John "Old John" Hembree, Sr.

See http://sites.rootsweb.com/~tnmcmin2/johnhem2.htm for Larry Petrisky’s extensive study of this family branch

John Amory “Emory” Hembree

• BIRTH 1744
• Purysburgh, Jasper County, South Carolina, USA
• DEATH 1808 (aged 63–64)
• Mountain Creek, Anderson County, South Carolina, USA
• BURIAL
• Mountain Creek Baptist Church Cemetery
• Anderson, Anderson County, South Carolina, USA
• MEMORIAL ID 88322410 ·

JOHN1 HEMBREE OR EMORY

John Emory was the son of Englishman JOHN AMORY (d.1746 SC) and a Cherokee woman whose English name may have been MARY (MOORE) AYERS. She was probably the grand-daughter of Col. James Moore (who was the son of Governor James Moore of South Carolina) and a Cherokee woman of Keowee.

John Emory was born c. 1744 near Purrysburg, SC and died c. 1808 in Pendleton District, South Carolina, or before 1810 in Kentucky.

John Emory was the son of Englishman John Amory (d.1746 SC) and a Cherokee
woman whose English name may have been Mary (Moore) Ayers. John’s father was somehow connected to the Amory family of Charleston, South Carolina. John’s mother was said to be the offspring of James Moore and a Cherokee woman of Keowee, perhaps a daughter of Charity Haig, the “smallpox conjurer” (healer) of Keowee. John’s mother was half-sister to Warhatchie (Wauhatchie) of Keowee, who served with General George Washington against the French in Virginia and Pennsylvania. She was also the consort of Thomas Ayers, Georgia’s agent to the Cherokee, who advised South Carolina on the building of a fort near Purrysburg, an outpost halfway between Charleston and Savannah. (John Amory the Englishman had a plot of land at Purrysburg and became a trader with the Cherokee in partnership with William Elder, John Watt, and Thomas Nightingale.)

John Emory was orphaned at an early age and raised by various people, including his “uncle” William Emory (actually a half brother) and his “uncle” Thomas Nightingale (relationship unclear). There is a family legend that John was involved in the building of a fort and this was probably Fort Loudon, Tennessee, where he worked as a helper at the age of 12 or 13. (Nightingale was involved in the Indian trade and was a saddle maker. He also drove supplies to Fort Loudon.) John was also likely involved in the rebuilding of the fort at Ninety Six in 1759. (Fort Hembree in Hayesville, North Carolina, was built for the Cherokee removal years after John’s death.)

John Emory was a Tory in the Revolution but he switched sides, a family legend has it, in North Carolina. He was regarded as a fugitive in South Carolina but was never prosecuted. He had very close ties with the Cherokee who turned cautiously neutral after being defeated by the colonists in 1776.

The transformation of the name from Emory to Hembree after the war was a fortunate combination of phonetics (both are pronounced the same in the backcountry and was spelled Embry or Emory during John’s British service) and the arrival of a Virginia Baptist family by that name who resided close to the Emorys in the South Carolina upcountry. (It was fortunate because it allowed the Emory family to escape further persecution for their Tory and Cherokee sympathies.) The “Hembree” spelling was the standard in South Carolina and was preserved by a few branches of the family. Others went by “Emery”, especially as they moved into Tennessee. The “Emory” spelling is the least used and nobody used “Amory” after the first generation.

John Emory was a half-brother of William Emory (b.c.1720-28 d.1770) and some relation to William’s step-brother or cousin Robert Emory (b.c.1718 d.1790). Both William and Robert had Cherokee children and children who were raised as white. Robert also had Creek children. John Emory was the cousin (“uncle”) of Drury Hembree (b.1755 SC d. 1845 MO) and Abraham Hembree (b.1757 SC d.c.1837 TN).

Some facts and legends regarding Old John Hembree

Legend: John Emory was born at a trading post in South Carolina. A birth date of 1733 for him
is too early. [That date refers to John Hembree, brother of James Hembree b.1730 of Virginia.] By legend we know that his father was John or William (son of John) and his mother was Cherokee with an English name of Mary Moore but another name of “Ears” or “Ayers”. His Cherokee roots were in the Keowee village / Seneca River area in what is now Oconee County, South Carolina. His English roots were in Charleston and Goose Creek, South Carolina. His father died when he was young, his mother was said to have gone to England and died over there. His half uncle was war chief Warhatchy (Wauhatchee) of Keowee. A half brother (old enough to be an uncle) was William Emory. Another “uncle” was Thomas Nightingale of Goose Creek. Legends of fort building can trace back to Old John Emory’s birth.

Fact: The family of John Amory (father of John Emory) came to Georgia in 1737 but went to Charleston in 1738, and were not involved in the Indian trade until 1740 or so. The mother of John Emory was the consort of Thomas Ayers, Georgia’s agent to the Cherokee.

