Ephraim Hixon and Margaret Hixon
Ephraim Hixon, Jr. (1797-1855) and his family were pioneers of Hixson County, Tennessee. The family came from New Jersey to the area.1 The family came to the area in the late 1770s. Wilson notes that
In 1786, Joseph Hixson paid 50 shillings for 100 acres at Green County. Joseph, like a number of future Hamilton County settlers, got his first look at the lush territory during an expedition against the Indians. He took part in the 1788 raid against the Chickamaugas under Gen. Joseph Martin. There was a skirmish at the base of Lookout Mountain near Moccasin Bend. Joseph Hixson died at Greene County in 1804. His widow, Susannah, continued living on Middle Creek of the Nolichucky River into her death in early 1823…The children of Joseph and Susannah were Eleanor, Andrew, William, Joseph Jr., Timothy, Ephraim, John, Susannah, Benjamin and James.
Some of the children of Joseph Hixson joined the families of Rawlings, Kennedy, Hughes and other of their neighbors migrating from Greene County to Bledsoe and Hamilton counties. Ephraim Hixson Sr. settled permanently at Bledsoe. Joseph Hixson Jr. married Mary Johnson at Greene County 1790. Eleanor Hixson, the oldest daughter, married Sparling Bowman and they remained in Greene County near the old Joseph Hixson place. Susannah Hixson married William Davis in Greene County, 1794. Timothy Hixson married Rebecca Hughes in Greene County in 1795. His older brother, William Hixson, married her sister, Ingobo Hughes, in 1789. The Hughes sisters were the daughters of Francis Hughes, who lived from 1759 to 1841…
Ephraim Hixson Jr. was born in Greene County in 1797. He grew up in Bledsoe County and then was an early Hamilton County settler and was a justice of the peace in 1834. In 1830, he bought the 640 - acre reservation of the Cherokee John BRown for $5,500. The property acquired by the Hixsons was in the vicinity of the Fields ferry on the Tennessee River and the Brown reseration. David Fields was a Cherokee who received a large grand under the Treaty of 1819. William Hixson in 1842 had acquired 1, 500 acres, including Fields Ferry and the Chickamauga mill tract. This was part of a 20,000-acre grant that James Cozby and McClung had obtained from the state of North Carolina. That was the William Hixson who lived in Bledsoe County and married Margaret Roberson and then Kesiah Sawyer…
Ephraim Jr. married his first cousin, Margaret Hixson, daughter of Timothy and Rebecca Hughes Hixson. She was born in Greene County in 1799. Ephraim and Margaret Hixson settled near the Houston Hixsons. They had a large family, including Wilson who married Nancy Hughes, David who married his cousin Malinda Hixson, Susan who married Hamilton Adams, Mary Collet who married Robert Henry Hamill, George Washington "Washington'' who married Sarah “Sally” Vandergriff in 1845, Houston who married Nancy A. Barker, Margaret who married John Brown, Sarah who married Samuel Hixson, then William Arnett and then Andrew Johnson, Malinda who married Henry Barker, Timothy Stringfield who married Elizabeth Adaline Lewis, and Ephraim Foster who married Mary A. and then Savannah Fitzgerald…
Ephraim Hixson Jr., who had accumulated over 1,000 acres and had 11 slaves, was dragged to death by runaway horses on Christmas Day 1855. Margaret Hixson Hixson survived until 1888.1
James W. Livengood's A History of Hamilton County Tennessee identifies the community of Hixson, Tennessee as being named after Ephraim's family:
Some Chattanoogans maintained summer homes on the mountainside near Daisy. When the railroad came that way, Mel Adams donated five acres of land on which to locate a station. The railroad people, in appreciation, named the place Melville. Since that day Melville has been absorbed by Daisy, which also reached out to claim the old Poe's Crossroads. A small depot fourteen miles from Chattanooga was called Cave Springs, so named for the spring with its cool waters by the side of the track. The station was about a half mile from the hamlet of Falling Water, where the stream by that name tumbles over the side of Walden Ridge.
At this point the Cincinnati Southern turned into the valley of North Chickamauga Creek. It continued on to Lakeside, once the site of a large lake which had receded to the size of a pond. The railroaders changed this name to Lookout Mountain from this point. However, on account of the wide use of the name Lookout, the railroad people two years later rechristened the stop Hixson since it was close to the home of Ephraim F. Hixson, patriarch of the numerous Hixson clan living in the neighborhood. Beyond Hixson the tracks crossed the Tennessee River via the first rive bridge built in the county after the military structure disappeared in the 1867 flood waters, went on to King's Point (just west of the present Chickamauga dam), and continued on into Chattanooga.2
He married Margaret (1799-1888). Ephraim was born in Greene County, Tennessee. He fought in the War of 1812. In 1814, he served in the military, in Tennessee. He married Margaret on March 25, 1815 in Bledsoe County. They had at least one child, Mary Collet (Polly) Hixson. By 1830, Ephraim and his family were living in Hamilton County, Tennessee. Ephraim Hixon served as an early justice in Hamilton County.3 In 1855, Ephraim Hixon died at the age of 58 in Hamilton County, Tennessee.
Robert Hamill and Mary Hixon
Mary Hixson married Robert Henry Hamill and had the following children with him: Samuel Houston (1846), Margaret Katherine (1849), Ephraim John (1851-1909), James Granville (1853), William Hickory (1856), George Washington (1858), Sarah Collet (1862), Susan Ann (1864), Henry Clagy (1867), John H. (1876), Martha Alice, and Rebecca Jane.
Sources
1. John Wilson, "Hixsons Are Hamilton County's Most Prolific Family." TheChattanoogan.com
2. James W. Livengood, A History of Hamilton County Tennessee (Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1981), 97- 267.
2. James W. Livengood, A History of Hamilton County Tennessee (Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1981), 97- 267.