Overton History

You will find hundreds of Overtons listed on this site that lived hundreds of years ago to the present. My 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 early 1700s they moved into the northern areas of North Carolina around Granville, Bute, and Hertford Counties .

Sometime after the 1790s and before the 1800 Census, my 4th great-grandfather John Overton Senior picked up his belongings and moved his family to the Kershaw District of South Carolina. Before 1814 and after the 1810 Census, he migrated from Lancaster District of South Carolina to central Georgia in search of new lands promised by the Georgia Land Lotteries that were created as the Creek and Cherokee Indians were being run off their lands. His family settled in Walton, Campbell, and Newton Counties of Georgia where he and his sons won parcels of land in the lotteries.

Around the 1850s and after my great-great-grandfather Rev. Jacob Hagler Overton became ordained as a Baptist preacher, he and his father, John Overton Junior, moved to Randolph County , Alabama where he spread their religious fervor and preached in a Baptist Church in the pioneer city of Wedowee . In the early 1900s my great-grandfather William David Overton moved his family from Wedowee to Ider Alabama in the mountains near the Alabama and Tennessee border. He farmed the land and struggled through the great depression as most of the mountain people did in those days. My grandfather William Thomas Overton took up the cross as my great-great-grandfather did and spread the gospel in the mountains of northern Alabama .

This site contains genealogy data on all Overton lines in the US. If one of your ancestors were and Overton, this is the site to find them.

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