William Rickard meets James Minyard

William Rickard was born before the Revolution. The author has been unable to determine, after three years of research, the year of birth, nativity, and parentage of the man who performed the military tribunal at George Washington’s funeral on December 18, 1799.

Rickard’s fraudulent obituary, printed in the Tennessee Gazette on December 22, 1812—five days after his supposed death and eight days before Theodosia Burr Alston’s disappearance—stated he joined the service at the age of thirteen; the earliest military activity of William Rickard known to the author appears on May 14, 1777, serving under Colonel Henry Jackson.

Rickard would serve under Colonel Jackson until 1782. In April of that year, at the approximate age of 18, Rickard was promoted to lieutenant in the 4th Massachusetts Regiment.

Almost a year later, in February of 1783, Rickard filed suit against the author’s ancestor, William Choctaw Jackson, for £500 for trespass in Randolph County, North Carolina. Rickard’s first appearance in North Carolina is exactly two years after Charles Cornwallis’ expedition through the North Carolina backcountry. On the Ides of March, 1781, General William Lee Davidson was killed at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse.

Davidson’s death and the ensuing chaos allowed General Nathaniel Greene’s outfit to retreat further into the backcountry.

Unbeknownst to most historians—at least as far as the author has been able to determine—on November 6, 1782, in Rowan County, North Carolina, Andrew Jackson and William Cupples, Esquires, were qualified and admitted as attorneys.

The reason the author finds this interesting is because it is well known among historians that Spruce McKay served as Andrew Jackson’s law mentor. And it just so happens that on the day William Rickard filed suit against the author’s ancestor, William Jackson—also known as William Choctaw Jackson—it was the same Spruce McKay who was acting as Rickard’s legal counsel.

For context, the author is the first in six generations not to be born in Carroll County, Mississippi. Going the other direction, the last male in his direct paternal line not to be born in Carroll County was James Minyard.

There is, whether real or imagined, a kind of kinship there. Maybe it is blood. Maybe it is proximity to the story. Or maybe it is simply that James Minyard is too compelling to ignore.

At some point—likely in the late 1780s or early 1790s—something happened that no record has preserved. A meeting. A conversation. A decision. Whatever the exact day, it has been lost to history.

But it happened.

And for reasons the author cannot fully explain, the course of two men—William Rickard and James Minyard—was brought together.

After nearly three years of research, the author has been unable to determine the parentage of James Minyard, nor the identity of his wife—or possibly wives.