County, NC - Heritage Series Reprinted with permission of the Mount Olive Tribune and cannot be reproduced without permission. More About The Kornegay Family "Our Heritage" By Claude Moore Friday, August 3, 1984 Last week I wrote an article about the obliteration of "Red Hill," an old plantation house belonging originally to the Kornegay family, about four miles east of Mount Olive. There were a few errors in the article and as a historian & writer, I felt I should correct them according to research done by others. The house of which I wrote was the second house at Red Hill & was the home of Basil Kornegay (d. circa 1821), a surveyor & planter, the last family member to live there. The original home, "Red Hill" was built during the colonial period on the east side of Holmes' Gardens & Lake & north of NC highway 55 & was probably built by George Kornegay, Sr. (died 1773) for his son George Kornegay, II who lived there. This old home burned in 1905. The Kornegay family cemetery is nearby & those buried there are: George Kornegay, II & his wife, Margaret Kornegay Baisl Kornegay Margaret Kornegay, daughter of Daniel Elizabeth Jane Becton Alice Becton Williams Richard E. Wooten & wife Mary Elizabeth (Bessie) Richard S. Holmes George Kornegay, II married Margaret Downing Lullum, a widow (not Mary as I had previously stated) from London. Her father was a barrister & she was known far & wide for her elegance, beauty & social graces. Many of her descendants were & are named Margaret. George & Margaret Kornegay had the following children: George Kornegay, III; Civil Kornegay who married her first cousin, John Kornegay; Daniel Kornegay who married Edna Flowers & lived on a plantation called Mulberry near Mount Olive; David Kornegay who married Zilphia Oliver, the daughter of the pioneer Baptist minister Rev. Francis Oliver; Basil Kornegay who married Tabitha King (sister of Vice President William R. King) & lived at the second house at Red Hill (destroyed by a tornado); & Jacob Kornegay who married his step-sister, Elizabeth Williams. Daniel Kornegay was a member of the Wayne County Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions & was one of the founders of Thunder Swamp Church (originally Baptist). Daniel & Edna had the following children: (according to J. B. Flowers, Jr.) Margaret Kornegay who married (1) Alfred Kornegay (2) James F. Kornegay; Bersheba Kornegay who married Soloman Pope & had eight children; Elizabeth Kornegay who married James Rhodes, Jr., son of General James Rhodes (buried at Waynesborough); & George Lullum Kornegay who married his first cousin, Elizabeth Barfield & settled in Sumter County, Alabama. Daniel Kornegay gave his daughter, Margaret Kornegay, the Red Hill plantation in 1842. Margaret & Alfred Kornegay's daughter, Elizabeth Jane Kornegay, married John Everett Becton & had a daughter, Alice Lullum Becton. Alice Becton married Robert Carr Williams & their only daughter, Elizabeth married Richard Edward Wooten. Richard & Elizabeth were the parents of Alice Elizabeth Wooten who married Robert P. Holmes, Jr. & they now live at their old home on Center Street in Mount Olive. They had three children: Robert P. Holmes, III; Elizabeth Holmes Lee; & Richard Speight Holmes. Mr. & Mrs. Robert Holmes, Jr., developed the beautiful Holmes Gardens at Red Hill. This is one of the show places of eastern NC with the stately pines, a great variety of azaleas & camillias & the lake which was built as a mill pond probably by George Kornegay, II. Red Hill is one of the few colonial plantations still owned & cultivated by the descendants of the original owners. The Kornegays & their descendants have made a notable contribution to the development of Wayne, Duplin & Sampson & even to North Carolina & to the South.