Andrew Greer - Joe's Dad
One of the many references used to create the book, “House of the Messenger”.
Tennessee Historical Magazine, Published under the Authority of The Tennessee Historical Society, Nashville, Tennessee 1916
Number 3., September 1916, J. T. McGill, Andrew Greer, p204-207
ANDREW GREER. The historical interest that attaches to the first settlers of Tennessee, especially those on the Watauga, to afford sufficient ground for putting on record in the Tennessee Historical Magazine something about Andrew Greer. The present time is opportune in view of the fact that Andrew Greer was the father of Joseph Greer, the subject of an interesting sketch in the March (1916) number of this journal. 1 Ramsey says in the Annals of Tennessee that "Andrew Greer was an Indian trader, and at a very early period, perhaps 1766, came with Julius Dugger to the West"; and that "Andrew Greer was one of the first if not the first settler very of Watauga."
This statement as to the time of his coming west is corroborated a record in the register's office, by Charlottesville, Virginia, showing that Andrew Greer, September 11, 1776, sold his land in Albemarle County. This land was conveyed to Jeremiah Warder and Richard Parker, merchants of Philadelphia, Pa. According to the Rev. Edgar Woods 2 this sale was made of his liquidation debts as a merchant in that vicinity. Andrew Greer was the son of Alexander Greer of Gaugh- waugher ( ?) Ireland (probably Garvagh, Londonderry The tradition is that he came to America with two County). Brothers and settled in the vicinity of Philadelphia. Leaving his brothers in he came to Virginia and lived in Pennsylvania, for a time at Staunton, Augusta County, Virginia. Certain it is that he was a resident of Albemarle County in 1758 as he was then a sergeant in an "Albemarle company of militia lately in active service for the defense and protection of the frontier against the Indians." 3
In the year 1834 or 1835 Michael Woods came from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, with several families into what is now Albemarle County, Virginia. The Kincaid or Kinkead family was one of these. There were three brothers, David, Joseph and James. They settled in the western part of the on-Medium’s river. part county, Andrew Greer, about the year 1751, married Ruth, daughter of Joseph Kincaid. Their children were Alexander, born in 1752, Joseph, born in 1754; Andrew, born in 1756, and Ruth, born in 1768.
"Watauga Old Fields," says Ramsey, "occupied the site of the present Elizabethton, in Carter County. Tradition says it was once an ancient Indian village, of which, when Mr. Andrew Greer, an early hunter and explorer, first settled it, no trace remained but the cleared land." Julius Dugger, who came to the West with Greer, settled at a place afterwards known as Bugger's Bridge, fourteen miles up the Watauga from Elizabethton. "They are believed," says Ramsey, "to be the first white men that settled south of what was afterward ascertained to be the Virginia line. After them came the John Michael the Dun- Robertson's, Carter, Hyder, Sevier's, McNab'bs, Matthew Talbot, the Horton's, McLinns and Simeon Bundy. Soon after the arrival on the Watauga of the emigrants named came the Beans, the Cobb's, and the Webb's, and, subsequently, the Tipton's and the Taylor's." It is probable that Andrew Greer did not bring his family to Watauga at this time, but built a hunting lodge as headquarters, traded in furs with the Indians, and made periodical trips to the home place in Virginia. Some others began to come from that vicinity to the settlements on the Holston and Watauga
perhaps some of them influenced more or less by his account of the new country. Among those who came at an early date were Valentine Sevier, from Augusta County, who stopped for a season on the Holston, then settled on the Watauga a mile or two below the site of Elizabethton, and Matthew Talbot, of Bedford County, who settled below Sycamore Shoals on or near the site of the Watauga fort. Ruth Kincaid, wife of Andrew Greer, died about 1770, it is supposed.
