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Descendants of Robert Dowling

Generation No. 2

2. JOHN² DOWLING (ROBERT¹) was born 1759 in Virginia, and died 1826 in South Carolina. He married NANCY BOUTWELL 1783 in South Carolina, daughter of LIONEL BOUTWELL and MARY BRACK. She was born 1763 in Virginia, and died March 30, 1849 in Haw Ridge, Dale County, Alabama.

Notes for JOHN DOWLING:
      Of Robert's three sons, the youngest one, John, was the longest lived. Unlike brother James who lived only a score of years after the Declaration of Independence....or William who died in the embers of the Revolution, John lived for a full half-century after that world-shaking war began.

      In 1824, John, as an old man of sixty-five, knew that his days were numbered and began preparing his will. Yet it was not until 1826 that this old revolutionary soldier died. On June 10 of that year, his son Simeon was qualified as executor of his will. It still lies in the courthouse at Darlington, South Carolina. His worldy goods, exclusive of land, totaled exactly $350.75 at the end of his lengthy life. (The inventory and itemized worth of these goods can be found listed in "A Dowling Family of the South")

      Though John willed that "my body be buried in a decent and Christianlike manner" this must not have included such a luxurious thing as a stone headmarker. He was buried on his own land, probably a stones throw from his residence.

      Within months after the Battle of Bunker Hill, John enlisted in Pinckney's 1st South Carolina Regiment, November 4, 1774. This lad of sixteen was not waiting for any declaration by a federal group!....Nor was South Carolina for that matter. The council of safety formed by a specially called "congress" of that colony had caused the King's govenor to flee in September. A tempest was brewing in his Majesty's teapot! Four and a half years after John's enlistment in Pinckney's Regiment, his name disappeared from its rolls. John's company, commanded by Levacher de Saint Marie, was possibly one of the American organizations defeated at Charleston. In any event, it was not until 1782 that his military service for this idea of self-government was again recorded. It was then that he is known to have been a guerilla with the dreaded "Swamp-fox," Francis Marion.

      John married the following year, 1783. Sister-in-law Mary Boutwell Dowling had probably introduced him to the bride some years earlier, for this was Mary's sister Nancy. Bride Nancy was twenty years of age and John was twenty-four. After his marriage, the remaining forty-three years of his life were spent near Jeffries Creek. This was the place that his father, Robert, had brought him to from Virginia. John and his wife raised all nine of their children here, without losing any to malnutrition, disease, or other pioneer hazards.
            - This information comes from "A Dowling Family of The South" by R. A. Dowling (no longer in print)

Notes for NANCY BOUTWELL:
      Nancy was thirteen when America's Declaration of Independence was signed. After the revolutionist whom she married had "died of old age" in the Jeffries Creek area, this sixty-three year old mother moved to Dale County, Alabama, to be near most of their children. She was living with her daughter, Jemima, in 1830. However, by 1840 she was alone, living by Dempsey. When she died nine years later, her grieving sons buried her in a Methodist Cemetary next to Zion Church, not far from Haw Ridge. Zacheus had carved it out of the wilderness a few years after Alabama's creation. The tombstone covering her grave marks the closest kin of our family's founder that can be found.

Children of JOHN DOWLING and NANCY BOUTWELL are:

	i.	RHODA³ DOWLING.
3.	ii.	REV. DEMPSEY DOWLING, b. December 14, 1783, Jeffries Creek, Darlington District, South Carolina; d. April 26, 1865, Dale County, Alabama.
	iii.	ELIAS DOWLING, b. 1787.
	iv.	LYDIA ANN DOWLING, b. 1789.
	v.	ZACHEUS DOWLING, b. July 29, 1792; m. PERMELIA CATHERINE HEAD.

Notes for ZACHEUS DOWLING:
Methodism entered the Pea River area in 1826 with the establishment of the Pea River Mission by the Tallahassee, Florida District of the South Carolina Conference. The Mision became a Circuit in 1830. Rev. Zacheus Dowling, one of the earliest preachers, rode the territory in the 1830's on his horse "Dickey." He was assigned to the Elba Circuit in 1856 and was the fourth pastor of the Elba Methodist Church. His permanent address for many years was Daleville, Alabama, and it is here that he lived with his wife, Permelia Catherine Head. Rev. Dowling lived to be ninety-two years of age and is buried near his wife in Liberty Cemetery at Greenville, Alabama.
Source: "Pea River Reflections" by Marion Bailey Brunson
Chapter 20 - You Can't Go Home Again (pp. 101-102)

	vi.		ALLEN DOWLING, b. February 10, 1794.
	vii.		LEVI DOWLING, b. 1800.
	viii.		SIMEON DOWLING, b. 1800.
	ix.		JEMIMA DOWLING, b. March 01, 1807; d. February 08, 1891; m. BENJAMIN HILDRETH, 1823, Darlington District, South Carolina; b. March 15, 1802; d. November 26, 1868.

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