Military Monday - Daniel Applegate: The Fifer Boy at Valley Forge



Washington at Valley Forge by F. Jiengling, 1876

Daniel Applegate, born about 1765, found himself motherless at the age of eleven, which was the fateful year 1776.  According to family tradition, he “was a stout boy” and was “put with a steady Dutch farmer” to be raised while his older brother, Benjamin, and his father, Richard Applegate, were serving in the Jersey Line in the Continental Army.  But wanting little of farm life when there was action to be had, Daniel ran away, traveling eighty miles to join his father and brother, but when he reached George Washington’s army, he discovered that the Jersey Line was serving elsewhere.  According to the story that was passed down in the family, “The officers were at a loss to know what to do with the boy, who like Jephet was in search of his father, and wanted to remain in the army until he could find him.  A kind-hearted colonel took him into his quarters, had him taught to play the fife, and had him enrolled as a fifer.  He also taught him to read, mostly from a newspaper, and he learned to write by imitating the common Roman letters.”  Other sources indicate that before the war was over, he served as a fifer, a drummer, and a color bearer.[i]

As fate would have it, little Daniel was with George Washington’s army at Valley Forge that terrible winter of 1777-78.  More than one drawing of that time shows a lad with a drum or a fife amongst the soldiers in the snow.  The engraving above, which appeared in the American art journal Aldine, shows General Washington himself with a drummer boy, and knowing Daniel’s story, one cannot help but wonder if it was originally intended to portray the Applegate lad.

Officially, Daniel is listed as part of the 2^nd New Jersey Regiment under Israel Shreve. That outfit saw action in all of the following conflicts:

§  Battle of Brandywine, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, September 11, 1777

§  Battle of Germantown, Germantown, Pennsylvania, October 4, 1777

§  Battle of Crooked Billet, Crooked Billet Tavern, Hatboro, Pennsylvania, May 1, 1778

§  Battle of Monmouth, Monmouth Courthouse, New Jersey, June 28, 1778

§  The Sullivan Expedition, Iroquois Confederacy (current New York State), 1779-80

§  Battle of Springfield, Springfield Township, Union County, New Jersey, June 23, 1780

§  Battle of Yorktown, Yorktown, Virginia, September 28 - October 19, 1781

Daniel remained with the army until it disbanded in New York in 1783.  One source indicates that Daniel may have gone to sea for a time after the war, possibly with a son of Colonel Shreve, who was said to be a sea captain.[ii]  However, the Shreve who developed the steamboat and for whom the city of Shrevesport was named was not born until after the Revolution.  Shreve’s oldest son, John, who was born to Israel Shreve’s first wife, had joined military service with his father when he was only thirteen years of age, so it is highly likely that he and young Daniel became close during the war.  John Shreve was twenty-one at the time the war ended.  His autobiographical sketch has been published but, alas, includes no mention of seagoing, so it is hard to say with whom eighteen-year-old Daniel Applegate would have gone to sea after the war.



"Kentucke" 1784 (South and East of the Ohio River)

Daniel appears in the records again in 1788 when he and his brother Benjamin turn up in northern Kentucky in the Ohio Valley area where the white settlers were encountering stiff opposition from the Iroquois Confederacy. It is important to note that Kentucky did not actually become a state until 1792, so in Daniel Applegate’s time, the term  Kentucky (spelled variously as Kentucke, Kaintuckee, and Cantucky) was a general Iroquois reference to the area south of the Ohio River.  

In 1788, Daniel was located at Lindsay's Station (or Fort) in what is now Scott County, Kentucky.  Lindsay's Station was a settlement established by Anthony Lindsay, a veteran of the French and Indian War and the American Revolution.  Descendant Frank Lindsay Applegate described Anthony Lindsay as “one of the early pioneers of the ‘Dark and Bloody Ground,’”[iii] a reference to the period in which northern and southern Indian tribes, notably the Cherokee and the Shawnee, had gone to war for control of the area. 


Plan of Boone's Station in Kentucky.
Lindsay's Station may have been similar.

Ken Lindsay, writing in 2005, described the settlement as “a typical Two-Family Station of that day. Located high on a ridge overlooking a broad Buffalo Trace, a twelve-foot high stockade completely enclosed the area between two log block-houses. About two hundred feet apart, the houses stood at opposite ends of the stockade. Their only doors and windows were in the side of the wall which enclosed the two rows of logs that stood on end, making the stockade.”[iv]  There were other buildings as well, some of which served as a safe harbor for neighbors during Indian raids. 



