Reports: Location of Gov. Caswell's Grave?  

Submitted by Jerry L. Cross, Research Branch
January 27, 1999

PREFACE

The site of Richard Caswell's grave appears to have been taken for granted for the sixty-one years following his death. If any of his surviving children knew the exact spot, not onerecorded it for posterity. In 1850, the last surviving child, Anna Caswell White, died, and the next year statements began to appear in print that Richard was buried in a family buryingground near Kinston. No one challenged the conclusion, which seemed logical since he had made Dobbs (now Lenoir) County his home for more than forty years. By 1914, a cemetery identified as the Richard Caswell Burying Ground, so-called because some of his descendants were interred there, lay about two and a half miles east of Kinston. Despite anapparent lack of any documentary evidence, the tradition that the first governor of the state of North Carolba lay beneath the soil somewhere on the tract took strong hold.

The Daughters of the American Revolution erected a monument (still standing) on the grounds in 1916. Two years later, that tradition prompted the North Carolina Historical Commission (later the Department of Archives and History) to appropriate $100 to assist the citizens of Kinston in placing by the roadside a tablet, which, with additional research primari1y about the career of Richard Caswell, was supplemented by an official highway historical marker in 1935. Responding to the appeal of prominent North Carolinians such as R. Hunt Parkerof Roanoke Rapids, then associate justice of the State Supreme Court, and Tom White and John G. Dawson of Kinston, both to become members of the General Assembly, the state purchased the tract of twenty-two and one half acres in 1956 to develop as state historic site. Still, the exact placement of Caswell's grave had not been located, and the lack of documented evidence led some historians to question whether or not he actually was buried there, especially since he died in Fayetteville some seventy-five miles distant. For many years the Department (now Division) of Archives and History has maintained the official position that Caswell's burial site remains unknown.

The question leaped to the forefront in early 1999 when Ted Sampley, a Kinston businessman and history buff, issued a challenge and reward to anyone who could authentically determine the location of Richard Caswell's grave. Knowing that the agency would be besieged with inquires and contentions, Dr. Jeffrey J. Crow, director of the Division of Archives and History, requested the Research Branch to examine thoroughly as many records as possible within a limited time span to see if the grave could be located. This report is the product of that search. Every member of the branch contributed to the effort, and this writer believes that, unless additional records are found or positive evidence turns up some place not generally expected to yield results, the data given herein representsthe best approach to the question at hand.

For purposes of time and convenience, this report does not contain footnotes. The research notes and data are on file in the Research Branch and any documentation deemed necessary can be provided. The following are the sources used in the course of this research.

Original Sources

Caswell, Richard. Estate Papers. New Bern District Court Records. State Archives
_______________ Papers. State Archives and Southern Historical Collection
_______________ Will. Secretary of State Records. State Archives
Clark, Walter, ed. The State Records of North Carolina
Cumberland County Records. Court Minutes, 1789-1790. State Archives
Dobbs County Records. Grantee Index. State Archives
Governors' Letter books. Samuel Johnston, Alexander Martin. State Archives

The plan directed that: "The Clergymen and Doctors precede the corpse--The Corpse--The Relations of the deceased and chief mourners--The Speakers--The Members of the Senate two and two--The Members of the House of Commons two and two--Governor and Secretary of State--Treasurer and Comptroller--Clerks of the General Assembly--Other persons attending two and two--That the General Assembly go into mourning one month." John Gray Blount presented the plan to the House which adopted it unanimously. Both houses then adjourned until the next morning.

Meanwhile, others prepared Caswell's body for burial. Mr. Arants (barber) shaved, washed, and laid out the corpse; Mrs. Boyakin [Boykin] (probably a seamstress) made the shroud and dressing; and Mr. McAustin (Store owner) provided the linen for scarves and [arm] bands, ribbon to tie the scarves and bands, and cambric for the cap of the shroud. The coffin containing the body was carried to the church from which the above described procession, described by William Blount as the "most regular I ever saw," took place. At this point, the body of Richard Caswell, seven times elected governor of the state and a Revolutionary War general, seems to disappear from the written record. Was he buried in Fayetteville as implied by the directive to the legislative committee? Was the body transported back to Dobbs [now Lenoir] County for interment? Some even speculate the possibility that he was buried in Fayetteville and later removed to a family burial ground near Kinston.

