George Peter Zellner
George Peter Zellner was born about 1760 in Germany. Family accounts place his birth at Hanover. He came to America during the Revolution as a soldier in the Ansbach-Bayreuth regiment, one of the German units the British crown hired to fight in North America, and his name appears on its muster rolls in 1783. Many of these German soldiers chose to stay in America when the war ended, and he was one of them.
After the war he went south to Bertie County, in the tidewater of North Carolina. There he married Elizabeth Nicholls, by whom he had a daughter, Barbara. Elizabeth died young. On 18 November 1788 William Ashburn of Bertie County sold him a house and lot adjoining Spring Branch for fifty pounds, with John Nicholls and Reuben Knight as witnesses. On 17 March 1789 he married Mary Capehart, a Bertie County woman born in 1761.
George and Mary had five children: Arnold, born in 1790, Sarah in 1792, John William in 1794, Andrew in 1798 and George Peter in 1800. In the 1790s George bought at the estate sales of his neighbors, among them John Nicholls in 1791, William Jordan and Hardy Hunter.
Late in 1798 or early in 1799 the family moved to Georgia and settled in Lincoln County, on the Savannah River. Andrew, the fourth child, was six months old. They farmed there for more than twenty years. Arnold married Margaret Holmes, a daughter of Benjamin Holmes, in 1811, and Andrew married her half-sister Rebecca in 1819.
On 2 November 1821, "being weak in body but of Sound Mind and Memory," George Zellner Sen. of Lincoln County made his will. He left fifty dollars to "my daughter Barbary Bentley," noting that he had given her a share before. He left "my beloved wife Mary Zellner" four hundred dollars, an enslaved girl named Milly, a horse and saddle, a cow and calf and whatever household and kitchen furniture she wanted for her lifetime. After her death that property, and everything else he owned, which was to be sold, went equally to "my five youngest children, that is to say, Arnold Zellner, John Zellner, Sarah McCord, Andrew Zellner and George Zellner, share and share alike." Mary was also to have a feather bed and furniture of her own choosing outright. He named Elisha McCord and his son John Zellner executors.
He died before the January court of 1823. On 6 January 1823 Travis McKinney and Silas Goldman swore in open court that they had seen him sign the will, and it was recorded on 13 January in Will Book B. His grave has not been found. His son George died the same year, and the family soon left Lincoln County for Monroe County, taking Mary with them.
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Cite: Heirology, "George Peter Zellner (b. 1760)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/george-peter-zellner-1760-1b7268.