This page last edited on 23 Jul 2006.
Cross, Britain Cross, HenryBrittain/Britton Cross married Mary (Polly) Parks in Greene County, Tennessee. They later moved to Anderson County, Tennessee. There are suspicions that Brittain was his middle name, and that he was either William Brittain Cross or Thomas Brittain Cross (more likely the former).
Brittain died at the age of 49 in 1826, and he had three sons who became movers and shakers in Anderson County. His sons were John b. 15 Sep 1803, William b. 4 Mar 1807, and Alfred b. 1 Feb 1818. They represent what I think of as "the other Cross line" in Anderson County. My Cross line is almost certainly related to Brittain's line, but the exact relationship is still unknown. See below for some speculations.
The conventional wisdom is that Brittain Cross was the son of William Cross, the Revolutionary War Drummer Boy. This conclusion goes back to Goodspeed. However, the data do not support this conclusion, and I think it extremely unlikely that Brittain was the son of William the Drummer.
The 1805 Greene County tax list plus other data suggests that Brittain was the son of Henry Cross. But I am not 100% sure how Henry Cross fits into the family. My best guess at this point is that Henry was William the Drummer's uncle, and that Brittain and William the Drummer were first cousins.
William the Drummer's father died when William the Drummer was still a boy in Baltimore County, Maryland. William the Drummer was living in what is now Tennessee at least by the time he was 14 or 15 years old, so he must have moved to what is now Tennessee with relatives. The first member of the Cross family of Baltimore County, Maryland to appear on a (what is now) Tennessee tax list was Henry Cross. So I suspect that William the Drummer moved to Tennessee with his Uncle Henry.
This page last edited on 23 Jul 2006.