Loftis Redlee Munnerlyn
( 13 Jul 1753 -  10 Sep 1843)

Loftis Munnerlyn was born in Craven County (later Marion County), South Carolina on July 13, 1753.  There seems to be little information about his childhood and youth.  He may have had very little formal education.  Existing legal documents requiring his signature only bore his name and the designation “His  X  Mark.”  However, he must have been an able and effective man in his day.  He engaged in numerous real estate transactions, served as an estate appraiser, and became a Methodist ‘local’ preacher.  Evidently his household was soundly religious.  He was probably the first in a line of Munnerlyn ministers extending through six generations of descendants.  At least one descendant of a Munnerlyn slave was a prominent Methodist minister.  There are at least three of his descendants who are ministers among the present generation.

Loftis’ early experiences were in the turbulent period preceding the Revolution when deep feelings were growing for and against the English Crown.  His home was in the midst of sympathizers with England (Tories) who were the objects of hatred by the colonists who were resentful of and hostile towards England.  In addition there still were problems of settler-Indian relationships if not actual war.  There was a lack of well established and enforced civil and criminal laws.  These conditions may or may not have any thing to do with Loftis’ volunteering for ‘one month’ service in the militia just before or at the time of the Revolution.  One document quotes him as saying that he volunteered before he was sixteen years old.  That statement was made when he was about eighty four years old and his recollection may have been failing.  At the time of the revolution he was in his early twenties.

There seems to be no record of the date of his marriage.  His wife was named Rachel and that is about all that is known of her outside of her signature on legal documents.  One descendant of Captain John Munnerlyn has suggested that her maiden name was Collins but that was merely a circumstantial conclusion.  Another suggestion is that her name was Rachel Mixon.  Loftis and Rachel may have married before the Revolution.  They were married by December seventh, seventeen ninety seven for on that day Loftis and Rachel sold a piece of land to Jonathan Collins.

The size of the family of Loftis and Rachel is not clear in the records.  They had two sons of whom there is certain knowledge, Benjamin and Thomas M.  There may have been other children.  The Census reports for 1790 indicate that the household consisted of one male under 16, one male over sixteen, one female, and three slaves.  In 1800 there were two males under ten, one male between 16 and 26, one male between 16 and 45, and 5 slaves.  The 1810 Census shows one male between 10 and 16, 3 males between 16 and 20, one male over 45, one female under 10, 1 female between 26 and 44, and 7 slaves.  By 1820 the household had decreased in number.  The record shows 2 males between 18 and 26, 1 male over 45, 1 female over 45, and 3 male and 4 female slaves.  Since the census takers may have recorded all persons in a household it is uncertain as to the blood relationship between them.  It is clear that one son, Benjamin, was born in the late 1780’s and Thomas M. was born in 1794.  There may have been a daughter by the name of Sarah.

Of the six brothers in the Revolution we have more information about Loftis than any of the others.  This is contained in two application which he made for a Revolutionary War pension which had been authorized by Congress June 7, 1832.  Loftis made the first application on October 16, 1833 and the other on March 28, 1837.  Evidently there was no immediate approval of the first one and three years after the second one was filed the first one was approved.  From the contents of these two applications many interesting facts about Loftis’ war record emerge.

Loftis’ first activity in the Revolution came when the militia unit of which he was a member was marched off under Captain Jack Buckholts and joined by a company under a Captain Dubose of the Darlington District and proceeded to See Wee Bay to prevent the British, who were hovering on the coast, from landing.  Loftis remained there two months and was then released to go home.  After two months at home he was ordered to march to Charleston under the command of his brother, Captain James Munnerlyn.  He was stationed in Charleston for two months doing guard duty and then released to return home for two months.  After that he was marched to Lynch’s Causway just before the fall of Charleston.  This last was under the command of another of his brothers, Captain John Munnerlyn.  After the fall of Charleston the troops were marched towards Camden and some were discharged.  However, Loftis remained faithful until after the battle in which General Gates was defeated by the British.  He was then released and returned home.

Some of the militia were sent to North Carolina but Loftis did not go.  Hearing that General Francis Marion was raising a party he, with his four brother, joined in the formation of Marion’s Brigade.  Evidently the brother, Francis Munnerlyn, was otherwise engaged or had by that time met his death.  From the time of the organization of the Brigade until the time it was disbanded Loftis was continually in service as a private, a sergeant, and finally as a commissioner.  However, years after the war the record of his commission was lost in a destructive storm.

