Samuel Sewell, Sr.

DAR Ancestor A102160

Samuel Sewell, Sr.

• Birth: 1715 Millersville Anne Arundel County Maryland, USA
• Death: Apr. 6, 1789 North Kannapolis Rowan County North Carolina, USA
• Place of Burial: Enochville, Rowan, North Carolina, United States
• Son of Henry Sewell, III and Mary Marriott (Marriott) Sewell
• Husband of Christian (Stover) Sewell and Elizabeth (Baker) Sewell

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Samuel served his country during the Revolutionary War and is accepted as a Patriot by the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution. He is found at DAR Patriot Index, page 604, National Number 540465 and Revolutionary Army Accounts, Volume A, page 92.

Samuel Sewell had 5 sons who served as soldiers in the Revolutionary War Militia. Samuel supplied food and aid to the Militia and is listed as a patriot with the DAR and SAR.

Samuel Sewell was a prosperous landowner in central Maryland in his early days, owning large tracts of what are now modern Baltimore County and Harford County. But due to bad investments and a large family (14 children, albeit family information indicates that Christian Stover had 12 children and Elizabeth Baker had 11, but some did not survive infancy and appear to be lost to history), he was forced to either give it to his grown children or sell off more and more of the land until he decided to move to North Carolina and start over with new tracts of land in Rowan County.

Born on Howard's and Porter's Range in Anne Arundel Co. MD, to Henry III and Mary Sewell. Married Christian Stover in MD had 9 children. She died and he married again to Elizabeth Baker, they had 4 children. They migrated with Bakers to Rowen Co. NC before the Revolutionary War.

They lived at Cannon Mills, near Enochville on the Buffalo Creek, which is present day north side of Kannapolis, Rowen, NC. Both Samuel and Elizabeth said to be buried unmarked in Baker Cemetery now known as Kannapolis City Cemetery. No proof to date but at least a point of reference until something else proves otherwise.

Family links:

Parents:

• Henry Sewell (1675 - 1726)
• Mary Marriott Sewell (1680 - 1732)

Children:

1. Samuel Sewell (1750 - 1815)*
2. William Sewell (1754 - 1835)*
3. Joshua Sewell (1755 - 1837)*
4. John N. Sewell (1777 - 1862)*
5. Greenberry Sewell (1781 - 1847)*

• Calculated relationship

Burial: Kannapolis City Cemetery Kannapolis Cabarrus County North Carolina, USA

GEDCOM Note

Samuel Sewell apparently delayed marriage until he was in his early thirties, perhaps because he bore the primary responsibility for his mother and the family plantation after the premature death of his older brother Henry around 1732. Whatever the reason, it was not until 17 February 1747/48 that he married Christian Stover. She is thought to have been born in Pennsylvania around 1717 and may have been the daughter of Jacob Stover and his wife Sarah Boone, but that has not been proven.

Samuel and Christian Sewell’s first child, Samuel Jr., was born 17 January 1749/50, probably at the family plantation on the Severn River. He was followed by seven more sons before their last child, a daughter named Comfort, was born in 1767. By then, however, they were no longer living in Maryland. Because of flaws in wills through two generations, Samuel’s inheritance was only twenty-five acres and the title to that was not even secure. He is thought to have acquired other land in Maryland on his own, but for many of his generation, the pull of the new frontiers to the south and west must have been strong. Tobacco culture was notorious for wearing out the land, but for whatever the reason, as early as 1753 and certainly by 1760, he was among a number of Marylanders who relocated to the new lands that were opening up in the Carolina Piedmont at a time when the Yadkin River valley marked part of the nation’s Southern frontier.

Most likely the Sewells had traveling companions on a journey that would have taken many weeks to complete, and some traditions say that Samuel Sewell, Absalom Baker, and their families left Anne Arundel County at the same time. Most likely they took the well-traveled Great Philadelphia Wagon Road that stretched westward from Philadelphia and crossed the Potomac at Williams Ferry in western Maryland. From there the road continued in a southwesterly direction through the Valley of Virginia to the Staunton River gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains and then in a more southerly direction winding its way down through the Piedmont of North Carolina. Fry and Jefferson’s map of 1751 was the first to show “The Great Road from the Yadkin River thro Virginia to Philadelphia distant 455 Miles.” It was later known as the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road or simply the Great Wagon Road, although it was very late in the colonial period before wagons were actually able to traverse most of its length. In the years before the Revolution, this road brought a flood of white settlers into the southern Piedmont. Although some did follow the paths and roads that ran along the fall line through Virginia, that way required numerous river crossings, and the Sewells probably followed the majority of the back-country pioneers and took the Great Wagon Road, joining it in western Maryland and from there for the most part walking with their wagons and household goods to the Yadkin River.

In Fry and Jefferson’s map, the Great Wagon Road is shown ending at the Yadkin River in the Moravian settlement at Wachovia, but the Sewells were among those who pushed on across the Yadkin, extending the Great Road further to the south and southwest. Later maps carried it across the Yadkin to Salisbury, where the road split into several branches leading to Charlotte, the Cherokee country, Camden Town in South Carolina, and Augusta, Georgia. The Sewells eventually settled on Irish Buffalo Creek southwest of Salisbury. Among their neighbors were the Plasters and the Bakers, who also had roots in Maryland and who would, like the Sewells, help settle the Georgia Piedmont in the early nineteenth century. Their home sat not far from the Great Wagon Road, somewhere north of the bridge over Buffalo Creek and a few miles northeast of where the “Path to the Cherokee” forked off to the southwest.

Christian Sewell died in 1775 and was buried in the nearby Baker family cemetery, which would be incorporated into the city cemetery of Kannapolis, North Carolina, in the late nineteenth century. Samuel Sewell soon married Elizabeth Baker, daughter of one of his neighbors, and with her had four more children. During the American Revolution, Samuel Sewell Sr. was too old for active duty, but all of his and Christian Sewell’s sons have records of service in the American Revolution. Samuel Sewell died in the spring of 1789, apparently within days of the birth of his last child, and was buried beside his first wife in the Baker family cemetery. Over the next decade, all of his children left North Carolina, all but one of them destined for Georgia and most of those for Franklin County in northeast Georgia.

Samuel Sewell’s will left his widow a life estate in their plantation and stated, “It is my will and pleasure that my negro fellow Samuel shall stay in my plantation during the life of my wife Elizabeth to help raising my five youngest children and if it should please God to spear [sic] him, then, to be sold and the money price of him to be equally divided amongst my children.” After Elizabeth’s death, the estate was to be divided between his son Nicholas by his first marriage and with the four children he had with Elizabeth. The older children had presumably already received some inheritance as they married and started their own families.

Origins

https://www.colonial-settlers-md-va.us/getperson.php?personID=I1101...

Sewell, Henry. A. A. Co., 29th April, 1726; 21st May, 1726.
To son Samuel and dau. Mary, personalty.
To sons Henry, Samuel, Joseph and Philip, 100 A. "Howards and Porters Range" equally after death of their mother -.
Portion already given to son John to be appraised and all children now living with wife - to have same amount ; residue divided among children after decease of wife -.
Exs.: Wife - and sons Henry and Samuel.
Test: Daniel Carter, Peter Porter, Charles Porter. 18,496.

References

• https://tomitronics.com/the%20gene%20pool/sewell/index.html