In 1820 David Dodd and his family were living in Lincoln County, Tennessee. David received a land grant in 1826 for thirty-nine and a half acres in Lincoln County. By 1830 David Dodd had moved his family to Lawrence County, Alabama. He received another land grant for twenty-eight acres in 1831. For a while in 1831 David lived with his father, Jesse Dodd in a log cabin on some eighty acres of land near Mount Hope in Lawrence County, Alabama. A photograph of this log cabin is available. One of his granddaughters said that while living in Alabama David signed as security on a note for a friend on some sort of loan. When his friend failed to pay off the note, David's property was taken to satisfy the debt. So the story has been handed down through the generations that even his wife's sidesaddle had been sold to help pay the debts of another man. David lost everything he owned because of this debt except for one mule. So, in the fall of 1835, taking his mule and his family David moved to the Arkansas Territory. By 1836 the David Dodd family was living in Saline County, Arkansas where a meeting was held in their home on 3 April 1836 for the purpose of organizing Spring Creek Church.
David Dodd was enumerated at Saline, Saline County, Arkansas for the October 8, United States Census, 1850. He was noted as born 1790 in Georgia. He was a farmer with $3000 of value in real estate. Under "married within the year" is noted that he was married in 1811 as seen in this image of the original census. Also included in the household are female Sally Dodd, female Emily Dodd and male Washington D Dodd.[1]
His family is enumerated there on the 1850 and 1860 United States census records. Apparently, David Dodd prospered in Arkansas. By the time the Civil War broke out David was the owner of one hundred twenty-five slaves and a lot of valuable real estate. In the fall of 1861 David sold some of his Arkansas property and moved to Bell County, Texas where he stayed and farmed for the duration of the war. When he returned to Arkansas from Texas he discovered that the Union forces had moved his houses and placed them in the town of Benton and used them for winter quarters during the fall of 1863. Not only his home and outbuildings were gone but all his other belongings were missing as well. He filed a claim before the Southern Claims commission for $3000.00 on 30 November 1871 where he testified that he was 83 years old, a resident of Benton, Arkansas, too elderly to work, and had been totally blind for four years. He claimed he had been opposed to succession and had cast his vote for the Union. Originally his claim was disallowed. The commission gave as the reason that the act of going to Texas during the war looked like sympathy with the Southern cause.
Later, in September of 1878 the name of this church was changed to First Baptist Church of Benton, Saline County, Arkansas.
They said it was not what a true Union man would have done. David's claim was eventually settled in 1892, eighteen years after his death. He died in January of 1874 in Benton, Saline County, Arkansas leaving a Will of which his son David Washington Dodd was the executor. From his estate a man named Bradford Morris was paid fifteen dollars on 19 January 1874 for lumber and nails for the coffin in which David was buried. David requested that his body be decently interred at the Benton Graveyard, near the town of Benton, Arkansas, with Masonic honors. [Sources: (1) 1820 United States census records; (2) Mrs Mark S Miller and her Relationship to the Dodd Family by Vivian Townley Turbyfill, as published in "The Saline", Saline County (Arkansas) History and Heritage Society, Volume II, Number #2, pages 71-81; (3) John's Genealogy Page: Descendants of Jesse Dodd by John L Dodd, <http://.www.tnstate.edu/jdodd/> as viewed on 22 May 2002].
Benton Graveyard, Benton, Saline County, Arkansas
See also:
United States Census, 1860??? United States Census, 1870???
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