Tag Archive for: #localhistory

TownTalk: Geneaology Basics, Pt. 2

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There is so much information at our fingertips in the 21st century world of genealogy, but people who want to learn more about their ancestors still have to use those tried-and-true research to obtain the most accurate results.

Bill Harris and Mark Pace, North Carolina Room Specialist at Oxford’s Thornton Library discussed different types of records, from family Bibles to courthouse files in Thursday’s tri-weekly history segment of TownTalk.

Before the days of online subscriptions that help individuals fill in family tree information, genealogists had to go to the source; oftentimes, that was the local courthouse.

“The court was all powerful back in the day,” Pace said, adding that you can find “all sorts of crazy records,” from the usual wills and deeds, to the bounty that someone was paid for bringing in a wolf hide.

Court records are considered “primary sources,” Pace said, as are family Bibles, tombstones and church records.

“Secondary sources are a little trickier to document,” he continued. A secondary source may be something like a newspaper article or obituary and books on local history, all of which technically contain second-hand information.

Of course, there are many books that chronicle the history of a place or a family that are considered very reliable and upon which many genealogists rely for information.

Pace said in his 40-plus years of researching history of some sort or another, he said it’s always gratifying to find that bit of missing information that had previously eluded him.

“You’ll hear a ‘whoopee’ in a quiet library,” he said, and it’s a sure sign that another researcher has found an elusive tidbit as well. “They’ve found what they’re looking for,” he said. “It‘s very rewarding.”

 

 

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TownTalk: The Reconstruction Era In Vance, Granville And Warren Counties

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Driving past historical markers that dot the roadsides in the area give motorists a brief glimpse into some of the well-known people that have lived, worked and died nearby.

But anyone who wants to take a deeper dive into those people memorialized on the historical markers need only ask Mark Pace, North Carolina Room specialist at Thornton Library in Oxford.

Pace joined WIZS’s Bill Harris Thursday for the tri-weekly history program on TownTalk and they discussed some prominent African Americans who influenced the political scene after the end of the Civil War.

Henry Plummer Cheatham, for example, has a historical marker along NC 96 in Oxford, which reads: “Born into slavery. U.S. Congressman 1889-1893. Superintendent of Colored Orphanage of N.C. 1907-1935. Grave 8/10 mi. N.E.”

But a marker cannot include all the accomplishments of someone like Cheatham, and of others who played a role in the politics of North Carolina during Reconstruction, which Pace said was basically between 1865 and 1900.

Vance County was formed during this period – 1881 – and until 1900 “every single representative in the state legislature from Vance County was African American,” Pace said.

This area had the highest number of free blacks in North Carolina at one point, somewhat of an anomaly that wasn’t seen in other parts of the state or in Southside Virginia.

Pace posited that this could be due to the fact that a Virginia law requiring anyone who bought their freedom had to leave the state within 90 days.

This core of free Blacks in the area opened up opportunities – educational opportunities, economic opportunities and political opportunities.

Cheatham, for example, was born in 1857 on the Cheatham plantation located off Highway 158 west of Henderson, went to Shaw University and by the age of 29, was elected to Congress. His sister-in-law was married to George White, another influential politician of the day.

White defeated Cheatham and went on to serve the “Black Second” district in the U.S. House from 1897 to 1901. He was the last black Southerner in Congress for 72 years.

That is what White’s historical marker says. It was erected in New Bern in 1976.

 

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TownTalk: Basic Genealogy

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Today’s genealogy enthusiasts have a multitude of online resources, from databases that help create family trees to digitized newspapers from bygone eras.

Whether you’ve been at it a long time, like Mark Pace and WIZS’s Bill Harris have, or whether you’re just getting started, there are a few rules of thumb to keep in mind as you ferret our tidbits of information.

In their tri-weekly history segment on Thursday’s TownTalk, the two history buffs discussed the basic nuts and bolts of genealogy – call it Genealogy 101.

Pace, North Carolina Room specialist at Oxford’s Thornton Library, has been doing research on his family for half a century. Harris, for about the past 25 years.

Harris reminds others to talk in person with the oldest family member you can to find out information. “But there’s so much more,” he said, from family Bibles to web-based resources.

Pace said a family’s oldest living relative is a “wonderful resource” to start with, whose basic knowledge can be verified – or disproven – by checking against other sources.

“If you start with what you know,” Harris said, such as talking with a grandparent or other older relative, to gain information, “you can plug it in and then…slowly start working backwards” to fill in the gaps.

