The History of the Shinn Family in Europe and America

by Josiah H. Shinn, A. M.

23. SAMUEL SHINN (3).--THOMAS (2), JOHN (1).

 Samuel Shinn was the posthumous child of Thomas and Mary (Stockton) Shinn, and was mentioned in the will of his father, who died in November, 1695. Samuel is recorded in Burlington minutes as having been born 2/15/1695, or April 15th, 1695. That this was a mistake is evidenced by the fact that his father died in November, 1695, and in his will provided for Thomas, his living son, and for another child "then unborn." Samuel was born in April, 1696. Of his early life we know little; his name occurred for the first time in authentic history in 1697, when his mother, Mary (Stockton) Shinn, divested herself of the trust conferred upon her by her departed husband, and made her brother, Richard Stockton, and her brother-in-law, John Shinn, Jr., trustees for her children, Thomas and Samuel Shinn.(She was then about to marry Silas Crispin of Pennsylvania) The inventory of Thomas Shinn's estate in 1694 showed that his personal estate amounted to £273 9s 06d, a very large property for that date. The deed of trust by Mary showed that her husband, Thomas Shinn, was a slave holder, and that as events will show hereafter, in the division of the estate, the slaves went to Samuel, the younger child. John Shinn, Jr., made a will in 1736, appointing his sons, Jacob and Caleb Shinn, and his cousin, Samuel Shinn, as his executors. From this I infer that Samuel was reared in the family of his uncle, John Shinn, Jr., and was thought by him worthy of a supervising control over his sons Jacob and Caleb, and so made him joint executor with them. And as Thomas, the elder son, is named in the will of John Shinn, Sr., 1711, I infer that he was reared in the family of his grandfather, John, Sr. Both were reared in Springfield Township and both were married there. We find Samuel on the records on June 11th, 1714, as a witness to his mother's third marriage to Richard Ridgway, a man who even at that day had made the name "Ridgway" synonymous with "Pounds, Shillings and Pence," a faculty which clings to the family to this day. Mary Stockton was born in an affluent family; she married Thomas Shinn, a man of wealth, as wealth was counted at that day; she then married Silas Crispin, a man of wealth and distinction, in Pennsylvania; and, again, Richard Ridgway, who made wealth the text of his daily life. It is but fair to presume that the early lives of Thomas and Samuel were spent among the best people of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and that they were counted as good marriageable quantities by matrons who had daughters of grace and comeliness, though clad in the simplest of Quaker garbs. Love seems to have smitten the younger brother first, for we find that on the 5th of May, 1718, he asked the good people at Burlington to certify his clearness, as he wished to take a wife in Chesterfield. The grave Quakers appointed a committee to inquire into his habits, and on the 2nd of June this committee reported that the young man, Samuel Shinn, was clear on account of marriage, and that his conduct and conversation had been pretty orderly. The certificate was granted at that meeting. Samuel could now go to Chesterfield with a testimony that he was no bigamist, whether his orderliness was above suspicion or not. The young fellow had already been over to Chesterfield and had walked before the meeting the first time accompanied by Sarah Scholey of that place. This occurred on the first of May, 1718. Two days after the committee reported on his character at Burlington, he took his certificate to Chesterfield and gave it to the Society, and on the same day appeared before the meeting the second time. They were married the next week at the house of Thomas Scholey. (Chesterfield M. M. R., Vol. 1.) It is tolerably certain that although Samuel was a member of the Church at Burlington, that he was not prominent in spiritual affairs. He was never appointed on Committees and did not attain that degree of Christian eminence which fell to his brother Thomas. The silence of the church record, however, attests a blameless life, for had he been wayward to the slightest degree the minute book would have contained the indictment against him. He was what might be called in modern times "a paying pillar" of the Church and nothing more.

