Elizabeth Bryan

Not the same as *Elizabeth (Smith) Walton of Middlesex Co.

Daughter of The Speaker, John Smith and Elizabeth (Whitfield) Smith, was born around 1720-1725 (estimate based on marriage in 1745)[2]probably in Middlesex Co., Virginia. About 1738, in her teens, she moved with her parents to Craven (Johnston) County, North Carolina. . The Johnson Co Elizabeth Smith was having her children after her 1744 marriage in Bertie Co .

"Col. William Bryan and Elizabeth Smith of Johnston County had at least 10 children that I know of and they are (in order of birth): Lewis, Mary, William, Arthur, Elizabeth, Hardy, Blake, Esther, Susannah and John.Lewis and Mary were twins and were both born November 4, 1745 in Johnston Co., North Carolina."Kenneth Barker http://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/bryan/2153/

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Smith-17538

Elizabeth (Smith) Bryan was The Widow of William Bryan whose passing in 1792, followed their married since 1744/5 in Bertie Co recently arriving to Johnson Co, and this William Bryan was the son of Needham & Anne (Rombeau) Bryan,[2][3] and Elizabeth (Smith) Bryan had Lewis, William, Arthur, Elizabeth, Hardy, Blake, Esther, Susanna, John, and Mary.

1. Lewis Bryan [3]
2. William Bryan [3]
3. Arthur [3]
4. Elizabeth Bryan [3]
5. Hardy Bryan [3]
6. Blake Bryan [3]
7. Esther [3]
8. Susannah Bryan [3]
9. John [3]
10. Mary, b. 26 March 1767[2]

They lived at Springfield,[2] 2 mi west of Smithfield, Johnston Co. NC.

