Mary McElfresh Foster ~1752->1832
Born: MD~ 1752
Died: Grindal Shoals, Union Co. SC After 1832
| FOSTER SPOUSE | CHILDREN BY THIS SPOUSE | FAMILY | UNIQUE EVENTS/DOCUMENTS | OTHER SPOUSE(S)/CHILDREN |
| John Foster ~1750 - 1832 | Nancy Foster Hames (1774 VA - 1807 SC) | McElfresh Family | Likely birthplace: Hagerstown MD | |
| Thomas Foster ( - after 1835) | Likely burial place: Jasper Family Cemetery | |||
| Jeremiah Foster ( - 1815 SC) | ||||
| Frederick Foster (1787 SC - 1864 MO) | ||||
| John M. Foster (1788 SC - 1869 SC) | ||||
| Jarrett Foster (1795 SC - 1876 KS) | ||||
| Possible daughter Martha |
Mary McElfresh was born in Maryland, possibly Washington (Frederick) or Baltimore County in about 1754. Not enough looking has yet been done to confirm much about the family. Her father was possibly Thomas McElfresh and she had several siblings.
Because of the arrival of a crop of new children, shortly after the family’s settling at Grindal Shoals, I wonder if Mary McElfresh is the biological mother of Nancy and any other children who seem to have been born in Virginia or Maryland.
If she is the mother of all John Foster’s children perhaps time spent active in the War of Revolution explains the gap in children, either way, there does seem to be a gap in their birth dates creating an older group and a younger group so common among pioneer families where life often wore women out and it was quite common for a man’s family to consist of children born of a second wife following the passing of his first. If there was a Mrs. John Foster, before Mary McElfresh we have no name for her.
It seems imagineable that the course of events that brought John Foster to the Pacolet River began the moment he married Mary McElfresh.
Mary’s sister Susannah or Suky, married into the Jasper family back in Virginia. The Jasper family had married into the McWhorter family and the McWhorters had secured a land grant from the Governor of the province of North Carolina in 1771. The region was resurvey in 1772 and redesignated part of South Carolina. Enterprizing members of the McWhorter and Jasper families had begun to migrate. When John and Mary Foster arrived along the Pacolet they rented land from John Portman. The Portmans had also married into the McWhorter family. Eventually another sister Massey would arrive along with her husband Daniel Fitch. This was very much a family operation.