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Note: Per Mrs. Sydney Carruth nee Christine Rawles, who was the daughter of Pap's cousin Benjamin Rawles, not his brother, Benjamin, there were seven brothers who left Charleston, S.C. (Not sure it was Charleston) in 1800. Three settled in that part of Georgia now in Alabama and four settled in Mississippi. They were: Benjamin, Sr., James, Isaac and Bryant Rawles. They stopped in Amite County, Mississippi, then to Marion County. Benjamin established a home at Hunt's Creek which is now in the Lux Community north of Hattiesburg. There is an old family cemetery there that has no fence and in the '80's, the property was owned by a doctor. There was an article in the paper about it and it showed pictures of the markers which had been knocked over by the cows. (I've located information a deed which was recorded October 25, 1817 wherein William Hunt and Sarah Hunt his wife deed to Benjamin Rawls for $814 a tract of land containing two hundred and nine acres, purchased from the U. S. Government, lying on Hunt's Creek. Witnesses were: Jabus Rawls and Thomas C. Hunt.
In the 1980's, a Colonel Rawls of Covington, Louisiana (Col. Charles A Rawls, 15 Green briar Drive, Covington, LA 70433) said the first Rawles he located in his searches in this country was a Captain George Rawles who came to the Virginia Colony with the Robert Bennett party as military representative in 1632. Colonel Rawls is doing research on the surname and plans a book. He said the name originated with a Raulauf who came to England with William the Conqueror. He has been the the Rawles family seat located in Dorset. It is called Five Head Neville. I don't know whether that is the name of the village or the home itself. I believe he said it is northwest (12 miles) of Dorsetshire, or some such place.
Copied following from Territorial Papers of the U.S. Compiled and Edited by C. E. Carter, Volume VI, Territory of Mississippi, 1809 - 1817
Signed Memorial on page 553: Benjamin Rawls, Bryant Rawls, Charles Rawls, Jabus Rawls, et al and James Rawls
Memorial to Congress by Citizens of Pearl River, September 1, 1815
"We beg permission to lay before Congress a few of our grievances, especially those which under present and existing circumstances appear to us the most intolerable.
Your memorialists beg leave further to state, that the time when they arrived in this savage and unexplored country, was at the very moment of the commencement of the late war, a war, which tho' glorious in its general effects and ultimate consequences, could not fail at that juncture to be peculiarly distressing to the individual circumstances of your memorialists, and although we are now revisited with the fostering blessings of an honorable tranquillity..."
Claudius Rawls signed a petition to Congress by citizens of the Mississippi dated November 11, 1811.
Harris Rawls signed a petition to Congress by the inhabitants of Marion and Lawrence Counties dated January 19, 1815. The petition deals with the fact that they've had to right England and the Indians and their country was invaded for 3 years and they had to leave their homes and haven't been able to make payments on their land. They ask for extension and compensation for widows and orphans.
Per Osra Bard, in a book "Mississippi Daughters and Their And their Ancestors" is Rawls, Benjamin; 1755-1830; North Carolina, married Elizabeth in 1782. Their children: 1. Sarah m. Joseph Ford; 2. Jabus m. Keziah Felder; 3. Ann m. Mr. Burnett, 4. Susan m. Mr. Ford, 5. Elizabeth m. Thomas Nixon, 6. Benjamin, Jr. m (a) Mary Slade, (2) Katy Lott. There was no mention of Bryant.
Information on the Rawls family provided by Osra Bard from information "(Copied from manuscript sent to me by Myrtis Wineman 1961.) (Mrs. R. L. Wilson-Christine)
(J Sharpe Note: I did not copy information she provided concerning Luke and Arthur Rawls in Franklin County in 1816 and later because it covered the period of time my ancestor, Benjamin Rawls, was in Marion County, Mississippi. They may have been brothers, or some other relation to Benjamin. I only copied information pertaining to the brothers who settled in what was then Marion County, Mississippi in the area of present day Columbia and Hattiesburg, Mississippi.)
Origin of the Name Rawles or Fawles is derived from the French baptismal name of Raoul, i.e. Ralph, which was early corrupted to Rawle. The final "S" frequently an abbreviation of "son." It is evident, therefore, that the name was first adopted as a patronymic by the sons of those who bore the Christian name of Rawle or Raoul. In ancient English and early American records the name appears in the various spellings of Raules Rauls, Raweles, Rawels, Rawells, Rawls, and others. Of these, the last two are the forms most frequently used in America in modern times, while that immediately preceding them is also in evidence.
Early settled in Sometshire, London, County of Cornwall, and Dorshetshire, the families bearing this name belonged, for the most part, to the yeoman and merchant classes of the British Isles. Although some of the families of the name Rawle, Rawls, or Rawles in America may have been of Continental European origin and ancestry, it is probable that the greater number of the American lines trace their descent from English branches.
In 1635, George Rawls was one of the 14 persons brought over to this country by Robert Bennett of Nansemond County, Virginia. This George Rawles appears in 1639 as one of the" Vewers of Tobacco Crop" in the Isle of Wight County, Virginia, but his records are not complete.
Note: The Virginia tax lists, used in lieu of the Census of 1790 which was lost when the British burned the Capitol during the War of 1812, show the following persons named Rawls in Nansemond Co. (which lies along the North Carolina boundary): Arthur, Ann, David, James, Jesse, Joshua, Philip and William. The North Carolina Census of 190 shows in that state: William, James, Jesse, Joshua, Silas and Philip, while the South Carolina Census of 190 shows: Benjamin, Elisha, Jesse, Luke, Silas, etc. Because of the similarity of names between the Rawls in Miss. and those of Va. and the Carolinas, plus one or two other factors, I have formed a theory that "our Rawls" ancestors located in Va. and then possibly through several generations migrated southward. However, this is merely a theory and may be wrong. E. J. S. Eunice Stockwell...
