First of all, thank you, Cousin Sharon, for starting and managing this page, and thanks especially for transferring the care of this memorial to me.

Sharon and I are 5th cousins. Her data and my data are pretty much in agreement, and where they are not, I submit both sides to you, the reader. And now, in January 2014, I've met another 5th cousin, Michael J. Fryman, who had also built a page for Isom and Mary but transferred its care to me as well. I'll combine his data with that already on this page. And thank you, too, Cousin Michael, for trusting me with this transfer.

The spelling of Isom/Isham's first name is based on the way his namesakes, of whom there are many, spelled it on their gravestones. Most spelled it Isom, but a few used Isham. All, however, spelled the last name Gwin (as opposed to Gwinn, Guin, Guinn, Guynne, etc., used by various census enumerators, clerks, etc.).

Isom Gwin's date of birth is approximate. Sharon's source has ca. 1764, and mine and Michael's both have ca. 1770. Her date of death for him is unknown, but still another 5th cousin, Jim Wall, found his will and probate records that pretty much nail it down to Dec 1830.

[Please note that I built a much earlier page for Isham/Isom and Mary Ann Canterbury Gwin located at http://gwingenealogy.net/GENEALOGY/SURNAMES/Gwin/gwinisham.htm. A number of us have been adding information to it ever since. For example, Jim Wall's above-mentioned and very well documented material for Isham's Last Will and Testament is there.]

Sharon has his parents as being an Unknown Gwin and Elizabeth Mordeca. My uncle James listed as his source The Abridged Compendium of American Genealogy, Vol. I, p. 706, which lists them as being Richard Gwin and Sarah Chesley of near Jamestown, VA (this make sense to me, due to so many descendants carrying the names "Richard", "Sarah", and "Chesley"). And Michael says, "His father may be John or William Gwin (Washington County, VA-1782 Taxpayers List-1, page 53)."

Sharon's and my sources agree that in 1787 Isom was serving in the Virginia Militia. On Aug 30, 1787, he married Mary Ann Canterbury in Montgomery Co., VA. Michael adds, "Isom received consent from Mary's father, Samuel Canterbury, Jr., on August 30, 1787 to be married in Montgomery County, VA. (Source: Kegley, Mary B., Early Adventures On The Western Waters, Volume II, The New River of Virginia in Pioneer Days, 1745-1800, Orange, VA: Green Publishers, INC., Pages 147, 150, & 182)"

By 1792, the year their son John, my ggg-grandpa, was born, the couple had relocated to western North Carolina (today's east Tennessee) somewhere in Greene or Sevier county. Four years later, this area became the new state of Tennessee. There are several land grants in this area on which Isom filed, one of which may have been in Greene Co. (the county lines moved, and I'm not sure exactly where this was), another of which is definitely the 249-acre plantation in Crowson's Cove (now the Wear Valley), Sevier Co., TN, that was surveyed in 1807 (this one can be seen clearly--see the Crowson's Cove Plat Maps link below).

Nobody seems sure when he made his profession of faith in Christ Jesus as his Lord and Savior, but it was clearly some time BEFORE 1810, since by that year Isom is listed as the pastor of the Tuckaleechee Cove Baptist Church, Blount Co., TN, located some 6-8 miles west of their home in the Wear Valley, Sevier Co., TN. Several sources testify that he spoke often and adamantly from his pulpit of the evils of slavery, and while most of his family and friends evidently agreed with him, at least his two oldest sons, William and John, did not. Finally surrendering to what must have been the gentle urgings of the Holy Spirit, Isom himself freed his own slaves sometime between 1810 and 1815, sold the farm in Crowson's Cove, and moved with most of his family and friends to the new free state of Indiana, while those two sons moved to Dallas County in what would soon become the new slave state of Alabama. And now we've learned that he and Mary kept and raised at least three (one source says seven) of his freed slaves, all orphans, as foster children until they reached adulthood as free people in Indiana.

