Welcome to Cape Fear Clans —
Cape Fear Clans is dedicated to the memory of my brother, Jay Edgerton, on whose research much of this material is based.
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This site was inspired by my research into John McPherson of the Argyll Colony. McPherson was an Argyll colonist who left the Cross Creek settlement to live on the north edge of Raft Swamp just east of today's Red Springs in Robeson County, then northern Bladen County. McPherson owned land on Raft Swamp by 1767, residing there with his son and family until his death in 1791. Land records provide a map of his lands south of the Shannon community.

I am working now, like others before me, to further unravel the intricate relationships of the very earliest McNeill families of the Cumberland-Robeson-Hoke counties region, focusing on the 18th and very early 19th century McNeills. My research is not perfect, but it provides insights, discovery and transcriptions of documents and information pertaining to the history and genealogy of the upper Cape Fear region.

Bladen County—formed in 1734 and the mother county of Scottish settlement in North Carolina—lost thousands of records to three courthouse fires (one around 1769, one in 1800 and another in 1893). Precious few of those lost deeds can be found—most only in citation—within Cumberland County deed books and Robeson County deed books. Hundreds of early deeds did fortunately survive the fires because citizens had originals recopied into new record books afterward; however, the order of the surviving deeds is a mess. An excellent, abstracted source for surviving Bladen deeds is Brent Holcomb's Bladen County, North Carolina, Abstracts of Early Deeds, 1738-1804. My site also includes maps, Robeson County estates records, Cumberland County estates records, wills, court minutes, depositions, land warrants, maps, newspaper articles, family histories, letters and publications about the clans in the Cape Fear region. The site www.nclandgrants.com has been a valuable site for grants, some of whom were never recorded in county records.

Bladen County tax records covering several years from 1768-1789 were discovered in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC. Their transcriptions were published in two volumes (purchase Vol. 1 here and/or Vol. 2 here) by William L. Byrd III. These tax lists—particularly the unalphabetized lists—provide insight into late colonial, Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary era neighborhoods in what is today Robeson and Hoke counties, and southernmost Cumberland. That said, in 1784 the new United States Congress enacted a law establishing our first census to be taken that year. However, copies of the law were a year late in reaching the states, and thus late to the counties, so this first census was not taken until 1786 and 1787. Bladen County is missing supposedly from this official 1784 U.S. Census; however, the enumeration categories per household in Bladen's 1786 tax list match those required by the 1784 census, enumerating not just white men and slaves but white women who were never counted in 18th-century tax lists. So, what Byrd labeled as Bladen's 1786 tax list had to have been the first census that, incidentally, not only includes Bladen of that era, but what is now Robeson, the southern half of Hoke and parts of southern Cumberland. Moreover, unlike many of the Bladen tax lists, this apparent census looks to be whole. Additionally, the NC Legislative papers at the NC Department of Archives and History hold another extensive, unalphabetized Bladen tax list from 1784 (Byrd did not include it in his two volumes) showing number of polls, amounts of land owned and the districts in which the land lay. Dr. Morris Britt put a transcription of that particular list in his "Robeson County Register," another not-to-be-overlooked serial publication found at the Archives in Raleigh. The Archives has been given recently an astonishing collection, a total of fifty-five maps platted over some four decades and donated by their creator, Dan MacMillan of Fayetteville, architect and surveyor, showing the early owners, locations and dates of land tracts throughout Cumberland and Robeson counties. The county libraries at Fayetteville and Lumberton, NC have fine genealogical collections as well. Mabel McNeill Smith Lovin's history (a series of pdf's on disk) of her McNeill ancestors, alone, is a monumental effort containing detailed research of several other early Scots families of Hoke, Robeson and Cumberland counties. Many of her families are recorded in Peggy Townsend's three volumes of Vanishing Ancestors, the only existing source of the cemeteries of Robeson County in toto. Dorothy Potter's Passports of Southeastern Pioneers 1770-1823 is another book providing details of thousands of pioneers who needed passports to traverse Indian territories on their way to the deep south. And for a revealing, non-fictional account of just how people of the colonial and post-Revolutionary periods migrated, settled and populated the expanding South, buy a copy of Everett Dick's 1948 book, The Dixie Frontier.

I'm researching the following 18th-century families. Many were neighbors in the early Bladen tax lists (information below was updated June 2018).

• "Bluff Hector" McNeill, son of Neill Dhu McNeill, aka "Black Neill" McNeill, one of the leaders of the Argyll Colony.
