Captain David Dodd – A Local Patriot

From the Sampson Historical Society

(Scroll down for pictures)

By Claude H. Moore (1916-1994)

   A generation ago, the old residents were still relating stories about Captain David Dodd and his experiences during the American Revolution.  In fact, his old home was torn down less than 10 years ago. Everyone here remembered it as the home in which General Cornwallis stayed overnight in the spring of 1781 near the Duplin Courthouse, enroute from Wilmington to Virginia.

   Capt. David Dodd was born around 1741, possibly near Scotland Neck in Halifax County. His family originally came from Scotland, settled in the low lands of the Roanoke River and after several seasons of flooding, the son, David, settled in Duplin County (that part of which is now Sampson.) 

   In 1767, he purchased a track of land from Gabriel Holmes and built a house in the Dutch Colonial style. This was located on the Old New Bern Road (now Old Warsaw Road) about two miles slightly to the northeast of Turkey.  He married Elizabeth Boykin.

   Dodd embraced the American cause very early in the Revolution. Before 1776, we find him on the Duplin Committee of Safety.  On March 4, 1776, he enlisted in Captain John Sumner's Company of the First North Carolina Battalion commanded by Colonel Thomas Clark. In May 1776, he transferred to the 4th North Carolina Regiment.  His neighbors and contemporary officers of the Revolution were: LTC James Kenan, Major James Moore, LTC Richard Clinton, Lieutenant Hardy Holmes, Captain James Thomson and others. In 1811, Captain Dodd was interviewed by a writer at his home and some of his stories that he told have been preserved.

   Captain Dodd was much sought after by the British because of his daring raids on the enemy. One story goes that the British came to his home and surrounded it before he could escape. He was a small man so his wife hid him in a barrel of feathers and in the search; the British passed the barrel unnoticed.  Later, Captain Dodd was in a skirmish with the Tories (Loyalists) near Clinton on Hwy 403 at what is now Bradshaw's Pond. A friend of Dodd's, John Thomson, was killed in this battle.

   After the Revolution, Captain Dodd represented Sampson County in the General Assembly in 1785, 1786, and 1787. He was a member of the Convention, which met in Hillsboro in 1788 to consider the ratification of the Federal Constitution.  He voted with the majority against ratification. In 1785,

   Dodd served on the board of trustees of Grove Academy in Kenansville. In 1787, he was appointed to the rank of Major in the North Carolina Militia.

   In 1788, the legislature passed an act to create the town of Lisburn, to be located in south Sampson near where Six Runs and Great Coharie Creek form Black River (in the vicinity of where today Lisbon Bridge Road intersects with Hwy 903.)  The town was laid out and Dodd was one of the first commissioners.  He then sold his plantation near Turkey to George Morisey who had married Mrs. Jane Kenan Love. Captain Dodd lived at Lisburn until his death in 1813.  He was buried at Beulah Baptist Church, on Ten Mile Swamp, near his old home north of Turkey.  Today you’ll find Dodd’s grave and headstone resting beneath a large, old oak tree in the churchyard.  

   When the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad was built 1836-1840, Lisburn began to decline and nothing remains there today.

   David and Elizabeth Dodd had three living children at the time in which he made his will in 1813. They were: Willie, Nancy who married John Treadwell, and Elizabeth who married a Mr. Spell. He left 14 slaves, a mill and a tar kiln. Captain Dodd has a number of descendants in North Carolina. The late Mrs. Nellie Treadwell Parker of Clinton and the late Mrs. Pearl Murphy Wright (wife of Robert H. Wright, first president of East Carolina University) were among the descendants.

* Reprinted with permission of the Mount Olive Tribune

This map shows where David Dodd’s property was when he moved to Lisburn on the river at Lisbon Bridge near present day Ingold. He and his family are believed to be buried on this property.

This is the headstone for David Dodd at old Beulah Church on Ten Mile Swamp. Claude Moore had the stone put there as a memorial for the Revolutionary War hero.

This is Claude Moore’s application for a headstone, dated January 1938.