♀Baber/Baker

Baber/Baker (1751–1791) was the first wife of John Dillahunty (1750–1797), whose will was proved in Davidson County, Tennessee, in 1798. She is known only by a surname, and the tree holds it in two forms. She was presumably the third great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her son John Dillahunty (died by 1830).

Marriage and family

Her husband’s will, signed on 25 December 1797 and proved in Davidson County in April 1798, names a wife, Rachel, then living, a daughter Hannah and four sons, Silas, John, William and James. It does not name the first wife or say which children were hers. The tree gives her three, John, Hannah and Silas, and makes William and James sons of the second marriage, the two boys the will left Rachel to raise; a family tree on FamilySearch places James, born about 1783, with the first wife instead. Hannah married Jeremiah Loftin in Davidson County in June 1796, and the “son Jeremiah Lofty” who held about $120 of her father’s money in the will was evidently that son-in-law. A Sons of the American Revolution application, also compiled, dates the second marriage to about 1790 in the New Bern District of North Carolina, a year before the death that family trees give for her; neither date rests on a record. The tree makes her the mother of the John Dillahunty who died in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, before 17 September 1830. The will shows that her husband had a son John living in December 1797, but that he was the same man has not been proven.

Notes

The records

No record of her given name, her birth, her marriage or her death has been found, and no record of her parents has been found. Family trees give her birth as 1751 and her death as 1791, both in North Carolina, and her marriage as 1770; no record confirms any of these. The sources that name her family all give the form Baker, and none of them gives Baber. A lineage book of the Daughters of the American Revolution, a compiled source, prints her as “—— Baker, his wife”, with the given name left blank, and calls her husband Silas; but Silas was the name of a son, and her husband’s own will shows that the father of Silas and of Hannah was John. A compiled genealogy of 2009 calls her Rachel Baker. Her husband’s second wife was named Rachel, and that given name may have been carried over to the first wife; a family tree on FamilySearch holds instead that both wives were named Rachel, and it too calls the first one Baker. No record decides between the two readings. Online indexes that offer parents for her in fact give her husband’s parents, as the lineage-society papers name them, carried one generation over. The descent from her to Floyd Amatus Delahorne passes through John Dillahunty (died by 1830), whose descent from John Dillahunty (1750–1797) of Davidson County, Tennessee, is probable but not proved.