Ephraim Claybourn - probably named after his uncle Ephraim - was born 7 December 1788, and because we know his father Joshua lived in North Carolina, it is likely that Ephraim was born there as well. Either way, Ephraim lived in Knox County, Tennessee (eastern Tennessee) at the time of his marriage on 21 December 1809, to Mary (called Polly) Browning (11 November 1792 - 1874). We know the marriage date from a pension record attested by the Rev. John McCampbell of Maryville, Blount County, who married them. Ephraim was twenty one and Polly seventeen. Click here to learn more about the historical and cultural context in which this young couple lived.

Fort Morgan, pictured here, was built over the site of Fort Bowyer on Mobile Bay. Fort Bowyer was constructed during the War of 1812 and may have been the one Ephraim helped erect.

Nearly five years after their marriage Ephraim left to fight in the "War of 1812," although his actual service lasted from 13 November 1814 to 5 June 1815. He was a member of the 5th Regiment of the East Tennessee Militia in Captain John Reeves' Company, which was under Colonel Edwin Booth's direction [1]. On his record from the Adjutant General's Office, the name is spelled "Clayborn." Along with the Third and Fourth Regiments, this regiment was part of the division under the command of Major General William Carroll. These units were sent to the Mobile, Alabama vicinity to protect that region from Indian and/or British offensive activities. The regiment was organized at Knoxville and their line of march took them to Lookout Mountain (present-day Chattanooga), to Fort Strother, and finally to Mobile [2]. When news of peace arrived on 17 Aprill 1815, Ephraim was helping erect a fort on Mobile Bay.

In about 1825, roughly ten years after the end of the war, Ephraim and Polly left Knox County and moved to DeKalb County, Tennessee [3]. Within DeKalb County they lived in the 19th District, about three miles north of a town called Liberty. The Brownings and Loneses were families that frequently interacted with Claybourns and they probably moved to Liberty at around the same time.

Examples of their interractions include Sally Browning, Polly's sister, who is believed to have married a Claybourn relative. Also, a Luticia (or Lutecia) Browning (22 April 1802 - 22 May 1872) married David Lones (13 March 1801 - 22 May 1872) and their son James married Martha Claybourn, daughter of Ephraim and Polly. David and Luticia (or Lutecia) are buried and have gravestones marking their spot on a farm Ephraim would later own in Allen County, Kentucky, and where Ephraim and Polly are also buried. Harriette Threlkeld corresponded with a J. Y. Lones in 1936, the Cashier of the People's State Bank in Scottsville, Kentucky, and the grandson of David Lones. J.Y. Lones' mother knew Polly Claybourn and attended her "burying," attesting to the fact that Polly and Ephraim were buried, though in unmarked graves, beside Lutecia and David Lones.

Liberty, DeKalb County, Tennessee

DeKalb County was formed around 1837-1838 from land in Cannon, Warren and White Counties. Historian Will T. Hale believes that the first settlers in the county were at Liberty and came from Maryland in 1797 [4]. If so, Adam Dale was the first settler. He may have come over the Cumberland Mountains, although some sources claim he came down the Ohio, up the Cumberland to Nashville, and then overland about 56 miles [5]. It was almost primeval forest. A Middle Tennessee land office was opened in 1783.

An early settler was Lemual H. Bethel and later a Dr. Tilman Bethel. Bethel appears as a family name among the Claybourns so it may have been because of this early day doctor. Jim Crook is named as a wagon maker, and a John Parker of Dismal Creek is named in describing the unusually large men of the county. Men of those names married Claybourn women. Dismal appears as a surname, and in a visit to Liberty in 1936 Harriette Threlkeld passed through a crossroads store settlement named Dismal.

