5 t
If
JOH N H. WHEELER.
Jjorn, Hertford Co., No. Ca. Aug. 2d. 1802. Died, Washington, D. C Dec. 7th. 1S82.
A. M. Univ. of No. Ca. 1826; State Treasurer, 1845. U. S. Envoy to Nicaragua, 1853.
Author Hist, of No. Ca. and of Reminiscences of Eminent North Carolinians.
REMINISCENCES AND MEMOIRS
NORTH CAROLINA
AND
EMINENT NDRTH CAROLINIANS,
John H. Wheeler,
AUTHOR OF THE HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA, AND MEMBER OF THE HISTORICAL
SOCIETIES OF NORTH CAROLINA, VIRGINIA, GEORGIA,
AND PENNSYLVANIA.
" T/s well that a State should often he reminded of her great citizens."
COLUMBUS, OHIO:
COt-UMBUS PRINTING \A^ O R K S ,
1884
.55
^6
TO
HON. KEMP P. BATTLE, LL. D..
President of the University of North Carolina,
as some evidence of
PERSONAL REGARD OF THE AUTHOR, AND DEVOTION TO THE FAME
AND HONOR OF THEIK NATIVE STATE,
THIS WORK IS DEDICATED.
It is well known to you that your venerated father encouraged tlie preparation and publication of this work. His letters to the author prove this. Rut he died before it was completed. Lest the same inevitable event should occur to the author now beyond the allotted period of human life, these Reminiscences and Mem- ories, the labor and research of a life, are now given as a grateful legacy to his kind and generous countrymen, who will admire the generous traits exhibited, and imitate the noble examples of their forefathers.
PRKFACB.
Washington City, No. 28, Grant Place, \ June 10, 1878. / To Hon. William H. Battle, L.L.D., Chapd Hill: Mv Esteemed Sir — Your recent letter as to "The Address on the Karly Times and Men of Albemarle," has been received. For the kind opinion, that ' ' the people of the State and es- pecially those of the Albemarle County, owe a debt of gratitude for this and other contributions to [heir iiistury, ' I sintcreiy liiiiiik. yuu.
Your letter further adds, that you ' ' have seen in the Raleigh Obseiva, a handsome tribute to the value and usefulness of my History of North Carolina, expressing a wish for an early publica- tion of a second edition , uniting yourself in a similar request.
Like expressions have been received from many respectable sources.
Recently, The Netvs of Raleigh, The Demo- crat of Charlotte, and other papers call for the publication of the "Reminiscences of Eminent North Carolinians," and appeal to her sons for contributions "to the Grand Old History of North Carolina."
It is hoped and believed this call will be heard and heeded.
While Virginia on one side and South Caro- lina on the other, have presented to the world the glowing record of the patriotism, valor and virtues of their sons, North Carolina equally rich
or richer in such reminiscences; and with traits of virtue, and honor, and sacrifices to patriotism, deserving of record, allows this record to be ob- scured by time, and to
"Waste its fragrance on the desert air."
It has been truly said that no State of our Republic, has, from the earliest period of its existence, shown a more determined spirit of in- dependence, and a more constant and firm resist- ance ■ • to every form of oppression of the rights of man " than North Carolina. This is evinced on every page of her history, and exhibited on the battle field, and in the exploits of individual prowess. This patriotic spirit has been accom- panied by noble traits of individual character ; as integrity of purpose, a straightforvvardness'o intention, and by simplicity and modesty in demeanor.
It was on the shores of North Carolina that the English first landed on this continent. It has been the refuge of the down-trodden, the op- pressed and persecuted of every nation, and here they found that freedom denied to them in the old world — with gentle manners and resolute hearts, their whole history exhibits a firm devo- tion to liberty, a keen perception of right and a ready and determined resistance to wrong. For this and this only, was life desirable to then;, and for this they were willing to die.
The gall.'.nt patron, who first sent a colon)' to
(6)
WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
our shores was the victim of tyranny and op- pression. Her first Governor was .sacrificed in cicicnce of popular rights. Such seed could but produce goodly fruits. The character of this people was graphically described by one of the early Colonial Governors, as ' ' being insolent and rebellious * * * impatient of all tyr- anny and ready to resist oppression in every form."
An early historian has recorded our people, as being "gentle in their manners, advocates of freedom ; jealous of their rulers, impatient, rest- less, and turbulent when ruled by any other government than their own ; and under that and that only were they .satisfied. "
It was in the natural course of events and "the
inexorable logic of circumstances" that the sturdy
men of the age were ever ready to defend the
cau.se of right ; and in defense of liberty to pour
out their life blood, as at Alamance ; on the Cape
Fear, to beard the minions of power, and cause their
oppressor to leave the State and seek refuge
>;i -vhefe, and that the p • of Mecklenburgh
• ince of every othci should thunder to
!.- -rid theeternal princij': s of Independence
and Liberty.
The acts and characteristics of these illu.strious men, and of their descendants, we wish to preserve.
We enter upon this "labor of love " with
.inestness and pleasure. "J.' >.ught"
•■-s ,x ica.-ricd writer, on a sin: ; " that
J rac workint^, for our.selves alone, nor for those.
now iivmg. "Let us rcTicn^^er t- *■ *hni;-,p.-ir^;
yet unborn will respect and bless the patient and
pious hands, that have rescued from oblivion
these precious memorials."
The Memories of the last fifty years or more, cover an interesting period of our history.
We shall leave the history of the earlier events to some faithful historian, and be it our task to take up the biographies of the leading men who have done " the State some service" with remi- niscences of their times and give the biography
and genealogy of each, as far as attainable. Bi- ography presents a more minute and accurate view of the lights and shadows of character, than general history. One is general, and the individual is a mere accessory ; the other is mi- nute, and directed to a single object. We often have a clearer idea of any event, when the mo- tives and the character of the chief actors are minutely described. We have in the " Life of Washington," by Marshal, the best history of the American Revolution. As to our genealogy, this is the first attempt to present the record of families in our State.
This untried path involved much research and labor. It is hoped it will be acceptable, and prove useful. We are far behind the age, on this subject. In England, Burke's great work (The Genealogical and Heraldric Dictionary of the British Empire) is a hand-book in every well appointed library.
In New England, ' ' Whitmore's American Genealogy" is valuable; the Genealogical So- ciety of Massachusetts is in full vigor, sustaining a (Quarterly Magaznie. Every locality and fam- ily in that section have preserved and published such materials ; these are commemorated by annual domestic gatherings ; thus strengthening the ties of affection and refreshing the memories of the past. In many cases genealogy is valu- able in preserving property to the true owners of estates, and the ties of kindred that otherw/se would be forever buried, and broken.
Some, with phlegmatic indifference may ridicule th-'5 atter,M>t ; exhibiting a supreme contempt for such vanity, as they call it ; but surely no one with a discreet mind and a sound heart can be in- sensible to the laudable feeling of having de- scended from an honest and virtuous ancestry, and having industrious and intelligent connec- tions of unsullied reputation. Such a thought instils a hatred of laziness and vice, and stimu- lates activity and virtue.
Such is a grateful oblation to departed worth. Not only is this a duty discharged to the dead.
PREFACE.
(7)
but a moral benefit may result to the living. It acts as an incentive to others, while they admire his services and brilliant career, to emulate his patriotic example.
"Oh, who shall lightly s.iy that Fame Is nothing but an empty name, While in that name there is a charm The nerves to brace, the heart to warm, When, thinking on the mighty dead, The youth shall rouse from slothful bed, And vow with uplifted hand and heart Like him to act a noble part."
Let US all cherish the recollection of talents, services, and virtues, of departed worth, and such faults as arc inseparable from our nature, be buried in the grave with the relics of fallen humanity.
Some pains have been taken with the table of contents and the preparation of the Index.
Mr. Stevens, in his "Catalogue of his English Library," says, correctly: " If you are troubled with a pride of accuracy, and would have it completely taken out of you, attempt to make an Index or Catalogue."
Dr. Allibone prints in his valuable Dictionary of Authors (I., 85), extracts from a number of the MoHt/tlj'RrL'in.v,\\\\\c\\ is well worthy r)f quota- tion here : ' 'The compilation of an index is one of those labors for which the public are rarely so forward to express their gratitude, as they ought to be. The value of a thing is best known by the want of it. We have often experienced great inconvenience for want of a good index to
many books. There is far more scope for the exercise of judgment and ability in compiling an index than commonly supposed. Mr. Oldys expresses a similar sentiment in his Notes and Queries (XI., 309): "The labour and patience; the judgment and penetration, required to make a good index, is only known to those who have gone through the most painful and least praised part of a publication.
Lord Campbell proposed in the English Par- liament (Wheatley on " What is an Index?" p. 27) that any author who published a book without an Index, should be deprived of the benefits of the copyright act. " Mr. Hinney of Philadelphia held the same views and Carlylc denounces the putting forth of books without a good Index, with great severity.
The History of Tennessee, by Dr. Ram.say, full of research and philosophy, fails in this re- spect. A book with no index is like a ship on the ocean without compass, or rudder.
In the following pages doubtless many worthy characters may have escaped notice — for the field is " so large and full of goodly prospects. " Nor would we if we could, exhaust this fair field ; but like Boaz, leave some rich sheaves for other and more skillful reapers in this bountiful harvest.
To you, my dear sir, who have so kindly and repeatedly encouraged these labors, I respect- fully commend them and subscribe myself Very sincerely yours,
Jno. H. Wheeler.
TABLE OF CONTENTS,
Dedication.— Preface.— North Carolina in the Colonial Period.— Memoir of the Author.
CHAPTER I.— ALAMANCE COUNTY.
Regulation Troubles. Oppressions and frauds of the officers of the Crown ; causes and conseiiuences. Sketch of Judge Ruffin, compared to Thomas Jefferson. Colonel Thomas M. Holt.
CHAPTER n.— ANSON COUNTY.
Sympathy with the Regulators, as to unlawful taxation— 1 768 ; copy of the oath taken ; resolutions that the Sheriffs and Magistrates should be elected by the people, Letter to Governor Martin. Character of James Cotten, a tory. Sketch of Judge Spencer ; his singular death. Sketch of Judge Thomas S. Ashe, now one of the Judges of the Supreme Court.
CHAPTER HL-BEAUFORT COUNTY.
Character of the nobleman for whom it is named ; commissioned the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of North Carolina. Freemasonry in North Carolina ; it saves the life of an officer in battle. Jeffer- son's opinion of Washington. Sketch of the Blounts of Beaufort. Hon. C. C. Cambreling, long a Member of Congress from New York, a native of Beaufort. Sketch of J. J. Guthrie, drowned off Cape Hatteras. Hatteras described by Joseph W. Holden, and in the National Gazette of Philadelphia, in 1792. Sketch of Edward Stanley; a letter of Judge Badger, his relative, as to his course. Sketch of Richard S. Donnell ; of Judge Rodman, who agrees with Hooker in his opinion ol the law. James Cook, C. S N. Adventurous life of Charles F. Taylor, a native of this section ; participates in the war in Nicaragua ; its stirring events, facts never before pubhshed; the policy of Marcey an error; sad fate of Walker; tragic death of Herndon, with whom another North Carolinian (John V. Dobbin) was drowned. Central America described- The Minister of the United States is recieved. Revolution. Walker captures Virgin Bay, Grenada, and puts the Government to flight. Sketch of Walker and his adventurous Hfe. Scenes at the Capital ; the U. S. Min- ister in jeopardy. The General Commander-in-Chief and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs executed by the invading forces. Letters between the General-in-Chief and the American Minister ; the last letter of Walker.
(lo) WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
CHAPTER IV.— BERTIE COUNTY.
Sketch of Whitmil Hill, a Member of the Provincial and Continental Congresses ; of David Stone, Judge of Superior Courts, Governor of the State and U. S. Senator. Genealogy of the family. Sketches of George Outlaw; of Willie Blount, Governor of Tennessee; of David Outlaw; of P. H. Winston; of James W. Clark. Genealogy of the Clark family.
CHAPTER v.- BLADEN COUNTY.
Battleof Elizabethtown, 1791; Cross Creek. Characterand services of James and Denny Porterfield. Sketch of John Owen, Governor of the State; of James J. McKay; of Thomas D. McDonald.
CHAPTER VL— BRUNSWICK COUNTY
Early history and character of its people, opposed to oppression, drove the Royal Governor, [Mar- tin] from the Country, July 10, 1775, seized the Stamp Master and destroyed the stamps sent to him from England; copy of the pledge given by the Stamp Master [William Houston]. Indignation of the people, and letter of Ashe, Lloyd and Lillington, offering lo jjrotect the Governor's person Sketch of General Robert Howe, his character as described by Governor Martin, who denounced him in a royal proclamation ; appointed Colonel of the zd Regiment of North Carolina troops in the Continental establishment ; marches to Virginia and drives the Royal Governor, Lord Dunmore, from that Province. Sketch of Cornelius Har- nett, his life and services ; his character described by Governor Burrington, the Royal Governor ; denounced by Governor Martin for the destruction of Fort Johnston. General John A. Lillington's Revolutionary services. The Moore family of Brunswick, Maurice Moore, Roger Moore and Nathaniel Moore, the early settlers of the Cape Fear region. Sketch of Judge Maurice Moore ; of General James Moore; of Judge Alfred Moore, his legal character described. Life and services of Benjamin Smith.
CHAPTER VII.— BUNCOMBE COUNTY.
Character and services of Colonel Edward Buncombe, after whom this County is named. Sketch of David L. Swain, his life, services and death ; Sketches of Professors Mitchell and Phillips of the University of North Carolina; of Samuel F. Phillips. Sketch of Zebulon B. Vance ; extracts from a work on the Vanre family, printed at Cork, Ireland, showing the relationship of General Andrew Jackson to the Vances ; letter to General Kilpatrick from Governor Z. B. Vance. Sketch of Robert B. Vance ; of James L. Henry, late one of the Judges of the Superior Court; of Augustus S. Merrimon, late Judge and U. S. Senator; of Thomas L. Clingman, late U. S. Senator, his life and services; duel with William L. Yancey; of John L. Bailey, late Judge of the Superior Court ; of Robert M. Furman ; of Thomas D. Johnston.
CHAPTER VIII.— BURKE COUNTY. Life, character and services of Waightstill Avery. Genealogy of the Averys. The McDowell family ; its genealogy and services in the Revolution. The Carson family. Life and services of John Car- son, the founder of the family. Sketches of Samuel P. Carson ; of Israel Pickens; of David Newland ; of Todd R. Caldwell; of James William Wilson.
CHAPTER IX.— CABARRUS, CALDWELL AND CAMDEN COUNTIES.
Life, character and services of Reverend John Robinson, D. D., and of Reverend Hezekiah J. Balch D.D.; copy of the tomb-stone of the latter. The Phifer family, and their genealogy. The Barringcr
TABLE OF CONTENTS. (n)
family, and their genealogy. Sketch of Nathaniel Alexander, a member of Congress and Governor of the State. Sketches of Dr. Charles Harris ; Robert S. Young ; of Daniel Coleman, of Cabarrus County ; of Samuel F. Patterson; of James C. Harper; of Clinton A. Cilley and of George Nathaniel Folk of Cald- well County.
CHAPTER X.— CARTERET COUNTY. '^'
First land sighted by the English, 1584; the lost Colony of Governor White. Indian wars with the Cores and Tuscaroras ; John Lawson, the first historian, murdered by them. Fort Hyde. Battle at Beau- fort. Sketch of the life and services of Captian Otway Burns.
CHAPTER XI —CASWELL COUNTY.
Life, character and services of Richard Caswell, the first Governor of the State under the Constitu- tion. Genealogy of the family. Sketches of Bardett Yancey ; of Romulus M. Saunders ; of Robert and Marmaduke Williams; of Calvin Graves; of Bedford Brown; of Jacob Thompson, Secretary of Interior in 1857, and Member of Congress from Mississippi; all natives of Caswell County. John Kerr, his sufferings at the hands of political opponents, and his release. The mysterious murder of John W. Stevens ; his char- acter.
CHAPTER XII.— CHATHAM COUNTY.
The life and bloody career, in the Revolution, of David Fanning. Sketch of Charles Manly, Gover- nor in 1848 ; of Abram Rencher ; of John Manning.
CHAPTER XIII.— CHOWAN COUNTY. /
Governor Eden, (for whom the County-lown is named); sketch of him and his alleged intimacy with the noted pirate, Edward Teach commonly called " Black Beard" ; the bloody deeds of this marauder ; his wicked life and bloody end. The principles and character of the early inhabitants of Chowan. The pro- ceedings of the Committee of Safety in 1775; the names of the members. The Vestry of St. Paul's Church, and the patriotic resolves of the ladies of Edenton. Life, services and character of Samuel John- ston ; the opinion of the Royal Governor (Martin) of him, who removed him from the office of Deputy Nav- al Officer, and Mr. Johnston's reply to the Governor ; member of the Provincial Congress in 1775, and of the Continental Congress in 17S0 ; elected Governor in 1787 ; U. S. Senator in 1789 ; in 1800 Judge of the Superior Court. A devoted advocate of freemasonry. Genealogy of the Johnston family. The title of the Marquis of Annandale supposed to belong to them. Sketch of Joseph Hewes, signer of the Declaration of Independence ; of Hugh Williamson, a member of the Colonial and Continental Congresses ; and of the U. S. ; author of a history of North Carolina ; of Stephen Cabarrus, long Speaker of the House of Commons ; of Charles Johnson; of Thomas Benbury. Of James Iredell, appointed Judge of Supreme Court of the U. S. by General Washington ; of his son, James Iredell Jr., Speaker of the House in 1817 ; Judge of the Superior Court 1819; Governor of the State 1821 ; U. S. Senator in 1S27, succeeding Mr, Macon. In the war of i8i2, was Captain, with Gavin Hogg as one of his Lieutenants. Sketch of Gavin Hogg- Life and services of Agustus Moore, one of the Judges of the Superior Court ; sketch of his son, William A.Moore; of Governor William Allen, of Ohio, member of Congress in 1833 ; Senator in 1837-49, and Governor of Ohio in 1874, a native of Edenton. An amusing incident connected with the names of General Scott, Dr. Warren, Major Gilliam and others.
(i2) WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
CHAPTER XIV,— CRAVEN COUNTY.
Its early history ; the Palatines; De Graaffenreidt ; Governor Dobbs; Tryon's palace ; his clock, John Hawks, architect. "The cause of Boston, the cause of all ! " Committee of Safety in 1775 of Chow- an County. Names of its members. Sketch of Francois Xavier Martin, a historian of the State ; of the Blount family; of Abner Nash, his character as given by Governor Martin; a member of Congress, 1776; first Speaker of the Assembly; Governor in 1779; member of Congress 1781. Life, service and death of Richard Dobbs Spaight. Duels that have been fought in North Carolina. Sketch of John Stanley ; of William Gaston ; of John R. Donnel ; of John Sitgreaves ; of John N. Bryan ; of Edward Graham; of Francis L. Hawks ; of George E Badger ; of Matthias E. Manley ; of Charles R. Thomas ; of Judge Sey mour ; of William J. Clarke, and his talented wife, Mary Bayard Clarke, and his son William E. Clarke.
CHAPTER XV.— CUMBERLAND COUNTY. V
The Scotch heroine. Flora MacDonald, once lived in this County. Sketch of her life and character ;
of Farquard Campbell, Governor Martin's opinion of Kim; of William Barry Grove; of John Louis Taylor,
late Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina. Judicial System of the State as it existed from
1798101804. Sketch of Henry Potter, Judge U. S. District Court ; of John D. Toomer; of Louis
D.Henery; of Robert Strange; of James C. Dobbin; of Warren Winslow; of Duncan K. MacRae ; of Mrs.
Miller; of Henry W. Hilliard of Georgia, a native of Cumberland ; of W. C. Troy.
CHAPTER XVI.— CURRITUCK COUNTY.
Sketch of Henry M. Shaw; of Emerson Etheridge, of Tenn., native of Currituck ; of Thomas J. Jarvis, Governor of North Carolina, 1882.
CHAPTER XVII.- DAVIDSON, DUPLIN, DAVIE, and EDGECOMBE COUNTIES.
Sketch of James M. Leach of Davidson ; of James Gillaspie ; of Thomas and O. Kenan ; of Charles Hooks of Duplin Co. Sketch of Henry Irwin, a Revolutionary hero ; of Jonas Johnston ; of John Hay- wood; genealogy of the Haywood family. Sketch of Henry T. Clark, Governor of North Carolina. The Battle Family, and their genealogy, including Judge Wm. H. Battle, and his son, Kemp P. Batde. Sketch of Duncan L. Clark, of U. S. Army; of Wm. D.Pender; of R. R. Bridgers; of Charles Price of Davie; of John B. Hussey of Davie.
CHAPTER XVIIL— FORSYTHE COUNTY.
Sketch of Col, Benj. Forsythe; of Joseph Winston ; of Israel G. Lash. The History of the Moravians.
CHAPTER XIX.— FRANKLIN COUNTY.
Lynch Law, origin of the term. Services nd Sufferings of General Thomas Person ; Sketch of Hon. J. J. Davis.
CHAPTER XX.— GASTON, GATES, AND GRANVILLE COUNTIES-
Sketch of Rev. Humphrey Hunter; Major Wm. Chronicle ; of Rev. R H. Morrison of Gaston County; of William Paul Roberts, of Gates ; of John Penn of Granville, one of the Signers of the Declaration of
TABLE OF CONTENTS. (i i) The last name in Chatham County should be Moreing.
(12) Chapter XVII, read Duncan L. Clinch, Jiot Clark.
(13) Chapter XXII, place a semicolon after the name "William Polk."
(the following are to take the place of the chapters .mentioned.) CHAPTERS XXXIJl AND XXXIV.— HERTFORD AND HYDE COUNTIES. The Murfree Family. Sketch of General Thomas Wynns ; of the Cotten Family; of Rev. Matthias Brickie; of Dr. Goodwin C. Moore ; of John Brown; Sketch of Kenneth Rayner ; of Willian N. H. Smith; Tristram Capehart ; of CuUen Capehart and of Dr. Wm. Anthony Armistead; of David A. Barnes; of Jesse J. Veates ; of Richard J. Catling; Gen. Lafayette's visit to North Carohna : The Chowan Female Institute; Insurrection of Slaves; Sketch of David Miller Carter of Hyde Coup.ly. The Wheeler Family referred to.