It’s important to determine what information is relevant to your search to avoid getting distracted. “Don’t let it overwhelm you,” Harris continued.

Libraries and courthouses are familiar places to many seasoned genealogists. But there is so much information available at your fingertips – online databases and archived documents make it easier for genealogists to find information in far-flung places.

Most places have a local history library, Pace said, and he constantly receives calls from people who are doing just that – checking sources.

“North Carolina was one of the very last states to mandate by law that you have a birth certificate or death certificate,” he said. That law took effect in 1913.

Before then, births may have been recorded in family Bibles and deaths verified in wills or estate records.

Wills and estates, however, were used by those who owned property. The lives and deaths of individuals who didn’t own property could easily have fallen through the cracks and lost forever, Pace noted.

Case in point, a branch of Pace’s own family. “All they did was grow tobacco and go to church,” Pace quipped, adding that there is scant information available about that part of his own kin.

Not surprisingly, when recorded information was done by hand and not by keystrokes on a computer, errors were much more common.

That’s just one reason why genealogists should always have multiple sources for their information

“Question everything,” Pace advised, adding that genealogists often have to be part sleuth to uncover information that may be difficult to prove.

For years, telephone books served the vital purpose of listing numbers of individuals and businesses. Those thick paperback behemoths are obsolete today, but the old ones that are still around can help genealogists confirm information, Pace said.

Documents as mundane as phone books help to place a person in a certain time period at a certain place. They are “fabulous” resources, Pace said.

He fielded a query once from someone who wanted to know the phone number for a family member who lived in Oxford at the beginning of the 20th century, when the town had its own self-contained telephone system. Pace located a 1903 phone book and found the phone number.

What was that phone number, you ask? 1.

 

 

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TownTalk: James Turner, NC Governor

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Back in his day, James Turner may have been considered a “typical” farmer in the area – by today’s standards, however, it depends on how you define “typical.”

Turner owned productive farmland, but he also was a legislator, a U.S. senator and served three one-year terms as the governor of North Carolina.

The plantation home known as Oakland, situated near Williamsboro, burned down in 1935, but his other home, Bloomsbury, still stands in Warren County in the general vicinity of Ridgeway and Manson.

Turner was born in 1776 and died in 1824, and he and some of his contemporaries were the topic of the tri-weekly history segment of TownTalk with Bill Harris and Mark Pace.

Pace, a local historian  North Carolina Room specialist at Oxford’s Richard Thornton Library, said Turner was referred to as “Lordly Governor Turner,” in his day. He was among a handful of prominent Warren County-area individuals that some have called the “Warren Junta.”

The term “junta” refers to a small group wielding great power in a country, usually following a revolution.

“Between 1790 and 1840, Warren County was the place to be,” Pace said, adding that during that time, three of the state’s five governors hailed from Warren County.

One governor, Nathaniel Macon, went from governorship to become the Speaker of the U.S. House.

In 1802, Turner was chosen by the state legislature to be the 12th governor of the state following the death of John B. Ashe, who died after being elected governor but before he could be sworn in to office.

He then served three one-year terms and then represented North Carolina in the U.S. Senate.

Turner was among a group of relatively conservative politicians at the time who advocated minimal responsibilities by the federal government – basically, they just wanted a federal postal service, Pace said.

There is some uncertainty about where Turner is buried, but Pace said he is fairly confident that Turner’s final resting place is at Bloomsbury.

One of Turner’s sons, Daniel Turner, also figured prominently in the politics of his day. The younger Turner, a West Point graduate, also served in the state legislature and in the U.S. Congress, Pace said. But he never really was able to capitalize on the opportunities afforded him.

He came home to Warren County and studied to become an attorney, Pace said. He was elected to the state house, and then made a successful bid for the U.S. Congress, where he served a couple of terms.

Pace said Turner opened an academy in Warren County. His wife, Anna, “ran things and kept things going,” Pace said. The academy brought in teachers from up North and was going along pretty well until it ran into financial trouble.

“His friends got together, pulled some strings,” Pace said, and Turner ended up accepting an appointment to be the director of the Naval shipyard in San Francisco Bay. He and his wife both are buried there.

Turner’s wife, Anna, married into a fairly prominent family, but her lineage was nothing to sneeze at. Her maiden name was Key – and her father, Francis Scott Key, was an attorney in his own right who perhaps is best known as the person who wrote what was to become this country’s National Anthem.

 

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TownTalk: Local Lore Rooted In History

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Once upon a time, the tiny town of Stovall in northern Granville County wasn’t so tiny. In fact, it once claimed the honor of having one of the largest private residences in the state, second only to the famed Biltmore Estate in Asheville.

