Staff report
The Richmond County Historical Society will present on May 11 a program for the Gen. Henry William Harrington chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution regarding the group’s namesake.
Submitted photo
The tomb of Gen. Henry William Harrington and family members lie a few miles south of Rockingham.
May MacCallum, RCHS genealogist, will share information on the Harrington family, including Col. Henry William Harrington. During her presentation, MacCallum will reveal the results of her research further into the Harrington family and new information she discovered along the way.
Gen. Henry William Harrington was involved in the American Revolution. He was at one time the largest and richest plantation owner in Richmond County.
In March, MacCallum hosted a meeting of the local DAR chapter at the historic Leak-Wall House in Rockingham. Following their meeting, members were taken on a tour of the house and learned of the work of the RCHS Genealogy Office.
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Dr. Mary Wayne Watson will return at 7 p.m. on May 18 to be the featured speaker at the regular monthly meeting of the Richmond County Historical Society at Rockingham’s City Hall.
Watson was a guest speaker in September 2014. Then, her presentation focused on “War on Sisters,” an account of the effects of the Civil War on Southern women. This time, her topic will be “The Sandhills: The Comfort of Tradition and Ritual” and draw on the writings of North Carolina poet John Charles McNeill.
Kevin Spradlin | PeeDeePost.com
Dr. Mary Wayne Watson will return in May and June as the featured speaker for the Richmond County Historical Society’s monthly meetings.
While serving as a Baptist missionary in China, McNeill was imprisoned in a concentration camp when Mao Zedong brought communists into power. From his cell, he wrote journal accounts of Riverton nights and prayer meetings in Scotland County, recalling those boyhood pleasures. Tiverton was his ancestral home near Wagram.
Watson said Riverton has been referred o as not so much a physical place but more so a “place of mind.”
McNeill’s poetry features the landscapes of the Sandhills and includes Scotland, Richmond, Moore, Hoke, Cumberland and Robeson counties.
McNeill was skilled in the oral tradition of storytelling in regional dialect. He also was a lawyer and state legislator.
Watson is McNeill’s great niece. Her lecture series is co-sponsored by the North Carolina Humanities Council. She is a Road Scholar with the council and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Watson will return to Richmond County for the Richmond County Historical Society’s June 15 meeting. She will present a program entitled, “Gerald White Johnson, Scotland County’s Pioneering Journalist and Noteworthy Historian.”
Johnson was found of the School of Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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