Andrew was probably born in Old Fort, North Carolina; his father is enumerated in Burke County on 1790 census (Old Fort was part of Burke County at that time).³  He was the son of Captain Thomas Hemphill and Mary Ann Mackie.⁴

Andrew and Catherine had nine children:  Thomas, Mary M., Dwight McDonald, James, Samuel McKey, Archibald McEntire, William McDonald, John R. and Benjamin C.⁵  In 1824, he was named as one of two executors of his father’s will.⁶

He is buried at Old Siloam (aka Old Ebenezer) Cemetery in Old Fort.⁷

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Building Erected More than 150 Years Ago Destroyed By Fire Last Sunday Afternoon

One of the historic homes of McDowell County passed Sunday when the Burgin home on Catawba river was destroyed by fire at 1:30 p. m.

This old homestead, which was situated a mile east of Old Fort, was built over 150 years ago and was the home of J. B. Burgin until his death, having been in the Burgin family for four generations.

It was here that General Locke Craig met Miss Annie Burgin, the daughter of J. B. Burgin, who later became his wife, the marriage taking place in this home.

Many people of McDowell county will be sorry to hear of the destruction by fire of the old Burgin home, which was the center of the social life of the community for years.  The house was originally built of hewn walnut logs.  Later the logs were weatherboarded and extra rooms added.  This history of this old plantation is the history of Old Fort and vicinity, the Burgins, Greenlees, Davidsons, Carsons, and McDowells being the earliest settlers of this part of Western North Carolina.

Due to the Burgin house being outside the water limits of Old Fort, the fire department could not check the blaze and the flames from the huge walnut logs made a spectacular show for the large crowd of people present.  It is supposed the fire was caused by a defective flue.

This property is owned by the Bancroft Company of Wilmington, Del., who purchased 500 acres on Catawba river and Curtis creek several years ago for a site to locate a bleachery.

This article was originally published in The Marion Progress on January 13, 1929.

Source:  Burgin, Don. “Fire Destroys the Old Homeplace.” Voices from the Past: A Burgin Genealogy Website. 25 Oct. 2008 (http://theburginfamily.org/house/1929fire.html).

Note:  the collage was created with pieces from the Butterfly Kisses Scrapkit by Tamara Dantes.

Twice Told Tuesday is an ongoing series featuring family-related articles republished from old books, magazines, and newspapers. To see all posts in the series, click here.

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1. Twice Told Tuesday: Death of B. B. Hemphill
2. Twice Told Tuesday: Mrs. Mary Hemphill Called By Death
3. Twice Told Tuesday: Lucy Hill Institute Notes

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A branch of my family that represents both kinds of “orphans” has haunted me ever since I first learned of their fate.

About ten years ago, my mother and I visited a cousin in Old Fort, North Carolina.  As she guided us through Old Siloam Church cemetery, where our relatives in that area were buried, she casually pointed to a row of six headstones, saying “That’s Tom Hemphill’s family.  They all died of typhoid.”

They all died of typhoid.¹

It was the summer of 1864, and the South was losing the war.  Sherman was marching through Georgia.  Disease was rampant; roughly two-thirds of Confederate fatalities were due to infectious diseases.² While no major battles took place in western North Carolina, soldiers coming home on leave would surely have spread disease to the civilian population.

When cousin Nina said “they all died of typhoid,” I thought she meant that the whole family died of typhoid.  I’ve since learned that there were children who did not perish in this epidemic.  The six gravestones represent Tom and Rebecca, and four of their younger children.

First to succumb was Thomas “Boot Tom” Hemphill, on July 24, at the age of 57.  Typhoid runs its course in about four weeks.  Tom must have caught the disease first; he may have brought it home to his family, for they began to die about three weeks after he did.

Mary, a daughter, died next on August 15.  She was twelve.³

Next to go was Samuel, the baby of the family.  He died on August 21, three weeks shy of his sixth birthday.⁴

Their mother, Rebecca (McEntire) died on August 22.  She was 51 years old.⁵

Three days later, the next-youngest son Columbus, age seven, died.⁶

Finally, on September 11, Joseph, died at the age of 14.⁷

Tom and Rebecca had eleven children living with them at the time of the 1860 census.⁸  Four died in the summer of 1864.  Of their remaining children, John Whitfield would have been 16 at the time of his parents’ deaths.  I don’t know if the other six were still alive, but if they were, they would have ranged in age from nine to twenty-three in 1864.

