 Although a slaveholder, some have suggested that Terrell may have put some of his slave property under the name of his son John Dabney Terrell Jr., in order to avoid a pending law suit against him in Tennessee, and the subsequent loss of such property.Terrell died on the 10th day of May 1850, at the age of seventy-five, whereupon his slave property fell unto his wife, Lydia.At her death in 1853, most of his registered enslaved persons came under the possession of his son Edward Garland Terrell, while John D. Terrell Jr. retained his own property in persons.