Hamilton family.

Thomas Ruffin (1787-1870), a lawyer who became chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, settled in Rockingham County in 1807. He was married to Anne Kirkland in 1809 and settled in Hillsborough, where her family's home, Ayr Mount, was located. Ruffin also became a leading planter who operated two plantations--one in Rockingham County and the Hermitage in Alamance County. Ruffin's oldest daughter, Catherine, married Joseph Blount Gregoire Roulhac (1795-1856), a merchant in Raleigh who frequently traveled to the Northeast and Middle Atlantic states on business. Catherine and Joseph had seven children, one of whom, Frances Gray, married Daniel Heyward Hamilton, Jr. (b. 1838), a Confederate soldier during the Civil War who owned a naval stores business in Madison County, Florida, in 1865-1866.