Harlee (Robert H.) Westmoreland was my grandfather, and I clearly remember being with "Pop" in the 1950's when I was a boy. As for my aunts and uncles and first cousins, I got to love them as a child and, as an adult, I've gotten to know them as adults. However, when I was a boy, I'd meet lots of other relatives when I'd go around with my parents or go to family reunions, but it was pretty confusing to figure out how I was related to most of them. I began to figure some of these relations in my 20's. At the same time, I found enough of the old records to tie the family I'd known to the part of the family that came before them.
In 1981, I wrote down some of this background as a birth present for Leslie Foster, first child of my cousin Elaine, first grandchild of Homer and Dot Westmoreland, and first great-grandchild of Harlee and Ada Westmoreland. I've updated it a little and one of these days will fill it out with more details and documentation.
This story jumps back through the generations to medieval England and Ralph Neville, the first Earl of Westmoreland. Ralph and Joan (his wife) lived about seventeen generations before Leslie. If you work out the calculation, you will find that from the Neville's generation, there ought to be about 131,000 direct ancestors of Leslie including Ralph and Joan. You can rightly point out that if even one part of us in 131,000 is Ralph Neville (neglecting all the other forces that shaped us and our ancestors), then that doesn't make us very much related to them, so this first part is history and not really about relatives. Still, the story is interesting, and it begins to explain how the Westmoreland name came to be. So, there I begin.
The Neville family was one of the two most powerful families in northern England in the fourteenth century, and Ralph Neville represented the high-water mark of the family's influence and success. He could trace his ancestry back 14 generations to John de Burgo, commanding general under William the Conqueror; 11 generations to Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, King and Queen of England; and 7 generations back to John Fitz Robert, a signer of the Magna Carta. (Most of this distinguished lineage was through his mother, Maud Percy, or through his grandmother.)
The "family seat" in those days was Raby Castle near present-day Liverpool, England, so when Ralph's father died, Ralph became at 24 the sixth Baron Neville of Raby. Ralph and his first wife, Margaret Stafford, had two sons and seven daughters. After Margaret died (probably in childbirth), Ralph remarried to Joan Beaufort. This marriage and the later marriages of Ralph and Joan's children eventually made the Nevilles into one of the most powerful families in England in the 1400's.
Much of the reason is that Joan was the granddaughter of King Edward III and the daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Through her, Ralph became tied even more closely to the royal court. For his military triumphs on behalf of King Richard II, Ralph was made the first Earl of Westmoreland in 1397. (King Richard may have selected the title Westmoreland or Westmorland because Westmoreland County was the closest county to Raby Castle that wasn't already an earldom. The name of the county had come from the Old or Middle English for "West Moor- land" because it was west of the Yorkshire moors.)
Joan's family ties ended up as the undoing of King Richard, though. Richard had the bad judgment to drive Joan's brother Henry Bolingbroke from England when their father, the Duke of Lancaster, died. Being denied his rightful title and lands, Henry landed again on English shores in July 1399, and with the military aid of Ralph and Ralph's first cousin, the Earl of Northumberland, King Richard III was overthrown. Henry became King Henry IV, and at 35, Ralph was made marshal of England to serve on the Privy Council (a group similar to the U.S. President's Cabinet). In Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part I, and Part II, Ralph shows up as the king's trusted advisor.
Joan and Ralph had fourteen children, many of whom acquired distinguished titles - Richard, Earl of Salisbury; William, Earl of Kent; George, Baron Latimer; Robert, bishop of Salisbury and Durham; Edward, Baron Bergavenny; Catherine, wife of the Duke of Norfolk; Anne, Duchess of Buckingham; Eleanor, Duchess of Northumberland; and Cicely, Duchess of York and mother of King Edward IV. The Westmoreland family is descended from George Neville, Baron Latimer, though Ð and the name is supposedly Westmoreland because George's family was bypassed when the Westmoreland title was passed down!
Ralph Neville's eldest son would normally have received the title of Earl of Westmoreland upon his father's death. However, Ralph outlived his and Margaret's firstborn, John, so John's eldest son (Ralph's eldest grandson) eventually became the second earl. In similar fashion, the third earl was the second earl's eldest nephew (his only son had died), the fourth was grandson of the third, the fifth was eldest son of the fourth, and the sixth was eldest son of the fifth.