  • A broadly flung and unsubstantiated tradition is that "Bluff Hector" McNeill was at the Bluff in today's Cumberland County around 1739 to meet the arriving 350-odd Argyll colonists. It seems more likely that a young man like "Bluff Hector," born into minor Scottish gentry, would have been living at that time in the area of Brunswick or Wilmington where he could be educated and make suitable connections in a thriving, colonial, coastal society more appropriate to his station in life. Indeed, he is found there with his mother in the will of Elizabeth McAuslan, dated 1748. Mrs. McAuslan bequeaths Hector a shirt that likely had belonged to her husband. So, it seems more likely that Hector was in a party that met the arriving colonists there. New Hanover County court minutes show his father "Black Neill" was a resident of New Hanover County in 1741, and in the correspondence between Miss Betty Capo of Wilmington and Mr. Everett McNeill Kivette of Black Mountain, the latter wrote of evidence that "Black Neill" owned land there as early as 1738. Alexander McAlester, another prominent Argyll colonist with holdings on the upper Cape Fear River, had a tavern in Brunswick.
  • "Bluff Hector" died between 1767 and 1768. In his last will and testament of 1761 he identified his two brothers, Duncan McNeill and Archibald McNeill. This second brother Archibald has gone largely unacknowledged, even within the earliest family histories of these Bluff McNeills. How did Archibald become forgotten? From available records, it is likely Archibald never married and was alive in 1784.
  • Regarding Bluff Hector's 1761 will, where has it been all this time? The signed original of the will is today in the NC Dept. of Archives and History. The document hints at some issues between brothers Duncan and Archibald. In his will Hector stipulated that his plantation on Taylors Hole was to be left to his brother Duncan, but half that plantation Duncan was to sign over to their brother Archibald. Hector further directed Duncan to provide Archibald a deed for the land, and in the sentence following he refers to other unspecified "matters" Duncan is to address. Finally, sixteen years after Hector's death, in May 1784, Duncan provided Archibald his deed—for the sum of £100, adding that after Archibald's death the lands he was bequeathed were to return to Duncan's descendants. Did the lands return to Duncan's family at Archibald's death? The unspecified "matters" may have included a string attached to Archibald's obtaining the deed, perhaps some hurdle to surmount. Nevertheless, the deed was recorded with the county in October 1784 so the transaction for £100 must have taken place. The reversion of the lands to Duncan's descendants also must have taken place, though I've found no record of it.
  • Duncan's will of 1788 does not address Archibald at all and Duncan never identified him as a brother in any document.
  • I have searched through deeds to confirm the identity of this brother Archibald McNeill to no hard conclusion. He was alive in 1784 and is only recently being listed as a son of "Black Neill" McNeill. This Archibald does not appear to be "Archibald Bahn" (aka "Scribbling Archie") McNeill. And he certainly was not "Laird Archie" (aka "Bluff Archie" and "Gentleman Archy") McNeill as "Laird Archie" was dead in 1779, per Cumberland County court minutes.
    
• Archibald "Gentleman Archy" McNeill and wife Barbara Baker, who, for a time at least, lived north of Big Rockfish Creek on 100 acres at Stewart's Creek in Cumberland County where Bennetts Mill was in 1901, but later moved to the Bluff area:
  • Judith Bullock Nesbitt, a "Bluff Archy" descendant and researcher, thought that he may have been the son of Malcolm McNeill of Colonsay and Barbara Campbell of Dunstaffnage. Aside from his nickname of "Gentleman Archy", he also was called "Bluff Archy" and "Laird Archie".
  • "Gentleman Archy" purchased a grant in 1754, the survey for which had been done in 1753. Recent grant and deed searches have shown that, in 1900, this tract was at Bennetts Mill on Stewarts Creek in Cumberland County, NC, and "Gentleman Archy" did not own it for long. Exactly where he and his family lived after 1759 when he sold the Stewart Creek tract is not certain—was that when they went to live across from the Bluff on Cape Fear River where he is said to be buried? It is said that Bluff Archy moved to the Bluff, and though that is unproved, his son Daniel and wife Isabella with most of their children are buried at Bluff Church cemetery.
  • He signed his name with an "A" in his will of 1778 and in grantor deeds. No lands are mentioned in his will, and pinpointing where exactly he resided has yielded little. Deeds concerning him hint that besides being a planter he may have been a minor land speculator from the 1750s to at least 1775. He died between 1778 and 1779, according to the date of his will and a Cumberland County court entry mentioning his widow, Barbara. It appears that the tradition that he and his family eventually lived near the Bluff area is correct.
