♂John Dillahunty Jr.

John Dillahunty (1750–1797) was a landholder on the Harpeth River in Davidson County, Tennessee, who signed his will on Christmas Day 1797, the same day he made over 120 acres of his land to Jeremiah Loftin, and died within the next few months. The family tree makes him the third great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son John Dillahunty (died by 1830), though that link has not been proven.

Davidson County

In June 1796 a John Dillahunty “of Davidson county and Territory of the U. States south of the Ohio”, in the first weeks of Tennessee’s statehood, sold a young enslaved woman named Emey, aged about seventeen, to Isaac Johnston for three hundred dollars. The bill of sale was proved in the county court in July 1796. Whether the seller was this John or his son John has not been settled.

He held two tracts in the county: 210 acres on the South Harpeth River, which a division of his lands in 1802 recites as a deed of conveyance from General James Robertson^W, and land on the Big Harpeth bought from Robert Weakley^W. In the last weeks of 1797 he sold three parcels out of the Weakley land, according to a printed abstract of the county’s deeds: 100 acres to Daniel Jones on 20 November, 100 acres to Samuel Bryant on 11 December, and 120 acres to Jeremiah Loftin on 25 December. In the last deed he is styled “John Dillahunty, Junr.”, and the land was “to be laid off at the discretion of my executors”. William Dillahunty and Daniel Jones witnessed it.

Will and death

He signed his will on 25 December 1797, “being very sick and weak of body”. He lent his wife Rachel the land and plantation for her life, to raise his sons William and James, and at her death all his land was to be divided equally among his four sons, Silas, John, William and James. His daughter Hannah received her bequest “as her full share”. Silas and John were to share the rest of the estate, to be divided when Silas reached twenty-one. The will also mentions money “in the hands of my Son Jeremiah Lofty”. A lineage book of the Daughters of the American Revolution, a compiled source, gives Hannah’s husband as Jeremiah Loftin, so Lofty was most likely the clerk’s spelling of the son-in-law who received the Christmas Day deed. He named as executors his wife, his brother Thomas and his son Silas. The will was proved at the April Sessions of 1798 on the oath of William Dillahunty, one of the witnesses, and Thomas and Rachel Dillahunty qualified as executors. He therefore died between 25 December 1797 and April 1798; the tree keeps the year 1797.

The will names twelve enslaved people. Cato, Sillvay and the girl Mimay were lent to Rachel for her life and were then to pass to William and James. Old Sall, Sarah, the boy Joe and Peg went to Hannah. Sam, Charles, Rachel, Clay and Lettis were part of the estate left to Silas and John. At the estate sale returned in July 1798 these last five were hired out for the estate rather than sold; Lettice, “this being a child”, was “put to the lowest bidder”, which most likely means the estate paid for her keep.

Family

The tree gives him two wives. The first, Baber/Baker (1751–1791), is known only by her surname; family trees date the marriage to 1770 in North Carolina, and the tree makes her the mother of John, Hannah and Silas. The second was Rachel, whose surname is not known. A Sons of the American Revolution application, a compiled source, dates that marriage to about 1790 in the New Bern District of North Carolina. A family Bible record, in a published transcription, names William as “son of John Dillahunty and Rachel his wife” and gives his birth in April 1793. The tree also makes James her son.

In July 1802 the Davidson County court ordered the land of “Jno Dillahunty Junr” divided among his heirs. The commissioners drew the shares by lot and returned their report in October 1802: 80 acres to James, 120 each to Silas and William, and the whole 210-acre Robertson tract to John. On 14 May 1805 General James Robertson sold the same 210 acres, by the same boundaries, to Alexander Allison, in a deed that names no Dillahunty, so the tract had left the heir by then.

The tree identifies that son John with the John Dillahunty who was at Natchez by 1806 and died in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana, before 17 September 1830. The will and the division show that this man had a son John living in 1802, but that the two were the same man is probable but not proven. A recent DNA test by a descendant of John Dillahunty (died by 1830) matches people whom other members’ family trees place among the descendants of three of this man’s other children, a pattern the father-and-son link would predict. The lines above those matches come from other members’ trees, so the pattern is a pointer rather than proof.

Notes

Origins

Family trees give his birth as 1750 at New Bern, North Carolina; no record of it has been found. The year sits awkwardly beside his sister Mary Ann, whom George West’s family Bible records as born on 3 July 1750; a Sons of the American Revolution lineage gives 1749 instead. The tree makes him a son of John Dillahunty (1728–1816) and Hannah Rachel Neal (1732–1816). Some records support this. His own will names “my Brother Thomas Dillahunty” as an executor, and a Thomas is among the sons named in the elder John’s will of 1810. The Davidson County records also call this man “John Dillahunty, Junr.”, while the elder John’s estate inventory of 1816 calls him “Sr”. Such styles usually marked a father and a son, but not always, and one record points the other way. The elder John’s will names a son John among three sons confirmed in lands in North Carolina, and it does not mark that son as dead, although it does so for two other children. The parentage is therefore unproven. Two men named John Dillahunty appear in an index of the 1780 tax lists of Dobbs County^W, North Carolina, and which of them, if either, was this John has not been settled. His son John is probably, but not provably, the John Dillahunty (died by 1830) of Louisiana from whom Floyd Amatus Delahorne descends.

The first marriage

The date of 1770 and the place, North Carolina, for the first marriage come from family trees and rest on no known record. The only source that names the first wife is a Daughters of the American Revolution lineage book, page 240, which gives “—— Baker” with no given name. No marriage record of the time is known.