John Haynie was the 4th child and 2nd son of Rev. John Haynie. Wesley is for the Wesley brothers, famous English founders of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

In 1825, when John was about 14, the Haynie family moved from Knoxville, Tenn., to Tuscumbia, Alabama. There, in the 1830s, John married Agnes Morton, with whom he had a son Henry. Agnes died just a few years later.

In 1839 most of the Haynies - including John - followed other family members to the Republic of Texas. John W.A. Haynie received a land grant on Sept. 7, 1839, for one-third of a league. He settled in Washington County, marrying in 1844 Pamelia Hargrove, sister of Chappell Hill's founder. The couple had nine children together. The Haynies and Hargroves were prominent citizens and active Methodists in the Chappell Hill area.

John's occupation, on the 1860 Census, was 'Merchant.' His wife "Amelia" Haynie passed away in 1865; and he died two years later during the yellow fever epidemic - which also took his 8 year old son James Dobbin Haynie and his son-in-law Dr. Edwin Rogers, husband of his eldest daughter Mary Agnes. Two of his sisters-in-law may have been victims as well, as they died in 1867: Mary E. Hargrove Baker and Rebecca A. Hargrove Cade.

Most, but not all, of the information in this biography came from L.H. Rossman's 1963 book, Rev. John Haynie: Ancestry, Life & Descendants.

John A. Haynie served as the third mayor of Chappell Hill in 1858-59, according to the Chappell Hill history book "All Our Yesterdays."

From Elsa Vorwerk's website (as of December 2015):
"The following appeared on 14 October 1847 in the Democratic Telegraph & Texas Register: We are requested to announce John A. Haynie, Esq., of Washington county, as a candidate for Lieut. Governor."

NOTE ON HIS MIDDLE NAME: Mrs. Rossman's book didn't reveal what the initial A stood for in John's name. Some web pages show him as John Alexander Haynie; I don't know whether documentation exists for this middle name. One of his sons was given that name, but he may have been named for his uncle, John Alexander Hargrove.

(Also, a few web pages have him mixed up with his father, saying that he was a minister.)