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.

Three library collections of family papers & another book

I've just discovered a book called Tulip Evermore, which contains letters written by Emma Butler Paisley* & her husband/others, in the mid-1800's. These were the Butlers who were Wyche descendants, second cousins of H. A. Tillett. They lived in the vicinity of the community called Tulip or Tulip Ridge, Dallas County, in south central Arkansas. The Butlers, Smiths, and other North Carolina families had moved here in the late 1840's, some taking their slaves with them, about twelve years before the Civil War.

The War Between the States was very destructive for this part of Arkansas, and in some ways it was never the same, having had an antebellum reputation for fine educational facilities. According to Wikipedia, at the 2000 census there were only about 9,000 people living in the entire county, with the largest employer being Georgia-Pacific Corp.

A nearby town to Tulip was Princeton, and it was to this area Gus Tillett went in 1881 after having finished at the University of North Carolina. Here he met and courted Mary Benjamin Smith, who was born and grew up on her family's plantation, called Tulip Farm.

One of Emma Butler's brothers, Ira Wyche Butler, had married Mary Smith's sister. This was the couple in Abilene, Texas, who sent a telegram to Mary and Gus in June of 1885, causing them to get married a little earlier...Fannie John Smith Butler died the next month.

One of Emma Butler's sisters married a Reverend Matthews and lived out her life in the old Butler home place; the Butler-Matthews Homestead is on the National Register of Historic Places.

*The Butler-Paisley Family Papers, including the published letters, are in a special collection at the University of Arkansas's library in Fayetteville:

http://libinfo.uark.edu/SpecialCollections/findingaids/butlerpaisley.html

The central Arkansas library system in Little Rock owns a collection of Smith Family Papers, which revolve around the household of Maurice Smith, a younger brother of Samuel Harrison Smith, or Mary Smith Tillett's great uncle on her mother's side & first cousin once removed on her father's side. The papers were donated only about six years ago, and they're located in a place called the Butler Center. --- I don't know whether this name is connected to the Dallas County Butlers...I would love to look through this collection someday:

http://www.cals.lib.ar.us/butlercenter/manuscripts/collection/mss02-20.html

In the main Charlotte-Mecklenburg library, North Carolina, there is a collection of Tillett papers and albums, donated by our relative Charles Allison, the Tillett book's author. (On my recent N. C. visit, I didn't have enough time to go inside this library.) They are located in the Carolina Room Collections & Archives.

Correction: Wyche-Tillett book authors' kinship

Clarence A. Wyche (1878-1947), whose picture is shown here, was a dedicated genealogy researcher and a first cousin, once removed, of author Charles W. Allison (and of Aunt Mame & Poppa Henry).

Charles W. Allison, son of Jeannette Tillett Allison and Rev. Thomas J. Allison, was named after his uncle Charles Walter Tillett of Charlotte, N. C., and compiled The Reverend John Tillett Family History.  (Our great-grandfather was another of his uncles; therefore, Charles Allison was a first cousin of our grandparents.)

Wyche Ancestry

We have one family name which can be traced back in history much further than any other surname (to the 12th century & earlier), and that is Wyche.  This was the maiden name of Poppa Henry's grandmother, Elizabeth Jenkins Wyche Tillett.

The Wyches even had a saint in the family.  In the 13th century, the brother of one of our direct ancestors was Richard de Wyche, Bishop of Chichester & Saint Richard in the Roman Catholic Church.  The name Wyche is supposed to mean salt spring.  It is also short for the town of Droitwich, which is located in an area of Worcestershire where salt has been extracted since ancient times.

Our 17th century emigrant ancestor was Henry Wyche II (1648-1714).  He was born in Surrey County, England, traveled to America in the late 1670's, and settled in Surry County, Virginia.  Henry's grandfather was Richard Wyche (1554-1621), Gentleman and Mercer; Richard was a shipowner, merchant, and one of the charter directors of the English East India Company.

According to a Wikipedia entry, Richard was also "among the adventurers of the Muscovy Company," chartered in 1555 and the first major English joint-stock trading company.  It monopolized English trade with Russia for about 150 years and survived as a trading company until the Russian Revolution of 1917, after which it became a charity.  I just found this information today...I am moved that this ancestor of ours was involved, early on, with a private organization which reportedly has sustained a 450 year history, or the entire period during which the twelve or so additional generations of this man's descendants have lived...The Wikipedia item on Richard Wyche says that several locations in the Arctic region were named after him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wyche_(merchant)

Richard Wyche married Elizabeth Saltonstall, daughter of Sir Richard Saltonstall, Member of Parliament and Lord Mayor of London.  [She had a first cousin Sir Richard Saltonstall who established a Massachusetts colony in 1630.]  The couple had many sons; the Honorable Nathaniel Wyche lived in India and was President of the East India Company in the late 1650's.  Another son was the Right Honorable Sir Peter Wyche, Ambassador to Constantinople (Ottoman Empire),  who married Jane Meredith. Their children included (another) Sir Peter Wyche, Sir Cyril Wyche, and Lady Jane (Wyche) Granville.  Rt. Hon. Sir Peter Wyche was one of the Chancellors of Oxford University, and his sons Sir Cyril and Sir Peter were among the founding members of the British Royal Society.  Lady Jane was Countess of Bath and Lady of the Bedchamber to Henrietta Maria of France, Queen Consort of King Charles I.* 

