Contributed by Walter S. & Maxine C. Gabennesch
This is a revision and update of the facts contained in a letter written by William C, Fields on April 6, 1965 to a Mrs. W. J. Christie of Dunedin, Florida regarding the Genealogy of the Carver Families of Bladen and Cumberland County, North Carolina. The date of this revision is August 1, 1999.
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Here is the Carver material I promised to send you. First I shall take up the Bladen Carvers. The wills Mr. Campbell sent you and a few deeds and land grants comprise the total record we have on this family. James, will 1738, was evidently the first of this family in North Carolina. He is supposed to come from Pennsylvania but there is no proof of this (documentary, that is). As his will shows he had four children: Samuel, James, Mary and Ann.
- Samuel Carver made a will in 1758, naming wife Arcadia and four children: James, Samuel, Mary and Sarah.
- James Carver made a will in 1753 naming wife Elizabeth and two children: Job and Elizabeth.
- Mary Carver married Charles Benbow and there are numerous descendants of these two, none of whom seem to know any more about these Carvers than we know.
- Ann Carver married William Maultsby, named as brother in the will of Samuel, 1758; he was actually brother-in-law. One of their sons William Maultsby II married Ann Evans.
James Carver, son of Samuel, will 1758, evidently died unmarried. His will, 1778, names various friends but Josiah Evans and Sarah Nixon are not referred to in the will as friends, as Mrs. Campbell’s abstract indicates. What he actually says is that if those various friends died without issue the property was to go to “Josiah Evans and his heirs the son of Sarah Nixon”. Sarah Nixon was his sister, Sarah Carver, who had married first Josiah Evans, brother of Ann Evans who married William Maultsby II, and second John Nixon. By Josiah Evans, Sarah had four children, one of whom was Josiah Evans II, born 1767, died 1841. It was he who was named in James Carver’s will. He was my (William C. Fields) great-great-great- grandfather.
This takes care of James and Sarah. Of the other two children of Samuel, will 1758: Samuel and Mary, nothing more is known. There are no Carvers in the Bladen Census of 1790 so it must be assumed that Samuel had either died or moved away. In the Bladen tax list of 1763 the only Carver is William, almost certainly he is William Carver-Braswell of the 1767 will. At that date Samuel was quite possibly too young to be listed. Samuel does show up the one and only time on the Bladen Co. tax list of 1770. He quite possibly could died or moved away after 1770. The only other Carver to show up on the Bladen Co. tax records besides William was his son Sampson Carver who paid tax on himself and three slaves, two males and one female, in the year 1774. In the Bladen tax list for Francis Lucas lists 1784 James Carver’s taxes, who was one of the executors of his estate. Jesse and Sampson Carver are on this list but they are obvious the Cumberland Co. Carvers (sons of William Braswell-Carver), as we know, they both owned property in Bladen as well.
Job and Elizabeth Carver, children of James, will 1753, moved to Pasquotank County. He appears there in the census of 1790. I have the records from his family Bible, which shows that he was born October 1st 1749, died 30th January 1799. He had several sons and two daughters, born between 1775 and 1792. The daughters were Elizabeth, born 29 July 1785, and Polly, born 23 June 1788. I don’t know what became of these two; they would have been of marriageable age in the early 1800’s.
The sources of the above information, aside from the wills, and tax lists noted, are the Evans family Bible and Cumberland County Court minutes. Those of Oct. 1778 stated that Sarah Evans, administratrix of Josiah Evans, had married John Nixon.
THESE ARE THE BLADEN COUNTY NC. QUAKER CARVERS NOT RELATED TO THE CUMBERLAND COUNTY CARVERS
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