Col. Joel Lane

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hinton-1165

Joel Lane was born in Halifax County, NC about 1739 and married twice. Both of his wives were daughters of the Revolutionary soldier and statesman, Col. John Hinton and his wife Grizelle Kimbrough.

On December 9, 1762, Joel married Martha Hinton (born c. 1745). They had three children. Martha died on September 9, 1771.

1. Henry (b. March 6, 1764, d. 1797) - He married his first cousin Mary (Polly) Hinton (1766-1813). The “old” portion of the Mordecai House is “Harry’s” (nickname) house. They had daughters named Harriet (1788-1848) and Temperance (1792-1874). His descendants lived in the house until the city of Raleigh bought it for a historic park in 1968.

2. James (b. October 7, 1766) - In March of 1787, James bought 700 acres of land on the south side of Crabtree Creek from his father for 10 shillings. His wife may have been named Irene, and they may have had at least two children named Elizabeth J. and Mary. Irene died in Raleigh on 25 July 1818. He probably died in Raleigh 10 Oct. 1807.

3. William (b. October 15, 1768) - A William Lane married Martha Pastieur or Pasteur in 1791 or 1793, but we aren’t sure if he is Joel’s William. The Lane Family Bible which is displayed in the parlor belonged to a William Lane.After Martha died in 1771, her sister Mary married the widowed Joel Lane.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hinton-696

In 1772 Joel Lane married his first wife’s sister, Mary Hinton (born 1755). They had nine children. Mary died on April 3, 1795. Joel died March on 29, 1795.

4. Nancy (b. July 22, 1773) - no known information, not in Joel Lane’s will of 1794.

5. John (b. March 6, 1775) - He married Sarah Jones (b 1 Aug 1776), daughter of Nathaniel Jones, of White Plains, Wake County, and left descendants. He moved to Bedford County, Tennessee, between December 1807 and November 1808 and died there in 1864. One son was Joel Hinton Lane (b. 1816 Bedford Co. TN, m. 14 Apr 1847 to Susan Helen Carter, and d. 1854 Maury Co. TN.)

6. Martha (Patsy) (b. February 19, 1778, d. May 20, 1852) - She married twice: first to Dugald McKethen; second to Jonathan Brickell. Was widow of Mr. Brickell by Nov. 1825. Had three children: Alexander James McKethen, Mary Hinton McKethen, and John Hamilton McKethan. Alexander died in Oct. 1819 at age 23. Mary H. McKethen died at age 22 on Nov 12, 1821.

7. Elizabeth (Betsy) (b. August 6, 1780) - She married Stephen Haywood of Raleigh. She died at the age of 24 on March 7, 1805. They had two sons, Benjamin Franklin Haywood (9 Jan 1802-15 Sept 1824) and John Lee Haywood (9 Jul 1804-16 Feb 1836). imageElizabeth Lane from the 1963 North Carolina Portrait Index. The image is from a miniature on ivory and describes Elizabeth as having “long hair, curls with straight bangs; blue eyes; black dress with white lace and vest; white sash or belt.”

8. Mary (b. January 1, 1783) - Not mentioned in Joel’s will.

9. Thomas (b. September 12, 1785) - He married his cousin Nancy Lane (b. June 9, 1790, d Dec. 21, 1855), daughter of his cousin and guardian, Martin Lane. Thomas inherited Joel Lane’s house, but he sold it to his sister Dorothy’s husband. Thomas moved to Giles County, Tenn. (This area was Bedford County before 1836) where he died on March 29, 1832.

10. Dorothy (Dolly) (b. December 13, 1787) - She married Dr. Allen W. Gilchrist on May 29, 1806. She and her husband lived in her father’s house from 1808-1813. They had descendants.

11. Joel Hinton (b. October 11, 1790) - He married Mary A.G. Freeman on 4 Jan.1815. He was a volunteer from Wake County, North Carolina, in the War of 1812. Later moved to Tennessee and died in Giles County, Tenn. on June 22, 1832.

12. Grizelle (b. June 13, 1793) – She married George Lillington Ryan, Esq. March 21, 1817 and died March 4, 1868. They had no descendants.

Joel Lane, legislator, Revolutionary Patriot, planter, and vendor to the state of the land on which the capital was established, was born presumably in Halifax (then Edgecombe) County, the son of Joseph and Patience McKinne Lane. His father is thought to have been a grandson of Richard Lane of Jamestown, Va., first of the name in America and, according to tradition, a kinsman of Ralph Lane, first governor of North Carolina. His mother was a daughter of Colonel Barnabas McKinne, provincial justice and colonial assemblyman.

In the early 1760s, Joel Lane was a justice of the peace for Halifax County. In April 1761 he was appointed sheriff by Governor Arthur Dobbs, who in July named him captain of a Halifax regiment of foot under Colonel Alexander McCulloch. Extant documents list him as a citizen of Halifax as late as July 1768. By August 1769, however, he had apparently settled near Walnut Creek in that portion of Johnston County that became Wake, where he acquired several thousand acres of land. In November he was commissioned a justice of the Johnston County Court.

