Hi Cuz - just have a good guess that Joseph came from Mecklenburgh County NC - see our Bio for him at our website.
http://home.comcast.net/~zieman3/familytree.htmMeanwhile, just out of curiosity, as as a direct descnedent of William, do you have any ideas on the origin of the
Haggard in
Williams' line:
Per RootsWeb.com posting of Paul
Murray at
towimeja@aol.com last updated 02/07/01: "The Dunn's originally came from
England to the United States and settled in North Carolina. Then later moved to
White County,
Tennessee and later to
Humphreys County before the Civil War. William's family lived on Little Blue Creek, near
McEwen TN".
From the 1850
White County TN census, we clearly see that all of the children of Joseph and Anna beginning with Samuel (age 21) were born in Tennessee; this of course includes William (age 18). Therefor, our Dunns moved to
White County some time between 1827 and 1829.
From "The
Heritage of
White County", Section 249 - School Teachers,
White County TN 1854 we find that William L. Dunn was paid $19.00 for teaching in school District 2. for the year and that his brother-in-law Wm. F. Carter (married Mary Ann) was paid $43.00 in 1855 in District 1. There is no reason to doubt the middle initial of L. for our William.
Wm. F. Carter was also the first
White County School Superintendant in 1867 and his son
Clark Cumming Carter "saught an education" and attended the Sparta Normal School where he met and wed his Elocution teacher, Permelia
Randolph Haggard. Where did the name of William's gr grandson John
Haggard Dunn come from? (This is a bit strange, and is probably one generation too late to answer this question, but
Clark and Permelia had a son
Merrill and they all moved to Nashville. Merrill then met
Milbury Dollie
Sugg of
Dickson at The Peabody School for Teachers in Nashville and wed her; our punch line is that Dollie's father, Dr. William Jesse
Sugg, began his practice in
McEwen in the 1890's!!!)
As to other family ties, there are proven Carters and Dunns buried in the Mt. Gilead Methodist cemetery, southwest of Sparta:
Montgomery Carter (another son of William F.), his second wife and daughter are in the new section, and Joseph, Joseph
Whitson and Samuel
Dunn are in the old section at the top of the hill; there is Montgomery's first wife and infant grandchild next to them, as well as one or two more unmarked graves. It is possible one of these is Anna.
Perhaps most significantly, on 1 Dec 1855 at
White County TN, William
Dunn sold "all of the lands belonging to the estate of his late father Joseph
Dunn Deceased" - an estimated One Hundred and Seventy One acres for One Hundred Dollars - to his brother-in-law W. F. Carter. He signed simply as William, no middle initial, and there were two Subscribing Witnesses attesting to his identity - presumbably because he was only 23 at the time. (This document also establishes that William Calvin was born in White County; we will have to find the 1860 census to determine when our young William
Dunn went on to
Humphreys County).
The question then becomes why older Samuel did not handle the Joseph
Dunn estate - he is shown as being buried in the Mt. Gilead cemetery (above) - had he left and come back? Or as implied in mentioning all the school teachers in the family, was William
Dunn the only one to read and write? (Ronnie
Dunn of DeKalb County,
Tennessee says his line of
Dunn had "above average literacy rates").
To confirm the family oral history, William is found in the 1880 US Census, TN Humphreys Co., CD 10, Sht 12, ED 101 . Paul
Murray reports that William is also found in the 1900 census and we get the exact date of death from an import of Paul's entitled "EdGrnMcx.FTW"