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Hi everyone,
I’ve done so much genealogy research lately but now I’d like to find some of you who might be related. I’m going to list the names I know at one time had/have NA connections.
First my father’s direct line: Rollins, Hawkins, Little, Simmons
Mom’s direct line: Smith, Branch, Blow, Lane, Moore, Etheridge, Sessums, Wynne, Simmons, Newsum, Valentine, Jones, Taylor, Price, Robbins.
Mom’s collateral lines these folks run all around us so we are cousins: Winborn, Sizemore, Lewis, Bird,Coker, Jones, Jeffries, Tucker, Walton, Norfleet, Watkins and Poytress 🙂 Linda
Hi Erica,
I was born in Virginia and lived there many years but graduated from high school in North Carolina. Both of my parents were born and raised in North Carolina. My father is from Pitt County. My mother was born in Halifax county and grew up in Edgecombe county. The deed records and the wills of Edgecombe and Halifax county show a close relationship to the Lewis’s in my mother’s line. I don’t remember right now which relative married a Lewis but I’ll look it up. What other names do you have in your family? I have so many I can’t even remember them all. LOL
Linda
Hi Linda,
Well, we might be kin. I don’t know. All my relatives are from Sampson and Harnett counties in North Carolina. But we do share WYNNS and SIMMONS lines
My SIMMONS line is through my mother’s side: James [b. circa 1795] (He claimed that his paternal grandparents were Indians who came from Roanoke [River]), William [b. circa 1832] (son of James), Julius [b. circa 1872] (son of William), Mildred [b. 1902] (daughter of Julius), my mom [b. 1924], and, me [b. 1948].
My WYNN/WINN line is also through my mother’s side: Adam [b. circa 1795] (owned all the land upon which the town of Mt. Olive, NC now sits. He sold most of his land to the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad Co. and the town grew up around the rail station.), Gray [b. circa 1815] (son of Adam), Penny [b. circa 1840] (daughter of Gray. Penny personally told my mother stories about Union soldiers ransacking her family home during the Civil War. Penny was married to William Simmons listed above.), Julius Simmons (see above Simmons line. Son of William and Penny.), Mildred Simmons (see above Simmons line. Daughter of Julius.), my mom, and then, me.
I’ve never (as of yet) been able to track my Wynns past Adam.
Most of my kin thinks our Wynns were Waccamaw Indians, but I don’t. I, like you, think my Wynns were Nottoway. Don’t ask me why. I just do. I guess the reason I think they were Nottoway is because of the European (English ?) Wynn family connection to the Nottoway. I believe one of thew white Wynns was a Captain who was murdered in retaliation for the hanging of one of the Indian’s great men. The other white Wynn was (I believe) a Nottoway interpreter.
Also, oddly (and coincidentially) enough, there was a white family of Simmons who lived extremely close to the Nottoway reservation in Virginia, and who bought land from the Nottoway on numerous occasions, AND, if memory serves me, one of whom was appointed as a trustee for the Nottoway.
Now, my theory has always been, “Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.” And there’s certainly a lot of smoke between my Simmons and Wynn lines and the Nottoway Indians.
That’s right smoke and fire LOL Do you have any Branch’s in your lines? They are also a Nottoway family. In fact one of the head men in Southampton county, today, is a Branch. I’ve been talking with some folks up in Hertford County who are of Nottoway descent and they also have Branch, Wynn and Simmons and several have Moore’s as well. I have two lines of Simmons and quite probably two lines of Wynns. One of which is Thomas Wynne the interpreter and yes his brother Joshua was killed by the Saponi because one of his servants killed one of their headmen. The oral stories in my family are that they came out of Virginia going to South Carolina and then settled in North Carolina. I have found no evidence of the South Carolina oral history so I am thinking they didn’t stay there long enough to leave that trail but I can’t just outright refuse to accept what my grandmother told us. I have one line I have found impossible to trace before 1790 so this may be the line that went to SC and came back to NC. This is one of my Etheredge lines I have two of those too LOL. My families have intermingled so much it’s hard to keep up with what happened LOL. Now my Etheridge line claims to be Cherokee. I have my doubts about this unless one of them married a Cherokee while down in Catawba country. Like I said this would have been before 1790. Now most of my indian relations came out of Southampton County in Virginia into Bertie and Chowan in North Carolina and later into Halifax and Edgecombe from my study this appears to have been a normal migration pattern for that time frame and they moved in groups or they followed each other because one appeared right after the other and so on. I still have relatives in what is now Hertford County (once was Chowan and Bertie). I have relatives in Gates and Northampton counties and Halifax, Edgecombe, Wilson, Nash and Pitt counties. I have heard of some going down into Harnett and Wayne and Sampson counties too but we have lost contact with them. My Littles came out of North Georgia into Greene County NC and later into Pitt county. My ggggrandfather William Little was born in Georgia in Sept 1819. By 1830 they were in North Carolina. Now this bit of info got my head spinning with questions. Gold was discovered in North Georgia in the 1820’s and the Little’s still in Georgia claim to be of Cherokee descent. For some reason, To me, it appears North Carolina was a safe haven for natives of all tribes. So I guess it makes sense that North Carolina has the largest population of Native Americans east of the Mississippi. Also I believe the Cherokees moved in small numbers out of the mountains so they would be hard to trace. I don’t believe that removal took ALL of them except the one’s in the mountains today I believe some ran and their descendents still live on the east coast. I believe the Lumbee tribe represents ALL indians that once lived in Virginia and the Carolinas and Georgia as well. I believe our ancestors have called some of us to learn the truth and to find our roots and reestablish our identity for who we really are not what society believes we are. Last month when I was in the hospital (angina attack) they left my chart in my room and I read it they had labeled me white of course. i told them that looks could be very deceiving and since races have different genetic makeup they should ask a person instead of assuming anything. I got a simple yes Maam we are sorry about that and they changed my chart to reflect what I really am, MIXED.
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