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From the files of Gene Blair. Typed by Jeanne Gold (remove Spamhate from Jeanne's address to send her mail).
(Note from Marty Grant). George F. Dugger (1896) was a son of John F. Dugger (1856) and Eliza Ann Williams. John F. Dugger was a son of David A. Dugger (1814) and Elizabeth Bunton. David A. Dugger was a son of William Dugger (1750) and Nancy Ann Brown. William Dugger's parents are much debated. George's memoirs perpetuate the claim that Julius C. Dugger was the father of William (1750), though no sources are offered. Much is claimed in these memoirs and they are fascinating to read. However, keep in mind the amount of time that has passed between the events in question and when they were written down (in the early or mid 20th century). Much of the earlier data is apparently based on oral family traditions and can not be confirmed from other sources. Like all family tradition, this should be kept in the proper context. It isn't gospel nor firsthand information, but just stories handed down over many years. Down through the generations names and events get confused and people are credited with events they weren't involved with. But there is always a grain of truth in family tradition, so it should never be discarded. Much thanks to Gene Blair and Jeanne Gold for making these memoirs available to the rest of us!
Note: George's memoirs were extensive, but only a few pages were devoted to genealogy. Only those pages are abstracted here.
MEMOIRS AND HISTORICAL NOTES OF GEORGE F. DUGGER, SR.
Pages 1 - 3
George F. Dugger, Sr. was born in Carter County, Tennessee, on December 28, 1896. He is the son of John F. Dugger and Eliza Ann Williams. John F. Dugger was born on August 8, 1856, in Carter County, Tennessee, and was the son of David A. Dugger and Elizabeth Bunton. David A. Dugger was born in 1814 in Carter County, Tennessee. Elizabeth Bunton was born in 1820 in Johnson County, Tennessee. They were married in Mountain City on July 7, 1840. David A. Dugger was the son of William Dugger and Nancy Ann Brown Pierce. William Dugger was born in Wilkes County, North Carolina, on March 3, 1750, and Nancy Ann Brown Pierce was born in Johnson County, Tennessee, sometime before 1800, as they were married in 1809. William Dugger was the son of Julius Caesar Dugger, who was born in Brunswick County, Virginia, about the year 1720. His mother was a Kincaid from Virginia, and I do not have the date of her birth. My grandmother, Elizabeth Bunton, was the daughter of Elijah Bunton of Johnson County Tennessee, and Emily Dugger, a distant relative of David A. Dugger. Elijah Bunton was the son of William Bunton, a Revolutionary War soldier. At the present time, I do not have.his wife's name.
On my mother's side, Eliza Ann Williams, who was born in 1862, was the daughter of W. W. Williams, a Civil War soldier in the Union Army. Her mother was Phoebe Lovelace, of Carter County, Tennessee. Her grandfather and my great-grandfather, was Pleasant Williams of Carter County, Tennessee, who was born about the year 1805. His father was Mordecai Williams, of Carter County, Tennessee, and his ---nothcr was Elzabeth Stover, a sister of Daniel L. Stover, whose grandson, Daniel L. Stover, Jr. , married Mary Johnson, a daughter of President Andrew Johnson. Pleasant Williams' wife, the mother of my grandfather, W. W. Williams, was Lucy Maury. Phoebe Lovelace, my grandmother, was a daughter of William Lovelace. William Lovelace was the son of John Lovelace, a Revolutionary War soldier. I do not have the wife of either William Lovelace or John Lovelace at this time.
All of my grandfathers were pioneers who settled in Tennessee at a very early date. My great-great-grandfather, Julius Caesar Dugger, came to Tennessee in 1766, which is verified by the various histories of Tennessee, and he was possibly the first settler of the state. My great-grandfather Lovelace and great-great-grandfather Lovelace, and my great-great-grandfather Bunton came to Tennessee in the very beginning of the settlement of Tennessee.
In 1863, when my father was seven years old, my Grandmother Dugger, the mother of seven children, received a visit from a soldier from Richmond, Virginia. He told her that her son, Michael Dugger, my uncle, who at that time was 19 years of age, was so weak that he was starving himself to death in Richmond, as a Confederate prisoner, and that he had been offered to be released if he would swear allegiance to the Confederate Army. When this soldier, a young man by the name of Clemons, explained to my Grandmother that he was going to be dead in a week or so unless he would swear allegiance to the Confederate Army, my grandmother, like all mothers, saddled her horse, and with some neighbors started on her way to Richmond to persuade him to swear allegiance to the Confederate Army and save his life. She was killed by guerrillas in a skirmish and never reached Richmond. My uncle, Michael, refused to swear allegiance, because Confederate soldiers had hung Alec Dugger, a close relative, whose only crime was that he wanted to join the Union Army and was trying to escape from Confederate guerrillas. He died in prison.