Fact: In 1739 and 1740 Thomas Ayers recruited the Cherokee and South Carolina to aid Georgia in another war on the Spanish in Florida (The War of Jenkins Ear). John Amory, son of John Amory, was killed in this war in Georgia. (He was a drummer.) His body was returned to Charleston and buried (as John Emmar) with the family in Saint Philip’s Parish in Oct. 1740.

John Amory Sr. obtained 500 acres in Purrysburg, South Carolina in Dec. 1738. In Oct 1742 he had these lands surveyed to secure a grant. In 1743 South Carolina recruited Thomas Ayers to build a fort at Purrysburg. He made an initial visit, leaving his Cherokee “bride” there, expecting to return. But Georgia raised objections to Engineer Ayers helping South Carolina when there was so much to be done in Georgia.

Legend: John Amory met the Cherokee consort of Thomas Ayers at Purrsyburg in 1743. John Emory was born (or just conceived) at Purrysburg in 1744 or perhaps at Keowee – his mother’s village. His mother’s name was “Many/Mary Ears” or “Mary Ayers”. (The Catawba Indians of SC also have Ears/Ayers families – perhaps our Thomas Ayers was more active in SC than we thought.)

Legend: John Emory spent part of his boyhood with a “revered uncle” at Goose Creek, South Carolina. This was probably Thomas Nightingale (d.1769) and his wife Sarah Amory. He was also with his “uncle” William Emory (d.1770) at Ninety Six. When William went off to join the British Army in 1758 John Emory (age 14) became “uncle” to Drury Emory (b.1755) and Abraham Emory (b.1757). William returned around 1766, and spent his last few years in Charleston.

Legend: John Emory was on his own (with two or three nephews in tow) by 1770 in upper South Carolina. Families associated with Emory included Smith (of Keowee), Murphy (offspring of Daniel Murphy killed 1751), Elder and Watts (partners of his father), Dougherty and Doughty/Dowdie (a variation of the name), Welch (of Ninety Six), Downing (Indian trader partner of Welch), and, of course, Moore. There are also connections to Davis, Harris, Harlan, Buffington, Jackson, Fields, Vann, Wilkinson (Wilkeson), Dewess (Dues or Due), Pettit, Pearis (of Keowee), Capt John Stuart and Alexander Cameron. All of these names have Cherokee connections before the Revolution. Two different lines of the Martin family are also connected: one before the war and one after.

Fact: John Emory was part of the backcountry Loyalist militia recruited by Richard Pearis under orders from Capt. John Stuart and Alexander Cameron (both fled to Florida). The Loyalists took control of the fort at Ninety Six in 1775. (They relocated and rebuilt the fort at the old property of Robert Gouedy. The fort was named Star Fort or Starr’s Fort.) A large rebel force took back the fortand chased and arrested many of the Loyalists. (After the arrest of Pearis a Creek Indian trader named Thomas Brown rallied support for the Loyalist cause. After the war he died in a London prison.) Some of those captured at Ninety Six were: Richard Pearis, George Pearis, John Davies, Thomas Welch, John Welch, William Elliot, Joseph Turner.

Legend: John Emory fled with his family into the mountains via the old Keowee trail which led into North Carolina. Other Tories fled to Florida where Captain John Stuart was but family tradition makes no mention of Florida.

Fact: In the South Carolina Gazette of 16 and 17 December 1779, John Emory was listed among SC residents who would forfeit their lands if they did not return to SC and take an oath of loyalty to the rebel government. Also on this list were Thomas Jackson, Barzil Lee, William Lee (Sr. & Jr.), Barnet Collier, David and Zachariah Bailey, George and David Moore, William Murphy, Aaron Pinson, Robert Coleman, and so on. Many of these men wound up in Spartanburg District and Pendleton District after the war.

Fact: On 1 Dec 1779 John Emory enlisted as a private (along with Jacob Fields and James Murphy) in a company of SC Loyalists under Lt. Col. Alexander Innis at Savannah, Georgia.

Legend: After the fall of Charleston or in 1781 (after defeat of the Tories at Cowpens near what would become Spartanburg) John Emory helped some Loyalist families of Abbeville District, South Carolina, escape to North Carolina. Up in North Carolina, it is said, he switched sides. His wife died in North Carolina by 1785.

Fact: Charleston fell 12 May 1780 to the British. Col. Tarleton’s slaughter of surrendering American militia on 29 May 1780 turned up-country sympathies toward the rebels. On 7 Oct 1780 backwoodsmen defeated the Loyalists at Kings Mountain. In May 1781 the Loyalists were defeated at Fort Ninety-Six (Star Fort). On 17 July 1781 British Colonel Coates burned a church down (as depicted in the movie The Patriot). By April 1782 Loyalists and their families were being run off their land and even murdered. In Sep 1783, after peace was signed, the South Carolina legislature began confiscating the remaining property of Loyalists (when they could find it).

