I18113: Robert BOYD (16 Apr 1770

Notes

2 Joseph BURT Jr. b: ABT 1770 d: NOV 1840 + Ann READ b: ABT 1770 d: 1831.
Marriages of Halifax County, North Carolina Publication: 1848
Children:
2 Nancy BURT b: 1789 d: 26 FEB 1864 + John COLEMAN d: 05 APR 1826
2 Martha BURT b: 1790 d: ABT 1850 + Thomas A. COLEMAN b: abt 1787 d: 26 APR 1865
2 Elizabeth BURT b: 14 NOV 1793 d: 1845 + Jarrott VINCENT b: 24 DEC 1778 d: 1841
2 Stephen Richard BURT b: 1796 d: 1870 + Catherine "Kitty" BILLINGSLEY b: 1798 d: aft 1860
2 William BURT b: ABT 1798 d: 1825
2 Sophia Weston BURT b: 28 JUL 1801 d: 11 JUL 1890 + Timothy Walton MATHEWS b: 20 JUL 1800 d: 28 JUL 1884
2 Martin Ross BURT b: 17 OCT 1804 d: 29 JUN 1870 + Delilah A. GRIFFIS b: 21 AUG 1814 d: 04 MAR 1896
2 Sarah BURT b: 17 MAR 1807 d: 20 JUN 1901 + Henry Harrison HUNT b: 09 DEC 1802 d: 03 MAR 1873
2 James Creth BURT b: 20 JUN 1809 d: 16 MAY 1896 + Frances Anne GIBSON b: APR 1818 d: 14 SEP 1901 + Elizabeth BAIRD d: BEF 1848
2 Joseph John BURT b: 1815 d: ABT 1856 + Elizabeth Grace BAKER b: 26 JUL 1818 d: 11 MAY 1888

According to the "History of the Burt and Coleman Families" narrated by Martha Mathews, "Mr. Burt was buried near the residence of his son-in-law Thomas Coleman, who was living on
the west bank of Breakfast Creek, about a half mile of its confluence with Autauga Creek. Mr. Burt was a Baptist in faith, but had never connected himself with any church. Mrs. Burt his wife was of the same faith but like her husband never joined the church." The grave of Joseph Burt, Jr. is unmarked.

Notes

Hunley Findings Put Faces on Civil War Submarine Crew
by Willie Drye for National Geographic News
Updated April 12, 2004

The identities of the crew of the Civil War submarine H.L. Hunley are coming to light just days before the men's remains are to be buried. The first submarine to sink an enemy ship, the Hunley itself sank off South Carolina in 1864, was found in 1995, and was raised in 2000.

On a cold February night in 1864, eight men squeezed through the tiny hatches of the H.L. Hunley, a strange new warship tied up at a dock in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. They crawled or duckwalked through the 4-foot-tall (1.2-meter-tall) passageway to their places on a long, low bench. Each of them sat down at a hand crank attached to the Hunley's propeller shaft.

These eight men were the living power plant for a revolutionary machine—a submarine that could attack an enemy ship from underwater. Led by Confederate Lt. George Dixon, these men would literally dive into the pages of history when the submerged Hunley attached a torpedo to the U.S.S. Housatonic and blew it up. The Union warship was helping to enforce the maritime blockade of Charleston that was slowly strangling the rebellious Confederate States of America's ability to fight the Civil War.

But the cantankerous Hunley was as dangerous to its crew as it was to the Housatonic, and not long after the Union warship sank, the submarine slipped to the bottom of the bay and never came up.

The name of the first submarine to sink an enemy vessel became the stuff of legend. With the exception of Dixon, however, the names of most of the crewmen who propelled the Hunley to glory were obscured by the mists of time.

That's now changed. After years of painstaking work, a team of archaeologists, forensic experts, and researchers at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in Charleston has dug up some interesting information—and more than a few surprises—about the submarine and the crewmen who had rested 30 feet (10 meters) below the surface of the ocean since 1864. These details were revealed on April 11 in a National Geographic Ultimate Explorer documentary produced by Simon Boyce.

Friends of the Hunley

The Hunley was found in 1995 by underwater archaeologists working for author Clive Cussler. South Carolina officials created the Hunley Commission to recover, preserve, and display the historic warship, and a private group, Friends of the Hunley, was formed to help with the project.