“Waterloo,” as it was known, was built by James Daniel in 1840 and ultimately had a whopping 48 rooms.

After the Civil War was over, a Mr. Dickerson frequented the area, where he spent time hunting quail. “He liked the place so much, he bought it,” said Mark Pace, local historian and North Carolina Room specialist for the Richard Thornton Library in Oxford.

Pace said it is Dickerson who is credited with a couple of other “firsts” for the town – he was the first person to bring a car there, he had the first graded road constructed and he also had the first telephone, according to Mark Pace,

Pace and WIZS’s Bill Harris chatted about a few examples of such historical lore during Thursday’s tri-weekly TownTalk history segment.

Dickerson lived up North and turned the sprawling home into a hunting lodge. He would travel down on the train, which stopped in Stovall, unload his car, and stay for weeks at the time, Pace said.

“When he came, it was quite a big deal,” Pace said. His office in New York was across the street from the Federal Reserve.

“Not only did he have money, but he had brand-new money,” Pace explained. That new money also prompted rumors that circulated at the time that Dickerson was actually printing money at his Stovall digs.

He did infuse the local economy, however, running a store next to the railroad depot with its own bar and drugstore.

When he got older, Dickerson returned to New York, leaving area residents bummed. It seems that Dickerson paid all his neighbors’ property taxes – in exchange for hunting rights.

The Vance County connection is this: Henderson native Charlie Rose owned the property for a number of years, although the main house burned in 1962, leaving several outbuildings and an overseer’s house.

It’s sometimes difficult to ascertain fact from lore when dealing with stories like these, but that just adds to the interest.

One story from right here in Henderson when, in December 1932, a real estate agent and stock broker driving to Richmond on business vanished, never to be heard from again.

Or was he?

Rufus Sidney McCoin was a well-respected member of the community, Pace said. He served in the state legislature and on the state advisory budget commission, which Pace said afforded him access to some of the state’s influential leaders.

It was the height of the Depression, Pace said, and “there was no indication that anything was going on in his life” that would raise questions or concerns for his welfare.

He was last seen at a gas station just outside Richmond, and that’s where the tracks went cold.

“He bough gas using a Gulf courtesy card…used the phone and took off down the road,” Pace recounted. “And that was the last anybody heard of him.”

Fast-forward a couple of weeks and the chief justice of the state supreme court received a letter postmarked December 25 from Chicago, IL. The letter, of which Pace read a lengthy excerpt, detailed what had transpired two weeks prior outside Richmond.

“It was signed ‘a boy in distress,’” Pace said, adding that the letter still exists. He’s seen it and he’s read it, and he has his own theories as to what may have happened.

 

The contents of the letter accurately disclosed where to find McCoin’s car – in a garage in Ohio. Also recovered were his wallet, a bloody glove and his eyeglasses.

Although there were alleged sightings of McCoin in the years that followed, the mystery has never been solved.

Which is where educated guesses and speculation come into play, Pace said.

“I think whoever wrote this was an educated person trying to sound like an uneducated person,” he said, questioning why some common words like “hotel” and “gas”would be misspelled while other less common names of towns would be spelled correctly.

The letter itself has stains on it that appear to be blood, but how those stains got on the letter will probably never be known.

To hear more stories of interest, listen to the entire interview at wizs.com.

 

TownTalk: Hauntings Of Old Granville

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One of the reasons the stately old home known as Cedar Walk in Williamsboro fell into disrepair was because of the ghost that inhabited the premises.

And the Neal House in Epsom rode the poltergeist wave right in the early ‘80s, about the time the movie of the same name was popular – you know, objects flying around, dishes flung from their shelves.

And then there’s the legend of “Hatchet Man,” who wanders the general area of Oxford Road near the local country club.

Mark Pace and Bill Harris talked about these phenomena – and more – during Thursday’s tri-weekly history show on TownTalk.

Did prominent physician Hutchins Burton really haunt Cedar Walk? Who knows. But according to the writings of local historian S.T. Peace, Burton was hanged in the house, Pace said. And members of families who later lived in the house reported hearing all kinds of strange noise over the years, and seeing a ghost in the hallway downstairs.

“It got to the point,” Pace said, “that nobody wanted to rent the house.” And, unoccupied, it fell into ruin.

Whether you’re one who believes in the supernatural or chooses to find logical explanations for the seemingly inexplicable, the stories you hear – especially around Halloween – are interesting, to say the least.

