From Dalton Now: Service to honor Revolutionary War soldier from Murray
A Revolutionary War soldier and Murray County resident will be honored later this winter with a memorial service.
The service for William Peeples (1751-1854) will be March 10 at 11 a.m. at the Mount Zion United Methodist Church cemetery in Chatsworth at 30 Wilbanks Road. The event is sponsored by The Sons of the American Revolution Piedmont Chapter of Atlanta.
Descendants of Peeples and the public are invited. A reception following the service will be in the church fellowship hall only for family and members of the Sons of the American Revolution.
Dunwoody resident Jerry A. Maddox, a sixth-generation descendant of Peeples, is one of the event organizers.
“This is an opportunity for all members of the Peeples family to reunite and meet at a place where many of their ancestors are buried,” Maddox said.
Maddox has researched Peeples’ lineage. He compiled a complete genealogical record of the family in “The Peeples Family, Descendants of William Peeples (1751-1854).” The book is available at public libraries in Catoosa, Gordon, Murray, Pickens and Whitfield counties. It can also be found at the Emory University library and the Georgia Archives Building in Morrow.
Peeples enlisted as a private on April 1, 1776, in the Continental Army of the U.S. to be a soldier in the Revolutionary War under Gen. George Washington. He was a member of Capt. Robert Fenner’s Company, 2nd Battalion, commanded by Col. John Patton of the 2nd North Carolina Regiment. He served for two and a half years. In 1778 he was stationed near White Plains, N.Y., in the area close to the Hudson River Highlands and West Point at Camp White Plains. However, the 2nd North Carolina Regiment did not fight at the well-known battle of White Plains, N.Y., in 1776. It remained in the South at this time, being involved in skirmishes in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
Peeples later moved to Georgia in 1795 and had five children.
According to Maddox, “considerable references regarding the place of interment for William indicate a burial site in the Mount Zion Church cemetery. The exact location of the grave has not been found and a memorial grave marker was donated in the Peeples section of the cemetery to show that William was buried somewhere in the cemetery.”
In 2009, Maddox helped organize a memorial service and grave marker dedication ceremony for Henry Clay Erwin, a 1st lieutenant for the Confederacy during the American Civil War and a prominent Daltonian. He is buried in Dalton’s West Hill Cemetery.
For more information about the Peeples memorial service, call Maddox at (770) 396-6135.
