John Minnis was born in 1750 in Down County, Ulster, Ireland. He immigrated to America as a very young man. He lived within 15 miles of Philadelphia. His proximity to history did not stop there. Some family history even finds him at the Boston Tea Party in 1773 but there is no documentation of that.
When the Revolutionary War started John Minnis was part of the Pennsylvania militia. He eventually became a sergeant in John Clark’s Pennsylvania Regiment commanded by Col. Walter Stewart. He was dismissed from his state militia service in 1777.
Records indicate that he then became part of the Continental Army. His service included battles at White Plains, Trenton, and Brandywine.
In his pension claim, John Minnis said he had also been involved in Continental service at Valley Forge, serving on occasion as an orderly for Gen. George Washington.
Some accounts put Minnis at the battle of Yorktown that was the last major land battle of the Revolutionary War. It is there that British Gen. Cornwallis surrendered to Washington. It was this battle that led to the Americans negotiating a treaty with the British ending the war.
At some point John Minnis received a wound to the face and was scarred for life. Luckily, he survived without other injuries. He served until the Revolutionary War was over in 1783.
Shortly after, he returned to Ireland. There, in 1787, he married Nancy Susan McCammon a young woman of Scottish heritage. Then along with her brothers John, Thomas, and Samuel McCammon they journeyed to America. By then John was 37 years old.
John and Nancy Minnis and her brothers became part of the Scots Irish who settled the Blount County area, leaving a legacy in culture and tradition from where they were born.
According to some documents John was granted approximately 640 acres on the banks of Pistol Creek and Nine Mile in Blount County, Tennessee for his Revolutionary War service.
The Minnis family were documented as some of the early settlers who had to take to fort in 1785 at Houston Station because of Indian uprisings in the earliest day of settlement. Others from the small remote community who sought refuge there were the Henrys, McConnells, McEwens, Barrys, Doaks, and Sloans, all were likely neighbors of the Minnis family.
The Indian massacre on Nine Mile is documented in the community and its tragic aftermath that took the lives of many Native Americans and some White settlers is verified as part of Blount County history. State markers for both the massacre and the location of Houston’s Station can be found in the area.
In 1789 Minnis was one of the petitioners to the state of North Carolina at the French Broad asking for secure titles to their land. His name appears on another petition asking for a land office to be established.
Other Blount County records include Minnis’s service as a jury foreman multiple times. He was once fined 50 cents for contempt of a coroner’s summons. The fine was later dropped.
John and Nancy McCammon Minnis had at least eight children including sons Samuel, Thomas, Robert, John Wain, James, and William. Daughters included Susan and Nancy (Henderson) Minnis.
John Minnis died in 1827 while on a visit to his son in Monroe County. John Minnis would have been 77 at the time of his death. He was buried in Monroe County in the Madisonville Cemetery at the Madisonville Presbyterian Church.
His widow, Nancy, filed for a pension for herself based on John Minnis’s service and was denied. She died 10 years after John Minnis, in 1837. Her burial site is said to be Blount County. Her gravesite is unknown and unmarked.
While John Minnis is not buried in Blount County soil, his service to his country and his family’s pioneering heritage in our county makes his legacy in Blount County large.
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