William David And Esther Sloan Dickerson Family
Sherry Adair-Goble, great, great granddaughter of Bill and Esther Sloan Dickerson
provided this picture and much of this information.
Pictured is the Bill or Willie (my family called him Uncle Bill while he was known as Willie by his
descendants) and Esther Sloan Dickerson family in about 1897. Bill, born Oct 1842, was the eldest
child of A. Lanson and Rebecca Grinad / Granade Dickerson. Esther was born in Jun 1850 and died
in about 1898 in Dade County, GA. She was the daughter of Josiah and Mary Porter Sloan.
The Dickerson and Sloan families both lived at Pleasant Shade and Bill and Esther were born there.
They were married Apr 4, 1864 in Smith County.
Front row, l-r: Bill, Esther, Samuel S., born 1890 in GA, and Josie, born 1886 in GA.
Back row: Thomas C., born 1885 in GA, Kinny, born 1866 in TN, Arra Elizabeth, born Apr 25, 1876 in
GA and died Mar 9, 1934 in Benham, KY, William, Jr., born Nov, 7, 1868 in New England, GA and died
Jan 7, 1923 in Rising Fawn, GA, John B., born Nov 1879 in GA and Calvert, born Oct 1872 in TN.
In about 1868, Bill and Esther moved to Dade County, GA, near Chattanooga, and were living
there for the 1870 census. Bill was listed as a railroad laborer but in later censuses was listed
as a farmer. After Esther's death in 1898, Bill, in about 1903, married Sarah Graham from
Trousdale County, TN. They were living in the third district of Smith County in the 1910 census.
From this marriage, Bill became the father of at least three additional children: Henry, born in
1905, in TN, Nil or Mil, born in 1907 in GA and David, born in 1909 in GA.
Bill died in the early 1920s and was buried in Highpoint, GA but I have not been able to find his
tombstone. He, Esther and Sarah have numerous descendants living in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky,
Oklahoma, Michigan and other states.
Two of Bill's siblings, Nancy Dickerson Beasley and James Samuel (Jim) Dickerson, have pictures
posted on this website. In addition to these two siblings, Bill had two other sisters: Elizabeth who
married Malcolm Calvin (Cab) Smith and Sarah, who married Charles Taylor.
I have a family story about Uncle Bill. I suppose the story came through his younger brother, Jim
(my great grandfather) to my grandfather, John, to one of my uncles, who told me the story. It is
probably embellished considerably as my Dickerson side enjoyed spicing-up tales to try to make
them more interesting and funny. The story goes that Bill, while working around some rocks, was
bitten by a copperhead. It made him mad and he tried to get the snake but it crawled in a hole under
a rock. Bill then decided that perhaps he had better get some medical attention. So he went to the
house, ate a twist of chewing tobacco and drank a pint of whiskey. After the "medicine" began to
work, he went back to the rock, reached back in the hole and tried to grab the snake so he could
drag it out and slam it against a rock. As I noted, this tale is probably highly exaggerated but it
perhaps had some truth in it.