Tretower Genealogy Research

This past month, due to fewer hours at work, I have had more time to research the Chowanoke connection to William Vaughan’s wife, Fereby.  There were two Benton families in North Carolina and southern Virginia at the time that Fereby was born, one was the ancestors of Thomas Hart Benton, and the other was the Epaphroditus Benton line.  As research has eliminated the Thomas Hart Benton line, I have concluded that Fereby comes from some branch of this family.

I won’t go into all the “proof” as I’ve covered that here before, but having found a series of three volumes of North Carolina court records at Ancestry, I decided to look at the families around the Bentons in the late 1600s and 1700s.

I found a fairly tight knit group of neighbors who sometimes intermarried.  The given name of “Fereby” (in various spellings) was not rare in the region of Chowan/Bertie/Gates Counties in NC and Nansemond County in VA.  Most stem from respect for Pheribee Savage, wife of Francis Pugh.  Even when there was not a blood tie to her, there were families which named their daughter Fereby.  I think this probably explains where Fereby Benton’s name comes from.

If you look at land grants and court records from this time frame, you first see that the mix-up over the Virginia and North Carolina boundary line can throw off a researcher, as what was once part of Virginia could be now part of North Carolina, or vice versa.  Epahroditus Benton owned land on Bennett’s Creek, which was next to land set up for the remainders of the Chowanoke tribe.  The Freeman family, which intermarried with the Chowanoke Hoyter family, lived close by.  Some Pughs, all descendants of Francis and Pheribee, also show up in records.   There is a large Parker family which left a large number of records, and they are all in the mix.

There was a Vaughan family there too, descendants of either a John or Thomas Vaughan.  There are several land transfers between John and Thomas to vairous members of the Holland family.  The Holland family seems to be one that was very close to this Vaughan line.  A William Speight also was a buddy of the Hollands and Vaughans, from what the records relate.  As several of the deeds of these Vaughans mention that the land they are either buying or selling borders land owned by Epaphroditus Benton, these Vaughans are very interesting to me.  Of course there is very little on them, they managed to sneak away in history before leaving any clues of a tie to my William Vaughan and Fereby Benton.  But I guess that what makes the hobby fun — pouring through information, learning more and more about history, and drawing educated conclusions.  I think now that William Vaughan was possibly born in the disputed area between VA and NC and may have grown up next door to the Chowanoke Indians.  I think one of the Benton men married a Chowanoke girl and this was the source for the stories of Fereby Benton’s “Cherokee Princess” stories.  I suspect her father, a Benton, may have been the mixed blood instead of her mother.  If this is so, then this would explain why Fereby’s MtDNA was white.

I also have began looking through the archives of the Saponitown Forum.  They have a lot of information on extinct and unknown tribes in the area and it could be some clues could be found here.  If I find anything, I’ll post my findings next month.

Eddie Davis