PROMINENT FAMILIES
Eppes Family
One of the genealogically important families who lived in Claiborne Co., Tennessee, was the Eppes family, who were descendants of the early American emigrant, Col. Peter Eppes, of Virginia. The ancestor of the Eppes family of Claiborne County lived in what was first Knox County, somewhere near the line of the present Grainger, and which territory was then a part of Knox County. His name was Edward Eppes, who settled there perhaps ca. 1790, coming down from Virginia. His wife was an Anderson and a direct descendant of the Jordan family to which George Jordan, Attorney General of Virginia (for the King) was connected. Anne Eppes, daughter of this Edward Eppes, who came to Knox Co., in an early day, married Thomas Gibbons, father of Thomas Gibbons. Source: Worth Stickley Ray, Tennessee Cousins: A History of Tennessee People (Austin, Texas, Worth S. Ray, 1950), 197.