The Holston River flows from Kingsport to Knoxville.
map by Kmusser
William Stewart was born about 1749.
He married Mary Orr, daughter of Arthur Orr in 1773 in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.
James Stewart (1788, married Martha Glenn),
Robert Stewart (1780, married Elizabeth Hussy),
Elizabeth Stewart (married James Fads),
Martha Stewart (married William Ford),
Mary Stewart Hussy (1785, married Nathan Hussy),
Margaret Stewart Johnston (married Thomas Johnston),
Jane Stewart Ryburn (1792, married Patrick Ryburn),
Catherine Stewart Evans (married William Evans),
William Stewart (married Polly Snograss),
Arthur Stewart (1800, married Mary Buchanon) and
Joseph Stewart(1805, married Sarah Buchanan).
The family moved to Washington County, Virginia.
On November 28, 1786 William bought 230 acres on the northwest side of the Holston River from William Thompson for 34£. The tract bordered land belonging to David Beattie.
In 1815, William was taxed on a farm containing 294 acres on Cedar Creek in Washington County next to Abednego Wedding and John Grimes. The property held a log dwelling house, a log barn and 2 log cabins. It was valued at $2,350.
William's will, written on March 17, 1823, named his wife Mary and the following children: sons James, Robert, William, Arthur and Joseph Stewart, and daughters Elizabeth Stewart, Martha Ford, Mary Huzzy, Margaret Johnston and Jane Ryburn. A legacy was also left to Catherine Evan's children.
William died on November 14, 1824 and was buried at Old Glade Spring Cemetery in Washington County.
Washington County, Virginia was formed from Fincastle County in 1777. It originally contained Sullivan County, Tennessee.
James Stewart was born about 1759 in Augusta County, Virginia, resided in Sullivan County, Tennessee.
He married Elizabeth (Montgomery) Stewart in Rowan County North Carolina.
They moved to Sullivan County, Tennessee.
Jane Stewart
Thomas Stewart
Augusta County, Virginia was formed in 1738 from Orange County and was vast territory including West Virginia and Kentucky.
1770 - southern part became Botetourt.
1776 - parts became Monongalia, Ohio, and Yohogania.
1778 - area west of Ohio River became Illinois County.
-
northeastern part became Rockingham.
-
southwestern part was combined with part of Botetourt to form Rockbridge
1788 - northern part combined with part of Hardy to become Pendleton.
1790 - western part was combined with parts of Botetourt and Greenbrier to form Bath.
Virginia county formation was complex and some of the above counties were further divided or disbanded.
North Carolina was one of the thirteen original Colonies. It was first settled by small farmers and grew quickly in the mid 18th century.
John Stewart was born about 1735 in Sussex County, Delaware. His father was Samuel Stewart.
John Stewart appeared on the 1759 tax list of Rowan County, North Carolina.
He married Susannah Fulkerson Bledsoe about 1760 in Rowan County. She was the widow of Thomas Bledsoe and the mother and step-mother of other children including Loving Bledsoe.
John and Susannah's children probably included:
David Stewart (1761),
William Stewart (1763, married Jemima Carter).
In 1764, John and Susannah sold land on Bradley Creek, Halifax County, Virginia to John Milam
In 1765 they sold their land in Rowan County North Carolina.
In 1774, Thomas and step-son Loving Bledsoe were listed on the Surry County, North Carolina tax list in the Houzer District.
A John and James Stewart were among the Regulators in North Carolina in 1771.
Between 1775 and 1778 the family moved to a part of Washington County, North Carolina that became part Sullivan County, Tennessee in 1779.
David Stewart, William Stewart, and Loving Bledsoe served in the American Revolution.
On May 22, 1802, John Stewart was received into the Stony Creek Primitive Baptist Church.
Halifax County, Virginia was established in May, 1752 from Lunenburg County. The counties of Henry, Patrick and Pittsylvania and part of Franklin were formed out of Halifax.
Deed: 24 Jan 1763
Rowan Co, North Carolina 5-470
Andrew Bailie to John Stewart
for 40,
200a,
granted by Granville 21 Dec 1761.
Wit: Edward Hughes, Will Reed, William Harrison.
