Fifth Generation

Catherine Magruder is my fourth great grandmother. She is the daughter of Joseph Magruder and Catherine Fleming. he was obviously named for her mother. She was born in 1781 in Montgomery County, Maryland in an area which I believe is now part of Washington DC. She had three older half sisters and four older half brothers. She also had one older sister, Ann and three younger brothers, John Burgess Magruder, Greenberry Magruder, Robert White Magruder. I know she went to a Presbyterian church around there. When she was 17, on April 6, 1798, she married the 28 year old Thomas Spencer Watkins, who was from Ann Arundel county. He was known as Tommie Watkins and moved to Catherine’s family’s lands in the Rock Creek area. They had four sons, Wilson Lee Watkins (1802-1861), Joseph Magruder Watkins (1806-1884), Greenberry Watkins (1808-1896), and White Watkins. Catherine Magruder Watkins died young at the age of 30 in 1811. Tommie Watkins remarried her cousin, Mary Magruder and had a son Samuel Brewer Watkins. Most of Catherine’s descendants moved to Tennessee. They are talked about in the previous post about my roots in Rutherford County, Tennessee.