Here is a section from a draft analysis of family and land records for a friend who lives in Fremont NC, in one of the Person family houses there (omitting the figures). There are many of the names you mention involved, including a "Hector," but as I had no reason to follow the Persons forward in time, I don't know how they connect. All of this is still a work in progress; please let me know of errors!

(EXTRACT FROM D. Rader, 2007 draft)

John B. Person, and his brother Benjamin Thomas Person, were interesting characters, in an interesting family. They were sons of Thomas Person and Sarah Person (as proven by marriage licenses for each, described below); John was born in September 1829 (according to the 1900 census), and B.T. Person on 16 September 1833. The family line may have descended from Thomas Person, the Revolutionary War hero for whom modern Person County is named, and who may have lived in the Dobbs County area. In any event, John and Tom’s parents lived in Greene County at the time they were born.

We are extremely lucky to know anything at all about the Thomas Person family, since most Greene County records burned in the fires in Kinston and Snow Hill in 1878/80. In addition to the cross-index mentioned above, one estate record book survived the Snow Hill fire, covering the period 1839 to 1845.

Thomas Person died before the May term of the court in 1839, and part of his estate records survive, laying out some of the relationships. Several minor children are clearly identified: Smithy Jane, John, Deborah and Thomas, all still minors when the records end in 1845. They were initially under the care of guardian William B.F. Fort, but then transferred to others later. Rachael Person is also clearly a daughter. Addison Garland Person (born about 1816) was one of the adults involved, possibly an uncle. A.G. Person who would become one of Fremont’s first physicians, and head of an impressive lineage of local physicians (Wayne County Heritage Book); he died in 1857/58, not long after Wilson County was formed. (Unfortunately, few records survive from his estate proceedings in Wilson County.)

I am certain that the “Thomas Person” listed above is Benjamin Thomas Person, about whom more below. (B.T. Person maintained connections to Greene County throughout his life.)

By 1850, the Person family survivors had fragmented and spread. John Person was listed as a carpenter in Wayne County (reportedly age 20), living with the Jethro Murphy family. Jethro Murphy was listed as 25-year old physician – where John Person must have begun his medical training. A.G. Person was an established physician near the village of Nahunta (modern-day Fremont) at age 34, living with his 17-year-old wife Arabella and their new baby William, north of Fremont, on the east side of the railroad tracks. (After A.G.’s death at about the age of 42, Arabella remarried to William R. Bass – see the 1860 Wilson County census in the appendix.)

The only “person” in the 1850 census in the entire United States consistent with Benjamin Thomas Person was enumerated in Maringo County, Alabama, living alone, and working as an overseer on a farm, at age 17 – and born in North Carolina! (Intriguingly, neighbors included a N.C.-born physician named Sidney J. Harris, and his family.) There is no suitable “Thomas” Person; the only other nearby “Benjamin” Person was five years old, the son of Elvina Person, living in Wayne County with three young siblings. That Benjamin Person also appears in census records later, as well.

Interestingly, I recently discovered an invitation – dated 12 April 1854 – to a May Ball, given on May 4-5 of that year at William M. Gay’s Hotel in Wilson, for which B.T. Person is listed as a manager (copy attached; published in “Trees of Wilson,” vol. 2, No. 6, June 1993). (Wilson County, of course, was not formed until 1855. The City of Wilson, itself, was part of Edgecombe County at that time.)

By 1860, John Person was living near Nahunta/Fremont (and near Elizabeth Sherard, the widow of state-senator Gabriel Sherard, who had died in 1848; that house still stands on Airport Road SE of town) with the John Coley family; he was listed as a physician at age 27. Benjamin Thomas Person does not appear in the 1860 census in Greene, Wayne or Wilson County. (The other “Ben Person” was then 15; he and his siblings were by then living with Needham and Elvina Smith in Wayne County.) His whereabouts just before the Civil War may remain obscure, as even his Civil War enlistment records are ambiguous (see below).