  • Archibald's son Malcolm owned around 2000 acres on the north side of Rockfish Creek near Ardlussa on Tom Stallings Road southeast of Hope Mills in southern Cumberland County. I've found many of Malcolm's landgrants in the Cornelia S. McMillan Collection at the NC Archives. They are in boxes along with deeds associated with the Alexander and Peter Johnson family.
  • Allan A. McCaskill wrote an interesting newspaper article in 1901 in which he stated that "Gentleman Archy" must have been the father of "Old Colonel Hector" McNeill, the Tory officer (said to have been from Bladen County) who was killed in 1781 at Canes Creek during the Revolution. McCaskill had good reason to offer this information: As Archy's great-grandson, McCaskill is found in the 1850 census of Cumberland, aged 24, living with his grandmother Isabella, the widow of Archy's son Daniel. Daniel had been in the American army during the Revolution (Isabella received his war pension) and fought on the opposite side than that of his brother Tory Colonel Hector. To me, McCaskill's grandmother certainly knew the names of her husband's siblings and, as the wife of a soldier whose brother had fought on the opposing side in the Revolution, she would have heard first-hand from her husband and his family about Daniel's and his brother's wartime loyalties and exploits. It is likely McCaskill learned from his grandmother the information found in his article wherein he added that the history of Bluff Archy's family was "well preserved". Barring older evidence or proof, this is as close to the source as one can get in determining Old Colonel Hector's true parentage.
• John McPherson of the Argyll Colony who about 1765 left Cumberland County with his son, Daniel McPherson, to live on the north edge of Raft Swamp near today's Red Springs in Robeson County.
  • He and his youngest son Daniel settled a short distance northwest of Godfrey McNeill's homesite and close to the old Patterson cemetery along the Stage Road from Lumberton to Fayetteville, a road that today still follows the north edge of Raft Swamp.
  • John's son Alexander remained in Cumberland County and had many descendants including today's McPherson and McArthur families of McPherson Presbyterian Church.
  • John McPherson died at his home on Raft Swamp in 1791 along with two of his little grandsons. John's will had devised to these little boys his lands on the Raft Swamp, a bequest that seeded a tangled, legal wrangle amongst John's grandchildren from 1820 to 1845. That drawn-out suit detailed and documented John's and his descendants' lives in Cumberland and old Robeson counties.
  • The McPherson name in Robeson has died out; however, through various McNeill, McPhaul, Buie, Brown, Gilchrist, McKay and Humphrey branches in the area, John McPherson still has a great many descendants around Red Springs.
• Daniel McNeill of Taynish, one of the minor leaders of the Arygyll Colony, owned the plantation "Tweedside" the location of which is revealed by a series of deeds as having been on the east side of the Cape Fear River in today's southern Cumberland County.
  • Daniel McNeill of Taynish was the second son of Neill McNeill of Taynish and his wife Elizabeth Campbell. It has been published that Neill of Taynish was born in 1697 but that date has to have been an error because of two facts: the obituary of one of Daniel's daughters stated she was born in 1730 and Daniel's sister married in 1727; so, 1697 is more likely the marriage date of Neill and Elizabeth. It has also been published that Daniel of Taynish had brothers Hector, Neill and Archibald. The older brother Hector remained in Scotland, inherited the title of clan chief and its estate where he lived out his life, and was succeeded by his son Roger who also lived and died in Scotland. Neill and Archibald appear to have been Daniel's two younger brothers. In Cumberland County there was a Neill McNeill of the Argyll Colony who lived on Tranthams Creek on the north side of the Cape Fear across from the Bluff. This Neill had a son named Roger, presumably after whom Roger's Meeting House was named. Throughout the region at this time, the name Roger was only used by this particular McNeill family. My suspicion is that this Neill may have been the brother of Daniel of Taynish. Was Daniel's other younger brother, Archibald, the man known as "Scribbling Archie" McNeill?
  • Daniel of Taynish had two wives, and it's known that he had at least one daughter—Margaret who lived, married and died in Scotland—by his first wife and at least three daughters and one son by his second wife.
  • Daniel's most notable descendant—through the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth to William McNeill and their son Dr. Charles Daniel McNeill and his wife the beautiful Martha Kingsley, who were the parents of Anna McNeill Whistler—is James Abbott McNeill Whistler, the famous painter. Whistler is recorded as having stated that his McNeills were "Barra McNeills", but it must be remembered that Whistler was descended from two McNeill men: his mother's grandfather William McNeill as well as the father of William's wife who was Daniel McNeill of Taynish. Was William McNeill's line from the Isle of Barra?
