I represent Sarah Smith. I was one of the group of about 400 that Gen. Thaddeus Lyman talked into coming down to settle one of the gigantic tracts of land he had been granted for the purpose of creating townships and filling them with Loyalist settlers from New England. This would have been in 1774. I petitioned for a tract of land and told the following story: That I had come down with Mr. Lyman, my husband and our ten children. My husband had been a clergyman in New England, and because of his Loyalism he’d had to leave and seek refuge in West Florida. He died the second day after we arrived at our settlement in Natchez, leaving his family without resources. As seven of the ten children were “young and helpless,” we had been living on charity. I asked for 100 acres for myself and 100 acres for each child on Fairchild’s Creek.
Sources: 4, 80