John B. Person fought in the Civil War from 1861 to 1864, in Company D of the 19th Regiment North Carolina Troops (the 2nd N.C. Cavalry). He enlisted at age 28 on 6 July 1861, in Robeson County, and was elected Second Lieutenant in that regiment in November 1861, being appointed to that rank in early 1862 (see the appendix for copies of portions of his very extensive war record). Among other things, he was wounded in the pelvis by gunshot in June 1864; he apparently never recovered adequately to return to the regiment.

Benjamin Thomas Person also fought in the Civil War. He enlisted initially on 1 June 1861 in Richmond County, N.C., in Company F of the 18th NC Regiment, for one year. (Other “roll of honor” records record his county affiliation at the time as Robeson and Pitt, so it remains unclear where he was living when he first enlisted.) He formally mustered in as a private on 15 June 1861 at Wilmington, N.C. The original “muster-in and descriptive roll” of that unit, dated 27 June 1861, describes him as 6’1” tall, aged 27, born in Greene County, and working as a physician. He was promoted to 5th sergeant of his infantry company on 29 August 1861.

B.T. Person then enlisted “for the war” in the 1st N.C. Cavalry (9th Regiment, N.C. Troops) in Wayne County, at age 28, on 17 March 1862 (copied as “May” in some records), as a private in Company H. He was appointed Hospital Steward on 1 June 1862 at the regimental level, but was transferred back to his company when he was elected 2nd lieutenant on 21/22/24 October 1862 (dates vary), and then elected 1st lieutenant on 23 July 1863, after the Gettysburg Campaign. He was in a C.S.A. general hospital in Charlottesville, VA, for nearly three weeks in August 1863, with hepatitis.

Something – now unrecorded – happened to interrupt his service as a Confederate officer. (There is a minimally informative allusion to an earlier court martial under General Orders 48 on 26 March 1863.) He resigned his commission on 10 February 1864, stating that his intent was to join his brother in Company D of the 2nd N.C. Cavalry (copy attached). [Sentence omitted about cause of resignation.] The resignation was accepted by Wade Hampton, and by J.E.B. Stuart and Robert E. Lee, effective 29 February 1864, as part of Special Order 49. (This was just a few months before his brother, John, was wounded and apparently invalided in the 2nd Cavalry.). B.T. Person served with the 2nd N.C. Cavalry at least until September 1864, when records become sparse.

After the war, Dr. John B. Person returned to Fremont and continued to work as a medical doctor, a line of work that persisted in his family. (His son, Thomas E. Person, born 1875, was also a doctor.) J.B. was also an active Freemason. By 1866, he was the Master of the Nahunta Masonic Lodge (Number 239, founded 5 December 1865). The “John B. Person” Masonic Lodge in Kenly (Number 257) was named in his honor when it was chartered in 1866 (see charter, Figure 5). He was identified as having been personally instructed in Masonic rites by Grand Lecturer Brother E.J. Bowen in July 1868, and having passed a personal examination in the same before Past Grand Master R.W. Best. (The Nahunta Lodge ceased active operation in 1879.)

John married Patience Lancaster (26 October 1844 to 3 December 1911) on 25 February 1870 (Wayne County Marriage Register, page 15). The marriage register proves both his descendancy from Thomas and “Sara” Person, and that of his wife from Bryant and Temperance Lancaster. The 1870 census shows John at age 38 as a physician and Patience at age 21 living in Wayne County, with Celia Morris and her daughter Louvina as housekeepers. (I also found two bastardy bonds from 1872 and 1873 from Johnston County, where Ursala E. Sasser and “Ersula” E. Phillips identified John B. Person as the father of their out-of-wedlock offspring. May be one and the same?!)