  • It is widely accepted, though unproved, that Daniel of Taynish and his unknown first wife were the parents of "Scribbling Archie" McNeill; I doubt this because, at least through my own research using available dates, Daniel and Archie's range of birth years are too close together to have been father and son. It is more likely Daniel and "Scribbling Archie" were brothers (see above). Daniel had a known son named Archibald born sometime around 1730 (his sister Jean was born in the year 1730), who was a physician in Dorcester County, South Carolina between the late 1740s up to his death in 1774. This Dr. Archibald McNeill wrote a will in 1772 and mentioned his three sisters and a half-sister, but mentioned no half-brother named Archibald.
  • Tweedside, Daniel's estate on the Cape Fear River, was located not far above the mouth of Dunfield Creek on the river's east side and just north of "Hector Carver" McNeill's 222-acre grant of 1740. Records show there was at least one burial at Tweedside. Daniel of Taynish eventually sold off most of Tweedside, moving later to Bladen County proper near Brown Marsh, the area where three of his daughters and their families resided and owned property. Existing records reveal these families had strong connections to Wilmington society and lived there much of the time. Records show that Daniel's granddaughter, Jean (or Jane) Dubois, a woman who knew how negotiate and win her power within the male-dominated society of the 18th-century, was living at Tweedside in 1782. She married three times, each time securing her interests in Tweedside and what was left of its considerable value, real and personal. In 1804, during her final marriage to Duncan McAuslen, she sold Tweedside to George Elliott.
  • There is no Daniel McNeill in the 1763 Bladen tax list, but a Daniel McNeill appears in the 1770 Bladen tax list with considerable estate value. He is said to have been alive until at least 1774.
    
• Turquill McNeill, another Argyll colonist, who with his eldest son Laughlin McNeill, lived on the border of old north Bladen (which became northwestern Robeson County and is now northern Hoke County) and Cumberland counties around the Beaverdam Presbyterian Church area in 1768.
  • Turquill lived in the area near Buffalo and Toneys Creek south of today's county lines of northern Hoke and the far western corner of old Cumberland. Turquill's neighbors were "Buffalo Daniel" Patterson, "Beaverdam Daniel" Patterson, Gilbert and Duncan McNair, the John Purcell Graham family, Archibald Beaton, Hector McNeill of Drowning Creek and James Dyer. Turquill also owned river lands around Carvers Creek he bought from "Hector Carver" McNeill, and owned another strip of land on the west side of the river across from Daniel McNeill's Tweedside adjacent a McFee.
  • Turquill was very likely a relative of James McNeill of Rockfish Creek.
  • It has been claimed by a professional genealogist that Turquill's wife was Mary Bethune but offered no source for that claim. From learning about his children it seems possible that Turquill may have married twice and that his son Laughlin was born of a first marriage.
  • Turquill's oldest son was named Laughlin. Laughlin's wife was named Flora ("Flory"), but her maiden name is unknown. Deeds reveal that Laughlin had two or three sons who moved to Washington and Columbia Counties in Georgia around 1800 and another who moved to Marion County, SC about the same time. Laughlin remained in the western Cumberland County area and died there in 1801. Deeds and his estate division prove that Laughlin's daughter Elizabeth married the surveyor and land speculator Angus Gilchrist.
• "Hector Carver" McNeill of the Argyll Colony, who owned and traded his acquired lands on Carvers Creek in Cumberland County.
  • In 1737, a McAlester writing from Scotland inquired of Alexander McAlester in the North Carolina province about a son of Laughlin and Margaret Johnstone McNeill—one Hector McNeill—who had remained in the province the year before. Through grants and deeds we now know there were two Hector McNeills in the Argyll Colony, one of them being "Bluff Hector" and the other "Hector Carver." As "Bluff Hector" is known to have been the son of "Black Neill" McNeill and not Laughlin McNeill, it appears far more likely that "Hector Carver" was the man McAlester referred to in the 1737 letter. So, perhaps, the old tradition that "Bluff Hector" McNeill was living at the Bluff to greet Neill McNeill and his colony's arrival in 1739 needs reconsidering.
