When We Were Greers, Part XI

by Glenn N. Holliman

The Greers Move Through the Great Valley of Virginia

to Relocate in North Carolina

Both my generation's 7th and 6th grandfathers, John Greer, Sr. and John Greer, Jr. left Maryland and moved south and west to the then frontier of western North Carolina. John, Sr. left to establish a new family. John, Jr. to acquire virgin farm land made available as the Cherokee were pushed from their historic hunting grounds.

John Greer, Jr. was born in Joppa, Maryland sometime between 1714 and 1718. He married at St. John's Episcopal Church in Joppa one Sarah Elliott, my generation's 6th great grandmother. John, Jr. would die in Wilkes Country, North Carolina in the Yadkin River Valley in May 1782. An early settler to the area, he must have prospered as he served his community as a justice of the peace. His wife then was Nancy Lowe Walker.

The map below captures the American frontier of 1763 when English Crown established the Proclamation Line, the black line in this map that stretches from New England to Georgia. No colonial settler was allowed to purchase or take Indian land west of the line. The dark purple reflects colonial settlement from 1700 to 1760.

The Greers, Boones, Wilcoxsons and another of my relations moved from Maryland and Pennsylvania down the Shenandoah to the purple circle next to the word 'frontier' in western North Carolina. Notice how far in advance this area in the Yadkin Valley around Wilkes County, North Carolina was from other Carolina settlements. This area was hunting ground for the Cherokee (just over the Proclamation line in what is now Tennessee).

This is a reproduction from Making America, published 2003 by Houghton Mifflin Company, and is not to be used for commercial purposes.

The move from the Chesapeake south evidently took place in several stages. My generation's 5th great grandfather, the Revolutionary War patriot, Benjamin Greer, was born February 9, 1746 in Augusta Country, Virginia, near the town of Staunton. Augusta County is smack in the middle of the Shenandoah Valley and was and is the Great Road from the Northeast to the Southwest in the Eastern United States. For the past half century, one travels on I-81 and since the dawn of the automobile age, U.S. Highway 11.

My ancestors - the Osbornes, Greers, Wilcoxsons, Boones, Wilsons and many others, the majority Scotch-Irish who poured off the ships in Philadelphia - began in earnest in the 1730s and 1740s to settle the back country of Virginia. With the defeat of the Tuscarora nation in eastern and central North Carolina, the Carolina frontier was pushed west toward the foothills and mountains of the Appalachian chain, into Cahawba and Cherokee and later, Shawnee hunting territory.