Dr. B.T. “Tom” Person also apparently pursued a medical career after the war, and also lived in Wayne County for a time. He appears in the 1870 census living near his brother John, working as a physician, living with two of his presumed cousins: William B. Person (age 21) and Addison Person (age 13). He married Elizabeth Lee Ruffin on 26 April 1871 in Wilson County; the marriage licenses prove that he and John B. Person were brothers.

Elizabeth Ruffin’s father is listed as W.L. Kennedy, making this her second marriage. Interestingly, Thomas Ruffin was the captain of B.T. Person’s original unit, before his Ruffin’s promotion to field rank in 1863. Colonel Thomas Ruffin died during the Civil War in October 1863, after being mortally wounded at Auburn Mill, Virginia, during the Bristoe Campaign. Elizabeth Ruffin was nearly certainly the widow of Thomas Ruffin’s
brother, Etheldred Ruffin, who also served in Company H of the 9th N.C. Regiment (1st N.C. Cavalry). Etheldred was injured during the war, and discharged on 5 February 1864; he died – apparently in Greene County – on 17 February 1864 (cited as such on Familsysearch.com). Etheldred Ruffin is also memorialized – and was perhaps reburied – next to Tom and Eliza Person in Maplewood Cemetery in Wilson (Figure 6).

An Edgecombe County bible record cites the marriage of Etheldred Ruffin to Eliza Kennedy in 1854, and demonstrates Etheldred’s relationship to Thomas (Williams and Griffin, 1958). The descendancy of the Ruffins is unclear. However, Samuel Ruffin bought Peacock’s Bridge and the land on both sides from Samuel Peacock in the 1750’s. Etheldred’s home is shown on the 1863 Gilmer map (Figure 7), located just south of Contentnea Creek between Stantonsburg and Snow Hill, consistent with descendancy from Samuel Ruffin.

B.T. Person first shows up in surviving land records in a deed dated 26 April 1869, when he was cited as “of Wayne,” and purchased 27 ¾ acres on the west side of Wolf Branch south of Fremont and adjacent to Colonel William Hooks’ land, from Delpha Langston (WCDB 29, page 302; copy attached). He sold the land for more than twice what he had paid for it to Colonel Hooks in 1870 (WCDB 30, page 86).

Dr. B.T. Person was also a Justice of the Peace after the Civil War in Wayne County from 1869-1870, and is listed in the marriage register of that period as having married at least four couples: Henry Martin and “Antiline” Thompson, Isaac Daniel and Mary S. Edmundson, Thomas Blow and America Howell, and Bunyan Ellis and Minda Aycock.

By 1872, Tom and Elizabeth Person had apparently moved back to Greene County, when Elizabeth Person’s mother, Sarah D. Kennedy conveyed her dower rights in then-deceased W.L. Kennedy’s lands to B.T. and Elizabeth Person (identified as “of the County of Greene”), including lands in Washington, NC (Wilson County Deed Book 15, page 444), and when they switched lands with other heirs (Wilson County Deed Book 15, pages 440-442). They are also so-listed in a deed to John Cox for 15 acres, also adjacent William Hooks (WCDB 37, page 185), and in an 1875 deed for a 37-acre tract located south of Nahunta Swamp from Chasey Corbett (WCDB 42, page 318).

In 1876, B.T. Person and E.L. Person, his wife, were still listed as “of Greene” when they made a mortgage to William Faircloth for their interest in land in Snow Hill Township (the former property of Silas Bryant, which the Persons had earlier purchased (Greene County Deed Book 1, page 147-148). (Unfortunately, the Greene County records prior to the late 1870’s burned in the fire in Snow Hill, and cannot be evaluated.) They were listed as “of Greene” again in 1877 when they deeded to John B. Person the 37-acre tract south of Nahunta Swamp in a land swap for John and Patience Person’s one-sixth interest in the family’s Greene County land (WCDB 42, pages 513-514). Also in 1877, the interest of a “B.T. Person and his wife Mary” in the William M. Bryant tract in Greene County was sold at auction to Hyman Yelverton (GCDB 3, pages 546-547. I believe “Mary” is just a typo: B.T. and E.L. Person clearly lost a law suit in Greene County Courts that required their land to be sold. The resulting execution also affected the remaining lot that had come from her mother, and it was sold in 1879 as well (Wilson County Deed Book 15, page 446).

