"Robert Williams’s son, John, became a civil engineer and surveyor and visited his boyhood home many years after he left it as a boy of nine years old in company wit his widowed mother, Anne Shoebridge Williams, and his older sister, Elizabeth, and his brother, Samuel (my Grandfather), to make their home in Ohio.
Copied from the map, the following notes by John, a son of Robert Williams, are interesting:
“I think the upland upon which people lived and on which the roads were mostly laid, was as much as 20 feet higher than the lowlands and streams and about as level, as well as I can remember now.
New River…Clubfoot Creek…Jos. Dew…Clubfoot Creek meeting house…Horton Howard canal…Howard’s mill…
“I never until this minute could imagine why that creek was called ‘clubfoot.’ Now I see that as I have drawn it, there is a resemblance to a clubfoot in its outline.
Great swamp called Pocoson…A. Martin…Mill pond…Isaac Sampson…To white oak…Tide water…Mill pond…To Newbern 40 miles…Borden’s Creek…Robt. Williams…Wm. Fisher…Wm. Borden….Borden’s saw mill…Jos. Borden…Newport River…Harless creek…Cause way…R. Lovet…Hardesty…Core sound meeting house…B. Stanton…Beaufort…Point of Core Sound
“Borden Stanton was a Friend and preacher and Grandfather to the Secretary of War, and his widow came with us out West, with her family.
“I remember well to have seen the canal in process of construction. I think as early as 1797. It was undoubtedly the first canal projected (by Dr. McClure) in the United States, if not the Western hemisphere.”
DESCRIPTION OF “DINNANT” by John Shoebridge Williams
The locality is now known as Newport as drawn by John Shoebridge Williams in 1864. The meaning of Dinnant is this: Din means Town or Fort: Nant means a little Brook. Dinnant—Fortified Brook or River, or Brook Town. The dam across Black Creek makes the name “Dinnant” very appropriate, as it means “Fortified Brook.”
This note is to his (John’s) grandson, the son of his youngest daughter, Martha Belle Van Vleck:
“Cincinnati, Feb. 1st, 1864
Willie Van Vleck,
Dear Grandson: As you requested I should draw something for you, and as I never could without urgent reasons, refuse a boy who wishes to learn, I attempt a sketch of the part of North Carolina where I was born and lived the first nine years of my life. The top of the sketch is intended for North.
You can see the position of your Great Grandfather’s house and mills. At the west or left end of the dam, a grist mill. East end, or nearest the house, saw mill. Next to the grist mill, near the middle of the dam, was the first mills that went away. Between that and the saw mills was the waste gates, for in wet weather all the water that came must be let go, without running over the dam, as in hilly, stony countries public roads always crossed the dams.”
