Yancy Turner
YANCY TURNER had grown up not far from his father's family in Yanceyville in Caswell County, North Carolina. He and his mother probably remained in his maternal grandparent's home during his youth. There is no way for us to know if he had a relationship with his father, THOMAS GRAVES YANCY, or his father's family, or if the "stigma' of "Bastard" was a problem for him in the community. We do know that YANCY grew up to be an upright and successful man. His natural father, THOMAS GRAVES YANCY, died about the time YANCY TURNER married. The TURNER family and the YANCEY family were frequently at estate sales in the area together. By this we can know that they more-or-less “moved in the same circle.”.
We don’t know how much MARY DILLON was influenced by her father's Quaker background. Her father was disfellowshipped for his marriage, and unless her parents rejoined the sect sometime later, MARY may have had little Quaker influence in her early life. Since she married into a family where slavery was practiced, she must not have been strictly adherent to the sect's views. So far, we haven’t found any evidence that her father rejoined the Quakers after he was disfellowshipped for marrying JEMIMA BRITTON/BRITTAIN.
YANCY TURNER and MARY DILLON-4 probably married about 1804 or 1805, close to the time her grandfather, DANIEL DILLON-2, died.
YANCY and MARY moved from Caswell, North Carolina, to Sumner, Tennessee, about 1805. YANCY’s mother, SUSANNAH, and her new husband, James Donaho, moved to Sumner at the same time. Beginning October 19, 1805, deed records show that YANCY purchased a total of 1198 I/2 acres in Sumner County. The first record we have of a land purchase by him was when he bought 122 ½ acres from Isaac Hurt “on the ridge between Bledsoe’s Creek and Tramel Creek.” His stepfather, James Donoho, witnessed the deed.
There are no records of his selling any land before 1842, when his property fell into the new Macon County. In 1850, his real estate was valued at $1,600 and in 1860 he owned 10 slaves. The value of his property and his slaves made him one of the more affluent members of the community, although he was not extremely wealthy. Apparently, MARY’s father, ISAAC DILLON, and possibly some of her brothers, also accompanied the family’s move to Tennessee, as ISAAC and Daniel Dillon are found in Sumner County tax records owning land near YANCY TURNER on Long Creek. It appears that this same Daniel Dillion was living there in the 1830’s. We aren’t sure if this Daniel Dillon was MARY’s brother, uncle, or great-uncle.
The first piece of property bought by YANCY TURNER for which we find a deed was listed in Sumner County Deed book, Volume 4, February, 1806, to June, 1810, page 104, and recounts the purchase of 122 ½ acres of ground from Isaac Hurt, of Smith County, Tennessee, located “between Bledsoe’s Creek and Trammel Creek, beginning north corner of Hartwell Sayres, witnessed by James Donoho and Joshua Hudson.”
The Sumner County Tax list records 59 acres for YANCY “on the Ridge” for the years 1818 and 1819. In 1820, it records 75 acres on Long Creek near ISAAC DILLON and near land owned by James Donoho. In 1821, the tax records show 175 acres on Trammell Creek.
YANCY started buying more land in the 1820s and continued into the 1860s. Many pieces of land were on Trammel Creek, but also on Garrett’s Creek.
YANCY’s maternal Grandfather, HENRY TURNER, died in Caswell County, North Carolina, in 1807, only a couple of years after YANCY's move to Tennessee. James Donoho gave a power-of-attorney to “Friend Yancy Turner" to secure the inheritance he [James] had received from HENRY, probably SUSANNAH's share. We would assume that YANCY may have traveled back to Caswell County to take charge of the inheritances from HENRY's estate. YANCY also received an inheritance from his grandfather, HENRY TURNER.
