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The following is a transcription of a letter that John Truman Stoddert wrote to his cousin Elizabeth Stoddert Ewell which may be of interest to you:
Wicomico House
Charles Co. Md.
December 16, 1868
Miss E. S. Ewell,
Georgetown, D.C.
My Dear Cousin:
I have received your letter inquiring into the pedigree of the Stoddert family of Maryland. James Stoddert was an emigrant from Scotland and settled in Maryland about two hundred years ago. He was an educated man; brought with him some money. He was appointed not long after his arrival "Surveyor General" of the Colony.
Your grandfather said to me when speaking of him that he was the wisest and best of the family. His eldest son, my great-grandfather, was John Stoddert, and a great acquirer of land an other property. He left an estate to each of his five sons and to one of his three daughters. He married a Miss Marianne Greenfield, daughter of Thomas Greenfield, a large landholder of St. Maries Co. and granddaughter of Thomas Gerard, Lord of Banbery, in Leiceistershire, Eng. From the date of his marriage all of my family have added as a baptismal name "Truman"; it is said that a large property in Eng. was settled by entail to descend in succession to the heir's entail conditioned he held the name of "Truman".
His eldest son was John Truman Stoddert, my grandfather. He was a member of the House of Burgesses, married Lucy Heabert Smallwood, eldest sister of Major gen. Wm. Smallwood of the Md. Line in the War of Independence. He died young having one child, my father Truman Stoddert who was Aid and Brigade Major to this uncle and died at the age of thirty-four, from disease caused by the hardship of camp life. He married Sally Massey, daughter of the Rev. Lee Massey, of Fairfax Co., Va. who was the friend and neighbor of Washington and George Mason, whose sister was the mother of his third wife. I am the only son and surviving child of this marriage.
So much for my branch of James Stoddert's descendants. By a second marriage he had a son who was the father of your grandfather, the late Benjamin Stoddert, and two daughters, one was married to Mr. John Haw of this County, who afterward removed to Georgetown, D.C. and help office as clerk in one of the executive departments, the other sister was married to a Mr. Smoot. Your great-grandfather intermarried with the Marshall family of this county, an old, prominent, and wealthy family. I do not recollect the name of your great-grandfather. He was a captain or major in the British Army when Maryland was a colony, and built the fort bearing the name on the southern Frontier of the British North America, dividing it from Louisiana then a Spanish Colony. Your grandfather entered into the service of this state as Capt. of Cavalry near about the time my father left the Univ. of Penn., at seventeen years of age, to do his part as Lieut. of Infantry.
Excuse this crude scrawl and believe me,
Yours sincerely,
John Truman Stoddert.
P.S. Col. Sir John Stoddert, (the friend of Sir. Walter Scott) who distinguished himself under Gen. Wellesley in the East Indies and who was knighted, was, I am sure, of our family.
J.T.S.
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