Jul 17, 2016 | Antebellum era, News
Old myths frustrate modern hopes If you grew up white, Southern and embedded in the successor class to the Antebellum gentry, you’ve likely heard it — more than once: “I was always told that they treated them like family.” “Them”...
Jan 27, 2016 | Antebellum era, Confederate affiliation, New Hanover, Reconstruction
Written by Robert Maffitt; edited by Cheri Todd Molter John N. Maffitt was born at sea on February 22, 1819. His parents, Rev. Maffitt and Ann Carnicke Maffitt, were traveling across the Atlantic from Ireland to New York at that time. They eventually settled in...
Sep 15, 2015 | Alamance, Antebellum era
By Ted R. Kunstling; Edited by Cheri Todd Molter Excerpted from Ramblings of a Country Boy, by Stephen Arthur Cohagan (my grandfather), written in 1953 (private papers): “Grandfather [John Pugh Jay] and Grandmother [Rachel Commons Jay] maintained a station in...
Aug 31, 2015 | Antebellum era, Burke, Confederate affiliation
Submitted by Louisa Emmons; Edited by Cheri Todd Molter (Contains both the family’s oral traditions and results of research) John Murphy Walton, son of Col. Thomas George Walton and Eliza Murphy Walton, was born at the family’s home, “Creekside,” in...
Jun 28, 2015 | Antebellum era, News
The South before the war: an island in time The first thing a modern time-traveler would notice, on arrival in the antebellum South, would most likely be the silence. There might be movement among dry leaves, or the snort of a horse. Bird songs, surely, and,...