John and his wife Jane Kerr were originally buried in a family cemetery on their land in Bibb County, Alabama. At some point following their burial, the graves of John and Jane and their children Mary, Lucinda, and John were moved to a cemetery in Tannehill Historical State Park in Tuscaloosa County, which borders Bibb on the northwest.[2] Tannehill Park is very close to the border of both counties and only five miles from Woodstock in Bibb County, near which the Green family lived.

According to Bibb County historian Rhoda Ellison, the family cemetery in which John and Jane were originally buried is a mile southeast of Woodstock on the west side of county road 27 in township 21 south, range 6 west, section 22 of Bibb County.[3] This location is in the northwest corner of Bibb County bordering on Tuscaloosa County. I have visited Tannehill Park and taken photos of the Green family tombstones there.

Jane Kerr Green’s tombstone also gives her dates of birth and death, stating,[4]

In Memory of Jane Green born in Abbeville District S.C. Oct. 8^th 1768. Departed this life Nov. 2^nd 1855.

As with his wife Jane, John Green was also born in what would become Abbeville District, South Carolina — though, as I’ll explain later, I am not entirely sure I have identified John’s father. For reasons I’ll share later, I think John Green was the son of a Benjamin Green who had a 7 June 1768 warrant for a survey of 150 acres in what was then Granville County, South Carolina, with the land being surveyed on 16 June and granted to Benjamin on 12 December 1768.[5] The land was on a branch of Sawney’s Creek in the Long Cane settlement of what became Abbeville District. Jane’s family also lived in the Long Cane settlement, and her great-uncle Patrick Calhoun surveyed Benjamin Green’s land for him.  

I say that John Green and Jane Kerr were born in “what would become Abbeville District” because at the time of their birth in 1768, this part of South Carolina was in what would be called Ninety-Six District right after their birth. Abbeville County was created from Ninety-Six in 1785, and was also called Abbeville District.

I have not found a marriage record for John Green and Jane Kerr.  Since their first child, a son whom they named Samuel Kerr Green for Jane’s father, was born in 1790, I estimate their marriage to have occurred around 1788, when both were twenty. By 1790, the couple had settled in Pendleton District, which was contiguous to Abbeville District, bordering it on the northwest.

As a previous posting states, John Green is on the 1790 census in Pendleton District, South Carolina, with a household comprised of one white male 16+, one white male -16, one white female, and twelve enslaved persons.[6] The three white household members are John and wife Jane and their infant son Samuel, who was born in 1790, evidently not long before this census was taken. As a young recently married couple whose parents had not bequeathed considerable property including enslaved people to them (Jane’s mother was still living), John and Jane were not likely the owners of the twelve enslaved people listed in their household on the 1790 census. I suspect that these enslaved people were the property of Jane’s uncle John Ewing Colhoun, whose Pendleton District plantation Keowee Heights John and Jane began overseeing after their marriage.

John and Wife Jane Oversee Keowee Heights Plantation of Her Uncle John Ewing Colhoun

John Ewing Colhoun (1749-1802) was a brother of Jane’s mother Mary Calhoun Kerr (abt. 1743 – 1805). On 21 May 1784, John E. Colhoun had a survey for 640 acres on both sides of Twelve Mile River on the east side of the Keowee River in what would soon be Pendleton District.[7] This land was bordered by the Keowee on the west and vacant land on all other sides. This would become the Keowee Heights plantation. On the same day, 21 May 1784, John E. Colhoun’s brother-in-law Andrew Pickens had a survey for 573 acres on the east side of the Keowee just south of where John E. Colhoun’s land lay. Andrew Pickens (1739-1816) was another of Jane Kerr Green’s uncles: his wife Rebecca Calhoun was the sister of John E. Colhoun and Mary Calhoun Kerr. Andrew Pickens was also a first cousin of Mary Calhoun’s husband Samuel Kerr, whose mother was Margaret Pickens Kerr, Andrew Pickens’ aunt, a point I’ll discuss in a later posting about the Pickens and Calhoun families.

