J. A. Sharp, historian

52 ancestors, 52 weeks, Week 5 (Jan. 29-Feb. 4): At the Library

I'm sharing about a cousin, J. A. Sharp.  Actually I've posted about him before, HERE about the letter he wrote my grandfather.. 
and Here where I searched to find the connection between the Rogers and the Sharps....
and another link in a series I posted last year about the Sharp family...Here.

I'm including him as my "Library" connection because I remember being in a library looking at microfiche of an article he wrote about our common ancestor, Rev. Elijah Rogers (1774-1841) my four times great grandfather.  I offer today a few of the articles Mr. Sharp wrote!  (Original blog posted June 10, 2018)

By J. A. Sharp for ancestors

So in checking on the ancestry of Joe (J. A.) Sharp, who I spoke about a few days ago, I was trying to see how he connected to my cousin Rebecca Cannon Sharp,(1812-1901) who lived a very long time.  There were occasionally others on my tree with longevity, but not anything extreme. Rebecca's husband also had a long life, James Madison Sharp (1816-1905). More about him later.

But try as far back as the American Revolution, and none of the Sharps in Rebecca's husband's family seemed to have a line to connect to Joe's line.  He said as much at one time. 

So I'll be happy to know that his great grandmother times a few greats (Dialtha P. Rogers Mullendore (1810-1884) was the Rogers sister of my Rogers great grandfather times a few greats (Micajah Rogers 1795-1883).  I'm happy to be related to a historian who contributed so much to the Sevier County genealogical records (imagine 18 reels of microfilm!)

I also found his research was quoted when I was looking at the earlier Sharp families.  I think I'd like to share a bit of what I found...

Under the ancestor's name: John Sharp, (1730-1816) there's an extensive article titled, Capt. James M. Sharp’s 1894 Reminiscences, written for his son Dr. Samuel Pride Sharp 

I'm not including that here, but Joe Sharp's notes about it. The article is long and convoluted, but interesting in a folk history way, as well as includes the lists of children and wives that people had.  Why is it under John Sharp rather than Capt. James M. Sharp's site? I don't know.  

But John Sharp listed was the grandfather of our Rebecca Cannon Sharp's husband, Captain James Madison Sharp (1816-1905), none other than the author of the first article.  John Sharp is on my family tree, and is listed as the paternal grandfather of a husband of a 4th great aunt.  Yep, I'm stretching the relationships.  But part of the fun is learning how these strong people lived and endured their lives.

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J. A. SHARP’S NOTES, ca. 1949, ON THE SHARP FAMILY

Captain James M. Sharp, a grandson of John Sharp Sr., wrote in his recollections about 1894 information about his grandparents that he obtained from his father, John Sharp Jr., who settled in Sevier County and 1806 and died there in 1844. Some family birth, death, and marriage dates are recorded in the Thomas Sharp Bible, in 1949 in the possession of Reuben Sharp of Loudon, TN. 

In 1925, Mrs. H. C. Jones of New Market, Alabama, corresponded with Mrs. Sterling Fort of Clarksville, TN, and Mrs. Fort gave Mrs. Jones information about the Sharp family. Mrs. Fort said that Robert Sharp and Mary Porter were born in Augusta County, Virginia, were married there, came to Tennessee between 1808 and 1812, and settled in Williamson County. She told Mrs. Jones that William H. Sharp of Nashville said that his grandfather, Robert Sharp, left somewhere in Georgia on May 4, 1794 and settled in Williamson County. He had gotten the information from an old almanac used as a diary, he supposed, by a Dr. James Boyd Sharp. Robert Sharp was still living in 1828 and attended the personal property sale of his brother Joseph’s estate in Augusta County, VA. It seems that he inherited considerable property from Joseph.

The John Sharp Jr. Bible (published by Matthew Carey in 1802) also has family dates recorded in it. It was purchased by John Sharp Jr. in 1803 and is now [1949] in the possession of Miss Mary Sharp, his great-granddaughter, of Sevierville, TN. 

The Clark Bible records some family dates and is in the possession of John Clark of Maryville, TN. Some dates are on markers in Clark Grove Cemetery near Maryville, TN. Letitia’s husband, Robert Sharp, presented quite a problem: nothing is known about his ancestry. In 1927, the late Will Parham, Blount County genealogist, interviewed the late Robert Sharp of Rockford, TN, and heard the old family tradition that Robert Sharp was “killed by Indians on Pistol Creek, near Maryville and is buried on the Will Brakebill Farm, 7 miles northeast of here.” Another version of the same story was that the was killed in 1792 “by an Indian striking him on the head with a tomahawk as he was crossing Pistol Creek with a hay fork on his shoulder, on his way to gather up hay.” That Robert Sharp was actually killed by Indians is proven by a contemporary account in the Knoxville Gazette of October t, 1792:

On the 3^rd instant Black’s Block House, on the head of Crooked Creek (a branch of Little River) at which there was a serjeant’s command of Captain Crawford’s company, was attacked, by surprise about an hour and a half in the night, by a party of Indians commanded by a Cherokee of Will’s Town, called the Tail, a brother of the Bench and Talohtkfke, consisting of three other Cherokees and five Creek.

