From the records of the Freedmen’s Savings Bank, New Bern branch:

Daniel Shellington, born about 1841, reported that he was born in Wilson County and was brought up “there & on Pungo river 32 mi. from Washington.”

Here is his mother Amelia “Milly” Cherry’s bank registration card. She named a two husbands, the second of which had died in Columbia, South Carolina. She had not seen her parents since she was a child:

And Daniel, wife Maria and children Cora and Isabela in New Bern, Craven County, as reported in the 1870 census. Daniel reported that he worked in a grist mill.

Freedmen’s Bank Records, 1865-1871 [database on-line], http://www.ancestry.com.