A historic study of the formative years of Pendleton District compiled by Pendleton District Historical and Recreational Commission credits John E. Colhoun with bringing the Pickens family into the Keowee area.[8] The 1790 federal census enumerates Andrew Pickens in Pendleton District on the page prior to the page on which John Green is enumerated. John E. Colhoun is not enumerated in Pendleton District but in St. Phillip’s and St. Michael’s Parish, Charleston County, where he and his family were living on land he had received through his marriage in Charleston on 8 October 1786 to Floride Bonneau, daughter of Samuel Bonneau and Françoise de Longemaure. The 1790 city directory of Charleston shows John as a lawyer at 127 King Street in that city.

A list of John E. Colhoun’s taxable property for 1791, compiled 1 March 1792 and archived in the John C. Calhoun family papers in the manuscript collection of Duke University’s Rubenstein library, shows him with extensive landholdings and fifty enslaved persons in various places in South Carolina including in Charleston and in other lowcountry areas, as well as in Orangeburg District, in Abbeville District on the Long Cane, in Ninety-Six District, and in Pendleton District.[9] His land there (“above the old boundary”) as listed on this tax list included 250 acres of low ground on Twelve Mile River and 60 acres of low ground (i.e., fertile river-bottom land) on the Keowee, along with 840 and 260 acres of 2nd-quality timberland on the Keowee. It was this Keowee land that John’s niece Jane Kerr and husband John Green were managing for Jane’s uncle John E. Colhoun while he lived in the lowcountry and practiced law in Charleston.

A 6 March 1792 letter written by John Green from Twelve Mile River to John E. Colhoun in Charleston, archived in the John Ewing Colhoun papers in the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina, shows him overseeing John E. Colhoun’s plantation on the Keowee and the construction of a house there. John Green notes that he had gotten a letter from John Ewing Colhoun through William McCaleb. John sends his wife’s uncle news of enslaved persons on the plantation: noting that there had been sickness in the area, he states that an enslaved man slave Will had nearly died and Will’s youngest child died, as well as a child of an enslaved woman named Juda. The letter notes that John Ewing Colhoun’s house would be ready by the first of May and that his stock of horses and cattle were doing well. John Green asks John E. Colhoun to send him a shear mold, some iron and steel, and salt. The letter also asks John E. Colhoun to send information about the price of hemp and whether he wished John Green to send John E. Colhoun’s meat down to him in the lowcountry. All these details demonstrate that by this date — by 1790, in fact, as I think the federal census indicates — John Green was overseeing the Keowee plantation of John E. Calhoun.

John Green’s letters to his wife’s uncle John Ewing Colhoun are written in the firm handwriting of a man with more than rudimentary education. His spelling, grammar, and punctuation confirm that he was a man with a sound education, as it appears was his brother Benjamin, who tutored the children of John E. Colhoun.

Mary Esther Huger’s The Recollections of a Happy Childhood has a drawing of the Keowee plantation from Keowee Waltzes, published in 1847 by Martha Colhoun, daughter of John E. Colhoun’s son John.[10] The drawing, which shows the plantation house whose construction John Green oversaw sitting atop a hill overlooking the plantation, was by J.H. Richard of Wagner & McGuigan in Philadelphia. Huger cites a description of Keowee Heights written in 1825 by Caroline Olivia Laurens:

[A] beautiful seat situated on a very high hill. The dwelling house is large & a very handsome one—has two piazzas, one above & below; they extend around two sides of the house.   

As is Andrew Pickens, the William McCaleb mentioned by John Green in his March 1792 letter to John E. Colhoun is found on the 1790 federal census on the page prior to the page listing John Green. Capt. William McCaleb (1747-1813) is enumerated next to Andrew Pickens, Esqr., and Robert Anderson, Esqr.[11] Robert Anderson (1741-1813), for whom the county formed from Pendleton District was named, appears as a neighbor of John Green when John first bought land in Pendleton District in January 1793.

