John Broad Dimmitt (abt. 1736 - abt. 1785)

Born about 1736 in Baltimore, Province of Maryland

Ancestors

Husband of Frances (Watts) Dimmitt — married 5 Aug 1759 in St Johns Parish, Baltimore, Province of Maryland

Descendants

Died about 1785 at about age 49 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States

BIOGRAPHY

JOHN BROAD DIMMITT, son of James Dimmitt and Barbara Broad; born ca. 1736 or ca. 1738, Baltimore County, Maryland; died after 1786 (his last appearance in the records of Baltimore County or in any public document in Maryland was on 14 March 1786, the date of the last of his many land transactions).^[1]

He married FRANCES WATTS on 5 August 1759 in Baltimore;

Marriage St. John's Parish" Register

"Jno. Demmitt & Francis Waits married Aug. 5th 1759. " ^[2]

father of John and Robert Dimmitt (born 1762, Baltimore County; died ca. 1809, Knoxville, Tennessee;^[3] married Alice Chapman).

He was identified as “John Broad Dimit, Grandson and Heir at Law of Thomas Broad late of said county [Baltimore] deceased” in an agreement, dated 21 January 1786,^[4] in which John agreed to sell to Robert Long, Gent., all of the 474 acres surveyed or resurveyed for John Broad Dimmitt’s great-grandfather and grandfather, John and Thomas Broad, and patented by the latter on 15 September 1738.^[5]

Research Notes

John Broad Dimmit’s whereabouts for the last two or three decades of his life are rather mysterious. Perhaps he accompanied his parents when they removed to North Carolina in 1765; he did not sign the Joppa petitions of 1768,^[6] which, according to Richard B. Miller, suggests that he had left Maryland (but maybe he simply did not want to sign). He may have returned at some point, Miller speculates: “after his father’s death in 1774, or his grandparents’ death, or even his own mother’s death, whenever these occurred”; but was he actually gone? The record of one of his transactions in 1786 referred to him as being “of Baltimore county”; still he does not seem to have been a permanent resident.^[7]

If the document means that all the time he was “of Baltimore" he was living in Baltimore, he is probably ineligible to be the father of John Demmitt. On the other hand, William Dimmitt, the American Revolutionary soldier, demonstrably had a son named John located in North Carolina, but that John probably settled in Sumner County, Tennessee, where he owned a grant of land that he had claimed as heir to his father for Revolutionary War service. Sumner County, Tennessee is a long way from Wilkes County, North Carolina.

SOURCES

1. ↑ Richard B. Miller, “Notes on the Broad Family," Maryland Genealogical Society Bulletin 27:236, citing Baltimore Co. Land Records, Vol. WG&Z, p. 40.
2. ↑ familysearch.org St. John's Parish Register page 219 image 438
3. ↑ “Ties that Bind,” defunct website (accessed 2004).
4. ↑ Richard B. Miller, “Notes on the Broad Family, Maryland Genealogical Society Bulletin 27:236, citing Baltimore Co. Land Records, Vol. WG&Z, p. 46.
5. ↑ Richard B. Miller, “Notes on the Broad Family," Maryland Genealogical Society Bulletin 27:236, citing Maryland Land Records, Surveys and Patents, Vol. E1&5, p. 365 & Vol. E1&6, p. 55.
6. ↑ Petitions requesting that the county seat of Baltimore County should be moved from Joppa to Baltimore Town.
7. ↑ Miller, “Broad Family,” Maryland Genealogical Society Bulletin 27 (Spring 1986): 237.