In 1787, Springfield Plantation was owned by John Bryan. It lay along Swift Creek, across the Neuse west of Smithfield. John Bryan had inherited this property from his father, William Bryan, a leading citizen of the county at the outbreak of the American Revolution. The elder Bryan was known as Colonel Bryan. His wife, a sister of John Smith Jr., was Elizabeth Smith Bryan. The Bryan ancestral home stood scarcely a mile west of Smithfield, near the intersection of today’s highways to Raleigh and Angier. The tobacco received at Smithfield during late colonial times, or rather at Springfield, was packed into hogsheads, loaded on flat boats, and sent down the river to New Bern, where cargoes were transferred to vessels that carried North Carolina products to England. North Carolina, then as now, was among principal tobacco regions in America. But, any production of tobacco in Johnston County was slight in the 1700s, and it remained slight in the 1800s until after the Civil War. By the 1850s only six North Carolina counties, all lying in the Piedmont region just below the Virginia border, produced as much as 20 pounds per acre.... Nevertheless, when the place called Smith’s Ferry became the site of a tobacco-receiving station, in 1770, it gave the place some distinction as a tobacco market, more than a century before eastern North Carolina had any bright-leaf auction markets. By 1771, a new courthouse location was necessary after Wake County was carved from western Johnston County, and the place chosen for it lay along the Neuse River exactly where Smithfield rose as Johnston’s enduring county seat. Construction of the new courthouse, the third erected across a span of 25 years following the county’s birth, began in 1771. Apparently it was situated on an acre of earth provided by John Smith Jr. a hundred yards or so south of his riverside residence, near the northeastern corner of present-day Smithfield’s Market and Front streets. If this courthouse was a reproduction of the abandoned courthouse at Hinton’s Quarter, it was built of timber, and was 20 feet wide and 30 feet long. Upon its completion in 1772, the builder, John Pope, also constructed “gaol and stocks” nearby. He received £149 and 14 shillings for his work. Until the Town of Smithfield was chartered in 1777, its location was widely known in North Carolina as “Johnston County Courthouse.” The rise of this immediate forerunner of Smithfield coincided with beginnings of the Revolutionary War, which ended British rule in Johnston County and all America. Indeed, the place identified as Johnston County Courthouse became the scene of significant events leading up to the Revolution. In 1772, by the time officials were performing duties at Johnston County’s new courthouse, Governor William Tryon had departed North Carolina to become Governor of New York. Although he had angered many North Carolinians, he left among them a reputation as an able leader. They soon found that his successor, Governor Josiah Martin, was more arrogant and intolerant than Governor Tryon. The spirit of independence was spreading through the colonies in the early 1770s, and Governor Martin’s attitude and policies prompted more and more North Carolinians to protest British rule. By 1774 Johnstonians were in a mood to give public expression to their growing spirit of independence. On August 12, almost two years before the colonies united to proclaim the Declaration of Independence that heralded establishment of a separate English-speaking nation in America, indignant Johnston County freeholders led by Samuel Smith Jr. (a first cousin of Smithfield’s founder) assembled at the courthouse beside the river to recite their grievances. They adopted formal resolutions demanding trial by jury of all persons accused of treason and also denouncing “taxation without representation.” But they stopped short of calling for separation of the colonies from Britain. These protesters not only expressed their grievances in writing, but also selected delegates to meet with residents of other counties to consider ways of resisting British arrogance. By the end of the summer of 1775, a provisional government in North Carolina was functioning with strong support from every county despite the prevalence of substantial loyalty to the Crown in some localities. The Provincial Congress, which held five sessions over a span of two and a half years, was the supreme power in North Carolina during the transition from colonial to state government. But, it assigned executive and judicial power to a thirteen-member body called the Provincial Council. District and local “committees of safety” were clothed with authority subject to the council’s will. North Carolina’s Provincial Council, authorized to hold meetings every other month, began its work at Johnston County Courthouse in a session that lasted from October 18 to October 22, 1775. Cornelius Harnett of New Hanover County was elected as its president. The council’s second session was also held at Johnston County Courthouse, December 18-24, and its third session was originally scheduled to be held there in late February and early March of 1776, but a late change of plans shifted that session to New Bern. Still, it may be said that for several months, during a critical time in American history, the seat of administrative government in North Carolina was Johnston County’s courthouse community that became Smithfield in 1777. The work of the Provincial Council at Johnston County Courthouse helped to determine the course of the American Revolution in North Carolina. State historians have noted that the council’s primary achievement during its Johnston County sessions was organizing and equipping the military forces that defeated British loyalists at Moore’s Creek Bridge north of Wilmington on February 27, 1776. The patriots’ victory there thwarted a British plan to bring North Carolina back under rule of the Crown. It turned the war away from North Carolina soil for almost five years, and it solidified North Carolina sentiment for complete independence from Britain. The first General Assembly of the independent State of North Carolina convened at New Bern on April 7, 1777. On April 23, a bill to establish the town of Smithfield was introduced by Johnston County’s Senator Needham Bryan. It passed the Senate readily. By April 26, the bill also had won quick approval in the House, where it was endorsed by Johnston County’s Representatives Henry Rains and Alexander Averitt. The Legislature’s procedures delayed ratification of the bill until May 9, but it can be said the town really was born during the last week of April 1777. The law named a board of “directors and trustees” to design a plan to divide the land provided by John Smith Jr. into lots. This board – composed of Benjamin Williams, William Bryan, Samuel Smith Jr., John Rand, John Smith Jr., John Stevens, and Lewis Bryan – was empowered to make arrangements for selling lots and to exercise other authority in developing the town. The act of the Legislature decreed that the name of the new town would be Smithfield. The original town extended along the east bank of the river from Hancock Street southward to Church Street. There were no streets east of Fourth Street. A map or “plat” of Smithfield, published in 1802 by Hodge and Boylan, reveals the owners of more than 135 lots in the original town plan. Among the original owners of Smithfield lots was Richard Caswell, the first Governor of the independent State of North Carolina, who had represented Johnston County in the Colonial Assembly in the 1750s when his home in what became the Kinston area was within the borders of Johnston. Among the notable events in Smithfield’s early history was a meeting of the state’s General Assembly, held in the Johnston County courthouse May 3-15, 1779. From 1777 to 1794, North Carolina’s governors and other state officials administered public affairs from their homes, and the Legislature moved from town to town, “auctioning off sessions to the highest bidders,” according to R.D.W. Connor. It was a smallpox outbreak at New Bern, however, that moved Governor Richard Caswell to shift the spring session 1779 from New Bern to Smithfield. Smithfield was among seven places having the honor of hosting the state’s legislators before 1794. Townspeople may have felt honored and Smithfield’s merchants may have reaped some profits from the coming of the legislators, but the visiting dignitaries themselves were hardly elated over their stay in the town. Whitmell Hill, a North Carolinian who had been a delegate to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, visited the Legislature while it was in session in Smithfield. In a letter to a colleague, he called the town “a rascally hole for such a meeting.” Smithfield was unable to provide the living comforts usually enjoyed by Hill, but Smithfield’s inadequacies were hardly unique. Indeed, none of the seven communities that lured the Legislature away from New Bern could offer desired comforts. Historian Connor cited the complaint of a visitor to Tarboro, who said the town, with its twenty families, had “inadequate” accommodations for the lawmakers, “some forty or fifty of them being crowded with other visitors in a tavern, others having to be cared for in private homes.” Connor added: “The situation at Tarboro was no worse than at Halifax, or Hillsborough, or Smithfield, or Wake Courthouse.” Courthouses, usually small, were inconvenient places for legislative meetings; and it was difficult to haul records of the Legislature from town to town – “in a common cart,” to quote Connor. The situation became so unbearable that the Legislature sought to establish a permanent state capital, but its members had difficulty reaching agreement on a location. In 1787, the Legislature referred the matter to a constitutional convention called to consider ratification of the proposed U. S. Constitution. The convention decided in the summer of 1788 that the capital should be near Isaac Hunter’s plantation in Wake County. Ultimately, after a long dispute in the Legislature, a commission created by the lawmakers established the capital on the Joel Lane plantation near Wake County Courthouse. In 1792, the commission laid out a town called Raleigh, named in honor of Sir Walter Raleigh, who had sponsored efforts to establish a colony in what became North Carolina. A legend insisting that Smithfield “missed being the capital” of North Carolina “by one vote” has been passed down from generation to generation. It is pure legend. But Smithfield did receive some consideration on more than one occasion prior to the choosing of a Wake County site that resulted in the creation of Raleigh. When the Legislature met in Smithfield in 1779, it appointed a commission to examine sites for the “Seat of Government,” directing it to look at land in Johnston, Wake, and Chatham counties. That legislative action settled nothing. The issue came up repeatedly in sessions of the Legislature after 1779. In 1782, Hillsborough was selected, but a rescinding action the following year (pressed by Fayetteville) turned Hillsborough’s victory into defeat. In 1784, the Legislature again tried to make a choice. On one ballot Smithfield received 18 of 141 votes, but Smithfield’s advocates made no headway on subsequent ballots. The county seat of Johnston received 13 votes on a second ballot and 17 votes on a third. Leading contenders in 1784 were Tarboro and Hillsborough. Later Smithfield was nominated to become the state capital when the constitutional convention was held, but its nomination mustered little support.

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