Born- 11 Jan 1793

At- Hoyle's Creek, Lincoln Co, NC

Died- 11 Feb 1876

Buried- Briar Patch Cemetery

(1) Married- Jacob Rhyne (her Step-brother)

Marriage Date- 28 Dec 1810

Born- 1785

Died- 1842

Buried- Mississippi

Jacob took off with a younger girl from Hoyle's Creek to Georgia

Divorced- 1818 and took her children and moved in with her father in South Carolina

(1) Married- James Strain (her fathers partner in the Iron business)

Marriage Date- 26 Aug 1820

Born- 1790 South Carolina

Died- 2 Feb 1869

At-

Buried- Unknown

Martha Catherine “Caty” Stroup was born Jan. 11, 1793 on the farm of her grandfather, Adam Stroup, at Saylor's Branch of upper Hoyle's Creek, between High Shoals and Alexis, Lincoln Co., N.C.

 FAMILY NAMES

            Caty was the second child and eldest daughter of Jacob and Elizabeth “Betsy” (Dellinger) Stroup, and named in honor of her paternal grandmother, Catherine “Caty” Stroup. Naming the eldest son and eldest daughter after the paternal grandparents followed an old German Patronymic name system, but Caty's eldest brother Adam, born about May 1771 and named for his paternal grandfather, had died young, so that Caty was called "the eldest surviving child" in a large family.

HOYLE'S CREEK HOME PLACE

            Young Caty knew her grandparents, Adam and Caty Stroup because she grew up on part of their land, and their large household was filled with her aunts, uncles and cousins. Her great-grandfather, Jacob Stroup, Sr., was alive on an adjoining farm until Caty was twelve, but she probably never knew him, because when she was small he and her father "fell out over land and never spoke to each other again."

            However, her father had six brothers, and she grew up among large families of kinfolks on adjoining farms.  She undoubtedly knew the Reels in their neighborhood because in 1784 George Reel married her great aunt Mary Stroup (daughter of her grandfather, Jacob, Sr.).

HER DELLINGER AND RUDISILL KIN

             Caty’s maternal grandfather, Henry Dellinger, was a prosperous man who owned a brick home and tavern at Magnolia Grove, not far the Stroup home place, and a second tavern in the new town of Lincolnton.  She surely knew her Dellinger and Rudisill cousins.  (Her grandfathers Henry Dellinger’s will leaves legacies to his Stroup grandchildren in Georgia.)

CHILDREN WORKED

            The Stroups, like most Germans, were ambitious and hard working, and at this time they placed work skills above formal education. Therefore, Caty's father did not send his children to public school but trained them at home for their life's work.

            Since girls were expected to be homemakers, Caty undoubtedly learned to card wool, spin, weave, knit, cut and sew cloth, make lye soap, boil laundry, care for infants, nurse the sick, make a kitchen garden, raise poultry, mold candles, scour the kitchen floor with creek sand, gather wild greens which were edible and nutritious, bake bread and pies in an hearth oven and to preserve foods for winter, including the pickled foods the Germans loved, and to make blackberry, cherry and dandelion wine for medicinal purposes.  A German girl was expected to know these skills and work at them from sun-up to sundown, then continue by candlelight.

 RAISED AMONGST IRONWORKERS

            By 1805, when Caty was twelve, she was her mother's assistant in caring for the house and younger children.  In the same year, 1805, her eleven-year-old brother Moses became their father's apprentice in the iron trade.  Caty’s father also took as his apprentice their young cousin, Michael N. Dellinger, and raised him in the iron business.

            Caty’s father bought pig iron and made guns and other iron products at their home forge.  While the men and boys were engaged in the strenuous work of farming, milling and iron manufacturing, the family women prepared hot food three times a day for as many at twenty at a sitting when work was heavy, such as harvesting or during late fall's hog-killing time.

                                                            MOTHER'S DEATH

            In March 1807 when Caty was fourteen, her mother died at the age of 36, apparently following the birth of her last child, Alexander, leaving five children, including the newborn.   They buried her in a Dellinger family cemetery on Elliot Road near Dallas, N.C. 

            Caty, as the eldest child, assumed responsibility for the younger siblings, and though probably aided by aunts and grandmother, she apparently earned her father's gratitude and her family's respect.

RHYNE KINSMEN WERE NEIGHBORS

            Caty surely knew their Rhyne neighbors at Little Hoyle's Creek.  All during her childhood and adolescence, her father was an extremely active ironworker, and perhaps worked at the High Shoals ironworks owned by Philip Rhyne as his assistant.

