Trip to Wilmington July 2025

Mary and I have planned a trip to Wilmington NC for this coming week.  We decided to stop in Greensboro, NC Tuesday night.  Hannah and Rachel had suggested that we visit Peggy Shepherd Wednesday afternoon at 2:00.  We were unable to book a room in the inn that Rachel had suggested for Tuesday night.  Rooms were only available Wednesday and Thursday nights.  We believe that we will be able to drive from Greensboro to Peggy's home by 1PM.  

So in talking about what we will do in Greensboro, I think our first picks are Top Golf and Golf Galaxy.  But I hope to find a few minutes to stop at the New Garden Monthly Meeting as well as the adjacent cemetery.  And perhaps the Revolutionary battlefield....Everything is quite close and we don't have to stop at the historical sites for long....but I wanted a few photos to show to the kids.  And a map or two.

Directions from Military Park to New Garden Monthly Meeting

I did not end up using any of the information below, but I am not going to erase it.  Instead I will explain what I had in mind when I chose the photos.  The reformation was started by Martin Luther when he nailed his 95 thesis to the door of the church:

Painting of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Thesis to the Door in October 1517

Then I planned to talk about the fact that as the Revolutionary War loomed in the future of the 13 colonies, the Quakers of Nantucket worried about their safety.  They did not believe in War and did not want to fight.  The Whaling industry was declining.  Many of the Nantucket families decided to move to North Carolina in the area that became Guilford County in 1771.  There were many Quakers living in the area.  Almost certainly the group took a ship from Nantucket to the area of the Albemarle Sound in North Carolina.  There were already Quakers in that area who were part of Perquimans, Little River, and Pasquotank Monthly Meetings.  These Quaker families would have helped the newcomers with the move to Guilford County.  

After a bit of deliberation, I decided the thing that would be of most interest to our group would be to visit New Garden Monthly Meeting and the cemetery that adjoins the church and our small group agreed to the plan.  I have a map of early Guilford County that shows land ownership, but I am away from home this week and can not pull it out to describe how close to the New Garden Monthly Meeting Francis Worth lived.  He is not listed as having been buried in the New garden cemetery, but I feel sure he is.  Early Quakers did not believe in headstones as they felt they were vain.  However, many of the Nantucket Quakers did indeed have stones, so it is hard to say for absolute certainty.  But here are some of the photos that we took:

This stone would have been placed later than Francis' death.  You can tell that the stone below is much older than the Worth stone.

Francis Worth's wife was a Gardner,  I believe she may have died before the move to North Carolina but the John Gardner on the above stone probably shared an ancestor with Mary Gardner Worth.  And in the below photo Rachel was likely a Nantucket descendant as she married a man with Starbuck surname.  Again Mary the wife of Francis Worth had a Starbuck grandmother.

But I was quite excited to find the below stone:

William Hunt's son, John is likely the man who was the next door neighbor to Francis Worth (across the road) and accompanied Silas Wooten to   William Hunt was born in 1733.....Francis Worth was born in 1735.  If the John Hunt who was a neighbor to Francis Worth was indeed the son of William Hunt, he may have inherited his land from his father....I need to look at the map.

http://marshamoses.blogspot.com/2014/01/silas-wooten-john-hunt-isaac-williamson.html

The lady that I talked to in the church explained that the original church is no longer standing.  However you can see the outline of the foundation of the original church and there are stones marking the corners.  There is also a marker showing where the school house would have been:  

Photo of my grandsons, Galileo and Jack standing beside the marker for the church.

However the big event for the boys that day was dinner at Top Golf!  Oh, wow.....it never occurred to us that we would need a reservation ahead of time.  This place is rocking!  But we filled in the time until it was our time to hit with dinner.  And the food was actually quite good.  I would recommend this to any family traveling to the beach.  Greensboro is slightly closer to the beach than to Huntington so it is a good distance to drive the first day.  On the way back we drove the entire distance home so we stopped for lunch instead of dinner.  And it was good to get out of the car for two hours and hit golf  balls....and we had learned from the first visit to have lunch delivered to our table on the tee.....so we ate and hit balls for more than an hour.  And best of all Top Golf is absolutely at the exit on I-40  

                                                                                  

     

The place that Rachel had chosen turned out to be a good fit for this trip.  It might be too far south for another visit as it was close to Peggy's house....not Hannah's house.  But Kure beach was very nice as everything was in walking distance....just a limited number of places to eat....they were within walking distance, but the Italian place was very mediocre and the other all three restaurants had waiting lines.  The inn was called the Light House and below is the view from Mary's room's balcony.  You would want to get rooms upstairs to have a balcony.  My room was nice, but no balcony to sit on.