Liberty had a Methodist Church around the time of the Claybourn's arrival in 1825, and the earliest school in DeKalb County was probably in Liberty. Nevertheless, the town was mostly log cabins and there were only about 30 houses in the town as late as 1850. Hale describes the Liberty area in these words:

"Between Dowelltown and Liberty one of the noisiest of streams issues from the Gin Bluff Cave and finds silence in the Crowder Hole of Smith Fork. On Dry Creek the stream cast out of a cave has for 75 years furnished the power to run Crisp's Mill. [That would be since 1840.] Then you arrive at Liberty, resting like a sleeping hound at the feet of a dozen lofty hills - the Barger and Evans Hills to the east; the Gin Bluff and Dismal Hills to the north; to the west the Bethel and Lamberton Hills; and to the south the Bratten, Givan and Clarke Hills - cultivated to the tops and hazy in summer, in winter drowsing to the wind's singing. And in their embrace this: Smith Fork Creek, forming a silver horseshoe, great bottom fields, the pioneer graveyard on a rise covered with pennyroyal and gashed with gullies; the battleground where General Winchester fought the Cherokees, . . . and a village so queerly arranged that the son of a pioneer once described it as being three miles long and thirty feet wide." [6]

Kentucky Farm

In 1840 William Divine Claybourn, Ephraim and Polly's son, left Liberty for Illinois. It is possible that Ephraim and Polly moved with him. Either way, on 3 July 1848, Ephraim bought 58 acres of land in Allen County, Kentucky, near Puncheon Camp Creek for $60 cash from Joseph Stinson. This creek empties into the Barren River a short distance from the Tennessee state line. The nearest post office is Fountain Run in Monroe County, but the nearest larger town is Scottsville, Kentucky.

Harriette Threlkeld (and other relatives) visited the Claybourn farm in 1936 and made the acquaintance of L. O. Cliburn of Scottsville, who had been county surveyor beginning in 1905 and had surveyed the entire county for an oil company. His grandfather was Joel Cliburn. Joel's father, George Cliburn, 1820-1892, was born near Ephraim's farm, and he thought they might be related, but they could not establish it. He said that some of his family spelled it Claibourn. Harriette described him as "a very pelasant and accommodating man of 75 who helped them locate the farm and graves, and who furnished them with a graphic description of the farm" [7].

Cliburn wrote: "Beginning at a beech tree, shown on the plat by index finger, running thence S. 40 W. 47 and 1/4 poles to a poplar, S. 70 W. 62 poles to a red oak, N. 26 W. 111 and 1/2 poles, N. and 1/2 E. 39 poles to a poplar, S. 57 and 1/2 E. 142 poles to the beginning, containing 58 acres."

To reach this farm by automobile, one must go south from Scottsville, Kentucky, to Haysville, Tennessee. Going east from there you would take every turn to the left up towards Roark Graveyard - back up into Kentucky. It is very hilly and the roads were not good in 1936, but the place is known locally as the Claybourn farm, and a James Claybourn lived on it then. His father was Alfred; his grandfather was Andy.

Although the land apparently stayed with the family, Ephraim and Polly did not own it long. In 1849, roughly a year after buying the land, Ephraim sold the farm in Kentucky and went to Illinois to visit his son William Divine Claybourn. Polly returned to visit in DeKalb County several times after she and Ephraim had left it, but it is not known whether Ephraim did as well. Ephraim died 11 May 1850, in Allen County, Kentucky. Since he is buried on this same Kentucky farm, it was presumably owned by relatives. The James Claybourn whom Harriette met in 1936 referred to "Aunt Polly" living on the farm, and she too was buried there. Harriette later relocated the farm and the grave in 1976, owned then by Arnold Stinson.

On 14 November 1871, Polly applied for a pension for Ephraim's service in the War of 1812. She was granted $8 a month on 13 July 1872. She cashed her last pension check 16 December 1874. The pension paper is headed, "Claiborne, Polly" [8]. The first line reads, "Polly Claibourn declares herself to be the widow of Ephraim Claybourn." His death and burial are attested by Milender and Sally Claiborn, citizens of Macon County, Tennessee, which is just over the county line. The last line says, "Ephraim Clayborne died 11 May 1850, in Allen County, Kentucky." Note the various spellings of the name used even in the same document.

Polly visited William Divine Claybourn in Illinois after the Civil War. William Divine remembered her as "a very tidy, sprightly woman" [9]. She would have been 73 in 1865.

Pedigree Chart

		Joshua Clyburn 1758 - 1799
Ephraim Claybourn 1788 - 1850
		Sarah

Descendants

Below are Ephraim and Polly Claybourn's children and describe what little we know about the girls, most of it being information from their niece, Nancy Johnson, whom Harriette met in 1936 near Liberty. Separate pages will cover sons.