The Revolutionary War had given way to the Northwest Indian War, which was a series of ongoing conflicts between the new American government and the Iroquois Confederacy, mainly over control of the Ohio Valley, including northern Kentucky.  The Shawnee and other Kentucky area tribes were none too happy that they had not been consulted by the Iroquois, who had by and large ceded Kentucky to the whites, and attacks continued on white settlers for a number of years.  By 1790, 1,500 settlers had been killed in the area, and Daniel Applegate is known to have been a part of efforts to protect settlers in the region.

On June 10, 1790, Daniel married Anthony Lindsay’s daughter, Rachel, and until 1797 farmed about fifty acres of land which adjoined his father-in-law’s land in Franklin County, Kentucky.   On March 13, 1799, Daniel received 100 acres of bounty land for his service in the Revolutionary War (Warrant 8084).  In 1802, he moved his family to Henry County, Kentucky, where he and Rachel raised their nine children.  Something must have riled him up in 1801 because there is a record that, on February 4, 1808, he was fined fifteen shillings and spent three hours in jail “for cursing” in the Henry County, Kentucky, Court![v]

Despite that incident, Daniel Applegate had a remarkable reputation.  Writing about Lisbon Applegate, a Missouri historian once wrote, “His father [Daniel] being a man of comfortable circumstances and of ideas with regard to education gave his sons good schooling which they did not fail to improve. . . .”[vi]

When the War of 1812 broke out, both Daniel and his oldest son, Elisha, volunteered, serving with the 13th Regiment, Kentucky Militia, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Presley Gray.  It later became Lieutenant-Colonel John Davis's Regiment.[vii] Elisha did not survive the war, but Daniel returned to Henry County after the Battle of New Orleans.

Currently the home of the Overland
Historical Society in Missouri, this
log house was originally on
the Missouri River just west of
Wild Horse Creek Road.

In 1821, he was issued a one-year permit by the authorities of Henry County to operate a tavern in his home, but in 1822, instead of renewing the permit, he and Rachel left Kentucky for St. Louis, the capital of the Louisiana Territory. 

Daniel Applegate died in Missouri on February 11, 1826.  According to the records of the Missouri chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, Daniel died in St. Clair County, Missouri, which is on the western side of the state south of Kansas City.  This may be true since three of his sons were living there at the time.  However, his remains were returned to St. Louis County for burial in the St. Louis Cemetery.[viii] 

©Eileen Cunningham, 2013

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[i] Based on information submitted in 1938 by Frank Lindsay Applegate on his application for membership in the Sons of the American Revolution.

[ii] Information from Hugh Vorees’ work, The Applegate Family in America, cited by John C. Butler. “The Applegate Trail.” http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/gean/applegatetrail.html

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Ken Lindsay. “Biography of Anthony Lindsay, Jr., (1736-1808): Soldier, Explorer, and Pioneer.  http://www.historical-footprints-2010.com/lindsay_2.html

[v]Hugh Vorees.

[vi] History of Chariton and Howard Counties, Missouri, p. 917.  Available on Google Books.

[vii] U.S., War of 1812 Service Records, 1812-1815 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 1999.

[viii] “Revolutionary War Soldiers Buried in Missouri.” http://mossar.org/files/2011/02/Missouri-Patriot-Graves.pdf

Military Monday - Applegates on the Frontier--Cunningham and Jager Lines

Ranger on the Northwest Frontier
(Western Pennsylvania)

To understand what the Applegates were up against in the violent milieu of western Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century, we can look at an example offered by C. Hale Sipe in The Indian Wars of Pennsylvania.  Sipe describes an episode of the French and Indian Wars (1754-1763) when French-allied Indians attacked white settlers in Pennsylvania:  "No pen can describe the horrors of this bloody incursion. Infuriated Indians dashed  out the brains of little children against the door-posts of cabins of the settlers in the presence of shrieking mothers, and, it is said, in some cases, cut off the heads of children and drank their warm blood. Wives and mothers were tied to trees, and compelled to witness the torture of their husbands and children. One woman, over ninety years of age, was found with her breasts cut off and a stake driven through her body. Scores of houses and barns were burned. Horses and cattle were killed or driven off. The captured settlers were taken to Kittanning and other Delaware and Shawnee towns in the valleys of the Allegheny and Ohio, and later to the Tuscarawas and Muskingum, few of whom ever returned (218)."[i]

 In the long ago, the prophet Jeremiah observed, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.  Who can know it?”  And certainly the massacres and atrocities committed by both the Native Americans and the European settlers in the late eighteenth century were sufficient testimony to the dark heart of man. 