My mother and I revisited Old Siloam cemetery this summer and, even though it had been ten years, I immediately knew which row held this family.  As I’ve been working on processing my photos from that trip, I realized why it was so easy to identify the location of their graves.  The stones are all the same shape, with the same style of inscription.  I can only imagine the stonecutter, carving stone after stone to mark the passing of this family.

Hemphill Family Gravestones

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We left early Wednesday morning and arrived in Asheville a little after noon.  Our hotel room wasn’t ready, so we had a quick lunch then drove on up to Marion, which is the county seat of McDowell County.  Marion is a typical small Southern town and the courthouse was easy to find, right in the middle of downtown.  I knew from online research that marriage records were housed in the Register of Deeds office, so we went there first.  The ladies in the office were very nice and helpful, giving us a tour of the office and showing us where all the records were kept.  They have a very nice facility – lots of computers where researchers can look up computer records, copiers, microfilm readers, and the largest scanner I’ve ever seen, presumably for plats and other very large, loose papers.

As user-friendly as the facility was, I was quite disappointed in what we found.  The one record that I really wanted was the marriage certificate of my 3x-great-grandparents, Ben Hemphill and Martha Lytle.  They were married in McDowell County in 1854.  McDowell County was created in 1842, so I thought I had a pretty good chance of finding this certificate.  However, they only had marriage records going back to 1857.  So close!  I did get a marriage index entry for Ben’s second marriage to Fanny Saunders.  I also got several birth index and death index pages with entries on collateral lines.  I found it interesting that they had such great indexes going back into the mid- to late 1800′s, but they didn’t have original records for any of the entries that I found.  I don’t know what happened to the original records; we asked if the courthouse had burned or been damaged at some point in time, but the office lady said “no.”  We think we offended her by asking.  Oops!

By the time we finished at the Register of Deeds, it was too late to do any more research, so we went back to Asheville and checked into our hotel.  Then we went to  dinner and to the fabulous, two-story Barnes & Noble at Asheville mall.  Have you read Julie & Julia?  Very, very good book and I highly recommend it.

On Thursday morning, we drove up to Old Fort and found our way to the cemetery.  We did not have GPS coordinates, but I had found directions online.  It was a good thing we had been there before, because the directions were not good.  I took 41 photos of headstones, so I have a lot of work ahead of me, transcribing, enhancing, and uploading those images.

Then we drove around looking for the old Greenlee homeplace where we first met our Greenlee cousins about 25-30 years ago (that’s a story for another day).  After we found the Greenlee house, we drove on to the house where my grandfather’s first cousin, Nina lived the last time we saw her before her death.  A sign in front of the house said “Grove Hill Pottery,” which intrigued us so we stopped to see if they sold pottery.  Leslie, the  person who came to the door was, in fact a potter, and turned out to be Nina’s great-niece, which makes her my third cousin.  We spent a couple of hours visiting and browsing and each bought a raku wall hanging.

Next, we went to Historic Carson House.  My hope here was to find a copy of the old Hemphill bible and get photos of the Birth, Marriage, and Death pages.  The aforementioned cousin Nina and her sisters possessed this Bible at one time and they were all very involved with the restoration of Carson House, so I had hoped that they had donated the Bible to the genealogy collection.  I had emailed Carson House a few weeks ago, inquiring if they had it.  At that time, the executive director responded that they were not aware of it, but would continue looking.  When we got there, we found out that, coincidentally, she had emailed me that very morning saying that she still hadn’t found the Bible, but were about to begin a cataloging project.  I have to praise her, because not only had she looked through the collection, she had also called the prior executive director and asked her if she knew anything about the Bible.  She also promised to contact me if it ever turns up.

Even though they didn’t have the Bible that I was looking for, they do have a good genealogy library, so we spent a few hours going through papers and books on the Hemphills, Burgins, Mackies, and Lytles.  I took a couple of pages of notes and got copies of several pages; none are primary sources, but they hold a lot of clues for future research. I also got a photo of a sea chest, purported to belong to Philip Burgin, the first of my Burgin line to come to America in the late 1600s.

