Westley Dawson arrived 1674 / Mary Ann Clampit , Son Leelyn (sp?)
I recently found a letter from 1972, which included my Great-Great Uncle Lon Butler Dawson's recollections of our branch of the Dawson family. There was once a family bible, but it was destroyed in a 1926 fire and all of his boxed genealogy research "disappeared" after he died, so all I have to go on is this letter. To a certain point, it agrees with what I've been able to determine through the census, online, through the recollections of other family members (also written down in the 1970s) etc., but then it goes on a tangent with names I cannot find anywhere online. With luck, maybe someone out there has this information. If so, please e-mail me at [email protected]. Thanks!
We'll start with my Great Grandfather Roy and his older brother, Alonzo (Lon) Butler Dawson; Roy and Lon both supplied some of this information, which I verified online.
Roy Dawson
b. 1900 d. 1986
Lon Butler Dawson
b. 1896 d. 1973
They are the sons of
William Perry Dawson
b. 1875 d. 1903
Florence Etta Kendrick (I've also found her as Marietta)
b. 1875 d. 1956
After this, the tree changes. My GG Uncle Lon has the following as his grandparents, the parents of William Perry Dawson:
Wesley Dawson
b. 1830 d. 1924
Savanna Laurie
d. 1904
(I had John Wesley Dawson b. 1849 d. 1924, son of Elbert Dawson, and Euphemia Hill b. 1848 d. 1891. Between the two of us, I'm probably wrong.)
After that, my uncle has several dates but didn't mention the particular Dawson to attach to it, but with the months, they seem very specific:
Dawson b. 1803
Dawson b. March 1766
Dawson b. August 1724
And then he mentions the following:
Lealyn R. Dawson
b. 1701
Mary Jane Walls
(I don't know exactly how these names are supposed to be spelled, but that's what he had in the letter.)
He said Lealyn was the first Dawson of this line born in America and is the son of:
Westley P. Dawson
b. Lancaster, England
arrived 1674
Mary Ann Clampit
That's essentially it. Supposedly, Westley and Mary Ann were part of a group heading into South Carolina and they stayed at a place called Carter's Oak Grove.
Any information anyone has would be greatly appreciated. I was four when my GG Uncle Lon died, and based on some of his letters, he knew five generations of his family. Oh, the stories he could have told!