First Generation
MARY DAVENPORT married HENRY GAMBILL in Virginia. The ancestors of MARTIN GAMBILL were among the last of the Scots-Irish who moved from Ireland to England after the Linen War of 1700-1704 and shortly thereafter migrated to America where most of them first settled in Pennsylvania. In the period from 1730 through 1750 many of these people were moving southward and settling along the headwaters of the James River in the central counties of Virginia, among them was HENRY GAMBILL, the father of MARTIN.
Second Generation
MARTIN GAMBILL, born May 29, 1750, Culpepper, Virginia, married September 23, 1777, NANCY NALL, daughter of CAPTAIN WILLIAM NALL. Martin died November 20, 1812 in Ashe County, North Carolina. Just prior to the Revolutionary War, MARTIN and his brother JOHN and possibly another brother, WILLIAM, migrated South, settling on Roaring River in Wilkes County, North Carolina.
MARTIN GAMBILL was soon thereafter inducted into service under COLONEL BENJAMIN CLEVELAND, who was head of the Patriots in the Yadkin Valley. After the Patriot surrender at Charleston, South Carolina, the British Army under LORD CORNWALLIS made its way toward Charlotte, North Carolina, where it planned to put an end to the Patriot uprising in the Carolinas.
COLONEL CLEVELAND dispatched CAPTAIN GAMBILL with a request for help to the men living in the Holston Valley of Virginia. CAPTAIN GAMBILL carried the message approximately one hundred miles on horseback across country dangerously infested with Tories. En route CAPTAIN GAMBILL stopped at Captain ENOCH OSBORNE'S homestead on New River to borrow a horse. Family legend relates "that ENOCH took his horse loose from the plow and loaned it to him to go on with the message." On his return to the Yadkin Valley, he found that CLEVELAND had been wounded, and that he had been selected to lead CLEVELAND'S "Company of Men" in the battle of Kings Mountain. In that Patriot victory over British forces led by COLONEL PATRICK FERGUSON, CAPTAIN GAMBILL was shot in the arm, leaving him partially disabled. After the war, MARTIN and his wife NANCY (NALL) GAMBILL, made their home on the South Fork of New River in what later became Ashe County. He served as Justice of the Peace, Sheriff, Tax Collector, and Representative to the North Carolina Legislature.
Third Generation
THURSA GAMBILL married JAMES McMILLAN.
Fourth Generation
FANNIE McMILLAN born August 18, 1815, Piney Creek, Alleghany County North Carolina, married August 21, 1834, in Piney Creek, Alleghany County, North Carolina, IRA JOSIAH HALSEY, born April 22, 1815, Piney Creek, Alleghany County, North Carolina, (son of WILLIAM HALSEY, III and JUDA PEAK) died December 21, 1861, Piney Creek, Alleghany County, North Carolina. FANNIE died September 6, 1849, Piney Creek, Alleghany County, North Carolina, buried in Alleghany County.
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