Mary Evans, Laurinburg City Council Mayor Pro Tem, and Pastor Michael Edds review Evans’s family history.
A gift between friends reveals a powerful history
LAURINBURG — Mary Evans, Laurinburg City Council’s mayor pro tem, is a fan of PBS’s Finding Your Root with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. It’s a show that airs on PBS where Gates explores the ancestry of dozens of influential people from diverse backgrounds.
While watching the show, Evans had a conversation with her friend, Pastor Michael Edds about the DNA service, Ancestry. And from there, an idea formed in Edds’s mind, he was going gift her with a membership to the DNA site.
“Pastor Edds had given me a gift,” Evans said. “And it turns out that it really was a gift for me because I found out some things that I didn’t know about my past and my history and everything. I didn’t know what I had in me and where it came from. But through the research of Pastor Edds, I know that I come from a family of leaders.”
Edds was able to trace Evans’s family back to Richmond County’s Wolf Pit Township, where General William Henry Harrington owned a large plantation and enslaved Africans. He was a commander in the Richmond County regiment of the NC militia from 1779 to 1780.
According to Edds’s research, he found a copy of the general’s son’s — also named William Henry Harrington — will. In the will, Harrington was giving his assets to family members and during that time, the enslaved Africans were thought of as property and listed on the will.
Evans and Edds discovered the name of Phillis in the will. And that woman was Evans’s great-great-grandmother.
Evans, who is an Army veteran and served in Vietnam, said she can see where all of this comes from. “I thought I just came off a farm,” she said. “Just fighting through the struggle, but it came from my DNA. All of my family members were in the military, it just trickled on down. My brother, and my uncles were in the military. My family is full of military people. People that are concerned about leadership and stuff like that. But I would’ve never known where it came from, from the roots of it until Pastor Edds.”
Evans said she didn’t know where to start her search, but Edds, who is a former history teacher and enjoys historical research, knew what to do and uncovered a lot about the two sides of Evans family.
The Harringtons who enslaved her ancestors fell on to hard times and Edds said they had tragedy after tragedy happened to them.
He said the Harrington family lost their wealth because they had their money turned into confederate currency that was useless at the end of the Civil War. There were many untimely deaths in the family through murder, suicide and even a dual.
“Today, there are no known descendants of the Harrington family,” Edds said.
But for the families of the enslaved people whom the Harringtons owned, there’s success and Edds said proof that prayers never die.
“I always told her that you’re a modern-day Esther, you’re a Joseph. And I didn’t why I would say that until I found all of this stuff,” Edds said. And he added that he’s sure that Phillis said prayers for her family and those prayers have helped to guide Evans to where she is today.
Evans and Edds plan to turn the research they’ve collected into a book. And they’re still putting the historical pieces of the puzzle together. The next step on their research journey is to locate the grave of more of Evans’s ancestors.