The house known as Pleasant Hill in Middleburg, later called Rivenoak, was purchased by a young couple who moved in and set about restoration work, which including wiring it for electricity for the first time.

Joel Holloman Carroll was born in that home and lived his entire life there. He was a real creature of habit, and was known to strike a match against the same door frame near the kitchen each evening to light a lamp before before bedtime.

Carroll died there, and during the restoration, passersby would swear they saw a light shining through his bedroom window. The young couple’s ebullient Golden Retriever refused to cross the area that led to that same bedroom. And the couple’s young child would remark about a man standing nearby when there was nobody there.

  1. You could possibly explain those away – the light was a reflection from something, the dog was just being, well, a dog. And a child can have a vivid imagination.

And Hatchet Man?  The story goes that if you go over to the country club section of town into a particular area that once had been a dead end, dirt road, and cut off your car, Hatchet Man would show up, Pace said.

  1. Maybe that’s someone’s overactive imagination or maybe that was a story created to keep pesky teenagers off manicured greens.

But what about the poltergeist of Neal House?

“Dishes move, things fly off the table – literally fly-through-the-air kind of stuff,” Pace said. He was a student at ECU when he read a story in the student paper about the home.

“It was really active stuff,” he said, recalling some of the stories being told about that house.

 

Hear more stories in the full interview at wizs.com

 

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TownTalk: History Of Middleburg

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Middleburg may not fit the modern definition of a “planned community,” but following its incorporation in October 1875, it did enjoy some of the same amenities that today’s planned communities have: schools, stores, restaurants and homes.

Mark Pace, local historian and North Carolina Room specialist at Oxford’s Thornton Library, said the Hawkins and Yancey families planned Middleburg, which got its name because it was the midpoint between Raleigh and Gaston, the two terminals for the Raleigh & Gaston Railroad.

“Like so many other communities around here, it didn’t exist until the railroad came through,” Pace said on TownTalk’s tri-weekly history show with Bill Harris.

Patriarch Philemon Hawkins, lived from 1717 to 1801. Numerous descendants figured prominently in North Carolina history.

One son of Philemon Hawkins III was John Davis Hawkins, who lived in Gillburg near the site of the prison camp. He served for 51 years as a trustee for UNC. His brother, William, was the 17th governor of North Carolina.

It was John Davis Hawkins, Pace said, who was “the mover and shaker who got the first railroad to come through.” They put up the money for the railroad, and Pace said any member of the Hawkins family could ride for free.

The Hawkins family lived at Pleasant Hill, which still stands today. And there is a family cemetery located there.

Sarah Hawkins Jordan was a Black woman born at Pleasant Hill. She was a midwife for 75 years, Pace said, and is said to have helped deliver 2,000 babies. Her husband, John Clark Jordan, was a successful farmer in the area, and she was an assistant to physician Joseph Warren Hawkins.

“She was noted for her medicinal abilities,” Pace said. When their son was stricken with blood poisoning, the hospital physicians said he would likely die. Not willing to accept that as an option, “she used her old-timey recipes and came up with a concoction – wild berries and such – and he recovered,” Pace said.

Those familiar surnames – Hawkins, Yancey, Henderson, just to name a few – seem to pop up frequently when delving into area history and genealogy, but do you know the connection between Middleburg and Shearon Harris nuclear power plant?

  1. Shearon Harris was the son of a Baptist preacher from Middleburg. He became president of Carolina Power & Light, and Pace said “he was a big fan of nuclear power.” The power plant was named for Harris when it opened in 1987.

Then there’s Albert A. Anderson, who operated a private academy in Middleburg in the early 1880’s. But he became interested in medicine, became a doctor and in the early 1910’s director of Dix Hospital. He preferred the use of occupational therapy over drugs to treat the mental health issues of the patients there.

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TownTalk: Place Names In Granville And Vance Counties

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A little community in northern Granville County could possibly be getting a unwanted name change, all thanks to newly planted state signage – and Google maps.

North Carolina Room specialist and local historian Mark Pace told the story of Jonathan’s Crossroads, named for the nearby creek of the same name. It seems that the state put up signs incorrectly identifying the area as Johnson’s Crossroads and Johnson’s Creek.

Once it’s in cyberspace, Pace said, the name could stick.

There are many communities all across the Old Granville County area – comprised of what is now Vance, Granville, Warren and Franklin counties – that have interesting name origins. Pace and Bill Harris talked about how some of those places got their names on Thursday’s tri-weekly history segment of Town Talk.

