Francis Dawson Price of All Saints Parish, Wife Mary Vaught, and Their Son

Added by tookeep on 15 Mar 2007

The 1810 census for All Saints Parish, Little River District, Horry County, South Carolina, documents Francis Dawson Price I (F. D.) as a resident of All Saints Parish, South Carolina. Because he lived near the Waccamaw River in upper Dogwood Neck (near Price's Swamp) this area in some census reports was also called the "Waccamaw, Georgetown District."

F. D. was born in South Carolina about 1775 or 1776 and was a land owner by 1800. In 1810 he had six children and a wife, Mary Vaught who was under 45 years of age at this time. Mary Vaught was born in All Saints Parish in 1773. F. D. had living in the same household with his wife and family an older female (named Ann) who was over 45 years old, at the time of the 1810 census. F. D.'s father, the patriot Samuel Price, died around 1810 and this elder female may have been Samuel's widow. (I have eliminated the possibility that Ann was a Vaught, and it would not be unusual during this time in our colonial past for a widow to move in with her son and family.)

The summer that F. D. died, his son, Francis Dawson Price II, born in South Carolina in 1806, executed F. D.'s "Letters of Administration" (recorded at the Brunswick County Courthouse). Witnessing the probation of F. D.'s letters was John Wescott who was a possible relation to Catherine A. Wescott (wife of Francis Dawson Price II). F. D. died in June 1843 and Mary Vaught Price died in September 1843. At this time F. D. Price II became executor of his parent’s estate. 

Many census recorders beginning in 1820 wrote down that the elder Francis D. Price's birth place was North Carolina. It was not. He was born about 1776 in All Saints Parish, near Little River Township (in upper Dogwood Neck) in what is today Horry County, South Carolina. Little River was an early colonial town located in All Saints Parish near the border of North and South Carolina, just north of Long Bay and east of the Waccamaw River. The Little River empties into the Atlantic Ocean near this small village, and the Waccamaw River runs west of the village through All Saints Parish to the old colonial port of Georgetown where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean, and it is in this "Waccamaw Neck" area where Price's Swamp is located and is still named today. It is a good landmark to locate the general area where both the Price family and Vaught family lived as plantation neighbors.     

In early colonial days "All Saints Parish" included the lower Cape Fear Valley from Buck Neck, North Carolina to Little River Neck to Dogwood Neck to Waccamaw Neck, to George Town South Carolina; it was only after the borderline was established between North and South Carolina that "All Saints Parish" was reduced to the South Carolina area of Little River Neck and Dogwood Neck, sometimes called Waccamaw Neck. Coordinates to locate the general geographical area where the Price land parcels were located are longitude 33.854 north and latitude 78.829 west (the heart of Dogwood Neck, sometimes called Upper Dogwood Neck).

The elder F. D. Price eventually relocated, after the death of his father Samuel, to Buck Neck (near the west end of Dutch Man's Creek) in Brunswick County, North Carolina, in 1813.

Francis Dawson Price II (born in 1806) was about seven years old at this time. Buck Neck is about 30 miles north of Little River Neck, and about 5 miles west of the town of Southport (known then as Smithville) North Carolina. Buck Neck is where the original Bethel Baptist Church was located not far from F. D.'s planter's house (his farm was known locally as the "Price Plantation;" its location is notated on an early US Navy engineering map of the lower Cape Fear valley, and today the old farm is known as Wescott Farms, a housing development on Dosher Cutoff Road near Southport). The elder F. D. was a founding member of Bethel Church, which was instituted in 1839. He knew Lewis W. Wescott, the first Deacon of Bethel Church. (Harriet Price, the daughter of F. D. married Sherwood Wescott, the grandson of Lewis. See their story on this web site.)

Francis D. Price I died in June 1843. His wife, Mary Vaught Price, died in September 1843. Their son, Francis Dawson Price II assumed responsibility for their affairs upon their death.