Maximilian Haney Conner

MAXIMILIAN HANEY CONNER 

Maximilian Haney Conner was the son of Maximilian Conner and Phoebe Bishop Conner.  Maximilian Conner was a native of Virginia, born October 14, 1762, in Culpepper County and was a soldier in the American army during the Revolutionary War. Maximilian Conner first served for three months in the South Carolina militia beginning in 1779 and in 1780, he enlisted in the Continental army serving in Captain Parsons’ company. In Parson’s company, he served in Col. Shelby’s regiment under General Sumpter in the siege of Augusta, Georgia, and was under the command of Captain Parsons until the surrender of British General Cornwallis at Yorktown which, in 1781, ended the fighting of the Revolution War. Maximilian Conner, in 1830, was to apply for a pension as a result of his service during the war and was granted a pension in 1831 that was to continue after his death to his wife until her death. ¹ Following the war, Maximilian Conner married Phoebe Bishop in the Spartanburg District of South Carolina on November 14, 1788. Sometime later, probably after 1810, Maximilian moved his family to Cocke County, Tennessee, and lived there during the remainder of his life. He died November 27, 1834, and was buried in the Old Slate Creek Cemetery of Cocke County. His wife survived him by almost ten years.²

  Maximilian Haney Conner was born January 2, 1806, in the Spartanburg District of South Carolina, the ninth of twelve children of Maximilian and Phoebe Conner.  In 1831, at the age of twenty-five, M.H. (as he later would sign correspondence and financial documents) married Martha Palmer, daughter of Revolutionary War veteran Thomas Palmer.³ The year following his marriage, M.H. executed a contract January 9, 1832, to teach school at “Anthony Benley’s school house” in Cocke County, Tennessee. His salary was to be derived from fees paid by the parents of the twenty-seven students under his instruction. Fees amounted to $2.00 per student for each quarter and were to be paid in com “delivered on the ear” to the school house. Conner’s tenure as a school teacher was to last two years or less.⁴ Since available and inexpensive land beckoned in southern Tennessee, he would not remain long in Cocke County and subsequently, he would make his living as a farmer. In late 1834, at age twenty-eight, with two young children and with Martha pregnant with her third child, M.H. moved his family by river barge on the Tennessee River to the area southeast of the confluence of the Tennessee and Hiwassee rivers. His third child, a boy named Thomas, was born shortly after his arrival in Hamilton County during the bitter winter of 1834-35.⁵ 

M.H. Conner located his family in the unsettled area that was, at the time, being purchased by the Federal government from the Cherokees and which had recently been annexed by Hamilton County. In 1836, he was taxed, along with fifty-one other families, in the 1Oth Civil District of Hamilton County which extended from just south of Grasshopper Creek north to the Hiwassee between the Tennessee River and the Hamilton Bradley county line.⁶  In 1841, as the area was opened for settlement through land grants from the State of Tennessee, Conner applied for and received a grant for 40 acres described as SW4, NW4, Section 22, FT2N, R3W.⁷  He later added three other grants and enlarged his holdings to160 acres. By the time of the Civil War (1861-1865), Conner had accumulated additional farm land and, in 1864, was taxed on a total of 390 acres.⁸  There, north of Grasshopper Creek in the Salem Community, he was to make his living as a farmer and raise his family of sixteen children. 

Maximilian Haney Conner was an early member of the Salem Baptist Church and was a trustee of the church when the church was the beneficiary of two acres conveyed to the church for its meeting house by George W. Gardenhire, October 10, 1844.⁹ He and Martha were to remain active members of the Salem Baptist Church until their deaths. M.H. Conner died July 7, 1893; Martha died June 15, 1890. Both are buried in the Conner Cemetery southwest of Birchwood. ¹⁰