CHAPTERS XXXV & XXXVL— IREDELL, JOHNSTON, JONES AND LENOIR COUNTIES. Sketch of Hugh Lawson White; ofWm.Sharpe; of Dr. Charles Caldwell; of David F. Caldwell; of Hon. Jose])h P. Caldwell; of Hon. Robert F. Armficld ; of Hon. David M. Furches of Iredell. Revolution- ary proc-edings in Johnston County, in 1768. Sketch of Wm. A. Smith ; of Hon. Nathan Bryan of Jones County, of Hardy B. Croom and of Hon. Wm. D. Mosely of Lenoir County.
CHAPTER XXXVII. —LINCOLN COUNTY. Sketch of Gen. Joseph Graham.— Genealogy of the Grahams. Sketch of Gov. W. A. Graham. Geneal- ogy of the Brevards. The Huguenots. Sketch of Gen. William Davidson ; of Dr. Ephraim Brevard, author of the Declaration of May 20, 1775. The Forney Family ; of Michael Hoke and his son Robert F. (Major Genl. C. S. A.); of John F. Hoke ; of James Houston ; of Dr. Wm. McLean ; of Dr. C. L. Hunter; of Gen. Stephen D. Ramseur ; of Gen. James P. Henderson; of Bartlett Shipp ; Robert H. Burton ; Hon. David Shenck.
Chapter XXXVIII and XXXIX., read McDowell, wo/ McDonald. Chapter XLL, write " I (enry K. Burgwynn" at end of tliis paragraph.
Coauty ; tf tl—
S'^'.-'.' li of Gen. Jcseph Gia.iaui; L-o.mil L':i\ 'ds,in ; of the Forneys; of Mich.ic", M [.ean ; of Dr. C. L. Hunter ; of Viii "^V. Schenck ; of Robert H. Builu..
CHAPTER XXXVIII AXD XXXIX.-
Sktii ii of Tames Lowrie Robinson (Spe.-'H 1 ; ■, jf Silas M
OUNTV
II XX.
TABLE OF CONTENTS. (13)
Independence ; of James and John Williams ; of Robert Burton. The Henderson Family — their genealogy. Sketch of Robert B. Gilliam ; of A. W. Venable ; of M. Himt , of Robert Potter.
CHAPTER XXL— GREENE AND GUILFORD COUNTIES.
Sketch of Gen. Jesse Speight; of Joseph Dixon. Battle of Guilford Court House, March 15, 1781, be- tween General Greene and Lord Cornv.allis. Sketch of Cornwallis ; of Col. Tarleton; of Col. Wilson Webster. Cornwallis'.s letter to his father as to the fall of Webster.
Sketch of Dr. David Caldwell; of Alexander Martin; of Newton Cannon, Governor of Tennessee, a native of Guilford ; of Governor Moorehead ; of George C. Mendenhall ; of Judge John M. Dick, and his son, Judge Robt. P. Dick; of John A. Gilmer; of John H. Dilliard ; of Rev. Calvin H. Wiley; of James J. Scales ; of John H. Staples.
CHAPTER XXIL— HALIFAX COUNTY.
The Jones Family- its genealogy; John Paul Jones adopts this name. Sketch of Wm. R. Davie, a General of the Revolution; of Hutchins G. Burton; of Andrew Joyner ; of John W. Eppes; of William Polk of the Cromwell Family ; of John B. Ashe ; of Willis Alston ; of John Haywood ; of John H. Ea*-^" ; of J. J. Daniel; of John R. J. Daniel; of Junius Daniel; of John Branch; of Lawrence O'B. Branch; of James Grant; of B. F. Moore.
CHAPTERS XXXIII AND XXXIV.— HERTFORD AND HYDE COUNTIES.
The Murfree Family. Sketch of General Thos. Wynns ; of the Wlieeler Family ; of Rev. Matthias Brickie; of Kenneth Rayner; of Godwin C. Moore; of Solon Borland; of Wm. H. H. Smith; of Jesse J. Yeates ; of Richard J. Gatlin. The Chowan Female Institute. Sketch of David Miller Carter ; of Hugh Lawton White of Tenn.; of the Osborne Family — Adlai Osborne, Spruce McCoy Osborne, Edward Jay Osborne, and Judge James W. Osborne; of David F. Caldwell; of Joseph P. Caldwell; of Professor Caldwell; of D. M. Furches; of Robeit F. Armfield.
CHAPTER XXXV AND XXXVI.— IREDELL, JOHNSTON, JONES AND LENOIR COUNTIES.
Revolutionary proceedings in Johnston County, 1768. Sketch of Wm. A. Smith ; of Nathan Bryan of Jones County ; of Hardy B. Croom ; of Wm. D. Mosely.
CHAPTER XXXVII.— LINCOLN COUNTY.
Sketch of Gen. Joseph Graham ; Family Genealogy of the Brevards. Huguenots ; of General William Davidson ; of the Forneys ; of Michael, Robert F. and John T. Hoke ; of James Graham ; of Dr. Wm. McLean; of Dr. C. L. Hunter; of Gen. Stephen D. Ramseur ; or Gen. Jas. P. Henderson ; of Judge Da- vid W. Schenck ; of Robert H. Burton.
CHAPTER XXXVIII AND XXXIX.— MACON AND MARTIN.
Sketch of James Lowrie Robinson (Speaker) ; of Silas McDonald of Macon ; of Asa Biggs; of Jos. J. Martin.
(14) WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
CHAPTER XL.— MECKLENBURG COUNTY.
The Polk Family,— its genealogy ; The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence ; it is denounced by the Royal Governor, Josiah Martin. Sketches of the Members of the Convention ; of Abram Alexander ; of Hezekiah James Balch ; of John Davidson— with genealogy ; of Wm Graham ; of Robert Irwin ; of Wm. Kennon ; of David Reese ; of Adam Craighead ; of Gen. Thomas Polk,— letter of Gen Greene to Gen- eral Polk. " Devil Charley." Sketch of Bishop Polk of Andrew Jackson. Bishops furnished by North Carolina to other States. Susan Spratt nee Barnett, a Revolutionary relic. Sketch of Mrs. Susan Hancock ; of Judge Sam. Lowrie ; of Joseph Wilson; of Wm. J. Alexander ; of Greene W. Caldwell; of D. H. Hill ; The Osborne family, and a graphic sketch of Judge James W. Osborne, from the pen of D. H. Hill ; Judge R. P. Warring.
CHAPTER XLL- MOORE AND NEW HANOVER COUNTIES.
Sketch of A. McNeil; of Archibald McBryde ; of Governor Benjamin Williams ; of Di. George Glass- cock, of Moore County. The Ashe Family,— its genealogy. John Baptista Ashe's controversy with the Royal Governor, and is imprisoned by him. Letter of Burrington, showing his own character and purely. Battle of Briar Creek. Sketch of the Hill family ; of Wm. Hooper ; of Timothy Bloodworth ; of Edward Jones; of Johnson Blakely ; of James Ennes ; of the Davis family; of the Waddell family; of Owen Holmes ; of John Cowan ; of Gov. Dudley ; of Bishop Atkinson ; of Rev. Adam Empie ; of Bishop Green ; of Wm. B. Meares; of Wm. H. Marsteller ; of General Abbot.
CHAPTER XLIL— NORTHAMPTON AND ORANGE COUNTIES.
Sketch of General Allan Jones ; of General Matt. W. Ransom ; of Edmund Fanning ; of Governor Burke, seized by Tories and carried to Wilmington. The Mebanes. Sketch of General Francis Nash ; of Judge Frederick Nash; of Judge Murphy; of Judge Norwood ; of Dr. Wm. Montgomery; of Willie P. Mangum ; of Thomas H. Benton ; of Gen. Geo. B. Anderson ; Memoirs of Chapel Hill ; Sketch of Dr. Charles F. Deems ; Hon. Paul C. Cameron ; Prof. Hubbard ; of Wm. Bingham; of John W. Graham.
CHAPTER XLIIL— PASQUOTANK, PERQUIMANS AND PERSON COUNTIES.
Sketch of John L. Bailey ; of Wm B. Shepard ; of George W. Brooks ; of Gen. James G. Martin ; of John Pool; of Pasquotank; of John Harvey; of J. W. Albertson ; of William H. Bagley, of Perquimans', of Hustavus A. Williamson ; of General Henry Atkinson, U. S. Army ; of Richard Atkinson ; of Judge E. G. Reade ; of John W. Cunningham, of Person County.
CHAPTER XLIV— PITT AND RANDOLPH COUNTIES. Sketch of Dr. Robert Williams ; of General Bryan Grimes, of Pitt ; of Jonathtn Worth, of Pitt ; Colonel Andrew Balfour, his gallant services and tragic end ; Herman Husbands, a leader of the Regulators; Hon. John Long, Member of U. S. Congress.
CHAPTER XLV —RICHMOND AND ROCKINGHAM COUNTIES.
Sketch of A. Dockery ; of A. H. Dockery; of Governor ; Joseph R. Hawley ; of Walter Leake Steele, of Richmond ; of Thomas Settle Sen.— genealogy of the Settles,— of his son Thomas, now Judge in Florida ; of David Settle Reid ; of John H. Dilliard ; of Hamilton Henderson Chalmers, a Judge of the Supreme Supreme Court of Mississippi.
TABLE OF CONTENTS. • (,5)
CHAPTER XLVI.— ROWAN COUNTY.
Documents never before published as to early times in Rowan. Population in 1754; first settlers their
names; Committee of Safety, 1774-76. Sketch of Hugh Montgomery — his decendants. leroic conduct of Mrs Steele. Sketch of General John Steele; of John V. Steele, Governor of New Har. pshire; of Wm. Kennon ; of Griffith Rutherford — his gallant services in the Indian and Revolutionary Wars. Sketch of the Locke family; of Spruce McCoy ; of James Martin ; of George Mumford ; of the Pearsons; of Judge John Stokes; of Charles Fisher, and his son, Colonel Charles F. F'isher, killed at Manasses, Va., and his daughter, Miss C. Fisher, distinguished as an authoress; of Governor John W. Ellis; of Nath. Boyden ; of Burton Craige; of Hamilton C. Jones; of of Francis E. Shober; of John L. Henderson.
CHAPTER XLVH.— ivUTHERFORD, SAMPSON, STOKES AND SURRY COUNTIES.
Sketch of Judge John Paxton; of Felix Walker, author of the world-wide expression "talking for buncombe;" of Colonel Wm. Graham; of Gen. John G. Bynum, and his brother, Judge Wm. P. Bynum; of Judge John Baxter, of Rutherford ; of Gov. Holmes ; of Gen. Tlieo. H. Holmes ; of Wm. R. King. Vice President of U.S. of Col. Benj. Forsythe of Stokes County ; of James Martin, his Military services in the Revolution, as de- posec to, by himself; of John Martin, of Stokes; of Benjamin Cleaveland, of Surry; Names of the Committee of Safety, of Surry County; Sketch of William Lenoir; of the Williams family; of Jesse Franklin ; ofMeshach Franklin ; of Judge Jesse Franklin Graves.
CHAPTER XLVIII.— TYRRELL AND WAKE COUNTIES.
Edward Buncombe, his Military services and heroic death. The Pettigrews, James and his son Ebenezer, and his gallant grandson J. Johnston Pettigrew ; Sketch of Dr. Edward Ransom ; of Joseph Gales, first Editor of the Raleigh Register; The Press of North Carolina. Sketch of Joseph Gales of Washington, D. C; of Weston R. Gales, of Raleigh ; of Seaton Gales; of Judge Sewall ; of Judge Duncan Cameron; of Edmund B. Freeman; of Dr. Richard H. Lewis. Sketch of William Hill, Sec. of State; of Dr. William G. Hill; of Theophilus Hill; of Mrs. Zimmerman, Poetess; of Andrew Johnson, President of United States; of General Joseph Lane, and of the Lane family ; of Governor W. W. Holden ; of Bishop Ravenscroft ; of Bishop Ives ; of Rev. Dr. Richard S. Macon ; of Bishop Beckwith ; of Octavius Coke ; of Randolph A. Shotwell ; of Don- ald W. Bain.
CHAPTER XLIX.— WARREN COUNTY.
Military services of General Jethro Sumner in the Revolution. The Hawkins family, with its genealogy; Sketch of Dr. James G. Brehon ; of Nathaniel Macon ; of Gov. James Turner ; of Daniel Turner ; of Whar- ton J. Green; of Kemp Plummer ; of Judge Hall; of Judge Edward Hall; of Judge Blake Baker; of Gov. William Miller; of Weldon N. Edwards; of the Bragg family ; State Capitol burned, June, 1831.
CHAPTER XLIX.— WATAUGA, WAYNE, AND WILSON COUNTIES.
Sketch of Daniel Boone ; of John Sevier. The State of Frankland, and its rise, progress, and fall. Sketch of Ezekiel Slocumb; of Col. Thomas Ruffin; of Gov. C. H. Brogden ; of Gov. Montford Stokes, and his de- scendants ; of Henry G. Williams, of Wilson ; Isaac F. Dortch ; of Richard W. Singletary.
/^
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR,
i®Siil iifflH aSMKlili
Of Hertford County, North Carolina.
BORN AUGUST^ 1806, DIED DECEMBER 7, 1882, Bv HON. JOSEl'II S. FOWLER, Ex-Senatok Fkom Tennessee.
" Excgi monumentum tsre perenniiis^ Hetjalique situ pijramidnm nltius ; Quorf non imher edax. non Aqnilo impoteng Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis Annorum series, cl/uga lemporum.'^
— UOR. Cau., XXX.
TJO.M Mooru's "Historical Si'ictches of Ileitford County," wo learn the fol- ^ey lowing: (|] L Among the early citizens of the
ei villiigeof Murfreesboro, in this county,
S was John Wheeler. He was of an ancient 1 family, long seated around New York. In the latter end of tlie 17th century-, under a grant of land from Charles II., Jo.^eph Wheeler emigrated from England, and settled in New- ark, New Jersey. Like William i'enn, he was the son of a gallant naval officer. Sir Francis AVheeler, an English admiral, was his father, and the grant of land from the Crown was in reward for faithful services, lie and his young wife had followed soon after the conqtiest of the New Netherlands by the Duke of York, son of Charles I., afterwards James II.
To them was born, in 1718, their son Ephraira Wheeler, to whom, and his wife Mary, the tirst American John AVheeler was born in the year 1744. John had bestowed upon him the best advantages of educai ion — he was educated as a
physician. When the Revolutionary war came on, he entered the army under General Mont- gomery', and accompanied him in the perilous and ill-fated campaign to Quebec, and was in the battle (December 31, 1775.) in which that gallant officer fell. In Toner's "Reminiscences of the Medical Men of the Revolution" he is prominently mentioned. Aaron Burr served also in this campaign. Dr. Wheeler accom- panied General Greene in his southern cam- paign, and was with him in the hard fought and glorious victory at Eutaw Springs, Sep- tember 8, 1781, and until the close of the war. Pleased with the genial climate of the South, he settled near Murfreesboro and brought his family with liim. llis wife Elizabeth Long- worth, was the neice of Aaron Ogden, after- wards the Governor of New Jersey, and Sen- ator in Congress. Ho lived near Murfreesboro for years, in the practice of his profession, in which he had great skill and much success.
His death occurred on October 14, 1814, and he lies buried in Northampton County, near
WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
Mnrfreesboro. He left several works in man- acript on medical science, which evinced tlie depth of his acquaintance and his devotion to his profession. His son John was born in 1771. In his early youth he was engaged with his cousin, David Longworth, in business as lial)lisher8 and booksellers in New York, Here he attracted, by his attention to business, the notice of Zedekiah Stone, who was then in Now York, and by v.'honi he was induced to remove to Bertie County, North Carolina. Ho was there married to Elizabeth Jordan. January 6th, 1796, and after the death of his triend, Mr. Stone, Murfreesboro became his home. At this place he was engaged in mer- cantile and shipping afiairs until the day of his death. From his enterprise, industry, sagacity, and integrity he attained great suc- cess, and his memory, to this day, is cherished in that section as "the honest merchant." lie was a man of unspotted integrity, so strong that venality and indirection cowered before him. After a long life of industry, usefulness and piety (for he was a consistent member of the Baptist Church for more than forty years) he died, lamented and belovetl, August 7tb, 1832. His family surviving him, consisted of two sons by his first marriage, John H. Wheeler, late Public Treasurer of the State, and Dr. S. Jordan Wheeler, late of Bertie County. By a second wife (Miss Woods) he left one daughter, Julia, the peerless wife of Dr. Godwin C. Moore; and by a third wife, among others. Colonel JuniusB. Wheeler, now Professor of Civil and Military Engineering and the Art of War in the United States Mil- itary Academy at West Point. He is the author of several military works on civil and military engineering, and on the art of war, which have been adopted as text books by the War Department. He has thus written his name in the useful literature of the nation and discharged "that debt," which Lord Coke says, "every man owes to his profession."
Professor Wheeler was born in 1S30; edu- cated in pttrt at the University of North Car- olina, and when only a boy volunteered as a private in Captain William J. Clarke's com- pany in the Mexican war. He was in every battle from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico. At the fiercely contested affair at the Nnvional Puente, one of the lieutenants was killed, and young as he was, he was appointed by the President as the successor, on the repor^ of his commanding otlicer, now on file, that "he had seen young Wheeler under heavy fire, and he had proved to the command that he was made of the stuff of which heroes are made." On his return from Mexico he could have remained as an officer in the army, but he declined on the ground of want of qualification, he there- fore resigned his commission. The President determined to retain him in the service, and he appointed him a cadet at West Point, where he graduated among the first of his class. After serving for several years in the Corps of Engineers in Louisiana, Wisconsin and elsewhere, he was appointed to succeed the late Professor Mahan in the position he now occupies.
Dr. Samuel Jordan Wheeler, brother of the above, w'as born in 1810; was educated at the Hertford Academy, and graduated from Union College, Schenectady; he studied medi- cine with Dr. Nathan Ch:ipman in Philadel- phia, and practiced for years with success. He has been an earnest co-laborer in the cause of education and religion, as the Chowan In- stitute and the Church at Murfreesboro bear witness; he was professor in a college in Mississippi. He recently died in Bertie County, loved and respected for his purity of character. He married Lucinda, daughter of Lewis Bond.
John Hill Wheeler.
The conspicuous services rendered the State of North Carolina, and her eminent citizens, by this accomplished man, will forever pre-
JOHN HILL WHEELER.
serve his nienioij from oblivion. Born in the dawn of the present centnry, ho has been tlie witness of the most remarkable events in the history of the republic. In the connty of Hertford he tirst saw tlie light, August 6, 1806.
lie was prepared for college at Hertford AcadLni}' by Dr. John Otis Fieenian, an emi- nent divine. He was then placed at the Columbian University, Washington, J). C , and graduated in the class of 1826. In the year 1828 he took his degree of Master of Arts in the Universitj' of North Carolina. He studied his profession, tlic law, tinder the direction of Chief Justice Taylor, of Xorth Carolina. He was elected to the Legislature before ho was admitted to the bar. in the3'ear 1827. Then State Legislatures were honored bodies, and secured some of the best talent in the States.
This Legislature containevl manj' eminent and able men, auiong thvui were Judges Gaston, Nash and Bailey, George E. Spri- uell, John M. Morehead, James Iredell, and many more. To win position in such a body was tl e [iromise of a fruitful manhood, in a youth just twenty-one years of age. For an earne. i and aspiring mind, it proved a valua- ble seij lol. Success was not to be hoped for witht>!.t severestuily and thorough preparation. To tu. -ide into revorentiui indifference was notl :.. i-liaracteri.-tic of hi.smind. Independ- ent i ! .is feelings, whilst respecting the ability of Ir' ju'ileagues, he claimed equal rights in the ! } . Conscientious in the execution of the it trust com. ' ' ' r.m ]>y a gen- e'.X' . ..id \jroad— &;->- . he could not
see .litir dignity -©vei'.-^liii.'TTrK'Bd, He sum- mon' : .11 his powers to the v.-ork.and won 1^7 hir;; :i conspicuous and honorable po,sition. So V ••: (lid he perform the task assigned him, that \iu. approving constituents returned him to the 'i.':)uy. In his twenty-fifth year, they nonil.i.ed him for Gviugress, but after a
severely contested ami gallant canvass, he wis defeated by the Hon. William B. Shepard.
In the year 1831, he was appointed Secii'- tary to the Board of Commissioners, under lli" treat}- with France, to adjudicate the claim.-- of American citizens for spoliations under Ihe Berlin and Milan decrees.
In 1836, he was placed by General Jackson in the position of Superintendent of the Branch Mint at Charlotte, but in 1841 shared the political fortune of his friends and parly.
In 1842, he was elected by the Legislature to be Treasurer of the State, in opposition to Major Charles L. Ilinton. After liis term had e.xpiied, he retired to his rural home on thq banks of the Catawba, and, aided by the sug- gestion of his friend, Governor Swain, he be- gan the patriotic labor of writing "Wheeler's Histoiy of North Carolina," on which he was employed for about ten years. How well this duty was performed, will appear from an ex- tract of a letter of General Swain, written not long before his death, now in our possession, in which he says:
"I have been much urged to write a comple- tion of Hawks' History of North Carolina. The on ly response I have ever made is that I am too old, and too poor to venture on such an un- dertaking. Were it ctherwise, in ray opinion another edition of Wheeler's History would be more useful and acceptable than any work I could write."
In this work. Colonel Wheeler sought to col- lect the intere.sting facts that illustrated the history of the State and give them an enduring place. He proposed to preserve, for all time, a faithful record of the illustrious deeds of a noble and patriotic people, who have character- ized their presence in the new world by an intense love of liberty and the most striking individuality. Ti^ey r.-2re. from their presenoo in the wilderness, aself governing"CDrr:;«iuuhy.