The passing down of titles was upset from its normal pattern in 1571, when Charles Neville, the sixth earl, was stripped of his title. Charles, a devout and headstrong Roman Catholic, had plotted with the king of Spain to overthrow the Protestant throne of England and to bring Mary, Queen of Scots, to the throne. He raised an army, marched to rescue Mary, and got there to find that Queen Elizabeth had found out about the plan and sent Mary elsewhere. His army broke up in fear, and Charles managed to escape, to live and die in exile in the Netherlands.
When Charles Neville (the exiled sixth earl) died with no descendants in 1601, succession to the title required going to the families of the other children of Ralph Neville. Standard succession of the title would have been to skip over the descendants of Ralph and Margaret Neville's second son as well as the descendants of Richard and William (Ralph and Joan's eldest two sons) because each of those men had been earls in their own right. Thus, normally the seventh earl would have come from the line of George Neville because his title of "Baron Latimer" was a lower-ranked title than "earl". Instead, the title was assigned to Francis Fane, a descendant of Edward, Baron Bergavenny, and so the title has remained in the Fane line. Ironically, in 1771, Loyalist members of the North Carolina Royal Assembly (legislature) tried to create a new county named Westmoreland County where Iredell County is today. Apparently the idea was to curry favor with the Earl of Westmoreland, who was head of England's board of colonies; the idea was defeated.
Edmund Neville, the great-great-great-grandson of George, Baron Latimer, would normally have received the title if it had passed by standard rules of succession. Edmund promptly submitted his claim to the title - from the Tower of London where he was imprisoned. Accusations had been made that Edmund was a Catholic conspirator against the Protestant queen, Elizabeth I. [It appears that he may instead have been the odd person out in a love triangle at court.] In any event, Edmund's petition for the title was never accepted. In 1618 he died in poverty, still considering himself the seventh Earl of Westmoreland, and his wife considered herself the rightful Lady of Westmoreland. Edmund's son Ralph similarly thought of himself as the eighth earl.
As best we can tell, Edmund's grandson Richard Neville emigrated to Virginia in about 1650 at the age of twenty-three. Stubbornly, he also insisted the title was rightfully his, so he did the thing that he had the power to do Ð he took Westmoreland as his family name. He died as Richard Westmoreland in 1706 in King William County, Virginia, founder of the Westmoreland family.
This next part is confusing because it isn't clear who the people were in the next two or three generations. Legal records and some church records give us what insight we have; family tales are next best. The Spartanburg (South Carolina) Westmorelands have the story that three brothers came over to Virginia from England. Whether these would be Richard and two brothers or three young sons of Richard is anyone's guess. Certainly, Thomas (born 1703, so probably Richard's grandson) is the next to show up in the records.
Migration from Virginia led to little clusters of Westmoreland families throughout the South. These clusters show up in the records of that day and in the present-day locations of Westmorelands. Robert (ancestor of General Westmoreland of the Vietnam war) left in the mid- l700's, married Ann Lenoir of Edgecombe County, NC (sister of the Revolutionary War hero for whom Lenoir, NC, is named), and settled on the frontier near present-day Spartanburg, SC. Reuben moved to Hillsborough, NC, about 1770 and then about 1795 on to Indian country - now about 50 miles south of Atlanta, GA. Isham and Alexander came to Stokes County, NC, (near Germanton) around 1770. Some of their family still live in the Winston-Salem/Greensboro area, while others moved on to middle Tennessee and to Texas in the early and mid-1800's.
Another group moved to the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee (Fentress County) about 1820, eventually spreading to Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri, and westward - probably split from the rest of the Westmorelands by the Civil War. In 1800, another group of Westmorelands moved from Virginia into Indian country south of Nashville (Giles County, TN), later spreading into northern Alabama and Mississippi. Sometime in the 1800's, the Westmorelands first moved to California.
These moves illustrate well the migration patterns of the early days of America from Virginia. People moved southward and westward toward wherever the frontier was. Rarely did they come back eastward or move toward the north. A facet of their lives was that some of these white Westmorelands were slave owners, and the many black Westmorelands are probably descended from their freed slaves.