James Paul was killed in the house, and George Morse and Robert Sharp at a fire on the outside, and John Shankland wounded, three horses were killed and seven taken off.

In August 1793 the widow, Letitia, settled his estate in the Knox County Court of Pleas and Common Sessions. Letitia Sharp married John Clark, a Revolutionary War veteran, in 1801, and her daughter Nancy married John’s son (by a previous marriage) James. Robert Sharp, before settling in Blount County, TN, owned land in Rockbridge County, VA, and may have lived there with his family.

The Union, Campbell, Claiborne County Sharps are not ours. There, Sharps were German in origin. “Scharp” was the German spelling. Our Sharps were Scotch-Irish, probably English in origin, but migrated with Scotch to North Ireland, from whence they came to Pennsylvania in the early 1790s.

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included on same site is this article as well...though I am not as particularly interested in the subject.

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Joe A. Sharp’s Article on Flayl Nichols in the East Tennessee Historical Society’s Echoes for January 1957

Flayl Nichols, Revolutionary soldier, settled in Sevier County, TN, about 1790. He married Nancy Hatcher in Bedford County, VA, on January 7, 1780. They sold their Bedford County lands in 1787 and 1788, and records of Franklin County, VA, show Flayl serving as juror and making depositions there during these same years. No details of his Revolutionary service are known, but his misspelled name, “Flail Nicholes,” was recorded on the roll of Captain Adam Clement’s Bedford County militia company. Also, it was said that he served in the regiment of Colonel William Campbell at King’s Mountain, and Captain Clement’s company assisted General Nathaniel Greene in North Carolina in 1781.

Flayl’s father was John Nichols, whose will was probated in Bedford County in 1803. The only bequest to Flayl was the “big family Bible,” but since he was the first heir named, it is believed that he was the oldest child and may have received his share before his father’s death. It is not known what happened to this old Nichols Bible. Flayl’s brothers and sisters, as named in their father’s will, were John Archibald, Elisha, Jesse, Mary Cundiff, Katherine Pollard, and Jane Hancock. Bequests were also made to “my beloved wife Martha Nichols,” but her maiden name was not revealed—unless she was a second wife, she was the mother of Flayl and the other children named above.

Bedford County records show the following marriages of the above Nichols children: Archibald was married twice—(1) Judith Hatcher, daughter of Richard Hatcher, and (2) Sarah Wollington (1799); Elish Nichols married Rosey Slinker (1782); Jane Nichols married Edward Hancock (1783); Jesse Nichols married Sally Fields (1800). It is believed that Katherine Nichols’s husband was John Pollard, but the given njame of Mary Nichols Cundiff’s husband is unknown. Neither is anything definitely known of Flayl’s brother John, except the bequest of a “small shot gun . . . unto my grandson John Nichols, son of my son John Nichols.” This grandson is believed to have been John J. Nichols, who, with his wife, Margaret (Scantlen) Nichols, migrated from Bedford County to Sevier County and settled near Sevierville about 1819. Descendants of Flayl always claimed kinship with descendants of John J. Nichols.

There is good proof that John Nichols, father of Flayl, was also a soldier of the Revolution.

Flayl’s Sevier County home was located on the West Fork of Little Pigeon River, four miles south of Sevierville, near the mouth of Walden’s Creek, where Colonel Samuel Wear established Wear’s Fort not long after 1783. Tradition has it that Flayl and family first resided in this fort after their arrival from Virginia during the early 1790s, when the Cherokee Indians were making their last attacks on the Tennessee frontier. It is likely that Flayl participated in Colonel Wear’s Tallassee expedition against the Cherokee in 1793.

In 1808 Flayl received a Tennessee grant for his occupant claim of 331 acres, which included two horseshoe bends of Little Pigeon and the surrounding hills; the river today makes the same bends as in 1807, when the Nichols grant was surveyed, as shown by the surveyor’s plat in the Tennessee Archives. His lands joined the lands owned by Stephen Winton, George Green, John Mahan, and Alexander Montgomery, also original grant holders and early settlers in the same neighborhood. His home was on the bank of the river a few hundred yards north of Shiloh Cemetery, and he operated a mill nearby.

Details in the lives of humble men are hard to find; so it was with Flayl Nichols, and doubly so in Sevier County, where the early county records were lost in the courthouse fire of 1856. Flayl, however, left a few footprints, although obscure and scattered. In 1801 we find him serving as captain of a Sevier County militia company; later, in 1805, the Tennessee legislature made him a commissioner for the town of Sevierville, although he did not live in the town.

Perhaps Flayl’s greatest claim to fame was his service as state senator in the Tennessee legislature, 1803 to 1804; he represented Sevier and Blount counties. In the impeachment trial of Judge David Campbell, he joined the minority of James White, Senate Speaker and Knoxville’s founder, and Joseph McMinn, future Tennessee governor, and voted for Judge Campbell’s conviction. He introduced bills to “establish fairs in Sevier County,” and to empower the Sevier County Court to levy a tax to repair the “court house, prison and stocks.” He also voted with the majority that defeated a bill to “prohibit the further importation of slaves into Tennessee.” And on November 7, 1803, Flayl joined the overwhelming majority of the State Senate that voted to clear John Sevier of fraudulently obtaining North Carolina land warrants for 105,000 acres of Tennessee lands. Finally, on August 1, 1805, he voted against the bill allowing North Carolina to “perfect titles” to lands in Tennessee, and after the passage this bell, he entered his strong protest in the Senate Journal.