Caswell's personal servant, Jack, who had accompanied him to the legislative session, remained in Fayetteville until November 22 (twelve days after Caswell's death) when William Blount sent him to New Bern to take the financial accounts and a copy of the North Carolina Gazette to William White. He did not return directly to Kinston, which would have been the usual procedure had the body been transported overland, and Blount made no mention of the corpse in his letter to White if a decision had been made to ship the deceased by water. Likewise, no evidence whatsoever was found in this research to indicate local interment and later removal to Dobbs County. The records so far examined are completely silent as to the disposition of the body after the procession in Fayetteville.

Since Caswell was Grand Master of North Carolina Masons at the time of his death, ceremonies honored him at virtually every lodge in the state. Particularly elaborate were the services at Christ Church in New Bern held by St. John's Lodge where Francis [Francois] X. Martin delivered a stirring eulogy. Records mention a similar service at the fledgling lodge in Kinston but no details were given and none addressed the place of burial. No one knows for certain the placement of Caswell's remains, but the tradition has been so strong in favor of the Kinston area that it has become an ingrained part of the Lenoir County heritage.

As stated in the preface, this brief research found that none of Caswell's contemporaries or his surviving children seem to have recorded the former governor's grave site. His will (1787) designates two one-half acre tracts as family burying grounds: "the Hill" where his father, Richard Caswell Sr., and mother, Christian Dallam Caswell, were buried and the "Red House" where his first wife, Mary McElwean Caswell (died 1757) and son William (died 1785) were interred. By platting the few available land grants and deeds, "the Hill" appears to have been located on the northeast side of Kinston near Adkins Branch, a tract of eighty-five acres granted to Richard Caswell Sr. in 1748. The same procedure places the "Red House" on a tract of unknown acreage that included the property where the state historic site and the so-called Richard Caswell Cemetery are located. Richard Caswell [Jr.] acquired this land some time prior to October 7, 1756. For some years the claim has been made that Caswell's will stated that he wanted to be buried at the "Red House," and that claim found its way into print and has been often repeated even by this agency. A close reading, however, clearly reveals that Caswell did not make a preference as to where he was to be buried, thereby leaving open other possibilities.

An undated article from an unknown newspaper, found in the clipping file of the North Carolina Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, makes an interesting, albeit undocumented argument favoring the "Red House" site. The writer contends that he accompanied the noted orator Edward Everett of Massachusetts and Judge John R. Donnell of New Bern to the grave site in 1858: "In a field nearby the road, next to the river, a small circle of cedars and bushes told where for three-quarters of a century peacefully reposed the ashes of the hero and patriot." He added that on this land once stood "a place now known as the Red House, which, it is said, Gov. Caswell did once occupy. Unfortunately, according to the writer, "The grave of Caswell is utterly neglected. He sleeps under a clump of trees and bushes is all that is known. The encroachments of the plow is little, by little, season after season, circumscribing the burial place.

The writer of the article, known only by the initial "W," based the location of Caswell's grave largely on the testimony of Lewis C. Desmond and Gen. Richard Caswell Gatlin. Desmond owned the property for many years and was residing there when visits were made to the grave site. He had married Eliza, born in 1804 and who, according to the writer, was a granddaughter of Richard Caswell who had once owned the "Red House" tract. Gen. R. C. Gatlin was the son of Caswell's daughter Susanna and her husband, John Gatlin. He was born in 1809 and named for his grandfather. Historians usually afford credence to family knowledge in direct relationship to the passage of time from the event in question. The closer the informants are, the more reliable the information. Eliza was born fifteen years after her grandfather's death and General Gatlin's birth came twenty years after. It seems likely that they learned about the family cemetery and its famous occupant from their parents who lived until the 1830s and 1840s, but the data does not appear to have been made public until the 1850s, more than sixty years after Caswell's death. That much passage oftime enters the gray area of reliability and raises one very important question. If Richard Caswell's grave and the cemetery were known to members of the family, and was even in the possession of a granddaughter and her husband who were not suffering financially, why was no effort at all made to maintain the site in good order? According to "W," Caswell's grave continued an accelerated deterioration while on the land of his descendants, Eliza W.and Lewis C. Desmond. A visit to the site during the Civil War, about five years before Desmond's death in 1868, led the writer to state: "Some of the bushes, in the lapse of a few years, began to acquire the dimensions of small oak trees and one was pointed out growing from an acorn accidentally dropped directly at the head of the grave of the first governor. "The last visit occurred shortly before the article was published, at which time the writer had some difficulty in locating the supposed grave.