Deed: 29 Feb 1764
Rowan Co, North Carolina 5-445
John Stuart and wife Susannah Stuart, formerly Susannah Bledsoe,
to William Robertson of Antrim Parish, Halifax Co, Virginia
for 60 Virginia Money,
300a East side Middle Fork Tarrarat River,
granted to Frederick Fulkerson 9 May 1757.
Wit: Jacob Lash, Abraham V. Gammerons.
S: John (I) Stuart, Susanah (S) Stuart;
Deed :26 Oct 1765
Rowan Co, North Carolina 6-302
John Stewart and wife Susannah to Henry Menadue,
for 30,
200a,
part of 500a grant to Frederick Fulkerson 9 May 1756 and sold to Susanna Stewart in her widowhood as Susannah Bledsoe
Wit: James Dorchester, Susannah (x) Blecher
Deed: 4 Mar 1767
Rowan Co, North Carolina 6-425
John Stewart and wife Mary to Andrew Ferguson of Orange Co, North Carolina
for 10,
200a adjoining Andrew Bailie
Wit: James Dorchester, William Frohock
S: John (A) Stewart, Mary (X) Stewart;
Deed: 5 Sep 1769
Rowan Co, North Carolina 7-126 John Stewart and wife Ann Stewart to Martin Armstrong,
for 100,
390a both sides Tararrat River,
granted 10 Aug 1762.
Wit: Henry Manadue, Mat Hobson.
S: John (X) Stewart, Ann (X) Stewart;
Apr 18, 1771
grant of 300 A on a large branch of Stoney fork of Mallard Creek in Mecklenburg Co.,
& sold this tract Mar. 1, 1775
to William Alexander. (I:51).
The New River flows through North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia .In 1755, Mary Draper Ingles (1732-1815) was captured by Shawnee warriors near Blacksburg and taken to Ohio. She escaped and made her way home by following the Ohio, Kanawha, and New Rivers.
from The Maiden Family of Virginia and Allied Families by Sarah Finch Maiden Rollins
John Stewart, third son of Lydia (Harrison?) and Samuel Stewart, was born about 1735 in Sussex County, Delaware. He married a young widow, Susanna (Fulkerson) Bledsoe ca. 1760 in Rowan County, North Carolina
During his adult life John Stewart was a pioneer wherever he went. When John Stewart was a little boy about seven years old, his family moved away from Sussex-on-the-Delaware. The family settled near Linville Creek in Augusta County, Virginia, a section that would become part of newly formed Rockingham County, thirty-five years later. This is where John grew up, in an area of the Shenandoah Valley where others from Sussex County, Delaware, lived too. When John was 18 the family left the Shenandoah Valley and moved to Rowan County, North Carolina, where about 1760 John married.
Between 1775 and 1778 John moved his family west across the Blue Ridge Mountains to a branch of the Holston River in Washington County, North Carolina the section that became part of new Sullivan County, in 1779. John Stewart was in his early forties at that time and had covered a lot of territory
The first reference to John Stewart on a document is when he was listed as the surveyor's chain-carrier when his father, Samuel Stewart, had his 508 acre tract of North Carolina land surveyed on the Yadkin River on 24 May 1754.
Most of John's brothers would locate in this general area west of the Wachovia Tract of the Moravians and near the Yadkin River in the western part of present-day Forsyth County...
Soon after 1756, when he was twenty-one John Stewart settled in "The Hollow" [Surry County, North Carolina], although there is no official record of his owning land. In the years 1757 through May 1759 traces of Indians had been seen beyond The Hollow and there was anger and fear in all the land. In the first months of 1759 there was a great lack of food for a hundred miles around, and Indians were murdering whites in the neighborhood. In the summer of 1759 a typhus fever epidemic killed many throughout North Carolina and Virginia.
John would find his future wife, Susanna (Fulkerson) Bledsoe, in "The Hollow." Susanna's father was Frederick Fulkerson and her mother is thought to be Anna Middlesworth. In her teens (about 1755), Susanna married Thomas Bledsoe, a widower with nearly grown children. One son, Loving Bledsoe, was born to Susanna and Thomas Bledsoe. Thomas died in 1758.