  • "Hector Carver" had two grants on the Cape Fear in 1740, a 222-acre grant, a triangular-shaped tract just above the mouth of Dunfield Creek on the east side of Cape Fear River, and a 640-acre grant in Chatham County at the fork of the Cape Fear at the Haw and Deep Rivers, the northernmost range of the colonists' grants."Hector Carver" was alive and living in Bladen County in 1778 when he sold the 640-acre tract.
  • Comparing several deeds' descriptions and call numbers all concerning the sale of the 222-acre triangle, it is proved that Elizabeth, the only child and daughter and sole heir of "Hector Carver" McNeill, married James McNeill of Rockfish (below).
• James McNeill of Rockfish Creek and wife Elizabeth McNeill, (aka Jimmie McNeill of McCaskills), in today's Robeson and Cumberland County.
  • My great-grandfather died in 1941 at the age of 92. He was a gr-gr-grandson of James McNeill of Rockfish Creek, and told my mother that he had been told by his own grandfather—"Wild Archie" McNeill who as a boy had known James in the final decade of James' life—that James "came over" in 1740. There is no proof he immigrated in 1740 but from what is now known the claim that James immigrated at that time is possible. It is a total mystery as to who James McNeill's parents were—no Argyll colony men fit the bill—and was not a son of Laughlin and Margaret Johnstone McNeill. James was well acquainted with, and close to, the family of Turquill McNeill of the Argyll Colony.
  • James McNeill of Rockfish Creek was also known as Jimmie McNeill of McCaskills. It's apparent that his residence was at McCaskills Bridge which was on Rockfish Creek almost due south of Philippi cemetery in today's Hoke County a couple of miles east of the town of Raeford.
  • A bible record shows James McNeill was born—certainly in Scotland—in 1732 and married in NC in 1752. He grew to manhood in Bladen, now Cumberland County, and eventually moved down into the northernmost part of old Bladen, now Hoke County. Although his will was recorded in Cumberland County (as was his wife's estate settlement), by the end of his life almost all his lands were in Robeson, and early tax lists and the 1784 census show he lived in the part of Bladen that became Robeson in 1787. Since the 1784 Bladen census (tax list) shows him living in that county, it appears that the minor boundary change between Robeson and Cumberland counties in 1791 put his residence just over the county line into Cumberland.
  • James was the only McNeill named "James" in the mid-18th century Cape Fear region, and remained the oldest man of that name until his death between 1803 and 1805. Philippi cemetery (originally known as "McCaskills") has a small sandstone grave marker with "J McNeill APTH 1800" carved on it, indicating James was buried there. Elizabeth, his wife, was the only child of "Hector Carver" McNeill, above.
• James McNeill, Esq. "of Canada" and of the Campbells of Duntroon in Argyllshire, Scotland, who migrated from Canada to Robeson County, NC around 1790 and became a justice of the peace and court official of that county until about 1830.
  • Legend has it that he was from Scotland, hired by the crown to survey the St. Lawrence River which brought him to Canada. He is associated with the legend that he was stranded on an island in Canada when his ship foundered and that his wife had remarried by the time he was rescued. James was a schoolmaster in Robeson County and was a court official (noted as James McNeill, Esq. in the minutes) in the 1810s, often presiding with one or two other influential gentlemen over court sessions. More research is needed to verify some of the information on this James McNeill.
  • His first wife's name is unknown, but it has been proved that his first child, Anne, was born in Quebec in 1788. She survived and married a Langworthy by whom she had several children. Elizabeth McNeill, his second wife whom he married about 1792, was born in Scotland, the daughter of Jane Campbell McNeill and her first husband William McNeill. It is believed James and Elizabeth had six children, some of whom have been positively identifed, whereas a few need further research to place them in the family. Elizabeth died about 1815. The widow Mrs. Sarah Patterson, James's third wife, bore him three children. His fourth and final wife, Mary Banter, outlived him and bore him no children.
  • He and his last wife and some of his children moved to Alachua County, Florida after 1833 the year he is last recorded in a Robeson County church record. In Alachua County he became a court official as well. He died in Florida in 1845.
• Godfrey McNeill and wife Catherine "Kittie" McDougald who lived at the intersection at Godfrey's Crossing, later Weaver Neill McLean's Crossing, and now known as McLeod's Crossing in Robeson County.
  • The couple and some of their children are buried in unmarked graves in the Patterson cemetery on Pattersons Branch, a branch on the north side of Raft Swamp below Shannon in Robeson County.
    
  • He and his wife immigrated from Scotland about 1760 and then lived briefly with James McNeill of Rockfish before settling on Raft Swamp a few miles to the southwest at the intersection of what is called today "McLeods Crossing" in Robeson County.
