Posted on: Yell Co. Ar Queries Board URL: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/Ar/Yell?read=252 Surname: Webb, Croft, Colwell, Clark, Brunson, Biggs, Walker, Crow ------------------------- John B. Webb came to Yell County by the 1870 census. His daughters married Biggs, Brunson, and Walkers around Centerville. Son James Warren Webb moved to Polk County in the 1890's. Son Charlie may have moved to near Cooper, Tx. Son John Pinckney Webb married Ida Alice Anderson of Centerville in 1901. His daughter, Viola (1905-1975) was my mother. John B. Webb married Sarah F. Croft in 1853 in Attala County Mississippi. She is buried at Pettillo Hill at Centerville. J.B. Webb's parents were Micajah and Harriet Benson Webb. The Charles Webb in the following sketch was J.B. Webb's grandfather at Anderson, S.C. The roots of Charles Webb (about 1767-1831) of Anderson, S.C., have been a mystery for over a hundred and fifty years -- until now! The late Miss Elizabeth Webb of Williamston, S.C., was a descendant of Charles Webb through his son William (about 1789-1852). In the 1930s and 1940s she made it a quest to find those roots. Many Webb families were contacted and correspondence exchanged. She gathered valuable information about the second, third, and fourth generations of Webbs who descended from Charles. At one point, she and others were overjoyed when they thought they had found Charles Webb’s roots. They discovered that Captain Isaac Webb and Lt. Charles Webb had marched into Mecklenburg County, Va.., with a band of men during the American Revolution. They believed that Charles Webb of Anderson was of this family. This would qualify them to join the D.A.R. They were subsequently disappointed. Miss Webb died without solving the puzzle. Her collection of unorganized notes on bits and scraps of paper and her notebook were never published. They were placed on file in the genealogy department at the Greenville, S.C., library. I searched through her work . I was happy to find my own great-grandfather, John B. Webb (about 1831-1896?), born to Charles’ son Micajah and Harriet Benson at Anderson before they moved westward in the early 1830s. Micajah was born Feb. 4, 1797, and died of pneumonia on February 5, 1850, at the home of his sister, Frances Webb Clark, near Kosciusko, Mississippi, He had married Harriet Benson, daughter of Major Thomas Benson, on Feb. 1, 1820. In Elizabeth Webb’s files there was an old newspaper clipping of Micajah Webb being the first postmaster at Anderson, S.C. There was one about the different generations of Webbs who had honorably served in several wars. There was one about the First Baptist Church of Anderson being built on the lot in Anderson donated by Micajah Webb. It was clear that the Webbs of Anderson had a lot of family pride. I double checked all of Elizabeth Webb’s leads and concluded that they were dead ends. Presuming that the names of the children of Charles Webb were clues to the past, I searched the Virginia records for unique names like Micajah, Warren Robinson, and Edmond. Immediately, my attention was focused on a group of Webbs that lived in Brunswick and later in Greensville County. There was a Micajah (1741-1815) and a Warren (1785-1836). There was a connection with the Robinson family. (Capt. John Robinson (DAR 1750-1856) had taken Polly Webb to be his second wife in 1800. Braxton Robinson was married to Frances Walton and was brother-in-law to Warren Webb.) There was a Charles there too! Who was he? How old was he? What was his connection to the others? Was he the Charles Webb of Anderson, South Carolina? Several years passed. I could only speculate. In 1987 I discovered a descendant of the Warren Webb (1785-1836) of Greensville. We exchanged lettters. I learned about Warren and his brothers and sisters. Charles was not one of them. Charles was not the son of Micajah Webb as I had speculated. My correspondent said that Micajah had brothers named John and Charles. Perhaps Charles Webb of Anderson was the brother of Micajah. That sounded plausible. The parents of Micajah Webb of Brunswick/Greensville were Charles and Elizabeth Barker of Southampton County. The will of Micajah’s father was dated February 21, 1758 and recorded on April 13.. It mentioned three sons; Charles, John and Micajah. Son Charles was to inherit the plantation (where Racoon Creek met the Nottoway River). Micajah Webb moved to Brunswick County in the 1760’s. By 1769, he had purchased land on Fountain Creek near the Meherrin River. In the 1774 will of Elizabeth, sons Micah and John were mentioned, but not Charles????. My first thought was that Micajah’s brother Charles was the Charles Webb of Anderson. Then I realized that if Micajah’s father died in 1758, there was