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- Benjamin Bryan
Birth 1750
Death 1771 (aged 20–21)
Burial
Spears Family Cemetery
Rockingham County, Virginia, USA
Memorial ID 156990436
Suggested edit: Benjamin was named in the will of Cornelius O'Bryan of Augusta County, Virginia as the eldest son of Cornelius's son Thomas. Being the eldest child in 1751, Benjamin most probably was born in or before 1748. His future wife, Lydia Lincoln, was born on 9 March 1748.
At the same time, all of Thomas's sons except Benjamin were named in Thomas's own 1793 will while Thomas also bequeathed land to his granddaughter Hannah "McDonald" [McDonald being the original spelling of McDaniel]. In that day, grandchildren ordinarily were named in wills only when the son or daughter who was the parent of that grandchild was deceased. It follows, then, that Benjamin was the father of Hannah Bryan. Notably, perhaps, the name Benjamin appears among Hannah's sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons.
The question Hannah's descendants long to have answered is when Benjamin Bryan died and where he lies at rest. In the mid 20th century, the Eastern Mennonite University recorded faint inscriptions on surviving headstones in what was once the Bryan family graveyard. By then, part of the Bryan property had been acquired by the Spears family, and what little remained of the graveyard had come to be known as the Spears Family Cemetery. Stones still remaining when the E.M.U. survey was done included one for "B. Bryan" and one for "T. Bryan", separated by four other graves including that of another Bryan. Unfortunately, there were no readable dates for B. Bryan and no readable birth date for T. Bryan. At some point, the property passed hands again, and the cemetery was resurveyed by J. Robert Swank in 1967. While the E.M.U. has 1783 as the year of death for T. Bryan, Swank shows 1798. Presumably, the year was originally inscribed as 1793, the year Thomas Bryan's will went to probate.
By the time of Swank's survey, the burial ground itself had been decimated by farmers' cattle and all the stones were down. Little if anything remains today to show that anyone lies at rest beneath the soil. Since the mother of Hannah (Bryan) McDaniel was remarried in 1771, it can be assumed that Benjamin Bryan had died not long after Hannah was conceived.
Contributor: Loretta Lynn Layman
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