Robert Bolkcom Newsletters 1982-1986

Robert Bolkcom was a well-known researcher of the “southern branch” of the Balkcom-Balcom-Balcombe-Bolkcom-Balkcum lines that descended from Alexander Balcom of Providence, Rhode Island.  Included here with his permission are some of his newsletters on the family and origins.

This information is of less relevance to the Oklahoma branch since their earliest genetic Balkcom was James E. Balkcom, born 1807, and James seems to have no genetic relationship to the early Rhode Island Balkcoms. I reproduce the newsletters here for general interest and as a repository to prevent them from being lost to time.

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Early Duplin County (North Carolina) Impressions

In 1853, a writer traveling through the area from Weldon to Wilmington on the railroad, described what he saw along the way.

“… on a recent trip from Weldon, on the northern boundary of the state, to Wilmington, a distance of one hundred and sixty two miles, we were struck with the unchangeableness of the scene. There was little to relieve the monotony of the interminable pine forests and cypress swamps except an occasional log cabin with its rude inmates, or an occasional collection of huts with a water tank, collectively dignified with the high sounding name of Washington, Warsaw, or some other euphonious title. This immense tract, however, furnishes the staple commodities of the State, viz., tar, pitch, turpentine, and lumber.

(From Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, page 37, 1853, from James O. Carr’s Civil War Scrapbook, in the Leora H. McEachern Library in Rose Hill, North Carolina.