The 1880 census shows John B. (age 55) and Patience Person (age 34) living in Wayne County, in Fremont, next to Frank Flowers, working as a physician, with children: Albert (age 9), James B. (age 7), Thomas E. (age 5), and Solomon (age 1). That same census shows Dr. B.T. Person (age 45), as a farmer, and his wife Elizabeth L. Person (age 40) living in Greene County, in “Bull Doze” (an early name for modern-day Bull Head, see Figure 8) Township, with children: Thomas L. (age 8), Sarah E. (age 3) and William K. (age 1).

In 1887, Mrs. E.L. Person lost her 275 acres in Bull Head Township after a Superior Court action (I assume the same one as above). Since no bidders appeared, the commissioners deeded the land directly to Greene County (GCDB 18, page 522). In 1888, B.T. and E.L. Person (listed as “of Wilson County”) sold ten acres (listed as in Wayne County, but registered in Greene County), half of Elizabeth’s dower in the lands of Etheldred F. Ruffin, to Thomas F. Jones (GCDB 18, page 502).

In 1889, B.T. and E.L. Person were listed as “of Wilson” in a deed to J.H. Jackson for 200 acres in Greene County, plus a 2/5 interest in the adjacent Martha Lancaster place (GCDB 21, page 128-129). In 1891, J.H. Jackson executed a mortgage to B.T. Person for these lands in Bull Head Township, Greene County; B.T. assigned the mortgage to E.L. Person (probably in relation to the lawsuit described below) (GCDB 20, pages 342-343).

Dr. B.T. Person and his wife Elizabeth are also listed in a baptismal record from St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Wilson from 29 November 1889, when their son, William Kennedy Person was baptized by Rev. Robert E. Wright (Valentine, 1996). That record – of course – says little about where they lived at the time, since the baptism could have occurred in her parents’ church. (Recall that they were married in Wilson County.)

The 1890 census was destroyed by fire. One of the few records I have found so far for the 1890’s cite Dr. B.T. Person (or Dr. T.B. Person) as the physician of record for various deaths between 1896 and 1898 in a funeral register for Wootten and Stevens Mortuary in Wilson (as published 2004-2005 in the “Trees of Wilson” newsletters).

A mortgage dated 1898 from H.S. Grantham to B.T. Person (GCDB 32, pages 516-517) matches a 65 acre tract in Bull Head Township also deeded in 1898 (GCDB 33, page 179).

The 1900 census shows John B. Person at age 70, living with his family (Patience, age 56; Thomas E., age 25; Solomon, age 20; Hector M., age 19, and Kate, age 17) living in Fremont. His occupation remains “physician.” Patience was reported to have had seven children, of whom five were still alive. That year, Benjamin Person and Elizabeth L. Person were shown to be living in Wilson, NC, after 29 years of marriage, with children Sallie and William in their early twenties. Also in the home was step-daughter, Mary L. Woodard (Elizabeth’s daughter with Etheldred Ruffin, born in 1859). His occupation was listed as “physician”; they were renting the house they lived in. Elizabeth is listed as having had five children, all then still alive. (B.T. Person himself was the census taker, so the data presented is more likely than usual to be correct. The signature is likely his!)

John B. Person died in 1903; his burial whereabouts is unknown, but nearly certainly in Greene County at the family cemetery (as laid out below).

