Kentucky Ancestors, Volume 46, Number 2 - Kentucky Historical ...
Kentucky Ancestors, Volume 46, Number 2 - Kentucky Historical ...
Kentucky Ancestors, Volume 46, Number 2 - Kentucky Historical ...
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Privates George Thompson Baker and Andrew Jackson Baker<br />
Company F, Seventh <strong>Kentucky</strong> Volunteer Infantry Regiment, USA<br />
by Joshua Lee Baker<br />
George Thompson Baker, of rural Whitley<br />
County, <strong>Kentucky</strong>, was a staunch Unionist. He and<br />
his son, Andrew Jackson Baker, enlisted in the same<br />
unit of the Seventh <strong>Kentucky</strong> Infantry Regiment<br />
shortly after the Civil War began. Both were<br />
privates. George Thompson was older than most<br />
enlisted men. He was in his fifties. He died aboard<br />
a U.S. hospital boat near Memphis. Andrew Jackson<br />
Baker was twenty-five when he enlisted. He survived<br />
the war, returned to <strong>Kentucky</strong>, and died in Berea at<br />
age eighty-one.<br />
Private George Thompson Baker<br />
George Thompson Baker was born in 1809, 1 on<br />
Stinking Creek, in Knox County, <strong>Kentucky</strong>. 2 He was<br />
the son of Bryce and Mary “Polly” (Arthur) Baker. 3<br />
He went by both Thompson and George T. Baker. 4<br />
Thompson Baker was the grandson of Joseph<br />
Baker, 5 a Revolutionary War veteran and early Knox<br />
County settler, 6 who came to <strong>Kentucky</strong> from Burke<br />
County, North Carolina. 7 Joseph Baker initially<br />
settled on Cherokee lands along Yellow Creek, in<br />
present-day Bell County, <strong>Kentucky</strong>, but was evicted<br />
from the Indian lands. 8 U.S. troops destroyed Baker’s<br />
crops and burned his cabin in 1799 when he and<br />
others refused to leave by the declared deadline. 9 He<br />
then purchased a thirty-three-hundred acre tract near<br />
Todd’s Fork, on Stinking Creek, in Knox County. 10<br />
Thompson Baker married Nancy Henderson,<br />
daughter of Jonathan Henderson, on 2 November<br />
1829; 11 they were married at her parents’ Knox<br />
60 | <strong>Kentucky</strong> <strong>Ancestors</strong><br />
County home. 12 Thompson and Nancy farmed in<br />
the Stinking Creek community of Knox County,<br />
<strong>Kentucky</strong>. 13 They did not have children when the<br />
1830 U.S. census was taken. 14 Bryce and Polly Baker<br />
sold Thompson a fifty-acre farm “on Bryces branch<br />
[near] the waters of the left hand fork of Stinking<br />
Creek,” in November 1834. 15 Thompson was listed<br />
on the Knox County tax rolls, annually, between<br />
1830 and 1839. 16<br />
Thompson and Nancy sold their farm on Bryce’s<br />
Branch of Stinking Creek, in Knox County, to<br />
Rochester Hales on 6 March 1839. 17 They moved<br />
from Knox County to neighboring Whitley County<br />
in 1839 or 1840. 18 Thompson appeared on the<br />
Whitley County tax rolls, for the first time, in<br />
1840. 19 He received a two-hundred-acre land grant<br />
along Craig’s Creek, in Whitley County, in 1850. 20<br />
Whitley County records indicate that he paid taxes<br />
on two parcels of land on Craig’s Creek between 1845<br />
and 1863. 21 He and Nancy were in Whitley County<br />
when the Federal censuses were taken in 1840, 1850,<br />
and 1860; he was listed as Thompson Baker on the<br />
1840 and 1850 schedules, and, as G. T. Baker on<br />
the 1860 schedule. 22 Thompson and Nancy Baker<br />
had ten children: John Baker, James Madison Baker,<br />
Mary Baker, Andrew Jackson Baker, William Baker,<br />
Mahala Baker, Emily Baker, Elizabeth Baker, Pleasant<br />
Martin Baker, and Nancy Ellen Baker. 23<br />
George T. Baker and Andrew J. Baker enlisted<br />
in the Union Army at the Whitley County seat in<br />
Williamsburg, <strong>Kentucky</strong>, on 20 August 1861. 24<br />
They signed on as privates in Captain William Sears’