Visiting the Ancestors

For Memorial Day, Joyce and I visited Bethel United Methodist Church near Denver, North Carolina. For those of you familiar with the area, it’s just down the road from Rock Springs Campground, where the Methodists (and others) have held a Camp Meeting every summer since about 1830.

We went to Bethel because my ancestry.com robot sent me an email that a number of my ancestors are buried there. We decided to check it out.

We found a number of Shelton graves, a number of them my direct ancestors, as well as a few Linebergers (although none of them are in my direct line as far as I could determine. Coincidentally, a new grave was being prepared for another Lineberger, whose funeral was scheduled for later that day.)

We both took a number of photos, although many of the gravestones are so weathered that it’s not possible to read them. I’ll attach some of the better ones to this blog entry.

When we got home, I dug out my copy of Z.F. Shelton’s family history, printed in 1962. He had spent 20 years traveling all over to research the Sheltons. I remember Grandpa Nelson talking about him coming to see him, but he didn’t trust this stranger with all the questions, so he didn’t tell him much. Luckily, others did, and there’s a very helpful chapter on our particular branch of the family. From what I’ve been able to find online, Z.F. did a good job of research. As he points out, it gets confusing trying to piece together information when many births and deaths are not recorded and not many wills exist, and the poor state of some counties’ record keeping made things worse.

Part of the confusion stems from the common practice of naming children after their fathers, grandfathers, uncles, cousins, etc. There are an awful lot of Nelsons, Spencers, Crispens, Ralphs, and Samuels, even several Leroys. Add to that the extra complication that one of the Spencer Sheltons lost his mother soon after birth, and he was taken to the Rock Springs area of North Carolina to be cared for by “relatives.” There were several variations of the story that Z.F. was told, so either that Spencer’s father, Spencer, died soon after, in Virginia or North Carolina. Spencer (the baby in the story) is listed as “my brother” by Meacon Shelton, although he was actually Meacon’s nephew. Apparently he was raised by Spencer and Sallie Shelton as if he were their son. I haven’t been able to sort out which of these Spencers are our direct ancestors, but some of them are.

Two of the Spencers are buried next to each other. Again, I haven’t worked out which ones these are, although the older Spencer served in the Revolutionary War in Virginia, so I am relatively sure he is the father who came to North Carolina after his wife died.