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Miss Hattersley:
Please forgive my delay in responding to your post on the Davidson and Simpson families. I had wanted to gather my facts more carefully and compactly before I responded to your post, but I am replying in this rambling way for fear that I may not do so otherwise, and I did want to respond to your post. Your information is most interesting as the Simpson-Davidson connections are new to me. I was not consciously aware of the Davidsons in Union County; that is, I had no doubt come across the name there, but it failed to register at the time in terms of my Davidsons in Laurens and Newberry Counties.
I seem to have a dual connection to the Simpsons of whom you wrote. Thomas Davidson who died in Newberry in 1799 was my direct ancestor as his daughter Jean/Jane/Jenny married Isaac Waldrop, son of Captain James Waldrop of Newberry and his wife Mary Henderson of the Granville County Hendersons in NC. Isaac and Jean Waldrop's grandson, James L. H. Waldrop, of Jonesboro, GA, married Louisa Caroline Juliet Wilson of Decatur, GA, and she was a niece of the Reverend John Simpson Wilson (1796-1873), who founded some dozen Presbyterian churches in early upper Georgia, including the First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta. The Reverend John Simpson Wilson was a son of Robert and Jane (Hillhouse) Wilson and a grandson of John Wilson, Sr., of Saluda River, Anderson County, originally of York County. Uncle John Simpson Wilson married Juliet Simpson, AKA, Juliet Simpson Means, the daughter of Isabella Simpson who was in turn the daughter of the William T. Simpson, Esq., of whom you wrote. On Isabella's marriage to James Means of Union County, as his second wife, Isabella's daughter Juliet was adopted by him and took the Means name; one of her own sons was named James Means Wilson.
Aunt Julia, as she was affectionately known by my branch of the family, was a much beloved lady and my great-grandmother was named for her, Juliet.
The Reverend John Simpson Wilson was named for his family's friend and much respected minister, the Reverend John Simpson, a graduate of the theological school at the College of New Jersey, Princeton, and a widely popular Presbyterian minister in upper South Carolina. As you see, the Simpson name weaves through the Wilsons and their connections, but I am not certain whether there was a family connection, other than Aunt Julia's marriage to Uncle John Wilson. They were married in Union County in 1825, and went to live in Georgia.
Interestingly, going back to the Waldrops, several groups of whom who were early settlers in Fayette County, GA, some Simpsons settled near them there and the first white child born in Fayette County is stated to have been Henry Waldrop Simpson. I have never had a sense that these Simpsons were the same as the Simpsons in Union County, but I am not certain of that and my memory is not clear on these Simpsons at this time.
There were Simpsons and Wilsons who intermarried in Abbeville County, SC, and they seem to have been different Wilsons from mine. Upper South Carolina was settled by many Wilson families, and we have no clue if or how they were related. Not all were related, surely, but I suspect that more were related than we now know about. My Wilsons lived in York County, were members of Bulloch's Creek Presbyterian Church, and in 1784 moved to Saluda River, Pendleton/Anderson County, and from there to Hall County, GA, near Gainesville, where they populated the early Wilson's Militia District just southwest of Gainesville. From Hall County my line moved down to Decatur and Atlanta.
In the will of William T. Simpson, naming legatee Mary Davidson, widow of Thomas Davidson, I cannot see that this would refer to the unknown first wife of Thomas Davidson who died in Newberry in 1799. But as this Thomas Davidson of Newberry had a child who married a Simpson, it raises the liklihood that the Newberry Davidsons were connected to the Union County Davidsons and Simpsons. My grandmother's genealogist, Miss Blanche Davidson of Newberry, did not examine Union County Davidson records, thus I have no information at all on Davidsons there. She only abstracted Davidson records in Laurens and Newberry, dealing specifically with our Thomas Davidson/Davison.
I have various ancestors from Union County and some were associated with the old Fairforest Church, the Little and allied families among them. I am descended from Wilbourns/Welborns in Union, and had some Stribling relations there who were an uncle and several cousins (an uncle, Thomas Stribling, settled first in Union about 1778, and soon moved to Pendleton County). The Union County Davidsons may well be the "lost" family of my ancestor Thomas Davidson of Laurens and Newberry, whose parents we have not been able to identify in the places where we've looked.
I was struck by your mention of Pleasant Harris and Christopher Golightly in William T. Simpson's estate papers, and wonder if you are familiar with the book "Piedmont Farmer: The Journals of David Golightly Harris, 1855-1870," edited by Philip Racine, 1990. Mr. Racine did not have much information on the Harrises, but I would suspect that the Pleasant Harris and Christopher Golightly whom you mention are some connection to those families in Spartanburg County, SC. I have two Harris lines, the Mecklenburg Harrises of NC, and the Granville Harrises, of Granville, NC, and Isle of Wight, VA. The name West Harris was used in the family of David Golightly Harris and it is possible that he is from the Ilse of Wight line as the name West Harris was very characteristic of that family, especially in Granville County and the other places where those prolific Harrises moved.
I hope you can make some sense of all this; I know much of it is entirely off the mark in terms of your interest. I am certainly interested in knowing more about the Union County Davidsons and their Simpson connections.
Let me mention one other book, Robert J. Stevens, Jr., "The Legacy of Father James H. Saye, 1808-1892: A Presbyterian Divine," 2006, for which I provided some of the annotations. Mr. Stevens makes several references to the Simpsons and Isabella Simpson, which I can better discuss with you in private correspondence.
I am not doing much work in genealogy these days and my mind has grown rusty on the subject, especially families I have not worked on in a long time, such as the Davidsons.
Thank you for the information you have posted and I look forward to hearing further from you.
Joseph Moore
hitemor@aol.com
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