  • Godfrey's will, dated October 1806, has no probate date but county court minutes show it was proved in court in very early January of 1807; he likely died between October and December of 1806. Curiously, the name "Godfrey" was never again passed down through his descendants or any McNeill family, and, despite claims to the contrary, Godfrey McNeill did not have a middle initial "W".
• John McNeill of Richland Swamp and his second wife Flora McMillan, who lived on Richland Swamp in Robeson County and who is found only in a series of Robeson County deeds dividing his estate amongst his surviving children.
  • Robeson researchers of the 20th-century did not recognize John McNeill of Richland Swamp and, indeed, they seemed perplexed by his complex descendants whose lands stretched from the southwest side of Red Springs near Moody Bay down toward Wakulla. Though she did not research them, Mrs. Mabel McNeill Smith Lovin recognized the family in her vast McNeill research, calling them the "Richland Swamp McNeills". The closest researchers came to identifying the family was through the nickname used during his life for a man who has been found to have been one of John's and Flora's sons, namely, "Daniel McNeill of Richland Swamp" who died in 1872 and is buried at Philadelphus Presbyterian Church. "Daniel McNeill of Richland Swamp" was often referred to in his time in county and other records in ways that varied from "Daniel McNeill (R.S.)" to "Daniel McNeill (Richland)", etc. Moreover, Daniel's father John was referred to as "John McNeill of Richland Swamp" in a deed dated 1802 from Angus Gilchrist. Researchers did recognize, however, that older McNeill men living in the vicinity were closely associated with and believed to have been related to Daniel; indeed, it's been found that Daniel had three, perhaps four, older brothers by their father's first wife. Henry H. Hodgin, Jr. of Red Springs noted—correctly—that Daniel of Richland Swamp and John McNeill of Keinfordale (1776-1850, husband of Margaret McMillan) were brothers. It appears also that John of Richland Swamp had two sons named Neill: the first (who may have been John's brother or other close relative) disappears from the records about 1795; the second, Neill McNeill, Esq. (1796-1875; married Sarah McBryde), born about a year later, was John's son by his second wife, Flora. By his first wife, John had at least three other sons: Archibald (died 1835, unmarried), Malcolm (married Mary Ray and moved to Georgia), and John McNeill of Keinfordale who died in Robeson County in 1850. By his second wife Flora, John had several other children.
  • A series of deeds in Robeson County records beginning in 1823 and ending finally about 1856 show several siblings distributing the lands, slaves and financial estate of their father, John McNeill. John appears to have died about 1819 and his lands were all along the north side of Richland Swamp and spread southwestward from today's Red Springs toward Wakulla.
  • His second wife, Flora McMillan, made her will in 1833 naming all her children and her deceased brother, Duncan McMillan. Flora may have been the daughter of Duncan McMillan, Senior of Robeson County. All Flora's children, except for the youngest, who was also named Flora, are all named in the series of deeds that begin in 1823. Flora was underage in 1823, so she was not provided for in that distribution; she married Alexander Varnum in 1841.
  Neill McNeill, Sr. of Jobes Branch, likely an Argyll colonist who was either a head of a family or indentured, lived in Cumberland County, but by 1768 lived on Jobe's Branch in today's Hoke County very near the entrance to Greenbriar on Duffie Road just west of Red Springs.
  • Generations of this McNeill family have claimed this immigrant ancestor Neill McNeill, Sr. came to America in 1740 with two little sons, "Sailor Hector" McNeill and "Shoemaker John" McNeill. If so, he likely came over indentured and not as a "head of family;" as head of a family he would have been given grants of land based on that distinction and on how many people he brought with him. He is not found in any of the earliest records of Bladen or Cumberland County. It is possible that he came by himself unassociated with any head of family at all.
  • The oldest deed for him trading land in Bladen (now Robeson) County is dated 1768 and identifies him as "Neill McNeill of Cumberland County." Subsequent deeds identify him as "of Bladen County." The lands he owned in Cumberland County were on the north side of Big Rockfish Creek as late as 1768-1771.
