The Peach Genealogies

A new day was dawning in the rural community of Flat Rock, South Carolina.  Rebecca Peach was in heavy labor with her third child, John.  Without the benefit of a hospital or pain killers, she gave birth the old-fashioned way, bringing her child into the world in excruciating agony.

John Peach was born a healthy child on a special day in 1782.  His father, John, Sr., was a proud father of his firstborn son.  The Peaches had three-year old Winnie and Frances who was two.  Now, finally, came the fulfillment of their dreams, a son to carry on the family name and lead the family into the future.

John, Jr. would grow to walk in the steps of his father and fish and hunt with him.  He was the boy who would be trained to plow and harvest the fields and lead his siblings to do likewise.  One of these days, he would be a pioneer and adventurer just like his father.

John Peach, Sr.

John Peach, Sr. was born in the late 1750s of English heritage.  Where he was born and who his parents were is unknown.  However, it is believed he was raised along the Potomac River of Virginia in the area of King George County.  This was during the same time period and vicinity of George Washington in his childhood.

When the Revolutionary War began in 1776, John, Sr. became quite anxious.  Realizing the war was to be focused on his home colony of Virginia, John headed south.  For some reason, John did not want to fight.  At the suggestion he might have been a Tory (on the side of England), Gene Peach of New Mexico suggests, “Would a Tory call one of his sons ‘George Washington Peach’?”  as John’s fourth child was named.

Since 1760, the government of South Carolina had been providing land grants to white Protestant immigrants.  This was due to its concern that blacks were flourishing, outnumbering whites by about ten to one.  There might be an uprising of the slaves, which were becoming a formidable force.  The bottom line was that South Carolina wanted to find every way possible to neutralize the overwhelming dominance of the African-Americans.

John, Sr. settled in the rural Flat Rock community of Kershaw County, South Carolina and married a girl named “Rebecca”.  Nothing is known about her surname or her parentage.  Whether they married in Virginia or South Carolina is likewise unknown.  Nevertheless, they must have exchanged vows around 1778 because their first child, Winnie, was born in 1779.

In 1780 when their second child, Frances, was born, the Peaches were living in troubled times.  Lord Cornwallis led his British troops from Charleston, South Carolina, right through John Peach’s neighborhood.  Likely, John and Rebecca saw the war from their own front porch.  So much for heading south to escape the Revolution.

England was soundly defeated on October 7, 1780 at Kings Mountain and on January 17, 1781 at Cowpens, both in northern South Carolina.  The rugged mountain men of South Carolina fighting with their Kentucky rifles decided these victories.  This helped to quickly end the war and give America its independence.

With Lord Cornwallis surrendering to America at Yorktown on October 19, 1781, John Peach, Jr., born in 1782, was among the first to be born in the new nation of the United States.  Soon after his birth, little John’s family returned to Virginia, where his next sibling, James Peach, was born in September of 1784.

John Peach, Sr., and his family were back in Kershaw Co., South Carolina by 1786 where his last five children were born.  They were George and Isabella, both born about 1786; Monroe in 1788; Ann in 1790 and Sarah in1803.

William Peach