B.T. Person and his wife (“of Wilson County”) mortgaged the land “known as the Person tract” located “on the right side of the road leading from Stantonsburg to Snow Hill”) in 1902 to C.P. Farmer (GCDB 42, page 328-330). That same year, they provided a quit claim to W.D. Hackney for their land on the north side of Lodge Street in the Town of Wilson (the R.L. Hyatt lot) (Wilson County Deed Book 62, pages 156-157). In 1903, they leased the 300-acre “Ruffin place” to Isaac Bass (GCDB 42, page 484), and then deeded it to C.P. Farmer in 1905 (GCDB 38, page 97-98). In 1904, they sold the rest of their Town of Wilson lands to neighbor W.E. Farmer, located at the corner of Barnes and Lodge Streets in Wilson (Wilson County Deed Book 68, page 84), and to Mrs. Patience Farmer, located at the intersection of Barnes and Spring Streets (Wilson County Deed Book 62, pages 254-255). (There was an irregularity in the latter deed that was corrected in 1905 when the land was resold to John C. Daniel. Wilson County Deed Book 68, page 600.)

Elizabeth Lee Kennedy Ruffin Person died on 28 January 1906, and was probably buried in the Person Graveyard; she was reburied later in Wilson in Maplewood Cemetery (Figure 9). (She died before death certificates were required.) In 1909, B.T. Person mortgaged his remaining 140 acres in Greene County to the Wilson Trust Savings Bank; his residence is not given (GCDB 67, page 233-234). That mortgage was satisfied in 1913 (GCDB 84, pages 229-230).

In the 1910 census, Patience Person is shown living still in Fremont, with son “Sol” (a liveryman, and single, at age 30), and daughter Kate (also single, at age 25). That year, Dr. B.T. Person is shown as a widower at age 77, a boarder (along with an unnamed, 25-year-old male with the same last name) at a boarding house on Tarboro Street in Wilson, Wilson County. His occupation was listed as “postmaster.” Patience Person died on 3 December 1911, in Fremont, and was buried in the Person Graveyard in Greene County. Her death certificate (attached) shows that she “died suddenly – presumably from some heart disease,” and confirms her parents as Bryant Lancaster and Tempie Smith. The informant was Dr. Tom Person, then living in Eureka, N.C., who gave the information “over phone.” (That likely was Dr. Thomas E. Person, who was then working out of Stantonsburg.)

Few additional records seem to exist for either man, although Judge Frank A. Daniels told an important story about B.T. Person in his 1914 speech to dedicate the then-new Wayne County Courthouse, shown below in Figures 10-12.

An intriguing sequel to the story about the Goldsboro killing comes from oral tradition related by [name omitted] of Greenville, N.C. The story goes that after the killing, B.T. Person “high-tailed” it back to his family haunts in Greene and Wilson County near Stantonsburg, and hid out in the attic of the local teacherage while the Yankee soldiers searched for him in the vicinity. Moreover, [his] wife was a Dawson by birth; she still remembers as a child being warned to be quiet, or “Dr. Person” would get her!

The Dawson family farm and homestead is located off Dawson Farm Road on the east side of U.S. 58 just south of Stantonsburg, near Watery Branch – exactly where Samuel Peacock’s land was located, and where Etheldred Ruffin’s home is shown on the Gilmer map. It seems very likely that the Dawson family admonishment about Dr. Person correlates to the Person ownership and the presence of the old Person Graveyard, although no Dawsons currently living recall its presence.

Dr. Benjamin Thomas Person died on 2 January 1916 at age 82, in Nahunta Township in Wayne County. He was originally buried near Stantonsburg (in the Person Graveyard, likely with his parents; John and Patience; his wife, Elizabeth, and perhaps with Etheldred Ruffin), but was later moved to Wilson’s Maplewood Cemetery (section EB), with his wife (Figure 13). His death certificate attributes his death to “general debility following rail road accident,” with a contributory cause of “heart failure,” and confirms his parents as Thomas Person and Sally Tarver. (The information came from his son J.E. Person, then resident in Pikeville, NC, and is signed by physician T.E. Person, then living in Stantonsburg. Tom is listed as having attended college – details are unknown.)