Allen–Wadsworth Family Burying Ground
It seems to be more frequent that I am encountering more destroyed cemeteries. The Allen–Wadsworth family burying ground near Pitch Kettle is a sad sight. This cemetery likely contains the grave of Colonel John Allen, the person who's house George Washington mistaken during his tour of the colony for a place of entertainment. John Allen was an officer in the Revolution (a Captain I believe). His immediate neighbors were Sacker Dubberly to the north and Lewis Jones to the south, the former a private and the latter a Captain.
John Allen headed a plantation he was the first to call Cattail or Cat Tail on the north side of the Neuse River. He was married to Ann Green Bryan, daughter of Brigadier General William Bryan, and was mentioned in his father-in-law's will. She remarried twice after her husband's death in circa 1794. Their son Burton Allen wound up with Cat Tail Plantation and kept it until his death in circa 1821. His widow Eleanor White remarried to General Samuel Simpson (his fourth and final wife) of the Fort Barnwell Plantation. Burton's estate records span many years and are several hundred various documents. He had two children, John Burton Allen and Ann Allen (sometimes Nancy Allen, Nancy White Allen, Nancy Ann Allen, etc.). John died young and Ann inherited the plantation. She married William Bryan Wadsworth, being his first wife, she then died two years into the marriage and was buried at Cat Tail Plantation. William B. Wadsworth then sold the land and it passed through hands until another Allen descendant named James Hanrahan in the 1880s bought out several land owners in the area, still referring to it as the Cat Tail Plantation, and sold a good part of it off to David Tripp and a few others.
The original house survived into the early part of the twentieth century. I am told it sat for a short while behind one of those three-bay farm houses you see often while driving and that it dwarfed the three-bay house in size. Its brick bases remained into the forties, possibly the fifties before entirely disappearing altogether.
The cemetery itself survived into the seventies or eighties. Then the trees were cut and thus the field enlarged. A farmer decided to plow over both the slave and plantation cemeteries to make a few more dollars, throwing the stones into the nearby branch. Ann's headstone was the only one saved from being tossed. My current project is recovering those marker stones with the help of the local residents of the area later this year in the fall or winter. The information I have received indicates that the cemetery at one time had between 8–12 main headstones. I added what information I have to FindAGrave. If anyone has any information they've gathered on this family or land it is most welcomed.
