LaVilla Landowners - James McDonald

Topic: Origins - Early Versions
James Weldon Johnson grew up in LaVilla, a small community west of Jacksonville after the Civil War. [1]  The area originally was an island, but the surrounding creeks later were filled. [2]

Like most land in the area, it began as a Spanish grant, and changed hands several times.  In 1836, Adin Waterman acquired 250 acres on behalf of Lydia Pinkston, apparently as an investment. [3]  It was described as pine and oak woods in 1863. [4]  Waterman had a large timber grant from the Spanish with a sawmill near modern Chester. [5]  He had been named as her trustee when she married Milo K. Pinkston. [6]

In that year, 1836, James McDonald was a Baptist evangelist in Darien, Georgia. [7]  He had been born in Limerick, Ireland, where his father was hung as a rebel in 1805.  The seventeen-year-old fled the country after “exacting revenge upon a fellow countryman for his false testimony against his relatives.”  He had been raised as a Roman Catholic, and so headed for Cuba, where he was arrested by the Spanish as a spy for England.  A friend from Norfolk saved him from execution. [8]

That was around 1815.  Sometime after he moved to Georgia, where he became a Baptist.  During his voyage to Cuba, the ship’s captain had tried to convince him “it was not a mortal sin to read the Scriptures.” [9]

McDonald was living near Macon in central Georgia when he was licensed to preach in 1830.  Two years later, the Georgia Baptist Association made him a missionary to Burke County near Augusta on the South Carolina border. [10]  By 1837, he was working for the Sunbury Baptist Association and living in Darien. [11]  Most of his converts there were Black. [12]

He made an exploratory trip down the coast into north Florida in the spring of 1837 where he held a three-day protracted meeting.  In the summer, he returned to the area where he held a five-day meeting in Jacksonville.  After people asked him to return, [13] he moved to Fernandina’s Nassau County in 1838.  At the time the county seat was at the Court House Ditch on Waterman’s Grant. [14]

McDonald’s primary purpose was holding meetings where he converted attendees.  If enough affiliated, he found some local person to run the congregation, while he went elsewhere.  He did return on a circuit a preach at each group. [15]  By 1839, he had organized 17 congregations, and was ministering to seven. [16]

In 1840, Jacksonville built a small church, [17] and, in June, McDonald moved from Nassau County to the town.  The building was dedicated in September, with a gallery for slaves. [18]

His life became for secure in 1941, when he was hired by the American Baptist Home Missionary Society. [19]  That year, he notified The Christian Index:

“In this beautiful river [St. Johns] opposite our town, I have never baptized but one white person, whilst thirty blacks have gone down into the water, and been buried with Christ by baptism into death.” [20]

In January 1842, Waterman transferred 250 acres to McDonald.  In March, a neighbor deeded the adjoining 250 acres to him. [21]  In May, the 44-year-old man married. [22]  In August, the Seminole War, which had been raging since 1835, formally ended. [23]

McDonald’s wife, Theresa Amanda Pendarvis, was the descendant of the Joseph Pendarvis, who had gone to South Carolina from Barbados in 1672. [24]  His son, John, recognized and freed the children of his slave mistress, Parthena. [25]  Theresa’s father George was born in Dorchester, South Carolina, and was in Jacksonville by 1830. [26]  One of her sisters was named Lavilla. [27]

Nothing is known about the wives of George’s father, William, or his grandfather, also William, the son of John. [28]  PBS thought some of John’s descendants could have married white women, and within a few generations been considered white. [29]  One assumes Theresa was deemed white.

McDonald’s security ended in 1845, when the Baptists split over slavery.  He lost his position with the northern society, and returned to itinerant evangelism for the Southern Baptist Convention. [30]

Meantime, the congregation in Jacksonville sold its church building and erected a brick building on McDonald’s land in 1846.  His deacon, Elias Gabriel Jaudon, purchased some adjacent land for a cemetery. [31]

The Southern Baptist Convention finances deteriorated and, in 1849, the 51-year-old began planning a move to Atlanta. [32]  After weathering the war there, McDonald moved to Rome, Georgia, in 1869, where he died in April. [33]

Jaudon must have maintained the church during the periods McDonald was working as an evangelist.  His immigrant ancestor, Daniel Jaudon, moved from the Bay of Biscay to the French Santee. [34]  Sometime his grandson, Samuel Elias Jaudon, moved to the Black Swamp area near Beaufort. [35]  There the family affiliated with the local Baptist church. [36]

Our Jaudon managed a plantation on Hilton Head for Mary Sarah Stoney Barksdale.  This was probably after her husband died in 1832 and before she remarried in 1836. [37]  Her grandfather, John Stoney, had migrated from Tipperary, Ireland, in 1774. [38]  His son, her father James, married the daughter of a Baptist convert who lived in the Black Swamp area. [39]

Jaudon was able to marry in 1835, and, by 1840, was a planter in Beaufort. [40]  He was in Jacksonville by the time McDonald held his first meeting.  He and his wife were charter members, and must have been two of the few whites in the congregation.  When he died in 1872, [41] he owned the Magnolia Plantation. [42]

End Notes
1.  Johnson is discussed in the post for 12 February 2023.