Flayl and Nancy had nine children, as follows: Sarah (born 1780), Martha, born 1783), Rhoda (Born 1785), John (born 1787), Jesse (born 1788), Simon (born 1795), William (born 1797), Robert (born 1800), and Edward (born ?). Only one of these remained in Sevier County—this was John, who married Esther V. Black of Blount County, Tennessee, in 1814. It is believed that she was a daughter of Joseph Black, one of the founders of Blount County and Maryville. The daughter Martha married Irish-born Robert Lawson, early Sevierville shoemaker and saddler, and they migrated to Talladega County, Alabama, soon after the War of 1812, and many of their descendants still live in the latter place today. Sarah married John Matson, War of 1812 soldier; after his death she and her children also settled in Talladega County. The son William married Martha Cannon, and about 1835 they migrated to Randolph County, Missouri—he died there in 1884. Jesse, a soldier in the War of 1812, married Tobitha Coulter, or Cotter, and they migrated to Marshall County, Alabama, where Jesse died in 1841—his widow still lived there in 1872. Nothing is known about the daughter Rhoda, and no trace has bene found of the other sons, but family tradition states that they, like William, also settled in Missouri.

Flayl Nichold died at his home on the West Fork of Little Pigeon on August 17, 1823. The family Bible recorded his death as follows: “Flayl Nichols departed this life on Little Pigeon River Sevier County Tennessee State with gravel Aug 17, 1823.” His grave in Shiloh Cemetery is marked with the original hand-shaped sandstone, with the inscription “F.N. Dc. 1823” and the carving of the old-fashioned canoe-shaped coffin below this inscription. In recent years a flat granite headstone showing his Revolutionary War service was furnished by the War Memorial Division of the United States Army, and it was erected in front of the old stone. The widow Nancy survived for several years—she died in 1840. No original marker remains at her grave, but the writer, with the help of three Alabama descendants, placed a granite marker for Nancy by the side of Flayl’s grave.

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and the third article included for the Nichols family was also included, so I've copied it to have it available if ever I get interested in it...

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More on the Nichols Family by Joseph A. Sharp, written about 1940

There is a family tradition that Flail Nichols served in the Revolutionary War, but neither the Department of the Army not the Veterans Administration has any record of such service [they must have found some records since the Army erected a Revolutionary War service grave marker sometime before 1957]. On the original marker, the date of his death is plant, but the date of his birth is not very plain; however, it appears to be 1747.

It is not known definitely that Edward (Ned), William, Jesse, and Robert H. were sons of Flail Nichols, but it appears likely that they were. Old land survey books in the Register’s Office of Sevier County contain land entries made by each of these men. William Nichols entered 52 acres on the west fort of the Little Pigeon River in 1824. Edward Nichols entered 100 acres in the same neighborhood in 1826, and in 1836 he entered 150 acres on Gist’s Creek in Sevier County. In 1938, Uncle Ash Nichols, at the age of 85 years, remembered hearing of his father’s, Joshua Nichols, going to mill in the present Shiloh community to his uncle Ned Nichols and also of visiting another uncle who lived nearby. The above land entries by Edward and William Nichols seem to have been located in the Shiloh community, and it is believed these were the two uncles referred to by Joshua Nichols, who was a grandson of Flail Nichols. In 1826, Jesse Nichols entered 50 acres on the west fork of the Little Pigeon River; he also entered 50 acres on Gist’s Creek in 1824. Robert H. Nichols also entered 50 acres on the west fork of the Little Pigeon River in 1828. Of course, the latter two men may not have been the sons of Flail Nichols, but in view of the fact that they were entering land in the same vicinity, it is reasonable to speculate that they were sons or grandsons of his. There was also a Sallie Nichols who entered 50 acres on Knob Creek in 1834, and a Charles Nichols in mentioned in one of the survey books mentioned above.

John and Esther Nichols are buried in the same grave in Shiloh Cemetery since there were only two days’ difference in their deaths (he died on Mar. 16, 1865, twelve days after his 76^th birthday, and she died on Mar. 18). John and family lived on Walden’s Creek, about four miles above its mouth. Land entries he made, as recorded in an old land survey book were for 25 acres on Walden’s Creek in 1828, for 100 acres on Walden’s Creek in 1831, and for another 100 acres there in 1851. He also owned land on Knob Creek in Sevier County. In 1938, a grandson of John Nichols, Ashley W. Nichols (Uncle Ash), of Sevier County, remembered visiting his grandfather on Walden’s Creek. His father sent him to plow for his grandfather, and he went home without telling his grandfather. John Nichols was a member of the Methodist church at Shiloh, and, as a very active member, it was his duty to “line out the hymns.” He and his wife are buried very near the location of the old church.