Story of Old House

In 1980, culminating years of effort by Judge N. Heyward Clarkson,  the Heyward Foundation transferred ownership of the Old House property and grave site to Jasper County in hopes that they would improve and maintain the site.

By 1994 when I was elected president of the Heyward Family Association,   Jasper County had done little to improve or maintain the Old House site.   Several of us on the Association board approached the Jasper County Council and proposed establishing the Thomas Heyward Site Committee to oversee a restoration of the property. In particular that included extensive feeding and pruning of the avenue of oak trees and restoring the cemetary wall and headstones. I served as the Heyward representative on the Committee. After many months, meetings and work, we achieved what we set out to do. (See article, 1994 NL, scroll to p.7)
Continue reading →

Heyward Genealogy Database – Status and Plans

Status Report

The Heyward genealogy database now includes 2,354 individuals. Most of the 400 individuals added in recent months are in the C-branch. That is to say, they are descendants of Nathaniel Heyward (b. 1766).

An intermediate goal of the database development is to bring all nine branches of the family to Generation 10, where Daniel Heyward (c. 1640 – 1684), the immigrant and progenitor, is defined as Generation 1. His children and their spouses make up Generation 2, his grand-children and their spouses make up Generation 3, etc. The nine branches of the Heyward family–labeled A through I–descend from the immigrant’s great-great grandchildren, in other words, from Generation 5.
Continue reading →

Welcome to the Heyward Family Association website

Heyward Cousins,

We are excited about the endless possibilities on our new family website. For an extended family as large as ours, this is the best way one could imagine to keep family members informed of our history, our Reunions, and newsworthy items within the Heyward confines. To date, the last, mostly complete, family history, was written in 1925! I refer to “Heyward”, or “The Red Book”, as dubbed by family members. It continues to give us a great education on the importance of the Heyward family in North American/South Carolina/U.S. history.
Continue reading →