The Manley family was one of the largest free African American families in Hertford, Halifax and Northampton counties, North Carolina, with 46 people counted as “other free” in 1800 and over 100 “free colored” in 1820. They descend from Gabriel Manly and Dinah Webb, mixed-race children of white women by “Negro” slaves in Northampton County, Virginia. Gabriel and Dinah were in Norfolk County, Virginia, by the 1740s and bought land in what was then Bertie County and is now Hertford County by the 1750s. Their children can be determined from the early Bertie tax lists but later generations cannot be determined with certainty because Hertford is a burned record county. Cullen was a fairly common first name in that area: Cullen Artis, Cullen Bass, Cullen Peters, and a Cullen Pollock was a tax commisioner in Bertie/ Hertford County.
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