no way Charles Webb of Anderson, born about 1767, could be his son. Perhaps the Charles Webb of Anderson was the son of one of Micajah’s brothers. Charles Henry Webb (1808-1879), second son of Warren, and grandson of Micajah , had visited Webbs at Pendleton, S.C., during the 1830s before moving westward to Alabama and then to near Jefferson in East Texas. The connection with those Webbs was not known, but there was a notation in their family history book from the Pendleton Messenger that Charles Webb had died at his home on Deep Creek , Nov. 11, 1831 -- about 64 years of age -- a Baptist. They believed there was a connection. Thirteen more years passed. Recently, I went back to the notes of Elizabeth Webb. What were the clues? She noted of Dr. Edmond Webb of Anderson that he was born in 1787 in Virginia near the Meherrin River at Dinwiddie Court House. His brother William was also born in Virginia about 1789. Searching for records of Dinwiddie was a dead end. They were burned during the American Revolution. Dinwiddie did not fit in with my theory that Charles was related to the Webb family in Greensville. It was too far away. Then came a great enlightenment. I could see the river on the map near Dinwiddie. Edmond Webb was born near that river -- but the river near Dinwiddie was the Nottoway!! The Meherrin River was farther south and flowed across the eastern border of Brunswick into Greensville. That’s where John, Micajah, and Charles Webb lived on the south side of the river on Fountain Creek. They were the only Webbs there!! I knew then that the key to connecting Charles Webb of Anderson to these Webbs was to also place William Ezell there. At some point in 1785 or 1786, when Charles Webb of Anderson reached marrying age, he had to come in contact with Delilah Ezell, daughter of William Ezell (1749--1832). According to family records in Union, S.C., William was forced to migrate during the American Revolution when his home was burned by British troops. Charles Webb first appears in the 1800 census of the Union District of South Carolina. William Ezell is also there. By this time, though, Charles is married to his second wife, Catherine Stribling, daughter of Thomas and Nancy (Kinchloe) Stribling. If the first son of Charles and Catherine Webb was Thomas S. Webb (11-07-1793 -- 11-28-1851), then the death of Delilah Ezell and remarriage of Charles took place in the early 1790s. By the 1810 census, Charles Webb was married to his third wife, Mary Ann Baldwin, daughter of Thomas Baldwin and widow of Rev. Henry Terry, Sr. They had one son, Charles Baldwin Webb (1810 - 1847). She also had young children. Catherine was mother of Thomas S. (1793-1851), who migrated to Giles County, Tennesse, with some of the Ezells before 1810 and became sheriff ; Micajah (1797-1850); Frances Webb (5-04-1800 -- 9-22-1878), who married Major James Green Clark and moved to Attala County, Miss.; Warren Robinson (1802-1856), the bachelor merchant at Charleston; Clayton (1804-?), who crossed the line into Hartwell, Ga., and became a state Supreme Court judge; Nancy (?), who married Henry Terry, Jr.; Elijah (1806-1873), who was clerk of the court at Anderson for 40 years; and Elisha (1806-?), content to be a farmer. Catherine died when her twins, Elijah and Elisha, were infants. Charles Baldwin Webb, the son with third wife, Mary Ann Baldwin, was born August 10, 1810. Tragically, he died on November 24, 1847, at the age of thirty-six. In the space of just a few years so many of the sons had died too young -- Charles Baldwin, Micajah, William, Warren Robinson, and Thomas. The Pendleton Messenger indicated that Charles Webb died at his home on Deep Creek in November of 1831, but he had prepared his will in 1828. The Webb plantation of 640 acres was four miles west of Anderson Court house near Portman Shoals on the Seneca River. The paper said he was about 64 years of age. He was a Baptist. (The strong Baptist tradition was shared with the Ezell family. William’s brother, Balaam Ezell, is well-documented in the records as being a primitive Baptist preacher. The obituary of Robert Berry Webb (1822-1900) in Kosciusko, Miss., refers to his father Micajah Webb as a minister of the Missionary Baptist Church.) William Ezell (1749-1832) died a very prosperous man and was buried on his plantation in Union District, S.C. He may have had as many 17 children by three of his four wives. Miriam Ezell Long of the Union District was his last child. Descendants of Miriam in the Union District provided a lot of information about the Ezell roots in a county history. Just before coming to the Union District, William Ezell was in the Fayette District of Richmond County in North Carolina. I found a land transaction document that