                                                            RHYNE STEPMOTHER

            Philip Rhyne’s farm and iron works were on both sides of High Shoals of Hoyle’s Creek, just down the road from the Stroups near Alexis.   He was an iron master whose iron foundry may have been the one called later “Washington Furnace”.

            Philip Rhyne and his wife, nee Hannah Hoyle, had two teenaged sons, Michael and Jacob. Hannah was a niece to the wealthy tavern keeper Henry Dellinger.

             In 1805 Philip Rhyne died.  In Feb. 1809, his son Michael Rhyne married Barbara Weathers.  A month later, on Mar. 13, 1809 Caty Stroup’s father, Jacob, had a marriage bond to marry forty-four year old widow, Hannah (Hoyle) Rhyne.  After their marriage, she and her teenaged son, Jacob Rhyne, moved into the Stroup home.

             As directed in Jacob Rhyne’s will, the Rhyne home place and iron works were then sold, and the proceeds were divided three ways between Hannah and her two sons.

MARRIAGE TO HER STEPBROTHER

      Within a year, romance had blossomed between seventeen year old Caty Stroup and Hannah’s eighteen year old son Jacob Rhyne with a Lincoln County Marriage Bond dated Dec. 28, 1810, his brother Michael Rhyne being bond surety.

MARITAL PROBLEMS

            Caty and Jacob Rhyne’s first children were a twin son and daughter, who were named according the old Dutch Name System, for paternal grandparents, Jacob Rhyne and Hannah Hoyle.  At Hoyle's Creek "Caty and Jacob lived together until five children were born, but unfortunately a disagreement arose between them and they separated." 

            "Uncle Mike and Aunt Barbara Rhyne tried to get them to live together as man and wife after they separated."  (Mike and Barbara Rhyne lived their entire lives in Lincoln County.)

HER HUSBAND ELOPES!

            The cause of their marital problem was that Jacob Rhyne, a married man with five children, "had fallen in love with Sally Hope, daughter of Henry Hope of Lincoln County, but her parents objected to their marriage, so they eloped on horseback to Georgia, where they were married.  He left the country and was never seen or heard of again."  Jacob Rhyne and Sally Hope eloped to Habersham County, Georgia, and set up housekeeping near Clarksville without benefit of matrimony, he still being married to Caty.

 FILES FOR DIVORCE

            After being abandoned, Caty took her five children from Hoyle's Creek, N.C. to the home of her father in Union District, S.C. where he had an iron foundry, and he supported her and her children in his home for at least two years.  They seem to have had a close and loving relationship. With his help, Caty obtained a divorce on grounds of desertion and adultery, which also enabled Jacob Rhyne to marry Sally Hope, by whom he raised a second family of five more children.

L. M. HOFFMAN'S ACCOUNT

            About 1909, Gaston County historian L. M. Hoffman contacted descendants of Jacob Rhyne’s two separate families and found that "Neither of which knew the existence of the other. I am led to believe both branches are eminently worthy and respectable people."

BUSINESS MOVES

            Caty’s father had a partner in the iron business, James Strain, with whom he moved their iron business several miles west building a new plant called Cowpens Furnace outside Spartanburg at the site of the Revolutionary battle of Cowpens.  Caty and her five Rhyne children moved to Cowpens as part of her father's household.

            Although it isn't certain, from census records it appears at this time that James Strain was a young married man with a wife and at least one child, and that for a short time they were also part of the very large Jacob Stroup household, along with a number of workmen from the new iron foundry.

CATY MARRIES JAMES STRAIN

             Apparently James Strain’s first wife died, perhaps leaving him with one small child that may not have survived long.  At any rate, in 1820 Caty married James Strain in South Carolina. Caty’s brother Moses Stroup was her father's primary business partner, and her brother Jacob D. Stroup later became an ironworker working with her father and brother Moses.  Their iron business ventures resulted in still more moves as they constructed new iron foundries.

                                                  TO SHOAL CREEK, WALESKA, GA.

            About 1829 James and Caty (Stroup) Strain again moved with her father, going further due west to Shoal Creek, where, in 1832, they apparently built a small iron works at Waleska. When they arrived this Indian Territory, part of which later became Habersham County, but they settled in the part of the Territory that in 1832 became Cherokee County, Ga.