However, our purpose here is not to examine the great sweep of history, but to look at the struggles of individuals who were simply caught up in these perilous times.  What were their lives like?  How did they respond to the danger around them? 

Now, the French and Indian War had ended with a victory for the English in 1763, and brothers Thomas and Benjamin Applegate had felt the tug to move from their home in New Jersey to the northwest frontier in search of farmland.

The Ohio Country
(Pennsylvania on east side)

According to a family history published in the Elizabeth [PA] Herald in 1888, “In the central portion of Forward township [in Westmoreland County] is a locality known for a hundred years or thereabouts as the ‘Jersey Settlement.’ This is the oldest settlement within the limits of the township, and dates from the year 1766.  In that year Thomas, William, Daniel, Samuel, and Benjamin Applegate, James and Walter Wall, all originally from Monmouth County, New Jersey crossed the mountains and settles [sic] here upon lands still largely owned by their descendants. They left their wives and children behind at their old homes. These two families were connected by intermarriage.”[ii]  Other members of this family also appear in the census records for Allegheny County in 1790 and the early 1800s.

Proclamation of 1763

As English colonists, some of the Applegates (including Thomas and Richard) had fought for the Crown during the French and Indian Wars and were none too happy when King George III signed the Proclamation of 1763 in which, after winning territory from the French, colonists would not be allowed to settle west of the Allegheny Mountains.  Many say the king was trying to improve relations with the Indians who had been allied with the French for so many years, but, as a sign of growing dissatisfaction with the British Crown, the colonists felt the king was deliberately keeping them east of the mountains in order to have a firmer grip on their actions.[iii]  By the time of the proclamation, some colonists had already settled in western Pennsylvania, and others, who felt they had earned the right to move into the area they had helped win, soon followed.

Fort Burd, Later
Fort Redstone

The Applegates and the Walls were among these settlers.  Probably following the road made by the army of General Braddock during the French and Indian Wars, they reached the Monongahela at or near Redstone.  Now, Redstone was the site of what is known as the Redstone Old Fort, which had been built by Col. James Burd’s men in late 1759.[iv]  This is significant to our story because Richard Applegate, brother to Thomas and Benjamin, had fought with Burd’s 1^st Pennsylvania regiment during the French and Indian Wars back in 1754, when Burd had still been a major. 

 

Whether Richard had helped build the fort is not known, but it is likely that his brothers knew about Fort Redstone as well as the nearby Fort Hangard, which had been erected by the French on Redstone Creek in 1754.  When the Applegates arrived, both of these forts were serving as places of refuge for settlers during periods of Indian depredations, making the site a good choice for men who wished to bring their families west as soon as possible.

In November 1768, the British re-negotiated the boundary set out in the 1763 Proclamation.  This agreement, called the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, is sometimes referred to as the Purchase of 1768 inasmuch as the Indians were paid £10,460 7s. 3d. sterling (in gifts and cash) as part of the deal.  According to this agreement, the western border was pushed considerably farther to the west, and it must have been this optimistic turn of events that made the Applegates and Walls feel secure enough to send for their wives and children to join them, which we know happened in the fall of 1768.  The following spring, the women and children did finally make their way west to join their husbands and fathers. Then, in May, 1776, as the thirteen colonies seemed headed to war with the Crown, the British sealed a deal at Fort Niagara, New York, by which most of the Iroquois Confederacy agreed to join them in war against the Americans.  As a result, these tribes “spread terror, devastation and death throughout the frontiers of New York and Pennsylvania.” At the same time, some of the western tribes, “through the influence of the British at Detroit, took the British side, and raided the frontiers of Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky.” In October, Sir Henry Hamilton, the British officer in command at Detroit, began organizing the king’s Indian allies for operations against the western frontier the following spring.  Offering rewards for scalps, Hamilton sent out war parties against the frontiers of Kentucky, Virginia, and Pennsylvania in early June of 1777.  By the end of July, he had “sent out fifteen war parties, consisting of 30 white men and 289 Indians, an average of 21 in each band.” [v]  The Rev. John Heckewelder, an American