No authority was sacred that did not emi- ' nate from themselves. Loyal to the will of the people, they resented indignantly the im-
iv WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
position of any external authority. They re- termined men, tojoin the liberals, and the posi- jected the magnificent plan of government pro- tion held by Colonel Wheeler became one of vided hy the Earl of Shaftesl)ury, though he much peril and responsibility. It soon became summoned the brilliant talents of the illnstri- manifest that neither party couki be relied on ous philosopher, John Locke, for its preparation, for any permanent and .sahitary government. They adopted a plan drawn from their own The following of Walker, though small, was experience and their wants, under the circum- brave, determined and intelligent; their leader stances, which surrounded them. They were very soon resolved, if he had not from the be- the first to repel the aggressions of the British ginning, to give the country an Anglo-Amer- parliament and crown. They well knew the ican government. He thus expected to make rights of freeborn Englishmen and the princi- Central America the -seat of a new and pro- pies of their constitution, and were determined gressive civilization, which would convert its that no invasion of them should be tolerated, fertile soil and generous climate into the uses Colonel Wheeler gave his work to the public of the commercial world. For the interesting in the year 1851. It was a compilete success, and incidents of this daring and romantic advent- is highly esteemed as a faithful record of a ure, the reader is referred to the sketches of the most interesting and remarkable people. incidents and characters connected with the in the year 1844, he was warmly urged upon revolution. A thrilling episode of his sojourn in by his party a.s a candidate f . v governor, but that distracted country, so characteristic of the did not receive the nomination. man himself, is given at pages 22 to 30 of the
In the year 1852, he was elected to the J^tate following Reminiscences. Legislature, which was fiercely agitated by the As soon as General Walker had established contest for a United States Senator. his authority, and his was the de facto govern- The Democratic caucus put forth their favor- ment,theAmerican mitiister promptly acknow 1- ite man, the Honorable .lames C. Dobbin, than edged it. This act was not approved by the whom a purer, or nobler man never lived. Not- Secretary of State, the Honorable William L. withstanding his great popularity with his Marcy, and be requested iiis recall. As Colonel party, and his admitted ability, the friends " /heeler bail a warm friend in the President, of the Honorable Romulus M.Saunders re- andashisearnestand longtried friend,theHon. fused to support the caucus nominee, and James C. Dobbin, was Secretary of the Navy, voted for Honorable Burton Craige. The ob- he was in no danger of being recalled without stinate contest thus made deprived the state a hearing. His reply to .Mr. Marcy's stric- of its representation in the Senate for two tures was triumphant, and the President re- years. In this contest Colonel Wheeler stood fused to recall him.
by bis party and his warm personal friend, iMr. Colonel Wheeler not only sympathized with
Dobbin, and did all in his power to secure his the object of this movement, but admired the
election. character of General WalJ^wv • He wasa qniet.
In the year 1853, Colonel Wheeler was ap- unassuming p^rtrtfeiian, eilucated under the
pointed, by President Pierce, Minister to Nica- best instructors of the United States and
ragna. Central America. j>i;:;;;g his residence Europe. In [loison, he was below the average
there thi>ef>uiiFrywastorn by opposing political American, by no means imposing in his pres-
" factions, that sought their ends by the sword, ence. A ready, eloquent, and graceful writer.
During tlie revolution General William Walker he would have been one of the first journalists
made his appearance with a company of de- of his age. The blood of the Norsemen coursed
JOHN HILL WHEKLER. v
through liis veins, niul he was alive with an soiinil judgment, a cautious fort'sight, a steady
onthui^iasni of the old Vikings for adventure. ]mrpose, and a captivating manner, lie knew
rio neither estimated the dangers of the how to hnshand liis resfiurces for the hour of
enemy, or the climate; his courage was of the trial. General Walker moved often under the
pure.«t steel. An ardent Anglo-American, lie influence of a whimsical impulse, careless of
had only contempt for the Spaniards and those the demands of an insatiable to-morrow. He
mongrel races, who occupied with indolence sought the enemy at too great a sacrifice of
and semi-harbarism one of the finest an<l most men who could not be restored; he took hut
productive regions on the continent. He con- little account of the profound causes which
ceived the purpose of planting there another preserve and destroy armies. His high quali-
race of men who would open the land to a re- ties and noble ambition will cause feelings of
finement and civilization that would make it regret for his unhappy end, and the failure of
the jiathway of nations to the eastcrir world, his ambitious and magnificent pui-pose. Not
Colonel ^Vheeler readily saw in the advent of the love of gain, nor the vulgar display, led
this cultivated and revolutionary mind, and this refined student to the unequal contest,
his brave and daring followers, the promise of It was the pride of his noble race and its ea-
hope for the country so long cursed w-ith de- pacity to rejoice a country blessed by nature
generac}' and mindless inaction. He became with every bounty, and cursed only b}' an in-
the invited guest and welcome friend of the dolent, vicious, and monotonous race. Too
United States minister, who knew the men soon for the demands of mankind, a more op-
and the situation far better than General portune period will, in time, complete the
Walker. Had he listened more earnesti}' to w-ork in which he bravely fell, and vindicate
the wise counsel and cautious prudence of his generous ilesign.
('olonel Wheeler, he would, in all probability. To the honor of Colonel Whoelei- be it re- have realized the briglit dreams of his ardent corded that he used his influence to promote a fancy. He had many of the qualities of a sue- revolution so fraught with unnumbered bless- cessfnl leader — sincerity, courage, self-denial ings to civilized man. Nor didhe com]>roniise and intellectual superiority. He was not a the great repul)lic, that had confided her good state-iiM-i" i.ifl +'ni!od in vnnking provisions es- faith to his care, though he cou'd not lookwirh sential to the maintainanee of armies. Takitig composure upon the contest, of an enlightened no account of the strength of the foe, or the civilization witii a stupid indifference to the i'atality of the climate, he wasted his forces demands of an intelligent and progressive age. without the possibility of a supply. That one entire continent, and a large pi)rtiou The United States minister, with far keener of another, should be consigned to stolid repose apprehension, saw the dangers that threatened without an heroic effort to unfold th.eir al- and advised the means to insure the success of most boundless possibilities, was to him. the promising enterprise. To him it was the neither statesmanship nor hiunanity. He introduction of a new civilizatiori by a race knew it was the destiny of his race to oradi- whose destiny was to found new nations. His cate barliarism, and teach the inhabitants of whole heart was with the movement, and his the wilderness the arts of production, coni- condnct was only limited l)y his duty to jire- mercc, moral responsibility, social refinement, serve the faith and honor of the republic and intelligent freetlom. Before its all-coa- which he represented. To a courage not less quering enterprise nature had put off its sav- pronqit than General Walker's, he added a age habits for new creations of beauty and
WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
utility. Prot'oundly versed in its history, he was moved witli iidmi ration for its all-creii- tive energ}'. He did not doubt that its pres- ence would endow, with a new life, that entire isthmus, which could not fail, in a few years, to meet the advance of the Unittd States into
estness through all its mcanderings. The change from Pierce to Buchanan brought no change in the purposes or dispositiou of the party. Under the former, the repeal of the Missouri compromise, and the organization of the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, had
Mexico. With prophetic vision he beheld its dissolved the Whig party and introduced the
gloomy' forests giving place to the peaceful abodes of cultivated men. Deprecating the erratic impulses of the young leader of this promising mission, he nevertheless hailed it as the harbinger of a glorious future for Central America and the commercial world. Not even the demands of a coldly selfish diplomacy could repress his generous approval, and he gave the benign presence of a creative enter-
Republican party into the field of action. The conflict between individuals had passed away with the magnificent personages that charac- terized that period. Principles laying at the foundation of free institutions, and deeply imbedded in the conscience, came into the field. The Republican party planted itself upon the doctrine of freedom for the territor- ies. The Democratic party proclaimed the Ni-
prise his counsel, his symiiathy, and his sub- violability of slavery in the States and Terri-
stantial support
In the year 1857, Colonel Wheeler resigned his mission, and returned to his abode in Washington City. So long as he lived he claimed his legal residence to be in North Carolina. On his door plute was that name
tories. The former was a new and revolu- tionary i'orce, the latter stood firmly by the ancient constitutional rights of slavery. The former was organized to break up and displace it, the latter resisted displacement. Trained in the school of Jackson, Colonel Wheeler's
onplcd with his own, and over the breast of judgment was against war, and adhered to
his encoflined form was engraved that name so dear to him. In all his thoughts,and in all bis jor.rneyings, his heart yearned towards North Carolina, and within her borders he would have preferred interment. The amia- ble and charming English poet. Waller, in his old age, purchased a small property at his birthplace, saj-ing he would like to die, like the stag, where he was roused. This poetic idea has immortality in the lines of Goldsmith:
■' As the poor stag, wliom hound and horns pursue, Fants for the place where at fh-st he flew, I still hud hoj'ed my vexations past. Here to return and die at home at last."
By this time the long agon}' over the slav- ery question was culminating. Oar republic was rapidly drifting towards a fierce and de- .-itructive war. Colonel Wheeler had ever been identified with the Democratic part}', and bad followed its taithand practices with earn-
the Union; but this school had disappeared and a new Democracy had arisen, and guided by his sympathies he followed his party, drift- ing rapidly upon dangerous reefs and quick- sands. One of his sons, C. Sully Wheeler, was in the Federal Navy; the other, Vi''oodbury Wheeler, had joined the Confederate Army. Each remained faithful to the cause he had esp )nsed, to the end. To those laboring un- der the weight of half a century that had seen the republic in the glory of its united power, it seemed now in the agony of inevitable death. The expiring houri< of Demoiiratic rule was spent shuddering before the fearful respon- sibility of the solemn oath "to support and de- fend the Constitution." The incoming admin- istration, though sustained by an unconquer- able enthusiasm in its ranks, was slow to an- nounce any policy. Many unionists in the south, believing all to be lost, hastened into the
JOTfX HILL WIIKELEK.
ranks of the disunionists. All tin' companions of Colonel Wheeler's life, all that was dear to him from childhood were enveloped in the fortunes of the Confederacy. Ilis lonj? and strong po- litical bias and the intensity of his friendship drew his sympathy and his hopes with them, and he came back to Xorth Carolina to be with her in the struggle. Too far advanced in life to become an actor in the contest, in 1863, pursuant to a resolution of the General Assem- bly of the State, he went to Europe to collect material for a new edition of liis history. Anx- ious to gather all that related to the subject which could render it a more perfect chronicle of his beloved people, he sought the treasures of the British Archives and buried himself in that wonderful collectioii, far from the desolat- ing and sanguinary events of the war. He collected much valuable and interesting mat- ter, which he incorporated in the new edition of his history which he left ready for the press. Colonel Wheeler was a sincere believer in the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independ- ence, of May 20th, 1775. His studies in the Archives left no doubt upon this interesting l.roblcni in his mind. The meeting and reso- lution of the same body of men of May 31st, 1775, are undisputed. They did not go to the point of declaring a separation from the British government, but they went far beyond the expressions of any other colony. The reader of Wheeler's History will mark with what delight he records the resistance of these forest-born republicans to the aggres- sions of the royal government. The gallant struggles and heroic sacrifices of his revolu- tionary ancestors are set forth with care and eloquence
He was thoroughly versed in the opinions of democratic statesmen, and sincerely devoted to the Jefferson school. He maintained the sovereignty of the states in all local matters, whilst he held to the inviolability of the Federal authority in national affairs. Each
was sacred in the realms assigned them by the Constitution. It is difficult to prosorvo the complicated adjustment of the relations of the states to the general govermnent. In the South, he saw a strong tendency to magnify the powers of the states. In the North, the Federal authority was rapidly assuming new and alarming importance. The effect of the war was to give far greater importance to the nation, and to silence everywhere the princi- ple of state sovereignty. Colonel Wheeler regarded the influence of the central power as dangerous to individual lilierty, and constantly tending to imperialism. He beheld with re- gret the citizen disappearing in the grandeur and power of the nation. Reared among men proud of their honor and influence, he dreaded the decline of personal excellence. Its loss was the grave of liberty, and birth of imperial power.
The integrity of the state and nation de- pended upon the sanctity of the ballot, liiid this upon the responsibility and intelligence of the individual citizen. The presence of powerful monied corporations, and a graiul central government, would destroy in time its responsibility. The voter, being entirely overshadowed, would soon begin to look as lightly upon his personal worth, as he did upon bis influence in the republic. He relied chiefly on character to preserve the republic through the ballot. Neither education nor wealth could be trusted with the liberties of the people, in the absence 'of inflexible purpose, and the habit of self government. The only safeguard for the encroachments of power was in the disposition and capacity of the citizen to resi.^t them at the threshold. When the public ceases to be a severe censor of the conduct of ofiicials, the end of our delicately adjusted republic will not be remote. His apprehensions of a gradual change, and a complete undermining of the nature of our institutions, was the result of close observa-
viii WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
tion for more than half a ceiitni'}-, of the The social qualities of Colonel Wheeler most e\'entful periiul of the history of the were of the highest order. His warm lieart, govei'iimont, aetuateil by an intense solicitude his classic wit, and mirth-creating humor, for the safety of the republic of the fathers. made him the favorite of all circles in which Cidonel Wheeler was a sincei'e believer in intelligence, refinement, and graceful address the salutary intiueiice of labor directed by were desired. Living in that age of the re- method. Ardent lal)or, regulated l)y reason, is public which gave the noblest development the price of excellence. He that would win of individual excellence, he had ample oppor- tlio latter, can not dispense with the former. tunity of mingling in its most delightful as- Time was a sacred trust that no one could sociations. BountifuUj' supplied with instruc- neglect Mithont evil. Thoroughly realizing five and intei'esting anecdote, his conversation its demands, with earnest i)urpnse and willing never lost its interest and inspiration. He hands he consecrated all to the noblest drew from ancient and modern literature their ends of life. Knowing that the brightest ricliest gems, and witli consummate taste he genius, and the most brilliant p iwei's, [ileased and instructed his ever attentive could avail but little if this trust was not ex- auditors. The fountains of Greek, Roman, ecuted with system, he introduceil the most English and French history were open to his con\'enient order into all his labors, so that lie never flagging memory. It was in the richer could call up the gleanings of years in a developments of American life that he en- nunnent. joyed the gi'eatest pleasure. Above all [leriods A systematic and laboi-ious scholar, he en- of human history, he esteemed the characters riched his understanding frcmi the treasures of our revolutionary era. It bad furnished of many tongues. The Englisli furnislied him the grandest exjjressicni of freedom an<l in- the I'ichest stores, and he liad drunk deeply at tegi'it}', as it had of civil and political iirstitu- her purest fountains. Into his tenacious and tions. With pious veneration he had collected fruitful memory, were joined the wealth of and preserved every heroic act and noble the prf)se and pioetry of that wonderful people, utterance, unwilling to allow the corroding whosi' intelligence, more tlian their arms, has ringers of time to erase fr(.)m coming genera- tilled the woild. lie was familiar with all the tions the humblest name.
great dran.iatists. The great poems of Shakes- Not less fortunate in his political ussocia-
peare, he could repeat with a [)ower rarely tions, lie knew personallv all the presidents
equalled by tlie first actors c>f his time. and cabinet otricers, from Jefferson to Arthur.
His friendships were ardent and sincere, and Ho had been the confidential friend of Jack-
his dev(.)ti<m to his friends knew no bounds; son, i'ierce and Johnson, and was by them
influence, purse, life itself, if in the right, called to counsel and advice. He did not
were at their service. Attachments .-o strong look to high orti< ial station, for the richest
and pure, insured a loving and faithful Inrs- manifestation of intellectual and moral worth,
band, a.n indulgent and devoted father, and a He had too often seen the most commanding
kind and generous neighbor. In all tlie rcla- positions occupied by presuming inferiority,
tions of life ho filled the measuie of a noble through the'labors and merits of the modest
aiianhood; tciider and charitable to the atriict- and deserving. By the fruits of their lives,
ed, cheerful and courteous to the prosperous, he esteemed the actors of the age in which
lie ever sought to mitigate the asperities of life, they lived and worked. Tliis volume of rem-
.thoserude blasts tliat visit too often evervhome. ini-cences discloses his estimation of characters
JOIIX TTILL WIIKELEK.
who figured in the moral and political life of most venerable and sacred institntions, in
the state and nation, far better than any sketch time, give place to new ones, better adapted
of his life. It also presents with equal force to represent its advancement, and perpetuate
his moral, social and political preferences and its usefulness.
appreciations. In all the noble actions of the great and He bad been from his first political essay, good of the republic, he bad an inheritance of trained in the Democratic party, and his ac- imperishable glory. With pious care he has tive afiinities drew from the ranks of that garnared all, and has labored to transmit party his warmest associations. Ilis demo- them to posterity, as an inspiration to emulate cracy was founded upon the lofty plane of the iieroic and worthy lives of an illustrious integrity and worth. There, all who could ancestry. The conduct of the great and good come wore equals, and entitled to the rights is the most valuable legacy that a nation can and honors of the state. Neither accident of have. The memories and the glorious deeds birth or wealth could push from their seats of the eminent personages whom North Caro- the true, the industrious, and the brave. Hum- liiia has contributed to humanity, have been hie worth, bending beneath the weight of sor- sacredly collected and eloquently described by rows and privations, had an open highway to this faithful historian. They have not been his respect. He rejoiced to see the virtuous left to [>erish '• unhonored and unsung." The youth, bursting the barriers of pride and cast, memory of the busy, patriotic and eloquent and appealing to the just judgment of society man, who has rescued from oblivion, so many for the recognition of its worth. For misfor- illnstrions names, will be recalled with grate- tune he had all sympathy; for unostentatious fr,l thanks, from tlie shores (mi which break the merit, reverence; for courage, that presses for- waves of the Atlantic, to the peaks of the ward in the achievement of great and useful Unaka mountains that mark the western limits measures, admiration. of the state. Whenever thesonsor daughters Trained from child iiood to industry and of the old commonwealth have eseheloned action, he knew the value of useful labor. No into the west, liis labors will be carried and speculative theorist, he sought substantial re- read. They will be to all a reservoir of bril- sults through methods approved of by experi- liaiit names, and a chronicle of illustrious euce. With reluctance he marked uny departure deeds.
from the way selected by the sages, and lined This worthy and learned man attained a
with countless blessings. The continuity of his- ripe age, in the full enjoyment of his intel-
tory described the march of human intelligence lectual powers, laboring cheerfully to the end. and could not be broken with any assurance Though during his clo.sing years he suffered
of safety. Nor was he blindly bound to an much, his genial and sunny disposition did
irrational and monotinous past. He well not desert him. He continued to receive his
knew that every day and every hour makes friends with that generous welcome, which
demands upon the exercise of reason and in- will be fondly remembered after he has past
vention, that can only be appeased by advance- the "sunless river's flow."
meut in time and space. A witness of all the He was married first to -Mary, only daughter
greatest discoveries in the useful arts, he well of Ilev. Mr. 0. B. Erown, of "Washington City,
understood their influence upon the refine- one of the most accomplished and literary
ment of the people. Society was undergoing ladies of her day, by whom he had one
perpetual change in all its varied aspects. The daughter, married to George N. Deale, a
WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
brotlier of General E. F. Beale, late ITnited States Envoy toAustria, and, second, to Pollen, daughter of Thomas Snlly, one of the most distinguished artists of Philadelphia, liy whom he had two suns, Charles Sully and Woodbury, a successful lawyer in Washington City.
On Thursday, Deecmher 7th, 1882, at 12:30 o'clock, a. m., the long sufferings of Colonel Wheeler were ended; and at 2 p. m., on Sun- day the 10th, lie was buried in Oakllill Ccnie- ter3', Georgetown, D. ('.
Eminent citizens of Xorth Carolina then in Wasliington, met in the National Capitol, and ndcijited the fiillowing resolutions:
''Rcsijfcal, That we, North Carolinians, pre- sent in Washington, have assembled to pa}' a trilnite of respect to the memory of our de- parted friend, Mr. John II. Wheeler, whose private worth and pul)lic services have en- deared him to our whole i)eople.
"Rei^olral, That by his life-work, though to him a labor of love, as the historian of the state, and the collection of vast stores of his- torical material, he imposed a debt of gi'ati- tude upon every Isorth Carolinian, and upon the republic of letters, which will be remem- bered for generations."
Eulogiums, attesting the high place the de- ceased had won in the hearts of his people, were pronounced by the Hons. Z. B. Vance, Samuel F. Phillips, Jesse J. Yeates, A. M. Scales, M. W. Ransom, and T. L. Clingmau.
The following letter of condolence was ad- dressed to Major Woodbury Wheeler, son of the deceased:
'' Senate Chajibek. ''Major WoonBrRY Wheeler.
"Dear Sir: We have this moment heard with deep pain, of the death of your father. Ilis death atiects us with great soritiw; his loss will be mourned by all the people of the State, which he loved and served so \vell. Truly :i good and great man has left us.
"We beg leave to exp)ress to j-ou and his family our sincerest sympathy. In your sad bereavement you have the consolation arising from the men}ory of his illustrious life marked by conspicuous virtues.
"Yours sincerel}',
"Z. B. Vance. M. W. Ransom.
"L. C. Latham. A. M. Scales.
"Rob't V. Vance. li. F. Akmfield.
"W. R. Cox. C. DowD."
KRRATA.
Paee XII, ist column, nth line, read frontier, not fronlinj,'. lb lb., i^.th line, read Lords, 7wl Lord,
lb -'d coiunin, 6lh line, read east, vol west, lb" lb qth line, read feeble, 7iot public,
p.ure XV ist column, TSth line, read writer's, not writers. Pale XVI ist column, 38th line, place comma after ^^KSrV^''^' " Pafc XV .St column 24th line, read antedates, not antidates
lb lb., . 33^1 lint-, read churchman, uot church man.
Paee XVIII, ist column, last line, omit " &c " Paee XX, 1st column, 35th line, read the, «c^/ he _
*' 11, lb 36th line, read what, not which. /
P^p-e XXI lb', 9th line, read e.xpOrts, 7iot e.\parts.
IK ' ' Ih T>th line read Sounds, wo/ sound. ,
Pa JxXII !b:; ^ -Hi 37th lines, omit the interpolated sentence in brackets.
Page XXIli, lb., 39th line, read ot, not et.
PaleXXV, lb., 21st line, read by, «o/ viz.
lb 2d column, last line, omit comma after local.
Pa>'-eXXVI. lb., read Tryon, wc^/ Tyron.
^•^hb^^""' J^^^Ir'^S^isKnSV:"! 1^ .wor of the clmrd.^^ Pace XXVIII ist column^ 2d paragraph should have quotation maiks to it. Paee XXIX, ist column, 3tst line, read imparted /w/ imported.
^^Tu lb lod hue, omit comma after tone.