  • Neill Sr.'s son, "Shoemaker John" McNeill, had an oldest son named Neill who was born about 1765 and died in 1831. This Neill (died 1831) and his wife Flora have been essentially a forgotten generation. This son Neill's estate was not settled until 1840 shortly after his own son Malcolm died, and the two estates were settled together. Although no estate settlement record exists in Robeson County records, the county's deeds alone show the estate was divided privately amongst Neill's children; however, the descendants of Neill's and Flora's daughter, Mary McNeill Brown (wife of Neill B. Brown, Sr.), saved two originals from this private settlement plus the original 1790 will of Mary, the wife of "Shoemaker John". These three originals were found in a trunk by Mary McNeill Brown's granddaughter, Ruth McArthur of Wilmington, NC (deceased), showing Neill's children and wife Flora (who was likely the often-misplaced Flora Riddle of this family). Ruth and I determined that Neill was forgotten, his own children having been claimed as being those of his father "Shoemaker John", revealing widespread confusion about this branch of "Shoemaker John" McNeill's descendants. Ruth died in 2009, but she and I brought these mistakes into the open and made sense out of this lost generation.
  • I will be turning my attention to uncovering more about "Sailor Hector" McNeill in the near future.
  • I believe the immigrant Neill, Sr. lived until 1786 as he is found in the 1786 Bladen County tax list. There are researchers today who are claiming that this Neill McNeill and the second husband of the widow Jane Campbell McNeill were one and the same man. If this were true—which it is certainly not—this Neill would have two sons named Hector and two sons named John.
• Jane Campbell and her two McNeill husbands, William and Neill, who lived in Bladen (now Robeson or Hoke) or upper Cumberland now Harnett County.
  • There is a tradition that Jane's stepson Hector (son of her 2nd husband Neill McNeill by his first marriage) married her own daughter Nancy (her daughter by her first husband William McNeill). The tradition is wrong: Revolutionary war pension records and two Cumberland County deeds reveal that Nancy did not marry Hector but married Hector's brother Malcolm, a 4-year veteran of the Revolution who fought with the Continental Army whose pension records not only prove his marriage to Nancy in the Spring of 1776 but lists all but one of their children, Malcolm who died in 1841 and whose widow fought to get his inheritance for her orphaned children. And by all the evidence, it appears very that Hector, whom Nancy did not marry, was Hector McNeill, Sr. of Upper Little River who married Margaret, the daughter of Turquill McNeill of the Argyll Colony.
  • Before Neill McNeill of Upper Little River married the widow Mrs. Jane Campbell McNeill, he had three sons and a daughter by an unknown first wife (her name is long lost and there is no hint of who she may have been). One of the three sons, yet another Neill McNeill, lived on the Upper Little River around Thorntons and Edes Creeks in what is today Harnett County, and died there about 1829 as his lands were divided by his children in very early January of 1830. One of his six children, Catherine, married John McLeod. More will be added if additional information is located about these Harnett County McNeills.
  • (Possibility: I am beginning to suspect that Jane's second husband Neill McNeill of Upper Little River was the son of Malcolm McNeill of the Argyll Colony, one of the colonists about whom very little is known beyond various mentions of his lands in several Cumberland deeds. I cannot prove this but in-depth deed comparisons are beginning to point in that direction. I will put more info about this possibility on the 'Latest Updates' page in time. This idea may prove to be wrong and I will post that as well.)
• "Beaverdam Daniel" Patterson and his wife Catherine Molloy, who lived in the far western corner of Cumberland County on Beaverdam near Toneys Creek, was John McPherson's nephew.
  • Daniel and his children have been referred to as the "Beaverdam Pattersons." His wife appears to have been Catherine Molloy, the daughter of John and Marron Molloy. John may have been the son of Charles Malloy who, with Daniel McPherson and "Beaverdam Daniel" Patterson, fought together as Tories during the Revolution.
  • A thorough study of deeds and wills prove this Daniel was neither "Buffalo Daniel" Patterson, "Raft Swamp Daniel" Patterson, nor "Piper Daniel" Patterson.
  • While settling Daniel's estate in 1844, the Cumberland County sheriff who wrote up the property listing for the legatees of the deceased identified him incorrectly as "Raft Swamp Daniel" Patterson. The names of the legatees do not match the known children of "Raft Swamp Daniel" Patterson in any way.
• Duncan Campbell and wife Christian Smith, originally from Cumberland County, who in 1768 appear to have lived near Burnt Swamp area just south of the Philadelphus community in today's Robeson County.
  • It is impossible to tell to what local Campbell clan this Duncan Campbell belonged.
  • According to a letter dated 1908 from a descendant in Alabama, Duncan's daughter Peggy married one of two Peter McArthurs in Bladen County. A Peter McArthur appears in the 1768 Bladen County tax list.
