The Sojourners

An exciting story of the travels of the Russ family, The Sojourners  begins in Normandy around 1050 and tells where they lived, the happenings in the world, and where they worshiped.  Tracing their journey from Normandy to England and then to New England where John Russ, the Immigrant, was a founder of the towns of Newbury and Andover, Massachusetts.

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In the early 1700s members of the Russ family migrated south to Charles Town and lived at Cainhoy Plantation on Daniel Island in South Carolina. Forty-five years later, two Russ brothers journeyed north up the Cape Fear River of North Carolina and settled in Bladen County, North Carolina where a large number of Russ descendants still live.

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The focus of The Sojourners is the life of Edward Jones Russ, great-grandfather of the husband of the author. He joined the War Between the States with four of his brothers. Two brothers died in the war. Edward was severely wounded in the head at the beginning of the war, spending the rest of the war in a hospital in Wilmington.

 

After the war the family returned home to Bladen County, North Carolina where Edward became a faithful Christian. He spent the next forty-five years serving as a Sunday school superintendent also in Columbus, North Carolina and ending up at Buck Creek Baptist Church in Horry County, South Carolina where he is buried.