To be sure, many communities were named for prominent families in the area – Gillburg was named for James and David Gill, whose estate stood near the site of the prison there. But Gillburg also was known as Crack Rock, because there had been a school there by the same name.

Once known as  Nutbush, Williamsborough in Vance County was renamed for John Williams , who was a member of the Continental Congress and later a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Townsville honors the family that gave land for the railroad to come through. And Henderson is named for Leonard Henderson.

The community known as Bobbitt, once called Five Points, was named for Patrick Bobbitt.

But Oxford gets its name from the plantation owned by a man called Samuel Benton, who convinced civic leaders in the area known as Merrittsville back in the 1760’s to build the county courthouse on his property. He subsequently went into the real estate business, selling land that would become known as Oxford.

“Sometimes we know the origins of these communities’ names,” Pace said. But sometimes the origin of the name has been forgotten over time.

Seth was the original name for the Granville County area known as Cornwall. But why did its name change? Pace can only presume it’s an homage to the Cornwall in England.

And not too far from Cornwall – between Cornwall Road and Hwy 15 – is the teeny tiny area of Gela. There’s a town in Sicily, Italy with the same name. But how did the name of an old Greco Roman town find its way to rural Granville County?

Then there’s Alert in Franklin County – but if you don’t put the emphasis on the A, folks will know you aren’t from around here.

The location of post offices had something to do with names of towns and communities. Epsom, near the Franklin-Vance line, reportedly got its name when a group of folks were discussing names for the spot where the post office would be located. The area once known as Duke had to change its name because there already was a post somewhere else with the same name. The discussion took place in the community store, and one person suggested Epsom after noticing the container of Epsom Salts nearby.

At that time, it was popular to give towns names that had a positive or progressive spin. And Epsom Salts, with its health benefits, sounded like as good a name as any, Pace said.

The crossroads called Midway in Granville County got its name because it was halfway between Williamsborough and Oxford. But its name got changed to Dexter because someone had a friend with that first name. It sounded upbeat, Pace said, but more importantly, there was no other town called Dexter that had a post office.

Middleburg in Vance County is so named because it was middleway between Raleigh and Gaston, two main points on the railroad.

Leonard F. Dean published a gazeteer in 2011 of the local area that contains a wealth of information, including some of those lesser known or almost forgotten names of communities.

“I don’t reshelve that book,” Pace said. “People use it every day.” He leaves it along with an atlas for library patrons conducting research of one sort or another.

The gazeteer contains information about family homeplaces, along with references to the many creeks that often are mentioned in deeds to denote property boundaries.

Dean’s book is titled “Granville County North Carolina Gazetteer.”

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TownTalk: The Gist Of The Grist Mill

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According to the 1850 U.S. Census, there were more than 140 mills in operation in Vance and surrounding counties that once were all part of Granville County.

Some were sawmills, and some were grist mills – some constructed for use by a single landowner, but many were built for commercial use.

Folks would come to the grist mills to get their corn ground, of course, but mills also were important in other ways, too.

Sadly, few mills remain today, their wooden construction giving way to time and weather. Some have undergone restoration and are reminders of the mills’ place in their heyday.

Mark Pace, North Carolina Room specialist at the Richard Thornton Library in Oxford, and Bill Harris talked about mills and their roles in the community on Thursday’s tri-weekly history TownTalk show.

Pace said his research showed that in 1850, there were 102 mills in present-day Warren County alone – twice as many as the following county on the list, he said.

The reason for that may have been because of Warren’s status among other counties in the state at the time.

“In 1840, Warren County was one of the most prosperous and prominent counties in the state,” Pace said.

In a six-mile stretch along the banks of Sandy Creek in Vance County, there were numerous mills, he said.

First, there’s Fox Pond, site of the long-popular recreation facilities. A little farther down, there was Rowland’s Pond and mill, followed by Club Pond, then Weldon’s Mill and then Southerland’s Mill. At that point the creek continues into Franklin County, where there was Laurel Mill, Pace said.

Laurel Mill has been restored and visitors can see how the mill operated. Although situated along the stream or creek, a mill usually needed a pond nearby to employ that water when the creek levels were low. A mill race worked like a canal or trough to carry water from the pond to the water wheel. Millers would use a millstone to pulverize the corn.

John Penn had a small grist mill on his farm that is situated on Michael’s Creek in present-day Granville County. That mill used a different system for grinding grain. It used a wooden wheel called a tub turbine that was situated horizontally underwater instead of the vertical waterwheel.