Her father, Joseph Kincaid, died in 1774. Then in 1775 Joseph Greer joined his father on the Watauga. That the other members of the family went with him or had gone there previously is inferred from the fact that the names of Andrew, Alexander, Joseph and Andrew Greer, Jr., all ap- pear among the signatures to the "petition and remonstrance" of 1775 or 1776, in which the inhabitants of the Washington district ask, among other things, to be annexed to North Carolina. Ramsey gives the following account of what he says was the
commencement of Cherokee hostility in 1775: "Andrew Greer, being in the Cherokee towns, suspected from the conduct of Walker and another trader that some mischief was intended against him. He returned with his furs but left the main trading path and came up the Nolichucky Trace. Boyd and Dogget, who had been sent out by Virginia, traveling on the path that Greer left, were met by the Indians near a creek. The creek is in Sevier and has ever since County, been known as Boyd's Creek. A watch and other articles were afterwards found in the creek. The watch had Boyd's name on the case. He was a Scotchman." Engraved. The next year the Cherokees made an attack upon the settlements. One division, led by Dragging Canoe, attacking the Holston settlement, was met and defeated at the Island Flats near Long Island of the South Fork of the Holston. The other division, under the command of Old Abraham, in- vested and attacked the fort at Watauga. "Captain James Robertson commanded the forces at Watauga, amounting in all to but forty men. Lieutenant John Sevier and Andrew Greer were also present." The families of the settlers had been brought within the enclosure for protection. Mrs. Bean was captured by the Indians, and Catherine Sherrill, who became the wife of John Sevier, is said to have narrowly escaped capture at the opening of the attack by a thrilling run to the fort. The Indians continued before the fort for six days, abandoning the siege on the approach of troops coming to the relief of the besieged garrison. The District of Washington, which at that time embraced all the territory now in the State of was annexed Tennessee, by the Legislature to North Carolina in 1776. The Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions for the district was established by the Legislature in 1777, and twenty-five magistrates were appointed by the governor. Andrew Greer was one of these. He was present at the first of the court February 23, meeting1778, which was held at the house of Charles Robertson, one of the magistrates; and he served as a member of this court until 1796. In 1780 he was continuously, nearly so, appointed by the court as one of the judges to examine the different kinds of currency and coins in circulation in order to detect and prevent frauds and impositions. He was collector of the public and county taxes for the year 1783.
When Carter County was established by the Legislature in 1796, he was appointed one of the commissioners to select the site for the courthouse and to erect county buildings. From that time until his death in 1806 he took an active part in the administration of affairs in that public county. It was with Andrew Greer that John Sevier came to the West from Virginia to a tradition in the Greer according to family.
Greer was a friend and supporter of Sevier. He was riding with him at the time when Andrew Jackson met Sevier on the road between Knoxville and Southwest Point, threatened to shoot him, and desisted from his purpose only when he became convinced that Sevier was unarmed. Andrew Greer married a second time. His second wife, was Mary Vance. The children of this marriage were Thomas, Vance, Margery, Jane, and Polly.
His children, all John, removed to Middle Tennessee before or after his death in the fall of 1806. All of them married. Hundreds of his descendants are now living in Tennessee. He purchased or received fifteen hundred acres of land for military service in Lincoln County, Tennessee, but he never left the Watauga. He had exercised good judgment and taste in selecting a location fronting on the Watauga River, with the Holston Mountain as a background, in the upper end of what Governor Robert L. Taylor named the Happy Valley. He possessed at one time all or nearly all the lands along the river on the north side, extending up the river three or four miles from the Tumbling Shoals at Elizabethton. Part of the property, near Elizabethton, which he sold in 1797, became the Stover place, where President Andrew Johnson died, at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Stover.
One thousand acres which he reserved as a homestead was sold by his heirs to John Nave. Mrs. Sharp, a granddaughter of John Nave, who lives on the place, pointed out to the writer the site of the residence of Andrew Greer in a very old apple orchard near the bank of the river. His grave could not be found;
but it is supposed that he was buried at the upper end of the place, near the mouth of Stoney Creek in an old cemetery that was obliterated by the high waters of the Watauga River in 1910.
JOHN T. McGiLL. University Vanderbilt .