By 1914 the Richard Caswell Family Burying Ground had attracted the attention of Mrs.W. T. Hines of Kinston who requested a professional surveyor to lay out the site. A map drawn by J. B. Harding, Civil Engineer, in January 1914, shows a cemetery plot 100 feet by 75 feet about 700 feet north of the Neuse River. That places it on the land now owned by the state and developed as a historic site. Mrs. Hines then asked Miss Sue Bond to provide a list of people buried in the cemetery. The typescript list, dated April 3, 1914, was found among the Caswell Papers in the Southern Historical Collection at Chapel Hill. Sixteen graves were identified, including Richard Caswell (1729-1789), his first wife Mary Mcllwain [McElwean] (died 1757), his second wife Sarah Herritage (died 1794), and his sons William (1754-1785) and Dallam (1769-ca. 1833). There is also the notation that the Masons "marked" Richard Caswell' s grave in 1908; "until then the only marker was one erected by nature--a giant oak still standing."

The papers do not indicate how much of Sue Bond's record came from personal observation and how much from local history. Obvious errors, such as the dates for Eliza W. Desmond showing her to be 140 years old at her death and Lewis Desmond producing his first child at the age of eleven, simply may be typographical errors, but they may also be the incorporation of inconsistent data taken from local tradition. The Works Progress Administration conducted a statewide survey of cemeteries throughtout North Carolina in the 1930's, and some of their information contradicts that given by Sue Bond. The WPA noted that the earliest marked grave was 1831; Miss Bond listed Mary McElwean Caswell, Richard's first wife, who died in 1757. The WPA stated that the cemetery contained no unmarked graves; yet, the Bond data indicated that there were several unmarked graves, and "many more [too] hard to obtain indisputable evidence as to whom [sic] they are." The contradictions pose a problem and call into question the entire series of events that identified Caswell's grave.

The argument for the Lenoir County location stems from a family tradition that began in the 1850s. Without any known documentary evidence, an unmarked grave was pointed out to prominent men who wished to visit the final resting place of Richard Caswell. That site went unchallenged for more than eighty years, and even today remains the alleged grave of the first state governor; yet, the contradiction in the WPA records, the events that took place in Fayetteville in 1789, and the inability to tie any documentary evidence to the spot of burial cause concern among people wishing to preserve history as authentically as possible. If logic prevailed, the surviving children and subsequent grandchildren should have known where Richard Caswell was buried. If they did, why did they not record such information for more than sixty years, and then only when dignitaries such as Edward Everett and Judge John R. Donnell asked to visit the grave? The tradition is strong, extremely so in the Kinston area, but at present there are too many nagging questions and loose ends to say beyond any doubt just where Richard Caswell is buried. A lengthy and more intensive research investigation possibily will provide additional information and, one can always hope, a definitive answer to the question. Files in State Archives.
SOURCE: THE BLOUNT PAPERS:

Addendum to the Cross Report. The following information, found in the Blount papers, states that Richard Caswell's body was returned to Kinston. Mr. Cross overlooked or did not include this in his report.

"The Senate placed William Blount in charge of the funeral arrangements for Caswell, his old personal friend. Blount saw to it that the Federalists (backers of the Constitution) were solemnly, but also conspicuously, positioned along a special order of march. The participants were to follow behind the coffin, which was heavily draped with scarfs and Bands and Ribband."

"The funeral got under way at what Blount identified simply as "the church". From there, the procession made its way to Market Square, where there were outdoor eulogies at the State house, during which time the town's only bell tolled a dirge from Barge's Tavern."

"Prominent among the mourners were members of the Masonic Grand Lodge of North Carolina, of which organization Caswell was grand master at the time of his death."

While there were no military units, members of the fraternal order were nearly all Revolutionary War veterans, and the Masonic ceremony, with its lined procession, colorfully draped coffin and marching mourners mimicked the traditional rites for military funerals."

"As soon as the ceremonies ended, Caswell's coffin was placed in a wagon, and with an escort of mounted mourners, departed for the two day journey to Red House."