The Chavis Family portion of the Pleasant Grove UMC Cemetery featured in our most recent  newsletter (page 3), is currently undergoing clean up and preservation by church volunteers. The clean up effort is largely complete. The volunteer group is moving on to preservation. Interested members of the public are invited to a tombstone repair demonstration conducted by Doug Compton with the NC African American Cemeteries Network. When:  Saturday, July 18, at 10 am Where:  Pleasant Grove UMC,  4415 Pleasant Grove Church Road, Raleigh, NC 27613 What: Live Tombstone Repair Demonstration Who:  Doug Compton, the NC African American Cemeteries Network Details from the Pleasant Grove UMC Church Newsletter below: There’s no “A” in Cemetery An historic cemetery like the one at Pleasant Grove UMC offers clues and links to the past beyond what can be read on tombstones. Doug Compton with the NC African American Cemeteries Network has learned to follow the clues left over the ...

There is a  Black cemetery section at Pleasant Grove Church Cemetery in Raleigh.  This cemetery is the resting place for several members of a Chavis family who lived on the land adjacent to the Pleasant Grove Church. The family were Free Persons of Color.  Graves within the Chavis cemetery appear below.   Click image to view larger Headstones read left to right - Richard, son of Anderson and Tabitha Chavis, Mar.15, 1842-Jan.8, 1914; Rhoda, Wife of Richard Chavis, (B&D are illegible); Small stone marked ACR (no dates) A committee of PGUMC church members intend to clean and preserve this portion of the cemetery with an eye to restoration and historical significance.  They are seeking volunteers to help with their efforts. Seeking descendants of this Chavis family,  willing hearts,  and helping hands for a cleanup day. Saturday, April 25, 9 am to 1 pm. at Pleasant Grove United Methodist Church 4415 Pleasant Grove Church Road, Raleigh 27613 Direct ques...

This Reading Room Review is republished from the Wake Genealogy Watch newsletter, Fall 2023, p.3 . The Life and Times of Lucius Griffis (1839-1918): Including a Detailed Study of His Participation in the American Civil War (1861-1865), written by Brian Craig Griffis.  119 pp. Brian Griffis shares this glimpse into his Wake County family story with us. He researched for years to discover and round out the context of his ancestor, Lucius Griffis. - CD  Lucius was a Wake County native born and bred, a fatherless son who was  raised by two women. He was not much of a student and chose to pursue farming as soon as he could get away from the classroom.  He was a soldier, a deserter who paid the consequences and rejoined his unit, a soldier again drilling and marching all over the South without seeing any real battle action until a very pivotal moment. He was a husband and father of a family unit tragically broken by the war and its aftermath, a husband again twice over, a...

If you have the surnames - Alford, Liles, and High - in your family lines, you will want to check out Eureka: Proving an Ancestor in Wake County, N.C . by Lodwick Houston Alford describing his efforts to discover and prove the parents of Green Alford , b.1787 near Wakefield, Wake County ( Wake Treasures , vol.10, nbr. 2, p. 17). I read his account hoping for a workflow strategy or inspiration to solve my own elusive ancestor. His efforts included: disambiguating between two similarly named men  proving/disproving the various family stories passed down for generations working with several local history librarians in the area using the Bastardy Bond abstracted records * published in the Wake Treasures   calling in another set of eyes when it seemed all possible lines of research had been exhausted The sum of all these efforts led to his success. This was a compelling report, one I could not stop reading even though it was NMF (not my family). He has given me some ideas to appr...

Browse North Carolina Baptist Church Records by Collection | ZSR Library Links to early Baptist churches that served NC. source There are several Wake County churches listed in this digital online special collection. You may find churches of interest in other NC locations too. Visit Wake County Genealogical Society's Website  -  Homepage  |  WCGS Events  |  Join WCGS  |  Publications  |  Wake Cemetery Survey Images  | Digital Resources  |  History Resources  |  More Links and Resources  |  Wake Cemetery Survey c. 1978 online  |  Contact  -  info(at)wakecogen(dot)org

Information about the NC Cohabitation records created in March 1866 appears at the NCDigital collection where these records are housed. The description reads as follows:  In March 1866, the General Assembly passed “An Act Concerning Negroes and Persons of Color or of Mixed Blood,” which included a statute that enslaved people who had been living together as man and wife during slavery were now considered to be legally married. Called Cohabitation Bonds, these were filed with the Register of Deeds and were retroactive, legitimizing the marriages of former enslaved peoples. Typically included was the name and age of the bride and groom and length of time they had been “married”. Some counties include the name of the enslaver and/or the number of children the couple may have had. While in the original records cohabitation bonds are sometimes named as such, for many marriage records we cannot determine the race of the couple. In some instances, other marriage records from 1866 may be ...

I found this great account of John Lawson's 1700 exploration of the area that would become North and South Carolina, in a book written back in 1922 - History of Wake County, North Carolina, by Hope Summerell Chamberlain. It is a fantastic book, fast paced and pleasant enough that I am frankly captivated. You may see more posts inspired by it pages in the future. Chamberlain describes Lawson's voyage : "The first historian of North Carolina, the explorer Lawson, although known to have passed through the central part of this State, cannot actually be proved to have trod the soil of Wake County. One authority on our local history thinks that he did, and indeed it seems more than possible. Lawson made a journey through western and middle Carolina in the year seventeen hundred or thereabout. His course was a long loop coming out of South Carolina and crossing the Catawba and the ''Realkin" (or Yadkin) and other streams, continuing in a northeasterly direction a...

Would Wake County be very different if the choice of the state capital location had been different? How? Would roadways and growth centers be effected? Would a location five miles away make a difference? This is an interesting thought to ponder. I am sure it would have mattered more to the generations who came before us as their transportation and access to commerce would be most affected. Hunter vs. Lane The story of selecting the site of the permanent state capital is covered in this great article about inns and tavern from NCpedia . Isaac Hunter and Joel Lane are both represented here, as are several other important inns and taverns from the early days of colonial North Carolina. "Inns and taverns played an important role in the economic and geographic development of colonial North Carolina. These establishments-also known as "ordinaries" in eighteenth-century America because they often catered to the full spectrum of social classes-were frequently one of the f...

Are thoughts of cool breezes and crisp fall air calling to you? Got a taste for fair food yet? While it is way too warm for that now, you can still get in the mood.  Stay inside and have a browse this fun old bit of ephemera from the turn of the century, the   Premium List of the NC State Fair 1899 - 39th Annual State Fair . There are some beautiful advertisi ng  graphics inside, as well as great historical context for Wake County and the rest of the state at the time. You can page through this volume much like browsing a physical book. Don't miss the ads for Briggs Hardware, Raleigh Cotton Mills, St Mary's School, Southern Railway, and a host of others less well known that we surely need to keep in our memory. Fun! source These old premium book are a great source of historical context for you ancestors life way back when.  Browse all from the history of the NC State Fair (1853-1859, 1869 - now). Visit NCDigital and search for "State Fair Ephemera". You ...