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...
It's always a good idea to look at original records yourself. More than once, I've seen a transcription that gets a name wrong and seeing the original document winds up solving a mystery. If you haven't already seen them, there are plenty of tax list images over at NC...
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...
While Ancestry is notorious for spreading false information, you should also be wary of Find-a-Grave (link to her page). Remember, both sites depend on users, who are human, to create family trees/bios. Always, always, always check the facts against contemporary...
(This article was originally published July 25, 2018. It was most recently updated June 6, 2019.) It's now worth investigating the possibility that Harriet Morris is a daughter of Thomas Morris of Beaufort County and granddaughter of Elisha Morris. While Laban...
The following post is an attempt to reconcile information that I've gathered so far, as well as an invitation for anyone who has more details to add in their comments. I have had a special interest in Elisha Morris for several years now. My cousin Mike Morris and I...
The family of John Holmes, Sr. went in different directions after the death of their family's patriarch. Thanks to deeds, census records, and DNA, we may finally be able to track their migration paths. These deeds involving children of John Holmes, Sr. mention him as...
The word "brother-in-law" is becoming the bane of my research. In earlier times, the term "in-law" had a broader scope than is now the case. Pretty much anyone related to you by marriage was an in-law. Therefore, a brother-in-law could be one in the modern sense, a...
I don't descend from Thomas Respess Crawford, at least not that I'm aware of, however some of our AncestryDNA matches do and I was scratching my head at the woman who was recorded as his wife. A Mary Tuton of Beaufort County, SOUTH Carolina. I didn't even know any...
The following is a transcription of the will of Garrett Nelson of Beaufort County, dated 15 May 1856. I don't descend from Garrett (that I know of), but I have seen far more children attributed to him on Ancestry, although I suspect some of that is in error. Garrett...
For this installment, we turn to the third volume of the collection. In this book, there are several letters relating to our Henry Williamson. The Legacy Mr. Blount writes to a William Murdock 18 Mar 1796 (pg. 35-36) "Some time since last winter I caused to be...
I'm sure many of you Joyner researchers have already sorted this out, but I'm still trying to make sense of who's who. I'm going to start posting information about the Joyner family of Pitt County, primarily focusing on items spanning the colonial era to the...