John Green Begins Acquiring Land on the Keowee River in Pendleton District, 1793

On 1 January 1793, John Green had a survey for 838 acres in Pendleton County, Ninety-Six District.[12] The land was on the east side of the Keowee, and the plat for it was recorded 6 May 1793. The land lay on the Keowee with land surveyed for Benjamin Lawrence bordering the tract on the north and land surveyed for Robert Anderson bordering it on the south. The grant for this tract was made 6 May 1793.[13] The preceding plat in the plat book recording John Green’s plat is a plat for 433.5 acres on Little Generostee Creek in Pendleton County for the Benjamin Green who was, I think, John Green’s brother.[14]

The original plat issued to John Green on 6 May 1793 for his 838 acres on the Keowee is extant. It is now found in the “Lawrence Family Papers” in Clemson University Library’s Special Collections and Archives (box 1, mss 114). As we’ll see in my next posting, when John Green and wife Jane Kerr Green sold their South Carolina land in 1818 as they moved to Alabama, they sold it to Thomas Gates, who then sold some of it to Benjamin Lawrence. The original patent evidently passed from John and Jane Green to Thomas Gates in 1818 and then later from Gates to Benjamin Lawrence, and was preserved by his descendants.

Benjamin Lawrence, named as a neighbor of John Green in John’s January 1793 plat, had a survey for 395 acres on the Keowee on 21 May 1784.[15] Another plat for Lawrence for 297 acres dated 20 June 1808, with the survey done on 4 March 1808, shows this piece of land also on the Keowee and lists John Green as a neighbor bordering on the south.[16]

The “Lawrence Family Papers” at Clemson (box 1, mss 114) have a typescript by an unidentified author, entitled “Oconee’s Soldiers of the Past,” which includes biographical information about Benjamin Lawrence. The notes state that Lawrence was “a noted scout and Indian fighter” born in Virginia (the year unknown) who came to Abbeville District prior to the Revolution. He served under Robert Anderson during the Revolution, and, following the war, on 5 March 1783, he married Rachel Weems and settled in Pickens District about four miles from present-day Calhoun. He died 2 April 1826 and is buried in a family cemetery on his plantation.

There were other men with the name John Green owning property in Pendleton District at the time John Green with wife Jane Kerr acquired land there in January 1793. On 7 November 1791, a John Green received a grant for 150 acres on the Big Generostee, land that had been surveyed for John Colhoun on 27 May 1785.[17] I’d be inclined to think this man was John Green with wife Jane Kerr, but when John Green sold these 150 acres to Moses Hopper on 1 January 1795, the deed states that John Green lived in Abbeville District, not Pendleton where it’s clear John Green with wife Jane Kerr was living at this time.[18] The John Green acquiring this 150 acres on Big Generostee in 1791 and selling them in 1795 was, I conclude a John Green enumerated in Abbeville District on the 1790 federal census, whose father was, I’m fairly sure, a John Green who died in what would shortly be Abbeville District by 31 July 1784, when a plat for James Ponder for 444 acres on the waters of Rocky Creek in Ninety-Six District shows the land bordering among others land belonging to the estate of John Green.[19] The John Green who was son of this older John Green was born in 1760 and died in 1807 in Jackson County, Georgia; he married Jane Bickerstaff/Biggerstaff.

I have not found John Green with wife Jane Kerr acquiring land on Big Generostee. As we’ll see later, when he and Jane sold their Anderson County holdings on 4 May 1818 as they moved their family to Bibb County, Alabama, the deed for their sale of 1,345 acres on the east side of the Keowee includes a plat showing the tract as one piece of property, with the deed noting that several tracts comprised this tract of 1,345 acres, including John’s 838 acres that were surveyed on 1 January 1838.[20] It’s clear that John Green’s homeplace was on his land on the east side of the Keowee, which the deed specifies that he began acquiring when he had 838 acres surveyed for him on 1 January 1793.