We spent Friday doing “non-genealogy” things, visiting the Farmer’s Market, wandering around downtown Asheville, etc.  Even though I didn’t find everything I wanted to, it was a good trip.

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• Weyrich Norrente Rudisill, 7x-great-grandfather, born 08 Jul 1695 in Germany.
• Thomas Hemphill, 4x, 5x, and 6x-great-grandfather, born 09 Jul 1746.
• Thomas McEntire Hemphill, 3x and 4x-great-grandfather, born 09 Jul 1796 in Old Fort, NC.
• Malinda Burgin, 4x-great-grandmother, born 04 Jul 1801 in Burke County, NC.
• James Young Hemphill, 2x-great-grandfather, born 31 Jul 1835 in Burke County, NC.
• Leaty Caroline Lankford, 2x-great-grandmother, born 20 Jul 1848 in Tennessee.
• Mary Lourania Forrester, 2x-great-grandmother, born 07 Jul 1864 in Georgia.
• James Young Hemphill, great-uncle, born 06 Jul 1902 in Georgia.
• William Elmer Hemphill, great-uncle, born 05 Jul 1910 in Georgia.
• my grandfather – Happy Birthday, Pop!

To see a complete list of July birthdays (and other July events), click on the “Family Tree” tab, then click on “Dates and Anniversaries” in the sidebar, then click on the drop-down arrow under “Day” and scroll all the way to the top, choose July under “Month”, then click “Search.”

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The inscription on the stone reads:

Thomas Hemphill
Captain N. C. Mil.
Rev War
May 4, 1826

Thomas fought at the battles of Ramsour’s Mill and King’s Mountain, as well as other skirmishes.

Photo source:

Spencer, Diana Proctor. Find a Grave, digital images ( http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSsr=81&GScid=2207823&GRid=25453203& :accessed 11 Sep 2008), photograph for Thomas Hemphill ( – 1826), Old Fort, North Carolina.

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“Thomas Hemphill, a son of James and Susannah Patton Hemphill, was born about 1750 in Pennsylvania, and he died May 4, 1826, in Burke County (now McDowell County), North Carolina. During the American Revolution, he lived in Burke County, North Carolina. In 1776, he furnished wagons for the Cross Creek expedition where the Patriots won a decisive victory over the Loyalists. In January 1780, Hemphill enlisted as a lieutenant in a mounted rifle company under the command of Captain Robert Patton. He was in an engagement at Monck’s Corner. Patton, Hemphill, and others later joined Colonel William Washington and remained at Camden, South Carolina for some time. Then they marched to Cross Creek where they joined the command of Colonel Charles McDowell.

In 1780, Thomas Hemphill became a captain and led his company in the Battle of Ramsour’s Mill, the first Patriot victory after the devastating defeat of the Continental Army at Camden.

After Ramsour’s Mill, Thomas Hemphill joined the McDowells and they were engaged in several skirmishes in South Carolina. Captain Thomas Hemphill was part of the force which defeated the British at King’s Mountain, a battle which many historians consider the turning point of the American Revolution. While he was on his last tour of duty, his home was visited by some of the British troops under Ferguson’s command.

In 1773, Thomas Hemphill married Mary Ann Mackie (Mackey), a daughter of Thomas and Rosannah McEntire Mackie of Burke County, North Carolina. She was born in 1758 and died in September 1804. Both she and Thomas are interred here in the Old Siloam Cemetery, which is approximately three miles east of Old Fort.

Their children include: (1) Martha Hemphill, who married Thomas Young Hemphill McEntire, (2) Mary “Polly” Hemphill, who died young and was never married, (3) James Hemphill, (4) Andrew Hemphill, who married Catherine McDonald, (5) Ann Hemphill, who married Moses Whiteside (some sources say she died young), and (6) Thomas McEntire Hemphill, who first married Malinda Burgin and who secondly married Margaret Hemphill Dysart. Other children may include: (7) Rebecca Hemphill, (8) Rachel Hemphill, who married Foster Whiteside, (9) Ruth Hemphill, who married John Underwood Whiteside, (10) Samuel Hemphill, (11) RosannahHemphill , (12) Jane Hemphill, and (13) Thomas Hemphill.”

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