I am extremely proud of all of my early ancestors, because they represent the fine families coming to this section. The Stovers, who came from Virginia, were related to President Eisenhower, but I do not have the father of Daniel L. Stover, Sr. , or my great-greatgrandmother, Elizabeth Stover. There are a great number of descendants of Elizabeth Stover, John and William Lovelace, William Bunton, and Julius C. Dugger, who are the worthy descendants of their intrepid pioneer ancestors. I am not certain as to who was the father and mother of Mordecai Williams.
George F. Dugger, Sr. married Rena Elizabeth Hyder on April 8, 1922. They have three children, John F. Dugger, Sr. , born January 7, 1923, in Athens, Georgia, who married Peggy Barkley. They have three children, Brenda Bae Dugger, Rebecca Elizabeth Dugger, and John F. Dugger, Jr. George Dugger, Sr.'s other son is George F. Dugger, Jr., who was born in Carter County, Tennessee, April 18, 1928. He married Jane Hensley and they have two children, Mark Dugger and Cathy Dugger. Their daughter, Kathryn, was born on October 2, 1926. She married L. M. Fouts, Jr., and they have two sons, Thomas M. Fouts and Michael Frank Fouts.
During the War Between the States, or the Civil War, East Tennessee was occupied by Confederate soldiers and the only way that the young men of this area could escape conscription to serve with the Confederate Army was to be taken by Captain Dan Ellis, a Union Scout, through the lines to Kentucky so that they could join the Union Army.
Guerrilla warfare is one of the most cruel systems of warfare known to man; brother against brother, father against sons. I have never had any ill feeling toward descendants of Confederate soldiers because they were innocent people who did not participate in the slaughter of innocent citizens. There was cruelty on both sides, but because the Union sympathizers had no protection, the cruelty toward them multiplied many times over the cruelty committed against Confederate sympathizers.
Pages 4 - 9
JULIUS CAESAR DUGGER
Julius Caesar Dugger, my great-great-grandfather, is reputed to be the first settler of the state of Tennessee. In the present textbooks of Tennessee history, under the title of The Story of Tennessee, by Joseph H. Parks, PhD., Professor of History, University of Georgia, and Stanley J. Folmsbee, Ph.D., Professor of History, University of Tennessee, they have been very objective and very fair in discussing the person entitled to be known as the first settler of the state of Tennessee. In the above book, they say, "We cannot be certain who was the first permanent settler in Tennessee country. Andrew Greer and Julius Dugger, who arrived in eastern Tennessee in 1766, may have been the first. It may be, however, that they were traders and did not settle permanently at that time. If this be true, then William Bean might have been the first permanent settler. He was said to have built a cabin on the Watauga River in 1769".
Recent investigations by the writer disclose that all of the historians presume that Julius C. Dugger and Andrew Greer came into Tennessee country through Virginia. Judge Williams, one of the most eminent historians and also the most distinguished judge of the Supreme Court of Tennessee see in recent history, says that Julius C. Dugger and Andrew Greer were only traders and did not establish a permanent home in what is now Tennessee. He bases this upon the fact that Andrew Greer's family was living in Augusta County, Virginia, in 1770, and that Andrew Greer was merely a trader. He does not give any facts as to Julius C. Dugger, but it is presumed that he came also from Augusta County, Virginia. This has been proven not to be true. Julius Caesar Dugger was residing in Wilkes County, North Carolina, on March 3, 1750, and perhaps for several years before that time. His son, William Dugger, who was my great-grandfather, was born in Wilkes County, on March 3, 1750, and William Dugger lived until 1839 and died in Carter County, T ennessee. It has been established as a fact that Julius C. Dugger lived near Dugger Mountain and on Dugger Creek in Wilkes County, North Carolina, in the year 1750. It is believed that we can substantiate by circumstantial evidence and by family tradition sustained by circumstantial evidence that Julius Caesar Dugger was the first settler of Tennessee and came here in 1766. Julius C. Dugger and Andrew Greer were brothers-in-law; both had married Kincaid sisters of Virginia. Andrew Greer was a younger man and was a merchant and Indian trader in Virginia.
Julius C. Dugger was a long hunter and also an Indian trader coming across the mountain from North Carolina into Tennessee country before 1750 and thereafter until 1766, when he established his home near Elizabethton, and invited his brother-in-law, who was a merchant and Indian trader, to come into this country to participate with him in trading, with the Indians and have a market for the furs that he produced on his hunts. While it is recognized that sometimes family traditions are inaccurate, there is positive circumstantial evidence in this case to verify the family tradition that has been passed down in time.
