Created 01/09/1998. Last updated 02/28/2004 (See What's New)

The Southern Family in North Carolina

View along Hewins Creek, Stokes County, N.C., where William and Magdalen Southern settled about 1775

Hosted by Michael Tesh Southern Raleigh, North Carolina

Hello. This simple site is a source for information about the history of the Southern family in North Carolina.

The "kernel" of this site is the story of one couple -- William and Magdalen Southern, who founded the family in what is now Stokes County, North Carolina, about 1775. William and Magdalen are the ancestors of most North Carolina Southerns and of many Southerns in other states. Even those Southerns who do not descend from William and Magdalen might find the material concerning their origins in Virginia useful to their own investigations.

For now, the principal offering is the narrative history of William and Magdalen and their children and relatives. Other items are transcriptions of research materials that support the narrative and that are linked to it. I will add additional materials over time, and try to bring the family history forward to the present. Corrections, suggestions, and information about other sources will be greatly appreciated.

All items are in HTML format, which you can read on screen or print on your personal printer. Or you can capture the text and load it into your own word processor to edit and format as you wish before printing.

William and Magdalen Southern of Stokes County, North Carolina. This is a narrative of the early history of the Southern family in Virginia and North Carolina, with footnotes citing sources of information. With Netscape's Navigator, this runs about 11 pages printed directly from the browser, but this will vary depending on your browser and its defaults, especially font size.

The following materials supplement the narrative and are linked within it, or can be viewed on their own:

• Map Showing Early Distribution of the Southern Family in the Eastern United States
  
• Southern Families of Christ Church, Middlesex County, Virginia, in the Early 18th Century. Middlesex was probably the point of origin of many Southern families in the United States.
• Southerns in Surry and Stokes County Tax Lists, 1775-1801. Tax lists show the first appearance of William Southern in N.C. in 1775 and the emergence of younger family members as they established their own households through the last quarter of the 18th century.
• Annotated Census Records: These will come as I am able to convert my old files to HTML. For starters, here are
  The State Census of 1784-1787
  The U.S. Census of 1790
  The U.S. Census of 1800
  The U.S. Census of 1810
  The U.S. Census of 1820
• William Southern's Will of 1794.
• Southern Family Marriages in North Carolina to 1868. Arranged chronologically and annotated.
• Map of the original Southern family farms on Hewins Creek.
  Photographs taken in 1998 along Hewins Creek.
  The original 1778 survey of the land grant to Joshua Tillery that became the Southern farms.
  
• Chart showing the first four generations of Southerns in N.C. This is a jpeg file converted from an illustration software document . To be legible it has to be a pretty big file -- about 134K, and will take a while to load, depending on the speed of your system. Even then it may be a little difficult to read on smaller monitor screens. If you'd like a printed version of the chart, e-mail me your mailing address and I'll be happy to send it.
• The Bible record of John and Elizabeth Duncan Southern. John and Elizabeth Duncan Southern raised 15 children in Giles County, Virginia, in the early 19th century. This John appears to be the youngest son of William and Magdalen Southern, who left NC in 1817. This is a transcription of John and Elizabeth's Bible record listing their children.
• Revolutionary War Service of William Southern II. William Southern II was an older son (or possibly nephew or other relation) of William Southern. Though this William is not believed to have any Southern descendants, the story of his military service is of interest, with a wonderful description of how his unit received the news that Cornwallis had surrendered to Washington at Yorktown.

Other items related to Southern family history will be forthcoming.

Links to other Southern family, Stokes County, and northwestern N.C. sites

You can reach me at msouthern@mindspring.com. Corrections, new information, and suggestions for improvements will be greatly appreciated! Please Note: I have my anti-spam setting at high, so if you get a message saying your email wasn't delivered, please be patient. I'll see it anyway and try to get back to you.

Links to two other interests of mine:
Southern Specialty Maps, my sideline map drawing business.
The Southern String Band, a little music group in Raleigh I play with. (It wasn't named for me)

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