Iroquois Joseph Brant
(Thayendanegea)
British Ally

missionary active in the region at the time, stated in his History of the Indian Nations that Colonel Hamilton’s instructions were “to kill all the rebels.” A Wyandot chief responded by stating that surely the order was not intended to apply to women and children, to which Hamilton replied, “Kill all; destroy all; nits breed lice.”[vi]  Now, during the Revolution, George Washington had determined that frontier security was to be a local responsibility, so to that end, some of the Applegates and Walls joined the Pennsylvania Rangers to defend the western frontier against Hamilton’s marauders.  Rangers were “full-time soldiers employed by the colonial governments to ‘range’ between fixed frontier fortifications as a reconnaissance system to provide early warning of hostile raids.  In offensive operations, they became scouts and guides, locating targets (such as villages) for task forces drawn from the militia or other colonial troops.” [vii]  From 1778 to 1783, Benjamin Applegate served as a Ranger in Westmoreland County under Captain Thomas Moore.  He was 51 years old when this service began.  Thomas Applegate may have been prevented by age and health from serving, but his son Hezekiah Applegate served under Captain Philip Rogers.To show the kind of danger these men were facing, let me here recount the story of Colonel William Crawford of Westmoreland County, the same county where the Applegates had settled.  In fact, Garrett Wall Applegate, son of Benjamin Applegate, served with Crawford for a time.[viii] On June 10, 1782, Crawford and ten others were taken captive by a band of Indians.  As John N. Bucher recorded in History of Westmoreland County: "His cruel death has been written of a great deal, and is perhaps, of all outrages committed by the Indians, the one which will dwell longest in the memory of civilized people.  He was tied to a tree and burning wood placed near him so as to lengthen his torture.  The squaws cut his ears and nose off, and heaped burning coals on his head and back.  For three hours he endured this agony, when at last the brave but exhausted Colonel sank into a most welcome death.  Simon Girty superintended this barbarous affair.  Dr. [John] Knight witnessed it, and knew that he was to be saved for similar exhibition in another locality a night or two following.  When being taken there he escaped, and after twenty- two days of wandering reached Fort McIntosh, and thence returned to his home."[ix]The Simon Girty mentioned in this narrative was born into a colonist family but had been taken

Simon Girty

captive by the Indians as a boy and raised among them.  Eventually freed, he served as a translator for the British during the French and Indian War.  At the beginning of the Revolution, he initially served on the American side, but turned traitor and took up with the British once again.  His home, which was called Girty’s Run, was on the Allegheny River in what is today Milvale, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, which made him a neighbor to Benjamin Applegate, who was living in Elizabeth township, Westmoreland County [Westmoreland County originally comprised Allegheny County].  Today some look upon him as a champion of the Indians against the encroachments of the whites, but during his life he was considered a man almost deranged in his cruelties and one of the most infamous turncoats of the war.  It is enough for us to note that Girty was just one more wild card in the frontier violence of the American Revolution. According to the obituary of Captain Thomas Moore, the Pennsylvania Rangers in his command “took part in the defense of Fort Pitt against the savages.”[x]  Moore’s lieutenant was a man named Benjamin Harrison, who was given command of the Westmoreland Rangers in 1782.[xi]

Outdoorsmen of western Pennsylvania today have kept alive the legend of these rangers. One notes 

that they “quite often looked as much like Indians as they did Europeans, often wearing Native clothes and sometimes painting themselves.”  Another states, “The rangers were all scouts, volunteers mostly, that would patrol the wilderness around settlements whenever Indian uprising occurred. All were exceptional woodsmen, the likes of Samuel Brady, Simon Kenton, and Lewis Wetzel. Hopefully they could prevent small Indian raids before they happened or warn the settlements of pending attacks when they couldn't. All were exceptional marksmen and trackers, and had the ability to live off the land with nothing more then the clothing on their back and the necessaries in their possible bag. A rare breed and I'm sure that quite a few of them left this world at the fire stake or without their hair.”[xii]  While the men were away, the women and children would have been dependent on each other for their sustenance and protection.  My guess is that, living in such dangerous times, most of them would have been able to handle a weapon.  One cannot help but notice that Rebecca Wall Applegate, Benjamin’s wife and sister of Walter and James Wall, died at age 51 in May 1781, which was during the time that Benjamin was serving with the Rangers.  I have not come across anything yet that indicates the cause of her death.  Whether she died as the result of one the very Indian depredations that the men were so devotedly trying to prevent or whether she died of disease while her husband was away, one feels equally saddened and painfully aware of what our pioneer mothers endured on the frontier.



