Bucklesberry, Back in the Day: Early Settlers–The Herrings
Dr. Joe Sutton
The proven patriarch of generations of present-day Suttons in Lenoir County was John Sutton (1720/30-bef. 1773). An early settler of Bucklesberry, he arrived around 1745-1750. Not the only settler, though, nor the first, evidence suggests that ancestors of the Herring family line of Lenoir County preceded John Sutton's arrival.
The late genealogist and historian Martha Mewborn Marble (1944-2019), a descendant of the Bucklesberry Sutton line, believed the Herrings were among the first to migrate to Bucklesberry of then old Craven County (now Lenoir County) in the early to mid 1700s. Further, in a 2019 email communication with this writer, Ms. Marble suggested that the Bucklesberry name may have originated with the Herrings, who owned and sold land in the coastal area of Merry Hill in Bertie County where, interestingly, there was a community named Bucklesberry Pocosin.
Two communities with the same name, in the same time period, and in the same geographic region of the country, albeit some one hundred miles apart, is almost certainly not happenstance. Marble's belief is supported in part by land records that indicate the Herrings were residents in the Bucklesberry area of Bertie County prior to their migration to the Bucklesberry area of then old Craven County.
In his 1969 genealogical narrative, Dr. Robert A. Herring, MD noted that his ancestor John Herring, Sr. (1684-1760) was "one of seven brothers who lived in eastern North Carolina" in Bertie and Chowan Counties during the early 1700s. The other six Herring brothers were Abram (Abraham), Anthony, Edward, Samuel, Simon, and Thomas. Archived at NClandgrants.com, abstracts of ten land deeds dated 1723 to 1757 named three of the Herring brothers–Abraham, John, Sr., and Samuel–as grantor, grantee, or adjoining landowner of land tracts in the Bucklesberry area of Bertie County.
The Herrings were also among the first landowners in the Bucklesberry area of then old Craven County. In his narrative, Dr. Herring reported the indexed abstract of a 1720 land grant to his ancestor John Herring, Sr., believed to be the first known tract of land in greater Bucklesberry in the La Grange area, by way of Bear Creek.
Additional online archived documents indicate the Herrings were named in seven patents and surveys of Bucklesberry area land in pre-Lenoir, old Craven County, dated 1738 to 1747. Totaling 1,525 acres, the land documents were issued to three of the seven Herring brothers: Abraham, John, Sr., and Samuel. Altogether, the eight Herring land documents support the claim by the Lenoir County Historical Association in their mammoth 1998 book, Coastal Plain And Fancy: The Historic Architecture of Lenoir County and Kinston, North Carolina that, "The Herring family had settled in Lenoir County by the 1730s" (p. 273).
Next month's article will share additional information on the Herring family as early settlers of Bucklesberry. Interested readers may access a previously published Bucklesberry article titled "Animal Stories" at https://t.ly/d8cKd.
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