NOTE: Received this issue this morning - guess Jerome put me on the list. Many of you are aware of the Sampson County Co publication. Found this more than interesting even though I have no Sampson families and am going to subscribe to the online service. Thought some of the rest of you might also be interested since it is only $5.00 a year. The dues information is in this issue. THis is being run with the permission of Jerome Tew. Martha NEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS OF THE SAMPSON COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY Volume XXIII, Number 2 ...... 15 June 2001 President: Jerome Tew, 600 Gloucester Rd., Goldsboro, NC 27534 Phone 919-7354848 First V.P.: Kenneth Wrench, Wrench Rd., Godwin NC 28344 Phone 910-567-6528 or 2821 Second V.P.: Joyce Bass Binkley, 506 Tanabridge Rd. Wilmington, NC 28405 Phone 910-799-9818 Secretary: Margaret Wrench, same as Kenneth Wrench kwrench@intrstar.net Treasurer: Jean Faircloth, 19 Barber Cooper Ln., Roseboro, NC 28382 Phone 910- 5254219 Editor: Jerome D. Tew  same as above - jdtew@esn.net Co-Editor: Micki Cottle 99 Pike Dr., Clinton NC 28328 910-592-6705 mcottle@intrstar.net Genealogy: Bradley West HH: Distribution: Bob Lewis and Robeania Hobbs. NEXT QUARTERLY MEETING ON SATURDAY, JULY 14 At the Piggly-Wiggly Restaurant, Jordon Shopping Center, Clinton, NC, STARTING at 2:00 P.M. Eat Downstairs and then go up an elevator for the Meeting. The speaker will be Wanda Royal who has written a book on her part of the Royal family of Sampson Co. NC. She will give details of the passion and purpose for writing this book. Her book is Royal Family Legacy. She is an ordained minister and lives in Wade NC. You will enjoy her story. I want to extend my appreciation for the copy of the Sampson county Historical Soc. newsletter. I had intended to get in touch with someone from the Society during a genealogical trip that I made to N.C. some weeks back. I had no specific names etc. Unfortunately when I arrived at the N.C. State Library and Archives in Raleigh I had terrible results in uncovering any of the information that I was seeking so I changed schedule and put in an extra day there. It was still to no avail despite the very gracious help of the people there. What little came up was information that I had already. So I diverted to the northern end of the trip and visited the site of the Battle of Antietam where my ggf and his son both fought with the 30th N.C. and were wounded so severely that they died before returning to their Clinton home. I am sending Online dues for the year 2001 and want to support what you are doing even though I cannot be there with you. My best wishes...James A. Clarkson jacl@ismi.net 2001 DUES ARE DUE Its time to pay annual dues again. Please make your check or money order for $7.50 payable to the Sampson County Historical Society and send to our treasurer: Mrs. Jean Faircloth, P.O. Box 1084, Clinton, NC 28328. Online dues are $5 and the online edition will be emailed out by Bob Lewis. Send email address to: rprestonlewis@hotmail.com Virginia and Oscar Bizzell have retired to do more books. P. O. Box 194, Newton Grove, NC. 28366 1-910-594-0577 Sampson County Heritage Book has been reprinted. It was done in two volumes without a hard cover. The cost will be $70. S&H included. Sampson County Court Minutes 1830-1840 is underway and about one third finished. http://www.angelfire.com/hi3/nccounties/ NC Cos A LONE GRAVE IN THE SWAMP Submitted by Judy Sellars Strickland. This appeared in the Waycross Highlight (former name of the Waycross Journal Herald) June 4, 1890. On a little knoll by thick bushes, terraced over by wild shrubbery, leaves and such, in the swamp of the Satilla River, not much over a dozen miles from Waycross, GA, is a lone grave in the swamp. One day, it was a Friday in February, old man Richard Gunter, who had not heard it thunder for 65 years or more, a man who had lost his ambitions and aspirations in life (he had no family) and was spending his later days in going from place to place, staying here and there among his friends, left JUDGE SELLARS LEE'S home just across the line in Appling to visit some friends on the Satilla River. (Note: keep reading - this IS about the Sellars line) Judge Lee not being home that day, Mrs. Lee, a kinder hearted woman can be found no where, had a Negro to hitch a horse and carry the old man a few miles to help him on his way. Four or five miles over in Ware County, the old man was left to complete his journey. The weather was severely cold for the climate. Along late that Friday evening he