When We Were Greers, Part XV

by Glenn N. Holliman

The Life of Jesse Greer, Sr. and his Wife, Mary Morris Greer


Jesse Greer, Sr. saw the light of day in 1778 in Ashe County, North Carolina two years before his father, Benjamin, fought the Cherokee and Tories in the American Revolution.  His grandfather, John Greer, born in the tidewater of the Maryland Chesapeake, died in 1782 in the mountains of Western North Carolina.  In these mountains, Jesse Sr. would live until death in 1869, passing away after the Civil War had claimed the lives of several of his descendants. Jesse Sr. is buried in Howell Cemetery in Todd, North Carolina.

As we move closer to our own time, more than just legal documents have become available.  Some of what follows is from a fragment of a diary Jesse kept and which was preserved by a great grandson.  I have a copy of this abbreviated journal, about 16 pages, which are difficult to read, which also lists the off spring of Mary and Jesse. (see below)


In addition, the Appalachian State University Press's publication Neighbor to Neighbor (2007) is a gold mine of Greer, Wilson and Osborne material.  Also, anyone exploring the lives of my family would do well to spend time in the Center for Appalachian Studies in Boone, North Carolina.  To their archives, in 2010 I donated the Diary of Frances Wilson Osborne which she kept from 1912 - 1940.


By Jesse, Sr.'s own admission he must have been a difficult child.  He was one of ten children by Benjamin's first wife, Nancy Wilcoxson Greer.  At age 12, his mother died, and at age 13 his father remarried and started a second group of children.  Also step-children became part of what must have been a very crowded home.  By age, 16, Jesse had had enough and left home.  He wrote (see below), 'At age 16 years old, I left my parents much against their will..."


                                              A facsimile of "A Smawl Travil of Jesse Grear" 

Jesse Greer Sr.'s story captures much of the essence of the mountain culture of the early 1800s, so I shall divide it into several articles.  The next post will tell the story of his amazing elopement with Mary Morris, my generation's 4th great grandmother, and later, his religious conversion which he recorded in some detail in his 'Small Travail".


Jesse Greer, Sr. (1778 - 1869) in his 91 years lived from the Revolutionary War through the Civil War to the time of Reconstruction of the Southern States....