The Birthplace of Confederate General William Whann Mackall: Correcting the Record, Again

GENERAL WILLIAM WHANN MACKALL WAS NOT BORN IN CECIL COUNTY. WILNA WAS HIS BOYHOOD HOME, BUT NOT HIS BIRTHPLACE.

A guest column by Milt Diggins

Pardon the excessive capitalization, but killing myths is tough work. When serving as the Cecil Historical Journal editor for Historical Society of Cecil County (HSCC), I had the opportunity to employ facts to slay a few local history myths. But one of those myths has returned. The myth: Confederate General William Whann Mackall was born in Cecil County, according to Wikipedia, some genealogical papers at the HSCC, and an obituary in the Cecil Democrat, 22 August 1891, which was used by the genealogist who compiled the HSCC’s William Whann Mackall-Aminta Sorrell Family Group Record. At one time, even the state’s historical marker at Wilna proclaimed the site was the general’s birthplace. But the state replaced that marker with a significant rewording that identifies Wilna as his boyhood home instead. I will explain what led to the state making the change.

Confederate General William Whann Mackall was not born in Cecil County. He did, however, grow up in the county. I presented this fact a little over a decade ago, with documentation, but the correction needs to be reasserted once again–so I repeat, the general was born in Washington, D. C. and grew up in Cecil County.

While serving as the volunteer editor of the Cecil County Historical Journal from 2000 to 2008, I decided to research and write an article on Cecil County’s lone Civil War general, but I bumped into a problem. Sometimes historians will repeat generally accepted information conveniently at hand without further investigation. Using material at the historical society, it would have been easy to write that Mackall was born in Cecil County. But I have a Civil War book at home, The Civil War Dictionary, by Mark Mayo Boatner III, published in 1959, and the entry on Mackall had D. C. for his birthplace. Historians, confronted by glaring contradictions in the historical record, cannot simply pick the fact they like best or they think would most please their readers. I had to investigate further before I could declare where Mackall was born. Preparing my research for the article I had planned to write for the Journal took two tracks. One track, my primary interest, focused on investigating Mackall’s military record and writing an article about his military career. The secondary track focused on discovering Mackall’s actual birthplace, and if evidence pointed to Washington, D. C., then I would want to know approximately when he came to Cecil County, and the circumstances that brought his family here.

At the conclusion of my two-track investigation, I published the main article: Cecil County’s Civil War General, Cecil Historical Journal, Volume 7, Number 1, Spring 2007, pages 2-10. Eighteen resources were used and cited. The HSCC holds reference copies of the Journal and could provide scanned copies of the article on request.

One paragraph in that article mentioned that Benjamin Mackall, William’s father, moved to Cecil County when William was around 6 years old. I wrote a separate piece detailing the evidence that William was born in Georgetown, Washington, D. C. and more fully explained the circumstances that brought William’s parents to Cecil County. This smaller separate article was published on the historical society website (it was eventually removed) and elsewhere, but I do not recall where. Unfortunately, my original Word files for both articles became corrupted.

Fortunately, my efforts did make a difference. My research convinced the state to change the historical marker at Wilna. I had previously written an article on Principio for the Journal, and the state had requested I suggest a script for a new historical marker they were placing there. I took the opportunity to ask the state commission if they would change the sign at Wilna if I sent evidence that it was his boyhood home but not his birthplace. I shared the documentation and research findings with the Maryland Historical Trust and the Maryland State Highway Administration. The state accepted the research and replaced the sign at Wilna. The marker no longer claims Wilna was Mackall’s birthplace, but instead identifies the site as “his boyhood home.”  And as they say, the rest was history; that is until recently, when the error resurfaced. After all that detective work, including a trip to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Though the original article about Mackall’s boyhood home disappeared, I kept copies of the documents I used and was able to reconstruct much of it for this blog post.

The Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army from its Organization, September 29, 1789 to March 2, 1903, Washington: Government Printing office, 1903, compiled by Francis Bernard Heitman, has “Born in D. C.” for his entry on Mackall. Among the sources I used to compile the history of Mackall’s military service were two documents verifying Mackall’s birthplace as Washington, D. C. I had obtained copies of Mackall’s military records from the National Archives. These official records were detailed and spanned his military service in the United States Army and the Confederate Army. On one form, the blank for “born in” was filled in with the cursive abbreviation D. C. This was likely the same record Heitman used for his Mackall entry.

An online search revealed that General Mackall’s letters, part of a dairy written during military service, genealogical and biographical material, and other personal papers were housed at the University of North Carolina, as part of the Southern Historical Collection at Chapel Hill. A perfect opportunity for a road trip. The papers provided a rich source of information about Mackall’s life, his military experiences, and his reflections on those experiences. The Manuscript Collection Survey, an introduction or overview about the Mackall papers, stated that the papers were deposited by his grandson, W. W. Mackall, of Washington, D. C. and that William Whann Mackall (1817-1891) was “born in Georgetown.” Separate research established that the Mackalls and their allied families were prominent in the Washington, D.C. region. Benjamin Mackall, William’s father, came to Cecil County in the early 1820s and he left the County by the 1840s, briefly returning to Georgetown before moving to the family estate, Langley, in Fairfax County, Virginia, not far from Georgetown. The estate shared its name with the nearby town, Langley, Virginia.

Approximately when did William’s parents come to Cecil County?

A search through Cecil County equity records at the courthouse (the records now located at the Maryland Archives and available online), family records and genealogies, and At the Head of the Bay: A Cultural and Architectural, History of Cecil County, compiled by the Cecil County Historical Trust, Inc. and Mills of Cecil County, John McGrain’s survey of historic mills in the county (reference copy available at the HSCC) presented enough information to form a reasonable conclusion about the circumstances that brought the Mackalls from Georgetown, Washington, D. C. to Cecil County, Md.