was seen passing Mr. William Brantley's. He failed to turn up at the place he was supposed to visit. Some days after that, the old man Gunter was not in the neighborhood he was supposed to visit. Inquiry was made but no one had seen him. A crowd gathered and instituted a search for him but failed to discover his whereabouts. After several days another search was made and about 2 miles from Mr. William Brantly's, where he was last seen, and just 21 days after that Friday, in the swamp of the river, his remains were discovered by Judge Sellars Lee. The body was intact and well preserved, the freezing weather kept it from decaying. A coffin was procured, a shroud prepared, a grave dug and his remains were interred on the same spot where the soul took its flight to the Eternal Land. (I just love the way they expressed "death" in those days - such a beautiful way to say that he died in the woods alone -probably froze to death ) Note: this spot is only a couple of miles from Brunnsville on the Waycross airlines (I have no idea what "airlines" means - do you?) NOTE: Sellars Lee was born in 1821, a son of James and Cinderella SELLARS Lee - and a great-grandson of RS SAMUEL SELLARS. Sellars Lee was married in 1841 to Dorcas Dedge and they had nine children. Judge Lee died in 1891 - just one year following this incident. Both Judge Lee, his wife, and Cinderella Sellars, are buried at Pine Grove Cemetery near Alma. Samuel served in the N.C. Militia from Duplin in the Revolutionary War and a few years afterwards moved his family to Effingham County, Georgia. On 9 Nov 1790, Samuel sold the old Sellars home place of 384 acres to Nathaniel Merritt. The transaction is recorded in Sampson deed book 9 page 336 at Clinton, NC. He married a cousin Zilpha Sellars and he died on August 29, 1794 in GA. Cinderella Sellars was daughter of Samuel III and gd of RS Samuel Sellars Jr. THREE JOHNS(T)ON MEN FROM SAMPSON COUNTY WHO SERVED IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARYWAR By Fred Hintze Jr. We, the descendants of Solomon Johnston, Jr., Soasby Johnston, Sr., and Ephraim Johnston, sons of Solomon and Mary (Herring) Johnson, have been, at times, enamored of their service in the American Revolutionary War. A number of ladies have joined the DAR as a result of being descendants of these brothers. I have collected many of their DAR Applications, plus Compiled Service Records (NARA) thanks to Mrs. Ava Healy of Rockville, Maryland. In an attempt to verify and document, historically and genealogically, I have research extensively, their military service, and put together all the information I have found in regards the unit in which they served. The enlistment of these men first came to my attention, in the book, HISTORY OF THE JOHNSTON FAMILY, dedicated to Mrs. James D. Moore, who collected early notes on the family, and which was published about 1941, Upchurch Printing Co., Dunn, N. C., compiler unknown. On page 61 we find, �...these Johnston brothers ...enlisted June 15, 1781 as privates in Captain Samuel Johnston�s Company, 10th North Carolina Regiment, serving 12 months. Ref.: see Vol. 16, page 1093, STATE RECORDS OF NORTH CAROLINA, 1782-1783. It is said the Tories captured these brothers and put them in Halifax jail because they would not fight with the Tories. While in jail they sung a patriotic song, which they learned in jail. It ran as follows: �The French are full of envy, The city�s full of pride The Parish is full of poverty And we can not abide. �The three brothers escaped from jail and rejoined the Revolutionary Army the same day in the same company as above mentioned.� Where this information came from is unknown. i.e., being jailed, singing, and their escape! This said, we have found that these brothers could NOT have enlisted in Captain Samuel Johnston�s Company, as we will show, but in the company of �Captain Benjamin Coleman.� A Samuel Johnson was found in HISTORICAL REGISTER OF OFFICERS OF THE CONTINENTAL ARMY DURING THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION, April 1775 to December 1783, by Francis B. Heitman, page 39, #321, but as a Lt. in the �10th. N. C. wounded at King�s Mountain, NC, October 7, 1780. (Died September 15, 1834).� It has been reported that this Samuel Johnson was a brother of the three Johnson men of Sampson County, NC, but we have found that he was born, c. 1757 in Virginia (near Richmond), the son of Jeffery and Rachel (Walker) Johnson, and married Mary Hammonds, 25 June 1781. Mary Hammonds was the daughter of Ambrose and Ann Hammonds. (DAR Applications with attached documentation).