Favorite Name
“You know,“ said my 3rd cousin Gordon Reed, “Wilson is one of the oldest names in the valley.” He told me this about 5 years ago, as we drove over a small stream called Wilson’s Branch, while driving up and down the mountains in the Sequatchie Valley. It was the first time I had heard the Wilson name in this area, but for some reason I tucked it away in my memory. A couple years after that, I was “doing genealogy” for my dad’s Tennessee heritage, and I came across the name Greenberry Wilson. What a Name! Greenberry! I had never heard that first name before. Don’t you love it? I went on to discover that he is one of my 4th great grandfathers. I had no idea. The creek we drove across a few years before was named for him over 200 years ago. Revolutionary War patriot Greenberry Wilson was most likely born in Buncombe county North Carolina around 1755. It’s believed his heritage was Irish. He might have been married twice, but the records ...