John Parker was born ca 1748 or later, stated to have been born in England, although research shows this to have been unlikely. He married, say 1770, Mary Ann Coons. He died in 1791 in Wilkes County, and she may have been living as late as the 1800 census.
Welk’s History of Putnam County, Indiana, states:
The immigrant ancestor of the Parker family was John Parker, who was born and reared in England, but who, because he accidentally injured the wife of a nobleman, was banished from his native land. His coming to America was sometime prior to the War of the Revolution and relics of this ancestor are now in the hands of his great-grandson, Benjamin A. Parker, of this township. Among the children of this John Parker was a son William, who was born in South Carolina about 1790 [sic]. Upon reaching mature years, the latter married Candace Austin, and to them was born a son, William Henley Parker. On November 27, 1827, William and Candace Austin [Parker] arrived in Putnam County, Indiana, and located on section 17 of Mill Creek township, of which they were the third settlers, their pioneer home being located in the heart of the forest. Here William Parker entered eighty acres of land, and this tract of land has remained in the family ever since, being now the property of his grandson, Benjamin A. Parker. The log cabin which they built there served as their home for many years and remained standing as late as 1906.
This writer assumes John Parker became estranged from his family to an unknown degree, being the only member of the family to move to the far western part of the State. It is possible he accidentally injured a woman of prominence and for that reason left home, as the Indiana book states. This hypothesis might explain his possible father’s 1800 will that includes John Jr, although the son predeceased his father by some years.
There is an abstract of his John Parker’s will, that reads, “Wilkes County, 1791 PARKER, JOHN, Mary Ann (wife); James, John, William and Diana.” The actual will names his stepdaughter Mary Ann Coons.
John’s father, another John Parker
After spending quite a bit of time studying my family’s autosomal DNA matches (thanks to COVID), it appears we also have Sessums ancestry. There are at least five DNA matches between my family and Nicholas Sessums and his wife, Hannah Culmer, through different children of theirs.
There was a couple named John Parker and Rachel Sessums. They were both born in the 1720s and married in Edgecombe Co NC, then moved west and south to Duplin County (a part that later became Sampson Co). In my opinion, they might be the parents of our John Parker, called “John Parker Junr” in a land purchase. The name John, the time and place, and the Sessums connection all align.
The Internet connects them to a son John, a different man, who lived in Bladen Co NC, but I can’t find any evidence that this man is the son of the couple in question.
Our potential ancestors are Parker-1806 and Sessums-1 at Wikitree. The biographies of both of them have contradictory and inconclusive data.
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