1. Sarah W. "Sally" Claybourn was born 3 February 1811. She married John Parker, and Verner Claybourn claimed that Minnie and Claude Parker, brother and sister, were their descendants and lived at Kinmundy, Illinois.

2. John B. Claiborne (click name for separate sketch) was born 30 December 1812. He moved to Little Rock, Ark., and he and his sons fought in the Confederate army.

3. Catherine E. Claybourn was born 23 April 1815, and died 16 August 1839, at the age 24. It's possible that she never married.

4. Nancy J. Claybourn was born 24 February 1817, and married Taylor Bennett, perhaps a brother-in-law to her sister Lutitia.

5. William Divine Claybourn (click name for separate sketch) was born 27 August 1819, in Knoxville, Tenn. It is possible that the children older than he were born there too. He moved to Illinois, and he and his sons fought in the Union army. He died 17 February 1896.

6. James Thompson Claybourn (click name for separate sketch) was born May 19, 1822, probably at Knoxville. He lived most of his life at Liberty, Tennessee, where he died 5 May 1900.

7. Lutitia Achea Claybourn [10] was born 15 August 1824. She married Jesse "Jess" Williams (born 27 March 1813 in Tenn. and died 22 March 1890 in Quitman, Ark.). Lutitia and Jesse moved from DeKalb County, Tenn., to St. Francois Co., Missouri along with Jesse's brother William Carroll Williams, and their sister Nancy Williams Bennett (who had married George W. Bennett). William C. remained in Missouri and Jesse/Lutitia and Nancy/George W. Bennett moved on to Van Buren County, Arkansas in 1858 (Van Buren Co. later became Cleburne Co.). Over the course of these moves Lutitia and Jesse would have nine children together:
   1. John Monroe Williams was born 20 Oct. 1843 in DeKalb Co., Tenn. and was married twice. His date of death is unknown.
   2. David Richardson Williams was born 8 July 1845 in Dekalb Co., Tenn. and married on 21 Dec. 1876 in Van Buren Co., Ark., to a Rebecca Emma Loftis. David died on 4 Feb. 1900 and is buried with his wife in Quitman Methodist Cem., Quitman, Cleburne County, Arkansas.
   3. Sarah Elizabeth Williams was born 17 Nov. 1846 in DeKalb Co., Tenn. and married in February of 1867 to Dennis Stell Cargile. Sarah died on 2 June 1890 in Quitman, Cleburne County, Arkansas and is buried with her husband in Quitman Methodist Cem. there. She and Dennis had a daugther, Laura Cargile, married Jackson Ross Beckett. Pearl Beckett, their daughter, married Emmett Fletcher Cook.
   4. James Carroll Williams was born 9 March 1849 in DeKalb Co., Tenn. and married on 7 July 1872 in Van Buren Co., Ark. to Zilpha Patterson. James died on 11 June 1889 in Quitman, Arkansas.
   5. Nancy Jane Williams was born in 1852 in St. Francois County, Missouri. She married (1st) in 1874) in Van Buren County to John Hudson and then married (2nd) Daniel Lewis Kennedy. Nancy's date of death is unknown but it occurred after 1878.
   6. Mary C. Williams was born in 1854 in St. Francois County, Missouri, but not much else is known about her life.
   7. William Claiborne Williams was born 9 Oct 1856 in Van Buren County, Arkansas and married on 10 October 1880 in Van Buren to Harriett Rosetta England. William died in November of 1932 in Cleburne County, Arkansas.
   8. George Washington Williams was born 10 November 1856 in Van Buren County, Ark. and married on 8 October 1882 to Annie Laura Jenkins. George died in 1941 in Cleburne County, Arkansas.
   9. Jesse Milton Williams was born 23 March 1864 in Van Buren Co., Arkansas. He married 17 July 1887 in Cleburne Co. to Zoie England. Zoie was a sister to Harriett, who married William C., and both girls were daughters of John McCamey England and LaVesta Ann Hamilton. Jesse's date of death is unknown.

8. Mary E. Claybourn was born 11 May 1827, possibly at Liberty. She married a Roberts.

9. Martha E. Claybourn was born 13 March 1831, probably at Liberty. She married James Lones, son of David Lones and Luticia (Browning) Lones. They had two sons named James and Henry Lones.

References and Notes