Various records indicate that the plantation on which John Green and Jane Kerr lived on the east side of the Keowee was situated between those of her uncles John E. Colhoun and Andrew Pickens. A table in Frederick Van Clayton’s Settlement of Pendleton District showing where the original settlers of Pendleton District lived puts John Green’s plantation on the Keowee three plantations removed from John E. Colhoun on one side and four places away from Andrew Pickens on the other side.[21]

John E. Colhoun and Andrew Pickens lived on the east side of the Keowee with the Old Stone Meeting House between them, and it appears that John Green lived between the two, perhaps near that meeting house. Robert Anderson lived south of Andrew Pickens, with a ferry over the river at Anderson’s plantation. The road to Pendleton village, the “General Pickens wagon road” that ran to Pendleton and then on to Abbeville, ran east from Anderson’s ferry and from Andrew Pickens’ plantation. The Old Stone church had begun as a log church in 1791 on Andrew Pickens’ plantation; when that church burned in 1796, it moved to the site of what became the Old Stone church, with Andrew Pickens and Robert Anderson two of its first elders.[22] Andrew Pickens is buried in the cemetery of this church, which is today in Pickens County.

A manuscript compiled by Cornelius Marion Hutton outlining genealogical connections of the Calhoun family states that John E. Colhoun lived near Old Pendleton courthouse.[23] The 1820 map of Pendleton District printed (with improvements) in Mills’ atlas in 1825 shows the land formerly belonging to John E. Colhoun and Andrew Pickens (both had died by 1820) lying on the Keowee on its east side, with the Old Stone Meeting House between them and east of Keowee.[24] All of these are clearly marked on this map as are Robert Anderson’s ferry south of Andrew Pickens and Twelve Mile River, which ran through John E. Colhoun’s Keowee Heights plantation.

We know from a 6 May 1793 plat for his initial acquisition of 838 acres on the Keowee that his land was bordered on the south by Robert Anderson.[25] As we’ll see in a moment, on 21 December 1798, John Green had a plat for 500 acres on a branch of Six Mile Creek in Pendleton District, with this plat also stating that John’s 500 acres adjoined Robert Anderson.[26] The plat for this land shows Anderson bordering John Green on the west, and shows that John’s 500 acres lay on branches of Six Mile Creek and on the Keowee. A 10 May 1805 deed by Henry William de Saussure and Ezekiel Pickens, acting as executors of John E. Colhoun’s estate and confirming an agreement John E. Colhoun had made with William Floyd, states that John E. Colhoun’s Keowee land was bordered on the west by the Keowee and on the east by John Green.[27]

We have, then, a number of good indicators of where John Green and Jane Kerr settled in Pendleton District when they began acquiring land there in 1791. It makes sense that they’d settle near Jane’s uncle John E. Colhoun for whom they were doing overseeing work, and also near her uncle Andrew Pickens. However, if John lived where Six Mile Creek meets the Keowee, as a number of documents suggest, then I wonder if he lived north along the Keowee from John E. Colhoun, and if Robert Anderson owned land in that vicinity that bordered John Green’s? If so, then I wonder if I’ve misunderstood Frederick Van Clayton’s table when I have read it to place John Green between John E. Colhoun and Andrew Pickens on the Keowee. Note, however, that Benjamin Lawrence, whose land bordered John Green’s on the north when John acquired his first 838 acres on the Keowee, is buried in a family cemetery in what is now Clemson University’s Experimental Forest land, on which John Ewing Colhoun’s Keowee Heights plantation and family cemetery (the house long burned down) are also located. This suggests to me that John Green and Jane Kerr also lived on land that is today in Clemson’s Experimental Forest land not far from her uncle John E. Colhoun.

It appears from a 12 May 1793 letter that John Green sent from Twelve Mile River (i.e., Keowee Heights) to John E. Colhoun at Bonneau’s Ferry in the lowcountry that John and Jane were still overseeing her uncle’s Keowee Heights plantation, apparently while setting up their own, but were making preparations to hand that work over to someone else.[28] John Green notes that he had not heard from John E. Colhoun and was sending his letter through a Mr. Meadows. John Green suggests to his wife’s uncle that Meadows would be a good supervisor (i.e., overseer) of Colhoun’s upcountry plantation, though he had his own crops to tend to at present. The letter also notes there was hostile activity in the Creek Nation on the western frontier in Georgia, with scalping and horse-stealing.

