Birds of Kirkwood

The untold history and legacy of Kirkwood's ornithologist

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Smith family history: Part 25

Kirkpatrick family

Part of the ‘Smith family history’ series

Part of the ‘Kirkwood history’ series

I have insufficient information (and inclination) to compile an exhaustive review of James Hutchinson Kirkpatrick, but I do think it’s a worthwhile endeavor to at least try to understand a bit more about the Kirkpatrick family’s landholdings, and the subsequent sales to some of the well known early residents of Kirkwood. In the case of the four acre Smith property, the chain of title was: James H. Kirkpatrick, to son John Lycan Kirkpatrick after his father’s death in 1853, to Marion P. Trotti in 1885, then to Mary Cleveland Smith in 1890.

First, a quick overview of the Kirkpatrick family. James H. Kirkpatrick [11/13/1778-11/11/1853] married Ann Parks Kirkpatrick [9/25/1785-3/20/1864] in Mecklenburg County, NC in 1803. By the time the family acquired land in DeKalb County in 1827 James was already ~49 years old and Ann was ~42. I’ve tried to identify as many of the Kirkpatrick’s children as I could, the following list includes what I’ve found.

The 1830 census is the first record I could locate of the Kirkpatrick family in DeKalb County, the family having settled here in 1827. At the time, the census recorder indicated the household was comprised of 8 white people, and, disturbingly, 20 enslaved people. The age breakdown of the enslaved people in the census is as follows:

Age RangeCount
Younger than 1010 (5 male, 5 female)
Between 10 and 238 (3 male, 5 female)
Between 24 and 342 (1 male, 1 female)

Interestingly, the 1840 and 1850 census records seems to indicate that James H. Kirkpatrick no longer had any enslaved people living in his household. I’m not sure what to make of this, especially given the fact that Franklin Garrett explicitly mentions the fact that at the time of his death in 1853 the valuation of his estate included eleven enslaved people. I was able to locate one of his sons James Wallace Kirkpatrick in the 1850 slave schedule, and there are six enslaved people listed under his name. However, I was unable to locate James H. Kirkpatrick in the 1850 slave schedule. Here are images from the 1840 census, showing simply a household of four white people, two male and two female.

Unfortunately, all DeKalb County records prior to 1842 were lost when the courthouse was destroyed in a fire. I ~believe some of the indexed recordings precede that date, so we have some record of earlier transactions, but no specifics. One quick tangential note, the oldest surviving DeKalb County deed book is volume “L”, which I previously mentioned includes the record of when Robert Windsor Smith’s father L. Windsor Smith purchased 21 1/4 acres from Charner Humphries. I viewed that deed book a few years ago, but it seems volumes “L” through “Q” are no longer available on the shelf in the DeKalb County courthouse. I tried to ask the nice people working at the desk in the real estate division about them, but they were unable to locate them. My hope is that they are simply being scanned/repaired/rebound or something and haven’t actually gone missing. The grantee & grantor indexes from that time are available and include some insight to the property the Kirkpatricks owned.

Looking at the pre-1910 grantee index under “Kirkpatrick”, we begin to get an idea of the scale of the family’s land acquisitions, albeit with the caveat that we aren’t getting the full picture since the earliest deeds are lost. Most telling is the deed I’ve highlighted from what I’m assuming would be administrator of James H. Kirkpatrick’s estate to his son John Lycan Kirkpatrick for 1,000 acres from land lots 211, 212, 237 (not 337, that doesn’t exist), 238, 243, & 244. Each drawn land lot comprises 202.5 acres, so that deed alone comprises the majority of all 6. My guess is that it included the southern halves of 243 and 244. The map following the index shows the six relevant land lots.

I’ve seen two different mentions of the location of where the Kirkpatrick home was located. One source indicated that it was near where McLendon Avenue ends at Ridgecrest Road, the other (I think more likely) was that it was near the intersection of Ponce de Leon Avenue and Ridgecrest Road, where Deepdene Park is situated today. So, I would say it was somewhere in that geographic pocket. The following additional pages of the pre-1910 grantee index give an idea of additional acquisitions by the Kirkpatricks during this time.

I was also able to locate references to the Kirkpatricks in the DeKalb County 1848 & 1849 tax digests that confirm their landholdings. The 1850 census, recorded three years before James Hutchinson Kirkpatrick’s death, lists the value of his owned real estate at $30,000; a very substantial amount for the time.

As we saw in the pre-1910 grantee index, the majority of James H. Kirkpatrick’s estate went to his son Dr. John Lycan Kirkpatrick. John Lycan was a Presbyterian minister, the fourth president of Davidson College, and lived most of his life in Virginia. Here are a few sources about Reverend Kirkpatrick for anyone interested:
https://www.pcahistory.org/HCLibrary/periodicals/spr/bios/kirkpatrick.html
https://www.logcollegepress.com/john-lycan-kirkpatrick-18131885

John Lycan Kirkpatrick obituary, July 1885

When we look at the pre-1910 grantor index we see that at some point after their father James H. Kirkpatrick’s death John Lycan deeded 850 acres to his brother James Wallace Kirkpatrick. The next sales listed I believe happened in 1868, and were to Sion Boon and Kate Hester Robson.

In the next post I will do a bit of a deep dive on the Robson family and the origin of the “Kirkwood” name.

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