Dr. Gideon C. Marchant IV(1798-1861)
Married my Paternal 3rd Great Grandmother, Emily Sawyer Dauge (Trotman)
Dr Gideon C Marchant IV, the son of Gideon Marchant III and Mary (maiden name unknown) was born in1798 in Albemarle County Virginia. Gideon came from a long ancestral line of sea captains - men who navigated the waters along the Atlantic coastline and left their mark. By the time Gideon was born the Marchant name was prominently known. Gideon came of age during the time when Albemarle was shifting form maritime trade to plantation agriculture. He straddle both worlds, trained as a physician at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and ultimately became one of the wealthiest landowners in Currituck County.
[Image: University of Pennsylvania Medical School]
Gideon’s life reminds me of a memorable scene from the movie “The Graduate.” He fell head over heels with Margaret Elizabeth Ferebee and asked his beloved to be his wife. Her father, Thomas Cooper Ferebee, a very prominent man in Currituck County North Carolina, was not thrilled with the arraignment and persuaded her to marry a well to do neighbor instead. In May of 1817, nineteen year old Gideon was studying at medical school when he got the gut wrenching news that his fiancée was about to marry someone else. He raced home, buying and exhausting five horses on the way from Philadelphia to the “Culong”, the Ferebee Plantation in Currituck. When he arrived the wedding guests were just starting to arrive. Gideon asked one of Ferebee’s enslaved persons to tell his fiancée he had come for her. Margaret escaped out the back door, joined Gideon atop his gallant steed, and rode away to get married, leaving the bridegroom and the guests in shock. Unfortunately, their happiness was short lived. She died in 1823 without any children.
[Photo: Dustin Hoffman and Katherine Ross from the 1967 movie the Graduate]
Five years later in 1829, Gideon married the widow Emily Dauge Trotman. Emily was the daughter of General Peter Dauge and Margaret Sawyer Lamb. Together Gideon and Emily built a plantation complex nestled in over 700 acres of land known as Indiantown Plantation on a road bearing the same name. It was a village with twenty or more buildings connected with brick walkways. The 1860 Currituck County census lists his real estate at $30,000 and his personal estate at $50,000, making him one of the wealthiest landowners in the county.
Image: [AI generated image of the Indiantown Plantation in its glory days]
Gideon and Emily’s first child, Archann Dauge was born in 1834. She married Durant Hall Tillitt, my 2nd great grandfather. Their story is told in another section.
Gideon and Emily’s second child, Elizabeth Ferebee, was born in 1838. She married Lucien Douglass Stark, a lawyer, member of the House of Representatives and colonel in the civil war. She gave birth to several daughters and died young at the age of 24 in 1862.
Image: [Lucien Douglass Stark, husband of Elizabeth Ferebee Marchant]
Gideon died in 1861 followed shortly after by his wife. Their headstone reads: after having been married for more than 30 years in life – were separated in death but by the brief space of three days.” After their deaths, the civil war spilled onto their property and their home and all of the buildings were burned down. In the backyard are buried Native Americans from colonial times as well as civil war soldiers. Today. Gideons’ medical chest is in the Museum of Albemarle in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.
Image: [Headstone of Gideon and Emily Marchant.]