As representative from Johnston to the 1770–71 General Assembly, Lane introduced the bill creating Wake County, effective 12 Mar. 1771. Named a commissioner to run the Wake boundaries, he also served on the commission to choose sites for and erect the new county courthouse, prison, and stocks. These were built near his home, still standing at 728 West Hargett Street, Raleigh, slightly southwest of its original site. Wake's first county court is thought to have convened at Lane's home on 4 June 1771. From that date until his death he was a member of that court, serving from time to time as presiding justice. During those years he was licensed to operate an ordinary at his home, apparently a well-known stopping place for travelers along main roads crossing in the vicinity. From 25 May 1772 until June 1777 he was register of Wake, evidently also serving for a year as Chatham County clerk of court. For most of the period 1778–79, he was entry taker for Wake. He represented Wake in the 1773 General Assembly, where he sat on the committee on public accounts.

Joel Lane House, available from the National Park Service. Joel Lane House, available from the National Park Service. On 19 Jan. 1771 Governor William Tryon appointed Lane lieutenant colonel of Wake militia under his father-in-law, Colonel John Hinton. The unit did not participate in the Battle of Alamance, rather being left at home, according to Tryon's journal, "to prevent the disaffected in [Wake] from forming into a Body and Joining the Regulators in the adjacent Counties." Theophilus Hunter succeeded him in the military post in about 1773. Lane was a Wake delegate to the Provincial Congress at Hillsborough in August 1775 and at Halifax in April 1776, although he apparently was not seated at Halifax. During the Revolution he was a commissioner for obtaining and distributing salt. The 1776 Council of Safety adjourned in late August to Lane's home, where the General Assembly also met from 23 June to 14 July 1781 in addition to using the Wake courthouse.

Lane was a senator from Wake County in eleven of the fourteen sessions of the General Assembly from 1782 through 1794. He was a member of the 1788 and 1789 constitutional conventions, the latter ratifying the U.S. Constitution and the former issuing the ordinance calling for a permanent state capital to be established within ten miles of Isaac Hunter's plantation in Wake. The commission on location appointed by the 1792 Assembly spent eight days in March at Lane's home while examining various tracts of land offered for sale. From these they selected Lane's tract of one thousand acres, on which they laid out the city of Raleigh the same year. Its western boundary was within a few hundred yards of his home and the Wake courthouse. During the last six years of his life, Lane served on the first board of trustees for The University of North Carolina and was one of those offering land for its site.

Lane was married twice, both times to daughters of Colonel John Hinton of Wake. Between their marriage on 9 Dec. 1762 and her death on 9 Sept. 1771, he and Martha Hinton Lane had three sons: Henry, James, and William. With her sister Mary, he had nine more children: Nancy, John, Martha, Elizabeth, Mary, Thomas, Dorothy, Joel Hinton, and Grizelle. Descendants include members of the Moses Mordecai family who gave that name to Raleigh's Mordecai House, the original portion of which was the home of Lane's son Henry and his wife Mary, granddaughter of Colonel Hinton. Governor and University of North Carolina President David Lowry Swain was Lane's grandnephew (grandson of Lane's brother Jesse), as was General Joseph Lane of Oregon, hero of the Mexican War and Oregon's first governor and U.S. senator. A nephew of Martha and Mary Hinton Lane, Hinton James, was the first student to enter The University of North Carolina, 12 Feb. 1795.

The deaths of Joel and Mary Lane occurred less than a week apart, Mary having survived her husband only five days when she died on 3 Apr. 1795. A small burial ground, believed to be the Lane family cemetery on South Boylan Avenue, Raleigh, was excavated in 1969, and those remains thought to be Joel Lane's were reinterred on 30 Mar. 1973 in Raleigh's City Cemetery. The Joel Lane House was acquired in 1927 by the Wake Committee of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of North Carolina for preservation. Designated a Raleigh Historic Site, it is also listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Active Civic and Political Life

Colonel Lane was an active participant in the affairs of North Carolina both as a colony and as a state. Joel Lane is known as the “Father of Wake County” because as a representative from Johnston County to the Colonial Assembly at New Bern in 1770, he introduced the bill for Wake’s creation from parts of Johnston, Orange and Cumberland counties. He was a colonel in the militia, justice of the peace, and served Wake County as senator in the General Assembly for eleven terms.

Revolutionary War Patriot

Lane supported North Carolina’s break from Great Britain. In 1775 he was a delegate to the revolutionary Provincial Congress held in Hillsborough. There he was appointed a member of the Council of Safety for the Hillsborough District. His brother Jesse and his nephew Martin were both patriot soldiers during the War. His father-in-law, John Hinton, was colonel of the Wake County militia and played an important role at the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge.

Participant in the Formation of the United States

Joel Lane was a delegate to the 1788 Constitutional Convention in Hillsborough. Like many of his contemporaries, he was troubled by the lack of a Bill of Rights in the original draft, and he voted along with the majority of North Carolina delegates to “neither ratify nor to reject the U.S. Constitution.” Both he and his son Henry were delegates to the 1789 Constitutional Convention at Fayetteville that did ratify the U.S. Constitution. In 1792, he was a presidential elector from Wake County.

UNC Trustee

Colonel Lane served as a member of the first Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina when it was established in 1789 until he died on March 29, 1795. Lane maneuvered to have his fellow trustees meet on a regular basis in his own backyard at Wake Court House, but this proviso was struck from the original charter for the University He then offered 640 acres of land he owned near what is now Cary, N. C., in Wake County, for the site of the university, but his offer was declined. The first student of UNC was Hinton James, son of Martha and Mary Hinton Lane’s sister, Alice, and Captain John James. Governor David Lowry Swain, grandson of Joel Lane’s brother, Jesse, served as President of the University 1835-68.