Xotnblo Families
of \orfliaiiiptoii
Historic names arc common in
Northampton. They include Robin
Jones, crown attorney-general, and his
two notable sons. Allan lived at Mt.
Gallant in Gaston township and not
only was a member of the Continental
Congress but a brigadier general as
well. One of his daughters married
Governor William R. Davie, another
married General William Baton of the
Continental Army.
His brother. Willie, was Lord of the
Groves at old Halifax. He was a bitter
opponent of Cieorge Washington and
his Federal Constitution, and one of
North Carolina's most notable leaders.
His brother. Allan, incidentally, voted
for the U. S. Constitution which Willie
so vigorously opposed.
One of the descendants of this fam¬
ily. Willie Jones Long, lives now at
Longview, the fifth generation of the
family to occupy this estate.
The Burgwyns. who came to North¬
ampton from Craven in 1840, have
been exceedingly active in North Caro¬
lina allairs and today comprise one of
the largest of the county's landowners.
They heired this land from their
wealthy unde. George Pollock. Their
ante-bellum plantations were models of
good management and production.
One of them. Henry King Burgwyn.
designed the handsome courthouse at
Jackson. An interesting note on this
family — for six generations there has
been a John Burgwyn in the family.
Matt W. Ransom ranks with Zeb
Vance as one of the most dashing and
popular North Carolinians of the Civil
War era. He was attorney general of
North Carolina at the age of 26. a mem¬
ber of the Assembly, a Confederate
colonel, later major general. He pro¬
cured the writ of habeas corpus which
freed Democratic leaders of the state
from imprisonment in 1870; he was
U. S. senator. U. S. Ambassador to
Mexico. Joseph Caldwell described
him:
"He was our fullest scholar, our
most accomplished diplomat, the hand¬
somest man among us. the ablest man.
the man who did us more credit in the
eyes of the country. He is indeed the
last of the Romans." His heirs own
his plantation Verona and farm it.
Hermit of
Bij STEVE WILLIAMS
If you have the desire to "get away
from it all." if the speed of this every¬
day life is getting you down each day
you might follow Robert Harrell. He
"resides" in an abandoned pillbox near
the south end of the Bay at Fort
Fisher, a few miles south of Kurc
Beach. North Carolina.
Mr. Harrell, says "The folks on this
old globe live too doggone fast; they
should slow down and live: learn to
relax." Here, among the sand flies, the
fiddler crabs and the mosquitoes he
lives out that philosophy.
In appearance he is a miniature
Hemingway, with a short gray beard,
and iron gray hair, he is usually seen
along the Bay clad only in a pair of
dark brown swimming trunks and a
well-worn straw hat. his attire both
winter and summer. Natives tell of
seeing him wading in the icy waters
of the Bay in dead of winter wearing
those brown trunks and nothing else.
Robert Harrell was born in 1893
near Shelby. He attended the Boiling
Springs Boarding school near there.
As a Baptist ministerial student, in his
senior year he got into an argument
with his science teacher on the sub¬
ject of evolution, and quit. Later he
was ordained as a Baptist minister, but
was never aetive in that field.
He went to New York to study lino¬
type operating, and for thirty years he
was a linotype operator for a news¬
paper in Shelby. Later, he traveled all
over the United Stales stenciling letters
on all types of metal. "I once stenciled
a man's name on his artificial leg." he
smiled.
The stenciling business got slow, so
he sold his machine and came to Fort
Others include. Thomas Williams
Mason, whom Judge Wm. H. S. Burg¬
wyn calls the greatest orator of his
generation in North Carolina; Robert B.
Peebles. Confederate leader and judge;
Andrew J. Connor, newspaper pub¬
lisher and friend of public education,
and Thomas Bragg, twice elected
governor. U. S. senator and attorney-
general of the Confederacy.
the Beach
Fisher. For a while he lived in a tent
near the front entrance of the Fort.
"But Hurricane Hazel came along and
blew all my belongings into the next
county," he said, "and I had to look
for new quarters."
He finally selected an abandoned
pillbox, one of several built by the
Army during World War IT. as his
abode.
His vocation scents to be fishing
for crabs, and now and then catching
a few common variety of fish that
abound in the waters of the Bay.
Fishermen in the bay at night look
kindly upon the old hermit, because
he always lights his lantern when he
secs someone fishing in or along the
Bay. giving them a beacon.
"I aim to do a book on the physi¬
ological aspect of home life," he said.
"I was married once, and have two
sons. The wife and I are divorced, and
I haven’t seen her or the boys in years."
For a moment he was silent, gazing
over the Bay.
“The title of my book will be A
Tyrant in Every
Поте,
and will be
based upon my observations and re¬
flections of a life-time of study on
home life."
Then the homeless expert on homes
sntiled. and waved his hand toward
the Bay. "But this is my home now.
and will be for some time to come."
24
THE STATE. NOVCMOCR 29. 1958
