THE BLOUNT FAMILY
Genealogy of the Blount Family.*

        * To be read in connection with pages 130-132.

        

James Blount

        The late Gov. Henry T. Clark considered this the oldest of North Carolina families. No family, he believed, whose name is still extant as a family-name in North Carolina, came into the Province so early as James Blount, who settled in Chowan in 1669. This James Blount is said to have been a younger son of Sir Walter Blount, of Sodington, Worcestershire, England, and a Captain in Charles I's Life Guards. His Coat of Arms engraved on a copper plate, which he brought with him, was in the possession of his descendants until about the year 1840, when it was destroyed by its possessor, the late James B. Shepard of Raleigh. A cut of it is given above, taken from an impression of the original plate.

        For convenience, the family may be divided into two branches; the descendants of James, the Chowan Blounts, and the descendants of his younger brother who settled about Chocowinity in Beaufort County, the Taw River Blounts. The latter is much the more numerous branch of the family, and has become too extensively spread throughout the Southern and South-Western States, to be fully traced here. This brief genealogy is complied chiefly from the family Bible of the Edenton family of Blounts, and from a Manuscript by the late Thomas H. Blount of Beaufort, and is as accurate as such accounts can ordinarily be made.

THE CHOWAN BLOUNTS.

        James Blount, who settled in Chowan in 1669, on a tract of land which remained in the possession of his descendants until the death of Clement Hall Blount in 1842, was a man of some prominence in his day. He is spoken of in contemporary documents as a member of the Governor's Council, as one of the Burgesses of Chowan, and as a leading character in the infant and very disorderly Colony. He left one son, John.

        This John Blount (I) born 1669: died 1725,

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