The family came to Cecil County after January 1817, after William was born in D. C. They had settled in Cecil County by January 1822; that was the month William’s brother, Richard, was born at Wilna, according to At the Head of the Bay. I had not noticed the date of Richard’s birth at Wilna when I wrote the Journal article in 2007, when I estimated William was about six when brought to Cecil County. If I had noticed, I would have estimated a slightly younger age. William was born 18 January 1817. Richard was born 14 January 1822, when William was four days away from his fifth birthday.

What brought the Mackalls from Georgetown, Washington D. C. to Cecil County?

Research revealed that family ties and economic opportunity brought Benjamin Mackall and his family from Georgetown to Cecil County. The family files at the HSCC, filled with genealogical records and copies of legal documents like wills, plus some separate research of additional resources showed a close relationship among three families. Not wanting to get too entangled in all the familial details, I searched just deep enough to get a general sense of the relationships as they pertain to the question, and I made some reasonable assumptions about the family and the land at Wilna. The Mackall, Moffitt (variation: Maffitt), and Whann families, in Georgetown, Washington, D. C. and in Cecil County, Maryland, were allied by marriage. William Whann, a Georgetown banker and his wife, Jane (Moffitt) Whann, originally came from Cecil County. Their daughter, Anna Maria, married Benjamin Mackall, William Whann Mackall’s father. According to At the Head of the Bay’sentry on Wilna Mill, the mill was established around 1740 by Richard Mackall on Little Elk Creek for producing flour (I did not search for the specific family link). On November 30, 1821, Sarah Maffitt purchased “Mill, Land, and Plantation” from the Elkton Bank of Maryland. The deed describes what appears to be Wilna (Cecil County equity record JS 19, pages 124-126; a previous description for the same land is in equity record JS 13, 124-126). About a month and a half later, January 14, 1822, Anna Maria (Whann) Mackall gave birth to William’s brother Richard at Wilna. Anna Maria’s mother, Jane (Moffett/Maffitt) Whann and Sarah Maffett were sisters. Ownership of the land would later pass to either another sister, Sally Maffett, or a related namesake. As noted, sorting out all the relationships could become more entangling than necessary for this inquiry.

John McGrain, a Baltimore County historian, did an extensive survey of the historic mills in Cecil County, and left a copy of The Mills of Cecil County at the HSCC. In his survey he states that Benjamin Mackall owed the mill. I did not find documentation to support ownership, and the land purchased by Sarah Maffitt includes the mill. But I did find documentation that Benjamin operated the mill, likely through a business arrangement with his wife’s aunt.

In May 1823, Benjamin Mackall, William’s father, purchased a collection of items, mostly household goods:

“One feather bed, bedstead and bedding, two tables one tea stand, four barrels, five yards of carpet, one shop board [Historically: “A counter or table on which a tradesman’s business is transacted or goods are displayed for sale.” OED online], one looking glass, two pots, one [D]utch oven, one set knives and forks, one set of cups and saucers, one tub, one bucket, one hog, two crocks, two jugs, two pitchers, one press iron, three chairs, two dishes, two plates, one breadbasket, one axe, one spinning wheel, three kegs, six tea spoons, one truck [At that time, and in this context, a truck would have been “A wheeled vehicle for carrying heavy weights ; variously applied.” OED online], one chest, one pot rack, two tea pots, one set razors” (JS 21, 35).

Two later entries in the county equity records clarify that those items were for spending long work days at the mill.

April 26, 1824 – Benjamin F. Mackall sold Parcel Hollingsworth, “three thousand and five hundred bushels of wheat now stored and in the keeping of Henry [Bennett or Barnett]; also one thousand bushes now in the mill where the said Mackall resides; twenty five hundred bushels of wheat, now stored and in the keeping of William Hewitt, also one hundred barrels of flour in the mill where the said Mackall resides.” [emphasis added] (JS 22, 52-53).

September 24, 1825 – Benjamin purchased the indenture of Enos Woods for a period of 5 years to serve as a miller apprentice to learn the mill trade (JS 23, 200).

Other significant dates to conclude General William Whann Mackall’s relationship to Cecil County.

In 1826, William’s mother died; William was nine years old. In 1834, William ended his residency in Cecil County to attend the U. S. Military Academy at West Point and begin his military career. On January 13, 1844, William Whann Mackall and his brothers, Henry and Richard, purchased the estate from Sally Maffitt. (equity record GMC 5, 368-370). It is possible that Sally Maffitt became especially significant to William after the death of his mother; William would later name his second daughter Sally Maffitt Mackall.

William served in the Mexican War, and during that time he sent letters to his father, who had briefly returned to Washington, D. C. On September 10, 1846, a Cecil County equity record identified Benjamin as a resident of Fairfax County, Virginia, likely at his estate, named Langley, which shared the name with the nearby town. William would inherit Langley after the Civil War. Benjamin had traveled back to Cecil from Fairfax, Virginia, that September to buy three children from Jane C. Mitchell.

The entry for the sale of the children was stark, but not uncommon:

Sam aged about ten years Slave for life

Henry aged about eight years Slave for life

Newton aged about five years Slave for life

[GMC 11, page 294-295].

December 19, 1848 – Major William Mackall and his wife sell their share of the land they purchased in 1844 to Henry C. Mackall. Two justices of the peace in Washington, D. C. affirm the sale and it was recorded in Cecil County, RCH 2, 207-208. Except for the possibility of family visits, William’s ties to Cecil County have ended.

For More on Milt’s scholarship, see this blog post.