Etheldred Melton

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=64168575

Son of Joseph Melton and Patience Hargrove

An old story that has been passed down through the ages was that Joseph's son Sion was an indian that he either picked up when he crossed the mountains of North Carolina or that he was his son by an indian woman. None of this can be proven or disproven, although Joseph raised Sion as his son, Sion was known to be part indian and is buried in an unmarked grave at the head of Woody Hollow on Harmon's Creek. Joseph is believed to have been on the west side of the Tennessee River before the Jackson Purchase in 1818. If he was, he was here illegally, as it was still the land of the Chickasaw Indians.

It is speculated than Joseph fit right in with the indians as he had this indian son and he was allowed to "squat" on the land. When the land was opened up to the white man in 1818, old Joseph was one of the first to file a land claim for 159 acres on the north side of the creek that would later become named for Adam Harmon and forever be known as Harmon's Creek.