Pace XXXI "d column, last line should follow third line of ne.xt column.
lb ' lb 2ist hue, place "Academy ' m brackets.
P,cr,. XXXII lb' 22d line, read extract, w/ extracts.
Page^ XXXI 1 , lb., ^^^^ ^^^ ^__^^ j.^^^^ ^^^^ disbarring, not debarring.
lb lb' -,ist line, read //was ordered.
Pao-e XXXIII ist column, -,6th line, read detinue, not detinee.
Pa^e 192, 2d column, 3d line, read Lizzie, wo/ John M. * lb lb 4th line, read Corvina, not Louisa,
lb' lb' between lines 8 and 9 insert John L.
Page 196. ist column, 32d line, read researches, not resuhs. Page 201, ist column, 17th line, read Humphrey, not Hampton. Page 202, ist column, ist line, read 1781, not 1871. Pifre -.04 ist column, 38th line, read " Colonel Lillmgton. Page 216, ist column. 17th line, read Amis, not Ams. ' lb. lb.. 22d line, read to. not at.
\h. 2d column, 32d line, " but had no." Page 217, ist column, i6th line, omit much of.
lb., 2d column, 14th line, omit early in and. Page 220, ist column. 17th line, read the. not he. Page 221, 2d column, 22d line, read Catling, not Gatlin. Page ^^6, ist column, 3d line, read member.
P 't„ B't'colun,™, n'h Un;"! b« '' McPCnl." ^l.ouUI be Mac„„el,„. Page -^30 2d column, 6th line, read " Carolina. Page 232 2d column, 24th line, read incessant, not incessent. Page 238, ist column, 7th line, read Pierre, w(?/ Pierce. Page 240, ist column, 4th line, insert on before one. Page 252, 2d column, 23d line, read Caesar, not Casar. Paee 2S3, ist column, 12th line, read 1776, not 1767. Page 255! ist column, loth line, read Lieut. George, not Colonel Lock. Page 228, ist column, 32d line, same error. ^
Pa^e 255, ist column, nth line, read Joseph, w<p/ (.eorge Graham. Page 287, 2d column, 30th line, read those that, 7iot these that. Page 288, ist column, 23d line, read correct, not court.
Page 289, ist column, 9th line, read have. «<?/ here ,K,„,l,l 1,,. Moore and New Han-
Page 297—301, inclusive-the running head " Mecklenburg counlv shoul.l be Woo.c
over counties. . , , . ^ / >
Page 300, 2d column, to the end ol 18th line add servient rami. Page 301, 1st column, 2d line, read Gen. not Gov.
KCDHTH CAM©MNA In the Colonial Period,
^.
BY DANIEL R» GOODLOE
An article by John Fisk, which appeared in the February ( 1 883) number of Harper's Maga- zinc, entitled "Maryland and the far South in the Colonial period," contains statements in regard to North Carolina which have given grave offense to every citizen and native of the State. The writer assumes to portray the con- dition of the people and the character of their institutions, civilization and government, during the whole period of their colonial existence, while he has presented only an exaggerated and distorted picture of disorders which prevailed among the first handful of settlers on the North- eastern border, before there was a defined boundary, and when that portion of the terri- tory, or a considerable part of it was claimed by Virginia.
The writer may, also, have had in view the resistance made by the people called Regula- tors, in the middle and upper counties, ata later period, to the robbery and extortion of the county officers. But the more charitable sup- position is, that he hag never read a history of the Province.
The original grant made by Charles II. to the Lords Proprietors, bears date March 20, 16G3.
This instrument conveyed to the noblemen and gentlemen, named all the territory lying between the parallels of thirty-one and thirty-six degrees of North latitude, and extending from the At- lantic Ocean westward to the South Sea. Wm. Ryrd, Esq., the intelligent Virginia gentleman, who was one of the commissioners employed to run theboundary line between the two provinces, states, in his " Westover papers, " that "Sir William Berkeley, who was one of the grantees, and at that time Governor of Virginia, finding a territory of thirty-one miles in breadth be- tween the inhabited part of Virginia and the above mentioned boundary of Carolina, (thirty- six degrees) advised Lord Clarendon of it, and his Lordship had influence enough with the King to obtain a second patent to include this territory, dated June 30, 1665."
It appears from this statement of Mr. Byrd, that North Carolina owes this addition of half a degree to the vvidth of her territory, to the treachery of the Governor of Virginia, to his trust. It was the duty of the Governor to se- cure, if practicable, the unclaimed territory for Virginia, but it was in the interest of Sir Wil- liam Berkeley to have it added to the Carolina
WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
Colony. However, the people of North Caro- lina have no reason to complain of Sir William on this account.
In reference to this acquisition Dr. Hawks, the historian of North Carolina, remarks : "But though this second charter defined the line that was to divide Virginia and Carolina, and stated on what part of the globe it was to be drawn, viz : 36° 30' North latitude ; yet astronomical observations had not fixed its precise locality, [' V and consequently the people on the fronti^ of both provinces entered land and took out patents A by guess, either from the King, or the Lord; Pro- prietors. The grants of the latter, however, were more desirable, because, both as to terms of entry, and yearly taxes, they were less burden- some than the price and levies imposed by the laws of Virginia, This statement will ex- plain the fact that some of the earliest grants of land, now confessedly in Carolina, but lying near the border are signed by Sir William Berkeley."
This new boundary line of 36° 30' remained undefined for two-thirds of a century — that is to say, until the year 172S; and in all that period there was a margin of territory several miles in width, in which no one knew, definitely, whether the inhabitants owed allegiance to Carolina or Virginia. The disputed territory lay within and on the southern border of the Dismal Swamp. Practically, for nearly fifty years, the territory west of the Swamp was not in dispute, as the settlements on the Carolina side lay to the east of the Chowan River. To the west of that great stream the Indians still held sway. It was not until after the Massacre in 171 1, when one hundred and thirty persons were murdered in their homes in one day, that these savages were made to give place to the advancing tide of civ- ilization. The largest of the tribes, and the most war-like, the Tuscaroras, after that event, were required to vacate their territory, when they emigrated North and rejoined the Iroquois or Five Nations, from whom they were de-
scended. The smaller and less criminal tribes were permitted to remain on reservations.
During the first sixty years of the colonial history, the population was chiefly confined to the territory north of Albemarle Sound, west of the Chowan River. The settle- ments between the two sounds, Albemarle and Pamlico, and that- about New Berne, were still -pi^i?, but were represented in the Albemarle \~<i(/ Assembly. This body was composed of twenty- seven members, of whom the four counties north of the sound sent five, each. The three counties south of Albemarle had two members each, and New Berne town one. There was little intercourse with the Cape Fear Colony, which had a separate Assembly of its own, as well as a Governor. It was a short-lived enter- prise. The colonists came from Barbadoes, in 1665, under the leadership of a gentleman named Yeaman. He was succeeded by a Mr. West, as Governor, who was also made Gover- nor of the Charleston settlement, a few years later, and persuaded the Cape Fear people to follow him. During the year 1690, the last of these Cape Fear settlers abandoned their homes and went to Charleston. The writer, whose statements are complained of, assumes that these Barbadian colonists became a permanent part of the population of North Carolina.
In 1729 seven of the eight Lords Proprietors surrendered their rights in and authority over the colony, to the crown, for a valuable consid- eration, of course ; Earl Granville retained his claim of right to the soil, and a large strip of country (about half the State) on the northern border was set off to him as his private property, while he surrendered his right to share in the Government of the people.
Francis Xavier Martin, one of the most judi- cious historians of the Province, estimated the white population at the date of this transfer of authority from the Lords Proprietors to the Crown (17-9) at about 13,000. He gives no opinion as to the number of the blacks; but
THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
there is reason to believe that tliey were fewer in proportion to the whites than were to be found in either Virginia or South Carolina.
A reference to the map will show the reader that the original boundary of 36° passes up the Albemarle Sound ; and the acquisition made by the new patent of 16C5 embraces, therefore, the whole territory north of the Sound. In other words, it embraced three-fourths of the popula- tion of North Carolina in 1729. This date of the purchase by the Crown from the Proprietors is, also, coeval with the separation of North from South Carolina, and the incorporation of the whole territory of the former under one Gov- ernor and Assembly.
Besides the small scattered settlements south of Albemarle Sound, the relative importance of which is indicated by their proportion of repre- sentation in the Assembly, as above stated, the population had begun to spread out beyond, that is to say, west of the Chowan River ; and in the year 1722, the County or Precinct of Ber- tie was organized ; but up to that date, if not later, the people on that side of the river voted as of Chowan Precinct.
The immigration of Swiss and Palatines under Baron De Graffenreidt and Mr. Mitchell came to North Carolina in the years 1709-10. No defi- nite statements as to their numbers, have come down to us, but it is believed that the two classes of immigrants combined, did not exceed two thousand. Some loose guesses make them larger. They settled in the vicinity of New Berne, which town received its name ''rom the Swiss. Somd of these foreigners were murdered by the Indians the next year, after their arrival, when the great Massacre of the whites occurred. De Graffenreidt narrowly escaped being burned at the stake by the Indians, in company with Lawson, the Surveyor General, who had invaded their territory with his compass and chain. It is probable that the massacre was the main hin- drance to further immigration from Switzerland and the Palatinate ; but De Graffenreidt failed
to give them titles to the lands he sold them, which must have greatly added to their dis- couragements.
The foregoing preliminary statement as to the nature and extent of the ground occupied by the early settlers of the Province has been thought necessary to a thorough understanding of the character of the aspersions of the writer referred to, and of the answers that will be made to them. lUit in the first place it will be proper to present them in the language of their author. They form a compact mass of misrep- resentation. I understand the writer to be a Massachusetts man. "Prof John Fisk" of Harvard. He says :
" At the time of the Revolution the popula- tion of North Carolina numbered about 200,000, of which somewhat more than one-fourth were negio slaves. The white population was mainly English, but the foreign element was larger than in the case of any other of the colonies which we have thus far considered. There were Hu- guenots from France, German Protestant from the Palatinate, Moravians, Swiss, and Scotch, and what we have to note especially is that this foreign population was, in the main, far more respectable and orderly than the English major- ity. The English settlers came mostly from Virginia, though in the southeastern corner of the colony there was a considerrble settlement of Englishmen from Barbadoes.
"Now, the English settlers who thus came southward from Virginia were very different in character from the sober Puritans, who went northward into Alaryland. North Carolina was to Virginia something like Rhode Island was to Massachusetts — a receptacle for all the factious and turbulent elements of Society ; but in this case the general charaeter of the emigration was iiiuiieasnreably loiver. The shiftless people who could not make a place for themselves in Vir- ginia society, including many of the "poor whites, " flocked in large numbers into North Carolina. They were, in the main, very lawless
WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
in temper, holding it to be the chief end of man to resist all constituted authority, and above all things to pay no taxes. The history of North Carolina was according!)' much more riotous and disorderly than the history of any of the other colonies. ' 'There were neither laws nor lawyers," says Bancroft, with slight exaggera- tion. The courts, such as they were, sat often in taverns, where the Judge might sharpen his wits with bad whiskc}', -li'liilc their decisions 'arrc not nronit-d, but were simply shouted by the crier from the inn door, or at the nearest market place.
' 'There were a icw amateur surgeons and apoth- ecaries to be found in the villages, but no regu- lar physicians. Nor does the soul appear to be better cared for than the body, for it was not until 1703 that the first clergyman was settled in the colony. The Church of England was es- tablished by Government, without the approval of the people, who were opposed on principle to church rates, as to all kinds of ta.xes whatso- ever. Owing to this dislike of ta.xation, most of the people were Dissenters, but no Dissent- ing Churches flourished in the colony. There was complete toleration even for Quakers, be- cause nobody cared a groat for theology, or for religion. The few ministers who contrived to support life in North Carolina, were listened to in a mood like that in which Mrs. Pardigle's discourses were received by the brickmakers, while the audience freely smoked their pipes within the walls of the sanctuary during divine service.
"Agriculture was conducted more wastefully and with less intelligence than in any of the other colonies. In the northern counties to- bacco was almost exclusively cultivated, but it was of very inferior quality, compared with the tobacco of Virginia.
" All business or traffic about the coast was carried on under perilous conditions : for pirates were alwaj^s hovering about, siriiir in the svin- patliyof tlie people, like the brigands of southern
Italy in recent times. It was partly due to this, no doubt, as well as partly to the want of good harborage, that a very large part of the com- merce of North Carolina was diverted north- ward to Norfolk, or southward to Charleston.
' 'The treatment of the slaves is said to have been usually mild, as in Virginia, but their lives were practically, at the mercy of their masters. The white servants fared better, and the general state of society was so loic that when their time of ser- vice was ended, they had here a good chance of rising to a position of equality with their masters.
"The countr)' swarmed with ruffians of all sorts, who fled thither from South Carolina and Virginia. Life and property were very insecure, and l)'nch law was not infrequentl)' administered. The small planters led, for the most part, a lazy life, drinking hard, and amusing themselves with scrimmages, in which noses were broken with blows of the fist, and eyes gouged out by a dexterous use of the long thumb nails. The only other social amusement seems to have been gambling. But, except at elections and other meetings for political purposes, people saw very little of each other.
' ' There were no roads worthy of the name, and every family was almost entirely isolated from its neighbors. Until just before tlic zuar for Indepemienec, there was not a single school, good or bad, in the whole colony. It need not be added that the people were densely ignorant.
"The colony was a century old before it could boast of a printing press; and if no newspapers were published, it was doubtless for the suffi- cient reason that there were very few who would have been able to read them. A mail from Virginia came some eight or ten t'mes in a year, but it only reached a few towns on the coast, and down to the time of the Revolution the in- terior of the country had no mails at all. Under such circumstances it is not strange that North Carolina was in a great measure cut off" from the currents of thought and feeling by which the
THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
other colonies were swayed in the middle of the eighteenth century.
"In the Warfor Independence, North Carolina produced no great leaders. She was not repre- sented at the Stamp Act Congress of 1765, and she was the last of the States, except Rhode Is- land, to adopt the Federal Constitution."
The reader cannot have failed to note in these statements, supposing the writer to be well in- formed, a spirit in sympathy with the arbitrary rule of the Lords Proprietors and the Crown of England, and with their persistent efforts to compel an unwilling people to pay taxes for the support of the Church of which they were not members. The whole tenor of the writers criti- cism would justify this inference; and that his sympathies are also with the corrupt county officials whose illegal exactions provoked and justified the efforts of the Regulators to resist them. But it is charitable to assume that he has only a vague idea of these events, derived from second-hand sources. For he could not read the history of the Province, without being convinced that the causes and grounds of resist- ance to the constituted authorities were, in the first instance, the efforts of the Lords Proprietors to impose the absurd "Fundamental Constitu- tions" of Locke, upon the people, followed by the persistent, and never quite successful at- tempt to estab'ish the Church, with a system of Church rates. Mr. Bancroft has brought out these facts with more distinctness than the his- torians of the State ; and even Dr. Hawks has only paraphrased the lucid statement of the great historian.
The second great source of disturbance, the robbery of the people in the name of law, by the county officers, at a later period, is equally well attested, and no one acquainted with the history of those times, will venture to vindicate or palliate their conduct. These events will re- ceive further notice in their order, as well as other arbitrary and unjust measures of the British rulers of the Province.
Another thing observable in this pretentious criticism is a proneness to jump to general con- clusions from single instances. The writer has seen th^r statement that at an out-of-doors relig- ious meeting, in the Albemarle region, in one of the first years of the last century, some rough fellow smoked his pipe while the services were going on; and this fact is sufficient to warrant the statement that such was the universal cus- tom throughout the colonial period, in all parts of the Province. He has read that a noted pi- rate infested the Sounds before there was so much as a village upon their borders, and that the pirate obtained supplies of provisions from the first squatters on the coast whom he would have exterminated if they had refused compli- ance with his demands ; and, without mention- ing that the pirate was at length captured and put to death, the swift conclusion is drawn, that piracy was the order of the day, all along the coast, with the connivance of the people, for the century and more of colonial vassalage; and that the effect was to render legitimate com- m.erce a hazardous and dangerous occupation, lo this cause the writer would have the world believe is due the alleged fact that the people of the colony carried their produce to Norfolk through the Dismal Swamp ; although there was neither road nor canal. Or else to Charles- ton through a wilderness two to three hundred miles in width, without roads or navigable wa- ters; whereas, at the period when the pirates infested the coast, the commerce of the colony was chiefly in the hands of New Englanders, who came with their vessels through the Sounds.
A traveler has at some time witnessed a fight, somewhere in the Province, accompanied by the brutal practice of "gouging," in which the lower class of whites sometimes engage, and this is sufficient to justify the critic in the sweep- ing statement that "scrimmages " of this sort constituted the favorite amusement of the small planters— " their only other entertainments be-
WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
ing drinking and gambling." It would be as fair to charge the whole body of respectable people in a Northern city, at the present day, with participation in all the vice and crime which are daily and nightly enacted in the dens of in- famy that are to be found in every street.
These arc only specimens ot the illogical in- ferences of this writer, with whom the rule seems to be, that every isolated fact warrants a generalization.
In view of reiterated charges against the peo- ple of lawlessness, idleness, "shiftlcssness," and general inability to make their way in the world, it is worth while to notice the first state- ment quoted from the writer, to the effect that at the period of the Revolution, North Carolina contained about 200,000 inhabitants ; and if this statement were true, it would afford evidence of an extraordinarily rapid increase of population during the next fourteen years, and especially so, as seven of those years were spent in civil and foreign wars, accompanied by the expatria- tion of thousands of the conquered, and the escape of not a few of the servile class. The census of 1790, which was taken just fourteen years after the Declaration of Independence, or fifteen years after the commencement of hostili- ties, showed the population of the State to be 393,000, or nearly 100 per cent, more than the supposed number of 200,000. In consideration of the destructive war through which the people had passed during those eventful years, we are bound to conclude that the population at the beginning of the war was nearer th'-ee hundred than two hundred thousand. In 1729, it will be remembered, the total white population was estimated to be only 13,000; and if we add 7,000 for the black, the aggregate, forty-six years be- fore the beginning of the Revolutionary War, would be but 20,000. Here, then, is evidence of an extraordinary increase of these "idle," "shiftless," "outlaws " and " renegades " from Virginia.
We are told that "the foreign population was
in the main far more respectable and orderly than the English majority." By the foreign population, the writer means those of non- English origin. There can be no question about the moral worth and respectability of the Mora- vians and German Lutherans, of the Swiss and Palatine. They all made orderly, good citizens, but they were not more conspicuous for these virtues than were the Quakers, who, in early times, exercised a controlling influence in the Albemarle settlement. Nor were the "for- eigners" more distinguished for sobriety and love of learning than the Presbyterians who came to the Colony from Pennsylvania and Vir- ginia, or directly from Scotland and England. Neither is it true that any of these classes were more respectable than the native Virginians and other Americans, mostly of English ancestry, who came in from time to time, during the whole colonial period, and constituted a large majority of the population of the Province ; and it is a baseless calumny to say otherwise. They constituted a majority, and a controlling major- ity of the people. They were part and parcel of the best element in Virginia society — em- bracing not many of the oldest, or more aristo- cratic families, but the solid, respectable, and well-to-do classes of planters and farmers — -the classes that produced such men as Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Henry Clay, and others who became eminent for talents and virtue; and they imparted these characteristics to their children. Many of the poorer classes came with these planters and farmers. Some were, no doubt, vicious characters, who added nothing to the strength and respectability of the Province. But what country under the sun is free from such a class ?
"North Carolina " we are again told, "was to Virginia something like Rhode Island was to Massachusetts — a receptacle for all the factious and turbulent elements of society. " There was, it must be owned, a resemblance in the two sit- uations. Massachusetts e.xpellcd Roger Wil-
Till". COLONIAL 1'1:r1()U.
liams and his Baptist followers, with Quakers and Presbyterians, as heretics ; and most good people of the present day arc apt to believe that when the exiles shook the dust from their feet, they left not their equals in moral worth behind them. And it was in like manner that Virginia intolerance drove many of her best inhabitants into the wilderness of Carolina, as will now be shown.
Durant's Neck in Perquimans county, was the first permanent settlement made in the Prov- ince, and it was made by Quakers who fled from Virginiaand Massachusetts persecution. "The oldest land title that we know of in North Caro- lina," says Dr. Hawks, "and that which we think was actually the first, is still on record. It is the grant made by Cistacaiioc, king of the Yeopim Indians, in 1662, to Durant, for a neck of land at the mouth of Little and Per- quimans rivers, which still bears the name of the grantee. In 1633, Berkeley confirmed this grant by a patent under his own signature." ^
This patent by the Indian Chief to the Qua- Ig^ ker, antedates the first patent given by the king to the Lords Proprietors. It became the nu- cleus of a large Quaker settlement, which re- mains to the present day. It is said that a com- pany was formed some years previous to this purchase by Durant, for the purpose of taking up lands and making settlements in the un- claimed territory; and it is probable that the plan may, to some extent, have been carried into effect — or this purchase by the Quakers may have been a part of it. The cautious terms in which the Quakers gave in their adhesion to the "Fundamental Constitutions," show that they were neither illiterate nor reckless vaga- bonds. Their signature and assent are qualified as follows :
" Francis Tomes, Christopher Nicholson, and William Wyatt did before me, this 31st July," &c. , &€., "and so far as any authority by the Lords constituted, is consonant to God's glory, and to the advancement of his blessed truth,
with heart and hands we subscribe, to the best of our capacities and understandings."
In regard to these earliest settlers of North Carolina, Mr. Bancroft states that the adjoining county in Virginia, Nansemond, had long abounded in non-conformists ; and it is certain, he says, that the first settlements in Albemarle were the result of the spontaneous overflowing from this source. A few vagrant families, he thinks, may have been planted in Carolina be- fore the Restoration. Such settlements would have been made voluntarily, as under Cromwell the Church would not have been permitted to persecute Dissenters. But on the restoration of Charles, men who were impatient of inter- ference with their religion, "who dreaded the enforcement of religious conformity, and who distrusted the spirit of the new Government in Virginia, plunged more deeply into the forests. It is known that in 1662, the Chief of the Yeo- pim Indians granted to George Durant the neck of land which still bears his name ; and, in the following year, George Cathmaid could claim from Sir Wm. Berkeley^a large grant of land upon the Sound, as a reward for having estab- lished sixty-seven persons in Carolina. This may have been the oldest considerable settle- ment; there is reason to believe that volunteer emigrants preceded them."