John Green ends the letter by asking John E. Colhoun to bring his wife to the upcountry, assuring her that she need not fear and telling Colhoun please to let Mrs. (Floride Bonneau) Colhoun know that John Green had five guns, which he and Jane would shoulder to walk up the hill and protect Mrs. Colhoun.

The troubles between white and native American settlers along the South Carolina-Georgia border in the upcountry in this time frame are discussed by Jerry Lamar Alexander, who notes that raids by renegade groups of native Americans continued in the South Carolina backcountry following the November 1785 peace treaty that Andrew Pickens had signed with the Cherokee.[29] To deal with the threat, upcountry officials built forts or blockhouses along the frontier to provide safety to settlers fleeing predations by the native peoples. Alexander notes that Colonel Robert Anderson wrote in 1792 that he had had frontier blockhouses built for citizens of the upcountry, and had spies stationed at the Tugaloo and Oconee blockhouses to watch the western frontier. For information about the tension between native Americans and white settlers encroaching on and taking the land of the native peoples in this period in this part of the country, see this previous posting about Jacob Hollingsworth (1742-1822) and wife Mary Brooks.

Later in 1793 on 12 August, John Green sent another letter from Twelve Mile River to John E. Colhoun in the lowcountry.[30] The letter notes that John Green was sending John E. Colhoun bacon, beef, and butter through a Mr. Lindsey. John Green had received salt from Joseph Reed (Reid in other documents), who is named as a near neighbor of John E. Colhoun and John Green in the May 1805 de Saussure-Pickens deed I discuss above, as well as a letter from John E. Colhoun through Ezekiel Noble, with family news. John Green reports to his wife’s uncle that he and his family are all well, though a horse had been stolen from John E. Colhoun’s plantation.

The Ezekiel Noble (1774-1832) who conveyed John E. Colhoun’s letter to John Green was the son of Alexander Noble and Catherine Calhoun, Catherine being a sister of John E.  Colhoun and of Mary Calhoun Kerr, the mother of John Green’s wife Jane Kerr Green. Alexander Noble was a cousin of his wife Catherine Calhoun. His parents were John Noble and Mary Calhoun. Mary Calhoun was a sister of Ezekiel Calhoun, who was the father of Mary Calhoun Kerr, John Ewing Colhoun, and Catherine Calhoun Noble. Ezekiel Noble and his brother Alexander Noble were witnesses to the will their uncle John E. Colhoun made on 20 May 1802 in the parish of St. John in Berkeley County, Charleston District, South Carolina. A 16 April 1798 memorandum of John E. Colhoun to William Bonneau in the John Ewing Colhoun papers held by the Southern Historical Collection of the Wilson Library at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ends with a statement that Bonneau can write to John E. Colhoun at his plantation on the Keowee in Pendleton District, enclosing letters to Ezekiel Noble, King Street, Charleston.

John Green’s 12 August 1793 letter to John E. Colhoun goes on to speak of a person named Sue who had had been suffering from fever and ague. John Green tells his wife’s uncle that he fears it will be a sickly season in the lowcountry due to recent wet weather, and he encourages John E. Colhoun to come with his family to the healthier upcountry. The letter ends with the statement, “Jane desires to be remembered to Mrs. Calhoun I am yours with Respect Jno Green Junr.”  A note on the exterior says that the letter was being delivered by Mr. Lindsey to Andrew Norris to be given to John Ewing Colhoun.

Andrew Pickens Norris (1765-1824) was a half-brother of John Ewing Colhoun; following the death of John E. Colhoun’s father Ezekiel Calhoun, John’s mother Jane/Jean Ewing remarried to Robert Norris and had several sons by him including Andrew Pickens Norris. I’m not sure who the Sue of whom the letter speaks was. Andrew Pickens and wife Rebecca Calhoun had a son Andrew who married Susan Smith Wilkinson, but she was born in 1788 and the couple did not marry until 1804, so I don’t think she is the Sue of whom John Green is speaking in this August 1793 letter. I tend to think that Sue was likely an enslaved woman belonging to John E. Colhoun — hence the use of her given name.