SUSANNAH’s husband, James Donoho, had been born about 1767 in Virginia, according to one of his descendant’s research, and married Elizabeth Lowery in Bedford County, Virginia, January 26, 1789. Their first son, William Thomas, was born May 9, 1790. Other children were Elizabeth, who married a Mr. Gourldman; Sally Hana; and Nancy, who married Jobe Meador. Apparently, after his wife’s death, James moved to Caswell County, North Carolina, where he married SUSANNAH. They shortly moved to Sumner County, Tennessee, however, and he received a grant of land in 1809.
“Susannah Donoho” was shown on the Sumner County tax lists for the year 1821 after James died. She apparently lived long enough to see many of her grandchildren born.
Children of Yancey Turner and Mary Dillon Turner
Henry Turner-1; Susannah-2 [Thomas Graves Yancey]; Yancy Turner-3
Luke Dillon-1; Daniel-2; Isaac-3; Mary-4
Jemima Turner-4, was born February 2, 1807, in Sumner County and married Joshua Doss, a brick mason, February 1, 1832, and they had five children. She died February 18, 1891, according to the Bible of her daughter, Emiline F. Doss Simmons. Joshua Doss was born September 30, 1804, and died February 5, 1862, according to the same source.
MILLEY TURNER-4, was born December 10, 1810, [Emiline’s Bible said her birth date was December 2] and married ALBERT GARNER HOLMES when she was only 13 years old. They both died in 1854, and her children were mentioned in YANCY’s estate. She would have been old enough to have remembered her grandmother, SUSANNAH TURNER DONOHO.
Senith Frances Turner-4, born December 8, 1812, married Jordan Coleman December 25, 1838, and died January 13, 1858, in Macon County. Her father’s estate mentions her heirs.
Leatha [Leathey] Turner-4, was born December 22, 1814, married Benjamin P. Wilson, May 10, 1830, in Sumner County, and moved to Allen County, Kentucky, where she died May 11, 1896.
Bartlett Yancy Turner-4, born June 30, 1817, married Margaret Foster, January 23, 1838, and died March 24, 1862, probably in Macon County. He was a Justice of the Peace of that county and wrote a very legible handwriting. Some of the other children, not withstanding the relative prosperity of the family, were illiterate. The 1850 Sumner County Census lists him as living in District 15, page 189, house 864. He is listed as age 33, born in Tennessee. Margaret A., his wife, is listed as age 30, born in Kentucky. The children at home are William Y., age 11; Mary J., age 9; Martha, age 6; Abner D., age 4; James W., age 2; and Booker A., age 1. Emiline Hilborn, age 15, is also listed in the household.
Polly [Mary] Turner-4, born June 24, 1820, first married Zachariah Fagg, at age 14, August 11, 1834. Later, she married Marcus Keen about August, 1847. The family cemetery is called "Polly Fagg" cemetery. A man by this name was in the Seminole War, and listed on the muster roll of Capt. Joseph Meador from June, 1836, to January, 1837, in Sumner. [Durham, Old Sumner.]
Matilda Turner-4, was born January 17, 1825, and married Charles Hawkins about 1843 in Sumner County. She died August 8, 1898, and is buried in the Polly Fagg Cemetery in Macon County
Emily Carolyn Turner-4, was born April 3, 1834, the youngest child, according to Emiline’s Bible. She married Alfred J. Hodges on September 16, 1850. They moved to Texas in the late 1870s. [See HODGES Chapter for his family.]
James Allen Turner-4, was born June 21, 1827, according to Emiline’s Bible, and lived in Macon County in the 1860s and 1870s. His wife was named Margaret Ann. A descendant of James A. Turner, Dorothy Gray, contributed a great deal of oral history for this family. This Turner family moved to Texas about 1895 or 1896, and Clarence Beard Turner, a son of James Allen Turner, married there in 1898.
of his sister’s daughter, Emiline F. Doss Simmons, with a birth date of October 27, 1822, making him the sixth child of YANCY and MARY. He was listed in the estate records for his father in Macon County, Tennessee. There is also a deed, recorded May 10, 1811, from Nathan Edwards to Alexander Rasco for land on Middle Fork of Martin D. Turner-4, was a son for whom little is known. He was listed in the Bible Station Camp Creek, witnessed by someone named Martin Turner. However, this could not be the son of YANCY. No descendants of this man have been traced by this author. The given name of Martin, however, makes us wonder if there is some family surnamed Martin who might be a connection.
