William Hiatt Bef. 1775-Aft. 1820 (1100000)

Quaker records from the Deep River Monthly Meeting in Guilford County, North Carolina
indicate that William was born the 26th day of the 11th month in 1774 to John & Phebe Hiatt.

William Hiatt is found in the 1820 Census in Fleming County, Kentucky, listed as over 45; so, for many years researchers only knew that he was born before 1775. Since he disappeared from records thereafter, this was all they had to go on. They had no records that showed where he was born, or even where he died. To complicate matters further, they were misled in their research by an interview of one of William’s grandsons that was published in 1896. That interview was the source of some information—and some misinformation—about the family.

Here is a trascript of the interview:

From: GOLDEN WEDDING ANNIVERSARY 1896 Holt Co. Mo

Being interviewed in regard to his ancestry Mr. Hiatt said. "The old stock of Hiatt's came across the Briney Deep with Wm Penn and located in Pennsylvania. My Grandfather William Hiatt, "Packed" over the Blue Ridge in 1808, going to OH. My father, Stephen Hiatt, was born in Pennsylvania in 1798 and was about 10 years old when grandfather left for Ohio. After reaching Ohio grandfather built a log cabin and lived in it for two years when he sold out and moved farther west, lived awhile and moved West again, and got as far as Cincinnati. From Cincinnati, he went over into Kentucky and figured (sic) around considerable with Daniel Boone."

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The father mentioned in this account—Stephen Hiatt—was the son of  our William Hiatt. William is the grandfather mentioned in the interview. The interview is mostly accurate, from what we now know of the Hiatt family. The first Hiatt who came to America—John Hiatt—was a Quaker. He did arrive in America about 1699, with his in-laws the Smiths. That was the year that William Penn made his final voyage to Pennsylvania, and it is likely that the Hiatts and Smiths arrived with Penn on that voyage. 

John Hiatt and his wife died in Pennsylvania. However, their sons relocated to the Shenandoah Valley in what is now West Virginia by the mid-1730s. From there they moved south to the border between North Carolina and Virginia. Two generations later, they made the move into Ohio. The interview skips over the interim two generations, and goes straight from Pennsylvania to the move into Ohio.

Shenandoah Valley, oil on canvas, William Louis Sonntag, Sr., 1859–1860. Virginia Historical Society

It is likely that the interviewee remembered stories from his grandfather about the early family coming to Pennsylvania with William Penn, and other stories about his grandfather leaving his early home to move to Ohio before coming to Kentucky. The interviewee may not have understood the many years that fell between these two events, and falsely concluded that his father was born in Pennsylvania. At any rate, those skipped generations led researchers to search for William's origins in Pennsylvania, instead of North Carolina where he was actually born, or in Virginia where he spent his early marriage years.

William did indeed “pack over the Blue Ridge” when relocating to Ohio, but it was from southern Virginia, and not Pennsylvania that he traveled. All of the Hiatts from our family line had relocated to Virginia by the mid-1730s. The later all moved down into North Carolina, just across the border from Virginia, where William was born.

William was just six years old when the Battle of Guilford
Courthouse was fought near his home. Since the Quakers in
the area took care of the injured men after the battle, it is likely
that his family also took on the care of some of the injured.

That interview was one source of misleading information. Another source was an early Hiatt family researcher who claimed that she had located William’s wife. She had found an Elizabeth Hiatt, living in Platte County, Missouri for the 1860 Census. This Elizabeth was 74 years old at the time, so would have been born about 1786. Since this researcher had found that Stephen Hiatt (son of William) had a son William Thatcher Hiatt who had moved to Holt County, Missouri (two counties removed from Platte County) by 1870, that perhaps this Elizabeth was related to him. 

It was an enormous leap from finding Elizabeth Hiatt in a nearby county a decade before William Thatcher Hiatt moved to the state, to connecting her to the Stephen Hiatt family. To then further claim that Elizabeth was wife of William, who had died nearly forty years before this and in eastern Kentucky no less, was tremendously improbable. To make matters worse, they then gave her the suppositional maiden name Thatcher, based on the name of William's second son Thatcher Hiatt. Once this completely made up information hit the internet, it spread beyond control.

A careful examination of the facts shows that this Elizabeth Hiatt would have been born too late to have mothered William’s children. She would have been only eleven years old when William’s first son Allen was born (about 1797), and about fourteen when his second son Thatcher was born (about 1800). Since she would have been so very young, it is unlikely even as speculation that a woman born in 1786 would be the mother of Thatcher Hiatt. Now that we know the actual source of Thatcher Hiatt's name, it has become even more unlikely that this speculative "Elizabeth Thatcher" ever existed.

William Hiatt moved from Guilford NC to
Grayson VA about 1797.

Having researched William Hiatt’s children through marriage, census and death records, I have learned that at least the first six of them were born in Virginia. From this we know that William was living in Virginia from about 1797 (when Allen was born) through about 1807 (when Betsy was born). All of the Hiatts who lived in Virginia during this period of time were related to one another. Through painstaking research in Quaker church records, land and tax records, I was able to place William Hiatt as the son of William Hiatt & Phoebe Thatcher. At last we had found the real source of Thatcher Hiatt's name.