It has already been stated that Sir William Berkeley was Governor of Virginia and one of / the Lords Proprietors of Carolina at this time. He was also a Churclv-man, intolerant of dissent — in Virginia; but his pecuniary interests im- pelled him to be very liberal and tolerant of Quakers, Presbyterian, and other sectarians who would agree to remove to their territory. His proprietary colleagues cordially concurred with him in this left-handed spirit of toleration, by which they hoped to be enriched ; and in con- formity with it, the Carolina colonists were allowed to indulge in whatever eccentricities of faith and worship their tastes or their con- sciences might suggest.
WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
Indeed, it was very plain to the common sense of the Proprietaries, that zeal for the Church north of 36° 30', if enforced by rigorous persecution, was as conducive to the peophng their Carolina territory, as the liberty of con- science which was granted south of that line. These seemingly hostile principles, or moral forces were thus made to work harmoniously for the advantage of their Lordships, while narrow- minded bigots, by enforcing conformity on both sides of the line, would have spoiled every- thing.
Howison, the historian of Virginia, describes Sir William, who was appointed Governor of Virginiain 1642, by Charles I, as an accomplish- ed gentleman whose winning manners captivated all hearts, but, "His loyalty was so excessive that it blinded his eyes to the faults of a crowned head, and steeled his heart against the prayers of oppressed subjects. * * He loved the monarchical constitution of England with sim- ple fervor ; he venerated her customs, her Church, her Bisjiops, her Liturgy ; everything peculiar to her as a kingdom; and believing them to be worthy of all acceptation, he en- forced conformity with uncompromising stern- ness. * * HadSir William Berkeley descend- ed to his grave at the time when Charles II gained the English throne, we might with safety have trusted to those historians who have drawn him as adorned with all that could grace and elevate his species. But he lived long enough to prove that loyalty when misguided, will make a tyrant; that religious zeal, when devoted to an estab- lished Church, will beget the most revolting bigotry : and that an ardent disposition, when driven on by desire for revenge, will give birth to the worst forms of cruelty and malice."
Yet this excessive zeal for religion and " re- volting bigotry, " had a practical side to them which the historian overlooked. For they tend- ed rapidly to people Sir William's Carolina plan- tation with sober and industrious Quakers and Presbyterians &c. , who bought land or paid rent
at prices fixed by the Proprietaries. The Vir- ginia Assembly, under such a champion of or- thodoxy, passed laws of the most stringent character for the enforcement of uniformity. Tithes were imposed and exacted inexorably : the persons of the Clergy were invested with a sanctity savoring strongly of superstition : papists were excluded from the privilege of hold- ing office, and their priests were banished the Province ; the oath of supremacy to the king as head of the Church, was imposed, dissenting ministers were forbidden to preach ; and the Governor and Council were empowered to com- pel "non-conformists to depart the colony with all convenience." It is not surprising that the Carolina Colony, where toleration was establish- ed by the Proprietaries, flourished, .when the Governor and Assembly of Virginia were so ac- tive in stimulating emigration. But it is obvious that these intolerant laws of Virginia, on the subject of religion, were not calculated nor in- tended to drive out the lawless and vicious classes. On the contraty, wherever Religion is established by law, whether the creed be Protes- tant or Catholic, the vicious and criminal classes are rarely arraigned for denying the authority of the Church, however much they may disre- gard its injunctions, and stand in need of its discipline. It is the sober, earnest men who suffer the pains and penalties of heresy, whether those penalties be the rack, the fagot or banish- ment.
But the persecuted Dissenters were not the only classes that preferred the free air of North Carolina to the intolerance of Berkeley. Thous- ands of Churchmen, real and nominal, joined them ; and without being eminently religious, they soon became sufficiently numerous to form a strong party in favor of a Church establish- ment.
Mr. Bancroft thinks that the first Governor of the Albemarle Colony, Drummond, appoint- ed by Berkeley, «»//^rt//4,W/y' liinizvitliout aitial, for alleged participation in Bacon's Rebellion,
THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
was a Presbyterian. If this opinion be correct, it serves to illustrate more fully how tolerant of heresy the bigoted Govenor of Virginia could be, when it tended to advance his pecuniary in- terests.
Two or three of the Lords Proprietors were cabinet ministers of Charles II, and they could not only procure a grant of territory half as large as P>urope, but they could stipulate the terms of the grant, and the sort of government its future inhabitants were to live under. Eor the reasons already explained, the Second Chart- er, dictated by themselves, authorized the es- tablishment of the utmost toleration, without so much as naming the Church, and this liberty was confirmed to the people. They were grant- ed "an Assembly, " says Mr. Bancroft, "and an easy tenure of lands, and he (Berkeley) left the infant people to take care of themselves ; to enjoy liberty of conscience and conduct, in the entire freedom of innocent retirement ; to for- get the world till rent day drew near, and quit- rents might be demanded. Such was the origin of fixed settlements in North Carolina. The child of ecclesiastical oppression was swathed in independence."
It is appropriate in this place to notice the ci- tation of Mr. Bancroft by the critic, as an au- thority for one of his aspersions, He says : "There were neither laws nor lawyers, says Bancroft, with but slight exaggeration," and he represents the historian as applying this remark to North Carolina throughout its whole Colonial existence. The truth is, that Mr. Bancroft has nowhere made such a remark, for the two-fold reason that he is too well informed, and has too much regard for truth to make it. On the con- trary, he has done more to vindicate the charac- ter of North Carolina than any of its special his- torians. And since he is a deservedly high au- thority throughout the nation and the world, it is worth while to show what he has said on the subject. The statement from which the above garbled quotations are made are but the conclu-
sion of an elaborate account of the settlement of the Colony which every citizen and native of the State reads with pride and pleasure. After mentioning the arrival of emigrants from New lingland and from Bermuda, he says that the Colony lived contentedly with Stevens as Chief Magistrate, " under a very wise and sim- ple form of government. A few words express its outlin,e3: a Council of twelve, si.x named by the Proprietaries and six chosen by the As- sembly ; an Assembly, composed of the Gover- nor, the Council and delegates from the free- holders of the incipient settlements, formed a government worthy of popular confidence. No interference from abroad was anticipated; for freedom of religion and security against taxation, except by the Colonial Legislature, were solemn- ly conceded. The Colonists were satisfied ; the more so, as their lands were confirmed to them by a solemn grant on the terms which they them- selves had proposed. "
Mr. Bancroft proceeds to state that the first Legislature, in 1669, enacted laws adapted to the wants of the people, "and which therefore endured," he saj's, " long after the designs of Locke were abandoned." Again he states that " the attempt to enforce the Fundamental Con- stitution of Locke, a year or two later, was im- possible and did but favor anarchy by invalidat- ing the existing system, which it could not re- place. The Proprietaries, contrary to stipula- tions with the Colonists, superseded the existing government ; and the Colonists resolutely re- jected the substitute."
The historian then gives a brief account of the visits of the celebrated Quaker preachers, William Edmundson and George Fox, to the settlements at Durant'sNeck ; of the favor with which they wen; received by the people, and by the Governor, and adds: " If the introduction of the Constitution of Locke had before been difficult, it was now become impossible."
The death of Stevens, says Mr. Bancroft, left the Colony without a Governor ; and by per-
WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
mission of the Proprietaries, the Assembly elected Cartwright, their Speaker, to act as Gov- ernor. "But the difficulty of introducing the model (Locke's Constitution) did not diminish ; and having failed to preserve order, Cartwright resolved to lay the state of the country before the Proprietaries, and embarked for England." At the same time the AssemblysentEastchurch, their new Speaker, to explain their grievances. Mr. Bancroft resumes:
"The suppression of a fierce insurrection of the people of Virginia had been followed by the vindictive fury of ruthless punishments and run- aways, rogues and rebels, that is to say, fui^itivcs from arbitral)' tribunals, non-conformists, and fiicnds of popular liberty, fled daily to Carolina as their common subterfuge and lurking place. Did letters from the government of Virginia de- mand the surrender of leaders in the rebellion, Carolina refused to betray the fugitives who sought shelter in her forests."
Such is the account given by Mr. Bancroft of the refugees from Virginia oppression ; and he rejects the idea of our historian Martin, that these fugitives were runaway negroes. Equally does he reject the Tory estimate placed upon them by the Virginia Governor, Smallwood, and other writers of that school, that they were lawless vagabonds and "runagates" — a phrase which our own Hawks applies to these non-con- formist refugees from priestly tyranny. These and similar passages in Bancroft occur in his first and second volumes, which were published long before Hawks' history of the State. The latter author, in som.e places rallies to [y^e. de- fence of the State and the South, against which he deems to be northern injustice ; but in deal- ing with this subject of our early history, he would have done well to follow the lead of the great northern historian, instead of that of the English and Virginia Tories. But no careful reader of Dr. Hawks can fail to see that his pat- riotic feelings, as a North Carolinian were in this regard overborne by his reverence for the
Church of England, and its then feeble offshoots in the Colonies. This feeling blinded him to the virtues of Quakers and other dissenters, who resisted the attempts to form an establishment, and compel the payment of tithes or Church rates. It is true that he has presented a mass of facts which should convince everj' wise and dispassionate son of the Church, that the at- tempt to establish it in the Colony, and by such agencies, in spite of the determined opposition of a majority of the people, did it lasting injury, as well as equal injury to the cause of religion. He has shown, as he could not fail to do, with- out grossly perverting history, that the Church suffered, as well from the unjust attitude which its friends assumed, of attempting to force it up- on the people, as from the character of the clergymen who were sent over from England. Of the seven who came on this mission during the Proprietary government, three turned out to be disreputable in character — drunken, dissolute and knavish. The others were intelligent and good men, whose teaching and example, sup- ported by the voluntary offerings of the Church at home, would have been eminently salutary. But as the representatives of an arbitrary plan of enforcing uniformity of worship, and with their good example offset by the bad conduct of their associates, their labor was almost in vain. It was unfortunate for the Church, also, that the jealousy of the British Government would not allow America to have a Bishop dur- ing the whole Colonial period, but turned a deaf ear to the appeals in this behalf, which were sent up by the Colonists. The consequence was, that there were few native Church clergy- men in America, since it was necessary to send them to England, at great expense, to be or- dained and properly educated. The clerical "carpet-baggers" sent to the Colonies, were, with honorable exceptions, of course, exact prototypes of the lay species which have visited the South in more recent years.
Mr. Bancroft has answered so many of the
THE COLONIAL PERKED.
misrepresentations of North Carolina, that the reader will excuse a few more brief references and citations. He denounces the meanness of the British Government in applying their navi- gation act, passed in 1672, to the Colonies, ac- companied by a tax on their products. Its ap- plication to North Carolina was cruel. The population was barely four thousand. Its ex- pifrts consisted of a few fat cattle, a little corn and eight hundred hogsheads of tobacco. This trade was in the hands of New Englanders, whose small vessels came into the ^und Maden with such foreign articles as supplied the simple wants of the people, and exchanged them for the raw products. But the act referred to re- quired that these products should first be sent to England, where a duty was imposed on them, before their re exportation to the West Indies, or elsewhere. The tobacco was taxed a penny on the pound, which was equivalent to three cents at the present day. From this source these poor people were made to pay twelve thousand dollars per annum, and to receive only British goods, or foreign articles through Brit- ish ports, in return. A revolt was the conse- quence of these oppressive measures, incited, Mr. Bancroft says, by the Virginia refugees, who came over after Bacon's rebellion, and by New Englanders who were trading in the Albe- marle country. The Deputy Governor and Council were arrested and imprisoned ; and Cul- pepper, an Englishman who had come over some years before, was made Governor. This rebel- lion, therefore, was on grounds identical with those which moved the American colonies to resistance a century later, and which resulted in their independence. The people of New Eng- land, also, resisted the enforcement of this Nav- igation Act. The motive assigned for this re- bellion was, "that thereby the country may have a free Parliament, and may send home their grievances." In connection with these facts Mr. Bancroft remarks :
" Are there any who doubt man's capacity
for self government, let them study the history of North Carolina; its inhabitants were restless and turbulent in their imperfect submission to a government imposed on them from abroad ; the administration of the colony was firm, humane and tranquil, when they were left to take care of themselves. Any government but one of their own institution was oppressive. * * The uneducated population of that day formed conclusions as just as those which a century later pervaded the country."
The people rebelled again, a few years later against the misrule of Seth Sothel, one of the Proprietors who was sent over as Governor. This man, says Mr. Bancroft, found the country tranquil, on his arrival, under laws enacted by the people, and under a Governor of their own choice. "The counties were quiet and well regulated, because not subjected to foreign sway. The planters in peaceful independence, enjoyed the good will of the wilderness. Sothel arrived, and the scene was changed. * * Many colonial Governors displayed rapacity and extortion toward the people ; Sothel cheated his Proprietary associates, as well as plundered the colonists." He was deposed by the people, who appealed again to the Proprietaries ; and the planters, says Bancroft, immediately became tranquil, when they escaped foreign misrule.
And here follows a remark of the historian made with reference to the four or five thousand people who constituted the whole population in 1668, but which the maligner of the Province misquotes, and makes applicable to them throughout the one hundred and thirteen years of colonial dependence. Under the marginal date, i688, which the garbler could not fail to see, and just at the close of the account of the rebellion against Sothel, Mr. Bancroft says :
"Careless of religious sects, or colleges, or lawyers, or absolute laws, the early settlers en- joyed liberty of conscience, and personal inde- pendence ; freedom of the forest and of the river."
WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
By " absolute laws," he clearly refers to the " Fundamental Constitutions " prepared by Mr. Locke for the Lords Proprietors. He could mean nothing else ; for he had just completed an elaborate eulogy of the people for their prac- tical wisdom in enacting laws adapted to their own circumstances. This remark about "abso- lute laws " follows what has been quoted above from his pages. He had also praised the virtue and devotion of the Quakers and non conformists, who sought refuge in tlie wilderness from the persecutions of the English church in Virginia. These men who had suffered together under the same tyrannical laws and government, and whose safety in their new common home depended on a cordial union with each other, would naturally subordinate their differences, and become less tenacious of mere names. The Quakers were an organized body of religionists, who, until they were able to build meeting-houses, wor- shipped in the beautiful groves, or in their pri- vate dwellings. The other unorganized non- conformists would naturally attend these Qua- ker meetings ; and we are assured, even by their enemies, that the Quakers made many converts to their Society from the others, not excepting the established Church.
But if it were literally true that in 1688, the refugees in the Albemarle settlemer.t, from Vir- ginia oppression, had neither laws nor lawyers, what must be thought of the candor or the intelli- gence of a writer who attempts to impose upon the world the statement that Mr. Bancroft ap- plies the remark to North Carolina during her whole colonial histor)' from 1663 to 1776. — (1- suggest to April, 1775-).
The facts here brought out on the authority of Mr. Bancroft, refute at the same time another statement of the writer, which he couples with his comparison of the several sorts of people who made up the emigrations respectively to Rhode Island, and to North Carolina, from Massachusetts and Virginia.
In regard to the Virginia emigrants to Carolina,
he says, " their general character was immeas- urably lower," than that of the Massachusetts emigrants to Rhode Island. There is no re- spectable authority for this statement. The victims of Massachusetts persecutions were ex- cellent people, no doubt ; but there is no reason to suppose that the Puritans of that colony were more select in regard to the characters of those whom they expelled from their borders, than were the Churchmen of Virginia. There has been nothing in the subsequent careers of the two classes of emigrants, or in their posteri- ties, to warrant the invidious comparison ; and there remains but one judgment to pronounce upon it, viz : that whether proceeding from ignorance or malevolence, it is no less a whole- sale calumny, and this calumny is repeated in other connections and forms, but the above answer must sufifice for them all.
"They were, in the main, very lawless in temper," we are told, "holding it to be the chief end of man to resist all constituted au- thority, and above all things, to pay no taxes." Here again this ready writer shows his ignorance of the history of the Province. The absurdity of the statement becomes apparent if we com- pare it with other statements made by him. He tells us in one breath, and tells truly, that these Virginia and American-born emigrants constitute a large majority of the people ; and in the next that they are lawless, riotous, indo- lent, " shiftless," and utterly opposed to paying taxes. Who, then, made the colonial laws of which there are large volumes extant? Who imposed the taxes? Was it the handful of Swiss and Palatines, not above two thousand in number, and not one of whom, when they ar- rived, understood the language ? Was it by the Gaelic-speaking Scotch Highlanders, who came to the Province after the middle of the eight- eenth century — two or three thousands in num- ber ? Was it by the German Lutherans and Moravians who came still later — all of whom spoke a foreign language ? These emigrants
THK COLONIAL PICRIOD.
I were most valuable acquisitions ; and many of
their descendants have become distinguished citizens ; but during the twenty or thirty years of their residence here prior to the Revolution, they knew too little of the English language to take a leading part in making the laws. The conclusion is a necessary one, then, that the colonial statutes, constituting a complete body of laws, adapted to the wants of the people, correctly and concisely written, in parliamentary style, were the product of the class which this writer would have the world believe, was com- posed, "in the main," of worthless renagades and law-breakers from Virginia. The character of these laws will be shown in another place.
"The Colony was a century old," says our censor, "before it had a printing press: and if no newspapers were published, it was doubtless for the sufficient reason that there were very few who would have been able to read them."
The first of these statements contains full eighty per cent, of truth, which is so much above the average that it may be allowed to go uncontradicted. But at the same timeitadmits of extenuation. The Colony was planted in 1663, and the first printing press was brought into it in 1749, and was employed in printing the laws, and a few years afterward, a news- paper.
The further statement of the writer, that " A mail from Virginia came some eight or ten times a year, but it only reached a few towns on the coast, and down to the time of the Revolution the interior of the country had no mails at all, " is quite true; and it fully explains to any fair mind how newspapers could not flourish under such circumstances, and without assuming that the people could not read. Another obstacle Q- to the success j^{ newspapers is presented in the fact that North Carolina was, and still is, more exclusively agricultural than any other part of America ; and contained and still contains, in proportion to aggregate population, f-nver peo- ple resident in towns.
In New England there was a far greater popu- lation, and at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Boston, according to Rev. Cotton Ma- ther, and other authorities quoted in the "Me- morial History " of that city, contained not far from ten thousand inhabitants. But there was the same deficiency of mail facilities, though not in equal degree, which existed in North Carolina. I find in a little work published by a Postoffice official, that so early as 1672, a monthly mail was established between Boston and New York; and that in 171 1, Massachu- setts established a weekly mail between Boston and her outl}'ing territory of Maine. And yet, with these relatively great advantages and facili- ties— a town of ten thousand inhabitants, and at least one weekly mail — no newspaper was es- tablished in Boston, nor in Massachusetts, until the year 1704. This was eighty-four years after the founding of the Colony. It is true that there was a printing press introduced at an ear- ier date, which was employed in the publica- tion of pamphlets and books of theology, and the laws of the colony; but no newspaper until the settlement was eighty-four years old. Isa- iah Thomas a Massachusetts man, in his valu- able history of printing, gives an interesting account of this first American journalistic enter- prise. It was called the Boston Xoxcs- Letter. The first numberappeared in April, 1704. John Campbell, a Scotchman, and Postmaster of the town, was the proprietor, or "Undertaker," as he styled himself. It was printed on a half- sheet of what was called "Pot" paper, once a week; but after the second number it appeared on a half-sheet of fools-cap. Whether this was an enlargement on Pot paper, or a reduction in size, is not stated ; but the change in dimensions, whether in one way or the other, was no doubt inconsiderable. At any rate the Ne^vs Letter continued to be printed for four years on a half- sheet of fools cap, once a week. It rarely con- tained more than two advertisements, one of them by the proprietor, in which he enumerated
WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
the articles he was ready to advertise, at reason- able rates, among them "runaway servants." The ill omened style of undertaker, assumed by the proprietor, may in some sort, account for the unhealthy childhood and youth of Boston's first- born journal. At any rate, the undertaker, after fifteen years of sad experience, informed the public that he could not dispose of three hundred copies weekly; and that he was thirteen months behind time in the publication of the foreign news.
This was the case in 1719, when Boston must have had apopulation of nearly or quite 25,000, for in 1 7 10, according to the high authority of the "Memorial History," it was already 18,000.
Mr. Thomas states that the first press intro- duced into North Carolina (at New Berne) was in the year 1754 and Mr. Bancroft makes the same statement ; but Martin, the intelligent historian of the Province, who resided about thirty years at New Berne, during all of which time he was engaged in printing — and most of the time, as a newspaper publisher, as well as public printer for the Colony, says that James Davis came, by invitation of the Assembly, with a printing press, in the year 1749. Davis began the publication of a newspaper in 1765. New Berne contained at that time, perhaps, five hundred white inhabitants ; and the fact that his paper was sustained was wonderful, in view of Campbell's discouragements at Boston.
It would not be fair to assume that this ina- bility to support, or indifference to the worth of a newspaper, on the part of the people of Massachusetts, was due to their ignorance or inability to read, for we know that such was not the case. It is more just to say that new in- ventions and new methods of doing particular things are slow in finding their way into com- mon use. Fifty years hence people may won- der that their ancestors of this our day, did not, one and all, use the telegraph or telephone, in- stead of the slow process of sending letters by
mail, by which days are consumed in doing the work of a few minutes.
"In the war for independence North Carolina produced no great leaders," says the essayist. It would be easy to retaliate that other colonies or States, more favorably situated, failed to pro- duce great leaders. New England furnished a majority of the rank and file, and probably, most of the material aid ; and yet she failed to produce the great leader; nor did she produce but one great soldier, and he came from the despised little colony of Rhode Island, and from the persecuted class of Quakers, who were driven into exile by Massachusetts orthodoxy. There were many good officers produced by the war of the Revolution — men who were brave, sagacious, and enterprising — but history fails to point to more than two who were equal to the greatest emergencies, in which the disciplined and well armed soldiers of Britain were to be met and foiled by the comparatively raw and ill appointed recruits of the provinces. Those two men were Washington and Greene. Per- haps there was one other thus endowed ; but he turned traitor to the cause.
