Hartley shares her ancestor’s legacy
Patricia Hartley has always felt a strong sense of patriotism and duty to community and family. It was only recently that she discovered those were family traits passed down at least seven generations.
For Hartley, a lifelong interest in genealogy has uncovered more than a family tree. It revealed a legacy of resilience rooted in one woman — Elizabeth Duckett Casey, her fifthgreat grandmother and an unsung patriot of the American Revolution.
“She was strong, formidable, brave,” Hartley said. “All those words apply to my mother and grandmother. I wish I knew more about the lives of those three women in between, but it’s lost. I mean, I can tell you when they were born and died and that they all lived in Lauderdale County. I think that’s pretty cool too. We’ve got roots that go back to 1820, when (Casey) came here with her family.”
Hartley’s journey into that history began early, but rather than starting with her maternal line, her earliest research began along the paternal side.
Her father, Henry Ford “Pat” Bryant, died when she was just four years old, leaving her with little connection to his side of the family and a lingering sense of curiosity about where she came from.
“I didn’t know anything about his family,” Hartley said. “I was lost, and I wanted to find out about that side of the family. So, I got into genealogy research really, really early. Even after I was married, I spent weekends at the public library doing the old school research.”
That curiosity had been sparked at a time before online databases like Ancestry.com existed, which meant combing through books and scrolling microfilm in search of answers. Hartley also had some help from the late William Lindsey McDonald, who once served as city historian for Florence.
Over time, all that research expanded beyond her father’s lineage and into her mother’s side of the family, which is how she would eventually discover Elizabeth Duckett Casey.
Born in 1759 in Maryland, Duckett Casey later moved to South Carolina with her family, where she was located at the onset of the Revolutionary War. She was married to Levi Casey, a militia officer who rose through the ranks to become a brigadier general and later served in the U.S. House of Representatives.
At first the family connection felt almost too surreal to believe.
“I almost wanted to disprove it just to make sure,” Hartley said with a laugh. “Surely I’m not descended from a representative? Then I found out he was a patriot too. I kept discovering things about him, and I thought, ‘Surely I’m not that important. I’m not that special.’ But it turns out, we are.”
While Levi’s accomplishments are well documented — including his role in key battles such as Kings Mountain and Cowpens — Hartley said Elizabeth’s contributions tell a more modest, but no less important story.
“Yes, Levi did amazing things,” she said. “He was a politician. He fought some of the biggest battles in the Revolutionary War. He was a hero. But so was she.”
As Levi commanded an army miles away from home, Elizabeth managed the family’s farm and raised their children in a region deeply divided by conflict. In South Carolina, tensions between Patriots and Loyalists often brought violence to civilians, with neighbors turning against one another and families facing harassment, destruction and loss.
“You know, she lived in fear for her and her children’s lives every single day,” Hartley said.
Despite those conditions, Elizabeth not only sustained her household but contributed to the war effort by providing beef to the Continental Army, a documented act of service recognized by the Daughters of the American Revolution.
“She wasn’t the ‘Oh, woe is me,’ poor little war wife sitting at home,” said Melissa Graham, who serves as registrar for the DAR Alamance Chapter in Florence. “She kept the farm going and evidently had enough surplus to give to the Continental Army. I’m sure she was hoping that maybe someone else was doing something similar to get food to Levi. That was her service.”
After the war, the Caseys remained in South Carolina until the death of her husband in 1807. He had passed just before he began his third term in Congress. Widowed, Elizabeth stayed for more than a decade before making a significant move that would impact her family for generations to come.
Around 1820, she joined some of Alabama’s early pioneers, traveling to the newly established state with a caravan of family members, including her seven children.
“To be a woman and to bring your young children here — I mean Alabama was brand new,” Hartley said, adding that her matriarchal ancestor not only made the trek spanning hundreds of miles, but once she settled in Lauderdale County, Elizabeth purchased a lot of roughly 160 acres to build her homestead.
“And she never remarried,” Hartley added. “She came here and made a home. She made a prosperous living from what we can tell, and her children all grew up to be outstanding citizens. She leaves behind such a legacy.”
Since she began digging into that story, Hartley admits she sees echoes of Elizabeth’s strength in the women who followed.
“I come from a line of women, one right after the other, who were all strong and admirable,” Hartley said. “Looking into that, I realized that every one of those women outlived their husbands, and they all did courageous things.”
Those traits, she said, were sustained by her mother and grandmother.
“I feel like that patriotism was inherited,” Hartley said. “My grandmother was so involved in the American Legion. She was really one of the earliest members of the Auxiliary. During World War I, she had my mother and all her kids, and she took them around to collect grease, paper and things like that for the war effort.”
It’s a legacy she carries with pride. One that has only deepened as she continues her research, now supplemented through her membership to DAR through the Alamance Chapter.
“Genealogy is something you’re never done with,” Hartley added. “There’s always more to learn. It’s been at least 36 years for me, and I’m still finding out new things about my family.”
