Goodspeed's Biographies Goodspeed's History of Greene County -- 1887

Maj. R. H. M. Donnelly

Maj. R. H. M. Donnelly, a farmer and proprietor of the Donnelly Hotel, at Fullens, was born in Lee County, Va., January 2, 1835, the son of William and Sarah (McQueen) Donnelly, the former a native of North Carolina, and a soldier in the war of 1812. He died in Johnson County, Tenn., February 16, 1842, aged fifty-one, where the mother was born in 1801 and died in 1876.

Our subject, the fifth of seven children, was educated at Taylorsville, but as his father died when our subject was but seven years old he worked the farm for his mother until he was of age. He was a carpenter until he and Capt. R. H. Lutteral raised a company which became Company D, Thirteenth (Federal) Tennessee Cavalry, of which he became first lieutenant, then captain, and was mustered out as major. He was in seventeen battles; was with Gen. Stoneman in both of his raids from Knoxville, first to Virginia in December, 1864, second to North Carolina and Virginia in March and April 1865.

In 1860 he married Eliza J. Allen. They have had eight sons and seven daughters. After the war he moved to Rheatown, Greene County, where he began merchandising in October, 1865, but since September, 1886, he has been a farmer. He is a Methodist and a Royal Arch Mason.

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