From Ellen Venable Poteet:

According to census records, John Venable was born between 1774 and 1780 either in Spotsylvania County, VA or in Spartanburg County, SC. His father, Joseph Venable, moved the family form Spotsylvania County, VA to Spartanburg County, SC between 1776 and 1778. No records have been found on John Venable in Spartanburg County to date (March 2001) as he was underage or a young adult while living there.

John Venable was unmarried and still living at home when his father, Joseph Venable, moved the family to Warren County, KY, about 1801. Mentioned in his father's will (dated 1810 Warren County, KY), John and his brother Larkin Venable, were still living with their widowed mother Lucy (Davenport) Venable in the 1810 census. The next year both John and Larkin married widows: John to Sarah (Pinson) Thompson (sic) on April 22, 1811, and Larkin to Molly Blasinger on November 22, 1811. According to one Venable researcher, Molly was a Roundtree before she married Blasinger...

Zephaniah, Ruth, Aaron, Elizabeth, and Mary Pinson were members of Friendship Baptist Church in Spartanburg County, SC in 1802-3. Friendship Baptist church was in the Tyger River area (southeastern part) of Spartanburg County. John Venable's family were members of Boiling Springs Baptist Church in the northern part of Spartanburg County, but there is amble evidence that both churches were intimately connected and the members of one knew the members of the other. But it was not until both families moved to Warren County, KY, that John Venable and Sarah Pinson Thompson/Thomson were married. Both were in their early 30s and there is a son listed in John Venable's household in 1820 and 1830 who was older by 10 years than the rest of the children, just the right age to be Sarah's son by Ephraim Thompson.

John Venable was listed on the Warren County, KY tax lists from 1805-1813; and when Allen County was formed from Warren County, he was listed on the Allen County tax lists from 1815 to 1816. He shows up in 1823 in Henry County, TN, but his whereabouts in the intervening years is not known at this time (April 2001). West Tennessee was opened up for settlement in 1818 and Henry County was formed in 1821. The new lands may have lured John Venable to that area. He was a member of Paris Lodge No. 108 of Free Masons in Paris (Henry County), TN.