In a previous post, I mentioned finding two new items related to my Womble research. I’ve covered the first item and now I’ll write about the book I found.
The DAR library has a new book about the Womble family titled, Albermarle ancestors, Tidewater ties: genealogies of four northeastern North Carolina families: Womble, Shoulard, Martin, and Elliott compiled by Frank Womble. Even though the Womble line I’m researching never lived in Albermarle County, NC, I decided to look at it anyway. My thought is typically that you never know what you might find. After looking through the book, I found that it had nothing worthwhile to connect my line to this Womble line. There were some interesting similarities, though. One of these was a story about the progenitor of the Womble line. This person according to the book was named Thomas Wombwell and was a sea captain from England. In the book, it states that Thomas Wombwell came from England and settled in Isle of Wright County, VA.
I had heard a similar story from a couple of different relatives about how my Womble ancestors came to this country. What I had heard was that the father of John Womble (~1755-Oct.1821) had been a sea captain from Germany. Also, that his father captained sailing vessels that transported people from Germany to the colonies. I have no idea if this story is even true or how I would go about investigating it, but it was an interesting find for me to read a similar story in Frank Womble’s book.
I even went so far as to try to see if my John Womble might fit into this family somehow. Unfortunately, I was unable to come up with anyone who might have the potential to be my ancestor’s father. Yet it still makes me wonder, is there a connection between these families and if so what is it?
Paul Heinegg’s, Free African Americans of North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina from the Colonial Period to about 1820, has a section about my John Womble on pg. 958. I have yet to really look into the race issue of this line and verify if the family really was of African decent. I did contact the author via email and asked him about it. He said that he based his theory about John Womble’s heritage on census records, which stated that he was ‘free colored’ in Edgecombe County, NC. If in fact he was ‘free colored,’ were my Womble line ancestors once owned by the Womble family from Albermarle County, NC? This would explain the similar sea captain story and lead to the possibility that the Albermarle County Womble men had children with their female slaves, if they even owned slaves.
The Wombles and their descendants that I knew sometimes had what I consider dark complexions; even though, all had blue eyes. Growing up I never gave this much thought, but after reading about John Womble in Paul Heinegg’s book I’m beginning to wonder if those people were of African American heritage. Race doesn’t matter much to me, but if it turns out that this is true shouldn’t I be aware of their history and what they experienced?
