Witness to Benjamin Marion Will~Frederick Rivers

I have researched Frederick Rivers and his family for the past 38 years. It has been years since I have found a new document with Frederick Rivers named within the document.
I was thrilled recently to find an 1846 newspaper article about the Marion family that mentioned the name Frederick Rivers.  In a discussion of the Benjamin Marion Will, Frederick Rivers is listed as one of the three witnesses to the Will.

Benjamin Marion is the brother of General Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox. 
 
I know that my 5th Great Grandfather Fredrick Rivers served with the Swamp Fox during the Revolutionary War. But, is this Frederick Rivers my 5th Great Grandfather. The newspaper is a secondary source so I need to run down Benjamin Marion Will and estate file to connect the dots properly.  



The Will of Benjamin Marion, of St. Thomas’, is dated Dec. 7, 1775 and proved Dec. 9, 1776. The Witnesses were Thos. Ashby, Frederick Rivers and Susanna Gignilliat. He must have survived his wife, as she is not mentioned in his Will. Besides her son Peter and Anthony Bonneau, she also had two daughters by her first husband, Esther (who married Jos. Maybank) and Magdalen. Benjamin Marion left daughters only and no sons. The following was his leading testamentary dispositions. To each of his daughters, Ann, Martha, Catherine and Elizabeth, he left specific legacies of £7000 current money of South Carolina, a few negroes, and some furniture; and he directed the rest and residue of his estate to be kept together, until his daughters should be severally portioned, with survivorship between them, on death before marriage or maturity, -the personalty <sic> to be equally divided between them , - and they to be maintained out of his estate, and to have the free use of his lands and negroes until married. He appointed Benjamin Simons and Edward Thomas, and his daughters, when of age, his executors and executrixes. The appraisers of his estate were Robert Quash, Thomas Ashby, Hopson Pinckney, and James Smyth, who, Dec. 24, 1776, appraised his negroes, (98 in number,) and other goods and chattels, as £128,765.10s.; and his stock and choses in action, at £39,768.19s6d,.total £168,534 9s6d., f currency. In the inventory are the following entries, indicative of the prevalence of a duality, if not a plurality, of wives, among the African slaves of that day; ‘Brutus and his two wives, Clay and Peggy.”
The daughters of the testator all married. Ann became the wife of Thomas Roche, of St. Mark’s , on the 31^st December, 1778; Martha, first the wife of Patrick Rochs of St, John’s Berkley, and then of Paul Warley; Catherine, the wife of Thompson Whitehouse, of Charleston, an Englishman, who deserted her and quit the country soon after the revolutionary war; and Elizabeth, the wife of Peter Porcher, St. Stephen’s. All of them died childless, except Elizabeth Porcher, who left three daughters, (Peter, a son, having died in childhood.) Elizabeth Catherine, Marianne and Martha, through whom she is the ancestress of a numerous progeny.
We find on record, in the office of the Registers of Means Conveyances, in Charleston, a deed, dates 20^th January, 1786, in which the four daughters of Benjamin Marion, and their husbands unite n conveying to Hopson Pinckney, of St. Thomas’, 500 acres on Ashley swamp, Berkley county, bounded north-east on land of Samuel King, south-east on land formerly of Benjamin Simons; and 500 acres, bounded north-east on land of Samuel Burcham, south-east and south-west on land of Benjamin Simons, and north-west on land of Samuel King; and also 500 acres. Bounded west on Mr. Ashby’s land, south-east on land not laid out, north-east on land of Samuel Burcham and Mr. Ashby.
As to the part taken by Benjamin Marion in the revolutionary war, we are as uncertain as we were in the case of his brother Gabriel. He, also, died in too early a stage of the war (1777), to have become conspicuous in it. In the journals of the Council of safety, under date, 12^th March 1776, is the following, among other memoranda; James Akeen, (commissioned to be) 1^st Lieut. Capt. Benjamin Marion’s company, Berkley county regiment, --22d Dec., 1775.” This record doubtless relates to Benjamin Marion, of St. Thomas’, (which parish, as well as that of St. John’s , Berkley was included in Berkley county,) the General’s brother. We are confirmed in this opinion by the inspection of another antiquarian treasure, which has recently came within our reach. It is a record of births, deaths, and marriages, most carefully kept, by Col. Isaac Hayes, the martyr of the revolution, who fell a sacrifice to a cruel and vindictive policy, and was executed on Saturday, the 4^th August, 1781. In dates range from 1701 to 1779, and it is not only a great curiosity, but invaluable to the compilers of genealogies or family trees. We learn from the ancient record. We learned from this ancient record, that major Benjamin Marion died on 20^th September, 1778. Corresponding with the date of the death of Benjamin Marion, of St. Thomas’, as inferrible <sic> from the proof of his Will on the 9^th Dec., 1778. It appears, that he was not only a captain in the service, but had actually been promoted to a majority, when death prematurely cut short his military career. But for this conclusive proof, there were two Marions, named Benjamin, who might have been held competitors for these military honors-Benjamin Marion, of St. John’s, Berkley, (son of Benjamin so St. John’s  and cousin of Benjamin, of St. Thomas’) whose Will was proved, June 7^th 1783, and who probably died about that time; and old Benjamin, of St, John’s, himself, the General’s uncle, (who died in 1778) then an octogenarian, -- a first in itself conclusive against his captaincy.
 
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[1] The Charleston Courier, Charleston, South Carolina, 29 May 1846, Page 2, column 2 & 3.