The submarine was raised in August 2000, and in January 2001 the investigators went to work. The team included forensic experts Doug Owsley and Sharon Long, archaeologist Maria Jacobsen, genealogist Linda Abrams, and underwater archaeologist Harry Pecorelli III.

They carefully removed the silt that had filled—and helped preserve—the Hunley, and recovered the remains of the crew. The forensic experts examined the bones and teeth for clues about the crew's identity. Long, a forensic sculptor, used the skulls to recreate faces of the men who had been lost to time.

One of the striking facts revealed by the research is that the men who went down with the Hunley reflected the complex loyalties, divisive politics, and slavery disputes that pulled the United States apart in the middle of the 19th century.

Most of the men aboard the submarine weren't from any of the 11 southern slaveholding states that made up the short-lived Confederate States of America. Four were probably from northern Europe. One was from Maryland, a slaveholding state that didn't secede from the United States when the Civil War erupted in 1861.

Two crewmen were from slaveholding states that had withdrawn from the Union. And George Dixon—who led the Hunley on its historic but doomed mission and became an immortal hero for the Confederacy—was from Ohio, where slavery was illegal.

The researchers identified the four likely Europeans by finding clues about their diets from their teeth. Uncovering the names of the Europeans has been difficult, but the researchers have developed some theories about their lives before they joined the Confederate cause.

Life of Strenuous Toil

The battered skull of one of the Europeans—a man in his early 40s who was perhaps named Simkins or Lumkin—revealed that he was a brawler who had been in some intense fights before he became a crewman on the Hunley.

Another European was a young man of about 20, perhaps named Arnold Becker, who may have been from Germany. Becker's spine showed that, despite his young age, he'd already lived a life of strenuous toil, lifting very heavy loads.

One of the Europeans was a man in his mid-40s whose name may have been Miller. The fourth non-American, who could have been named Carlsen, was a daring man who had made a lot of money by running supplies for the Confederate States through the Union blockade of southern ports.

The two men from seceded states were James Wicks from North Carolina and Frank Collins from Virginia. Wicks, who was about 40, was serving in the United States Navy when the war broke out. But when his ship was sunk in fighting at Hampton Roads, Virginia, Wicks joined the Confederate Navy.

James Ridgaway was from Talbot County, Maryland. He carried a war souvenir that puzzled the researchers for a while—an identification tag belonging to Ezra Chamberlain, a Union soldier from Connecticut. Researchers thought at first that they'd discovered a Union deserter serving on the Hunley, but later determined that Ridgaway was carrying the tag that apparently had been taken from Chamberlain's body after he'd been killed in battle.

The fact that George Dixon came from Ohio was only one of several surprises uncovered about the Hunley's commander. After the war, a colorful legend arose about him.

Lucky Gold Coin

Dixon, so the story went, had a beautiful young sweetheart in Mobile, Alabama, named Queenie Bennett. She gave him a U.S. $20 gold piece, which Dixon had in his pocket at the bloody Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee in 1862.

A bullet that could have killed Dixon struck him in the thigh, but the gold coin stopped the slug. The legend said that Dixon had this lifesaving coin from his sweetheart with him the night he went down with the Hunley.

Bennett had a photograph supposedly of Dixon that was published many times after the Civil War.

A bent gold coin, inscribed "Shiloh April 6, 1862 My life Preserver G.E.D" was found in the Hunley near Dixon's remains. At least part of the legend was true. But there was no mention of Queenie Bennett in the inscription, and when investigator Nick Herrmann used a laser to examine Dixon's skull, another surprise was revealed. The man in the photo that Bennett had kept probably was not George Dixon.

The researchers in Charleston also have discovered that the Hunley was even more of an engineering marvel that anyone had realized. Pecorelli, the underwater archaeologist who found the submarine with diver Wes Hall in 1995, said the submarine is "almost a work of art."

The men who built the Hunley gave the warship's prow a knifelike shape that would cut through the water, and the rivets that held the ship together were sunk flush with the hull to reduce drag. "We could see right off the bat that someone had spent a lot of time putting this thing together," Pecorelli said.

