From the Vertical Files, Tennessee Room, Jackson-Madison County Library

GRAVES OF SAMUEL DICKINS AND
WIFE, JANE VAUGHAN DICKINS

Submitted by Jonathan Smith, PO Box 3787, Murray Station, Jackson, TN 38303.


DICTIONARY OF NORTH CAROLINA BIOGRAPHY, ed. by Wm. S. Powell (Chapel Hill, 1986), volume 2, pages 64-65:

Samuel Dickins

. . . surveyor and congressman, was born in Person County. . . . He married Jane Vaughn (sic) of Mecklenburg County, Va. . . . From 1813 to 1815 and again in 1818 Samuel Dickins was a member of the North Carolina House of Commons. . . . He was elected to the Fourteenth Congress of the United States to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Richard Stanford in April 1816. . . . Dickins had nine children by his first wife, who died four or five years after the family moved in 1820 to Madison County, Tenn., to what was then called the Chickasaw Purchase. He established himself as an efficient surveyor and locator of land in western Tennessee and in 1821 was appointed by Archibald D. Murphey and Joseph H. Bryan to locate and sell the Tennessee land claims of The University of North Carolina. His partner was Dr. Thomas Hunt. . . . He died in Madison County, Tenn., and was buried beside his first wife, the spot having been designated by him for that purpose when he first moved to Tennessee.


Samuel Dickins and wife, Jane V. Dickins were buried near Jackson, Madison Co., Tenn., probably on their plantation there. Their great-granddaughter, Martha Cinderella (Dickins) Smithwick (1858-1935), was concerned for the perpetual welfare of these graves so that she had the actual remains of her great-grandparents, the said Dickinses, moved and reinterred on November 17, 1914, to Elmwood Cemetery, in Chapel Hill section, lot 896 (S. D. in space 6 and J. V. D. in space 7), and placed over their graves the slab tombstones that had always been over the same, which read:

Sacred
to the Memory of
Samuel Dickins
Born
in Person County, N. Ca.
1781
Died
in Madison County, Tenn.
1840
He walked humbly before God

Sacred
to the Memory of
Mrs. Jane Dickins
daughter of Thomas Vaughan, Esq.
of Mecklenburg County, Virginia
departed this life
Dec. 3rd 1825
. . . in the commencement
of the 42nd year
of her age

 

1 copy to Mr. Jack Woods, Tenn. Room, Jackson-Madison Co. Library
1 copy to Mrs. Helen Johnson, Bells H'way, Jackson, Tn.

Nov. 9, 1991