In 1837, YANCY TURNER, along with his son-in-law, ALBERT HOLMES, and ROBERT HOLMES, ALBERT’s father, signed a petition to form Macon County. [History Macon County, Tennessee, pg. 20.] The 1838 “Scholastic Population” listed the names of each man or woman in Sumner County, the district in which they lived, and the number of children in school. YANCY TURNER was listed in District 15 and 3 children were enrolled in school that year. Martin, Matilda, and James were probably those three children, as the other children would be old enough to have graduated or left school, and Emily would have only been four years old that year. ALBERT HOLMES also lived in district 15 and he and MILLEY had three school-aged children that year.
“Kentucky lands” that were actually in Tennessee were bought by YANCY about this time. His lands were listed in Kentucky grants because they were “grants south of Walker’s Line.” This was an area that was in dispute between Kentucky and Tennessee. The line, run in 1779 and 1780, failed to establish the true parallel of the 36th degree and 30 minutes and the lands were really in Tennessee. YANCY had bought lands in this area in 1826, 1839, 1846, [two parcels] and again in 1851. There were over 500 acres of these lands.
In 1840, YANCY TURNER, along with others, including William Doss, who was commissioned overseer of the road, “from Charles Simmons to YANCY TURNER’s in place of Elijah Butler resigned. The Hands from Butler and also Nancy Doss, James Fagg, Joshua Doss, James Hunt, William Parish, Nancy Weatherford, Samuel Morris, and James Hoskins were to work the road.”
In 1841, a jury consisting of YANCY TURNER, and Samuel Morris, Bartlett Turner, Wm Smothers, and George Hunt were to lay out a road from old meeting house on Rock House Road [from Gallatin to Scottsville] to YANCY TURNER’S where it will intersect the Hartsville Road leading up to Trammel Creek, then down to Joshua Doss, thence take a point of ridge below James Hunt, Sr., the best way to intersect the old Ft. Blount Road from Scottsville to Long Creek.
Hartsville was a post town in the southeast corner of Sumner near Goose Creek and Cumberland. It is now located in Trousdale County. Long Creek is a branch of the Baren River and located in Smith and Sumner Counties.
YANCY and MARY’s eldest daughter, Jemima Doss, lived next door, but one, to her parents in 1850. MILLEY and ALBERT G. HOLMES lived nearby on land ALBERT had inherited from his father, ROBERT HOLMES. Because the families lived so close to each other, MILLEY and ALBERT had probably known each other since childhood. A Bible, owned now by Robert Witt, which was inherited from Carrie Doss [1871-1952] dated 1857, contained birth and death dates of YANCY and MARY as well as their children. This Bible is thought to have been owned by Jemima Turner Doss’s daughter, Emiline Doss. A transcription of the Bible record is available on the Sumner County site of the Tennessee Gen Web on the internet.
After the death of ALBERT HOLMES' parents, ROBERT and MARJORY HOLMES, in the 1840s, ALBERT and MILLEY continued to live on the farm near YANCY and MARY as they raised their family. The community-of-family seems to have been a close one with mutual assistance as needed. Unfortunately, as was the case many times in the days before antibiotics, many parents outlived their children. This was the case with YANCY and MARY TURNER. They outlived both ALBERT and MILLEY HOLMES by many years. YANCY and MARY “advanced” land, slaves, livestock, and cash to some of their children to help them establish independent homes as they matured and married.
An article, reprinted from the Gallatin Examiner newspaper dated September 22, 1876, [viewed on Microfilm from the LDS Library and supplied by Kathy Wilcox] says;
Mr. Yancy Turner of Epperson Springs is 90 years old. Notwithstanding the fact that he has passed the 5th of a century beyond the allotted time of man, he attends regularly to his business, saddles, and harnesses his own horse, is but slightly gray and enjoys good health. His living children, grandchildren and great great grandchildren number two hundred.
