When We Were Greers, Part XII

by Glenn N. Holliman

The Will of John Greer, Jr. 1782

When John Greer, Jr. (my generation's 6th great grandfather) died in 1782 in Wilkes Country, North Carolina, the Revolutionary War had just ended with the defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia. The back country of North Carolina had been divided between Tories, those that supported the Crown, and a larger number of American Patriots. The Greer families would be caught up in both the divisions of the Revolution in the 1770s and 80s, and the bitter war of the 1860s. In each conflict, the family would experience violence and hardship.

As noted in previous writings John Greer, Jr. was born in Joppa, Maryland and migrated down the Great Valley Road of Virginia, stopping in Augusta County in 1746 to give birth to my generation's 5th great grandfather, Benjamin Greer. According to Ancestry.com, the Greers arrived in Surry County (now Wilkes County), North Carolina about 1771.

The Regulator Movement was in full swing in western North Carolina as backwoods families protested high taxes and lack of representation in the colonial capitol of New Bern. In 1778, John was appointed a justice of the peace for the first court after the organization of Wilkes County. Evidently, the family was a leader in the community which is borne out in the careers of at least two of his sons.

Below is a contemporary road map of the Wilkes County, North Carolina area. Wilkesboro is some 74 miles west of Winston-Salem and 30 some odd miles east of Boone. The Greers, Boones, Wilsons, Osbornes, Wilcoxsons and other families kin to my generation moved to this frontier in the 1750s to the  1770s. 

In 1782, John Greer, Jr. died and his will was probated. To his second wife Nanney he left the plantation of 492 acres, and then to son Jessey after the death of Nanney. (Jessey would be a captain in the American Revolution).

There were enslaved persons in this family, a bit unusual for the frontier but not for the amount of acreage the Greers farmed. Bequeathed in continued human bondage was a Negro girl, Pheby to John's daughter Ann Mitchell, and to daughter Hannah Demoss, a Negro girl, Hannah. Hannah had married the local sheriff, Lewis Demoss.

The remainder of the estate was divided equally amongst these children: Aqulla, John, Benjamin (my 5th great grandfather), Joshua, Jessey, Rachel Mitchell, Sarah Hardgrave and Hannah Demoss. The executors were wife Nancy (spelled differently here) and a friend, John Brown. Witnesses were Archelus Walker (a next door neighbor), Nancy Walker and Sarah Greer.

On the tax list of 1782, Ann Greer, presumably the widow, has 600 acres and four enslaved persons. The majority of the family lived in Captain Abraham Demoss's district.

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.