Albemarle Tradewinds October 2018 Web Final

Northeast North Carolina Family History – changes are a part of life…
By: Irene Hampton - nencfamilyhistory@gmail.com
Well last month I wrote about the 350th
anniversary celebration that Currituck
was planning but who knew Hurricane
Florence would decide to visit the same
weekend and cancel the event! Sadly our
neighbors to the south are still struggling
with the aftermath and I cringe to think of the
lost items of value to every family’s history.
With the advantage we now have of storing
valuable family histories and photos in the
cloud or on family history websites such as
familysearch.org and Ancestry.com, I hope
more of us will make this a priority in the
immediate future.
As for rescheduling those events – the
decision about the anniversary is being
made after my deadline as I am writing this,
BUT the Kansas City BBQ, People’s Choice
BBQ and the Rodeo have been rescheduled
for November 3rd. The BBQ contest begins
and 1 pm and the rodeo at 3 pm along
with numerous other activities, including a
cornhole competition. For more details and
specific costs go to www.visitcurrituck.com/
currituck-bulls-bbq/
For more than 30 years we have been
talking about going to southern New Jersey
to visit the graves of my husband’s 5th
great-grandparents. We finally committed
to make the trip this past August. Most
Hampton descendants in the area (and
there are MANY) got their family history info
from a record completed in 1949 by Mary
Hampton Modlin, the granddaughter of Dr.
John Thomas Hampton II, the first Hampton
to live in Currituck. A copy of this information
is in “The Heritage of Currituck County
1670-1985” and is what I used as the basis
for my 1980’s Hampton genealogy. As I
have mentioned in the past it is also where
the confusion between the Virginia and New
Jersey Hamptons was created.
I finally got around to comparing DNA
circles on Ancestry.com to my husband’s and
YEAH! – his DNA matches a number of Virginia
lines with documentation from William
Hampton born in 1586 in England, arriving
in Virginia in 1620 followed in 1621 by his
wife and two children. We just don’t have a
documentable paper trail… But I just found
a new minor error from Mary Modlin’s record
that is now literally in stone. Her death date
of our first Currituck ancestor, John Thomas
Hampton was October 31, 1831. That is
incorrect but is chiseled on his monument in
Aydlett – oh well…
I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit I
really haven’t looked at this line in over a
decade. In 2014 a picture appeared in a
web search of the 5th great-grandmother
whose grave we went to see, posted by
Stephen Haynes. Her name was Mercy
Harris Hampton and she married the father
of our Currituck ancestor, also Dr. John
Thomas Hampton. He was a Revolutionary
War doctor and throughout the Old Stone
Church cemetery in Fairton, NJ, Revolutionary
War veterans are marked with a flag
and a large medallion. There were A LOT!
When we got home I decided to check into
this Hampton line again and I was impressed
by an article now on Ancestry.com also by
Stephen Haynes. The title is “The Story of
Three Grandmothers” written in 1955 by his
grandmother Maria Louisa Kennard Haynes.
It is 68 pages and a great read with wonderful
information. After his mother’s death in
2011 he inherited a basement full of thousands
of letters, documents and photos and
a notebook with this type-written manuscript.
Only “one grandmother” is our line.
It gives some information about Mercy’s
Harris (maiden name) line as well as a letter
from Mercy’s second husband Amos Wescott
to Mercy dated May 5th, 1800, Fairfield (now
Fairton), NJ. One line is of special interest to
Currituck Hamptons – “The Medicinal Society
meets at Cohansey Bridge next Thursday
and John and David is going to be examined
on that day.” Our Currituck ancestor and his
step-brother David are taking their examination
to become doctors!! The correction to
our John Thomas Hampton’s death appears
in a letter sent to Ruth Wescott Jeffers
(Mercy and her 2nd husband’s daughter) by
her nephew James Hampton, dated April 23,
1831. “We received a letter from Currituck
a few days since informing us of the death
of Uncle John Hampton; he died on the
27th of March of a pulmonary consumption.”
Checking Currituck wills gives shows his will
was proved May of 1831 so 69 years of the
October date are wrong and every genealogy
based on Mary Modlin Hampton’s info is
wrong.
The picture I am including is from a
daguerreotype made of a portrait of Mercy
Harris Hampton Wescott. This was a
photograph made from a very early photographic
process. Although the location of
the portrait is unknown Stephen Haynes has
the daguerreotype. If both pictures make
it – the other is of my husband standing next
to the graves at the Old Stone Church. It
was the third church built there by Presbyterian
settlers from Fairfield, Connecticut. Its
building was delayed by five years during
the Revolutionary War, finally built in 1780 to
replace a wooden one that had stood since
1715. Don’t be determined your family history
information is the only right version, new
light changes things!
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Irene Hampton earned a certificate
in Genealogy from Brigham Young
University and worked as the Genealogical/Local
history Researcher for the
Pasquotank-Camden Library for over
12 years. She has also abstracted and
published “Widow’s Years Provisions,
1881-1899, Pasquotank County, North
Carolina”; “1840 Currituck, North Carolina
Federal Census” and “Record of
Marriages, Book A (1851-1867) Currituck
County, North Carolina”.
You may contact her at
nencfamilyhistory@gmail.com.
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