John C. Shannon (1816-1896)

John serves as an important link between the early 19th century Shannon generations and the later generations. He is the only male individual who’s descendants carry the rare R-S1194 YDNA marker who also appears on federal land records associated with the sons of John Shannon of Pendleton (c. 1759-1815) in Pickens County, Alabama. The county records for Pickens were destroyed by fire in the 1870s, so most of the local history of the family there were lost. Since our male lineage is the only one carrying this marker in the South, that validates that all those others who have no earlier documentation probably descend from Thomas or Owen Shannon of that county.

However, neither Thomas or Owen have a son listed on the 1830 census of the right age to be this John C, who would have turned 14 that year. Neither do the other brothers, William, Moses or Aaron. This leaves only brother John as John C.’s likely father, but records of this older John cannot be confirmed after 1815. My hunch is that he is the John Shannon listed on the 1820 Louisiana census, who does have a son and a wife in the correct age range to be John C. and Patsey, but this cannot be corroborated by other documentation. Louisiana John vanishes from the records also.

Census records give John’s year of birth as 1816 and his birth place as South Carolina. We have no proof of who his father was.  However, we have copious documentation around his early life and can piece together a plausible account of how he fits into an extended family structure and historic time and place.  In addition, we now have genetic data that clearly associates him with even more well documented relatives on his paternal side.

John first appears in the federal land records of Pickens co., AL in the 1830s.   He is closely associated in those records with James Chambers and Aaron Shannon. All three acquired lands from federal land grants near to each other at about the same time. Aaron, already one of the larger land owners in the area at that time, seems to have been close to John personally, but we know he was not John’s father. Aaron had a son also named John in 1820 who died as a young man in Texas and may have been mentally retarded.

James Chambers and Aaron Shannon were both married to daughters of William Kilpatrick and Catherine Brandon.   In the 1970’s, my aunt Hattie Reed, granddaughter of William Shannon, and well known to me personally, reported in an interview that her grandfather’s name was ‘William Kilpatrick Chambers Shannon’.   While we almost always find him listed as William M. Shannon, this does indicate that Hattie had a living memory of those names associated with her grandfather.  Interestingly, there was a man named William Kilpatrick Chambers, obviously named for his grandfather, William Kilpatrick, documented living near John C. Shannon in both Alabama and Mississippi.

Land records indicate that John’s first wife was named Elizabeth, and is thought to have been the daughter of James and Mary Chambers. There is no legal documentation for this, but there are very strong genetic matches between the descendants of John and Elizabeth and others who descend from James and Mary. This can only really be explained by her being a member of that family.

   In 1840, John C. Shannon and James Chambers moved into Winston County, MS, where several of John’s children were born, including his son William in 1844.   By 1850, John had moved to neighboring Attala County where his mother, Patsey, remarried to John George, lived.  After 1860 the family moved to Drew County, AR.   In 1881, John moved with his son William and family to Brown Co., TX where he died in 1896.  

In the late 1840’s, John cites his mother as Patsey George in a ‘deed of gift’ (involving two young  slaves, Gin,14, and Will,18).  From census records Patsey was born in Virginia in 1794.   In the early 1830’s there was a court case in Pickens Co., AL that named a Patsey Shannon as the daughter of William Cockerham and Nancy Estes.   The Cockerham family moved from Virginia to Pendleton District, South Carolina in about 1800 corresponding to the information we find later for Patsey on the 1850 and 1860 US census.   

I am suspicious, however, that Patsey might not be the biological daughter of William Cockerham. Patsey was the oldest child of that union and doesn’t seem to have been particularly close to her younger siblings. In fact, she is missing from virtually every older genealogy on that family. This suggests the possibility that she was born to a previous relationship Nancy Estes was involved in and adopted by William Cockerham as a young child after marrying her mother. But this is a conjecture, the actual available documentation cited above has her as William’s child by Nancy.