Youngblood-Armstrong & Allied Families
1700 to 1800, in Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia.
Research on Johns has been confined mostly to the family which went to Alabama fifteen years after the state was admitted into the Union.
After the Treaty with the Creek Indians was signed, which opened up land in East Alabama, to settlers, Robert Johns, moved his family, a wife and seven children, from Edgefield, S. C. to Cusseta, Chambers Co., Ala.
It was at Cusseta, ten miles south-east of LaFayette, that the preliminary negotiations of this famous Treaty were begun, by which the Muscogees ceded all the lands, owned by the Tribe, in this state. The final Treaty was signed in Washington, D. C. on March 24, 1832, by Lewis Cass, Sec. of War, for the United States and Opothleyoholo and six other chiefs, for the Indians. By this Treaty the Creeks (Muscogees) gave all their lands east of the Mississippi River, in return for new lands in the west and a considerable sum of money. Brewer in his History of Alabama says, "This most valuable acquisition has since been divided among fifteen counties, which were carved wholly or in part out of it, and which embraced the whole east center of Alabama."
The Johns family reached Cusseta on Christmas Day, 1835, and established their home. In the party were Robert Johns' married daughter, her husband, John Hart and their two children.
Among Edgefield families emigrating to Chambers Co. about this time were other Johns, other Harts, Daniels, Grays, Buckalews, and Culbreaths, all said to be related by blood or marriage.
Robert Johns stated he was a native of Virginia, having been born there in 1784. He settled in Edgefield District, where he married Frances Clark, about 1805.
Frances Clark was the daughter of John Clark (Clarke) of Edgefield District, who died prior to Oct. 23, 1826, as on that date his will, dated June 23, 1814, was probated. (Will Bk C. p. 311)
John Clark's wife and son, John, had predeceased him. He was survived by six children, and by a number of grand children, who were under age at the time his will was written. Only three of his grandchildren were named in the will. To his daughters, Polly Robert, Nancy Taylor, Elizabeth Brooks and Frances Johns, he bequeathed slaves. Each daughter was to have the use of her slaves during her life time, after which the slaves were to be equally divided among her children.
To his son William Clark, he willed the tract of land on which William then lived. To his son, Edward, he willed the tract of
270