Sir Cyril Wyche, scholar and longtime Member of Parliament, was a first cousin of our ancestor, Henry Wyche II.  His portrait, whose image is shown here, hangs in the National Portait Gallery of London.  Henry was the son of Henry Wyche (1604-1678), Rector of Sutton in Surrey, England, and his wife Ellen Bennett, daughter of Ralph Bennett, Esquire.

According to the Tillett book, "one of the oldest streets in the old walled city of London proper was Wyche St."  Today, there is a Wyche St. in Henderson, North Carolina (Vance County), which was named after either James Wyche or his sister Sally Wyche Reavis. 

There is a new, interactive website developed by and for descendants of James & Pamela Wyche of North Carolina:

http://www.benwychefamily.com/

*I added the above paragraph about Richard Wyche's family to expand the short Wikipedia article on him, since this information was documented in the James Wyche Family History, a section of The Reverend John Tillett Family History, published in 1955.

The Wyche section of the Tillett book is dedicated to Clarence A. Wyche, a first cousin of our great-grandfather Henry A. "Gus" Tillett.  Clarence, who died in 1947, did most all of the research about the early ancestry of the Wyches.  Charles W. Allison, the book's compiler, was another first cousin of Gus and Clarence, being a son of Jeannette Tillett Allison (Gus' big sister who looked after him following their mother's death).

Tillett - Wyche - Smith family history in North Carolina & my visit there

On Mother's Day, I was in Charlotte, North Carolina! While there I looked for Reverend John Tillett's grave at Elmwood Cemetery, but I couldn't find it. The place is huge, and I haven't located any directions to his grave.

I used the inspiration of a national genealogy meeting in Raleigh to make a six-day visit to the state...to see a few of the places the Tilletts and Wyches lived, and also to consider whether I might want to move there. I took the train and rented a car; just attended about a day & a half of the conference.

I do love the scenery in the Piedmont region: endless green hills and forests. And I like the fact that the state has actually put money into the passenger train system!

I started out in Richmond County east of Charlotte on Saturday, May 9th. [Ione's notes had indicated that Richmond Co., Virginia, was the Covingtons' location after Maryland but that was an error.] I found and took pictures of the graves of Elizabeth J. Wyche Tillett and her daughter Laura Tillett in Rockingham.

Then I located the old church which the Covingtons attended in the late 1700's (Cartledge Creek Baptist)--- according to a library book I'd consulted [A History of Richmond County by J.E. & I.C. Huneycutt, 1976]---and took a look at the Blewett Falls area of the Pee Dee River, with two old Blewett graves. William Blewett came from England in the early 1700's, having obtained one of the earliest land grants in the area and is probably one of our ancestors through Winifred Stone Covington, widow of Henry Covington who died in the War of 1812. A dam was built at Blewett Falls about a hundred years ago, so there is more of a lake with a spillway than a waterfall.

Another day I stopped in the town of Burlington, formerly Company Shops, from which some of the Tillett letters were written. The town is in the Greensboro vicinity and was established by the North Carolina Railroad as their maintenance site. Next I found the historic marker for the Bingham School for boys in Mebane, formerly Mebaneville, where Gus Tillett attended secondary school. (Happened to find out at the conference this is pronounced "Mebbin.") I made a swing through Pittsboro in Chatham County, where he was born and where there is now an organic grocery co-operative...Didn't ever make it to Chapel Hill to see the university.

Tuesday I found our ancestor James Wyche's grave in the woods of Granville County, about 40 miles north of Raleigh, thanks to the directions someone had put on line; although it took a while since the headstones aren't visible from the road. (He died in Raleigh at the age of 59, in 1845.) Then I took pictures of a house that may have been theirs; I so much wanted to find the "old Tar River plantation home," established in 1825 after the Wyches moved from Brunswick County, Va. If it was the right house it's been drastically remodeled as a hunting lodge.

I believe their plantation must have been a tobacco plantation, as this area was big in tobacco and James was part-owner of a tobacco warehouse. There used to be an old mill on their land, but I didn't know where to look for the ruins. James and Pamela Evans Wyche had 14 children, 13 of whom lived to adulthood; all of their children (two daughters and eleven sons) attended college. Elizabeth J. W. Tillett later returned to the Tar River home to have at least two or three of her babies. She had been about seven years old when they moved here.

John and Elizabeth Tillett had nine children, six of whom lived to adulthood: Jimmy, Laura, Jeannette, Wilbur, Charlie, and Gus. During the War Between the States the eldest, James Wyche Tillett, was away serving in the Confederate Army. Elizabeth died during this period, when Gus was about two; the next year John Tillett married Elizabeth's widowed sister, Louisa Young Wyche (Speed). All of the Tilletts attended college, as well, although the war prevented James from finishing his formal education.