Such a path brought Reaves and Susannah Harwell Westmoreland to Iredell County, NC, in 1800. Reaves was about 60 then, nearing the end of his life. They came with their children, the families of the children that were already married, and with some of their neighbors from Brunswick County, VA, such as the Harwells and the Laniers. As best we can tell, they stopped near Davidson, NC, somewhere near the Mecklenburg County line.
Reaves may have been the son of Thomas and Edith Nipper or Napier Westmoreland of Dinwiddie County, VA. That would make him a grandson or great-grandson of Richard (Neville) Westmoreland. Susannah was the daughter of "Little Samuel" and Anne Jackson Harwell (the nickname distinguished him from his father); her family had come over from England at about the same time as the Westmorelands. In about 1766 Reaves and Susannah were married.
Their children were born over a period of 21 years in Dinwiddie County. In about 1767 Edmund was born. The other seven were born about every two years from 1774 to 1788; first, three girls Ð Susannah, Hummons and Nancy Ð and then four boys Ð Peterson, Robert, Jackson, and Rhodey.
In about 1788, Reaves and Susannah moved their family to a 70-acre parcel of land in Brunswick County. The land was a gift from Susanna's father Samuel and is in the northern part of the county along the road to Smokey Ordinary (then a tavern, now a country crossroads) along the Nottaway River. That area and the nearby land in Dinwiddie County probably looked about the same then as it does now from Interstate 85 Ð low coastal plains with murky, sluggish rivers like the Nottaway meandering through. Hardwoods may have outnumbered the pines then, but the swampy bottomlands were surely much the same.
In 1800, the family moved to Piedmont North Carolina, and the Westmorelands let go of their land in Virginia. Peterson returned to Brunswick County the next year, married Elizabeth Jolly, and brought her back to Iredell County.
For awhile longer, Reaves and Susannah's family stayed together. Then in 1807, the families of Edmund and his sister Susannah moved with Reaves and Susannah to York (now Cherokee) County, South Carolina. Reaves died there the same year, and Susannah died a few years later. Their daughter Nancy married a Harwell and moved to Tennessee. In the 1820's the four youngest brothers began moving away from each other - Peterson settled outside Cornelius, NC; Robert went to Habersham County, GA; and Rhodey and Jackson went to Mississippi.
Peterson and Elizabeth Westmoreland had ten children. Born in Iredell County in 1808, the fourth child was Jesse Westmoreland, Harlee Westmoreland's grandfather. The family appears to have lived in Mecklenburg County during most of Jesse's childhood.
About 1835 Jesse married a Miss Cornelius. In 1837 they bought 46 acres in Iredell County from Reeves Westmoreland (Jesse's cousin, son of Robert) in Mayhew community southwest of Mooresville. They had three children. Apparently, in about 1846 Jesse's wife died from complications of childbirth.
The widower Jesse was riding his horse up the Old Georgia Road, which ran through Shepherds northeast toward Bethesda Presbyterian Church; Bethesda Church Road lies along its path. Supposedly, Jesse saw a beautiful girl across a field on a horse, was smitten immediately, and went straight to her to ask her to marry him. Julia A. Pierce, only 16, agreed (sooner or later) and became his second wife. On a hill between present-day Ostwalt, Amity Hill, and Shinnville, just west of what is now shown on maps as Westmoreland Creek, they bought land in 1851 and built a house. [This house was just south of the houses that Harlee and his brother George Bruce were living in during the 1950's.]
Jesse also built a general store below it, where the road runs now. From when they were boys, my uncles remember the ruins of what was probably this store. Jesse may have operated a store even before then because when he was a young man, he periodically drove a covered wagon to Charleston, SC, to pick up supplies. Jesse (and his sons) supposedly had huge hands, and Jesse also picked up quite a reputation in Charleston as a bare-knuckled boxer. This reputation was lost when he was beaten by a "banty Irishman half his size."
