Re: ISAAC EDMONDSON (1755-1810), NC AND GA,

I’ve been researching the family of Dicy Tillman (b. abt. 1808, Bulloch County, Georgia) who married David Edmondson (b. 1809, Bulloch County, Georgia), son of Isaac Edmonson.

I believe Tillman and Edmondson family ties pre-date Bulloch County and were probably established in 18th century Craven County, North Carolina and/or Dobbs, Lenoir, Johnston, and Jones Counties in the area around the Neuse River and Great Contentnea Creek. From there, I believe those connections continued possibly through Colleton, South Carolina and eventually to Bulloch/Candler and Lowndes Counties in Georgia.

Isaac’s Edmondson’s supposed father, John Edmondson, lived in the same area of the Neuse River in Craven County, North Carolina as the Tillman/Tilghman family Dicy Tillman descended from. I believe her father, Jeremiah Tillman, was born in Bladen County. His father, Gideon Tilghman, was related to the Craven County Tillmans and later resided in Saint Bartholomew’s Parish (South Carolina), in Bladen County, North Carolina, and finally Bulloch County, Georgia along the Canoochee River by 1797. At least some members of the family were members of the Upper Lotts Creek Primitive Baptist Church you mention. A man I believe to be Gideon’s brother, John Tillman, is buried there.

If you’re looking for this Edmondson family’s whereabouts in the 1780s, you might try Colleton County, South Carolina. There was a John Edmondson living there in 1756 who’s listed in the same small company of militia (7th Company, Beach Hill District Militia, St. Paul’s District) as a John Tillman who I believe was the son of one of the Craven County-area Tillman families whose children later came to Bulloch County, Georgia. Although I know that the John Edmondson sited as being the father of Isaac Edmondson is said to have been in the Craven County area up until at least 1778, I’ve read via other Edmondson family researchers that his birth was around 1717. That would mean he left a pretty comfortable life in Craven for the hardscrabble Georgia frontier at about the age of 70. I can’t find a will for this John so no idea if he had childrenn. I’d speculate that maybe he died in 1778 which is why he disappears. I think there may have been another John Edmondson, possibly the son of this man (or one of his brothers?). If that son was born around 1737-1740, he’d be the same age as at least three Tillmans I suspect also traveled from Craven to Colleton and later to Bulloch County (by way of Bladen County, NC). Many other families in the same area of Bulloch County in the early 1800’s (Strickland, Kennedy, Coleman, Norman, Bryant, Kirkland, etc.) share ties to Colleton and/or Bladen County, NC. Cox is a name strongly associated with Bladen. May be worth a shot to dig into this further. This was an age when people almost always migrated in packs and who founded settlements, churches and intermarried in clannish groups, sometime lasting several generations. It seems that many of the early Bulloch Settlers around the Canoochee River area may have been one such group.

Brian