Much of the fighting by Marion’s men was with the Tories, on one occasion when returning home Loftis found that his father’s house had been unroofed by the Tories and his father and mother taken prisoners.  General Marion sent a party of thirty men who rescued the elder Munnerlyns.  Another account given in another version of the pension application says that the Tories raided the father’s house and carried off everything of value including the family Bible in which Loftis’ birth was recorded.  In this raid the Tories even took the feather beds, ripped them open, scattered the feathers, and confiscated the ticks which were quite valuable at that time.  Accounts are confusing but it seems that the Tories may have preyed on the Munnerlyn household more than once.  They knew that five of the old man’s sons were with Marion.  Once they captured the father and held him in a Tory camp not far from his home.  On hearing where the Tories were holding their father the five Munnerlyn brothers went to General Marion and asked him to assist them in rescuing their father.  General Marion replied that he had available only sixty men and it was believe that there were five hundred Tories.  The five brothers expressed their determination to get their father and General Marion then said that he would go with them along with the sixty men.  They arrived at Blue Savannah about day break.  The Tories were sitting around the camp fire.  Marion and his men opened fire, the Tories scattered, and the elder Munnerlyn ran to Marion’s lines.  After that he stayed with Marion constantly as he was afraid to go home.  He knew that the Tories would kill him if he did.  In the engagement one Tory, Mathew Allen, was killed as he sat by the fire.  The Tories were defeated in this small engagement.

Loftis participated in many other encounters with the British and/or Tories at: Black River, Smith’s Bridge, the fort at Monk’s Corner, Coosahatche Bridge, Fort Defiance, and Eutaw Springs.  He may have participated also in the spectacular defeat of the British at Fort Watson.  There, Marion’s men built over night a tall log tower which elevated them above the British who were camped on a hill.  Suddenly at dawn Marion’s men began firing on the British and annihilated them.  Loftis participated in a clever scheme in which General Marion constructed many fake cannon out of large logs mounted on wagon wheels.  The British, on sighting what they thought to be cannon, were frightened and fled.  Loftis was put in command of a detachment of men and took possession of the fort which the British had occupied.  There they found barrels of English peas, rice, and a good bit of meat which the British had brought from one of their boats.

At the battle of Smith’s Bridge, where the Americans were defeated, Loftis was thrown from his horse, was injured, and was taken prisoner.  However, he escaped at the first opportunity by mounting his horse and dashing off under gun fire.

In the battle at the fork of Black River the Americans slipped up on the enemy when they were cooking a big dinner.  They were “hoping” and “hollering” and saying that they wished that they knew where Marion was and that they would make “riddles” of his hide.  The Americans routed them taking, along with the freshly cooked dinner, saddles, bridles, and other equipment.

 On July 17, 1784 Loftis received six pounds, nine shillings, and four pence for 97 days of military duty with Marion’s Brigade.  We have no other records of payment for military service except that of a pension granted later.

 In 1832 the United States provided for pensions for its Revolutionary War Veterans.  We have indicated that Loftis applied twice.  One of the persons who testified to the truthfulness of Loftis’ statements in the application was a minister by the name of Benjamin Holt.  That name, Benjamin Holt, have been given to several of Loftis’ descendants.  On March 11, 1840 a pension was granted by Certificate 31726.  It amounted to $80.00 per year and was retroactive to March 4, 1831.  He received $720.00, back funding, for nine years and $40.00 for the period March to September, or a total of $760.00.  It is presumed the annual rate continued until his death.  The last payment was September, 1843, $40.00.

 It may be helpful to include a brief statement about the men and the tactics which characterized Marion’s men.  His men were planters, farmers, and hunters who were familiar with every forest path, river, and creek.  Gentlemen rode as privates in his ranks, proud to be known as Marion’s Men.  It was said that Marion never demanded arms, clothing, or provisions from the government; the country supplied him.  Plantation blacksmiths made swords and spikes from scythes and tires.  Shot guns were in every house.  The women spun and wove indefatigably and men could live on corn and sweet potatoes and not starve.  Much of the time the sweet potato-corn fare was all they had.  Of them William Cullen Bryant wrote:

 

                                                Our fortress is the good green wood,
                                                            Our tent the cypress tree;
                                                We know the forest round us
                                                            As seamen know the sea.
                                                We know its walls of thorny vines,
                                                            Its glades of reedy grass,
                                                Its safe and silent islands
                                                            Within the dark morass.                                                                       

                                                                        (Song of Marion’s Men)

 

In his declining years Loftis, who was living with his son Thomas M. Munnerlyn, often took his grandchildren out under the apple trees to tell his war experiences.  One of his favorites was the one about surprising the enemy as they were preparing dinner.  My grandmother was one of those children.  We, her grandchildren, got some of the stories from her before we read them later in history.