Because these tub turbines remained submerged and weren’t exposed to the elements or  bug infestations, they were quite durable. “They lasted for decades,” Pace said. Using water-resistant woods like cedar and bald cypress made the turbines even longer-lasting.

In the mid- to late-19th century, a millstone cost somewhere in the $50-$90 range. Pace said that would easily translate to $4,500 or so in today’s money.

“So the people who had the money were the ones that ran the mills,” he said.

But mills represented more than just a place to grind grains.

“Mills were kind of a cultural and social center of the community,” he said. In some instances, some mills served as polling places. Folks who lived on one side of the Sandy Creek would vote at one mill and folks who lived on the other side of the creek would vote at another mill, he said.

Mills in the area are associated with certain family surnames – there’s Amis, Gregory and Stark in Granville County, Weldon in Vance and Hamme in Warren, just to name a few. Hamme’s Mill just south of Warrenton is an example of just how picturesque the mills and their settings are, Pace and Harris agreed.

In Vance County, O.B. Weldon ran Weldon’s Mill along Sandy Creek, and his brother operated another mill as well, Pace said.

Granville County’s Rufus Amis Mill, currently undergoing a restoration, and the Gregory Mill near Stovall serve as the county’s two existing examples of mills. Dalton Mill near Grassy Creek had been one of the oldest and largest in the area, dating back to the early 1800’s. It was taken down in 1993.

The Perry family owned Cascine in Franklin County south of Louisburg and there’s a mill that survives on that property today. If you count the basement, that structure stands five stories tall.

Want to learn more about mills and their history in North Carolina? Visit the North Carolina Room of the Richard Thornton Library and check out a book titled Beginner’s Guide to Grist Mills in North Carolina.

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Sons Of American Revolution: Descendants Often Play Detective To Find Lost Graves Of Patriot Heroes

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The Sons of the American Revolution is, first and foremost, a fraternal and civic organization. But its members also are part detective who spend time tracking down clues and uncovering details about individuals who fought for this country’s independence from England.

Bill Riggan, a member of the Halifax Resolves chapter of the SAR, spoke with Bill Harris and Mark Pace on Thursday’s Town Talk tri-weekly history program.

The four-county area is steeped in history, and Riggan said his SAR chapter covers Vance, Granville, Franklin and Warren counties, in addition to several other counties to the north and east.

“It’s a place where we should have a lot of revolutionary era soldiers,” Riggan said. He said the National Society of SAR has 140,000 names and locations of patriots’ gravesites, and a total of 732,000 names of patriots that are available for people to attach themselves to.

Being able to prove that you are a descendant of someone who supported the revolution against the Crown may prove difficult, or at least time-consuming. There are several criteria that must be satisfied for membership to the SAR: any male lineal descendant of someone who wintered at Valley Forge or a signer of the Declaration of Independence may become a member, as well as male descendants of members of the Continental Congress or those who fought in battle during the Revolution.

But civil servants during that era are also considered patriots. “There were a lot of people who helped with the war but didn’t put on a uniform and fight,” he said. Another criterion for membership is being a descendant of a signer of the Oath of Allegiance, a petition that was circulated throughout communities that disavowed the King and supported the revolution.

Although its membership is aging, Riggan said he hopes interest in preserving history will encourage younger men to consider joining.

Several grave-marking ceremonies are scheduled for October in Franklin County, and will include the state SAR color guard, as well as local Boy Scouts and the DAR – Daughters of the American Revolution. The color guard will be in period dress – “it will be very ceremonial, very traditional,” Riggan said. The dates are Saturday, Oct. 16 and Saturday, Oct. 23.

Although the SAR doesn’t maintain gravesites – it relies on families for that –  Riggan said the group strives to identify as many as they can. He encourages anyone with information about possible gravesites  – whether found while combing through family archives or stumbling across a random grave while hunting – to contact him and he can help with verification.

“We want to honor them,” Riggan said of those long-ago patriots, whose final resting places deserve to be cared for and remembered.

Take Harrison Macon, for example. Macon fought in the Revolutionary War and he is buried in Franklin County. The now-defunct Franklin SAR chapter bore his name, thanks to founding member Dr. D.T. Smithwick, a historian from the 1930’s.

Riggan said efforts to reconstruct the records of the former Franklin chapter have turned up details that show Smithwick ordered a headstone from the VA for Macon’s grave. ”We have evidence he did that. He put that on the grave – we know that to be a fact,” Riggan said.

But where?

To learn more about the October grave-marking ceremonies or SAR membership, contact Riggan at 919.495.0706.
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