Tripp, Araminta Guilford, 1833-1897.

The Tripp family appears to have settled in eastern North Carolina in the early 1700s. William Henry and Araminta Guilford Tripp, who married in 1853, farmed at Mount Hope farm on the Pamlico River near Durham's Creek (sometimes called New Durham's Creek) in Beaufort County. Corn seems to have been their chief cash crop. They also raised hogs and other animals for their own consumption and to feed a small number of slaves. The Tripps had ten children: Josephus, born 1852; Lavinia, born 1855; Benjamin, born 1857; Rebecca, born 1859; Thomas, born 1861; Grace, born 1865; Eliza, born 1867; Guy, born 1870; Edwin, born 1873; and Mary, born 1877.

William served in the North Carolina legislature during the 1850s and also with the North Carolina militia. He volunteered for military service in September, 1861, and was commissioned a captain in the Confederate Army. He commanded Company B (Artillery) of the 40th North Carolina Regiment. William and his men were stationed at Fort Fisher, which guarded the vital port at Wilmington, April 1862-January 1864; at Fort Holmes on Smith Island, where William commanded the entire seaward side of the island, February 1864-January 1865; and, for a short time in early 1865, at Fort Anderson on the Cape Fear River. From Fort Holmes, they journeyed down the coast to help in the defense of Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia. William resigned his commission in late January 1865, his letter of resignation stating that he had served since September 1861, was now 45 years of age, and had a large family with no white male above the age of eleven. (William owned or employed from ten to fifteen adult slaves, but his ownership is uncertain.)

While William was in the army, Araminta supervised the farm. Araminta's role was a point of anxiety for both William and herself--it seems that she was unhappy with the work and frustrated by her inexperience. William, for his part, sent detailed instructions to her on how to manage farm business. Both of them considered the arrangement to be a necessary but very unpleasant response to wartime conditions.

After the war, William returned to Durham's Creek. His last employment seems to have been as an enumerator for the 1880 United States census. He died in 1881. Araminta carried on alone for another sixteen years, dying in 1897.

From the guide to the William Henry Tripp and Araminta Guilford Tripp Papers, 1801-1910, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.)