When the war was over, Benjamin and his family settled permanently in Elizabeth township in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, where, at the age of 98, he passed from this life on May 31, 1823.  He is buried in the Applegate Family Cemetery in Allegheny County.  Benjamin’s son James took a westerly route to Ohio, where James’s son Andrew also resided.  Andrew’s son, Uriah Samson, went west to Pottawatomie County, Kansas, sometime in the 1870s and was the ancestor of Helen Applegate, who married German immigrant Adam Jager in about 1914.

Benjamin’s older brother, Thomas Applegate, died in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in about 1790.  His son Hezekiah became a Baptist minister and settled in Scott County, Indiana, where he passed away in 1828.  Hezekiah’s daughter Mary moved south into Tennessee with her husband, Burwell “Burrell” Burchett.  The two eventually settled in Claiborne County, Tennessee, and are the ancestors of the Cunninghams of Claiborne County.

 

---

[i] The Indian Wars of Pennsylvania.  http://www.archive.org/stream/indianwarsofpenn00sipe/indianwarsofpenn00sipe_djvu.txt

[ii] “The Jersey Settlement.” http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/gean/jerseysettlement.html

[iii] “The Proclamation of 1763.” http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/related/proc63.htm

[iv] Report of the Commission to Locate the Site of the Frontier Forts of Pennsylvania. http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/1pa/1picts/frontierforts/ff32.html  

[v] The Indian Wars of Pennsylvania.

http://www.archive.org/stream/indianwarsofpenn00sipe/indianwarsofpenn00sipe_djvu.txt

[vi] History, Manners, and Customs of the Indians Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighboring States. https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=EoqFU50BYaAC&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&authuser=0&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA338

[vii] “Rangers in Colonial and Revolutionary America.” http://freepages.military.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~douglas/Creeds_Histories/rgrhistory2.html

[viii] Friends of Fort Laurens.  http://www.friendsoffortlaurens.org/Biographies_/Applegate__Pvt_Garrett__Garret_.pdf

[ix] History of Westmoreland County. http://www.pa-roots.com/westmoreland/historyproject/vol1/chap11.html

[x] Find A Grave Memorial #5061854.  http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=5061854

[xi] Francis, Robert E. A Biography of COL John Hinkson: Pennsylvania and Kentucky Frontiersman. http://www.frontierfolk.net/ramsha_research/jhinksonbio.html ; Rosters of Officers and Staff 8^th Pennsylvania, September 1778-January 1783. http://www.bchistory.org/beavercounty/BAHF/FortMc.Carver/Carver.Roster.html

[xii] HuntingPA.com. http://www.huntingpa.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2655874 [Edited for typos]

Llywelyn the Great, Part III - Bain Line

 

Llywelyn ab Iorwerth

In Shakespeare’s play Henry V, the king goes wandering amongst his men incognito the night before the battle.  He engages them in conversation about whether there is a difference between a king and other men and says, “I think the king is but a man, as I am: the violet smells to him as it doth to me.”

And this is something we often forget.  The king is “but a man,” and Llywelyn was no different.  So what can we know about Llywelyn the man?

Entry to Corbet Castle

First, I think, we must consider his boyhood.  His father was killed in political violence when Llywelyn was just a toddler, and his mother fled with him into exile, probably into England.  Sharon Kay Penman's novel Here Be Dragons, which is about Wales in the time of Llywelyn Fawr, opens in Shropshire, which borders north Wales, where the boy Llywelyn is growing up in Corbet Castle, his mother having eventually married into the Corbet family. There has been some debate as to where Marared fled with her son, but there is documentation that suggests Penman is correct. Specifically, in a grant of land to the monastery at Wigmore, Llywelyn makes references to a Walter Corbet, who appears to have been a monk at Wigmore, and a William Corbet, whom Llywelyn styles avunculi mei, (my uncle). If this William were the brother-in-law of Marared, then he would indeed have been an uncle (albeit a step-uncle) of Llywelyn's. Since two-year-old Llywelyn was, for all practical matters, at war with his father's brothers when Marared took him into exile, the Corbets may have been a family whom he did actually view with affection. 

