| Weaver | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Country | United States |
| Current region | Southern United States |
| Place of origin | Germany |
The Weaver family is a locally prominent American pioneer family that founded Weaverville along Reems Creek in Buncombe County, North Carolina and were early settlers of Cocke County, Tennessee. [1] [2] [3] [4]
According to family lore, the progenitor of the family was an unknown German linen weaver, surnamed Weber, that fled from the Holy Roman Empire to the United Provinces of the Netherlands due to religious persecution, likely because he was a member of the Reformed church. He married a Dutch woman and fathered 3 sons, including John, who later settled in the British colonies. [5] [6] [7] [8]
However, a descendant of the Weaver family in Cocke County, Tennessee recorded in 1950 that the family had come from Germany, with the original immigrant Weaver being a man named John George Weaver (Waber or Wärber). John arrived on the ship "Halifax" in 1752, which departed from Rotterdam, briefly stopped in Cowes, and finally landed in Philadelphia in the British Province of Pennsylvania. He settled in Augusta County, Virginia. One daughter, Mary Weaver, is listed as living in Cocke County, Tennessee with her husband, Benjamin O'Dell. [9] [10]
The Weaver family would intermarry with the predominantly Anglo-American, notably Scotch-Irish (descendants of Lowland Scots and northern English settlers in Ireland), population of the region. [11]
Per the Family Tree DNA Weaver DNA Project, the family has the Y-DNA haplogroup J-FTC77280, originating in the Balkans. [12]
Branches of the family exist in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas. [13] [14]
John Weaver of Reems Creek (1763-1830) maintained friendly relations with the local Cherokee in the valley and built an Indigenous-style house, before purchasing 320 acres of land to construct a European log cabin as his family's permanent residence. His descendants would found the town of Weaverville. [15] [16]
John Weaver of Cosby Creek (c.1786-1860), a relative of Reems Creek John, settled in Cocke County in the 1820s, having perhaps formerly lived in Sullivan County, Tennessee. [17] According to his grandson, John Weaver (1869-1954), he was a veteran of the Battle of Horseshoe Bend and New Orleans, serving under Andrew Jackson. The family would heavily intermarry with the Allens, another locally prominent family. [18] [13]
John of Reems Creek's son, Montraville, became a slaveholder. [19] Despite the vast majority of Germans in the Antebellum South not using slaves and many being generally opposed to the practice, there was a minority of German slaveholders located primarily in the Shenandoah Valley and other parts of the region. [20]
As a slaveholding family, many members of the Weaver family fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War, such as Captain Elbert Weaver (1841–1935), who was Montraville's first son, and Private Abraham Weaver (1832–1913), a cavalryman in Ashby's 2nd Tennessee Cavalry, who deserted in at Tunnel Hill, Georgia after his unit was slaughtered during Wheeler's October 1863 Raid. Abraham was the son of John Weaver of Cocke County, TN. [21] [17]
Weaver College, founded in 1851 as Weaverville College, was a co-educational Methodist academy located in Weaverville. It was founded on land gifted by the town's founder, Montraville Weaver, and operated from 1873 to 1934 before being merged with Rutherford College to form modern-day Brevard College. [22] [23]
Bend of the French Broad River in Cocke County, Tennessee. [24]