Between 1846 and 1871 they had ten children, most colorfully named. There were Margaret Isabella (after Queen Isabella of Spain?); Thomas More, probably named after the archbishop of England and saint; Winfield Scott, after the Mexican War general; Victoria A., after Queen Victoria; George Washington (Harlee's father); Augustus Boygard, probably named after Caesar Augustus and the Confederate general Pierre Beauregard, given that the boy was born in mid-1861; Lily C., maybe named after Lily Langtry, a famous singer of the time, and Laura Y., and Julia. [Victoria Westmoreland Templeton had kept a family Bible that now seems to be lost, but a lot of these records come from it indirectly. A woman from Utah copied the information down in 1960 when it was owned Mrs. H.H. McLelland of 322 E. Center St. in Mooresville. She also took down information from another family Bible that is now missing, then owned by a Mrs. Harry Alexander, originally Margaret Irene Westmoreland.]
When the Civil War came, Jesse was 53, too old to fight, and the oldest of his and Julia's sons was just 10. William Lee (a son of Jesse's first marriage who was named after Jesse's younger brother) fought in the war and came back to resume storekeeping with his father. Eventually William moved to Statesville and set up a store behind the old Statesville High School on Front Street. William's son William continued in business in Statesville, operating the last livery stable in town, but this grandson of Jesse's was best known as Captain of the "Iredell Blues", the local company of militia. He led them to Mexico to fight Pancho Villa and then on to World War I.
Next door to the north of Jesse's farm, it was the young husband, father, and provider of the Gardner household who died in the Civil War. John Morgan Gardner died at Liberty Mills near Orange Court House, Virginia, in early 1864. At the age of 29, he left behind his widow Sarah and three children under the age of six - Mary Catherine, Margaret Elizabeth, and John Atkinson Gardner. John's mother Catherine also died a few months later, so John's father Edward, his widow, and his children drew together to take care of each other in the farmhouse that had been built just in 1860. John's widow, Sarah Mills Gardner, also had parents, brothers, and sisters living nearby who surely gave her emotional support.
The Mills family had long been prominent in the area. Sarah's grandfather, Charles Nathanael Mills, had led a large group of families in 1794 from St. Mary's County, Maryland, to Iredell County. The incentive to make the move had probably come from the war stories of Charles' brother, who had been an army captain in the Revolutionary War under General Nathanael Greene (after whom Greensboro NC is named). In the final campaign before Yorktown, Greene led the British general Cornwallis through Piedmont North Carolina. Charles Mills's brother saw a land of abundance there, which he told about in Maryland after the war. His stories must have been persuasive. [One of the friends of the Mills family was George Washington himself. Washington was born along the same area of the Potomac River, and Charles's father served in the Revolution as a captain with Washington. In 1799, nineteen-year-old William and his father Charles came back to Maryland for a last visit, Charles's father having just died; while there, they intended to see Washington at Mount Vernon, but Washington died just before the planned visit.]
When he moved to North Carolina, Charles Mills bought 600 acres north of what now is Shinnsville and built a large house there on a hill. As a staunch Episcopalian, he built a temporary meeting place for the congregation. Eventually he gave land for the graveyard and church of St. James Episcopal Church. The present-day church cemetery is just off what was the backyard of the Mills house.
William Mills, Sarah's father and the fourth child of Charles and Elizabeth Mills, had come to North Carolina as a ten-year-old boy. He married Elisabeth DeArman (or Dearman), in 1820 when he was 36 and she was 20, and they eventually built a showplace home of their own nearer Ostwalt (now Westmoreland Road off US 21 south of the I-77 interchange). It was surrounded by flowering shrubs and trees and was approached from the east by a long, straight entrance road lined with cedar trees. William and Elisabeth had ten children, of whom Sarah Ann Mills (Gardner) was the seventh.
In the years after the Civil War, Sarah's children grew up with the children of Jesse and Julia Westmoreland, who lived on the farm next door. It isn't so surprising, then, that two of the Westmoreland boys married the two Gardner girls. Wash (George Washington) and Maggie (Margaret Elizabeth Gardner) Westmoreland were married in 1879 and initially lived with Maggie's mother and grandfather, in the home where she'd grown up. Scott (Winfield Scott) and Cate (Mary Catherine Gardner) Westmoreland married in 1880, and they moved in with Julia and with Scott's younger brothers and sisters. Jesse had died in 1877, and his land was split among the children in more-or-less equal parts.
