Simpson and Biddle Family Papers, 1721-1928, 1944

UoAth Ccuiotina State. Aackive^ RaZeZgh, NoAth Сало Zina 1533.1-1533.8 Collection: SIMPSON AND BIDDLE FAMILY PAPERS 1721-1928, 1944 n.d. Pitt, Craven, and Wake counties Physical Description: 1900 items; correspondence, grants and indentures, courses and plats, contracts, accounts and receipts, estates papers, wills, genealogical material, etc. Acquisition: Gift of Thomas B. Carraway, Jr., flHHBHBMBP» Wilmington, N. C. 28401, September 19, 1973. One pen and five billfolds were transferred to the Museum of History, July 24, 1974; two tin boxes were transferred to the Museum 4-18-75. 18th century money; Confederate stamps; Carraway genealogy chart; and ca. 50 miscellaneous envelopes, many with stamps, were returned by mail to Mr. Carraway, April 23, 1975. James Iredell's Laws of the State of North Carolina, 1791 printing, autographed by John Gray Blount and General Samuel Simpson, presented to the Museum of History by Thomas B. Carraway, Jr., 1973. Description: BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION— The Simpson, Biddle, and Carraway family connections are through Samuel Simpson's daughter Mary Nixon Simpson who married William Phillips Biddle of Princess Anne County, Virginia, in 1810; their daughter Sarah, whose second husband was Snoad B. Carraway; and their great-granddaughter Edith Smith, bom in 1880, who married Thomas D. Carraway. John Simpson (1728-1788), a native of Massachusetts, settled in the mid-18th century on the Tar River about six miles below present day Greenville in Pitt County. While representing Beaufort County in the colonial General Assembly in 1760, Simpson introduced the bill to create a new county to be named for William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, the friend- in-Parliament of American colonists. Simpson, whose own plantation was called "Chatham," was the first sheriff of Pitt County, and later served as register of deeds and justice of the peace. He was a member of the Pitt Committee of Safety and a delegate to the provincial congresses of 1774-1776. In state government he was a member of the House of Commons, 1778 [resigned], a councilor of state, 1778-1779, and state senator, 1780 and 1786. Simpson was a merchant involved in extensive trade whose river plantation become an inspection station for tobacco in 1764 and whose schooner "John and Elizabeth," was captured by the Spanish in 1769 at Vejra Cruz, Mexico, and detained until 1772., [See English Records [PR 15-8] et al for account of schooner's detention.]