Thursday, May 18, 2023

The Families - Drowning Creek


The Families - Drowning Creek 


This is how we got here; 


    How could anyone argue the Native Americans did not have Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and African DNA in 1608? Who were the Cofitachequi and where did they go?  

    Governor Dobbs of North Carolina sent the Militia out in 1754 to survey the Indians.The Bladen militia submitted the following: “Col. Rutherford’s Regimt. of Foot in Bladen County 441, a Troop of horse 36... Drowning Creek on the Head of Little Peedee, 50 families, a mixt Crew, a lawless People, filleth the Lands without patent or paying quit rents. Shot a surveyor for coming to view vacant lands being inclosed in great swamps. Quakers to attend musters or pay as in the Northern Counties. Fines not high enough to oblige the militia to attend musters. No arms stores or Indians in the county.” [Colonial Records of North Carolina, Vol. V, p161 

"Mixt" surely meant brown people, no Indians, after two hundred years these 'mixt Indians" had been living as their European/African/Indian ancestors,  they had shoelaces, buttons, etc., unlike the 'Indians.'

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Origins of Lumbee No Mystery 
S. Pony Hill Here

The founding families of Robeson mixed-bloods arrived in the Drowning Creek area during the era 1750 to 1770. Early land grants and wills can trace these individuals back to Bertie and Edgecombe Counties on the banks of the Roanoke River. Migration from the Tuscarora reservation was a well accepted fact among the historians of the area as recounted in newspapers and memoirs

The Ivey, Chavis, Locklear, Bass, Gibson, and Sweat families all owned land along the Roanoke River area of Edgecombe and Bertie in the 1720-30 era before moving down to Robeson, and it was there that they undoubtedly also intermarried with the reservation Indians.

The Sweat, Gibson and Bass families bore Indian blood prior to residing in Bertie County. Of Pamunkey Indian origin, the Sweats were prominent in that tribe’s affairs, as was the Bass family among the Nansemond. The Bass’s apparently picked up a Siouan bloodline after marriage into the Harris family in Bertie. (7) The Gibson’s were Siouan Indian inhabitants of the Tuscarora reservation, and also shared a common ancestry with the Chavis family. 

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The Drowning Creek  



27 August 1753, John Johnson Jr. entered 100 acres in Bladen County, North Carolina on the north side of Pugh's marsh whereon John Oxendine was then living. (Bladen County Land Entries #805). In 1759 , he and two of his sons, John and Benjamin, lived in the Drowning Creek area of Bladen County, North Carolina which is the upper part of the Lumbee River area.

Moses Bass was living near "the drains of Drowning Creek" on 1 February 1754 when Robert Carver entered 100 acres there [Philbeck, Bladen County Land Entries, nos. 677, 934

Robert Sweat was granted 100 acres on Wilkerson Swamp near the Little Pee Dee River on 23 Dec 1754. This land adjoined the land of Joshua Perkins and was sold to Phillip Chavis.  

(Gilbert Sweat Case…21 Aug. 1829…St. Landry’s Parish LA… Testimony of Joshua Perkins – Gilbert Sweat was born about 1756 in what was then Marion Co. SC on the Pee Dee River. About the year 1777, Perkins helped Sweat run away with Frances Smith, the wife of J.B. Taylor. Sweat moved from SC to Tenn, to NC to Big Black River, Miss. And arrived in LA in 1804.)

31 Mar 1753 Grant: To Daniel Willis, 300 acres in Bladen County on Saddletree Swamp adjacent Thomas Ivey [Colony of NC 1735-1764 Abstracts of Land Patents, Margaret M. Hofman, Vol. 1, p10, grant #111]

17 November 1753  Bladen County land which had been surveyed for Gideon Gibson in North Carolina on the north side of the Little Pee Dee River was mentioned in a Bladen County land entry [Philbeck, Land Entries: Bladen County, no. 904]. 


20 Feb 1754 Land Entry: Thomas Ivey enters 150 acres including his own improvements, on the 5 Mile Branch in Bladen County. [North Carolina Land Entries 1753-1756, A. B. Pruitt, Vol. 2, p127] (From BOB'S FILING CABINET) 

1735 Spencer Bolton, born on the Pee Dee River.

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1874 Hamilton County, Tennessee Court Case, Jemima Bolton, daughter of Solomon Bolton, granddaughter of Spencer Bolton. 

Judge Lewis Shepherd 

South Carolina had a law taxing free Negroes so much per capita, and a determined effort was made to collect this of them.  But it was shown in evidence on the trial of this case that they always successfully resisted the payment of this tax, as they proved that they were not Negroes.  Because of their treatment, they left South Carolina at an early day and wandered across the mountains to Hancock county, East Tennessee; in fact, the majority of the people of that country are “Melungeons,:” or allied to them in some way.  A few families of them drifted away from Hancock into the other counties of east Tennessee and now and then into the mountainous section of Middle Tennessee.  Some of them live in White, some in Grundy and some in Franklin county.  They seem to prefer living in a rough, mountainous and sparsely settled country.


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In the early 1760’s Indians, as families, began to move out of the Granville County area. Many went south into the region of Cumberland County, North Carolina around Fayetteville and then into present day Robeson County. (These were simply the first Indian settlers in Robeson County. They were later joined by the Hatteras from the coast and Cheraw from South Carolina. Robeson County became a refuge for “loose” Indians and Indian families from all over that region congregated there over the years.) Theses Granville County families who went south into Robeson County were the Chavis’, Locklears, Gibsons, Collins’, Goings’, etc. These are families that we are sure came from the area of Granville County, North Carolina. Some of these families may have been composed of a black or white man with an Indian wife, although there is fairly good evidence that Collins is a Saponi family name. The Gibsons moved on further south from Robeson County so that name is no longer found in Robeson County among the Indians there who are officially now called the Lumbees.


Gideon Gibson History in Question

  GIDEON GIBSON MURAL                                                                                                                       ...