North Carolina produced in the Revolutionary era anumberof good officers — Howe, Davidson, Davie, Caswell, Lillington, Moore, Nash, and many others — the equals in merit with those of the same rank, in other States. And during those eventful days, a North Carolina boy was trained by the discipline of adversity, to take the foremost place in the Nation's regard, as a great captain, hero, and statesman. A New England author of celebrity, Parton, has demonstrated that Andrew Jackson was born on North Caro- lina soil. His childhood was spent in South Carolina, though within two miles of his birth- place; which circumstance gave rise to the im- pression that he was a native of that State. While still a boy, he returned to North Caro- lina, where he spent his youth and early man- hood. At length he emigrated to Tennessee, which was then only a western county of his
THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
native State, and there he lived and died. For greatness of soul — for the possession of those qualities of intelligence, of courage, and firm- ness, which inspire respect and confidence, and constitute a nature "born to command," An- drew Jackson has had, certainly, not more than one superior in this country.
" She was not represented at the Stamp Act Congress of 1765," says Fisk, and the purpose of the statement is to convey the impression that the absence of North Carolina from tliat Congress was due to a want of sympathy in the common cause. If this was not his purpose, he could have had none. He failed to add that New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Georgia were also unrepresented in that Convention. If he had had any acquaintance with the history of North Carolina, he could not have been ig- norant of the fact that her failure to be repre- sented on the occasion was caused, in the lan- guage of Martin, -i"^^: "the lower House not having had the opportunity of choosing mem- bers," Martin suggests that a similar obstacle may have prevented the other three colonies from being represented. He states that, ' ' In the Province of North Carolina, the people, at all their public meetings, manifested their high approbation of the proceedings of the inhabi- tants of the other Provinces ; and Lieutenant Governor Tyron, judging from the temper of the people that it would be unsafe and danger- ous to allow them the opportunity of express- ing their feelings, by allowing a session of the Legislative body, in these days of ferment, on the 25th of October, issued his proclamation to prorogue the General Assembly, which was to have met on the 30th of November, till the 12th of March, assigning as a reason for the step, that there appeared to be no immediate necessity for their meeting at that time."
In January, 1766, the British Sloop of War Diligence arrived in the Cape Fear, having on board the stamp paper. The Governor issued his proclamation calling on the stamp distribu-
tors to apply for it to the Commander of the .'^loop. But Colonel John Ashe of New Han- over, and Colonel Waddell of Brunswick em- bodied the militia of the two counties, and marched at their head to Brunswick, where the Diligence was anchored, and notified the com- mander that they would resist the landing of the stamp paper. A party was left to watch the movements of the ship, while their comrades seized a boat belonging to the ship, and ascend- ed the river to Wilmington, where the Governor resided, for the time. They placed the boat on a cart and marched with it through the streets, amid the plaudits of the people. The next day, Colonel Ashe, with a crowd of the people, called on the Governor, and demanded to see the Stamp Master, James Houston, who it seems, had taken refuge with His Excellency. The Governor at first declared his purpose to resist the demand, but was induced to yield by a threat that his house would be burned over his head. Houston then came out, and accompanied Col- onel Ashe and the citizens to the market, where he took a solemn oath not to attempt the execu- tion of his office. Whereupon the people gave him three cheers, and conducted him back to the Governor's quarters. This statement is con- densed from Martin, who has given a fuller ac- count of the resistance of the Colonies to the Stamp Act, than even Mr. Bancroft, and other historians of the United States.
The Whigs of North Carolina, owing to pe- culiar circumstances, had to confront formidable bodies of tories at home, where there was less glory, or at least, less reputation to be achieved, than in the struggle with the foreign foe. These internecine conflicts, though fierce and bloody, and calling forth physical courage and military conduct of a high order, were not of a character to place their leaders in the line of promotion in the Continental service.
The existence of Toryism in North Carolina called forth all the more courage and firmness on the part of her lovers of liberty. This local,.
WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
defection was the result of a combination of circumstances which have never been fully ap- preciated beyond the limits of the State.
The Scotch Highlanders who came to North Carolina about the middle of the eighteenth century, would, under other circumstances, have been an excellent class of immigrants. They were good people. But they had rebelled against George II, in favor of Charles Edward, a de- scendant of their ancient kings of the House pf Stuart. These adherents of the Stuarts con- stituted or formed a part of the Tory party of Great Britain; and the Highlanders were, there- foie, Tories by inheritance ; that is to say, they belonged to the party which believed in the di- vine right of kings. They had been defeated at the battle of CuUoden, and their last hope of a restoration of the Stuarts was gone. The leaders were hanged, and their followers were allowed t;^ emigrate to America, after taking the oath of allegiance While these North Carolina Highlanders, therefore cannot be supposed to have felt an ardent love for the British Govern- ment, they were still further removed in senti- ment from that form of Whigism in America,
marriage licences and all legal processes. The Sheriffs exacted double and treble the amount of the taxes. The people protested, but to no pur- pose. At length an indictment was found against the Clerk of the Orange County Circuit Court. He was convicted, and was fined by the Judges — a sixpence. This conduct of the Court in conniving at the fraudulent extortion of the Clerks, rendered the people desperate, and provoked them to take up arms in defence of their violated rights. No fair-minded man who reads the history of these events will hesi- tate to say that these people were subjected to greater injustice than was imposed by the Crown and Parliament on the American Colonies. They took the name of Regulators, and organ- ized rude military companies, which were very poorly armed and equipped. They were poor, and for the most part ignorant ; and without arms or military training, they were in no plight to cope with the forces under Governor Tyron. They were ingloriously defeated at Alamance, in May, 1771 ; and like the defeated Highlanders at Culloden, they were required — such as were not hanged — to take an oath of allegiance.
which had armed itself for the establishment of Governor Ty^on was a man of the world, un
a Republic. They were at the same time suffer ing the terrible consequences of an unsuccessful rebellion against an established government ; and having renewed their allegiance to it, nothing was more natural than that they should shun, and even resist, a second rebellion. Under these circumstances the Royal Governor Mar- tin, authorized Donald McDonald, their recog- nized head, to raise a brigade. He did so; but was soon defeated and made a prisoner, together with Allan McDonald, the husband of the cele- brated Flora Mclvor. The leaders were ex- changed, and returned to Scotland.
The yeomanry of the upper counties had for
scrupulous, but polished in manners. His wife, and her sister Miss Esther Wake, were ladies of rare beauty and accomplishments. The gen- try in all the eastern counties were completely led captive by the fascinations of the Provincial Court. In those days, the lawyers and wealthier classes exercised far more control over the peo- ple than they have done in later years. As il- lustrative of this statement it may be mentioned that Tryon, by these social influences, was able to carry through the Assembly a measure which was regarded at the time as one of startling ex- travagance. This was an appropriation of fif- teen thousand pounds for the erection of a Gov- ernor's palace. The house was built at New
years chafed under the illegal exactions of the Berne, and was, no doubt, one of the finest man- county officers. The Clerks of Courts demand- sions in America, in its day. It added consider- ed two to six times the amount of the lawful ably to the burden of taxes, and to the irritation fees for registering deeds and wills ; for issuing of the people.
THE COLONIAL PKRIOD.
It was in like manner, by social blandishments that Tryon was able to rally around him the gen- try of the lowlands, when he marched into the up-country ;*«. the suppression of the revolt of the Regulators. These gentlemen, three and four years later, became the staunchest of Whigs, and were not a whit behind the Adamses and Hancock, of Massachusetts, or of Henry and Jefferson of Virginia, in their early and firm support of the rights of the Colonies. But the active part taken by these men in the suppres- sion of the revolt of the Regulators, tended strongly to alienate the latter from the cause of the country in 1775, and the years following.
This antipathy of the Regulators to the lead- ing Whigs ; the suffering they had undergone, as a result of unsuccessful revolt, together with the oath they had so recently taken to be faith- ful to the Crown, made it an easy matter for Tryon's successor, Josiah Martin, to fix them in their allegiance. He visited their region of country, redressed their grievances, pardoned such as were still amenable to trial or punishment, and gave them his confidence by appointing their leading men to office. Martin, in all these respects showed great good sense and sagacity. But he led a forlorn hope ; and was compelled in April, 1775, to abandon the seat of govern- ment at New Berne, and fly for safety to Fort Johnston, on the banks of the Cape Fear. In July, feeling insecure in the Fort, he took ref- uge on board the British Sloop of War, Cniiscr, and from this safe retreat he fulminated his Proclamation, and issued his orders to his Tory adherents ; but never again could he set foot on North Carolina soil, as Governor of the State. The knavish conduct of the county ofificersin extorting illegal fees and taxes, which the'Regu- lators resisfed to the best of their ability, be- longs to the class of occurrences in the history of the Province which half-informed scribblers have, for a century and more, harped upon as affording evidence of the lawless character of the people.
In Virginia, the old aristocratic families, who gave tone to public sentiment, were strongly biased, by the force of habit, education, and attachment to the Mother Country, )/f the Church of England. They were not a particu- larly religious class of people ; nor were they deeply learned or interested in theological con- troversy. But the religion of the Church was that of the Monarch, and of the aristocracy, and therefore, they argued, it must be the true church. They had sufficient influence with the people to establish it, and maintain it at the public expense. But there was a large and growing element of dissent, which was destined under the lead of Jefferson, to overthrow the establishment, and to place all denominations on an equality before the law. A large proportion of the wealthy and well-to-do classes who emi- grated to North Carolina from Virginia, were attached to the Church ; and, backed; at first, by the Lords Proprietors, and afterwards by the King's Government, they succeeded in estab- lishing the Church as the Religion of the Prov- ince, accompanied by the imposition of a tax for its support. The Province was divided into Parishes, and glebe lands were set apart, out of the public domains, with the same end in view. At the same time all other forms of religion were tolerated without the slightest restraint. The provision of law for the support of the clergy, and for other church purposes, was wholly inadequate, and the payment of taxes for that purpose was evaded as much as possible. The odium which attached to the establishment from a sense of the injustice of compelling Dis- senters to pay taxes for its support, was a fatal obstacle to its usefulness. The Proprietors might without olTensc to the people, have en- dowed the Church out of their more than princely domains, with lands, which, in the course of time, would have made it wealthy ; but the im- position of taxes for the support of the clergy was a fatal mistake which deprived it of the love and veneration of the people, which its unri-
WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
valed liturgy is so well calculated to inspire. At the outbreak of the Revolution there were not many clergymen in the Colony, and scarcely one of these remained with their flocks, to share in their fortunes, when the shock of revolution and war came.
The failure of the Church to take root in the Colony, owing to the persistent efforts that were made to force it upon the people, was sufficient reason, with British Tory writers of those times (and is sufficient reason still, with an American writer who wishes to calumniate the State) for the declaration, "Nor does the soul appear to be better cared for thanjhe body, for it was not until 1703 that the first clergyman was settled in the Colony. '
The Church of England was established by the Government, without the approval of the people, who were opposed on principle to Church rates, as to all kinds of taxes whatsoever. Owing to this dislike of taxation, most of the people were Dissenters. But no Dissenting Churches flourished in the Colony. There was complete toleration, even for Quakers, because nobody cared a groat for theology, or for relig- ion. " This remark, like the others quoted from the writer, is made with reference to North Caro- lina, "in the Colonial Period" — that is to say, throughout that period. It has been shown on preceding pages, that the earUest settlements in the colony were made by people who fled from religious persecutions in Virginia. It is never the indifferent and careless, the vih; and the vi- cious, who become the victims of religious per- secution— they would rather bend the knee ; than brave the storm. On the contrary it is only the sincere and earnest believers — those who are inspired by an unconquerable love of truth and duty — that prefer exile and martyrdom to a re- cantation or abandonment of their faith. And such, we have seen, was the character of the Quaker and Presbyterian emigrants from Vir- ginia to the Albemarle settlements. They were, after a few years, followed by large numbers
who were members or adherents of the Church. The proportion of sincere believers of this class was quite as large as the average in communi- ties; while the Quakers and Presbyterians were eminently rehgious — else they would not have been exiled by persecution. The first necessity of all was to build cabins to shelter them from the elements, to clear the forests for cultivation, and to enclose them with fences. For they brought horses, cattle and other live stock, which roamed at large, and helped themselves to the bounties supplied by nature, and needed little attention from their owners. The colonists were not in a condition to build stately churches, nor to pay salaries to ministers ; and it was, and is, a principle with Quakers, to pay no salaries to their preachers. This fact has been familiar to every man of ordinary intelligence for two centuries. They met at private houses for pur- poses of worship, or when the weather was fa- vorable, in the stately groves. The Presbyte- rians whosecircumstances were similar, imitated the Quakers in the simplicity of their religious exercises. They were often under the necessity of putting up, for the time, with the ministra- tions of laymen, or of a minister who had some secular occupation for his support.
The Baptists formed a congregation in Per- quimans, as early as 1727. Paul Palmer was the minister. He began with thirty-two mem- bers, whose names are given. Joseph Parker succeeded him. A Baptist congregation was founded in Halifax, in 1742. "This, says Mr. Benedict, the historian, "is the Mother Church in all that part of the State, which still abounds with Baptists." In 1752, the Baptists had six- teen congregations in the Province. In 1765, they had become numerous, and formed the Kehukee Association. ' 'About this time, " says Mr. Benedict, "the separate Baptists had be- come very numerous, and were rapidly increas- ing in the upper regions of North Carolina." This schism, however, was soon afterwards healed, and the two branches of the denomina- tion were cordial'y united.
THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
Mr. Moore an able historian of the State, mentions a Baptist congregation known as Shi- loh, which was organized in Pasquotank County, as early as 1729, and refers to John Comer's Journal of that year, as his authority. Mr. Moore states, also, that "six years later, Joseph Parker, ordained by this church, had established, where Murfreesboro now stands, the church still known as Meherin ; that in 1750 a congre- gation was formed at Sandy Run in Bertie; and about the same time, chapels were in exist- ence at St. John's, and St. Luke's or Buckhorn, in Hertford.
In the year 1736 there was an immigration of Presbyterians into Vh-ginia and North Carolina, from the North of Ireland. Henry E. McCul- lough, the agent of Lord Granville — himself a large land owner — induced a colony of these people to settle on his estate in Duplin county, in the southeastern part of the Province. Erom this time forward colonies of Presbyterians came and settled in the Province, from year to year, and became a powerful influence, from their su- perior education and strong characteristics. From the Virginia border to that of South Caro- lina, in all the Piedmont region, and as low down as the county of Granville, their settle- ments were numerous ; and in conjunction with the Moravians in Surry, the Quakers in Guilford, and Lutherans, and German-Reformed Churches Cl in Rowan, they imp^jfrted a high moral and re- ligious tone, to society, in all that portion of the Province, accompanied by a love of learning and of liberty. The Presbyterians were strongly planted in Granville and Orange ; and where- ever they formed a settlement they built a church. These settlements date back to the year 1740.
To the Rev. Mr. Foote, who composed his valuable Sketches of North Carolina from the records of the Presbyteries and congregations, I am indebted for many valuable facts. The Rev. Mr. Caruthcrs, also, in his Life of the Rev, David Caldwell, and his sketches of the
history of the Province and State, has contrib- uted many valuable facts and incidents. Mr. Eootc, in this connection, says :
" While the tide of emigration was setting fast and strong into the fertile regions between the Yadkin and Catawba, from the North of Ire- land, through Pennsylvania and Virginia, anoth- er tide was flowing from the Highlands of Scot- land, and landing colonies of Presbyterian peo- ple along the Cape Eear river. Authentic re- cords declare that the Scotch had found the sandy plains of Carolina many years previous to the exile and emigration that succeeded the crushing of the hopes of the House of Stuart in the fatal battle of Cullodon in 1746. But in the year following that event, large companies of Highlanders seated themselves in Cumber- land County ; and in a few years the Gaelic lan- guage was heard familiarly in Moore, Anson, Richmond, Robeson, Bladen and Sampson. Among these people and their children, the warm hearted preacher and patriot, James Camp- bell labored more than a quarter of a century ; and with them, that romantic character. Flora McDonald passed a portion of her days." This lady worshipped at a little church among the sand-hills of Cumberland, called "Barbacue." It is still a place of public worship, but whether in the same building or not, is not stated.
In the year 1750 the Moravians, or United Brethren purchased 100,000 acres of land from Lord Granville, in Surry County, in sight of the mountains. They began their settlements the next year. There were several of these settle- ments in the purchase, and each settlement im- mediately built a house of worship. Their de- scendants still inhabit that fine district of coun- try, and give tone to society. Like the Quakers, they are an eminently religious people ; and like the Quakers, too, they are conscienciously op- posed to war and fighting. It is a fact highly honorable to the Province and State of North Carolina, that the scruples of these two classes of Religionists have always been respected ; and
WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
men whose consciences forbid the bearing of arms, have ever been excused by the payment of a moderate tax. The ill success of the Church of England has already been explained. But it was not wholly inefficient. Every Parish — and the Province was divided into Parishes — had its lay Reader, who, in the absence of a clergyman, read the services, and a sermon, selected gener- ally from the works of some eminent English- man, such as Tillotson, South or Barrow. And thus, every heart which remained loyal to the faith of our English ancestors, was nourished and instructed. But the desertion of their posts by the clergy, on account of inadequate salaries, and the open revolt of their parishioners, in 1775, prepared the way for the reception of Methodism, which, at that time, was only a new method of propagating the faith of the Church. Most fam- ilies which were not distinctively of the Presby- terian, Baptist, Quaker or some other denomina- tion, during and immediately after the Revolu- tion, became attached to the Methodists. There was no interregnum of Religious worship and ob- servance in the State.
There remain two more serious misrepresenta- tions to be noticed, viz : the denial that there were schools or Courts of law in North Caroli- na, during the era of Provincial dependence. And first, as to schools, the writer says :
"Until just before the war for Independence there was not a single school, good or bad, in the whole Colony. It need not be added that the people were densely ignorant."
If the people of North Carolina were as ignor- ant of letters as this historical critic has shown himself to be of his subject, their condition was pitiable indeed.
Dr. John Brickell, an intelligent naturalist, resided in and traveled throughout the settle- ments in the early part of the eighteenth centu- ry, and published, in Dublin, in the year 1737, "The Natural History of North Carolina ; with an account of the trade, manners and customs of the Christian and Indian inhabitants." This intelligent writer says:
"The Religion by law established is the Prot- estant, as it is professed in England ; and though they seldom have orthodox clergyman, (he means those of the Church) among them, yet there are not only glebe lands laid out for that use, commodious to each town, but likewise for building churches. rhcimntoj these Protestant Clagy is generally supplied by some sehoolmasters, who read the Liturgy, and then a sermon out of Dr. Tilotson, or some good practical divine ev- ery Sunday. These are the most mtmerous and are dispersed through the whole Pi ovince. ' ' This gen- tleman traveled and made his observations in the Province between the years 1730 and 1737, as is shown by the imprint of the book ; and it appears from his statement, that at that early day the ' ' schoolmaster was abroad " ' ' through the whole Province." Next in numerical strength were the Quakers, the Presbyterians, the Baptists and the Catholics, and the author says that the latter, who were scattered over the Province, had a clergyman at Bath-town.
In 1704, Mr. Blair, a Church missionary, and a good man, came to the Colony, and reported that the settlers had builtsmall churches in three precincts, and appointed a lay Reader in each, who were supplied by him with sermons. These lay-Readers were schoolmasters, as appears from the specific statement of Dr. Brickell ; and there is additional incidental evidence of the fact. The lay-Readers were to be supported, and to employ them as teachers of schools was the nat- ural resource. But there is other positive evi- dence of the fact.
Dr. Hawks gives an account of some small subscriptions made by the wealthy clergy and nobility for the propogation and support of the Gospel in America, from which it would appear that those well-to-do Christians of the fatherland had an idea that a very little money would dif- fuse a great deal of Gospel truth ; or that a very little of the truth would be sufficient for the Colonies. But the King, (William III,) we are told, did better. "On the report of Dr. Bray,
THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
a missionary, Bishop Compton went to tlie King, as he had done before, and obtained from him a bounty of ^20 to every minister orsc/iooluiasta; that would go over to America."
The Rev. William Gordon, an intelligent Eng- lish clergyman, who came as a missionary to North Carolina in the year 1708, and who was a man of character and piety, after returning home, wrote a long letter to the Secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, in regard to the Colony. It bears date May 13, 1709. In this letter he incidentally alludes to the fact that the Quakers in Pasquotank were sending their children to the school of a lay Reader of the Church, named Griffin. The same clergyman established a church at the head of Albemarle Sound, in the settlement which afterward became the town of Edenton, and in- trcdiu'cd a sclwobnastcr, with school books. He states that there were no Quakers in that pre- cinct, (Chowan) and that the people were ex- tremely ignorant and poor. Yet Edenton, long before the Revolution, became the centre and the abode of the wealthy and refined. The reader of the life of Judge Iredell, of the Unit- ed States Supreme Court, by iVIcRee, is charmed by the picture presented of a polished society of well-bred and educated people in that seclud- ed little nook of the Province of North Caro- lina.
At the session of the Assembly which met at Wilmington, November 20, 1759, says Martin :
"An aid was granted to the King for the sub- sistence of the troops and militia now in pay of the Province ; it was directed to be paid out of the fjiiid heretofore appiopriated for the purchase of glebes and the establishment of schools, the King not having signified his pleasure on that appro- priation."
As a rule the Kings of England had to be bribed into acquiescence in any measure pro- posed in behalf of the Colonists, however essen- tial to their welfare, by the grant of money to / which was no doubt dropped out or omitted, as '
himself or his favorites, The foregoing is a spec- imen of this system of government. I fail to find in the Colonial statutes the Act referred to, it never became a law. But Martin published one or more editions of the laws, and there can be no question that the Assembly, about the middle of the last century, passed an Act for the support of Common schools — a measure of benificence, which was frustrated by the selfish stupidity of George II.
The subsequent Act of the Assembly for di- verting the school fund from its original purpose, in order to defend the Colonies against the com- bined attacks of the French and Indians, was justifiable ; but the withholding the royal assent, before the emergency arose, was simply in keep- ing with the heartless policy, with reference to the Colonies, which governed in the British Cab- inet.
