This page was created and maintained by Jason A. Owens, who later transferred it to me. Thanks for setting it up and letting me maintain it, Jason!

John Gwin, one of my 16 ggg-grandfathers, was born in 1792 in western North Carolina which would become the state of Tennessee four years later. His parents, Isom Gwin and Mary Ann Canterbury Gwin, had married in Montgomery Co., VA several years earlier and had moved to this western North Carolina site to purchase land. Isom eventually staked claim, in what would become Sevier Co., to a 249-acre tract which was finally surveyed in 1807. John and his siblings grew up on this plantation maintained by slaves held by his father.

On 8 April 1812 when John was nineteen and a half years old, he went to Maryville in next-door Blount County and took his sweetheart, Jane Walker, to the office of Mr. J. Houston, the Blount County Clerk, and procured a marriage license. This they took to her brother, a justice of the peace for Blount County, who married them.

Isom became a Christian somewhere along the line, and eventually he felt called by God to serve Him as a pastor. During this time he became more and more convicted of the evils of slavery, and he often spoke against that institution both from the pulpit and in the community. Finally he released all his slaves, sold the farm, and moved with most of his family and not a few friends to the new free state of Indiana. We've now learned that when Isom released his slaves, he maintained custody of several of perhaps seven of the orphaned children of those slaves until they reached adulthood, raising them as his own children.

But John and his older brother, William, evidently disagreed quite openly with their father regarding slavery, so when Isom moved to Indiana, John and William took their families and their shares of their inheritance from Isom to the new slave state of Alabama, settling first (and buying land) in Shelby County where John's son Isom was born, then moving to (and buying several more pieces of land in) Dallas County and in the county's new seat and the new state capital, Cahawba.

John opened a wheelwright shop there in Cahaba and in 1838 evidently may have built an elegant home near Sardis which in 2020 still stands across the Alabama River from Cahawba (see photos and further explanation at bottom of the page located at http://gwingenealogy.net/GENEALOGY/SURNAMES/Gwin/GwinJohnJaneWalker.htm). Also listed there is an email dated August 28, 2014 from the home's then-owner, realtor Andy Blackstock, who presents arguments that seem to support our John Gwin as being the home's builder.

Anna Gayle Fry mentions his home in Cahawba on page 41 of her 1908 book, MEMORIES OF OLD CAHABA, as follows: "Occupying the block on Oak Street, between First South Street and Capitol Avenue, was Academy Square with its Indian mounds. The two-story brick building was ornamented by a large observatory and belfry. Across the street, in front of the Academy on the corner of first South Street, was the residence of John Guiwn (sic), another old landmark of early days. Adjoining the Guiwn place, at the corner of Capitol Avenue and Walnut Street, was the Presbyterian church."

John and Jane had at least these children:

01 Mary Gwin m1. Drury Roark, m2. Abel Turner
02 Thomas Gwin
03 Isom Gwin m. Mary Burdine Wilson
04 William Gwin m. RoseAnn Carlisle Jones Wilson
05 Sarah Gwin m. Louis Basset
06 Ann Gwin m. Joseph Lavalette Basset
07 Martha J. Gwin m. Jesse Comelander
08 Chesley R. Gwin m1. Frances E. "Fannie" Bell, m2. Mrs. Blevins
09 Louisa A. Gwin m. Wm. J. McKnight

I've put together another page for John and Jane at the abovementioned location, the link to which I repeat here for your convenience:

http://www.gwingenealogy.net/GENEALOGY/SURNAMES/Gwin/GwinJohnJaneWalker.htm;

please feel free to visit it! And feel free also to contact me with any questions and/or suggestions you may have: [email protected].