Scott and Catherine later moved "west" (I don't know where) about 1892, and Julia may have moved with them. The third Gardner child, John, had also moved out of his childhood home about 1880, apparently under some kind of unpleasant circumstances. When his grandfather Eddie Gardner died in 1884 (cited as "an excellent citizen" by the Statesville paper in his obituary), John was left only five dollars. In contrast, Catherine was left $505 and Maggie Westmoreland was left Eddie's personal belongings and the farm (effective upon her mother's death or remarriage). This farmhouse was later my grandfather's and still later was bought and fixed up by Glenn and Myrtle Westmoreland.
Wash and Maggie Westmoreland had 13 children from 1880 to 1903 - two daughters and nine sons, including Robert Homer (Harlee) Westmoreland. Most of the children had nicknames, but I can only imagine where some might have come from:
My uncles have told us several stories about how rambunctious the boys (their uncles) were. If I remember, in one escapade three of the boys had gone to Statesville to the outside of a tent revival meeting. Prowling around the tent wall with a hatpin, they found someone's bottom bulging out the tent fabric. The emotion and high spirits grew inside the tent meeting until the boys, sensing a fever pitch of excitement, poked the unsuspecting behind with their pin. The preacher must have thought that someone was really seeing the glory. Making their escape, the three boys found their way blocked by a suspicious policeman, who grabbed hold of one of them. The boy promptly pulled out his jackknife and cut off the long beard of the policeman, startling the man so much that he let the rascals get away.
Wash died suddenly in 1904, the victim of pneumonia he'd caught after being drenched rding down to visit his brother Tom in northern Mecklenburg County. Margaret survived him by 26 years. My Uncle Homer remembers her in her old age as having a sixth sense to tell when her grandchildren had been up to something. Glaring wide-eyed through her glasses, she'd rebuke the offender in no uncertain terms, and you couldn't do anything but admit your offense. After coping with raising all those lively children, I'm sure she could do a pretty good job of rebuking, too.
Harlee Westmoreland married Ada Bernice Arthurs. Like him, Ada was the product of several Iredell County families who all lived close by each other.
Ada's father was James Agustus Arthurs. The Arthurs family was probably Scotch-Irish, coming from Ireland in the early 1800's. In 1831 Thomas Arthurs bought 224 acres (at $2 per acre) in southern Iredell County. He soon moved on to Indiana and turned over the land in 1834 to John Arthurs, who may have been his brother. This land is located just northeast of the Highway 115-Interstate 77 highway interchange at Ostwalt. It has been passed on and split up through the years, but it still remains pretty much within the Arthurs family.
Martin Luther Arthurs was the son of John and Leah Hoover Arthurs; in about 1866 he married Julia A. Simpson. They built their farmhouse on the Arthurs property, a two-story building that used to stand just off the Interstate, just down the road from Julia's family. There they raised five children, the second of whom was James Agustus Arthurs.
Just a few miles away lived the Brawleys. Neil Brawley (originally Braley) seems to have been the first Brawley in the area. He had come from Ireland in 1771 and supposedly had fought in the Revolutionary War. Neil and Mary Brawley, his wife, lived in the Mt. Mourne community, and they are buried there in the cemetery at Centre Presbyterian Church.
In 1830 Nancy McNinch married Peter P. Brawley, who was probably Neil and Mary's son. Nancy had emigrated from County Antrim, Ireland, in 1818 as a young woman of 21. She may have been living in Chester, South Carolina, when she met Peter, who was eighteen years older than she. In any event, they married, and in 1831 the first of their six children was born - Samuel R. Brawley. Peter died in 1845, and Nancy survived him by 35 years. When Nancy was buried beside Peter in Perth Church cemetery near Troutman, her children raised a large tombstone that describes her as "a woman of strong, practical sense... she exhibited many remarkable traits of character that unmistakably bespoke her nationality."
