These pages are all part of one digitized item. The small slip reading “A Copy of Joel Walls oath” was probably a wrapper or label. The oath is on a torn half sheet, and the questions on its back break off where the paper is torn. A larger sheet marked “Blank Camission” was filed with them.
Joel Walls’s oath about a line tree on the Ready Branch land, with questions by Roach and Chapman – Craven County, 1810
Transcription notes: spelling, capitalization and punctuation follow the original. Words in [square brackets] are editorial notes; [?] marks an uncertain reading and [illegible] marks words that could not be read.
[Wrapper:]
A Copy of Joel Walls oath of a Line three [tree] of the Rady [Ready] branch land the maples
[The oath:]
State of North Carolina }
Craven County }
personally was before me Stephen Harris one of the Justes [justices] of the peace Joel Walls and maide oath on the Holy evengilest [Evangelists] of all mighty god that two maples that he Show’d yesterday in company of Stephen Harris John Fornes & Charles Roach Senr on the side of the Horse pen pocoson [pocosin] was shown to him by John Hill Stephen Worsley Sen & Shadrack Gatlin to stand in the 3d line of a pattent granted Thos Pollard Senr — by him sold to sd Gatlin & by said Gatlin to me for 300 acres Begining on the Ready branch and further sayeth not given under my hand this 10th of October 1810
Joel Walls
Sworn to before me the Day & Date above
Stephen Harris J.P.
[On the back, questions and answers; the top lines may be lost:]
by Roach was the Ded to go with the pattent to the begg [beginning?] Answer it was
Quest by Roach Do you beleave that the Ded Herrington had was the Same as yourn exept the alteration of Names
Answer I Do for he carried mine to Mr Palmer and after words I saw his and beleave it was a true coppy
Quest by Chapman Did you ever tell hill you would agree to the line markd after you left hill
Answer I never Did for I never Saw it
by Roach Do you beleave Herrington & hill ever maid any line between them
answer I dont beleave th[e]…
[A separate wrapper sheet:]
Blank Camission [Commission]
About the original
Words struck through in the original (“and maid oath” after “god”, and a repeated “Gatlin”) are left out.
The questions were asked by “Roach” (likely Charles Roach Sr.) and “Chapman” (likely John Chapman). Herrington, Hill and Mr. Palmer are named without first names. The answers point to a dispute over a line of the 300-acre Ready Branch tract, first patented to Thomas Pollard Sr.
This oath very likely belongs to the 1810 suit John Chapman vs. Joel Wall, a plea of trespass on the case for which Laban Morris, David Averitt, Willie Hill, Silvia Hill and others were summoned as witnesses.
“Pocoson” is the local word pocosin, a swampy upland bog. In the original, Gatlin can look as if it has a double t, because clerks often ran the cross of the t on through the l.
Source: Joel Walls’s oath about a line tree on the Ready Branch land, with questions by Roach and Chapman. Roach Family Papers (#346), East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, Box 1, Folder d (Legal Records, 1784–1901). Collection guide. Digitized folder: ECU Digital Collections, 0346-b1-fd.
Images courtesy of East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University. View in ECU Digital Collections: 35859.
Also from this folder: Swift Creek residents hire Turner Nelson as teacher of “Reading writing and Arithmetic” in 1823.
Part of the Roach Family Papers collection on East Carolina Roots.
