Isaac "Ike" C. Dortch, Jr., was born on September 15, 1831, in Henry County, Tennessee. He was the sixth of nine children of Isaac C. Dortch, Sr. and Nancy (maiden unknown). His father had come to the "wild west" of Tennessee from Nash County, North Carolina, and his mother had come with her family from Georgia. They married in Henry County and raised their children there.

Ike's siblings were: Lewis Jackson Dortch (1818-1886, married Mary Davis and later Emily), William Dortch (1822-1902, married Nancy, Susan, and Middy M. Lee), John Dortch (1825-1897, married Martha Moody), Thomas Dortch (1826-aft 1900, married Mary J. and later Louisa Debruce), Mary Jane Dortch (1829-?, married Abraham Clements), Washington Dortch (1835-?), Carroll L. Dortch (1839-aft. 1900), and Sarah Ann (1840-aft. 1870, married Thomas Culpepper).

On July 20, 1854, Ike married Mexico Powell, the oldest daughter of a local chair-maker and farmer, in Benton County, Tennessee. They lived in Tennessee for the first few years of their marriage, but in 1859 they decided to head further west. Ike and his brothers Lewis, John, Thomas, and Carroll and their families moved together to Greene County, Arkansas, where they farmed. Many of their descendents still live in this area today, and a significant portion of the Rock Springs cemetery in Knob (in Clay County, Arkansas, near the border with Greene County) is filled with Dortches.

Ike and Mexico had nine children together. The first three were born in Tennessee; the rest were born after the move to Arkansas. They were: George Washington "Wash" (1855-1932, married Martha Essie Stanphill), Mary Jane "Sis" (1854-aft 1920, married Jesse Hatley and James M. Trantham), Joseph A. (1859-1879), David Powell (1860-1932, married Elizabeth J. Gossett and Jeanette "Nettie" G. Gossett), Margaret Abigail (1861-1950, married John Mitchell Wyatt), Nancy J. (1864-?, died unmarried, probably young), Louis D. (1866-1959, married Eliza Ann Lamb and Irene Elizabeth Haneline; this was my ancestor), Martha Melvina (1870-1900, married Henry L. D. Wyatt and Johnnie Beaton), and William S. (1872-1960, married Pearlie A. Lucy).

Mexico died in about 1874, when their youngest child was still a toddler. I don't know what she died of; it could have been an illness or accident, or given the ages of her children, it could have been due to pregnancy or childbirth with a tenth child. Several years later, Ike remarried to a woman named Martha Jane.

Ike died at the age of seventy-seven in Greene County, Arkansas. On his gravestone, there is a picture of him with a long flowing white beard, the patriarch of a large family.