The following information was assembled from numerous sources and cannot be used directly as proof of Qualifying Service or Lineage.
It is considered a research aid and is intended to assist in locating sources that can be used as proof.
State of Service: SC
Qualifying Service: Sergeant / Patriotic Service
Author: Jim Lester Wilson
Of Scotch-Irish ethnicity, James Dobbins was born 1744-1749 in either Ireland or Pennsylvania. The first reliable documentation for him is found in the records of Augusta County, Virginia, where in 1772, 280 acres of land on Naked Creek were surveyed for him. Based on the age of their oldest child, he and Elizabeth Stevenson were married in about 1772 in Augusta County, Virginia. At some point between the years 1775 and 1778, the family migrated to South Carolina. In 1784 James Dobbins and his wife, Elizabeth, then living in District 96 (later known as Abbeville Dist/County), South Carolina, sold land in Augusta County to Jacob Sheetz (or Shultz). During the War for Independence James Dobbins served in the South Carolina Militia under Capt. Samuel Rosamond, alternatively on foot and on horseback from February 1779 to May 1783. He signed a receipt for an Indenture from the South Carolina Treasury on April 19, 1785 for this service. He received a land grant on Little River in 96 Dist, South Carolina in 1784 and another tract on Beaver Creek in 1785. He was an active member of the Greenville Presbyterian Church and a founding elder of the Varennes Presbyterian Church. James Dobbins’s last will and testament was written on May 11, 1813, in Pendleton Dist, South Carolina, and he died there sometime before July 26, 1817, the date his will was proved in court. James Dobbins and Elizabeth Stevenson were parents of the following children: Robert Boyd, John, Mary (m. John H Morris), Elizabeth (m. George H Hillhouse), Sarah, (m. Hugh F Callaham), Jane (or Jean), (m. George Liddell), and James, Jr.
Ref: 1. Robert Z Callaham and James F McConnell, Three Dobbins Generations at Frontiers, (Walnut creek, CA and St Michaels, MD: Privately published, 2012), 31-62. 2. Boby Gilmer Moss, Roster of South Carolina Patriots in the American Revolution, (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co, 1994), 258. (Can be found on Ancestry.com). 3. Will of James Dobbins, Will Book A, page 215, estate package 174, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, SC. 4. Lyman Chalkey, Chronicles of Scotch-Irish Settlement in Virginia, Vol 3, (1912: reprint, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co, 1974), 571.
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