Estuary of the River Conwy

In 1184, when Llywelyn was twelve, his supporters in Wales began to rise up against his uncle, Daffyd ab Owain, and Llywelyn appears to have returned from exile.  It took ten years, but in 1194, Llywelyn, assisted by his cousins, Gruffudd ap Cynan and Maredudd ap Cynan [in Welsh dd is pronounced as th], defeated his uncle at the Battle of Aberconwy.  Llywelyn and Gruffudd were strong figures in Wales until 1201 when Gruffudd died, and with Daffyd ab Owain safely imprisoned, Llywelyn was the undisputed prince of Gwynedd for four decades.

So, from a king’s point of view, things might be looking quite good.  But, as Richard, Duke of Gloucester, is given to say in Shakespeare’s play Richard III, once “the bruiséd arms” are hung up on the wall, the warriors begin to “caper nimbly in a lady’s chamber to the lascivious pleasing of a lute.”  And thus it was with Llywelyn.

Sarcophagus of Joan, Lady of Wales

In 1204 or 1205, Llywelyn contracted a marriage with an illegitimate daughter of King John of England, hoping, no doubt, for a strong alliance with England in the bargain.  Named Joan, this daughter of John’s came, over time, to be called “the Lady of Wales.” 

Now, here is where things get complicated.  It is hard to know what any king’s feelings were for a wife he took for political reasons—or she, for him—but Llywelyn’s manhood suffered a blow in the year 1230.

  In 1229, Llywelyn had released from imprisonment William de Braose, an Anglo-Norman lord of the Welsh Marches (i.e., a subject of the king of England).  De Braose had been captured in border fighting the previous year and had ransomed himself by promising a marriage alliance between his son and Llywelyn’s daughter Isabella, a match that came with a nice chunk of property for Llywelyn.  And so the plans got underway.



Dolwyddelan Castle Keep,

a Castle of Llywelyn Fawr

 

Now, in 1230, Lord William was forty-three years old and Joan, the Lady of Wales, already forty-nine, so perhaps Llywelyn did not suspect any shenanigans to occur between the two of them.  But in this he would have been wrong.  Had they become attracted to each during the time when De Braose was held captive by Joan’s husband, or was it a more sudden rush by a man who had not seen freedom for awhile?  Whatever the case, it became known that the two had committed adultery. 

One story has it that the king returned from a hunting trip and found them in the bedchamber together.  Another says that, upon learning of the affair, he sent men to De Braose’s own home to arrest him and return him to Wales.  Outraged at the betrayal, Llywelyn had De Braose publicly hanged on May 2 at a place called “Crokeen,” says the Dictionary of National Biography.



Arms of William de Braose
Inverted to Signify His Hanging

In 1231, Joan was forgiven and released from house arrest.  As a king, Llywelyn came out a winner: the marriage of his daughter to the heir of De Braose brought land to him, and the man who had made of him a cuckold had been hanged.  But what about Llywelyn as a man?  Was he upset about Joan’s betrayal of him as a person, or just the act of treason—for the adultery of a queen was tantamount to treason against the king, as we all know from the Arthurian legend (which did, after all, originate in Wales).  The fact that he released and forgave her suggests there was a fondness between them, but the record is silent from the time of Joan’s release until her death in 1237.

Still, one cannot be too sentimental about the whole business because Llywelyn—as with most medieval princes and kings—was guilty of his own indiscretions.  Before his marriage to Joan, Llywelyn had a mistress named Tangwystl, daughter of Llywarch, who apparently died giving birth to Llywelyn’s first son, Gruffudd, in 1198. 

King John of England

This son is the source of another tale which shows the conflict between personhood and kingship in the life of Llywelyn.  In his ongoing problems with his father-in-law, King John of England, in August 1211, John got the upper hand, and Llywelyn sent his wife, Joan, to broker a deal with her father.  According to the terms she worked out, Llywelyn lost his lands east of the River Conwy but was allowed to keep his other lands, which would revert to England if no male heir was born to Joan.  Further, in addition to being forced to pay tribute to the English king in the form of cattle and horses, Llywelyn had to surrender his first-born son, Gruffydd, as a hostage.