Still, one question about the Hunley's fate has only been deepened by its discovery. Whatever caused the submarine to sink is still a mystery. The researchers discovered that the crewmen were still seated at their posts when they died.

It was a puzzling discovery. "You'd expect that when the sub flooded, they'd have desperately tried to escape," Boyce, the National Geographic television producer, said. "There's no evidence of that."

Pecorelli is confident that the crew's remains will yield an answer as to why they perished, but finding that answer will take years.

"In the end, we'll be able to answer what happened more accurately than if they brought the Hunley up the next day after it sank," Pecorelli said. "It won't be a guess."
________________

"After several dives about the harbor on 29 August 1863, the submarine moored by lines fastened to steamer ETIWAN at the dock at Fort Johnson. The steamer unexpectedly moved away from the dock, drawing H. L. HUNLEY on her side and she filled and went down. Five seamen of the CSS CHICORA were officially reported to have drowned but Lieutenant Payne and two others escaped. The submarine was raised, and on 21 September 1863, turned over to Horace L. Hunley for fitting out and manning. He brought a crew from Mobile which had previous experience in handling the submarine and was to be headed by Lt. G. E. Dixon, 21st Alabama Volunteers, CSA.

In the absence of Lieutenant Dixon, 15 October 1863, Hunley took charge of the submarine for practice dives under the Receiving Ship INDIAN CHIEF. After several successful dives, the submarine again went under INDIAN CHIEF but air bubbles traced the downward course of the submarine which failed to surface. Hunley and his entire crew of seven lost their lives as the water was nine fathoms deep and nothing could immediately be done to aid them.

The third and final sinking was February 17, 1864 with entire crew of 8 lost. That makes the total 21 men lost. she was raised three times.

Dimensions: 39’ 5” from upper tip of bow to the furthest aft point of the hull. This does not include the propeller cover (shroud) and the rudder which would add another 4’ to 5 ‘.also does not include the upper or lower spar.

The widest point or belly in the center of the sub was 3.5 feet - width. The height (tall) was 4’ 3”. The hatches were a little less that 24” long and 15” wide (oval shaped) The crew compartment from wall of forward and aft ballast tanks was 16’. from page 167, “Raising the Hunley: the remarkable history and recovery of the lost Confederate submarine" Brian Hicks and Schuyler Kropt. - 1st edition. April 2002
__________

Sept. 9, 2002--One of the smallest pieces of metal recovered from the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley may hold the clue to the life of her commander, Army Lt. George Dixon.

It's a watch fob, a little piece on the opposite end of a pocket watch chain, used to secure the chain, and thereby the watch, to the owner's clothing. The one on Dixon's watch chain appears to be a Masonic symbol, including the name of a lodge.

Hunley researchers won't yet say which chapter it is in order to give them a chance to review the records, said state Sen. Glenn McConnell, chairman of the South Carolina Hunley Commission.

"The fob is going to settle once and for all where George Dixon is from," said state Sen. Glenn McConnell, chairman of the South Carolina Hunley Commission.

"Some have said he is from Kentucky. Some have said he is from different places, and somebody has even mentioned he might be from Ohio," McConnell told the Charleston Post & Courier.

Researchers have long believed Lt. George Dixon was a Mason, although what this is based on has never been made clear. McConnell said the fob has markings indicating an exact chapter of the fraternal organization.

"That chapter has been in continuous existence. Those records should be there," he said.

Notes

2 Edward Payne b: ABT 1693 d: 1702

My Southern Family

Robert BOYD

16 Apr 1770 - 1819

ID Number: I18113

Sources

Joseph BURT Jr.

ABT 1770 - Nov 1840

ID Number: I99921

Notes

Sources

EMMA de CORBUCEO

1159 - ____

ID Number: I43317

Sources

Lt. George Edmund DIXON C.S.A.

ABT 1830 - 17 Feb 1864

ID Number: I103653

Notes

Sources

Harriet Jones GUERRANT

1803 - 1869

ID Number: I30713

Sources

Hardy HAY

ABT 1740 - ____

ID Number: I84383

Sources

Edward PAYNE

ABT 1693 - 1702

ID Number: I82013

Notes

Sources

Ann Patterson TALIAFERRO

ABT 1803 - ____

ID Number: I34034

Sources