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Thomas B. Jarnagin was born on 25 July 1746[1] probably in Pittsylvania County, Virginia Colony. (Exact birthplace is unknown.) He is the son of Col. John Jarnagin and Mary Bynum. Thomas is buried in Thomas Jarnagin Family Cemetery, Morristown, Hamblen County, Tennessee. A monument erected by the Powers family in 1974 gives names, birth and death dates for Thomas, his wife Mary Witt, Benjamin and Susannah Lea Jarnagin, and Lewis and Lucinda Jarnagin Leeper. Thomas Jarnagin born 25 July 1746 and died 6 February 1802. The original marker is not legible.[2].[3]
Thomas married Mary Lavinia Witt about 1767 in Virginia. They left Virginia about 1778 and settled in the Watauga settlement in Washington County, North Carolina. By 1786 they had moved into Greene County, North Carolina and settled on the north side of the Nolichucky River at the mouth of Long Creek, which is presently in Hamblen County, TN.
He finished the building of his home, which he called Mount Harmony, in 1792. It stands about four miles from White Pine and about six miles southeast of Morristown in Hamblen County, Tennessee.
Thomas served as a Captain of a militia company from 1779 to July 1783 under the name Jonakin. In October 1984 the Historian of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution approved the marking of the grave of Capt. Thomas Jarnagin with a bronze marker recognizing his services in the cause of American Independence. The grave is located in the Thomas Jarnagin family cemetery on the Mount Harmony boundary on Long Creek presently in Hamblen Co., TN.
See also:
Thomas Jarnigan of Jefferson County and His Descendants: Capt. Thomas Jarnigan, who settled on the North side of "Chucky" river about four miles from its mouth in 1784-1785, built the first mill in Jefferson County on Long Creek. According to Goodspeed's History, he was from somewhere on the Dan River "in Virginia." The mistake in this statement is that, instead, he came from North Carolina, though perhaps from that part of it through which, dropping down out of Virginia, the Dan River runs.
Originally, the Jarnigan family came from Nansemond County, Virginia; from thence to Chowan & Bertie counties, on down into the Neuse River country in Johnston & Duplin and Sampson counties. The Jarnigans intermarried in North Carolina with the Needham Bryan family, and there was a Needham Jarnigan, among others. Capt. Thomas, or his father moved farther west to Orange County, and along the Dan River, and then, later, probably was among those who accompanied General James Robertson to the Watauga settlement. He lived in Carter or in Washington County in a Fort for a year or so, and when the lands below were opened for settlement, he came along with many neighbors to the Nolichucky River in Jefferson County, TN.
Source: Tennessee Cousins: A History of Tennessee People, Worth Ray (1950) at 100.
as cited on Caswell County Family Tree
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Categories: Virginia Militia, American Revolution | NSSAR Patriot Ancestors