- Joseph Melton was born in Nash County, North Carolina ca 1770. He was the son of John Melton and the grandson of Zachariah Melton. Joseph married Patience Hargrove in 1798. No marriage record has been found, but it is presumed that they married in Nash County as Aaron and Unity Proctor Hargrove, her parents, were also living in Nash County the same time that Joseph and his parents were there.
Joseph had seven children that are known. John, born sometime after 1798, Matthew, born 1800, died 1836, married Mary Polly Holland; Sion, born 1802, died in 1886, married Lucrita Farmer; Etheldred, born 12 February 1813 in Tennessee, (possibly in Humphreys County) married Mary Ann Arnold 25 January 1837 in Benton County, although no record of their marriage has been found. She was the daughter of Wilie and Sarah Arnold. Etheldred died 24 April 1885 and was buried in the Melton family cemetery on Harmons Creek, Benton County, Tennessee. The next child of Joseph's and Patience's was Pridgeon, born 1815, died 1883 and married another daughter of Wilie and Sarah Arnold, Martha Patty Arnold. Child number seven for Joseph was an unknown female, born about 1816, and the last known child was Sintha Melton, born October 1819.
An old story that has been passed down through the ages was that Joseph's son Sion was an indian that he either picked up when he crossed the mountains of North Carolina or that he was his son by an indian woman. None of this can be proven or disproven, although Joseph raised Sion as his son, Sion was known to be part indian and is buried in an unmarked grave at the head of Woody Hollow on Harmon's Creek. Joseph is believed to have been on the west side of the Tennessee River before the Jackson Purchase in 1818. If he was, he was here illegally, as it was still the land of the Chickasaw Indians. It is speculated than Joseph fit right in with the indians as he had this indian son and he was allowed to "squat" on the land. When the land was opened up to the white man in 1818, old Joseph was one of the first to file a land claim for 159 acres on the north side of the creek that would later become named for Adam Harmon and forever be known as Harmon's Creek.
The 1836 tax records of Benton County show that 159 acres of land on Harmon's Creek under the ownership of Etheldred and Sion Melton. Etheldred eventually gained sole title to this track. The same 159 acres of land that Joseph Melton claimed in 1836 has remained in the Melton family even to this day and some of it is still being used as farm land for corn and soy beans.
Joseph died in 1835 and Patience about 1850. Both are buried in the Melton Cemetery on the original Melton property on Harmon's Creek, Benton County, Tennessee.
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