On 8 October 1759 Frederick Fulkerson conveyed to his young widowed daughter, Susanna Bledsoe, for the nominal consideration of five shillings, 500 acres lying on the east side of the middle fork of the Ararat River.
On the Rowan County, Tax List of 1759 John Stewart's name is listed, as are Samuel Stewart and David Stewart. About 1760 John Stewart and the widowed Susanna Fulkerson Bledsoe married.
Their children were:
1. David Stewart: b. ca. 1761 and
2. William Stewart"
"The Hollow," which had the heaviest settlement in Rowan County, was where John and Susanna started married life. This would be where their first child, David, was born about 1761. Susanna's son by her first marriage, Loving Bledsoe, was about six years old. It is likely that John and Susanna went to Halifax County, Virginia, approximately the time when her father, Frederick Fulkerson, did. In 1761 Susanna's father was buying land in Halifax County, . John and Susanna, with Loving and David, probably moved to Halifax County, Virginia, in late 1761 or early 1762. However, John and Susanna would not stay on in Halifax County, as Frederick Fulkerson did.
Many of the settlers constantly moved up and down and east and west on the North Carolina and Virginia border east of the Blue Ridge, buying and selling land.
"Earlier in 1764 John and Susanna had moved back to North Carolina. Less than two years later John and Susanna sold the rest of the Rowan County, 500-acre tract her father had conveyed to her when she was a widow. After 1765 there is no further land record for John and Susanna Stewart in Rowan County, North Carolina, but it is most likely they lived on some of Frederick Fulkerson's Rowan/Surry County, land, inasmuch as Frederick was in Halifax County, VA, until 1772. John's parents had died - Samuel Stewart in late 1768, and John's mother Lydia in late 1772."
If John and Susanna were living on some of her father's Surry county land, it just may have been given to them by him. Interestingly enough, there is the reference to "Susannah Stuart, a 1771 heiress." John and Susanna stayed on in Surry County, a few more years.
Sometime between 1775 and 1778 John Stewart took his family over the "big, blue mountain" to live in Washington District, North Carolina. One route John Stewart could have used was the route Daniel Boone used in 1769 when heading for Moccasin Gap in the Clinch Mountains to enter what is now Kentucky but was then still Virginia. Leaving from the head of the Yadkin River, the Stewart family could have taken their course westwardly crossing the Blue Ridge to the three forks of New River, then over Stone Mountain, next over Iron Mountain into the Holston River valley until arriving on a stream south of Long Island which is present Kingsport area.
In the 1770s many people were flowing into this area. Among them, partially as a result of the Regulator movement in Surry County, there was an exodus (that included a great number of Baptists) to the new frontiers in present-day Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia. It may have been that the Presbyterian Stewarts had become Baptists on the frontier, but as usual, seeking new land in new places was the prime reason for moving. Those who went west found homes where they believed they were beyond the boundary of North Carolina and were in Virginia, but actually for several years both colonies claimed the northeastern part of the present state of Tennessee.
When John's youngest son, our William, volunteered for military service in 1779 during the American Revolution, he was just over sixteen. John's son David and stepson, Loving Bledsoe had already volunteered.
Records show that John Stewart was on land in Sullivan County, (then North Carolina) on 10 July 1788 and had sold some land there by 17 November 1790. Whether John retained other land there is not known. There is no help from the federal census. The first census was taken in 1790, in which Tennessee was still included in the Salisbury District of North Carolina.
Evidence suggests that by about 1800 John Stewart had crossed from Sullivan County, just over the state line into Russell (now Scott) County, Virginia, where his son William lived, and where he would be closer to son David and stepson Loving too. On 22 May 1802 John Stewart was received "`by experience and baptism" into the Stony Creek Primitive Baptist Church that son William and his family belonged to. John was sixty-seven years old. It was here that John probably died. The date of death of John's wife, Susanna, is not known. Evidence suggests she had died by April 1782
Typhoid fever is transmitted by the eating or drinking feces contaminated food or drink. Symptons include fever, profuse sweating, gastroenteritis and diarrhea. Typhomalarial fever has symptoms of malaria and typhoid fever. Typhus is a completely different disease and is spread by lice or fleas. The patient has fever, joint pain, cough and headache.
