When We Were Greers, Part XIII

by Glenn N. Holliman

Benjamin Greer, A Son of the Wild Frontier

(Among sources are: "Going Home for History, The Greer Family of Wilkes County, North Carolina", on Ancestry.Com,  the web site of genealogists Judith and Ralph Terry, Coleman County, Texas and John Preston Arthur's "A History of Watauga County, North Carolina".

Ben descended from the Scottish clan of Macgregors, a vigorous tribe of sometime cattle rustlers and brigands that drove other clans and the English to distraction. Born on the Virginia frontier, Augusta or Albermarle County on February 9, 1746, he married a niece of Daniel Boone, Nancy Wilcoxson, in 1767 at Old Fields, Rowan County, North Carolina. Like her uncle and other relatives, the Greers, Bryans, Boones and Wilcoxsons fought Indians, Tories and on occasion the British Army. Later in life Benjamin took on his local Baptist Church!

Some of what we know of Benjamin is from the 1915 work of John Preston Arthur in his History of Watauga County (North Carolina) available now as a reprint from Genealogical Publishing, Baltimore, Maryland.

A frontiersman, Ben lived to see Tennessee and Kentucky settled, the fighting of two American Wars of Independence with the English, and his brood of children and grandchildren spreading his genes throughout the mountains and valleys of Tennessee, North Carolina and Kentucky. On October 23, 1816, he laid down his burden and died in Green River, Kentucky at the home of a daughter.

For one violent year from the summer of 1780 to the summer of 1781, as a militia captain, Ben, his brother Jesse and their men stalked and fought through the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, and when they and others were through, a new nation was born. Here is what we know of the story of my generation's fifth great grandfather.

He and Nancy Boone Wilcoxson (May 17, 1743 - October 30, 1790) had ten children, before Nancy died in Wilkes County, North Carolina. Benjamin remarried Sarah Atkinson Jones, the widow of Thomas Jones and daughter of Edmund Atkinson. This couple had five children, making Ben the father of 15 Greers, a family that would continue to multiply. Among the children of Nancy and Benjamin was one Jesse Greer, Sr., born 1778. This Jesse is my generation's 4th great grandfather, and we will later examine his interesting story.

We know in 1767 in Bedford County, Virginia, Ben sold to one Mathew Tolbot 163 acres his father, Jesse Greer, had given him. With the proceeds he moved to Wilkes County (then Rowan County), North Carolina, married Nancy and purchased land on both sides of Cub Creek.

Here on the frontier, they raised their children. Fate intervened with the American Revolution in which Ben and his brother, Jesse, another militia captain took part. There three episodes in Ben's military career. They are:

- The 1780 Cherokee-Militia conflicts in what is now East Tennessee

- The 1780 Battle of Kings Mountain

- The 1781 Rescue of Col. Ben Cleveland from Tories