TO STAMP CREEK

            About 1836 Caty’s father moved southwest down the Etowah river to Stamp Creek, Cass (later Bartow) County, and built still larger iron works at Etowah village, near Cassville, a few miles north of Cartersville.  James and Caty apparently accompanied her father here, he still being a business partner.

                                      JAMES STRAIN NO LONGER A PARTNER

             In 1842 Caty’s father was becoming elderly, and he sold his Stamp Creek works to his son Moses, but both men had overextended themselves by building a number of new foundries and buying thousands of acres of land on speculation.  Their purchases and debts unfortunately coincided with a national depression during which many banks and businesses were going bankrupt. To raise cash, Moses Stroup was now forced to take as his business partner Mark A. Cooper, a wealthy cotton merchant, rather than his brother-in-law James Strain.

ETOWAH COMMUNITY

            With Cooper able to pour large amounts of new money into building the Etowah community, it continued to flourish and expanded.  A large new furnace was built in 1844 and by 1849 a large flourmill.  Etowah community became a thriving village employing 500 - 600 white miners, furnace workers, mill operator, carpenters, etc., along with perhaps and equal or larger number of slaves.  It also had a school, church, post office, etc.

 RELATIONSHIP TO HER FATHER

            Caty was undoubtedly very fond of her father, he having supported her and her five children in his home after her divorce, and their relationship apparently deepened over the years.  His sons Moses and Jacob D. talked business with him, but Caty was his eldest, the one with whom he could discuss family matters in German, after he married into a non-German family, sharing with her memories from his first forty years of life in the German community at Hoyle's Creek.

 MOVES AGAIN AFTER HER FATHER'S DEATH

            “After the death of Jacob (Stroup in 1846) Caty moved back on a farm on Shoal Creek, and raised a highly respected family. They were among the best families of the county.”

                                                             CATY'S BIBLE

            According to Laban Hoffman, Caty gave an old German Bible with family records in German script and dates to the 1760's to her 20-year-old grandson John C. B. Rhyne, who was studying to become a lawyer at Waleska.

            In 1909, John C. B. Rhyne, now an elderly bachelor, described it as "My Grandmother's German Bible".  One of his grandmothers was Eliza Pitts; hence this German book was given him by his other grandmother Caty (Stroup, Rhyne) Strain. However, after much research, “my Grandmother's Bible” turned out to be the prayer book of his grandfather Jacob Rhyne, in which records began with his birth in 1760.  

HER DEATH

            "Caty died Feb. 11, 1876 being 83 years and two months old." (2) At Shoal Creek, Ga.  She was buried in Briar Patch Cemetery, near Waleska, Cherokee Co., Ga.

RHYNE CHILDREN

                  Children of Caty Stroup and Jacob Rhyne:

            1. John Philip Rhyne. Twin born July 16, 1811. Died Feb. 21, 1875. Married Eliza Pitts.  Children:

                                                             (1) James A. Rhyne.  Married.  In 1909 his children lived in Marianna, Florida.

                        (2) Mary C. Rhyne.

                        (3) Martha A. Rhyne.

                        (4) Artie E. Rhyne.

                        (5) Elmira Rhyne.

                        (6) Victoria Rhyne.

                                                              (7) Hosea B. Rhyne. 1909 lived Jasper, Ga.

                                                                   (8) John C. B. Rhyne. 1909 lived Waleska, Ga.; a bachelor lawyer; d. 1928, heir was his niece Alice Smith (whose husband was alive in 1991 and had never heard of her owning an old Bible or prayer book.)

            2. Hannah Rhyne, married Mr. --- Hapton, b July 16, 1811. (Twin to J.P. Hapton or Hampton

                3. Mary Anne Rhyne;  married Henry Burns; to Texas in middle life.

                    (1) Daughter, Mrs. -- Carrington, lived in Moultrie, South Georgia.

                4. Elizabeth “Betsy” Rhyne; married Robert Moore who was by trade a blacksmith, and followed the Stroup iron works.  Robert Moore died at Stamp Creek, Bartow County, Ga. "Aunt Betsy moved on joining farms of my father (John P. Rhyne). She died a few years past, and had a son:

                        (1) J. A. Moore, "who lives there now." 

                5. Jacob Rhyne, "youngest child, married twice and had eight children by each wife”.  First wife was Miss ---Pitts, sister to Eliza Pitts, and several of the children by her live in this county (Cherokee County, Ga.). His second wife was Eunice Darr.