YANCY and MARY TURNER died on the family home place where they had settled as a young bride and groom. They outlived several of their children and some of their grandchildren. Both lived through the Civil War which must have been a hardship on them, especially at their advanced ages.
MARY died August 11, 1870, and YANCY died January 2, 1878. [Doss, Simmons, Turner Family Bible transcription has these dates reversed, but since he was alive per the newspaper article, we will assume he died after 1876 when the article was published.] He was 92 years old when he died. They are buried in the Fagg Cemetery at Route One, Westmoreland, Tennessee. The only picture we have of YANCY shows him as an elderly man with a downturned mouth and a relatively large nose. His eyes were hooded and he looked very stern. He wore a white shirt and a coat with a wide lapel. The quality of the photograph is very poor, but he appears to be bald, with hair on the sides only.
James Turner had a 500-acre farm on Trammell creek. He grew tobacco, and Dorothy has a long-stemmed pipe which either he or his wife, Margaret, smoked. Dorothy’s sister also has their Bible, which says James’s wife was named Margaret Ann. Charles Simmons said, in a letter to Dorothy, that the farm was bought by Josephus [Joe] Simmons when the family moved to Texas.
According to Dorothy, a couple of James’ daughters stayed in Tennessee when the family moved. One of them married a Carter, “according to the Bible, Cammie Turner VanSickle married D. L. Carter, September 18, 1891.”
MILLEY TURNER-4 HOLMES’ father, YANCY TURNER-3, born October 30, 1786, was the illegitimate son of THOMAS GRAVES YANCEY and SUSANNAH TURNER-2 from Caswell County, North Carolina. Both of YANCY’s parents were from prominent families. THOMAS GRAVES YANCEY lived and died in Caswell County, North Carolina, but SUSANNAH TURNER-2 eventually married and moved to Sumner County with her husband, James Donoho, around 1805. [Doss, Simmons, Turner Family Bible, 1857.]
Illegitimacy was not as “rare” then as we might now suppose. In the post-Elizabethan- pre-Victorian era, women were frequently brought before the county courts to be prosecuted for producing bastard children. YANCY’s mother, SUSANNAH TURNER, however, because she was from one of the “better” families in the area, and would not become a “charge” [burden] on the church to support her and her child, was not prosecuted. In fact, SUSANNAH actually sued for, and apparently received, monetary damages from THOMAS YANCEY. In Genealogical Evidence, the author states on page 3, concerning bastards:
Sir William Blackstone summarized the rights [or lack of them] of illegitimate children thusly, “I proceed next to the right and incapacities which appertain to a bastard. The rights are very few, being only such as he can acquire, for he can inherit nothing, being looked upon as the son of nobody; and sometimes called filius nullius, somtimes filius populi. Yet he may gain a surname [sic] by reputation, though he have none by inheritance.
The first permanent settlement was made in the Carolinas about 1650. It wasn’t until 1729, when the proprietary government of the colony was dissolved, that North Carolina was divided into three precincts or counties: Albemarle, Bath, and Clarendon. In 1734, it was again divided, and again in 1748, when Anson was created. Anson contained areas that are now contained in Rowan, Iredell, and other counties. North Carolina was settled in the 1750s by overflow from Virginia, primarily by English, Scots, and Scots-Irish stock. North Carolina was more open to settlement than some of the previously settled colonies. In the pre-Revolutionary days, when some of our ancestors settled in Caswell County, in the north-central area, the lines between the colonies were rather vague. Whether they were in one colony or another didn’t matter a great deal because they were on the edge of the frontier. Land was not entirely “free,” as quit-rents or payments of some kind were in order, but land was more available.
Caswell was one of the premier “jumping off places” of the Carolinas and many of our families at least passed through this region for a generation or two. The county records are well indexed and abstracted and this has facilitated research for many families.
