Temperance Alston

• Reference: MyHeritage Family Trees - SmartCopy: Dec 18 2016, 16:13:42 UTC

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Temperance Smith was the second daughter of Drew Smith of Scotland Neck, North Carolina. In his will in 1762, Smith entailed a tract of land of four hundred acres on the Roanoke to Temperance. The Alston family sold this land in 1789.

Philip Alston and Temperance Smith had eight known children - James, John, Elizabeth, Temperance, Philip Jr., Winfred, Mary Drew, and Drew.

Photo of the "House in the Horseshoe" from NCPedia. (Also known as the Alston House, it still stands in Carthage, Moore County, North Carolina.)

https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/alston-philip

A Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution is named in her honor:

History of our Chapter's Name

The courageous lady, Temperance Smith Alston, saved the House in the Horseshoe during a Revolutionary battle in 1781. Her home was being attacked by the Tories and was about to be burned when she negotiated the surrender to save the house and the Patriots who were defending it. It is told that Temperance Smith Alston saved her home with a pillowcase! The siege began in the early dawn of August 5, 1781, when the followers of the dreaded Tory, David Fanning attacked Colonel Philip Alston and his Whig soldiers. Heavily barricaded in Alston's plantation home located on the bend in Deep River in the then Cumberland County, the Whig troops managed to beat back the onslaught for several hours. The Tories filled a cart located next to the house with burning hay and realizing the Tories meant to burn her home, Mrs. Alston tied a "pillowcase" to a broomstick, opened the front door and in exchange for the lives of the occupants of the house, offered surrender terms to Fanning.

Temperance Smith Alston Chapter, National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), Pinehurst, North Carolina

http://www.ncdar.org/TemperanceSmithAlston_files/TemperanceSmithAls...

Note:

Colonel Phillip Alston (1738-1790) married not a Mary Drew Temple but Temperance Smith, daughter of Drew Smith (ca. 1725-1762)...See Dr. Smith's correction (pp. 15-16) of the misreading of the record by Dr. [Joseph A.] Groves.

https://www.scribd.com/doc/31681229/Moore-Williams

[I suspect he is referring to Dr. Claiborne Thweatt Smith, Jr., in his Planters on the Roanoke: Smith of Scotland Neck (Baltimore, 1976).]