 The wife of Samuel, Sarah Scholey, was an estimable woman. Chambers in his "History of the Early Germans in New Jersey," p. 480, gives a history of the Scholey family, from which it appears that Thomas Scholey, the first, came to New Jersey in November, 1677, (From the Deed of Records and Surveys of New Jersey it appears that Thomas Scholey took up land as follows: "1680, Thomas and his brother Robert, 200 acres along Delaware Run; 1685 Thomas Scholey 340 acres; 1684 Thomas Scholey of Mansfield Woodhouse one sixty fourth of a share; 1685 Thomas Scholey late of Mansfield Woodhouse 100 acres; 1690 100 acres; 1696 200 acres." He afterwards made large entries on Scholey's Mountain and proved his ability to equal the English in feats of land grabbing. He was a consistent Quaker and remained true to his faith, although many of his countrymen became members of the German Reformed Church.) in the ship "Willing Mind," and that he married in 1686 Sarah, daughter of Thomas and Sarah Parke, of New Jersey. Sarah was a daughter of this marriage. The apparently accidental union of the Englishman, Samuel Shinn, with the daughter of the German, Thomas Scholey, led to momentous conclusions in the life of Samuel Shinn, and will enable his descendants to understand many of the incongruous incidents which have puzzled them in their studies. Some of them in North Carolina still maintain that the Shinns are of German descent, and the habitat in which they lived, as well as the strong German characteristies of the descendants, would seem to prove the assertion. Another portion of the North Carolina branch, as well as many of the New Jersey and Virginia lines, maintain with dogmatic obstinacy the claim that the Shinns are Irish. The English paternity of the Shinns has already been established, and the marriage of Samuel Shinn to a woman of German descent enables us more clearly to perceive the influence of a mother upon the mental and physical organization of the children than would have been possible had she been English born. The first effect upon Samul Shinn was an enlargement of his social life. He had always known English manners and customs, and the rigor of the Quaker Church. He now learned something of the German manners and became acquainted with the German Reformed Church, and with many Germans who influenced his later life. That his English rearing was superior to his new surroundings in his earlier life is demonstrated by the fact that he and his wife Sarah remained in the Quaker Church throughout the life of Sarah, and that the children of this marriage remained within the fold. Samuel and Sarah began life in Springfield Township and remained there until her death, which occurred some time in 1733 or 1734. In 1721 his brother, Thomas, deeded Samuel the land which his father, Thomas, had willed the elder brother. (Deed Book G. G., p. 194.) Thomas again conveyed land to Samuel in the same year. (Deed Book G. G., p. 380.)

 The custom of giving every child a vocation was characteristic of the 16th and 17th centuries. John Shinn, Sr., was a husbandman, wheelwright and millwright; Levi Shinn, husbandman and carpenter, and Samuel Shinn, husbandman, cordwainer and mason. The vocation of breeding fine horses was taken up by New Jersey people about 1730, and Caleb and Samuel Shinn embarked in this enterprise. The breeding of race horses almost invariably leads to racing, and racing is never in favor with the Church. Sarah (Scholey) Shinn must have died late in 1733 or early in 1734. The first church trouble of Samuel originated about this time. On the 4th of the 12th month, 1733 (Feb. 4, 1734), he sent a paper to the Burlington Meeting condemning his outgoings, and this was laid over for consideration. In May of the year 1734 his paper was taken up, and as his behavior had been orderly of late he was left for further probation.

 Whatever his troubles may have been with the church they were not so flagrant as to call for severe discipline, nor did they affect his general character for probity and honor. John Shinn, Jr., selected him in 1736 as an executor of his large estate, and certainly estimated him as a man with sound judgment and exemplary character.

that time, as it is now, one of the most respectable in New Jersey. From this date, with a single exception, the church records are silent as to Samuel Shinn. The political records of Burlington County show that he voted at an election held at Burlington in 1738, and after that the Burlington records know him no more.

migration of the Shinns from New Jersey, and about the first migration of people of any name from that colony. The region beyond the Alleghenies was not then open and the only inviting field was to the South. And as the South favored slavery, it was for this reason the Mecca of slave-owning people leaving the Northern States.

 Bernheim has given an account of the method of travel of these early immigrants from Pennsylvania and New Jersey into Rowan County, then nearly all of Western North Carolina:

 "Immigrants to the South journeyed in covered wagons; every available article for house and farm use, capable of being stowed away in their capacious wagons, was taken with them; and then the cavalcade moved on, every able bodied person on foot, women and children on bedding, and cattle, sheep and hogs driven before them; they traveled by easy stages upon the roads of the picturesque Shenandoah Valley until they reached the land of their hopes and desires."

 Dr. Foote in his "Sketches of North Carolina" (page 20) says:

 "As the extent and fertility of the beautiful prairies of North Carolina became known, the Scotch-Irish, seeking for settlements, began to follow the 'Traders' Path' and join the adventurers in this Southern and Western frontier. By 1745 the Settlements in what is now Mecklenberg and Cabarrus (then Rowan) Counties were numerous. Some were born in Pennsylvania, some in New Jersey, and some had only been sojourners there for awhile."

 Again on page 202 he says:

 "Year after year were supplications sent to Pennsylvania and New Jersey for Missionaries."

