Person:John Donelson (3)

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John Donelson (1718–1785) was an American frontiersman, ironmaster, politician, city planner, and explorer. After founding and operating what became Washington Iron Furnace in Franklin County, Virginia for several years, he moved with his family to Middle Tennessee. It was on the developing frontier.

There, together with James Robertson, Donelson co-founded the frontier settlement of Fort Nashborough. This later developed as the city of Nashville, Tennessee.

Donelson and his wife Rachel had eleven children, four of them girls. Their tenth, daughter Rachel, married Andrew Jackson who was elected United States president in 1828.

1. ↑ Pauline Burke, Emily Donelson of Tennessee (1941)
   Page 3.

   "between 1718 and 1725, the exact year is unknown"

2. ↑ Inventory for the estate of John Donelson, dated 1736, in Maryland Indexes to Probate Records, Colonial, Index, D, 1634-1777, SE4-4, Image No: 04113
   Liber 22, folio 174.

   Catherine Donelson and her children, John (II) and Mary, did not move to Virgina until after the death of her husband, John (I), in 1736. His death in 1736 is further supported by the Somerset County Tax Lists, in which John Donelson appears between 1725 and 1735, while in 1736, his wife Catherine Donelson appears instead. Neither appear after 1736, after which Catherine Donelson and her children are presumed to have relocated to the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

3. ↑ Appraisment Bill of the Estate of Colonel John Bowman, in New York Historical Society
   July 19, 1785 .

   A bill of appraisal of items in the Estate of Colonel John Bowman, signed and dated July 19, 1785, at Lincoln County, Kentucky, by "John Donelson, Jr." (apparently as a witness). See: New York Historical Society record no. nyhs_sc_b-04_f-01_002-001.
   http://cdm128401.cdmhost.com/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15052coll5/id/21239/rec/1

4. ↑ ^4.0 4.1 Pauline Burke, Emily Donelson of Tennessee
   Pages 168-69, final note to Chapter I.

   Mary Purnell Donelson told Lyman C. Draper in an 1844 interview that Col. John Donelson was "at the Big Bend of Tennessee as a Georgia Commissioner" in the fall of 1785, when the rest of the family returned to Tennessee, that "the next Spring he left the Big Bend for home--went to the old settlement in Virginia to settle some matters there" and was killed in Kentucky en route to the Cumberland, during April or May, 1786. The interview with Mary Purnell Donelson appears in Lyman C. Draper Mss. S32 at pages 299-312 and was conducted in March, 1844.

5. ↑ The History of Pittsylvania County Virginia, Maud C. Clement (1929)
   Pages 154-56.

   "Colonel John Donelson...was a pioneer settler of Pittsylvania, first patenting lands here in 1744 when this section was still a part of old Brunswick." Id. 154-55. "When about twenty-five years of age Donelson came to this section and made his home on Bannister River, near the mouth of Whitehorn Creek, where the house is still standing with long slooping roof and wide rock chimneys." Id. 155. "He disposed of his properties in Pittsylvania, selling his home plantation to Colonel John Markham, from whom the place has taken it name, and is known today as 'Markhams'." Id. 156. See also: Henry H. Mitchell, "Rachel Donelson Jackson Birthplace: Comparing Photographs", 2004. http://www.victorianvilla.com/sims-mitchell/local/jackson/rd/pics01/
   The approximate location is depicted here: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=36.876857,-79.240565

6. ↑ The History of Pittsylvania County Virginia, Maud C. Clement (1929)
   Page 156.

   "He first successfully developed here the mining of iron. His iron works, known as the Bloomery, were located on the Pigg River. In the tax lists for the year 1774 John Donelson was listed at the Bloomery--Hugh Henry overseer, Thomas Bolton, John Holloway, Aaron Tredway and seven slaves." The Bloomery was established by Donelson in 1773 and sold to James Calloway and Jeremiah Early for 4,000 pounds sterling in 1779, who renamed it the "Washington Iron Works". Id. See also: Virginia Historical Marker No. A-97, in Rocky Mount, Virginia.
   Wikimedia.org contributor MarmadukePercy has made available a number of excellent photographs of the remains of these iron works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Washington_Iron_Works_Franklin_County_Virginia.JPG

7. ↑ W.W. Clayton, History of Davidson County, Tennessee (1880)
   Page 1364.

   The erroneous dating of his death during the Fall 1785 by Clayton and others, appears to have been based on the fact that his last known letter was written from Campbell County Virginia, dated September 4, 1785, and indicated that he expected to be home the following month. However, a careful reading of the letter reflects that he intended first to go to North Carolina to attend to matters involving William Blount, with whom he was involved as a Commissioner of the State of Georgia for the establishment of Houston County, Georgia, north of the Big Bend of the Tennessee River. Mary Purnell Donelson confirmed that Col. Donelson was at the Big Bend of the Tennessee in the Fall of 1785. See: Note 4, above.

8. ↑ The deposition of James M. Lewis, dated September 29, 1817, Exhibit D to the Petition of Andrew Jackson to the US House of Representatives, in Report No. 86 of the House Select Committee, 1818, Congressional Edition Vol. 8
   Pages 11-12.

   "the commissioners then, (between the twentieth and twenty-fifth of December, seventeen hundred and eighty-five,) adjourned to meet at the mouth of Elk river on the first day of April, seventeen hundred and eighty-six: that on the appointed day, this deponent with two other men, viz: Turner Williams and Argalous Geter, went over mouth of the Elk river on Tennessee river, and staid there a number of days, and the commissioners not meeting, he returned some time in said month to Nashville, and shortly afterwards heard that colonel John Donelson had been killed by the Indians, and upon the deponent going to Kentucky in company with others to know the certainty of his death, found it a fact."

9. ↑ Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1619-1776 (1905)
   Vols. 11-13.

   Member Virginia House of Burgesses, representing Pittsylvania County, from 1769 through 1774. He also was present at Williamsburg on May 27, 1774, and signed the Articles of Association with other members of House of Burgesses, which had been dissolved by the Governor on the previous day. Id. Vol. 13, pages xii-xiv.