Alexander Nisbett Jr.
Alexander Nisbett Jr. was born on 21 February 1762 in the Waxhaw settlement of Lancaster County, South Carolina. He was the fifth child of Alexander Nisbet and Agness Ramsey. His father died in July 1773, when the boy was eleven. The father's will ordered the plantation sold when the executors thought best, with the money divided between the widow and the six sons, Alexander among them, so that they could buy land elsewhere.
He stayed on the farm with his mother through the Revolution. Several of his brothers served in the war, but a family history written in 1961 found no service record for him, and supposed he was kept at home with his mother and his younger brother Benjamin.
About 1793 he married Mary Woods, who was born on 18 August 1773. They lived on his mother's farm until Agness died in August 1797. Their first three children were born there: Joseph William on 29 September 1794, Nancy about 1797 and William M. about 1800.
About 1800 Alexander took his wife and children west with his brother James and his family. They crossed the mountains into Tennessee, and Alexander settled in Rutherford County, south of Murfreesboro, among the first settlers of a county formed in 1803. Six more children were born there: Isabella D. in 1802, Elizabeth P. about 1805, Alexander about 1808, Rebecca, Ephraim about 1813 and Margaret, called Peggy, about 1814. Alexander and Rebecca died as children.
The county records show a farmer adding to his land a few acres at a time. In March 1818 Jesse Brashear acknowledged in open court a deed to him for twenty-five acres, and the next year he bought ten acres from Thomas Moore. On 16 January 1826 he swore before the county court that he had killed a grown wolf inside the county, and the court ordered a certificate issued to him, as the law directed for a wolf bounty.
His mother's family and the Montgomerys had both come out of Lancaster County. In October 1840 Joseph A. Montgomery, a cousin, named him an executor of his will and left him a lot in Murfreesboro on the Shelbyville Turnpike, with two hundred dollars. On 8 October 1840 Alexander gave an enslaved woman named Sophia, about forty-five years old, to the six children of Francis and Rebecca Manning, Montgomery's sister, "for and in consideration of the love and affection I entertain" for them.
He died on 18 November 1841, aged 79, without a will. In November 1844 his heirs signed an agreement settling the estate among themselves. They left all his land to his widow for her lifetime, to be sold and divided equally after her death. Joseph Nisbett signed first. Mary died in June 1851, and in September 1852 the county court ordered his 135 acres sold for the "children and heirs at law of Alexander Nesbett."
Alexander and Mary were buried in a small graveyard on their farm, about five miles south of Murfreesboro, on land later known as the Swanson farm. When the family historian searched it out in 1957 it held about forty graves, and only two stones still stood: his and Mary's. His is badly worn.
Sources
If Alexander Nisbett Jr. is in your family, start your own tree.
Cite: Heirology, "Alexander Nisbett Jr. (1762-1841)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/alexander-nisbett-jr-1762-1841-dc6db9.