connected a William Ezell in North Carolina with a John Webb and Virginia. I believed that if William Ezell was a neighbor to a John Webb at some point, then John Webb was likely the father of Charles. I followed William Ezell’s roots all the way back to France. He was the son of Thomas Ezell (1716-1782) and Anne Rose. Thomas was the son of Timothy Ezell (1689-1760) and Mary Bradenton. Thomas was the son of George Ezell (born 1645) and Elizabeth Clark. The first Ezell in American records was Timothy Ezell, who named son George in his will and was a taxpayer in Surry County, Va., in 1668. They were Huguenots who came from the small village of Ezalle, France, to escape persecution.. Some of the Ezells moved westward into Brunswick and Mecklenburg Counties. In 1727, George Ezell of Surry County had received 330 acres of land on the south side of the Meherrin River in Brunswick. A William Ezell began to show up in the records there. There was a William Ezell voting in Brunswick in 1748, the year before Delilah Ezell’s father was born. By 1782, there were three William Ezells on the tax roll for Brunswick. One was the father-in-law of Charles Webb. Delilah Ezell’s mother was probably Susanna Seat, daughter of Robert Seat, who was the son of Josiah Seat. (1708-1761). Josiah was born in Lunenburg County and died in Mecklenburg. William’s brother Balaam married Sussana’s sister Lydia. (Some sources say William first married Eudora La Motte and Balaam married Lydia La Motte.) In 1797, William’s daughter Susannah married Balaam’s son Jeremiah. Another wife was a Miss Whitlock, daughter of William and Molly Roundtree Whitlock. I found a John Webb in the 1782 records of Mecklenburg County. Was this the John that William had been a neighbor to? On the internet I found a person connected to this John Webb. I was disappointed. The contact said the John I was asking about had no known connection to the Webbs in Greensville and none of the names I mentioned were common in that family. Hope revived. He said that in the process of researching his related John, he had also found a lot of information about those Webbs on the Meherrin River. He put me in contact with a descendant of Kinchen Webb, son of Micajah. The e mail system helped us communicate quickly. But, as fifteen years earlier, the leads started running cold. Just as Warren’s descendant could not place Charles Webb of Anderson in the family, neither could the descendant of Kinchen Webb. Then, the contact that had referred me to Kinchen’s descendant told me he had a copy of a 1787 petition in which residents of the area along the Meherrin River requested to become a part of Greensville County for convenience. Members of the Webb family signed the petition. Yes, I wanted to see it, because he said it had a second Micajah on it -- a young Micajah Jr. Who was he? Kinchen and Warren did not have a brother of that age. If Micajah had a son named Micajah, Jr., it could mean that Micajah had a previous marriage and that Charles could be of that union. The petition had the names of John, Charles, and Micajah Jr. Somehow these three were closely connected. I remembered my befuddlement to discover that John Webb, Jr.(born about 1777), was not the son of John Webb. He was the son of Micajah. So who was the young Micajah Jr, if he wasn’t the son of Micajah Webb? That’s right. Micajah Jr. was the son of Micajah’s brother John. In 1831 there was a Micajah Webb, Jr. living at Dinwiddie Court House!! As I scanned the names on the 1787 petition a familiar name caught my attention. There was William Ezell. Not far away was Charles Webb, his son-in-lawl!!! The pieces fell into place on May 5, 2000.! This evidence tells me that Charles Webb of Anderson was the son of Micajah Webb’s brother John. Micajah Webb, Jr. was an older brother to Charles. One of the Edmund Webbs that lived in Brunswick could have been another brother. The Edmund name probably came from Edmund Ruffin (1713-1790). The children of Warren Webb for certain look to Edmund Ruffin as an ancestor. The family believes that Micajah’s wife Martha was connected to the Ruffin line. It’s possible that John’s wife, believed to be Lucy, was also of this family. Charles Webb’s sister, Temperance, married John or Daniel Cato, Jr. in 1790. By 1794, Temperance was widowed with four sons and three daughters: Sterling, John, Harris, Warren, Patsy, Nancy, and Jincy. The Cato name rang a bell. In the will of Thomas Stribling, one of his highly-esteemed slaves was named Cato!! If you have information to add to this record, please do so. Sincerely, Bobby L. Lamb Son of Viola Webb Lamb (1905-1975) 3307 Lilac St. Pine Bluff, AR 71603 If you would like to see the 1787 petition, e mail me at bobbylamb@prodigy.net.