Biographies...

Col. John Tipton

Born on August 15, 1730, Col. John Tipton resided in Baltimore County until 1747 when his family moved to the Shenandoah Valley near Winchester, Virginia. While there he married his first wife, Mary Butler and had his first nine children. In Virginia, he held many political and military appointments. During the Revolutionary War, Col. Tipton aided the colonies as a recruiting officer. At the death of Mary (1776) he married Martha Denton Moore. He moved his family to Washington Co. (TN) in 1783, which was then part of North Carolina. Col. Tipton served in the North Carolina legislature and led the opposition to the State of Franklin. A significant battle between John Sevier and Col. Tipton was fought in 1788 on his farm. He served as a member of the Territorial Assembly, U.S. Territory South of the Ohio River, and represented Washington Co. in the 1st General Assembly of Tennessee. Col. Tipton died in August of 1813 and is buried in the cemetery located on the site.

John Tipton Jr.

John Tipton, Jr., born April 21, 1767, was the seventh son of Col. John and Mary Butler Tipton. He married Elizabeth Snapp in 1791 and divided his time between Virginia and Tennessee until he moved to Washington Co. at the death of his father, Col. Tipton, in 1813. He served as legislator in the Tennessee General Assembly from 1803-1819. Between 1819 and 1829, he ran for the United States Congress, losing by narrow margins each time. He died in 1831 in Nashville while serving in the 19th General Assembly.

Landon Carter Haynes

Landon Carter Haynes was born at Buffalo Creek on December 2, 1816. He graduated from Washington College in 1838 and read law with T.A.R. Nelson. He married Eleanor Margaretta Powell on March 26, 1839 and received the Tipton farm as a wedding gift from his father. He represented Washington Co. in the state legislature until 1861 when he was elected to the Confederate Senate. After the Civil War he moved with his family to Memphis, TN where he lived until his death in 1875.

André Michaux

André Michaux was born in France in 1746. He became interested in botany as a young man and studied plants in England, France, and Persia [Iran]. In 1785 he went to America with his young son to study how forest trees could be transplanted to France. Michaux established a plantation near Charleston, South Carolina to grow plants that he collected while in the America. He kept a journal for nearly eleven years of travel in America: from Florida in the south to the Hudson Bay of Canada in the North and from Philadelphia and Charleston on the Atlantic coast to the most remote Western settlements, including the Indian lands of Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee. In the spring of 1795 and the spring of 1796 he visited Col. John Tipton's farm. In 1802 Michaux died of fever on the island of Madagascar.