Fact: In March 1783 a list of enemies (Tories) was compiled by SC militia commanders after the war. On the list of Col. Thomas Brandon were “John Emrey”, Barnet Collier, Robert Coleman, William Lee Jr., George and Davis Moore, William Moore, John and James Martin, David and Thomas Bailey, and so on.

Fact: On 15 Nov 1788 the land grant of John Emory (Hembree) and Joshua Pettit in Spartanburg County was surveyed. The land was near Goucher’s Creek which fed into the Pacolet River. This land was later described in a 1 Dec 1801 deed as on the north side of the Pacolet River opposite the Healing Springs. Abraham Hembree later lived on or near this land. Ephraim Hembree, son of Abraham and son-in-law of Joshua Pettit received & sold some of this land in 1827.

Fact: In 1788 John Emory and John Elder filed civil claims together against William Weir in Spartanburg District Court. Weir responded by filing writs of scieri facias against a John Hull to make him responsible for the charge.

Fact: On 1 Mar 1788 John Hembree witnessed a deed in Spartanburg County. The deed involved the sale of two tracts of land owned by John & Sarah Campbell.

Fact: In 1788 John Hembree was summoned for jury duty in Spartanburg County. He was apparently out of state. He cannot be located in the 1790 census.

Fact: On 16 Jun 1789 John Hembry was named as the father in a bastardy case against Rebekah Sullivan in Spartanburg County. Her brother was Ezekiel Sulllivan. Ephraim Jackson, a friend of Ezekiel, later married Rebecca. Both Ezekiel Sullivan and Ephraim Jackson witnessed land deeds for the Hembrees in later years.

Fact: On 7 May 1792 “Abram. Emery” was granted 200 acres on the Keowee River in Pendleton District for his war service. On 19 Nov 1795 “Abraham Emery and wife Winnifred” of Spartanburg sold the land. Ephraim Jackson was a witness to the transaction.

Around 1789 the family of David Hembree (1728 – 1809) and his son (Rev.) James Hembree (1754 – 1849) moved from Spartanburg to Pendleton District, locating on 26 Mile Creek (in what would later become Anderson County). Old John Hembree’s son, William, would locate there about the same time and the family would live with him (Old John perhaps did not want his name on any land records).

Legend: Could the families of David Hembree and John Amory (d.1746) be connected in Barbados or Jamaica (from England)? The Amory family of Charleston, SC (before John arrived) had Jamaica connections and later established themselves in Boston, Massachusetts. There is a persistent belief that the Hembrees came by way of Barbados (where an Edward Hanburry can be found in 1690). Or was their connection a combination of coincidence and conversion to the Baptist faith by some of the SC Emorys? Even then, many Baptists were expelled from Massachusetts and found (for a time) more freedom in Virginia.

Could they be connected back in England? So little is known of them back there. Perhaps that is the missing piece of the puzzle.

Legend: Notes on “Nana” – the French Woman of Keowee:

Nana was born in the Cherokee village of Keowee around 1733 and she was captured and sold into slavery as a young girl, winding up in the French West Indies. She spoke only Cherokee and French (and later occasionally English). At the age of 13 or 14, her French masters sent her back to Charleston to be freed. The ship’s steward, however, tried to sell her. She called out in Cherokee and caused a commotion when someone recognized what she was saying. A benefactor came forward (probably William Elder or Thomas Nightingale) and purchased her freedom. She became attached to the Amory and Nightingale families and moved in and out of their households off and on for about 80 years.

She rejoined her people in Keowee and probably was a factor in the anti-British, pro-French disposition of that important town and of Attakullakulla (Little Carpenter) for many years. (She was Little Carpenter’s wife for several years.) She was possibly a half-sister of John Emory’s mother because she “adopted” him and followed him throughout his life.

After the Cherokee War (1762) she lived in Goose Creek with the Emorys and Nightingales and helped to raise their children. (The older Emory children were kept in the Cherokee Nation by Little Carpenter and Tassel. Tassel was a grandfather to the Emory children.)

Nana’s devotion to the Emory children raises the question if she was in fact John Emory’s mother but she was the source for the information on his mother. She appears in the 1830 census in the household of Edward Emory (Hembree) 90-100 years old and died soon thereafter. Legend was that she was Edward’s mother-in-law but that turns out to be not true. In the way of legends, though, she was probably John’s mother-in-law, the mother of his first wife. This would explain the name given to Elizabeth Jane, “Yen Acona” – that would be her mother’s name, the name she was known by, “Jane of Oconee”. (Nana or Nannie or Nonnie may have been a shortened version of her clan name: “a ni” is how the clan names begin.)