It’s not clear to me why John Green uses the designation Jr. in this letter. Since the John Green I mentioned previously, who acquired land in Pendleton District in November 1791 and sold it in January 1795, continues in Pendleton District land records up to around 1799, when he moved from Abbeville County to Jackson County, Georgia, and since that John Green was eight years older than John Green with wife Jane Kerr, I think it’s possible the John Green who married Jane Kerr was using the designation “junior” at times to distinguish himself from that older John Green.

John Green Buys More Land on the Keowee

On 22 July 1794, John Green acquired another piece of land in Pendleton District: Levi and Elizabeth Peirce sold him 148 acres on Six Mile Creek of the Keowee.[31] The deed indicates that this tract lay on the Keowee River where the creek reached the river. The deed describes John Green as a planter of Pendleton County. Appended to the deed is a receipt of Levi Peirce, evidently dated the day of the deed, for £80 from John Green for the land, with Elijah Stevenson and Joab Lawrence/Laurence witnessing. The deed was proven on the day named above and recorded 14 October 1794. Note that there seem to be two copies of this same deed at this locus in Pendleton County deed books. I’m assuming that one of the two deeds is a copy of the other and that John Green did not buy two tracts of 148 acres from the Peirces. But perhaps I am reading these deeds wrong.

The 148 acres that John Green bought from Levi Peirce on 22 July 1794 had been sold by Robert Anderson and wife Jean to Levi Peirce on 24 December 1790. The original deed for this land, which is preserved in the “Lawrence Family Papers” in Clemson University Library’s Special Collections and Archives (box 1, mss 114), states that the land was bounded on one side by Six Mile Creek and on the other by the Keowee, and had been granted to Robert Anderson on 2 February 1789.

On 10 November 1796, a John Green was foreman of the jury at a trial in Pendleton District in which James Shockley was accused of having stolen a horse from Griffith James (who happens to be another of my ancestors) in Pendleton District.[32] The case began with accusations on 1 October 1794 that Shockley had taken a bright bay mare from James’ pasture on 2 September 1794. Shockley was indicted on 10 November and a jury struck. The trial continued into 1797, with Shockley being jailed, and it’s not clear to me whether the not guilty verdict was eventually overturned. I also do not know for certain that the John Green who was jury foreman in this trial is John Green with wife Jane Kerr.

Another John Green who is neither John Green with wife Jane Kerr nor the John Green of Abbeville County who had bought land on Big Generostee appears in Pendleton District records on 22 November 1796 buying from George Nelson of the same location 300 acres on Little Beaverdam adjoining George Anderson and John Green, with Thomas Green and William Nelson as witnesses.[33] This John Green, I think, belongs to a Green family who came to Pendleton District from Baltimore County, Maryland. I have no evidence that this family is related to the family of John Green who married Jane Kerr.

As I noted previously, on 21 December 1798, John Green had a plat for 500 acres on a branch of Six Mile Creek in Pendleton District adjoining Robert Anderson.[34] The plat states that the land was surveyed for John Green on 15 November 1798, and that the land was on branches of Six Mile Creek and on the Keowee in Washington District, Pendleton County. As I state above, the plat shows Robert Anderson on the west. It shows James Beaty bordering John Green. When John and Jane would sell their Anderson County land in 1818 to move to Bibb County, Alabama, the deed would note that this tract and John’s original 838 acres on the Keowee were part of the landholdings they sold. The deed also mentions that 334 acres of John’s land had been surveyed for James Beaty originally. 

On the same day that John Green had this survey for 500 acres in Pendleton District — 15 November 1798 — his wife Jane’s uncle John Ewing Colhoun also had a survey for 500 acres on branches of the Keowee, waters of the Savannah River, in Pendleton District (South Carolina State Plats Columbia Series Bk. 37, p. 177). The plat for John E. Colhoun’s 500 acres shows his land bordered on the east by John Green.

