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Collection: GRANT, DOROTHY FREMONT Collection P.C. 1436—
Wilmington, New Hanover County
Smithville, Brunswick County
Rockingham, Richmond County
1773-1893, 1954
Physical Description: 270 items; correspondence, business accounts, receipts,
land grants, deeds, agreements, leases, tax receipts, license, commissions,
certificate, log, newspapers and newspaper clippings, programs, invitations,
menu, advertisements, insurance policies, bill of sale, oaths, testimonials,
postcard, negative, etc.
Acquisition: Donated by Mrs. Douglas (Dorothy Fremont) Grant,
Asheville, N. C., October 27, 1969, with additions on January 28 and
April 29, 1970.
Description: Biography — Sewall Lawrence Fremont (1816-1886); born in New
Hampshire; graduated from U.S. Military Academy; army duty in Smithville
[Southport] and in War with Mexico [see index to Governors Calendars,
1847-1848]; married Mary Elizabeth Langdon, daughter of Richard Langdon
of Smithville, 1848; enroute to duty in California with 3rd Regiment,
U. S. Artillery, Fremont and family survived wreck of steamer San
Francisco, 1853. Resigned commission; superintendent of Wilmington and
Weldon Railroad Company, 1855-1871. [Town of Fremont in Wayne County on
the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad named for S. L. Fremont in 1869.]
Served during first year of Civil War as colonel in the state militia,
coastal artillery defenses. During last decade of his life was employed
by federal government as a civil engineer; died age 70 in Memphis, May,
1886; buried in Oakdale Cemetery, Wilmington. Additional biographical
information in collection.
Records of the 18th century until the Civil War are primarily land
grants and deeds, 1773-1859, for property in Smithville, Wilmington,
and Richmond County acquired by Fremont in the 1860s. Other antebellum
documents, exclusive of land records, include stock certificate (xerox
copy), 1848; life insurance policies for $3,000 and $5,000, 1854-1855;
law license (parchment) for Samuel- Langdon, Fremont's brother-in-law,
signed by the justices of the N. C. Supreme Court, 1853; bill of sale
for slaves, 1858; life insurance policy for female slave, I860; fire
insurance policies for house and furniture, Smithville, $15,000 in 1854
and $23,000 in 1860 and 1882; Wilmington newspapers of 1854 and 1856
with death notices for Fremont's daughters; and memorabilia of the wreck
of the steamer San Francisco in 1853.