Hello. Thanks for your suggestions

Q: Have you checked local newspapers to determine if any of the Knight's posted notices that Thomas and his wife escaped?
A: Yes. Old newspapers for this county are extremely limited.

Q: Do you have timeframe in which they escaped?
A: No. Not at all.

Q: Did Thomas serve in the Civil War in a military or civilian capacity?
A: I don't know and don't have any leads. I've searched all the available data bases (including the online colored troops listings) and found no good leads.

Q: Was he too young or too old to serve?
A: Not sure.

Q: If too old, did he have sons who served during the war?
A: None of his sons served in the war. I can find no information on Thomas Knight's North Carolina family. I've dug and dug through NC resources for Edgecombe and have found virtually nothing.

Q: Or, if you know of any of Thomas' male siblings who might have served during the war, they too could have pensions that supply some information.
A: He has no siblings that anyone knows of.

Q: Have you checked the Freedmen's Bureau records for Mississippi and North Carolina?
A: Yes, exhaustively. Still nothing.

Q: Also, since you have placed Thomas at Newt's plantation, what records have you found to support this?
A: Therein lies the first problem. History has it that Newt Knight never owned any slaves or a plantation. Newt's history is so sensational, there's barely any info on slaves in Jones Co., except for Rachel (Newt's black wife) and the 1860 slave schedule. I have combed trhough abstracts that list a few slave names, but have not run across a Tom/ Thomas or Cora.

Q: Have you been able to document that Thomas was indeed a resident of Newt's plantation, or do you merely have oral history?
A: Unfortunately all I have is the oral history.

Q: Have you checked probate or estate records to determine who enslaved Thomas or his wife?
A: I tried operating on the hypothesis that they were actually slaves in NC and again found no promising leads. I found no leads in MS and none in NC

Q: Do any of the white Knight family records identify either Thomas or his wife? Is it possible that Newt may have hired them?
A: I thought of this as well and couldn't find much. I even constructed a family tree for white Knights in both MS and NC, tracking who inherited which slaves (info gathered from deeds, probate/ estate records/ slave schedules/ etc.)

Thanks for your help. The original post is fairly old. I had run into so many dead ends with this line of research I decided to put it to rest, at least for now.