John Nisbet
John Nisbet was born about 1705, by the age on his gravestone. Family accounts say he came from Scotland with his wife Sarah about 1731, that their son Alexander was born on the crossing, and that they lived first in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where James and William were born.
Like many Scots-Irish families, the Nisbets moved south from Pennsylvania through the Shenandoah Valley into the Carolina backcountry. On 30 April 1753 John received a grant of 350 acres on the south side of the Catawba River, in what became Rowan County, North Carolina, the year the county was formed. He held other tracts on Buffalo Creek, Crane Creek and Grants Creek, and grants for 330 acres in 1756 and 640 acres in 1757 were issued on entries he made before he died.
His children, by the family account, were Alexander, born in 1731, James, born in 1733, William, John, David, Thomas and Elizabeth.
John died on 19 November 1755, aged 50. His wishes for his property were written down and signed with his mark, and recorded in the Rowan County court a year later, on 21 November 1756. The home plantation was to be divided, half to his son James, next to John Brandon, and half to his wife and his son David for her lifetime and then to David. William was to have the 350 acres on Buffalo Creek, John and Thomas the tract on Crane Creek, and his daughter Elizabeth the land on the south side of the Catawba and an enslaved woman named Anna. His wife was to keep her bed and the sorrel mare. Each child was to have the horses, mares or colts "formerly named for them." Sarah and James were the executors, with Alexander Osborne and James Harris to oversee them. Alexander, already settled on his own grant in the Waxhaws, is not named in it.
He was buried in the Thyatira Presbyterian churchyard near Mill Bridge, on land deeded to the church in 1753. His stone is the oldest marked grave there. Sarah's name was added to it after her death in October 1764.
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Cite: Heirology, "John Nisbet (1705-1755)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/john-nisbet-1705-1755-836004.