2.  T. Frederick Davis.  History of Jacksonville, Florida and Vicinity, 1513 to 1924.  Saint Augustine, Florida: The Record Company for The Florida Historical Society, 1925.  151.

3.  Davis, 1925.  43.

4.  Thomas Frederick Davis.  History of Early Jacksonville.  Jacksonville, Florida: The H. and W. B. Drew Company, 1911.  180.

5.  John Hendricks.  “Pioneers Who Lived in the Yulee Area Two Hundred Years Ago.”  The Yulee News, 16 June 2022.  2.  Not much more is known about them except Waterman named one of his sons Lewis Pinkston. [43]

6.  Davis, 1925.  43.

7.  Darien, Georgia, is mentioned in the posts for 2 October 2018 on Lydia Parrish and for 3 February 2019 on Robert Winslow Gordon.  Gordon collected four versions of “Come by Here” near Darien in 1926.

8.  “James McDonald.”  Florida Baptist History website.

9.  James C. Bryant.  “James McDonald: Missionary to East Florida.”  Florida Baptist Historical Society meeting, Deland, Florida, 5 May 1984.  Republished on the society’s website.  9.

10.  Bryant.  9.
11.  “James McDonald.”
12.  Bryant.  3.
13.  Bryant.  4.

14.  Bryant.  5.  “So stagnant did business become between 1835 and 1840 that the county seat was removed from Fernandina to a community known as Court House Ditch at Waterman’s Grant, between King’s Ferry and Fernandina.” [44]

15.  Bryant.  6.
16.  “James McDonald.”
17.  Davis, 1911.  86.
18.  Bryant.  11.
19.  “James McDonald.”
20.  The Christian Index, 24 September 1841.  618.  Quoted by Bryant.  12.

21.  Davis, 1925.  43.  Davis used the word “deeded.”  This suggests McDonald may not have bought the land, as it seems hard to believe he would have accumulated any capital.

22.  Bryant 17, note 18.
23.  “Seminole Wars.”  Wikipedia website, accessed 26 February 2023.

24.  Agnes Leland Baldwin.  First Settlers of South Carolina, 1670–1700.  Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1985.  182.

25.  Jim Latrip.  “Pendarvis.”  Gen website.  The connection was made by Theresa’s daughter who knew the names of George, William, and William.  Randy Floyd found the reference in a letter of James Barnwell Hayward.  Hayward then tied the elder William to Joseph. [45]  Hayward elided John’s children in his published genealogy of the family. [46]

26.  Fred.  “wilfredleblanc -- Cavaliers and Pioneers.”  Roots Web website, last updated 9 May 2019.  Page for “George Pendarvis.”  Dorchester is discussed in the post for 12 March 2023.

27.  George Pendarvis.  Will, 28 October 1870.  Transcribed by Jane Gibbs and posted on US Gen Web website.  He called Theresa Tracy.

28.  Latrip.
29.  “Pendarvis.”  Public Broadcasting System website.
30.  Bryant.  13.
31.  Davis, 1911.  87.
32.  Bryant.  14-15.
33.  Bryant.  15.

34.  Robert E. H. Peeples and Sarah Nichols Pickney.  “Jaudon of Carolina.”  Huguenot Society of South Carolina, Transactions (89):123-139:1984.  123.  Daniel probably immigrated after 1700, because he is not in Agnes Leland Baldwin’s list of seventeenth century settlers. [47]  His son was born in 1715 in the French Santee. [48]  The French Santee is mentioned in the post for 20 November 2022 on Hezekiah Maham.

35.  “Samuel Elias Jaudon.”  Gini website, 5 September 2017.
36.  Peeples and Pickney.

37.  “Calibogia (Lawton) Plantation.”  The Heritage Library Foundation, Hilton Head, South Carolina, website.

38.  Mags Gaulden.  “John Stoney (abt. 1748 - 1821.”  Wiki Tree website, 18 March 2014; last updated 20 February 2023.

39.  Robert E. H. Peeples.  Tales of Ante Bellum Island Families.  Hilton Head, South Carolina: 1970.  Part reprinted in “Gaillard Genealogy,” Square Space website.

40.  Peeples and Pickney.
41.  “Elias Gabriel Jaudon, Jr.”  Gini website, 8 February 2023.
42.  Peeples and Pickney.

43.  Sally Spencer (Watkins) Lanoza.  “Adin Eleazer Waterman.”  Geni website, 8 November 2022.  She does not have surnames for Waterman’s wife or mother.

44.  “American Proprietors, 1818-1860.”  Amelia Island Genealogical Society website.
45.  Cited by Fred.  Page for “Sarah Rebecca McDonald.”

46.  James Barnwell Hayward.  Pendarvis-Bedon Family.  Atlanta, Georgia: Foote and Davies, 1905.  45.

47.  Baldwin.
48.  Edward Leo Neary.  “Elias Timothy Jaudon.”  Geni website, 14 July 2021.