Samuel Brawley, a dry goods merchant, married Malinda Clementine Barr about 1860. Their farm, adjacent to Nancy Brawley's, was just across the creek behind the farms of the Gardners and Jesse Westmoreland's. During the 1860's, they had four children. Then in 1870, three months before the fifth child - Robbie Mary Cordelia Brawley - was born, Samuel was hit by typhoid fever and died. Supposedly, because Robbie was born after her father had died, she had the ability to "talk fire out" of people - that is, she could talk with burn victims and have the power to take away their pain. This sounds like some old Irish superstition from her grandmother Nancy, but people say there was actually something to it.
When Robbie was nearly seven, her mother Clementine died, too. Robbie's eldest brother Amzi was 16 and had started farming, and the five orphans were living very close to their father's family, so they were allowed to stay together as a family unit.
The Arthurs and Brawley children must have gone to school together (along with the Westmoreland and the Gardner children), and that is probably where Robbie Mary Brawley and James Agustus Arthurs met. When they were about 20, they married, and their first child was Ada Bernice Arthurs, my grandmother. Gus and Robbie built their farmhouse not far from Gus's parents and raised five children there. Gus was described as an older man to be fairly short and very bald, but his eldest son Clyde was supposed to look like a typical young Arthurs. In his World War I discharge records, Clyde was described as 5'6" with blue eyes, reddish hair, and light complexion. Robbie died of diabetes and heart disease in 1937. Gus survived her by 28 years, living to be 85.
Harlee Westmoreland and Ada Bernice Arthurs married in 1912. Ada fit the Arthurs mold of looks pretty well. My Aunt Marie Atwell writes that Ada's brown hair was wavy and thick and that she had the "deep-blue Arthurs eyes." When she married Harlee Westmoreland, the petite woman weighed 98 pounds and wore a size 3 shoe.
Early in their courting days, they went to a social and Harlee got out on the dance floor. He was Episcopalian, and she was Methodist. Methodists didn't approve of dancing, so she went onto the floor to get him. The sight of tiny Ada pulling the tall, sheepish Harlee off the dance floor suddenly made everyone realize how serious he was about her.
Harlee and Ada had six children over the period 1913 to 1926 - Homer, Ray (Herman), Glenn, Bob (Robert Clyde), Marie, and Rachael. Their home was close by the old William Mills home, down the road from the Arthurs's and the Simpsons. Later the family moved to the old Gardner house after this home burned down.
Theirs was a farm family. My aunts and uncles remember enjoying many of the delights of the early-20th-century rural South Ð swimming holes; lots of home-canned, home-grown vegetables; big church and family get-togethers; churning the family butter; and trying to outsmart cantankerous mules. They raised a lot of vegetables and lots of strawberries to take to Statesville to sell during the Depression, sometimes to William Westmoreland's store.
The thing I've heard most often about my grandmother (whom I never knew) was that she had an extremely active mind. She read voraciously, and a great many of her books were lost in the house fire. She wrote, too - poetry, songs, even a memorable Christmas pageant for the Sunday School.
Ada was confined to bed with a thyroid condition much of the time toward the end of her life (she died of complications in 1933), but up to that time she stayed active in the church, the PTA, and the Home Demonstration Club activities.
I remember "Pop" (Harlee) from my childhood as being an affectionate grandfather. He had remarried late in life, and we cousins had good times down on the farm with Pop and Grandma Clara. There was a dinner bell to ring, a snake or two to watch out for in the garden, big trees to play around, a long kitchen porch, weathered gray barns and dusty hay, climbing through the fence to the barnyard, and the family outhouse in the backyard, complete with wasps during the summers.
Both then and later on, when Uncle Glenn and Aunt Myrtle owned the farm on Weathers Creek Road in Troutman, we'd have big family reunions. In the afternoon we pulled the farm wagon into the front yard, covered it with sheets for tablecloths, and saw it covered again with lots and lots of good food. At night under the electric lights strung out in the trees in the yard, we'd play and talk and eat with a lot of folks who we didn't exactly know. Now I wish I knew them, although some I have gotten to know.
One of my clearest childhood memories is riding with Pop and Grandma Clara in his pick-up truck. I knelt on the seat because I was too little to see out if I'd sat down. In 1957, Pop died of complications from bone cancer.
Phillip R. Westmoreland