At his website entitled “Miller and Reid Families of Parks Creek” which I no longer find online, research Bob Thompson previously had a transcript of a letter Felix Hughes sent Ebenezer Miller in Abbeville District, South Carolina, on 27 March 1798 from Cole’s Creek in Jefferson County in Mississippi Territory. The letter stated that Thomas M. Green wished to have news of “John Green’s affair.” Because Felix Hughes was the husband of Margaret Miller, daughter of Robert Miller and Jean Pickens, Jean being a sister of Andrew Pickens who married Rebecca Calhoun, Bob Thompson thought that the John Green mentioned in this letter might be John Green with wife Jane Kerr. The Hughes family moved in 1797 or 1798 from Abbeville County, South Carolina, to Cole’s Creek in Jefferson County, Mississippi Territory. Felix Hughes was a founder of Jefferson College in Washington, Mississippi. Thomas M. Green was Thomas Marston Green (1723-1805), a Revolutionary colonel in Virginia who was descended from a prominent Green family in Virginia. He is perhaps best known for marrying Andrew Jackson and Rachel Donelson at his Springfield plantation in Mississippi Territory in 1791. Felix Hughes tutored Thomas M. Green’s children on Green’s Springfield plantation.

I have no information that would link John Green to the Green family from which Thomas M. Green descends, and am not sure that the John Green mentioned in this letter is John Green with wife Jane Kerr, though Bob Thompson is right to point out Felix Hughes’ family connection through his wife Margaret Miller to the Pickens and Calhoun families connected to Jane Kerr Green. Since the Miller family lived in Abbeville District until they moved to Mississippi, and since the John Green who bought Big Generostee land in Pendleton in 1791 lived in Abbeville County until he moved from there to Jackson County, Georgia, in 1798 or 1799, I tend to think the John Green named in this letter may be that John Green and not John Green with wife Jane Kerr.

In my next posting, I’ll pick up the chronicle of John Green in 1800.

---

[1] See Find a Grave memorial page of John Green, Tannehill Historical State Park, Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, created by Kathy, with a tombstone photo by wdlindsy and two photos of a later flat marker placed on John’s grave which records the same information as is found on his original tombstone. These photos are by SButler2017 and J R MORRIS-AKA-FRANK DOCKERY. See also Alton Lambert, History of Tuscaloosa County, vol. 1 (Centre, Alabama: Stewart University Press, 1977), p. 28, on John Green’s tombstone. The tombstones of John Green and wife Jane are transcribed in Billie Thomson Lockard and Mary A. Sinclair, Bridging the Past of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, vol. 2 (Tuscaloosa: Mary A. Sinclair, 1987), p. 56. This source states that the stones are in Tannehill State Park. Family Adventures, Bibb County, Alabama, Cemeteries, Graveyards, and Family Burial Plots (San Antonio: Family Adventures, 1988), pp. 84, 289, also transcribes the tombstones of John and Jane Green and the three children buried with them at Tannehill Historical State Park, Mary, Lucinda, and John, noting that these graves were removed from the Green family cemetery in Bibb County to Tannehill State Park.

[2] A manuscript compiled by James Lee Green, “The Greens of Bibb County, Alabama” (Columbia, South Carolina, 1992), states that John Green was buried in a family cemetery on his plantation in Bibb County, but his remains, those of his wife Jane Kerr Green, and of several other family members were later moved to Tannehill State Park (p. 5). Green notes that his primary source is Rhoda Ellison, Bibb Co., Alabama, The First Hundred Years 1818-1918 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1984).

[3] Rhoda Ellison, Place Names of Bibb County, Alabama (Brierfield, Alabama: Cahaba Trace Commission, 1993), p. 74.

[4] See Find a Grave memorial page of Jane Kerr Green, Tannehill Historical State Park, Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, created by Kathy, with tombstone photos by wdlindsy and J R MORRIS-AKA-FRANK DOCKERY; and see sources cited supra, n. 1.

[5] South Carolina Plat Bk. 9, p. 293; South Carolina Royal Grants Bk. 18, p. 104; and South Carolina Council Journal Minutes, 16 June 1768.

[6] 1790 federal census, Ninety-Six (Pendleton) District, South Carolina, p. 6.