Wicked Stepmother

Now here we must stop and look at the manipulation that was being done here at Gruffydd’s expense.  First of all, the boy was only thirteen at the time, and here he was, being sent off indefinitely as a prisoner of a foreign king as part of a deal negotiated by his stepmother!  Convenient enough for her, as her sons, when they were born, would not have to compete with Llywelyn’s illegitimate son for the right to become the next prince of Gwynedd, which, under Welsh law, would not have been a problem.  Was Llywelyn by, when Gruffydd mounted a horse or was placed inside an English carriage and hauled back to London a prisoner?  It is not certain at what point in time he was released by the English and returned to Wales, but by 1221 he was styled lord of the cantref of Meirionnydd (now Merionethshire) and the commote of Ardudwy—and in fairly constant conflict with his father, Llywelyn.  Who could blame him?

One more consideration, before moving on, is the fact that Llywelyn had sent Joan to deal with King John in the first place, which suggests something about his personality.  There is nothing in the writings of Gerald of Wales that would indicate a weakness on Llywelyn’s part, and he is known to have been a skilled leader of men.  One doesn’t become known as Llywelyn the Great by hiding behind a woman’s skirts, so I think we can exclude cowardice as a cause. 

Gerald of Wales

Perhaps King John had a soft spot in his heart for his illegitimate daughter.  Certainly he had made a pretty good marriage for her and, like most kings, probably hoped to have a grandson through whom his dynasty could gain some power and influence.  If so, then Joan might have seemed an excellent candidate to come to terms with John, and, looking at the situation through twenty-first century eyes, perhaps we can say that Llywelyn was ahead of his time in understanding the acumen of which a woman could be capable (and Joan was, after all, her father's daughter with perhaps his penchant for high-handedness.)

Llywelyn on Death Bed

with Sons Gruffydd (l.)

and Daffyd (r.)

Sadly, the conflict between the son of Tangwystl and the eventual sons of Joan continued for decades until 1241, when Joan’s son Daffyd sent him once again to be held in the Tower of London, where he died in 1244 (three years after his father’s death) in an escape attempt.

But Tangwystl was not the only mistress Llywelyn had, nor was Gruffydd the only illegitimate child.  One never knows how many “natural” children are on one’s family tree until digging in to genealogical research, but my family owes a debt of gratitude to the fact that Llywelyn acknowledged his illegitimate children and made solid arrangements for them. 



13th-Century
Lady

In 1230, the same year that Joan fell from favor and was imprisoned, Llywelyn took another mistress, whose name is lost in the mists of time.  However, as a result of that relationship was born a little girl named Elen, to whom I will refer as Elen the Younger to distinguish her from Llywelyn’s legitimate daughter, Elen the Elder, who was already twenty-four when the younger Elen was born.

Llywelyn’s provision for Elen the Younger was a marriage he arranged for her with a Scottish noble, Máel Colium (Malcolm), 2^nd earl of Fife, in the year 1249.  Malcolm, however, died in 1266, and three years later Elen remarried with Donald I, 10^th earl of Mar, who held Kildrummy Castle, where the marriage took place.  With Donald, Elen had six children, the fifth of whom was their daughter Isabella Matilda, Lady of Mar, our ancestor, and the first wife of the famous Robert the Bruce, king of Scotland (1274-1329).



Kildrummy Castle, Seat of the Earls of Mar

Isabella Mar and

Walter Stewart

When life gives you lemons, they say, make lemonade.  Perhaps that’s an applicable motto for the illegitimate daughter of Llywelyn.  Conceived while Llywelyn was on the outs with his wife, married into Scotland (a foreign land), and widowed at the age of twenty-six, Elen the Younger held on, becoming the mother of Marjorie Bruce, whose marriage to Walter Stewart, 6^th high steward of Scotland, made her the matriarch of the Stewart dynasty.  Not bad for a little girl with few chances in the far-off corner of Wales.

And so it was that Llywelyn the Great, prince of Gwynedd, negotiated the curves of his personal and political lives in a way that helps us to see the follies and fortunes of our ancestor, the man Llywelyn ab Iorwerth.