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| "There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths where highways never ran" _ Sam Walter Foss _ |
| __ THE FIRST POSTMASTER __ |
| II. HEZEKIAH BRANSON b. Maryland ca 1792, the year Kentucky entered the Union, son of Leonard and Polly Gay Branson. m. ca 1820 to ELIZABETH ELY. d.. ca 1892 in Poor Fork, now Cumbland, Harlan County KY. Belived to be buried on a knoll on his farm. Elizabeth b. ca 1802. d. before 1850. bur. beside her husband. Their graves have not been found. A story passed down through the family is that Hezekiah came to America as a stoway on a ship from Ireland and served an indentureship of seven years before he was on his own to seek his fortune. Perhaps this was the fate of one of his forebears. Hezakiah was one of the early arrivals in the southeastern corner of the state. He was a young man to be traipsing around the wilderness but he was not traveling alone. With him were his brother, Henry, and perhaps an older Henry, the relationship unknown. Records show that the two brothers stuck close together until Henry's death. Hezekiah might have entered Kentucky from Lee County VA. Many of the people who moved into the new west bought land in Lee before crossing Big Black Mountain. They were hunters, trappers, petitioners for ferries, members of the militia and Virginia's House of Delegates. Not until they found the land that became eastern Kentucky did they settle down and rear children who in turn populated the counties from their pioneer rootstock. Maybe Hezekiah moved from Scott County, VA, where his father had settled after the war. His name appears in early records of Tennesse, North Carolina, Virginia and Kentucky, where he permanently settled. He went to the Poor Fork area about 1815, when it was still Knox. With John Creech Sr., Hezekiah Branson became one of the largest landholders in the Poor Fork area. He became a land dealer, a gentleman justice, a farmer, a leader in Poor Fork's growth and in the life of the county, prosperous and recognized in other parts of the state. His earliest land grant, surveyed on Nov. 29, 1818, was for 50 acres on the fork of the Cumberland River. This was one of the warrants he recieved under an act of the 1815 Kentucky Legisature. It opened for sale at $20 per 100 acres all the vacant lands in the state. The owner had to locate and survey the acreage, then register it in the land office. A land patent was issued within six months. (1) Hezekiah was listed among the taxpayers of Harlan County as early as 1820, when he was 28 years old. He also is listed on the first tax book of Perry County for 1821-1822, where his surname is spelled BRONSON. (2) While living in Harlan County in 1820, he was oneof five men appointed by the State Legislature as a commissioner to " ascertain and fix on the most convenient and suitable place for the permanent seat of justice of Perry County." (3) COUNTY SEAT After the majority agreed on the place, the county court was to make plans for the necessary buildings needed for the county seat. Apparently these commissioners did not act, since others were appointed for the task in 1821, the year that Perry County was established. Hezekekiah's land deals span several decades, all verified in the Harlan County land records. In 1822, John Gass of Greene County, Tn deeded 200 acres on Clover Lick Creek to Hezekiah and his brother Henry. The land included "the plantation the said Hezekiah lives on, also the plantation where Henry now lives and all 50 acres that said Hezekiah claims." One land grant is to "Branson and Day." Henry Branson is listed with two grants dated 1841 and 1844 on Clover Lick Creek and Leonard Branson with two grants, dated 1840 and 1845 at Hill Branch and Hopkins. This Leonard may be Henry's son. Other Bransons with grants on Clover Lick in the early 1820's were Thomas and John, relattionship inknown. Hezekiah recieved six Kentucky land grants between 1818 and 1848, allon Clover Lick. (4) The largest, for 945 acres, was dated July 20, 1848 and was signed by Governor John L. Helm. A partial description places it "in the county of Harlan on the waters of the Cave Branch and Fugates Creek, beginning near the head of the right hand fork of the branch, running to the top of Big Black Mountain near the butt of the Big Fork Ridge of Fugates Creek." He now held more than 1,200 acres. In those days, the survey boundaries often were set by poles to a maple or a sugar tree or an oak, as if those trees would stand forever. Hezekiah's great grandson Gilbert Creech had a survey run on all of Hezekiah's holdings in the 1940's and 50's and walked off every mile of it. About 1820, Hezekiah went back across Black Mountain to marry Elizabeth Ely of Lee County, Va., near Pennington Gap. She was descended from a well-established line in Lee County. (See Thomas Ely Sr.) He built the home where they reared their family on the "plantation" mentioned in the Gass transfer on Clover Lick Creek. The site is now the location of the Southeast Community Collage of the University of Kentucky and Clover Lick Heights Housing Project. In later years it was called the Cullen Hogg place after a man moved there. His brother Henry was his neighbor. Page # 6 |
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