_Richard CANTRIL _
_Joseph CANTRIL __|
| |_Dorothy JONES ___
|
|--John CANTRELL
|
| _John HEATH ______
|_Catharina HEATH _|
|_Hannah _____ ____
"Land of Eden", Granville County, North Carolina, which became Orange County in September 1752. The list of taxables collected in the years of 1752 and 1753 as submitted by the Sheriff to the County Court in 1754 contains the name of John Cantrell with two white polls. John purchased land north of the Haw River and south of the Dan River in 1758. The land was on Wolf Island Creek, a tributary of the Dan River. John was appointed to many juries in the next 15 years.
Miss Brittain died and John married Jane _ about 1770. John and Jane had four sons and two daughters. Family tradition says that there were a number of twins in John's family (since he is reported to have had 17 sons with his first wife). John is shown to be the father of 21 sons and 2 daughters, but research indicates that a number of children attributed to John were nephews, sons of brother Isaac.
Guilford County, North Carolina was formed in 1771 from the western part of Orange County. John and his family lived in the northern part of this new county. This area became Rockingham County in 1785, but by that time, John and his family had moved southwest down the Piedmont Plateau to the 96th District of South Carolina. This move was made soon after the close of the
Revolutionary War. There he farmed and worked with the Buck Creek Baptist Church. Some of his descendants still attend this old church. John died before February 1803 (the date of the will probate) and three of his sons, Abraham, Stephen, and Moses were the administrators of his estate.
There were many traditions about John Cantrell and his family regarding their move to the Carolinas, but the exact date of his leaving New Castle County is not known. It is known, however, that he was living in Rockingham County, North Carolina, before the Revolutionary War. Shortly thereafter, he moved to the 96th District, now Spartanburg County, South Carolina where he owned over 800 acres of land on Buck Creek, a tributary of the Pacolet River. In 1790, John was listed in the census or the 96th District of South Carolina. He had one son under sixteen and two daughters living at home. Many of the names on this census were familiar names from the Court Records of Orange County, North Carolina. It should be noted that this was the first record found in America where the family name was spelled Cantrell. The same census in Kentucky, Virginia, and North Carolina listed families as Cantrall, Cantrel, Cantril, and Cantwell. John appears to be the first to use the Cantrell spelling in America.