In 1764, "An Act was passed for the erection of a schoolhouse, the Academy in the town of New Berne, which," says Martin, " is the first effectual Act for the encouragement of litera- ture." Why this was the first, we have already explained. In 1767, the Academy was incor- porated, and about the same time a charter was given to the Edenton Academy. Careless writers have misunderstood these remarks of Martin, with reference to these Charters, as implying that they were the first schools ever established in the Province. The pretentious Harper's Magazine Critic belongs to this class of super- ficial readers and writers.
The condition of these Charters was, that the schools were to be taught by members of the established Church. And it was for lack of this restriction that the Royal authority was withheld from the Charter of Queen's Museum, at Char- lotte, which was to be under the control of the Presbyterians. At the next session of the As- sembly, 1 77 1, the Charter was modified, in the hope of securing the Royal favor, but without success. But as there is no royal road to science, so also, the classics and sciences may be taught
WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
in institutions from whicli the Royal assent is withheld — and there were many such in North Carolina, long before the Revolution.
The Rev. Mr. Foote, whose sketches of North Carolina have been quote.:; in preceding pages, says "Almost invariably, as soon as a neigh- borhood was settled (by Presbyterians,; prepa- rations were made for the preaching of the Gospel by a regular stated pastor; and wherever a pastor was located, in that congregation was a classical school — as in Sugar Creek, Poplar Tent, Centre, Bethany, Buffalo, Thyatira, Grove, Wilmington and the churches occupied by Pa- tillo in Orange and Granville." The Presby- terian settlements commenced in 1738 ; and al- though each settlement did not, at first, have a minister, and a classical school, there can be no question that they had schools in which the children were taught to read and write.
The history of the Moravian settlements at Wachovia, or Salem, shows that they founded churches and schools immediately on their ar- rival ; or as soon as they had provided humble dwellings for themselves and their children. On their hundred thousand acre purchase they formed several settlements, each of which had a place of worship. Salem is the centre ; and now for nearly eighty years it has had one of the largest and finest female schools in America, in which, during that long period, thousands of young ladies have been educated, who have gone thither from every State of the South, and not a few from the North and West.
In the eastern and middle counties the common schools were taught, as has been shown, by the lay readers of the Church, and by others ; while the most wealthy classes sent their .sons to Wil- liam and I\Iary in Virginia, to Princeton, to New England, and even to Old England, for higher education.
The libel which the writer attempts to attribute to Mr. Bancroft, has been exposed, and need not be repeated. He follows up that statement with another, however, which requires notice. He says :
"The Courts, such as they were, sat often in taverns, where the Judge might sharpen his wits with bad whiskey ; ivhile theit decisions were not rcconicd, but were simply shouted by the crier from the Inn door, or at the nearest market place."
Of all the statements of the writer, the aboye shows the greatest degree of ignorance; for it ie incredible that a sane man who has read the his- tory of the Colony, would deliberately make assertions which are contradicted on almost every page of our annals. A large portion of Martin's history of the Province is devoted to an exposition of the court systems. But to begin at the beginning, — Dr. Hawks, in his his- tory of the early colonization of the Province, which he brings down to the year 1730, has a lengthy chapter entitled "The Law and its Ad- ministration." He prefaces this chapter, as is his method, with his authorities; and these con- sist of extracts from the Records of the Courts. The first extract^ from the Records of the " General Court," refutes two of the statements above. It is dated 1695, and is an order of the Court to the Marshal to take into custody Stephen Manwaring, an attorney, " to answer for his contemptuous and insolent behavior be- fore the Court. " L-'ji
Then follows an order debarring him ; and another, allowing him till th^ next term to an- swer ; and finally, in 1697, was ordered "that the said Stephen Manwaring shall not, from henceforth, be permitted to plead as an Attor- ney in any Court of Record in this Goveiunieut." The next extract bears date the same year, 1695, and is of the same character. Two gen- tlemen of the bar were debarred for contempt. One of them, Henderson Walker, Esq., after- ward made a distinguished figure in the history of the Colony; and four years after this con- tempt of Court, he became its Governor.
In 1697 we have the record of a "Summary proceeding for a false accusation." In 17 14, the "Proceedings on an Information against a
THE COI.ONIAl, I'I'.RIOD.
militia-man;" and in 1722, an "Abatement of suit by reason of the plaintiff's outlawry." Next follows the whole proceedings in the Gen- eral Court, on a writ of error. This was in the year 1723. The introductory lines in this pro- ceeding will show that the forms of law, brought from England, were substantially observed. It begins as follows:
"JohnCiray of Bertie precinct, gentleman, comes to prosecute his appeal from certain pro- ceedings had against him, at the Pnriitct Coutt of Berth-, on Tuesday, the 14th day of May, Anno Domini, 1723, at the suit of John Cot- ton, Esq.
" And the said John Gray, by Edward Jfose- lev, his attorney, brings into court here, a copy of the Record and proceedings of said Court, in these words," &c.
This precinct or county of Bertie, was the youngest of the settlements, and it had just been given corporate authority. This may have been the first court — and it was certainly among the earliest. Yet we see that it was a Court of Record, and thus brands as a calumny the state- ment referred to in Harpers Magazine. It is a part of the Record that the Court was held at the house of James Howard at Akotsky. The date was Tuesday, May 14, 1723. Bertie is just across the Chowan river from Edenton, the principal town of the Province; and the writ of Error seems to have been sued out on the day the judgment was rendered.
Dr. Hawks gives the writ of arrest of John Gray, and his declaration, signed by John Hen- neman, his Attorney, " pro pi' ff." The suit tLC was an action of detiihlc for a patent, for "six hundred and forty acres of ground. " The Dec- laration is endorsed, "I do not detain the pat- ent.— John Gray." Next follows a formal sum- mons for George Wynn as a witness ; then the statement of the issues joined, the plea of non- detinet, the impannclling of the jury, and their verdict for the plaintiff. All this in the lowest court of the Province, held by three or more
Justices of the Peace, in the youngest county in the Province, in the year 1723. Mr. Mosely, afterwards distinguished in the history of the Province, was the attorney for the plaintiff in error. He recites the foregoing facts, and excepts to them in the usual form and assigns four reasons why the court below manifestly erred.
The General Court reversed and annulled the verdict, and ordered that Cotton pay the costs. Dr. Hawks, who was a lawyer before he became a clergyman, reinarks on these proceedings as follows :
"VVe have presented the whole Record of the General Court in this case, that the reader might see the forms of writ and subpoena in use as set forth in the Record from the Precinct Court. It furnishes, also, incidentally, evidence that the practice of the day seems to have been in the Precinct Court, to endorse the pleas on the declaration. It illustrates also, the formality with which the minutes of proceedings were kept in the General Court. There are nuiiierous other eases to be found, more fidly even, than this, and where the errors assigned involved some interesting and really doubtful points of law ; but we selected this, as being one of the short- est, and yet sufficient for all purposes of illus- tration."
Dr. Hawks fills sixteen pages with extracts from "tho Records of the General Court of Oyer and Terminer," beginning in 1697, and ending in 1726. Nothing could have been further from his purpose than to furnish proof that North Carolina had courts of record at that early day : for how could he imagine that any man would make such a display of his ignorance as to dispute the fact? How could he suppose that a pretentious Magazine would commit such a blunder, in an article of historical criticism — and that it would apply the stupid remark to the condition of the Province, during the whole time of colonial dependence? Yet that is the predicament in which Harper s Magazine has placed itself.
WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
The first case copied by Dr. Hawks from the Records of the General Court of Oyer and Ter- miner, is erroneously placed under the date of 1697, when William III. was on the throne. For the writ runs in the name of "our Sovereign Lady, the Queen " — meaning, doubtless. Queen Anne.
It was on an indictment against Susannah Evans, for witchcraft, under an old English stat- ute, as amended in the reign of James I. It was not a colonial statute ; yet the courts were required to enforce it. But the result of the trial shows that our ancestors were not abreast with the civilization of that age, as illustrated further north, and it was lucky forSusanah that they were not. The indictment is as follows :
"The Jurors for our Sovereign Lady, the Queen, present upon their oaths, that Susanah Evans of the precinct of Currituck, in the County of Albemarle, in the aforesaid Province, not having the fear of God before her eyes, but being led by the investigation of the Devil, did, on or about the twenty-fifth day of July last past, the body of Deborah Bouthier, being then in the peace of our sovereign lady, the Queen, devilishly and maliciously bewitch, and by as- sistance of the devil, afflict, with mortal pains, the body of the said Deborah Bouthier, whereby the said Deborah departed this life. And also did diabolically and maliciously bewitch several other of her Majesty's liege subjects, against the peace of our sovereign lady, the Queen, and against the form of the statute in that case made and provided," &c.
This indictment was laid before the Grand Jury, by the Attorney General; but that body failed to find a true bill, and Susanah was turned loose upon society to work her "devilish arts." This seems to have been the only case in which a person was brought before the Courts of North Carolina, on a charge of witchcraft, and whether the fact was due to the isolation of the Province, by which it "was in a great measure cut off from the currents of thought and feeling by
which the other colonies were swayed," or whether to a more enlightened sense of justice than prevailed in colonies which sent witches to the gallows " by the cartload," as Upham in- forms us, was the case in Massachusetts, the reader may determine.
But if North Carolina suffered from its seclu- sion, a loss of .sympathy with the great move- ment for the suppression of witchcraft, it was from no lack of zeal for religion and good morals, as the Magazine critic would have the world be- lieve. Among the numerous extracts from the Records of the General Court of Oyer and Ter- miner, made by Dr. Hawks, are the proceedings on the indictment of John Hassel, of Chowan Precinct, in the year 1720, on charge of pro- fanity. Hassel was one of the "advanced thinkers" of that age, who declared publicly on Sunday, March 13, 17 18, "That he was never beholden to God Almighty for anything ; for that he never had anything from him, but what he worked for;" and much more of the same sort. He plead "not guilty," but the jury con- victed him. His counsel moved in arrest of judgement, that the indictment was not brought within six months after the words were spoken ; nor was it prosecuted within ten days, "accord- ing to the form and effect of an act for obscming ilic Lord's Day." The court overruled the mo- tion, and ordered that the culprit should receive "thirty-nine lashes on his bare back," and give security "in the sum of fifty pounds for his good behavior for a year and a day."
Here is incidental proof that these colonists, who are represented as devoid of law and relig- ion, and of learning, had laws against profanity, and requiring the observance of the Lord's Day, as early as 1 7 1 8 ; and that these laws were en- forced against any "lawless and vile fellows" who might come into the Province, and offend against them. But our ancestors failed in the matter of hanging witches, and selling Quakers, and are voted ignorant and irreligious.
Tiie proceedings on an indictment for ' 'forcible
THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
entry and trespass," are given by Hawks, un- der date of 1729. And of the same date there is the written refusal of the Governor to sign a death warrant on account of informaHties in the trial.
Numerous specimens are given of the sen- tences of the Court for theft, and similar offences, in which the lash was generally brought into requisition.
Some pages are devoted to the Records of the Chancery Court, during the early period of colonial history, prior to 1730; but the foregoing must suffice.
It is probable that the as.sailant of the good name of the State may have deduced many of his conclusions from the following remark of the elder Josiah Quincey, which he recorded in his Memoir. That gentleman passed through east- ern North Carolina in the Spring of 1773, and was greatly pleased with the character and spirit of the people, all along his route. He was es- pecially pleased with the gentlemen he met at Wilmington, where he spent some daj's. He mentions with honor several whose names have come down to us. Passing on further north, he states, under date of April 5th, that he "break- fasted with Colonel Buncombe[in Tyrrell County] who waited upon me to Edenton Sound, and gave me letters to his friends there. Spent this and the ne.xt day in crossing Albemarle Sound, and in dining and conversing in company with the most celebrated lawyers of Edenton." [Among these lawyers were, doubtless, Samuel Johnston, who, a few years later was chosen to the office of President of the Continental Con- gress, which he declined ; but became Governor of the State, and a United states Senator. Mr. Quincey more than likely met, also, James Ire- dell, who afterwards became a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.] Mr. Quincey continues : "From them I learned that Dr. Samuel Cooper of Boston, was generally (they said universally) esteemed the author of "Leonidas," who, together with " Mucius
Scaevola, " was burnt in effigy under the gallows, by the common hangman." And here follows the misleading remark of Mr. Quincey, which a person, entirely ignorant of the history, and of most other things, might be excused for taking as conclusive proof that North Carolina, prior to the Revolution, never had any laws or courts, although she possessed "celebrated lawyers." Mr. Quincey says: "There being no courts of any kind in this Province, and no laws in force by which any courts could be held, I found little inclination or incitement to stay long in I'Menton, though a pleasant town."
This statement was literally true at that day and date ; but the circumstances which brought about the peculiar state of things, being well understood throughout the colonies, Mr. Quincey did not stop to explain them. They constituted one of the most serious grievances against which the people of the Province had long had reason to complain of the Crown and Government of Great Britain. The explanation is as follows: For more than twenty years a struggle had been going on between the Assembly on the one side and the Governor and Council, appointed by and impelled by the Sovereign, on the other, in regard to the constitution of the courts, Supe- rior and Inferior.
The Crown insisted on the appointment and removal of the Judges, at pleasure, and to im- port them from Great Britain, while the Assem- bly was required to provide them fi.xed and lib- eral salaries.
The Assembly resisted this unjust pretension, and insisted that lawyers resident in the Colony should alone be appointed to Judgeships over them ; that their tenure of ofifice should be per- manent, and that their salaries should depend upon the free offering of the Assembly from year to year.
This controversy dated back to the middle of the century. An act of the Assembly of 1754, for the regulation or reorganization of the courts had never received the royal sanction, and at
WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
length, after it had been in force for several years, it was annulled, or vetoed. In 1760 a new court act was adopted, which provided, among other things, that no person should be appointed a Justice of the Superior Court, unless he had been regularly called to the degree of an outer barrister in some of the luiglish Inns of Court; unless he were of five years standing, and had practiced law in the principle Courts of Judica- ture of the Province. The act also required that the commissions of the Judges should run during good behavior.
The Governor, Dobbs, held that the clause defining the qualifications of the Judges, was an unconstitutional restraint on the King's pre- rogative, almost precludeing the appointment of any one from England ; and that the clause de- fining the tenure of the Judges was at variance with the principle of keeping all great colonial officers under a strict subordination to, and de- pendence on the Crown.
The Assembly plead earnestly with the Gov- ernor, alleging the necessity for courts of Justice and the sacredness of the right they contended for. They were, indeed, fighting over again the parliamentary battles of Hampden and Tyni, for regulated liberty; and they fought them with a courage, an intelligence, and a dignity worthy of the cause. They were fighting just such battles as Massachusetts had fought throughout her whole history, and which constitute her chiefest glory.
As illustrative of the Crown officials in the Province, and as throwing further light upon the causes which provoked the Regulation move- ment, I will be excused for presenting more fully, the nature of this controversy between the people and their imported rulers.
Of the new court system, which was intro- duced and passed in the Assembly which met at Wilmington, November 20, 1759, Martin says that it provided for the establishment of a court of king's bench and common pleas. It forbade the Chief Justice to receive any part of
the fees of the clerks, which seems to have been an unauthorized practice of that eminent person — or rather, of one or more persons who had held the office. The Council, which was ap- pointed by the Crown, would not consent to the passage of the bill until this prohibition was ex- punged, which that body held to be derogatory of the dignity of the Chief Justice. The Assem- bly replied that '' tlic practice zvliich had hitherto prevailed of the Chief Justice exacting from the Clerks a considerable proportion of their legal fees, had been one cause of their being guilty of great extortions, whereby the Superior Courts had be- come scenes of great oppression, and the con- duct of the Chief Justice and Clerks, a subject of universal complaint, ,);hey admitted that the J late Chief Justice, Peter Henly (whose death was lamented by all who wished to see the hand of Government strengthend, the laws duly exe- cuted and justice impartially administered) from a pious sense of the obligations of his oath, had conformed to the act of 1748, for regulating officers fees, but they thought themselves bound in duty to their constituents to provide against the pernicious effects of a contrary conduct."
On this and other grounds of disagreements the two Houses did not come to terms, and the bill failed. At the ne.Kt session the Assembly passed a court bill not materially different from that of 1759. It was sent up accompanied by an address, in which its importance to the welfare of the Province was urged.
But the Governor, who was very anxious to have an aid bill passed, in compliance with a demand by the Crown, for the prosecution of the war against the French and Indians, temper- ized while urging the paramount duty of passing that measure. The Assembly prepared an ad- dress or petition to the King, in which the griev- ances of the Colony were strongly set forth, and tile great importance of the "court law " was urged.
In the same address, serious complaints were I
made against the Governor, Dobbs, who, it was j
THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
charged had appointed corrupt and incompetent men to office.
No agreement was reached and the Superior Court bill was rejected.
An act, however, was passed, for establishing county courts, accompanied by a provision for the support of the clergy ; and this was sanc- tioned.
The Governor then prorogued the Assembly, from the 23d to the 26th of May; when he again called on that body to pass a Superior Court bill, and grant an aid to the King. These meas- ures were accordingly adopted ; and the Gover- nor gave his sanction to the "Court law" on the condition that if the King did not confirm it within two years from the loth of November following, it was to be null and void.
In December, 1 761, the Lords Comm'ssioners of Trade and Plantations, laid the Court laws, passed in May of the preceding year, before the King and Council, asking the royal disallowance and repeal ; and accordingly the act was annulled. The Governor was severely censured for allow- ing it to go into operation before it received the royal sanction.
In 1762, a Superior Court law, temporary in its character, was agreed upon by the two Houses, and was permitted to go into operation. The Assembly still maintained its position of with- holding permanent salaries from the Judges. In 1764, the Act was renewed, or extended; and in 1767, a new Act was passed, and limited to five years duration. The County Court law was also renewed, and continued for the same period. These laws would therefore expire in 1772 —
probably at the close of that year ; and hence it was that Mr. Quincey, in February, 1773, was correct in saying, that there were "no Courts of any kind in the Province, and no laws in force by which they could be held." The people of all the Colonies were aware of this state of things and the reason for it, and hence he deemed it unnecessary to explain them. A man of ordi- nary intelligence, and especially one who assumes the office of historical critic — even at a distance of a century — should have, at least surmised as much.
The remark quoted from Mr. Bancroft, on a preceding page, that whoever doubts the capac- ity of man for self-government, should study the early history of North Carolina, was made with reference to the people of the Albemarle settlement during the Proprietary Government ; but its truth receives additional, and even fuller, illustration, in the subsequent career of the Col- onists, when they had spread over a territory as large as the Mother Countiy, and laid the foun- dations of a great State. No true man can read that history without admiring the courage, and the unconquerable firmness, exhibited under the most trying circumstances with which they vin- dicated their rights as men. The whole history of the Province, from 1663 to 1776, Was a strug- gle of the people against arbitrary power and corrupt administrative officers ; and people of the present day who imagine that Colonial de- pendence in the 17th and i8th centuries was an easy yoke to bear, only show their ignorance of the history ot that period.
t^^^^^^"^
GERMANS IN CABARRUS.
^^^^^^^^S'^'^^^^r^^
EARLY GERMAN SETTLERS IN EASTERN CABARRUS COUNTY.
X
An Address of Gen. Rufus Barringer, delivered at the Lutheran Commemoration in Concord,
N. C, November loth, 1883.*
From a variety of causes, so far as I can learn, not a record exists exactly fixing the date of the first German settlement in this section of North CaroUna, nor has a single pen told the story of the wanderings of our Ger- man fathers nor the part they bore in our early wars.
Less than five generations liave passed away since these German fathers first struck the banks of the Cold Water and Dutch Bufialo Creeks. Yet who, in this large assembly can tell when, whence, why, and. how these hardy pioneers came ? If direct from Europe, what part ? If from or through Pennsylvania, what County? What routes did they travel ? When and where was the first settlement made ? }2<.\d especially what were their peculiar char- acteristics ? Did they have any distinct reli- gious creed ? Any known political polity ? How did they bear themselves in the nume- rous Indian and other early wars? Especially in the great rexolutionary struggle for free- dom and independence, what troops did they furnish ? What sufterings and losses did they endure, and what sacrifices did they make for the cause ? Who were Whigs and who Tories ? All interesting questions ; the very doubt
*Tlie reader should reraemlier tliat many of these remarks were local and personal aud uuderstood by the audience only.
and confusion in wliich they are shrouded greatly embarrasses one. I shall, therefore, rather seek to excite interest and enquiry into the subject before us than undertake to decide or debate disputed issues. If I .should chance to fall into errors of any kind, I will be only too glad to be fully and promptly corrected. My great aim is historic truth.
Before proceeding to the main enquiries, it is proper to disabuse the popular mind of cer- tain prejudices in regard to the so-called Dutch or Germans, generally, of this country and more particularly as regards the religious faith and fighting, or rather non-resisting tenets, of certain Teutonic sects amongst us.
It is true that many of the earlier Dutch and German colonists were non-armbearing secta- rians, such as the Mennonites in Pennsylva- nia, the Moravians here in North Carolina, and the Saltzbergers in Georgia. But there were none amongst our Germans. From the days of Braddock's defeat and the advent of Maj. George Washington, down to the last battle under Gen. Robert E. Lee, our Dutch have proved a most pugnacious set.
Then, again, the first German settlers are constantly confounded with Hessians, who fought against us, and numbers of whom, after the revolution, found an asylum in this coun- try, and were not unwelcome.
xl
WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
The facts are these : The Hessian contin- gents of George III came from a region, and were rait^ed at a time, when the bulk of the common people, the world over, were lit- tle better than beasts of burden for their rulers. The Swiss Guards were not the only mercenaries. They, too, came from the only Republic of Europe. But these Hessians hap- pened to be mostly Protestants. The mar- velous light, of Luther's teachings had struck deep into even their dark minds. General Washington, with that tact and wisdom pecu- liarly his own, readily saw this, and ventured to turn it to account. He accordingly man- aged, when any of these Hessian soldiers were captured, to send them off into the interior of the country, and quarter them upon the soundest German settlements. In this way many of them were very naturally left in America. Or if exchanged, they had but to take the chances of war. to release them fi-om their military oaths and obligations. This happened, notabl^v, at the siege and surrender of Savannah, and under the articles of Peace 1782, when hundreds of these Protestant Hes- sians chose to remain in this land of liberty, and enjoy the untold blessings they were sur- prised to find here. They very sensibly sought their German countrymen, who knew the facts of their case, and who pitied their forlorn con- dition. As a well-known circumstance, they almost universally make good citizens — strik- ingly faithful to every trust and obligation. Hence they soon intermarried with other clas- ses, and thus it happens that hundreds of those now before me, are the descendants of the once "Hated Hessians."