 The "Traders' Path" ran from Philadelphia to Winchester, Va., and thence southwest through the Shenandoah, through Evan's Gap, into North Carolina. Rumple in his "History of Rowan County," on page 36, says:

 "There is a tradition that the first courts of Rowan County were held in the Jersey Settlement, not far from Trading Fork. Rumple also says that Rowan County was created in 1753 and that, at that time, the Jersey Settlement was more populous than the region between the Yadkin and the Catawba."

 A settlement at Crystal Springs, ten miles south of Salisbury, was made in the year 1746, and the old graveyard at Crystal Springs Church contains the remains of the McPhersons, the Mahans, the Longs, and others. Rumple says that the members of Crystal Springs were transferred to Old Bethpage. Samuel Shinn was buried at Old Bethpage. Along with the Scotch-Irish immigrants and settling side by side with them, went the Germans,(The German settlement was large and compact, so that it is said that the Rowan negroes spoke the Dutch language) or, as they were called, "the Pennsylvania Deutch." Thus "Old Rowan" as early as 1753 had three great classes of population:

 1. The English from New Jersey, forming "the Jersey Settlement."
 2. The Scotch-Irish.
 3. The Germans.

 The names Bostain, Cline, Trexler, Rheinhardt, Barringer, Meisenheimer, Beard, Overcash, Harkey, Cress, Henkel and others attest the German occupation, while the McCulloughs, Grahams, Cowans, McKenzees, Osbournes and others show the Scotch-Irish. Into these two great lines "the Jersey Settlement" merged by marriage, and in a short time became indistinguishable from them. Thus the Longs, Potts, Sloans, Bransons, Gaunts, Gaskells, Howells, Oliphants and Shinns from New Jersey were claimed by either the Germans or the Scotch-Irish as parts of their original clans, to the great detriment of the genealogist who seeks to follow a given family through all its ramifications to a logical end.

 The "Traders' Path" is identified by the "Constables' Beats" as outlined in the old records of the Rowan Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions, for 1753-4-5-6. Rumple says that the "Traders' Path ran to a point where Coldwater Creek runs from Rowan into what is now Cabarrus, then Rowan."

 It was in this region on Coldwater in Old Rowan that Samuel Shinn migrated. Here he took up several hundred acres of land. Here he settled and opened up several large farms or plantations, and here he died in December, 1761, leaving his wife, Abigail, and several children to mourn his loss. The following is a list of children by each wife, as enumerated in his will dated 11/12/1761 and probated at the January Court, 1762, at Salisbury, N. C. (Will Book A, p. 144. Clerk's Office of Rowan County, N. C., and the Burlington Register of Births and Deaths, Burlington, N. J.)

Children of Samuel and Sarah (Scholey) Shinn.

99. (1) Mary Shinn, b. 3/16/1719, ob sine proli 1727.
100. (2) Alice Shinn, b. 1/20/1721, married Thomas Stevenson 3/10/1739.
101. (3) Sarah Shinn, b. 6/16/1723, married Philo Leeds 1740.
102. (4) Thomas Shinn, b. 5/2/1725, married Ruth Stratton 1743.
103. (5) Mary (2) Shinn, b. 12/3/1727, married William Taylor, Jr., 1745.
104. (6) Elizabeth Shinn, b. 4/14/1730, unmarried.
105. (7) Marcy Shinn, b. 10/31/1733, unmarried.

 Children of Samuel and Provided (Gaskell) Shinn.

 106. (1) Samuel Shinn, b. 1737, married Ann 1762.

 The preceding children were given twenty shillings each by the father's will and remained in New Jersey. They had doubtless been provided for in vita patris.

 Children of Samuel and Abigail (Urie) Shinn.

107. (1) Leah Shinn, b. New Jersey 1741, married George Crozine in N. C. 1758.
108. (2) Isaac Shinn, b. New Jersey 1743, married Agnes (???) in N. C. 1760.
109. (3) Silas Shinn, b. New Jersey 1745, married Elenor Overcash in N. C. 1768.
110. (4) Sarah Shinn, b. New Jersey 1747.
111. (5) Rachel Shinn, b. Hopewell, Va., 1749, married a Clay in Cabarrus Co., N. C.
112. (6) Joseph Shinn, b. Hopewell, Va., 11/27/1751, married Jane Ross 1774 N. C.
113. (7) Benjamin Shinn, b. Hopewell, Va., 1753, married Rebecca Carlock 1784 N. C.
114. (8) Hannah Shinn, b. Hopewell, Va., 1755.

 These children received large bequests of land and money by the will of the father. In the will of the mother (1775) the last eight children are named, but not the first. In the father's will there are two Marys and two Sarahs.