Early on in Indiana, Isom, Mary, and their family lived in both Harrison and Crawford counties before settling down for good in Orange County. In 1817 he is listed as a founding member of the El Bethel Baptist Church, Crawford Co., IN. Then on 4 Sep 1819 he was called to be the first pastor of the just-founded (7 Aug 1819) Providence Primitive Baptist Church in Orange County, which call he accepted. Following is a transcription of that entry from the Providence Church's first Record Book (the entire book is transcribed and can be seen at the link below):

Saterday the 4 September [1819]
1. the Church met and after singing and prayer proceeded to Business
2nd chose Brother Pape as their moderator.
3rd the Church agree to call Brother Isom Gwin as their preacher and further agree to send a request to the El Bethel to give him up for that purpose and John Lee Senr to bare the same to their meeting on the fourth Saturday in September
4. Brother James McMahan to Bare the request of the Church to Brother Gwin.

Isom served some four to six years as their first pastor, and his friend and next-door neighbor in Crowson's Cove, Tennessee, Kinsey Veatch, who evidently made the move north with the Gwin family, served some 25-30 years as their second. The Providence Church, by the way, has been in continuous service ever since!

Isham and Mary left Providence Church and moved their membership east to Unity Baptist Church just inside Washington County. We discovered in August 2016 that the records there indicate that they joined Unity together in September 1825 and that they were members until "dismissed by death". For Isham, that was in December 1830. For Mary, it was some twenty years later, shortly after the August 1850 census.

Whether or not he served as pastor at Unity is not clear. We do know that the church dissolved in 1858, evidently on doctrinal issues. Searches of the Old Unity Cemetery there have not revealed the Gwins' graves; however, the inscriptions on the some of the stones there are now completely illegible and forever lost. Only an exhumation of the bodies buried beneath them and a DNA comparison would identify those graves now.

But Isom died in Orange County, Indiana (Sharon says from cholera) in Dec 1830, and Michael says, "Isom's death is recorded in Volume 1, Page 57 of Orange County, IN."

So we've not been able yet to find his or Mary's graves, but we're quite sure they're not in the cemetery of Providence Primitive Baptist Church where he was the first pastor.

More clues as to their graves' locations, however, may exist in the 1850 census of Orange Co., IN. In that census Isom's widow, Mary Canterbury Gwin, is blind, age 80, and living with the family of her also widowed daughter, Minerva Gwin Wright. Minerva is listed as head of the family living on a plot of land valued at $600 next door to the family of Minerva's second-oldest sister and her husband, Elizabeth and David Denton, whose farm is valued at only $50. It makes sense to me that Minerva's family would have moved back to the old homeplace after her husband, Elijah Wright, died, in order to assist her now-blind mom and to help manage the farm.

I theorize and believe that both Isom Gwin and David Denton sold their respective 249-acre and 36.5-acre farms in Crowson's Cove, Tennessee, and used the proceeds to buy these respective $600 and $50 farms in Orange Co., IN, and that Isom and Mary MAY BE BURIED somewhere on that $600 farm, the location of which we do not yet know--but see next paragraphs.

UPDATE: In the summer of 2016, I made another trip to Orange County, IN, specifically to search for Isham's and Mary's graves. I knew, from an earlier deed search in the Orange County courthouse in Paoli, that his son-in-law Elijah Wright had bought (from the family of his sister-in-law) and owned the SE quarter (160 acres) of section 20 in Orange County's Southeast Township. I'd seen this land on maps and decided to try to find it while I was there. I got excited when I discovered that Elijah's widow still owned this land in 1850 when she appeared on the census as living with her mother, Mary (Canterbury) Gwin--I think that means that the location of their 1850-census residence was that piece of land. Not only did I find the land, but I met the current owner--who turned out to be a cousin! He assured me there were no grave markers on his property, but he did show me the well and foundation stones of a residence that had evidently existed there long ago, and together we speculated that this was where Elijah and Minerva had lived and where Minerva had hosted her mother in 1850.

The eastern edge of this land abutted Washington Co., and, as I studied the map further, was WALKING distance (definitely wagon distance) from the site of the old Unity Church that had existed at the time. There wasn't much daylight left, but I did a quick walk through that church's graveyard, looking for Isham's and Mary's graves, to no avail, but decided to drive to Salem, the seat of Washington, to see what I could find.