Notes on the wives of “Old John” Hembree or Emory:

1. He probably married his first wife in 1764/5 in Goose Creek, South Carolina. She was a Cherokee mixed-blood. She died young (1767) during a “plague” that lingered in lower South Carolina from 1768 to 1770. John had one child by her and this child was closer to the Cherokee than his other children (except perhaps his son Michael who was born into the tribe by right of his mother). The later connections suggest that his first wife was a mixed-blood Elder, Jane or Nancy (Nana) Elder, daughter of Nana (above) and William Elder, who may have been her benefactor. (See John Amory and the Emory Cherokees for more details.)

2. His second wife was a widow, Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Cantle. They married in January 1769. [SC Hist. Mag. xi, 36]. She died 9 November 1769. [Ibid., x, 166], and was buried at Saint Philip’s Parish as Mary Emory. They had no children. [A John Cantle was buried at St. Philip’s on 2 Aug 1768. He was the husband of Sarah Loocock Cantle who married William Emory in 1769.] (I suspect John Emory had a son Thomas by his first wife who died very young.)

3. After burying his uncle William Emory in July 1770, John took his children, his nephews, and his nanny (“Nana”) from the low country to the back country, probably to the Congaree settlement or back up to Ninety Six. He met and married there his third wife, a white or mixed-blood woman whose was name was probably Martha or Mary, possibly a Murphy or a Jackson. Thomas Jackson, carpenter and Indian trader, took in the young wandering Emory family. Abraham Emory, a nephew of John Emory, would marry Winnifred Jackson, the daughter (I believe) of Ephraim Jackson of this family group.

When the Revolution broke out the Jacksons, Murphys and Emorys were Loyalists to the British crown and had to flee to North Carolina to escape retribution. It was in North Carolina, around 1784, that John Hembree’s third wife died.

4.. His fourth wife was a Cherokee woman named Susannah but this marriage was uncertain. They had a son together in 1785 but by 1788 John Emory followed his nephews into Spartanburg. He may have returned to her by 1789. She may have been the Stratton widow in Burke County, North Carolina, named Susannah who was cited for having a child out of wedlock.

5. In Spartanburg he had an affair with a much younger woman and she became pregnant. John Emory, it seems, went back up to North Carolina and reunited with Susannah. But she was on her way westward, to Alabama and then to Arkansas, with the tribe (c. 1792). She left her son Michael with John to be raised as a white man, because the Cherokee were facing extinction. (Another less colorful possibility is that she married her former brother-in-law and he did not want the boy.)

Some notes on the family of Thomas Jackson:

(Note: I no longer believe the family of Thomas Jackson was connected to the Welch or the Emory family. The William, Ephraim, Reuben, Winnefred Jackson connected to Abraham Hembree were from Virginia by way of North Carolina, coming to Spartanburg c.1785.)

JACKSON, THOMAS

Edward Jackson and James Jackson came to Savannah, Georgia in 1733/34. They both had sons Edward, Thomas, James. Thomas Jackson the Indian trader of SC was a son of either Edward or James. An Edward Jackson, brother of Thomas, had an Indian wife (Catawba, Cherokee or Creek) and lived in the Edgefield District of SC. (He may have had a white wife also.)

Thomas Jackson was a trader at Cherokee middle town Ioree (Joree) in North Carolina on the path from Keowee to Chote. (Ambrose Davis was the principal trader there.) In August 1750 he was listed in the South Carolina Journal as a Cherokee trader approved to trade in the Creek Nation, along with Abraham Smith and Robert Emory (of Keowee). He was one of the traders (and associates) killed in the early violence after the Fort Prince George outrage in January 1760.

Another (or the same) Thomas Jackson had land near the Congaree trading post in South Carolina in the late 1750’s. He was described as a carpenter and Indian trader.

Another Thomas Jackson, a North Carolina Quaker, was one of 62 Quakers receiving grants of land (forming Wrightsborough, Georgia) in December 1768. Others included Richard Moore, Richard Jones, William Elam, Absolom Jackson, George Beck, Edward Murphy, Benjamin Jackson, Isaac Jackson, Richard Bird, and John Murray. (Thomas Jackson Jr. was dismissed from the Quakers in 1776 for brandishing arms and acting in a warlike manner.)

Thomas Jackson and George Beck (father of Jeffery Beck who married into the tribe) were killed by Creek Indians at Wrightsborough, Georgia, in 1771. It seems the Quakers traded with the Creeks. Fellow traders George Beck Jr. and Richard Fields (who married an Emory) came up with a plan for the Creeks to pay off their debts to the traders with land. Indian Commissioner John Stuart opposed the idea as naive and dangerous: unscrupulous traders would quickly dispossess the tribes. (This turned out to be the case.) But Governor James Wright of Georgia lobbied England to get the foolish plan approved. He was unsuccessful, but land cessions to pay off debts would doom the tribes after the Revolution. [Col Recs GA, Coleman XXVIII Pt 2, 351-353]