You will find hundreds of John Overton Senior's descendents listed on this site that lived hundreds of years ago to the present. His ancestors originally migrated from Wales in the 1600s and first settled in colony of Virginia where they raised their families and established roots. Then in the mid-1700s they moved into the northern areas of North Carolina around Granville and Bute Counties.
Around 1790, John Senior married Jane Price and settled in North Carolina where he had two boys, Henry and James. Sometime after the 1790s and before the 1800 Census, John picked up his belongings and moved his family to the Kershaw District of South Carolina. Between the 1800 and 1810 Census years, John moved to Lancaster District a few miles north of Kershaw. During this period, 1800 and 1810, John had two more boys, John Junior and Abijah, and two girls, Jane and Bersheba. Before 1814 and after the 1810 Census, he migrated from South Carolina to central Georgia where he had another girl, Mary. John's sons James and John Junior married the Hagler sisters, Rebecca and Susannah, in the fall of 1817 and settled in Walton County after John Senior and James won a parcel of land in the 1821 Georgia Land Lottery that was created after the Creek and Cherokee Indians were run off their lands. James eventually migrated to Alabama and then to Arkansas and John Junior migrated to Alabama.
In the fall of 1818 while living in Walton County, John Junior had a son named Jacob Hagler Overton. When Jacob was a young man he fought in the Cherokee Indian War serving in the Georgia Militia and later after the war became an ordained Baptist preacher in Georgia. John Senior died in Georgia sometime after 1840 while living with John Junior in Newton County. Soon after the 1850 Census, John Junior and his sons moved to Randolph County, Alabama. Here Jacob spread his religious fervor and preached in the pioneer Precinct of Wedowee in Randolph County. While living in Georgia, Jacob had a son named William David Overton who was born in the winter of 1846. When William grew up he became a farmer and spent his whole life near his father in Wedowee. He married twice. He had two children with his first wife, and after her death, he remarried and had five more children. William farmed the land and struggled through the great depression as most of the mountain people did in those days. The first born of his second wife was William Thomas Overton born in the fall of 1888. William Thomas married Nancy Heard in 1910 and moved to High Shoals in Randolph County. William took up the cross as his grandfather Jacob had, and by the time he was 18 years old he was an ordained Baptist preacher. By 1930 William moved his family to Jackson County, Alabama and eventually moved father north in the mountains near the Alabama and Tennessee border. William did not make his living as a Preacher for he felt that any money collected in the Church was to be used for God's works and spending it otherwise was a sin. Instead he made his living as a farmer and a sawmill owner, which was worked most of the time by his sons as he spent most of his time walking the mountains spreading the Gospel. His son William Roscoe Overton left the mountains and joined the Navy in 1941 and never returned to the mountain life. After the war, William settled in Chattanooga, Tennessee where he raised his children.
I hope you find your stay enjoyable, and if you have any questions or can add to the tree, please leave me an email.
Descendants of John OVERTON Senior
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Steve Overton
P.O. Box 30188
Alexandria, VA 22310
