When We Were Greers XIV

by Glenn N. Holliman

The Family and Will of Benjamin Greer


At the age of 70, Benjamin Greer died October 23, 1816 in Green County, Kentucky.  He had moved to Kentucky in 1810 with his second wife.  Another source suggests he sold his land in Ashe County, North Carolina - formally Wilkes County - (where Gap Creek enters the South Fork of the New River) in 1803 and may have moved at that time.


 He had married twice, first to Nancy Wilcoxson, my generation's 5th great grandmother and later to Sallie Atkinson Jones.  By Nancy Wilcoxson Greer (a niece of Daniel Boone) were born ten children, one being Jesse Greer, Sr, my 4th great grandfather, whom we will discuss in later articles.  


In 1955 on the lawn of Geraldine Stansbery Holliman's home in Johnson City, Tennessee gathered numerous descendants of Benjamin and Jesse Greer, Sr. through the Frankie Wilson Osborne (1851 - 1940) line.  Frankie's mother, Caroline Wilson Greer, had been a great great granddaughter of Jesse Greer, Sr. (1778 - 1896).  Left to right are:  Louise Stansbery Sherwood (1915 - 2006), Rebecca Holliman Payne (1950), Geraldine Stansbery Holliman (1923), Pauline Osborne Smith, Pearl Osborne Wright (1890 - 1980) and her husband David Wright (d 1962).  At the time of photograph, Louise lived in Knoxville, Tennessee, Pearl and David in Damascus, Virginia, and Pauline in Washington State where she had moved with her father, Toby Osborne in 1924.  Toby was a brother of Pearl and uncle of Louise and Geraldine.  The mountain in the background is the Buffalo, 50 or so miles west of the mountains of Wilkes and Watauga Counties, North Carolina were the Greer families lived in the 18th Century.

My 5th great grandmother, Nancy Wilcoxson Greer, had been born May 17, 1745, and died October 31, 1790, at the age of 45.  The children Benjamin and she had were:


Rachel Greer (sometimes spelled Grear) - b 1/16/1770
William Greer -  b 1/21, 1772  
Benjamin Greer - b 2/14/1774
Anna Greer - b 4/26/1776
Jesse Greer, Sr. -  11/14/1778 - 9/20/1869 ( my generation's 4th great grandfather)
David Greer - 2/2/1781
James Greer - 9/17/1783
Samuel Greer - 11/28/1785
Joshua Greer - 4/8/1788
John Greer - birth date unknown


A Wilkes County marriage bond in the State Archives in Raleigh, NC, dated 4/26/1791 lists Benjamin Greer and Sarah Jones as married.  This would be Mrs. Sallie Atkinson Jones, widow of Thomas Jones who died from a Revolutionary War wound.  She reared children by both husbands.


By widow Sallie, five children were fathered by Benjamin Greer.  They were:


Edmund Greer
Sally Greer
Elizabeth Greer
Mary Polly Greer
Aquilla Greer - b 1797


This son of the Wild Frontier fathered 15 children by two wives!  No wonder the population of the new young country was doubling every twenty years.  One can understand how the population of Kentucky went from a handful of settlers (many my family members) in 1780 to over 400,000 in 1810! Kentucky became a state in 1792, the first state to be admitted to the Union after the original 13.  

In his will, Benjamin left two tracts of land equally divided between Aquilla and Edmond Greer, and the rest of his estate between his three daughters - Sally, Elizabeth and Polly Greer, after the death of their mother, Sarah Greer.  To the children of the first marriage, presumably further along in life financially, he left $1 each to John, Rachel, William, Benjamin, Anne, Jesse, David, Samuel, Joshua and James.  Witnesses were Benjamin Bayly, Christopher Hinker and James Lile.

Note please that Benjamin, ever the yeoman farmer, left no slaves.  Kentucky may have gone from frontier to plantation is a generation, but the majority of settlers were small to medium farmers growing corn, hogs, cattle and a cash crop such as tobacco.  The Shawnee Indians were gone (as was most of their wild game), replaced by European and African Americans.

Benjamin had a long life, born in 1746 in Virginia when George II was on the throne of England.  In 1816, the President of the United States, a republic that Ben helped found, was a fellow Virginian, James Madison.

Adieu Benjamin, my generation's 5th great grandfather who helped found the United States and settled the Appalachian frontier!


Information for the above article from John Preston Arthur's A History of Watauga County and the notebook of the Jesse Greer Family, copy provided by the defunct Watauga Genealogical Society.  Also copies in Appalachian State University Archives and in Karen Worley's Genealogy Database on the web.