[7] Abbeville County, South Carolina, Plat Bk. A, p. 8.

[8] Pendleton District Historical and Recreational Commission, Pendleton Historic District: A Survey (Pendleton, South Carolina: Pendleton District Historical and Recreational Committee, 1973), p. 20.

[9] John C. Calhoun family papers, 1765-1818, special collections, Rubenstein Library, Duke University, box I, folder I.

[10] Mary Esther Huger, The Recollections of a Happy Childhood (Greenville, South Carolina: Keys, 1976), p. 39. Keowee Waltzes was published (sheet music) by George Oates of Charleston in 1847 — see the digital images provided online by the Library of Congress’s Music Division.

[11] William McCaleb, son of William McCaleb and Sarah McAlpin, was born in 1747 and died at his Hermitage plantation in Claiborne County, Mississippi, on 7 March 1813. On 23 October 1769, He married Ann MacKey. He was a Revolutionary captain under Generals Francis Marion and Andrew Pickens, and represented the south portion of Saluda District with Wade Hampton in the South Carolina Convention that ratified the federal constitution. See Katy McCaleb Headley, Mac Killop (McCaleb) Clan of Scotland and the United States: Descendants of Captain William and Ann (Mackey) McCaleb (Chillicothe, Missouri: Elizabeth Prather Ellsberry, 1964), pp. 1-13.

[12] South Carolina Land Plats Bk. 29Q, p. 279.

[13] South Carolina Land Grants Bk. 32, p. 243.

[14] South Carolina Land Plats Bk. 29Q, p. 278.

[15] South Carolina Plats, Charleston Series Bk. 1, p. 271.

[16] Ibid., Bk. 41, p. 314.

[17] South Carolina Land Grants Bk. 30, p. 71.

[18] Pendleton District, South Carolina, Deed Bk. A, pp. 150-1.

[19] South Carolina Plat Bk. 17, p. 349.

[20] Pendleton District, South Carolina, Deed Bk. O, pp. 136-7.

[21] Frederick Van Clayton, Settlement of Pendleton District, 1777-1800 (Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1988).

[22] See Beth Ann Klossky, The Pendleton Legacy (Columbia: Sandlapper, 1971), p. 23, noting the role of Robert Anderson and Andrew Pickens and his uncle Robert Pike Pickens in the early Presbyterian communities of this part of South Carolina.

[23] Cornelius Marion Hutton, “Genealogical Tree of Calhoun family of America, 1733-1912 from Donegal County, Ireland to America, 1733,” p. 5. The handwritten original of this manuscript was owned on 6 December 1956 by Mrs. John B. Taylor of Shaker Heights, Ohio. A typewritten copy prepared by W. Calvin Wells III of Jackson, Mississippi, was circulated among Calhoun researchers by Alan T. Calhoun of Spartanburg, South Carolina, and has been filmed by the LDS library (film 362675).

[24] Robert Mills, Atlas of the State of South Carolina (Baltimore: F. Lucas Jr., 1825); available digitally at the Library of Congress website.

[25] See supra, n. 12.

[26] South Carolina State Plats Columbia Series Bk. 37, p. 192.

[27] Pendleton District, South Carolina, Deed Bk. H, pp. 450-2.

[28] This letter is also archived in the John Ewing Colhoun Papers in the South Caroliniana library at the University of South Carolina, Columbia.

[29] Jerry Lamar Alexander, “Backcountry Militia Blockhouses Needed Even After 1785 Cherokee Treaty,” Carolina Herald 38,4 (Oct.-Dec. 2010), pp. 22f.

[30] The letter is in the John C. Calhoun family papers, 1765-1818, special collections, at the Rubenstein Library, Duke University.

[31] Pendleton District, South Carolina, Deed Bk. B, pp. 331-2.

[32] Washington District, South Carolina, General Sessions Case Rolls, 1792-1799, #49; I’m grateful to Beverly Peoples of Raleigh, North Carolina, for sending me copies of records in this case file.

[33] Pendleton District, South Carolina, Deed Bk. C, p. 299.

[34] See supra, n. 26.