Who Do I Think I Am? Wow! Part 43

Before we move on, first let’s back step one generation to look at Eugene Hargraves/Job Tyson’s wife Frances Eliza Porthress Herring Tyson (1799-1878). She was the oldest child of William and Betsy Flipping Hamlett.

William and Betsy Flilpping Hamlett had fourteen children.


William Herring (1780 – 1812) was the son Arthur and Elizabeth Stokes Herring.

Elizabeth Stokes Herring (b1740) was the daughter of David and Sarah Stokes Montford Stokes

David Stokes (1707-1794) and Sarah Montford Stokes (1716-1800) had 11 children. There were 3 captains in the family and at least one daughter who married a captain. The youngest son Montford Stokes (1762 – 1842) became a U.S. senator then the Governor of North Carolina. Here is what I have on him:

He was a veteran of the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.

Montfort Stokes (1762-1842), a native of Virginia, held various county and state offices in North Carolina before election to the U. S. Senate, 1816 to 1823. He subsequently held a number of state offices, including governor. He resigned the governorship to accept a commission to investigate conditions among the Indians of Indian Territory. He served as subagent for the Cherokees, Senecas, and Shawnees in 1836, and agent, 1837-1841.

Source: Who Was Who In America, Revised ed. (Chicago: Marquis Who’s Who, 1967), Historical Vol.: 540.

President Andrew Jackson appointed his good friend Montfort Stokes to over see the displaced Indians at Fort Gibson. He was became a friend of the Native Amricans and introduced many bills to improve their lives, but none was ever voted into law.

Montfort Stokes was a veteran of both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. At the age of fourteen, he served under Commodore Stephen Decatur, was captured near Norfolk, and served seven months aboard the prison ship "Jersey" in New York harbor. He became friends with Andrew Jackson while practicing law and serving as clerk of Rowan Superior Court in Salisbury. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1816. In 1823, he represented the western part of the state at a convention called to secure more equal representation in the legislature between the parts of the state. As a result of the meeting, representation was provided on the basis of the white population and three-fifths of the Negro population. Stokes served as a representative from Stokes County to the state Senate and later to the House of Commons. During his term as governor, he pushed for sound currency and better internal improvements. In 1832, President Andrew Jackson appointed Montfort Stokes as the chairman of the Federal Indian Commission to oversee the settlement of southern Indians west of the Mississippi. He served in this capacity for ten years, dying near Fort Gibson, Arkansas, in 1842.

Actually, Montford is one of those “near-kin” persons. He was a distant in-law.