Nicodemus KORNEGAY was the seventh of ten children born to Nicodemus KORNEGAY, Sr. and Alice GOODSON. Nick's mother, Alice, died in childbirth or from complications arising from childbirth in February 1904 - four days before his fifth birthday. As his father was a prosperous country storekeeper, Nick probably had a good childhood except for the fact that he grew up without a mother's influence. Very little is known about Nick. I spoke to his younger brother Irving in 1993 and learned some small items about his life. Nick and his brothers Lamb and Irv were around the same age and spent much time together. As young boys, the three KORNEGAY brothers would ride a railroad handcart along the tracks on Sundays for entertainment. Irv related that the boys had a roadster automobile and drove around Duplin County with a fishbox in the back seat. As the boys grew older, they began to notice girls. Nick and one of his brothers went "courting" together and Viola Williams QUINN, who knew him, told me that he had once said that he was going over to the Daniel R. BENNETT house "where girls were girls." Nick must have been impressed with the BENNETT girls as he married Lola Ellen BENNETT June 26, 1924 when he was 25 and she was 23. The moved in with Nick's father at Kornegay Town after the wedding. Lola was unhappy in her father-in-law's house and must have been very intimidated having to cook and clean for such a large group. Nick knew that Lola hated living there and built her a four room wooden house across the road from her mother and father where they moved in 1929 with their two young sons Morris Daniel and William Rufus. Their daughter Alice Evelyn was born in the new house in 1932 and Nick happily crowed that now he could buy little dresses instead of overalls. However, Nick and Lola's happiness was short-lived. In November 1933, Nick was working outside in the rain and caught a chill. The chill turned into influenza which turned into the killer disease pneumonia. A doctor was brought in, but penicillin was years away, and he couldn't cure Nick. The family hired a nurse, Mrs. Mittie Williams, to tend him but she was unable to do more than make him as comfortable as possible. Nick's condition steadily grew worse. Finally he was unable to speak and his tortured efforts to draw breath could be heard all over the house. Inevitably, late in the evening of 16 November 1933, Nick died. He was buried in a wooden coffin on a cold November day in the Kornegay family cemetery within sight of the house in which he was born 34 years before. Circa 1990, Nick's children moved him from the family cemetery to be next to his wife, Lola Ellen BENNETT who had died in 1985. As they dug down into the grave, they found only pieces of his glasses, a few bone fragments, and some metal hardware from his coffin. The Kornegay family land from which he and so many other KORNEGAYs before him had sprung had almost completely taken him back. His pitiful remains were placed in a wooden box and reburied at Pineview Cemetery in Duplin County. In 1926, Nick's father deeded 107.5 acres of land jointly to him and his brothers Lamb and Irving, the brothers taking possession of the property upon the death of their father. Had Nick outlived his father, he would have inherited his share of the property.