Ancestors

Joseph William Nisbett

Joseph William Nisbett was born on 29 September 1794 in Lancaster County, South Carolina, the eldest child of Alexander Nisbet and Mary Woods, by a family history of 1961. As a boy he came west with his parents to the new county of Rutherford in Middle Tennessee, where the family were among the first settlers around Murfreesboro. Clerks wrote his name Nisbett, Nesbitt and Nesbett, sometimes all three on one page.

On 26 January 1818 he married Rosanna Newman in Rutherford County. They had fourteen children, whose names and dates were kept in his family Bible: Frankey, 1819; Mary Permelah, 1820; Nancy, 1821; Alexander, 1823; John Newman, 1824; Isabella; Susan; Joseph Newman; Benjamin Forrest; Rosannah; Ephraim; James William; Elizabeth Frances; and Nathaniel Crowder. Rosanna died on 4 April 1846, leaving the youngest children still small.

In the census of 1850 Joseph was 56, a widower on his farm, with Nancy, Isabella, Susan, Joseph, Benjamin, Rosanna, Ephraim, William, Elizabeth and Nathaniel at home. His sons Alexander and John Newman were gone. They had ridden out of Rutherford County on 15 October 1849, bound for Texas.

On 27 October 1857 Joseph made his will. He gave each of his younger children a bed and furniture, and to most of them a horse, saddle and bridle. Nathaniel, the youngest, was to have a horse worth $120 when he turned ten. "I wish my children to remain on the farm for the next year," he wrote, with a year's provisions out of the crop, and then the land was to be sold and the rest divided among "my bodily heirs." He named his son Benjamin F. and Ephraim Nesbitt executors and signed on 27 October. He died a week later, on 3 November 1857, and was buried near Murfreesboro.

At the December court the executors and heirs asked leave to sell his two slaves, a man named Ed and a woman named Ann, so the money could be divided. The court found that he "left surviving him Eleven children to wit, the said Mary Howland, Rosanna Turner, Alexander, John, Susan, Joseph, Benjamin F., Ephraim, William, Elizabeth and Nathaniel Nesbitt." The last three were minors, under the guardianship of Ephraim Nisbett Jr.

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Cite: Heirology, "Joseph William Nisbett (1794-1857)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/joseph-william-nisbett-1794-1857-6b83ee.