George Howard - An Update

I recently posted on my great x 4 grandfather George Howard (Harward) of Wake and Moore Counties, NC. (See that post here.) Since that time, I have been back to the NC Archives to gather more information on George and his family.


On this trip I focused on the tax records of Moore County, NC form 1852-1858. These are some of the few records that survived the Moore County courthouse fire of 1889. George is listed each year as owning land in Moore County tax district #4. In 1852 and 1853 George is listed as paying taxes on 446 acres of land. From 1854-1858, he paid taxes on 207 acres of land. During this time period, both his sons James C and Caswell begin to appear in the tax records living close. Likely, the brothers received land from their father.


One of the more exciting pieces of information I learned was approximately where George and his sons lived in Moore County. Given that the land records for the county were destroyed, this was the earlist record of my ancestors' location within the county I have found. On the tax records was listed a location for each person. In the case of George and his sons, this location was listed as Fall Creek. By 1854, Caswell Howard is listed with two locations: Fall Creek and Daniel [Daniley's] Creek. I found the location of these two creeks on a Moore County map for 1747-1847. Both creeks are off the northwest branch of the Cape Fear River in the northeast corner of Moore County just over the county line from Wake County. (This area would later become Lee County in 1907.) While George moved his family out of Wake County, he did not move that far from his Howard/Harward relatives of Wake and Chatham counties.