William’s birth was recorded in Quaker records at the Deep River Monthly Meeting as 26 November 1774. With this new information, I was able to trace William from his birth in Guilford County, North Carolina, to his marriage in the same county in 1797. William Hiatt and Charity Hoggatt were mentioned in Quaker records as having married “out of unity” in 1797. 

From Deep River Monthly Meeting records we get the following:

1797, 6[th month], 5[th day] Charity (Hiett) (form[erly] Hoggatt) dis[missed] mou

1797, 11, 6 William (Hiat) dis mou (rem[oved])

[“mou” stands for “Marriage Out of Unity”]

Trail in Grayson County, Virginia

Marriage “out of unity” means that they were married by a minister, or justice of the peace, who was not of the Quaker persuasion. Such marriage was quite common in the Quaker records. It was difficult to marry within the Quaker church. The first step in the process was to approach the elders to announce the intention to marry. The elders would then assign several members to perform what amounted to a background check. They would speak with everyone who knew the couple, to discover if they knew of any sins that had been unreconciled. This process could take many months to complete, sometimes over a year, since the elders were in no hurry to unite the couple.

If the couple did not want to wait through that long rigorous process, they would get married outside of the church and ask for forgiveness later. It is likely that this is what William and his bride had in mind. However, they may never have returned to the church to beg forgiveness. No record of their reconciliation has been found.

William and Charity (Hoggatt) Hiatt had the following children:

Beautiful Carroll County, Virginia

1) Allen Hiatt b. 1797 VA; d. aft 1820 Fleming KY
2) Stephen Hiatt b. 1798 VA; d. aft 1850 Platte County, Missouri
3) Thatcher Hiatt b. 1800 VA; d. aft. 1840 Gallia, Ohio
4) Nancy Hiatt b. 1803 VA
5) Sallie Hiatt b. 1805 VA
6) Betsy Hiatt b. 1807 VA
7) John Hiatt b. 1809 (probably OH)

[Note: There may be a son who is unaccounted for, shown in the 1820 Census as born 1810-1820.]

Since the Quaker records indicate that William relocated after his marriage in 1797, it is likely that it was at that time that he moved across the border from Guilford County, North Carolina to Grayson County, Virginia. The rest of his family settled in Grayson County that same year. William can be found in the tax lists in Grayson County from 1797 through 1807.

The Hiatt family lived in what was then Grayson County (now Carroll County) Virginia. Their church records were kept in Surry County, North Carolina, just across the border. since that was the nearest Quaker Monthly Meeting before Mount Pleasant Monhtly Meeting formed in 1801. The part of Grayson County where the Hiatts lived was very near the border between Virginia and North Carolina. The Quakers who lived in their area attended Westfield Monthly Meeting in Surry County, North Carolina, since there were no Monthly Meetings in Grayson County in 1797. 

Mount Pleasant Monthly Meeting formed in Grayson County, Virginia in 1801. The extended Hiatt family began attending Mount Pleasant Monthly Meeting shortly after it formed. William’s extended family—uncles and cousins—as well as his parents can be found mentioned in Mount Pleasant records. 

William Hiatt's migrations from Ohio
through various Kentucky counties.

Between the years 1808 and 1813, the Mount Pleasant Monthly Meeting records indicated that the greater part of the Hiatt family were relocated to Fairfield Monthly Meeting in Highland County, Ohio. William probably left for Ohio with his parents and siblings about 1808, when he disappears from tax records in Virginia. 

By 1817, William had relocated to Kentucky. His migrations in Kentucky took him through Campbell County where three of his children married:

May 3 1817-Allen HIATT to Polly DRYSDALE bm-James DRYSDALE

Dec 6 1817-Stephen HIATT to Lucy MORRIS bm-Thomas MORRIS

Aug 3 1818-Landon BONUM to Nancy HIATT bm-William HIATT

The 1820 Census finds the family in Fleming County, Kentucky. William is living next door to Thatcher Hiatt, and a few doors away from Allen Hiatt, two of his sons. 

Wm (William) Hiatt in 1820 Federal Census, Fleming County KY.
Note that son Thatcher Hiatt is listed next door, and another son Allen Hiatt is listed further down the page.

William's son, Thatcher Hiatt, married Esther Hunt Green Markwell in Fleming County KY in 1820. Within a few years they had relocated again to Greenup County KY where three more of the children married:

Rice, Jeremiah m. Sally Hiatt 24 Mar 1824 Greenup County KY

Griffith, Jesse m. Elizabeth Hiatt 21 August 1827 Greenup County KY

Hiatt, John m. Mahala Brammer 16 July 1830 Greenup County KY

By 1840 the family had dispersed from Greenup County KY to Missouri, Ohio and perhaps Indiana. William has not been located in the 1830 Census, and probably died in Greenup County sometime after 1820.