JM

James Minyard/Joseph Miniere

Records suggest the pioneers from Cumberland, North Carolina arrived in Georgia around 1795. While the Carpenter and Smith families were dealing with Native land disputes in Franklin County, James Minyard was seemingly MIA. 

In 1797, War Department accountant William Simmons corresponded with Captain William Rickard at Fort Southwest Point in Knoxville.  Rickard omitted four names from his invoice: Hardy Mawn, Thomas Brown, Henry Edwards, and James Minyard.  The purpose of Rickard’s recruiting efforts remains unknown.

The year before, Haitian refugee Joseph Miniere married a woman named Jane Mathias in Baltimore at Saint Peter’s Catholic Church. The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) resulted in the evacuation of many white plantation owners.  Most of the evacuees found refuge in Charleston, but many also settled in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. 

In 1798, the Georgia pioneers sent a petition to Governor James Jackson regarding a land dispute with the Creeks.  The settlers found themselves in a precarious situation: they had inadvertently settled on Indian land.  In response to the petition, Federal agent Benjamin Hawkins was dispatched to Georgia to settle the dispute. 

After running the boundary line, Hawkins concluded the Indians were right and told the settlers they would unfortunately have to vacate when Spring arrived. The 1798 petition included signatures of Owin Carpenter, Nathan Smith and James Minyard. 

In 1800, the government sent agent Levin Wailes to re-run the boundary line.  Wailes concluded the settlers were right based on the 1790 Treaty of New York, in which the Creeks ceded land “east of the Oconee River” to the United States.  

Curiously, despite Wailes’ conclusion, the boundary issue was not immediately resolved.  In response to another petition in 1802 to Governor Josiah Tattnall, Cherokee agent Return Meigs was sent to Franklin County to finally resolve the issue. 

The result was the Four Mile Purchase of 1804, in which the Indians ceded a strip of land four miles wide and 23 miles long.  Despite this, JM and his compatriots left Georgia and resurfaced in Mississippi around 1813.

The 1804 petition included signatures of Owin Carpenter, Nathan Smith, and a forged signature of James Minyard.

Meanwhile in 1799, Joseph Miniere and his partner Valtange were operating a hardware store on 295 Greenwich in Manhattan.  Miniere’s store was only a block from his residence on Chambers Street where he was a neighbor to the recently widowed Catherine Alexander Duer. 

Lady Catherine had recently relocated to Chambers Street; her late husband William Duer died in debtor’s prison earlier that year.  William Duer was responsible for the Market Crash of 1792 due to unscrupulous business practices, among them fraud and market manipulation.  He was sent to debtor’s prison that year and remained there for the rest of his life.

In 1777, Duer was appointed by George Washington to launch an espionage program to monitor British activities.  Duer recommended colleague Nathaniel Sackett to organize and handle logistics.  Duer and Washington believed Sackett’s ability to organize and his status as a civilian made him a good candidate to set up a civilian spy network.

In 1804, while Return Meigs was visiting Georgia, Joseph Miniere resurfaced in Charleston.  He appears in the deceased William McCleod’s ledger book as owing $210.50 to someone named “Bacot”.

The next year Miniere became involved in the slave trade.  Bills of Sale show that he bought and sold slaves in 1805, 1806 and 1807.  In 1807, Miniere applied for citizenship at the Federal Courthouse in Charleston, 11 years after marrying Jane Mathias in Baltimore. 

During his time in Charleston, Joseph Miniere was a patron of the St. Cecelia Society, a private concert club exclusive to Charlston’s elite.  He told his SCS patrons he fled Haiti/Cape Francois in 1803.

In 1808, the year Congress banned the importation of slaves, Joseph Miniere first appears in New Orleans where he sold two slaves to Charles St. Medard for $1300.  By this time, Catherine Alexander’s son William Alexander Duer had relocated to New Orleans to start a law practice with his partner and Lady Catherine’s nephew Edward Livingston.  Duer’s sister, Maria Theodora Duer, accompanied him to New Orleans and married Beverly Chew in 1810.

An 1811 New Orleans directory shows Joseph Minere living one block from the law office of Duer and Livingston.

The distance between New Orleans and Monticello MS  is roughly 100 miles. 

Before railroads, the fastest way to travel between the two cities was via the Pearl River, which connects the two cities.  James Minyard first appears on the Lawrence County tax list in 1813.