Hollis Rawls, a lawyer in Columbia, Mississippi, wrote me in 1947: "I have your letter, and note that you are a member of the Franklin County branch of the Rawls family." He went on to say that he had determined from sources which he believed to be correct that during the reign, or shortly after the reign of Charles I, "our ancestors migrated from England and originally settled in Virginia. From there one brother went to Pennsylvania, and another to South Carolina in the vicinity of Charleston, and in 1800 or 1801 seven brothers left South Carolina and migrated westward, hunting, we are told, more fertile lands and further elbow room. As each brother would find a green valley to suit his notion he would leave the caravan and homestead, and you will find members of the family in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. We do KNOW DEFINITELY that four of the brothers reached Mississippi, one locating in what is known as Rawls Springs, about five miles north of Hattiesburg; another, who was my great-grandfather, located on Pearl Fiver, about twenty miles south of Columbia; another stopped in the vicinity of Brookhaven, Mississippi; and your ancestors settled in the Natchez country, and it is from that branch of the family you spring." Favorite names in this branch of the family, he said, are Charles, Jabus (Jabez?), James and Benjamin.
A Mrs. Rawls of Silver Creek (northwest of Columbia about 26 miles) wrote me in 1918, in reply to a query, that her husband said that over 100 years ago two families named Rawls came from the Carolinas to Mississippi, one settling on Leaf River, the other on Pearl River. This agrees perfectly with what Mr. Hollis Rawls wrote, as Hattiesburg and Rawls Springs are on or near Leaf River.
Goodspeed's "Memoirs of Mississippi" gives Benjamin Rawls, pioneer in Marion County, as a native of South Carolina. (Columbia is the county seat of Marion County, Mississippi.)
METHODISM IN MISSISSIPPI, by Jones, Vol. 1, page 387, shows "Keziah, widow of Jabez Rawls (sic), was, in 1815, in age and feebleness extreme" Her father, Rev. Mr. Jones goes on to say, was Peter Felder from near Orangeburg, South Carolina, who settled in what became Pike County before the War of 1812.
A lady, who in 1948 answered my published query on the Rawls family, wrote that she thought "the neighborhood of Charleston" was misleading, and in her opinion the Rawls family once lived in the Columbia-Camden-Orangeburg and "96" area rather than in Charleston. (Or near C.) A resident of New York State, this lady said that she was quite familiar with the area in South Carolina in which she places the Rawls family, as one of her parents grew up there and she had visited it many times. She made a tracing of an old map of the state showing early divisions and early localities and enclosed it with her letter. She also enclosed the names of persons named Rawls in the Camden District, Fairfield County, who were listed in the Census of 1790, among them a Luke Rawls in the Camden District, Fairfield County, with self and another male over 21 years of age and two females in family...
Publications of the "Mississippi Historical Society", Vol. IV, page 489, states that "immediately after the Spanish Session of the Mississippi Territory (1798) there was a steady tide of immigration, chiefly from Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia, which in ten years swelled the population from 10,000 to More than 40,000, exclusive of Indians." Perhaps this sheds some light on the coming of the Rawls and Williams families to the Mississippi Territory."... Among the men serving in the War of 1812 are Briant, Charles, Jabez, James, Claudius, Harris, and "our Luke."...
"Information from Henry Eugene Bayliss, son of Mary Rawls Bayliss:
The name of Cotton Rawls I have heard spoken often in my family, and I am certain he was an ancestor of mine. I have met and talked to friends of the Rawls family who lived in Monticello, Mississippi, and they have in their possession a more detailed record of the Rawls family.
My first cousin John (or Jabez) Rawls died in Monticello, and was buried near there at New Hebron.
It is quite probable that a lot of my mother's people were in the Revolutionary War. They came to America in early Colonial times, French Huguenots fleeing from persecution in France.
My great-grandmother on my mother's side came from Holland. They too were fleeing from religious persecution. They and the Rawls family settled near Abbeville, South Carolina. My maternal grandmother, with her parents, moved west and settled in western Georgia, near Fort Mims, until 27 hours before it was captured. After my grandmother's people left Fort Mims, they moved west and settled in Mississippi.
It was there that my mother, Mary Rawls, wed by father, Dr. John McCormick Bayliss, June 12, 1856.
My mother's family settled on Santee River, northeast of Charleston, about 1685. My mother's family descended from Thomas Rawls who was a Huguenot from southeastern France.
The great-great-grandson of Thomas Rawls was Cotton Rawls, who was an officer in General Green's army. He was, from what I can learn, a non-commissioned officer. His grandson was my grandfather, Benjamin Rawls.
My grandfather settled in Mississippi, about 1820, at what is known as Rawls Springs in Perry County. His wife was Mary Slade, descended from Holland Dutch, who had settled about the time the Huguenots came to that colony. The name was originally spelled Schladde. (looks like a double D.) They were Dutch Reformed people and were persecuted out of Holland just as grandfather's people were persecuted out of France.
My father's people were originally Irish. They emigrated to Sheffield, England, and from there my grandfather came to this country, near Charleston, South Carolina, and became a planter. From there my grandfather, George Bayliss, immigrated to Mississippi Territory, and settled on Leaf River. This was about 1820.
(Signed) Henry Eugene Bayliss
Mary Slade married Benjamin Rawls, Jr., and their daughter was Mary, born October 27, 1835, died Oct. 18, 1918. This was the mother of Henry Eugene Bayliss.
(June 17, 1961. Above copied from manuscripts by Luther Paschal Hines, 113 Poplar Street, Levelland, Texas. Said manuscripts were graciously lent by Mrs. R. L. (Christine) Wilson, 2411 E. Greenlee Road, Tucson, Arizona.)
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