  • Duncan may be the Duncan Campbell who is listed in the 1755 Cumberland Co. tax list.
  • While living in Cumberland County in the early 1750s Duncan bought 150 acres of Tweedside, the plantation of Daniel McNeill of Taynish (above). In a 1783 "deed of gift," Duncan gave this land to his grandson, John Campbell of Campbells Bridge on Drowning Creek.
    
• John Johns(t)on, Sr., known in his time as "Big John" Johnston, appears to have been the John Johnston who came from Scotland in 1770 with his sister Margaret's husband, Archibald Little, and their family:
  • The surname in this family changes in the early records from Johnston to Johnson and then back again, but is consistently spelled as "Johnston" in the 1780s and 1790s.
  • An 1850 family chart cited in a book on McCallum genealogy states a John Johnston married a Mary McAllister (whose mother had been a McNeill) and that their daughter Margaret, born about 1736, married Archibald Little in 1756 whose Robeson County will is dated 1797. This same chart states that this John Johnston came to NC in 1770 with his sister Margaret and her husband Archibald Little. The McAllister Papers at the Archives in Raleigh contains a letter from James McAllister in Scotland to Alexander McAllister on Cape Fear River dated October of 1771 wherein he inquires of a "John Johnston, a tailor" and a "Donald Johnston, shoemaker" who both had emigrated in 1770. There is a Robeson County deed dated 1788 wherein John and Mary (probably "Big John" but not Mary née McAllister Johnston) Johnston are selling land south of the Great Marsh witnessed by a Daniel Johnston. Daniel Johnston is known to have lived south of the Great Marsh and was a son of "Big John" Johnston. A year later Archibald and Margaret Little are selling their property on the south side of Rockfish Creek the deed for which was witnessed and proved by John Johnston; Archibald and Margaret are found later living around the Great Marsh.
  • Research on this "Big John" Johnston, Senior is ongoing but hampered by the use and reuse of first names over the first three generations in NC, and who all sold land to each other, father-to-son and brother-to-brother, without mentioning their close relationships in the respective deeds. "Big John" owned land on the southwest side of the Great Marsh bordering John McPherson. Late in his life he purchased land on Ten Mile Swamp and its Cowpen Branch that eventually went into the hands of his son, John Johnson, Junior. This land was signed over via quit claim deed by Randal Currie, Patrick Kelly and John Little to "Big John" Johnston's grandchildren in 1810; Randal Currie is known to have married a Johnson.
  • Evidence in Robeson deeds points to "Big John" Johnston, Sr. as having been the father or grandfather of Randal Currie's wife Nelly Johnson. Tradition has said she was the daughter of Soloman Johnston but that is wrong. It is becoming more and more likely that John Johnston, Senior was the father of Nelly Currie but further research is needed.
• Solomon Johnston, Sr., originally from Cumberland County (and perhaps Virginia before that), was the father of widowed Marrion "Ann" Johnston Perkins who, after 1767, married John McPhaul, Sr.
  • In legend, Soloman was said to have been a giant of a man, and fought off a group of bandits bent on robbing him at his cabin on Richland Swamp on the south edge of the old lands of the immigrant Malcolm Buie just south of Red Springs.
  • He also had a son Solomon Johnston, Junior who lived for a time in Georgia and who, though married by 1769, died without children.
  • Colonial Bladen County tax lists record Soloman, Sr. at times as white, sometimes "mulato" or of "mixed blood." Oral tradition has long held that his daughter Marrion herself or her own daughter "Pretty Polly" Perkins was Native American; Bladen tax lists record Marrion to have been at times a non-white, widowed, head-of-household, and at other times white. It is my belief that Marrion was white and that her first husband, Joshua Perkins, was of Native American (perhaps Lumbee) descent.
  • Solomon may have come from Virginia but his name, though crossed out, appears in the 1755 tax list of Cumberland County. He owned land in Cumberland in 1757 and appears later owning lands in Bladen. He had a 640-acre tract located south of Red Springs in Robeson County, and it probably encompassed the old Goza farm on Hwy 71 on the south side of Richland Swamp, originally called Solomons Swamp and also Scolding Branch. Soloman, Sr. also owned land around White Oak Swamp near Centre Presbyterian Church. John McPhaul's son, Daniel McPhaul, Senior owned White Oak Swamp and records state he drained it around 1812.
    
    

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“For whatsoever from one place doth fall,
Is with the tide unto an other brought:
For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.”

― Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

©2004 -2014 S.C. Edgerton