But I have lately obtained information quite curious in regard to these Hessian contingents: At the very time that George III. was gath- ering up his foreign levies, to help to conquer us, Silas Deane, the American Commissioner in Germany, was offered large numbers of the
same people to fight for us; and only an acci- dent and a scarcity of money defeated the scheme.*
Another class of German immigrants who entered largely into our population of foreign descent, and who are commonly thought to have cast a stain on the name of freedom, were the so-called Redemptioners — a term now well nigh obsolete in popular speech — but once indicating a body of immigrants, who took an eventful part in the development of this New World. The term was first used in connection with white indentured apprentices. It was af- terwards applied to a large class of very poor emigrants, who could not pay their passage- money to America in cash down ; but who were willing to enter into contracts of limited service, on their arrival here, in order tore-im- burse the funds advanced for that purpose.
Still again, it was an artful scheme often re- sorted to, by the down -trodden of Europe, to escape the thraldom of feudal bondage.
Some of our first German settlers no doubt belonged to all of these three different classes of redemptioners. A few of the most promi- nent pioneers certainly came in the way last indicated.
The story of the wrongs, the sufferings, the trials and troubles of these humble heroes, is so full of interest and instruction, nay of sub- lime courage and christian fortitude, that I pause to explain it. The facts, too, slied a re- flected light on the mooted and somewhat mys- terious question of where these first adventu- rous Germans came from, and of tlieir national characteristics.
In one of the quiet out-lying districts of Wiirtemburg, the traveller now sees standing a plain stone pyi-araid, erected by the peasants of German}- in 1789, as a monument to Prince Charles Frederick of that Duchy, for his vol-
*[See American Archives— series 5,— (1779), vol. III. page 887.]
GERMANS IN CABARRUS.
xli
uutaryaliolitioii (if sorl'dom in that year. And its simple history is this:
The thunder of Luther's tire struck deep and fast into tlie hearts of the peasantry chiss, as you have heard liere to-day. This resulted in all sorts of insurrectionarj' outhreaks, which had to be put down hy force. This stayed sonie- wliat the progress of the reformation and grieved Luther, But the mighty work Avent on and soon the minds and consciences of men Itecame comparativelj' free. And yet it was a long time before the light of political truth reached the prerogatives of power and property. At that time very few, if any, of the peasant class, as such, could hold real estate in Central Europe. On the contrary, they themselves were often bought and sold with the land they worked, and had to serve their landlords a certain number of days each week, the year round, and all through life. The Protestant peasants, naturally enough, became restive un- der such hard and cruel restraints and restric- tions. And they ere long sought in every pos- sible way to avoid and escape them. This was next to impossible to do, and still remain in the country. But to flee their homes was also ex- tremely hazardous. The law of expatriation was not then fully recognized, and all sorts of treaty stipulations and alliances provided for their recapture, return to slavery, and, usually, a barbarous beating besides. But go they would, and their safest course was stealth, un- der this scheme of indentured apprenticeships. In this way, the young men could gradually re- move themselves from one State or province to another, and little noticed, reach a seaport; and so escape to America or some other foreign country where life, liberty, limb and land were somewhat free. To us of this enlightened age and free republican government, it is simply incredible that such a state of things should have existed in any Christian country, espec- ially in the English colonies, less than one hun-
dred and fifty years ago. But so it was. White men not only indentured themselves as ap- prentices, but gladh' sold their persons into long but limited slaverj', for the blessed privi- lege, or chance of escaping feudal serfdom. But listen while I read this advertisement from an old Philadelphia newspaper, Tlw Arn^r icnii Mn-i-urji, of date November 28, 1728:
"Just arrived from London, in the ship Bor- den, Williani llurbert, connnander, a parcel of young likel}' Men Servants, consisting of Hus- bandmen, Joyners, Shoemakers, Weavers, Smiths, Brickmakers, Bricklayers, Sawyers, Tailors, Staymakers, Butchers, Chairmakers, and several other trades, and are to be sold vei-y reasonable, either for ready monej',wheat, bread or flour, by Edward Home, Philadel- phia."
Amoiiir the classes thus named were, no doubt, the ancestors of many now high in the Free Citizenship of this great country, and possibly the ancestors of some of those present here to-day.*
After the American revolution, the exodus from Europe under this process was enormous; so much so as almost to depopulate certain German States and countries, notably "Wur- temberg, where serfdom was so absolute and grinding. Then it was, in 1789, that the reigning Grand Duke, Prince Charles Frede- rick, rose to the supreme height of voluntarilj- abolishing all serfdom in his dominions. And
*It wa.s tlie liDiicst boast of the di.stiiiKuislied John Covode, of Pennsylvania, "tliat his fatlicr liad been held as a Kedcniptioner."
John Reed, tlie discoverer and tirst owner of tlie fa- mous "Reed gold mine" in Cabarrus County, was one of the Hessians of the RcvohUionary war. He died a wealtliy man, but did not know, wlien he found the lirst lump of fiohl, wliat it was or what it was worth. Nor did he know until he was more tliaii eiffhty years old that he had a right to citizensliip in thi.s country. He was naturalized at Concord about 1843. For tlic discovery of the Reedf;old mine, see Wheeler's History of North Carolina, Vol. H, page 64.
xlii
WHEELEK'S REMINISCENCES.
in return, a grateful Protestant peasantry cheerful!}' erected this simple monument to his memory. Wurtemburg again prospered; population grew and she soon became a king- dom.
In all this may be noticed the marked char- acteristics of the German mind and temper. According to their light, the German Princes generally had a fatherly love for their people, and the latter, ever reverential and grateful, ac- cepted the great boon conferred by Providence not in a spirit of fanatical pride and resent- ment, but as a gracious concession and bless- ing.
And what may seem strange to us, as touch- ing this custom of voluntary slavery, no sense of degradation seems to have attached to it. It simply shows that parties resorting to it, were in dead earnest to reach the goal of free- dom, and meant real work and business. As just and proper labor contracts, such inden- tures were almost invariably carried out in good faith by all parties concerned.
For one, therefore, I rather commend the patient fortitude, the unfaltering faith and courage, and the Christian tidelity, with which certain of the redemptioners worked their way to the fertile fields of the Cold Water and Buflalo Creeks. As the darkest shades often reflect the most beautiful tints; and as the purest gold is usually found in the rough- est rock, so the finest characters are always evolved through the severest trials and tribula- tions. We are the more perfect through suffering. Our Redemptioner fore-fathers had realized in their own persons the inestim- able privileges and blessings they had come so far, and at such fearful risks and sacrifices, to se- cure. The sequel will show that when the day of trial came, and they were called upon to fight for their dear-bought benefits, they were equal to every emergency.
The first Germans known to have reached
this immediate section, now called the Dutch Side, consisted of three young farmers — all foreigners and probably all three Redemption- ers. One certainly was, and he the best known, a man in fact, of rare strength of will, and singular force of character. He was a native of Wurtemburg ; left therewith the consent of his father, in his 21st year; tarried a while in Hanover; finally sailed from Rotter- dam in the ship Phcenix, and landed at Phila- delphia Sept. 30th, 1743. He had some edu- cation but no money or friends. He left home and country, because he was not allowed to buy or hold real property. His term of ser- vice was three years; but he worked so well, and faithfully, that he managed, some way, to make favor with his master, and wiped the whole debt out in one short j^ear. Whether he married his master's daughter, or some other good Pennsylvania girl, it is not certain; but she, too, was poor; and he often told, with much glee that he got with her "just one sil- ver dollar."
With this wife and two small children, and accompanied by his two countrymen and their little families, the youthful Redemption- er, now free, set out from Pennsylvania, for the rich region of the Yadkin and Catawba — then the aim and end of the adventurous immigrant.
When this trio of enterprising Germans* started on their perilous march, the buffalo, bear and the wolf still roamed our forests. The savage Indian and the frontier French often marked the camping grounds of the lonely immigrant with the blood of slaughtered innocents. They crossed the mountain ridges and the flooded streams by following the old buffalo trail, then known as the " Indian Trad- ing Path." At last they reached the end of their wanderings, and the}- safely forded the
* The names of these three pioneer Germans were BaiTiuger, the grand-father of the speaker, Dry, (Derr, and Smith.
GERMANS IN CABARRUS.
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broad and beautiful Yadkin at the "Trading Ford," the sole memorial amongst us, of this once famous "Indian Trading Path." But here a new ditBculty beset these peaceful fugi- tives from the land of the "Broad-brimmed Quaker." The free and tolerant principles of Penn had gathered into his Province, all the odds and ends of civil and religious persccutioti, the world over. Jarrings and conflicts na- turally ensued ; notably, among the Scotch- Irish and some of the quaint Mennonites of that State. When our German friends crossed the Yadkin, and began to cast their wistful eyes over the wide plains and spreading prai- ries of this lovely region, they were surprised to find the Scotch-Irish just ahead of them.
The latter had occasional squatters, here and there, on the choicest spots, especially on its western borders, up and down the Catawba. Our German Pilgrims had seen enough of strife and resolved to "avoid all such." They ac- cordingly abandoned the "Trading Path," just east of the present site of Salisbury and turned square to the left and followed the right bank of the Yadkin, down towards the lighter slate soils of that broken region. They were however, not afraid of their Scotch-Irish allies, in the mighty struggle to subdue the wilderness and enter its broad acres. So they gradually turned their steps to the better lands above them, and iinally located on the high ground between the present Cold Water and Buffalo creeks. The exact spot was the old Ovenshine place, near the Henry Propst home- stead.
How long these people had resided in Penn- sylvania does not appear — long enough, how- ever, to have lost somewhat their native Ger- man, and picked up, in its stead, that strange but popular gibberish of all tongues, univer- sally known as " Pennsylvania Dutch." Our immigrants themselves were called Dutch. They recognized the term and proceeded to
designate their surroundings accordingly. Their nomenclature, however, was quite limi- ted, and they usually followed nature. Hence we have Big and Little Dutch Buffalo, Big and Little Bear Creek, Big and Little Cold Water, and Jenny Wolf Branch. Above and west of them, was the English or Irish Buffalo, and south was Johnson, now Rocky River.
This would seem to have been a long time ago. Ours was then Bladen, or probably Pee Dee County— a County never legally recog- nized. But after all, it was only about one hundred and forty years back — as near as I can fix it — 1745-6. One hundred and forty years ! Only the hfe-span of two or three of the stout old German fathers. And yet what marked and momentous changes have taken place amongst us, in that eventful period ! IIow t the panorama of history has crowded upon us, in one short century and a half ! How slowly time has passed ; and how utterlj' the foot- prints of these wandering fathers have fled from sight and memory ! They numbered only three families, and their nearest neigh- bors, on one side, were sparse settlers, in the present limits of Popular Tent and Coddle Creek, and on the other, the Highland Scotch of the Pee Dee hills. But our wanderers were uot long alone.
Soon the news of a goodly land flew back, first to Pennsylvania, and then on to the far off", struggling, toiling, teeming, millions of the war-racked and priest-ridden Fatherland. And now they poured in from all directions, mainly still from and through Pennsylvania, but often through Charleston and occasionally through Wilmington, following the routes along the high ridges dividing the principal rivers. And it was thus, that this particular section, embracing parts of the present Coun- ties of Cabarrus, Rowan and Stanly, came to be so rapidly settled, and almost exclusively by Germans. Bv the time of tlie revolution, the
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WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
" Dutch side" of old Mecklenburg was its most densely peopled portion.
I here propose to correct a partial error, into which many have fallen (at one time nij'self,) in regard to the distinctive nationality of these first German settlers. They are often supposed to have come from the central and northern parts of Germany, and sometimes from the low countries of Europe. But I now have ample proof that they came from the upper or Castle Rhine regions — Wiirtemburg, Baden, Bavaria, and the ancient Palatinate — so mei'cilessl}' wasted by that grand ogre of France — miscalled Louis the Great. It was the fiercest and bloodiest of persecutions that then desolated all this jtart of Southern Ger- many, and scattered its honest, liberty loving, intelligent, industrious Protestants to everv quarter of the globe. And I am able to state from positive knowledge, that the common German names of this section, so numerous amongst us to-day, are all now found in the upper Rhine region, referred to, notably in and around the skirts of the Black Forest and its borders.
Our familiar name of Blackwelder (German, Schwartzwalder) means not black wood, but a Black Forester. So the names of Barnhart, Barrier, Bost, Dry, Misenheisner, Pi'opst, Sides, Bosheimer, Barringer, and hundreds of others are there to-day. No doubt the emigrants, and especially those escaping under the guise of apiirenticcships or as indentured servants, often stopped over in the countries through which they passed, working their way along. And it may liave served their purpose occas- ionally, to hail from the Continental domin- ions of the (Jcorges of England. But this much is certain, very few of them were Dutch proper, or natives of the low countries, or even the level parts of (_Termauy. Onr first (^lerman settlers, nearly all built their liouses on I'each- ing here, on the high grounds, and often on
the tops of the hills, aftei' the castle times of > their own rugged country-. Their removal to the level lands and bottoms was afterwards. But be that as it may, they came ; they came to stay ; and that they did so, is fully proved by the immense numbers of their descendants here to-day, and the vast regions the "Dutcli Side" has peopled elsewhere. They were a hardy, healthful, handy race, self-reliant, self- helpful, and they have made their mark wlierever the^^ have struck.
The intellectual and religious cpuilities of such a people were almost sure to be marked and enduring. .Many of them had fought in the battles of Europe ; others had left home and country for conscience sake ; all had en- dured toil, sufi:'ering and sorrow for the free- dom they came so far to find. They learned to live almost entirely within themselves. Their wants were few and simple. Onl_y two things seemed absolute essentials: (1.) In all their wanderings — in shipwreck at sea, and in storm on land ; in serfdom and in voluntaiy slavery ; under the iron lieel of Power in Europe, and in the boundless freedom of Amer- ica— they clung to their Luther Bibles. With- out any distinctive notions of formal creeds, and profoundly indift'erent to the mere forms of religion, they grasped the fundamentals of the Bible as taught by Luther, and so they lived and died. (2.) They tolerated no idlers — no drones in either the Church, the State, or the family. In fact, however, the family was everything. With a proper start in the family, all government was simple and easy. There was an intense regard for all lawful authority. The husband and father felt his responsibility both to God and the powers that be. The wife and mother was, indeed a help-meet, and shared alike the joys and sorrows of the hus- band. The young all worked, and grew up trained and skilled in every ordinary labor and handicraft. Both sexes were strong and act-
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xlv
ive — monilly, mentally, and physically. The men were manly, and the women matronly. When trials and tioiihles canie, such people knew lunv to meet thorn. They had, at last found ik'liyhtful homes, and tasted the sweet freedom they had so much loiiged for. And when, therefore, they were summoned to de- fend those homes and to vindicate the rights and privileges they had secured, no people ever responded more heroically.
I am ahle to show that these German sett Icrs paiticipated in almost every expedition against the Indians, and that they took a very active part in the forced march of General Ruther- ford against the Cherokees in 1776. A young German was one of the very few killed in ac- tion on that expedition."
It is not generally known that the settlers of this section were ever disturbed by the French enemy on our distant frontiers. But I have here (holding it up,) a petition in 1756 to Grovernor Dobhs, from the Rowan and An- son settlers, complaining (among other thmgs) of the dangers that threaten them from the "savage Indians in the interest of their French allies." Also a curiously carved powder-horn that was worn by Archibald Woodsides of Coddle Creek, in one of the long and hazardous marches against Fort Diiquesne. It has on it a good description of '' Fort Pitt " and its pic- turesque surroundings. The history of this singular memorial of our early wars is, that the owner chanced to meet in one of his marches with German soldiers from this settlement, and they persuaded him to return with them.
But I come now^ and chiefly to speak ot the revolutionary services of the German fathers. Here the evidence is full and complete. But, unfortunately, it is only in old musty army roUs, not accessible to the general public; and no one has been found to tell the story of their
•Matthias Barriuger of the Catawba family.
deeds. But this was then the most populous part of old Mecklenburg; and it was, fromiirst to last, true, indeed, entirely unanimous in its fidelity to the great cause of freedom and in- dependence.
That the Germans do not figure iirominently in the famous meetings at Charlotte, .May 20, 177.5, is not strange. Their settlement lay mainly in the extreme limits of the old County, with numerous intervening streams, and scarce- ly any roads. They spoke a different language, and uearl}' all their trade and travel was in other directions — with Salisbury on the north, with Cross-creek (now Fayetteville) on the east, and Cheraw Hills and Camden, South Carolina, to the south — the three last thriving points at the head of navigation, on theii- re- spective rivers, then a matter of vast import- ance. But as a mere truth, the hopes of the German settlement, then centered in one leader, Lt. -Col. John Phifer. He was a Swi.ss by descent. But all his ties and associations were Gei-man. His mother was a Blackwelder and his wife a Barringer. He was an un- usually bright and promising man and soldier. The meetings were held at the Phifer Red Hill, three miles west of Concord. He was their delegate to the immortal convention that declared Independence, and his name so ap- pears. But he died early in the struggle, and in his youthful grave at the Red Hill seemed to perish the hopes of his people. But not so. Old and young continued to go forth to swell the ranks of both the regular and irregular forces. I have examined the Muster Rolls and have extracts from them, and they clearly show that in proportion to population the Germans were very largely represented. On the Pension Rolls for Cabarrus County in 1835, of 21 revolutionary soldiers still drawing pen- sions, 12 were Germans. And old men now present will remember that when the "heroes of 1776 " used to parade together at the 20th
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WHEELER'S REMINISCENCES.
of May and -ith of July celebrations, the "Dutch Side " was always strong. At the last of these parades in 1839, 5 out of 8 of those present were of German blood. The Black- welder family alone furnished eight tried sol- diers to the cause.
The silence, therefore, of the Charlotte meet- ings, and the absence of co-temporaneous his- tory, as to the Dutch Side, is nothing against it.
There is a story, too, which shows that the Dutch had some other reason for not attempt- ing to make an}' display in the Queen City. It is, that on some military occasion, a Dutch captain took his company over there, and, giv- ing his commands in most emphatic Pennsyl- vania Dutch, the Scotch-Irish laughed at him. His company vowed to stand by their Captain, and refused both collectively and individually ever to go back to Charlotte again. In con- firmation of this story I have here an old Mus- ter Roll, and sure enough "Martin Fifer" is the Captain ! Certain it is, too, that at a ver}' early day the Dutch demanded a new County, and at the first election, after Cabarrus was cut off, Caleb Phifer (the son of Martin) and John Paul Barringer were its highly honored Commoners. So, probably, the creation of tliis County is also due to the German element.
But there is another aspect of the Revolu- tionary struggle, decidedly complimentary to the Germans of old Mecklenburg, and adds a new laurel to her crown.
The Dutch Side, from their isolated and re- mote situation, might have easily stood aloof from the conflict, and so, po.ssibly, have escaped the losses and sufferings I am about to describe. But they chose otherwise; and then, their very location and seclusion exposed them to the fiercest ravages of war.
Remember, then, the surroundings of this German settlement. On its east the Scotch Highlanders of the Cape Fear and Pee Dee
country, nearly all Loyalists, enabled the Brit- ish to extend the royal rule up to the Narrows of the Yadkin. On its south, at Cheraw and Camden, were British posts. North of it? across the Yadkin, Faiming and his infernal crew roamed almost unmolested. While in the Forks of the Yadkin, just above, the able Toiy leader, Col. Samuel Bryan, held a well organized regiment of 800 men. And then' on several occasions the British army lay at Charlotte (twice) and at Salisbury (once). Now history shows just what might be ex- pected in such a situation as this. While in. deed, no great armies traversed this region, it was greatly exposed because of its remote- ness and isolation, to the more frightful depre- dations of irregular and lawless bands of ma- rauders and other desperadoes, passing to and fro. It is a historical fact, that Col. Bryan marched his whole Tory Regiment of 800 men through the eastern end of this settlement, to Cheraw, S. C, spreading fear and desolation in all directions. It is equally true, that when the British occupied Salisbury, several parties of Tories and Royalists, from the east of Yad- kin, sought to join Cornwallis, but were driven back, mainly by Home Militia.
But the one expedition that still lives in the memory of the Dutch Side, and never fails to fire the German blood, even to this day, was that organized by the Fanning men east of the Yadkin; and crossing the river, swept this German settlement in its whole length, up and down the two Dutch Buffalos, and thence on to the British post at Camden. S. C. They robbed hundreds of Whigs,destroyed much property in purest wantonness, and seized and carried off to British prison, under most brutal circumstances, more than twenty leading citi- zens. In this number was Major James Smith, of the then County of Rowan, (now Davidson,) a regular officer at home, wounded, and Caleb Blackwelder and his son-in-law, Jno. Paul
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Barringer, both old men — far past the military age. Smith and several others died in prison of small pox. Blackwelder and Barringer were promised their release provided some mem- ber of their families would come in person, and make certain pledges as to their conduct. No male of either family could risk the venture when old Mrs. Blackwelder mounted her horse and went herself to Camden, on the hopeless errand. She failed in her object, and m its stead, was the innocent means, through her clothing, of spreading the small pox all over the countr}' she passed, and far and near among her friends at home. I need not tell this au- dience, that these terrible events drew the lines, once and for all, between Whig and Tor}' in the whole Dutch settlement. Up to that time, there had been no division what- ever; no man who had ever taken protection, or given the eneni}- any sort of aid or' comfort, could stay on the Dutch side and live. Now two individuals were charged with bad faith or infidelity. One of them, Rufus Johnson, who was no German, simply disappeared. The other, Jacob Agner, was run out of the coun- try and his valuable property — the present House Mill — was confiscated. Of one or two others there were vague suspicions of disloyalty, or mean cringing in the hour of trial; and to this day, their names are mentioned with bated breath.
Such, ray friends, is the proud record of our German ancestry.
I am glad of the occasion to paj' this just trib- ute to their noble memory. Especially am I happy to do so, on this day commemorative of the immortal Luther. His fame belongs to all mankind. But in its simple strength and en- during might, it is strikingly reflected by the unpretending life, and elasticity of German character. And we here draw a most instruc- tive and useful lesson. It marks the myster- ious workings of