Our Wyche great-great-great grandparents

Here are Gus Tillett's maternal grandparents, Pamela Evans Wyche (1789-1869) and James Wyche (1785-1845). These pictures are apparently part of the special collection at the Public Library of Charlotte-Mecklenburg in N.C.; they are posted on the Wyche family website mentioned earlier.

This couple's married life was divided between Brunswick County, Virginia, and Granville County, North Carolina. Most of their children were born in Va.

Our Smith great-great-great grandparents

These images are also from the Smith book. They are Mary's maternal grandparents: Frances "Fanny" Martin Smith (1799-1862) and Samuel H. Smith (1795-1853). Fanny is at a disadvantage here next to such a young image of her husband!

This couple lived in Wake County, North Carolina, for a while, later moving to Hardeman County, Tennessee, and finally to Dallas County, Arkansas. They had five children of their own, and later they reportedly helped raise the five children of Sam's sister Mary "Polly" Crisp after she died.

Later picture of Mary Smith Tillett

Here is a lovely picture of Mary "Mamie" Tillett, said to have been taken in 1913. It's in the online book, Smith of Abram's Plains.

The only photo we presently have of her husband Augustus "Gus" Tillett, is the one published in the Tillett book. He is shown with his siblings.

Image of Anne William Smith (1830-1871)

Anne was born in Wake County, N.C., just a few miles north of Raleigh, on the plantation where her mother was born, Forest Hill [this according to info I found on line]. Her portrait was painted in 1847 by an artist named Grunewald while she attended the Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies in Bethlehem, Pa.; she turned 17 that year. The college is now named Moravian College & Theological Seminary. This copy is from the online version of Smith of Abram's Plains.

In December 1849, after the Smith clan & other North Carolina families had migrated to Arkansas, she married her father's first cousin, Benjamin M. Smith. Benjamin was said to have graduated from the University of N.C. in 1844. Anne's family actually lived in Hardeman County, Tenn., for several years, before making the move farther west.

Anne Smith had thirteen children, dying at age 41 after the birth of the youngest one on their plantation called Tulip Farm, just six years after the Civil War ended. Mary Benjamin Smith was 10 years old when her mother died; the following year her father married another cousin, Anne Wilson Smith.

According to Aunt Mame's notes, it was in 1894, the year before our grandfather Henry was born, that Mary Smith Tillett wrote a letter to the seminary to inquire about the painting of which she had heard her mother tell...Mary specified that the portrait was to be inherited by the eldest daughter in each generation of her daughters.

Another Battle of New Orleans ancestor

According to the Rev. John Haynie family history book, John's father Spencer Haynie, Jr., was not only a Revolutionary War soldier who received a land pension in Tennessee, but he was with General Andrew Jackson for the Battle of New Orleans in 1814-15, the final confrontation of the War of 1812!

This means that we have a Battle of N.O. soldier on each side of our family, Henry Covington of Robertson County, Tenn., who lost his life in this service; and Spencer Haynie, Jr., of Knox County, Tenn.  This seems remarkable to me, and somehow especially so since we lived in New Orleans without being aware of this heritage.