I was thrilled this past week to receive in the mail a great big heavy package postmarked from Virginia. As soon as I saw the from address, I knew it was the book I ordered a couple of months ago, Beaufort County, North Carolina Ancestors by Roy Archbell, Jr. Before I...
I was recently asked by Wake County Public Libraries to give a virtual Zoom presentation on fascinating but little known facts about colonial North Carolina history. In this presentation, I talked about the Lost Colony, the Tuscarora War and how it led directly to the...
Do you happen to have a carpenter in your family tree? How about a blacksmith? A bricklayer? Or any of 127 different crafts practiced in the American South (coopers NOT included, more's the pity). This is your lucky day! I have just stumbled over this bit of...
It's time for some myth-busting. There are a couple of persistent ones that surround this family. "Thomas Laughinghouse came to America about 1750..." The first comes down to us via Henry T. King's Sketches of Pitt County: There are several problems with this...
I've been researching a bunch of different things lately and I'm trying to compartmentalize them into a handful of posts that might be helpful (and easily accessible) in the future. This will be the first in a series of random items for random families I've spent time...
In trying to make sense of the connections between the Rountree and Wallace families, I'm finding I need to dig deep into the available documents. It appears there is some erroneous information on Ancestry and other sites relating to Thomas Rountree, his children, and...
The following items are pulled from the North Carolina Historical and Genealogical Register, Vol. 1, 2, & 3. I've only chosen items that predate 1800, as my own research focus related to the Rountree family is in the early 18th century. Feel free to add more...
How early were your ancestors in North Carolina? If they were here prior to the War of Independence, then it might be worthwhile to check the Moseley Map for their names, or at least their surnames. The Moseley Map was created in 1733 by Edward Moseley (1682-1749),...
If your genealogical research has largely been limited to Ancestry.com, the NC GenWeb and perusing county records at your local library, court house or Register of Deeds, then perhaps it's time to go a bit deeper with your research. If you can take your ancestors back...
The following are much like the Colonial and State Records of North Carolina, however, these are British records. They are relating specifically to people, places and events from the Crown's perspective during the early colonial era. Documents Relating to the Settling...