John Wiginton Back to South Carolina

A Pioneer Village Museum in Campbell County, Tennessee

I don’t like to jump back too far when filling in a timeline. Although it's tempting to jump back and see where he came from it's usually not as productive. It’s better to go back in increments when possible. Once you have enough to fill in gaps then you can jump back a little more in time. I believe I’ve collected quite a bit on John Wiginton, my 4th great grandfather, at least as far I can go for now in Tennessee. To find further information I’ll have to plan a research trip to Tennessee in the near future and visit all the counties that he resided in or that his daughters married in. So for now I’ll look at what I can find from the internet, local research libraries, and microfilm from the Family History library.

I've now started looking at John’s home before he went to Tennessee. From census records in 1850 and 1860 John stated that he was born in Georgia. If he was born about 1784 from calculations Georgia was Indian Territory at the time, but it’s not impossible for him to have been born there. Unfortunately there are no records for Georgia at that time period. If you look at census records for Jeremiah Wiginton, the younger man mentioned in the last blog then he was born in South Carolina. I've surmised that Jeremiah was most likely a younger brother or a nephew. He is found in several of the counties with John in Tennessee and seems to have followed John with almost every move. Jeremiah was born about 1800 so we can start looking there for my Wigintons, and at least there will be records in South Carolina for that time period. So far I have no other info pointing me toward South Carolina. Of John’s six children only one lived to be in the 1850 census and that was my 3rd great grandmother, Lucinda Tallent. She stated she was born in Tennessee.

So beginning this leg of my research on South Carolina I found there were some Wigintons living in the old Pendleton District of South Carolina, which just happens to lie on the Georgia border. So now I have a time gap to work on from the date of John’s birth in 1784 to 1812 when he was found on the Warren County, Tennessee tax list. John had two of his daughters in this time period. Melinda was born about 1806 and Rhoda was born about 1809. I’ve already done some research on these two daughters and have exchanged info with some of their descendents. This will be a big block of time of about 28 years to fill in for John Wiginton. I’ll do what I can to find more records in Tennessee, but I can also work backward to see what I can find in the old Pendleton District in South Carolina. First order of business is to study the record-keeping that was done in this area and get a sense of the history of the area.