http://thelibrary.springfield.missouri.org/lochist/periodicals/wrv/v32/n4/s93d.html

Volume 32, Number 4, Summer 1993
 



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Brays’ Settlement and Civil War (Part I)
by Robert Bray


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The North Carolina Heritage

In the first United States census (1790) for Chatham County, North Carolina there was a William Bray family consisting of one free white male over 16, and one free white female; presumably he and his wife. There was also a Henry Bray, head of another family consisting of one free white male and two free white females. That Henry may have been William’s father.

There was a son named William in nearly all generations of Brays that have been traced. The earliest was one of the eleven children of Henry B. Bray and was the father of Mark and his twelve siblings.

The Bray Family and Bray Settlement

The first William Bray, son of Henry Bray, Junior, was a second generation American. He lived near Siler City, North Carolina. One of his sons, Mark, was my great grandfather. The will of William was dated 1843 and showed that he was a resident of Chatham County. That area was called, in earlier days, "the back settlement," as opposed to the Tidewater or Piedmont. In the will, William disposed of five slaves; Richmond, Diley, Lish, Minerva and Jack. Richmond went to his daughter Peggy York who already had possession of him. Jack was to be hired out during the lifetime of his wife, Peggy, for benefit of the estate. The remaining three were willed directly to his wife Peggy. Mark, along with twelve brothers and sisters, were considered already to have had their respective shares of their father’s estate, and received nothing in the will.

One of William’s sons, Mark (1796-1868), married Margaret Patterson in their home state. In 1841, Mark, his wife and six children, together with a company of their friends, including the McDaniel and Marley families, emigrated to Greene (later, to become Christian) County, Missouri. The McDaniels and Marleys settled near the Village of Ozark where there was a grist mill on Finley Creek.

Mark entered land about half way between Ozark and Sparta and built a log house near a spring.

My grandfather, my father and I were all born on that farm within 175 yards of the same spot. The place was 2 miles due south of Linden, a tiny settlement on Finley Creek several miles above Ozark. Mark became owner and operator of a grist mill at Linden before 1860, but his principle occupation was farming and stock raising. In 1844, Mark and Margaret’s seventh child was born. He was Taylor, my grandfather. An eighth child, Isaac, was born in 1846.

Mark, like his father William, became a slave holder. Whether he acquired all his slaves in Missouri or whether he brought some of them from North