Records show that Loftis engaged in several real estate transactions.  He bought and sold land within his family and with his neighbors.  One deal was the purchase of some fifty acres from his sister-in-law, Ann Batchelor Munnerlyn.  The land had been transferred to Ann by her father, James Batchelor, shortly before her marriage to Loftis’ brother Benjamin Munnerlyn.  In 1797 Loftis sold the land to a neighbor named Jonathan Collins, the price being 12 pounds sterling.  Loftis also purchased more of this land, not from Ann but from her husband and Ann’s brother James Batchelor, Jr but without Ann’s release.  As long as Benjamin lived Ann had no claim on the land as a sale under such conditions was valid.  But Benjamin died March 25, 1800.  In August 1803 Ann entered suit for the restoration of the land to her as was her legal right as a widow.  Loftis contested the suit in the local court and the Constitutional Court of South Carolina but Ann won in both courts.

When Benjamin died in 1800 Loftis was made the appraiser of Benjamin’s estate.  There may or may not be any relationship between Loftis’ work as appraiser and the suit filed in 1803 for the return of the land to Ann.

We do not know of the religious affiliations of the Munnerlyns before Loftis.  We do know that baptisms, marriages, and deaths were recorded in several Methodist churches and especially in the one in Georgetown.  Around the turn of the century Francis Asbury, the first active Bishop of the American Methodist Church made many trips into South Carolina.  On one of the trips he ordained Loftis as a local Methodist preacher.  The certificate of ordination was in the hands of Loftis’ great grandson, the Reverend Tracy Munnerlyn.  I saw it during a brief visit with Tracy about 1930 but did not take the time to copy the date and place.  Efforts have been made to secure this data from Tracy’s descendants but with no results.  We have many reasons to believe that Loftis and his brothers were very influential Christians in their day both in the church and community.  They were also very active Masons.

The Census of 1840 noted that Loftis, an 87 year old Revolutionary War veteran, was living with his son, Thomas M. Munnerlyn.  The same record listed a female in the household between 80 and 90 years of age.  This may have been Loftis’ wife Rachel.  One Munnerlyn descendant has written that Loftis and Rachel lived with Thomas M. Munnerlyn until their deaths.  Death came to Loftis in 1843.

In 1930 a descendant of Captain John Munnerlyn was visiting in South Carolina in the area where the old Munnerlyn plantation was located.  While there this descendant met a man of the community who seemed to know a good bit about Munnerlyn history.  He knew of a tradition that Loftis was the first person to be ‘buried’ in a vault in that part of the state.  The man took the visitor, a lady, across a cotton field to the spot where the vault had been.  The only remains was a pile of bricks.  It was on land that had belonged to a Collins family.  This lady came to the conclusion that Rachel Munnerlyn had been a Collins and that Loftis’ grave site was on land that may have belonged to his wife’s family.  However, there are records to the effect that Loftis and Rachel sold land to the Collins family after they were married.  Later other land was sold to the Collins family by Loftis’ son Thomas M. Munnerlyn and his wife.  So, there is no proof or explanation as to why Loftis’ grave was not on Munnerlyn property.  One possible explanation may be that the Munnerlyn property sold to John J. Collins by Thomas M. Munnerlyn may have had the grave of Loftis on it as the sale was consummated the year following Loftis’ death.  

Note:  The above was written by Dr. Horace W. Williams about 1980.  Since that time further information as come to light and should be mentioned here.   Your writer became aware that Loftis’ wife, Rachel, was a Collins because my aunt, Ada Munnerlyn Allen knew that information before we had heard this from any other source.  The only way she could have known this was that it had been passed down from her father to her.  She also knew other family information that could have come only from her father, Samuel P. Munnerlyn.

Another bit of important information that has come to light since Dr. Williams wrote this article is that Loftis Munnerlyn was married a second time.  Evidently Rachel died shortly after 1800 and Loftis married between 1803 and 1806 Lucy Case, widow of John Case.  Lucy is believed to have been a Thomas before her marriage.  She was the mother of John, William, and a daughter by her first husband, John Case.

--Francine Munnerlyn Jones

 

Descendant Relation:
James Sr.>Loftis Redlee MUNNERLYN

Documents:

 

 

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Last Updated 08/28/04