the Belfast News Letter in 1771 announcing their safe arrival in Philadelphia. Although not proven, this appears likely to have been our Mathew McCauley. If that is the case, and if the statement in the paragraph above is correct, then William would have come to America in 1769/1770.

As William seems to have been rather well-established in Orange County NC by 1775, he may have come quickly there after arriving in America. Where Mathew was and what he did between 1771 and his arrival (attested to by his wife when a widow) in Orange County in 1775 are unknown.

William McCauley's birth date and parentage remain uncertain (October 2017). Most family trees say he was born in September of 1738. A few give 1747 as the year. Until a reliable record either primarily in Ireland or secondarily from the early family in America, the question remains unresolved. [February 2019: Probable birth dates of William's first children suggest that the 1738 date is probably correct.]

For more on this see the will of William Loung (Long) in Catherine Johnstone’s media and Andrew Mitchell’s will in Wm McCauley’s media.

1810 Census: I do not reliably find an entry for William McCauley in th 1810 US Census for Orange County NC.

There are entries for two primary possibilities:
Bill McCauley - too young; and
Wm McCauley - eldest male is 26-44 as is eldest female; there are no slaves; inconsistent with our William McCauley

Our William McCauley was 72 years old in 1810. His wife had died 10 years before. Their youngest known child, Charles, waa 29 or 30 in 1810. He would marry in 1811 and could possibly still have been at home with his father. There is no census entry for Charles McCauley for 1810. Nor is there evidence that William McCauley was with one of his married children.

I went manually through all of the scans of Orange County census records for that year.

1820 Census: There are two entries for William McCauley in 1820 in Orange County. Both have a free white male > 45 years of age. Only the one chosen for use here fits the pattern of slave owning appropriate to this William McCauley. Specifically, this is the only record to match William's 1818 will and later census findings regarding one Jacob McCauley (a slave born circa 1810). The other William McCauley entry could only match with Jacob, if Jacob was a "free colored". That cannot be true, however, because he was later bequeathed to William's daughter Jane, later sold to Charles McCauley and finally inherited again by Charles' son, Mathew J. W. McCauley. He is found in the 1870 census next to his former owner in Orange County.

20 Dec 1825 is the date most commonly given for the death of Wm McCauley. Although this would certainly be consistent with a filling of probate in the Feb 1826 court term, there is no known documentation giving an actual date of death. It would have been expected that his death would be published in the Hillsborough Recorder, but all publication dates that might reasonably have contained such a notice no longer exist so far as is known. Nor is there a notice in the Raleigh Register for which there are existing scans for all publications dates for the time in question.

This alleged burial appears to be based upon a memorial tablet in the churchyard of the New Hope Prebyterian Church south of Hillsborough upon which are inscribed the names of congregation members who were in the Revolutionary War. The tablet does not state that those persons were buried there, and the church has no record that Wm McCauley was buried in either the old or the new cemetery.

The so-called "Morrow Papers" state that William was buried "on his own land", while a letter written in 1896 by William M McCauley (grandson of William's brother Mathew who lived on some of his grandfather's land) seemed to state that Mathew and William were both buried in the same cemetery, that being the one currently known as the (Mathew) McCauley Cemetery near University Lake in Carrboro NC. Another family source states that William was buried on his own land and that his house was still standing in the 1890s.

William Burlingame of Orange County NC had intended to search the area near Bald Mountain for William's house and family burial ground but died before that could be done. Suffice it to say that no actual burial place has yet been discovered for William, but the chance that he was buried in the New Hope Presbyterian Church Cemetery (old) is vanishingly small.