The writer was born in 1896. The writer's father, John F. Dugger, was born in Carter County, Tennessee, on August 8, 1856. The writer's grandfather, David A. Dugger, was born in Carter County, Tennessee, in 1814, and was the son of William Dugcer and a grandson of Julius C. Dugger. He lived to be 87 years of age, and died in 1901. The writer, a boy of five years of age, remembers him and remembers the date of his death and the circumstances of his funeral. He does not remember the statements or family history passed on to the family by David A. Dugger, who was a grandson of Julius C. Dugger, and a son of the pioneer William Dugger, who owned a large farm in Carter County, near Elizabethton, and owned a mill and large land holdings where Watauga Lake now is in the upper end of Carter County, Tennessee.
The writer's uncle, David A. Dugger, Jr., often told the writer about the family and that William Dugger was married three times, his last wife being Nancy Brown Pierce, who had eight children, and William Dugger also had eight children. They had seven children of their own, constituting twenty-three children, in addition to the father and mother. He often described the large table necessary to seat them all when they were all present. William Dugger was a prosperous farmer, mill owner, and sawmill operator, and was well able to help educate these children and feed and clothe them. Thus, we see that the writer, George F. Dugger, Sr., his father, John F. Dugger, his grandfather, David A. Dugger, and his great-grandfather, William Dugger, constitute four generations spanning two hundred twenty-three years. If we go back to 1720 and include Julius C. Dugger, it will be five generations spanning two hundred fifty-three years. We can see five generations living, today, but this unusual situation occurred because the writer was the tenth child in a family of twelve. His father was the seventh child in a family of seven. His grandfather was the fifteenth child in a family of fifteen produced by his father, William Dugger. It is not knonwn exactly how many children were in the family of Julius C. Dugger; however, considering that the whole family had rudimentary educations in the schools of that day and could read and write, they certainly knew their grandfather and great-grandfather. This was because David A. Dugger, the son of William Dugger and the grandson of Julius C. Dugger was twenty-five years old when his father died, and was thoroughly familiar with the family history and other important family facts.
David A. Dugger, Jr.., who gave me a lot of the facts along with my father, was born in 1854. His father, David A. Dugger, Sr., lived forty-seven years after the birth of David A. Dugger, Jr., and forty-five years after the birth of John F. Dugger, and he lived with them from time to time. For this reason, it would be preposterous to say that they did not discuss their family history and relatives, because they were as before said descendants of educated ancestors.
Julius Caesar Dugger came from Brunswick County, Virginia, and was a relative of the ancestors of Benjamin M. Dugger,. who discovered auromycin after he was eighty years of age, and Dr. John F. Dugger, author of books on agriculture from Auburn University in Alabama.
Shepherd M. Dugger, of Banner Elk, North Carolina, was another close relative. He was the first superintendent of schools of Watauga County, North Carolina, a graduate of the University of North Carolina, and a surveyor and engineer. He was the author of The Balsom Groves of the Grandfather Mountain and the war trails of the Blue Ridge, and other periodicals.
Several of the sons of William Dugger and brothers of my grandfather, David A. Dugger, went to Indiana and became miners of coal near Terra Haute. They founded a city, which is now known as Dugger, Indiana, and has a population of approximately 5,000 people. Many of their descendants still reside there.
Benjamin C. Dugger, a grandson of Julius C. Dugger, Jr., went to Copper Hill, Tennessee, about the year 1840. Having been engaged in the manufacture of iron in Johnson County with his family, he opened up what he thought to be iron mines at Copper Hill. Not being a metalurgist he had unknowningly discovered the great copper mines there, and after investing his funds of three thousand dollars, he went broke, traded his mines and land for a team of oxen, went over into Blue Ridge, Georgia, and went into politics. He held office as long as he lived, was a member of the legislature of Georgia, a state senator, and was the only Republican member of the Georgia House or Senate for many years. He was highly regarded, and we quote here from the journa1 of the State Senate of Georgia his record:
"The records of this office show that Benjamin C. Dugger was a member of the House of Representatives of Georgia for the following sessions; 1873-4, 1875-6, 1877, 1878-9, 1884-5, 1888-9, and was a Senator from the forty-first Senatorial District, composed of Fannin, Gilmer, and Pickens Counties, for the 1880-1 session.
