Ancestors

Thomas Camp

Thomas Camp was born on 8 February 1717 in Virginia, in King and Queen County by one account. A Camp family history written in 1963 by Mabel McEachern Stewart says he was the son of a Thomas Camp "born in 1691 in Essex County, England," and "a Miss Marshall," who "lived in Culpepper County, Virginia." Culpeper County was not formed until 1749. Later accounts call his mother Mary Ida Marshall.

In 1738 he married Winifred Starling. "This Thomas Camp was married twice," the 1963 history says. "The first wife was WINIFRED STARLING, who was the mother of eleven sons and one daughter." Their children came every two years: Edmund in 1739, Joseph in 1741, John in 1743, Nathaniel in 1745, Thomas in 1747, Starling in 1749, Hosea in 1751, William in 1753, Alfred in 1755, Benjamin in 1757, Elizabeth in 1759 and Joel in 1761. Another list adds daughters Mary, born in 1740, who married a Tarpley, and Lucy, born in 1742.

Winifred died about 1761. About 1762 Thomas married Margaret Carney, "of Ireland." "Margaret Carney was only 18 years old when she married Thomas Camp, and was younger than the first three children of Winifred Starling. She was born June 20, 1744 and died 1824." She bore him twelve more children, ten sons and two daughters: Crenshaw in 1763, James in 1765, Daniel in 1766, Lewis and Adam in 1769, Stephen in 1771, Larkin in 1773, Unicy in 1775, Aaron in 1778, Ruth in 1780, George in 1782 and Joshua in 1786. Joshua was born when his father was sixty nine.

"The first group were most likely born in Virginia and the last group in North Carolina," the history says. Thomas spent his last years on Broad River in southwestern North Carolina, two miles from the South Carolina line, between Forest City, North Carolina, and Chesnee, South Carolina. The house stood on the north side of the road, east of where Horse Creek runs into Broad River. In 1963 only a lone black walnut tree marked the place. Below the bridge on Horse Creek lay the mill stones of a water mill the Camps had worked.

The Daughters of the American Revolution count him among the patriots of the Revolution.

He died on 8 January 1798 and was buried in the family cemetery on the farm. The plot was reserved when the farm was sold, and several of his family lie there with him, among them Joshua, the youngest of the twenty four. "The grave of Thomas Camp is marked with a native granite stone. The hand carved inscription says 'T. Camp, born 1717, died 1798,'" Mabel Stewart wrote. She saw it in 1938, in a field a few hundred yards off the highway, overgrown with bush and weeds because the plot flooded often. J. W. Camp, a great-grandson of Joshua, helped her find it. Joshua's own house still stood on a hill across the road, no longer in Camp hands.

If Thomas Camp is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Thomas Camp (1717-1798)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/thomas-camp-1717-1798-3c9dae.