After I came back to Florida I realized there was a Smith plantation and graveyard in Granville County, also (Mary Benjamin Smith Tillett's forebears on her father's side); I hadn't remembered that during the trip. They were farther north. The other Smith ancestors (her mother's side) were located in Caswell County,* farther west along the Va. state line.

In Raleigh I found the 1862 Raleigh & Gaston/ Seaboard RR building, which has been preserved, and took a lot of pictures inside the State Capitol (1840). James Wyche was involved with both of these entities, as railroad president and legislator, although he died before the RR building was built.

*In reviewing online Smith information, it appears that the Samuel H. Smiths may have lived in the Raleigh area for a few years, as Wake County is supposed to be where Anne William Smith was born and where her parents married...There sure was a lot of intermarrying among that clan. It looks like, in marrying Benjamin Men Smith, Anne married her father's first cousin. Many of the Smiths moved to Dallas County, Arkansas, probably during the 1840's.

Covington and Tillett History & Their Intersection in North Carolina

Henry Covington almost surely participated in the Battle of New Orleans on the 8th of January, 1815, which repelled the British invaders once and for all. Natalie & I visited the Chalmette battlefield in 1999, out of general interest; and later Lisle and Ione sent me Robert Remini's book published that same year about the historical events involved. The book is The Battle of New Orleans: Andrew Jackson and America's First Military Victory.

I've found general information on line about the Tennessee Militia units which served at the Battle, under General Jackson. The typewritten book Covington Cousins (1956) asserts that Henry died at Camp Henderson, five miles above New Orleans. It just occurred to me that, in 1815, "above New Orleans" meant upriver from the City; so that helps slightly to identify where the military encampment was. Online information about Camp Henderson is scarce to non-existent. Wasn't the location marked? When the soldiers died of infectious disease (there were very few battlefield casualties), where were they buried?

There is a woman in Tenn. who has been researching the Covingtons, and either she or I will probably order the National Archives file that has Winney Covington's war widow pension application in it. Maybe that would have the details of his service; it would be very gratifying, if so.

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About 50 & 70 years, respectively, after our branch of the Covington family left Richmond County, North Carolina, for upper middle Tennessee, the Tillett family lived in Richmond County. I found the listing on line for the graves of Poppa Henry's grandmother and his Aunt Laura, who are buried there in the county seat town of Rockingham...Richmond County is east of Charlotte, bordering South Carolina...The Tillett book doesn't really say what Elizabeth J. Wyche Tillett died of in 1862 during the Civil War; she was in her forties. But about 20 years later her daughter Laura taught in a private academy in Rockingham for 2 or 3 years --- upstairs in the Covington store building, reportedly. She was in her thirties and engaged to be married, but tragically, she died of roseola in 1881...At least her father was able to take the train down to be with her. There's a letter written by Rev. John Tillett at the time to his eldest son James that says at the end something like, "Gus is here but he leaves tomorrow for Arkansas."

We know that Henry Augustus "Gus" Tillett had recently graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and would meet his bride in Arkansas & move to Abilene, Texas. (The book states that he didn't see his father again until nine years later when Rev. Tillett was dying, in Charlotte.)

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Someday I might join or at least write to the National Society, Daughters of the War of 1812, because I want to know how we can find out where Henry Covington is buried. They have a program for decorating the graves of the soldiers.

Revolutionary War Ancestors

This is a list of direct ancestors of ours, that we know of so far, who served in the Revolutionary War (1775-1783) and/or earlier conflicts of the 17th and 18th centuries, e.g. the French and Indian War. [All except the two Haynies are on Ione's side of the family.]

Soldiers:

Spencer Haynie, Jr. (1758-1825)

Peter Wyche (1748-1803)

Officers:

Lieutenant William Evans (1756- after 1816)

Captain John Haynie (1624-1697)*

Colonel Haynes Morgan (Abt.1742-1795)

Major Vincent Shelton

Colonel Maurice Smith

Colonel William Thompson III (Abt.1724-1780)

*Since Capt. John Haynie, Sr., is said to have transported 46 persons to the Virginia colony for settlement, I take it that his title indicates that he was a sea captain, if not a military naval officer. The Haynie book asserts that he served as "Commander" in the Susquehanna War of 1678.

On another historical note, I thought that the Oath of Allegiance to the Commonwealth, mentioned in the description of Nehemiah Covington's colonial life, referred to the Commonwealth of Virginia, which to this day is the official name of that state. However, the Haynie book describes this as swearing allegiance to "The Commonwealth of England as it is now established without King or House of Lords." This was the period of the English Civil Wars, when there were several power struggles between the monarchy and Parliament, as well as between Protestant and Catholic religious factions. Haynie took the loyalty oath one year after our Covington ancestor did, though in a different coastal county.