He was born December 7, 1813, and died July, 30, 1891. He was married to Mary Ann Campbell Taylor, widow of W. L. Taylor, in 1848. I find the following sketch in "Georgia General Assembly of 1878" Biographical sketches of Senators, Representatives, the Governors and Heads of Departments, by Samuel A. Eckels.
Honorable Benj. C. Dugger (Fannin County) "Who shall judge a man from manners, Who shall know him by his dress, Poor men may be fit for princes, Princes fit for something less, Homespun shirt and crumpled jacket May belcoth the golden ore, Of the deepest thought and feeling, Satin vest could do no more. ....... President Lincoln's favorite lines"
What would the Georgia Legislature be without the member by the name of Dugger. He has served in six consecutive sessions; and is likely to come to the house until he is called to take a seat in one not made with hands. Mr. Dugger is an honest man. Not a member of any house, with whom he has served, will say nay to that proposition. He is not an appello in personal beauty, nor a Daniel Webster in learning or eloquence, nor did he profess to be either. Then, too, he is a Republican, and that, by some men, would be considered unpretentiousness to learning and in his Republicanism....
......... "Georgia General Assembly, 1878" by Samuel A. Eckels, p. 117.
Daniel Boone hunted in the Tennessee country with Julius C. Dugger, as a boy.
Another interesting fact connected with the life of Julius C. Dugger, when he lived in Wilkes County, North Carolina, is that about 1750, the father of Daniel Boone moved from Pennsylvania and settled near the home of Julius C. Dugger. History records that Daniel Boone was born in Pennsylvania in 1734, and that they moved near the Yadkin River, which is not far from the residence of Julius C. Dugger. History also records that Daniel Boone's father was a farmer and was not interested in the adventures and travels of his distinguished son; however, a family tradition, which is sustained by circumstantial facts, is that Daniel Boone, as a boy, visited the home of Julius C. Dugger, and heard him tell of his great adventures in the Tennessee country hunting for game and trading with the Indians. He often came with Julius C. Dugger, when a mere lad, into this country, and each adventure kindled in him a greater desire for further exploration.
Why do we say that the family tradition in reference to the relationship between Julius C. Dugger and Daniel Boone is sustained by facts? We do so because Julius C. Dugger was a mature man with a family in 1750, and his children were too young to accompany him. Daniel Boone lived nearby, and the families had close relationships and kept in touch with each other as pioneers did in the early days for their own protection. It was a natural consequence that Daniel Boone would want to go hunting and became the famous hunter and explorer because of his early travels into the Tennessee country.
It is believed that the circumstances shown here should be ample proof, even in a court of justice, that the tradition of the Dugger family is sustained and proven to the satisfaction of any unbiased person. It is also known that Julius C. Dugger was living in Wilkes County, North Carolina, in 1750, and that his young brother-in-law, Andrew Greer, was a merchant and Indian trader in Augusta County, Virginia, and the fact that Andrew Greer did not bring his family to Tennessee until after 1770 is of no consequence, because he evidently desired to live with his brother-in-law and conduct his business by trading with the Indians until such time as he could safely bring his family into Tennessee country and clear up his business in Virginia.
It is believed that the foregoing statement here will verify the fact that Daniel Boone came into Carter County with Julius C. Dugger in the early 1750's. The only known record of his being in this area was in 1760 when they found his name on a tree near Boones Creek. Ten years had elapsed before this was found in 1760 after the time that he settled on the Yadkin River. Being a restless boy and having a great opportunity to come with an expert hunter and Indian trader, he of course did not forego the opportunity and anyone who disputes the facts as given here should give positive evidence to the contrary.
Congressman James H. Quillen is now introducing legislation to activate the Boone Trail out of North Carolina through Tennessee. In introducing this legislation, we hope he will see that Carter County is recognized as a part of the Boone Trail where he came down the Watauga and Doe Rivers into Elizabethton and then went on to other places.
Page 135
WILLIAM DUGGER, THE PATRIARCH OF THE DUGGER FAMILY IN AMERICA
William Dugger, the head of the Dugger family in Virginia and perhaps in this whole country, was a member of the House of Burgesses of Virginia in 1656, which was only 36 years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, and only 49 years after the creation of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. It is now known just how long he had been residing in Virginia at the time he was elected as a member of the House of Burgesses.
This fact is proven by an inscription at Williamsburg, engraved in bronze, showing the members of the House of Burgesses ii-i 1656. It is believed. that he came from Brunswick County, Virginia, as the records there show a great number of Duggers living there in the 1700's, and the latter parts of 1600.
We have, in other parts of these memoirs, referred to the various Duggers who came from Brunswick County, Virginia.
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