There, at the John Hay Museum's Genealogical Library, I found transcriptions of the records of Unity Baptist Church. And in them I found that Isham and Mary, along with several of their children (Tom and Polly Walker, Elijah and Minerva Wright, David and Elizabeth Denton, and Joseph and Virginia Jane Tipton), had moved their memberships to Unity! Isham and Mary had joined in September of 1825 and had remained members "UNTIL DEATH"--Isham's in Dec of 1830 and Mary's in 1850 or 1851.

So even though I could not find them during that quick walk-through the evening before, I feel very comfortable that their graves are somewhere in the Unity Baptist Church cemetery. The engraving on many of the stones there has eroded completely over the years, and this comforts me as well that their graves are most likely beneath one of those stones.

[* Later, in February 2018, in that very cold, snowy, and icy winter, I got an email from the aforementioned cousin, Mike, who owns that land. He told me that his uncle had just told him during a phone conversation of an old cemetery on the uncle's neighboring land some 1.5 miles from Mike's house. Mike planned to search that cemetery when things warmed up to see if the Gwins are buried there, but evidently they were not.]

See more on this update on Elijah and Minerva's page at the link below.

--John M. Gwin

Isom and Mary had at least eleven children whose names (and their spouses' names) we know. Evidence places them in this approximate birth order:

01--Polly Gwin, b. ca. 1788 (m. Tom Walker, Jr.) who remained in Indiana [FaG memorial built];

02--Elizabeth Gwin, b. 1788 (m. David Denton) who remained in Indiana [FaG memorial built];

03--William Gwin, b. ca. 1790 (m. Susanah Beard) who moved to Alabama [FaG memorial built];

04--John Gwin, b. Nov 1792 (m. Jane Walker, Tom's sister) who moved to Alabama [FaG memorial built];

05--Virginia Jane Gwin, b. 1795 (m1. Joe Tipton, m2. Ben Weathers) who remained in Indiana [FaG memorial built];

06--Isham Gwin II, b. 1797 (m1. Mary Likens who died, m2. Betsy Snowden) who disappeared from the records and has not yet resurfaced;

07--unknown child (Chesley?), b. 1799, about whom almost nothing is known;

08--Richard "Dick" Walton Gwin, b. 1804 (m. Nancy Elizabeth Watson) who moved to Iowa then into Kansas [FaG memorial built];

09--Sarah Gwin, b. 1803-1808 (m. William M. Houston) who returned to Kentucky [FaG memorial built];

10--Nancy Gwin, b. 1805 (m. Squire Houston, Will's brother) who moved to Illinois;

11--Minerva Gwin, b. 1807 (m. Elijah Wright) who remained in Indiana [FaG memorial built]; and

12--Mahala Gwin, b. ca. 1808 (m. John B. Houston, Will's and Squire's brother) who moved to Illinois, then to Missouri, then to Iowa, before returning to Illinois.

Some links from my own website:

http://www.gwingenealogy.net/GENEALOGY/SURNAMES/Gwin/gwinisham.htm

http://www.gwingenealogy.net/GENEALOGY/TENNESSEE/CrowsonsCove/CrowsonsCovePlatMaps.htm

http://www.gwingenealogy.net/GENEALOGY/INDIANA/ProvidencePrimBapCh.htm

http://www.gwingenealogy.net/GENEALOGY/SURNAMES/WalkerTomJrPollyGwin.htm

http://www.gwingenealogy.net/GENEALOGY/SURNAMES/dentonDavidElizGwin.htm

http://www.gwingenealogy.net/GENEALOGY/SURNAMES/Gwin/gwinWmSOishamBOjohn.htm

http://www.gwingenealogy.net/GENEALOGY/SURNAMES/Gwin/GwinJohnJaneWalker.htm

http://www.gwingenealogy.net/GENEALOGY/SURNAMES/Gwin/gwinVAtiptonweathers.htm

http://gwingenealogy.net/GENEALOGY/SURNAMES/Gwin/GwinIsham2MLikensBSnowden.htm

http://www.gwingenealogy.net/GENEALOGY/SURNAMES/Gwin/gwinRichardW.htm

http://www.gwingenealogy.net/GENEALOGY/SURNAMES/Houston/HoustonGwinFamilies.htm

http://www.gwingenealogy.net/GENEALOGY/SURNAMES/wrightelijahmanervagwin.htm

http://gwingenealogy.net/GENEALOGY/SURNAMES/Houston/houstonJohnBMahalaGwin.htm