In trying to untangle the complicated records however, the fact that several influential men in the county were related to us has helped very much.
YANCY
TURNER’s mother, SUSANNAH,
was the daughter of HENRY
TURNER, Sr., and his wife ANN___?__. From the
family Bible of one of their daughters, we know that HENRY was born
September 25, 1721. He may have been born in the area that became
Culpepper County, Virginia. We know he lived there shortly before
his move to Caswell County, North Carolina, probably during the early
part of the Revolution. [Family Bible of James Kimbrough and Nancy
Turner.]
About 1805, YANCY TURNER married MARY DILLON from Guilford County, North Carolina. MARY’s father was ISAAC DILLON and her mother was JEMIMA BRITTAIN. MARY was born October 2, 1788, according to the Doss-Simmons-Turner family Bible, published 1857.
Estate of Yancy Turner
The estate of YANCY TURNER-3 was decreased by the loss of the value of the slaves he had owned before the Civil War. By the time he died, the cash from his estate totaled only a little over $2,900 to be divided between 10 children, and/or their heirs. James A. Turner-4 was the administrator of the estate.
James Turner & others vs. Emily Hodges et al, order., J. A. Turner is made defendant by petition of complaint for whom proceeds will issue to June rules. [Volume D., August 1877-January 1886, Chancery Court Minutes, Macon County, TN, pages 234-5.]
The estate first determined how much each child had been advanced by YANCY before his death. A listing was made of all the surviving children and the heirs of those who were deceased.
Matilda [Turner-4] Hawkins had been advanced “a negroe girl worth $500,” one colt worth $45, one cow and calf worth $25, two sheep worth $1 each, $2, and one bee gum worth $3, total $575.”
James Allen Turner-4 had received a tract of land worth $500, a 3-year old colt worth $40, one other colt worth $30, one heifer worth $10, one cow worth $25, provision worth $25, one bedstead worth $3 for a total of $623.
Polly [Turner-4] Fagg had been advanced a tract of land worth $500, one crippled “avet” worth $10, and one bee gum worth $3 making a total of $513.
Jemima [Turner-4] Doss had received a tract of land worth $500, one cow worth $20, and a bee gum worth $3 for a total of $523.
Letha [Tuner]-4 Wilson had received a Negro girl worth $500 and one mule worth $100 for a total of $600.
Emily [Turner-4] Hodges had received a Negro girl worth $500 and a mule worth $100 for a total of $600.
MILLY [TURNER-4] HOLMES’ children had been advanced $500 in notes and money.
Martin Turner-4 had been advanced one stable horse worth $300, one gelding worth $100, one mare worth $75 and $900 cash for a total of $1,375.
Frances [Turner-4] Coleman’s heirs had been advanced only the family carriage worth $60 and $5 worth of hogs making a total of $65.
Bartlett Yancy Turner-4 had received one cow worth $25 and a bee gum and bedclothing.
The estate papers stated in the course of settling the estate that there were “10 original heirs to said estate” and named them.
Each of the 10 heirs, or their heirs, were entitled to $708.23 and 5/9 cents, which included their advancements. The loss of the value of the slaves after the Civil War had decreased the value of the estate by some unknown figure, but probably a substantial one. Before the war, at one time, we know that YANCY had owned about 10 slaves. If we calculate the value of the slaves, using the figure used in the estate of $500 each, this would have been a substantial amount of loss to the estate when the slaves were freed. Those children who received slaves as part of their advancements suffered the loss of that value from their share of the estate, whereas those children who had received livestock, money, or land, didn’t. MILLEY’s heirs had taken their advancements in money and other forms of liquid assets.
All of the heirs received enough cash to make them equal with the others, but Martin Turner’s share [and then some] had already been advanced to him.
Thanks to Kathryn C. Wilcox of Temecula, California, for supplying us with the copies of the estate which she transcribed from difficult microfilm records.