JOHN KNOX, IMMIGRANT, AND JEAN KNOX'S WILL.
John Knox, emigrant progenitor, represented by the trunk of our Knox Family Tree, was a native of Scotland, born about the year 1708. The exact locality of his birthplace is not certainly known. Some of the descendants on two different branches have it by tradition that Renfrewshire was his native place. He went from Scotland to Ireland, with other Scotch emigrants, by invitation of the King of England, to constitute a balance of power against the insurgent Irish Catholics. He married an Irish Presbyterian wife, Miss Jean Gracy, whose. mother's name was Jean Sinclair. They emigrated to America (from Coleraine, Ireland) about 1740, in company with his brother-in-law, Patrick Gracy, and others. It is thought that he first settled in Pennsylvania before coming South to Carolina. He was one of the early settlers of Rowan county, N. C. He bought six hundred acres of land on the south side of Third Creek for £37, 10s., which land had been granted by Earl Granville to James Stuart.
[Most of this information was furnished by Rev. James Knox, who drew, up the original sketch.]
Some have gotten the idea that, for some service rendered the English government, this old Knox ancestor obtained a land warrant for six hundred acres and located it in Rowan county. We cannot vouch for the correctness of this. The writer has in her possession old land deeds and other papers, in pieces with age - one conveying land from Earl Granville to James Stuart, with the Earl's seal affixed, and signed by his agents, Francis Corbin and Joshua Bodley; another from Stuart to John Knox, yeoman.
We know very little of the life and character of this ancestor, John Knox. An old paper gotten up and signed by several of his neighbors or friends as a certificate of recommendation "to show - as he traveled southerly, selling some of his horses," certifies that he was a man of worth and integrity. We conclude, almost beyond a doubt, that he was a Presbyterian, from the name he bore, and having married a Presbyterian wife, and also that he was laid to rest in a Presbyterian burial ground. We inquired of the clerk of session of Thyatira Church, where he and his wife were buried, to know if their names were on the church roll there. He replied that. "the old records of that church were destroyed by fire about 1826. Though he thinks it very likely that they were both members of Thyatira Church, says those old Scotch people were noted for their Christianity. They brought their religion with them, and it is not likely they would forsake it when they came to this country." Indeed, it may be possible that persecution drove them from the mother country.
We are informed by the family of "Knox the Hatter" that they have old letters and papers which show that the Knox family from Glasgow and Edinburgh, and from the North of Ireland, are of one family, and were persecuted on account of their religion, some of them having to leave their homes in the night. Coleraine, where, as we have it, our Knox people came from, is in the extreme north of Ireland.
Toward the end of the seventeenth century the disputes between the Presbyterians, or Covenanters, and the representatives of the Church of England were marked with great intolerance, to which was added the Stuart uprising. Many a peace-loving Scotchman grew weary of such continual strife, and began to seek freedom of conscience and other blessings in the American colonies of the new world.
While engaged in this work we have frequently been asked whether this John Knox was a descendant of John Knox the Reformer. We conclude that he was not. As we learn from McCries' Life of Knox, and also from Genealogical Memoirs of John Knox and the Family of Knox, by Rogers, that his two sons both died without issue, consequently the family of the Reformer was extinct in the male line. The daughters married into other family names, as may be seen from the genealogy of John Knox the Reformer, in another chapter. Some of our line have it by tradition that we are descended from William Knox, the brother of the Scottish Reformer, though we have not succeeded in tracing the connection.
John' Knox, emigrant, and wife, Jean Gracy Knox, had seven sons and one daughter, viz., William, Samuel, James, Absalom, John; Joseph, Benjamin and Mary.
We are not informed as to the order in which they come. In the mother's will Benjamin is called the youngest son, and the date of his birth, 1759, is gotten from the pension roll, or census of pensions, at Raleigh, N. C. It is thought by some of the descendants of William Knox, that he was the eldest.
From the records sent in on the several branches, we gather that these sons all took part in the revolution. Of which further details will be given under each head, or name.
John Knox died 1758.
In the old Thyatira Church graveyard, Rowan county, among the old graves we find a small tombstone, now overgrown with moss, and blackened with age, bearing the following inscription
"John KNOX, died October 12, 1758, age 50 years.
Also
JEAN Knox, his wife, died September 18, 1772, age 64."
The clerk of session of Thyatira Church has the old deed of land on which the church now stands, given in 1753, about five years before John Knox's death. So that we imagine there are but a few graves antedating his in that cemetery.
