Upper Tatnalls, Oneils-Scrub Hill, Doctors Creek

Josiah Tatnall. Origin: Loyalist.

Josiah Tatnall, Esq. was a native of Charlestown, South Carolina. At the commencement of the revolution, he settled in Georgia where he was a planter and a “sawyer,” having presumably owned a sawmill. Notes on his Memorial for Compensation state he was a meritorious and zealous Loyalist, though he did not bear arms. The witness on his memorial stated that Mr. Tatnall “was a man of very handsome fortune and lived extremely well.” He was the Receiver General of Quit Rents, County Comptroller, and Deputy Auditor in South Carolina, where he was also the Judge Surrogate of the Admiralty under Lieutenant Governor Powell.

Tatnall and his wife sailed from East Florida on the ship Sally to the Bahamas, where he was appointed Surveyor General of the Bahamas, and signed a land grant to himself of 1000 acres on Long Island—in the area of Upper Tatnall’s, Doctors Creek, and O’neills-Scrub Hill. The earliest existing map of Long Island is known as the (1792) “Tatnall Map.”

Reference: HB, RCL