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Vol. VI. JULY, 1906 No. i
"UAe
NortK Carolina Booklel:
GREAT EVENTS
IN
NORTH CAROLINA
HISTORY
PUBLISHED QUARTERLY
BY
THE NORTH CAROLINA SOCIETY
DAUGHTERS ofthe REVOLUTION
CONTENTS
The Indian Tribes of Eastern Carolina - - -
By Richard Dillard/M. D.
Glimpses of History in the Names of Our Counties
By Kemp. P. Battle, LL. D.
A Colonial Admiral of the Cape Fear - - .
By James Sprunt, British Vice-Gjnsul at Wilmington, N. C.
(ILLUSTRATED)
Page
3
26
48
SINGLE NUMBERS 30 CENTS $1.00 THE YEAR
^•^••X-Jfe-X'-X"X"^^1g^gW^-Jg5g-^^^J^-^-Sg-^"X"^"X"^:^g^^^^gtg^^^^
ENTERED IN THE POST-OFFICE AT RALEIGH, N. C, AS SECOHD-CLASS MATTER.
The North Carolina Booklet.
Great Events in North Carolina History.
VOLUME VI.
Glimpses of History in the Names of our Counties,
Kemp. P. Battle, LL. D.
A Colonial Admiral of the Cape Fear (Admiral Sir Thomas Frank-land),
, Mr. James Sprunt.
The Indian Tribes of Eastern North Carolina, Richard Dillard, M. D.
Gov. Thomas Burke, . . . Mr. J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton.
Some North Carolina Histories and their Authors,
Professor Edward P. Moses.
The Borough Towns of North Carolina, . . Mr. Francis Nash.
The John White Pictures, Mr. W. J. Peele.
Gov. Jesse Franklin, .... Professor J. T. Alderman.
Industrial Life in Early North Carolina, . . Mr. T. M. Pittman.
Colonial and Revolutionary Costumes in North Carolina,
Miss Mary Hilliard Hinton.
«North Carolina's Attitude to the Revolution, Mr. Robert C. Strong.
The Fundamental Constitutions and the Effects on the Colony,
Mr. Junitis Davis.
The BooKi^ET will contain short biographical sketches of the writers
who have contributed to this publication, by Mrs. E. E. MoflStt.
The Booklet will print abstracts of wills prior to 1760, as sources of
biography, history and genealogy.
The BooKi^ET will be issued quarteri,y by the North Carolina
Society of the Daughters op the Revolution, beginning July,
X906. Each Booklet will contain three articles and will be published
in July, October, January and April. Price, |i.oo per year, 30 cents for
single copy.
Parties who wish to renew their subscription to the Booklet for
Vol. VI, are requested to notify at once.
MISS MARY HILLIARD HINTON,
"Midway Plantation,"
Editors: '
Raleigh, North Carolina.
Miss Mary Hilliard Hinton,
Mrs. E. E. Moffitt.
VH
\
..'^\
>K
a
North Carolina State Librafy
Raieigh
Vol. VI. JULY, 1906. No. 1
15he
flORTH CflROiilj^il BoOKIiET
^^ Carolina! Carolina! Heaven'' s blessings attend her
!
While we live zve will cherish, protect and defend her.''
Published by
THE NORTH CAROLINA SOCIETY
DAUGHTERS OF THE REVOLUTION
The object of the Booklet is to aid in developing and preserving
North Carolina History. Tlie proceeds arising from its publication will
be devoted to patriotic purposes. Editors.
i
ADVISORY BOARD OF THE NORTH CAROLINA
BOOKLET.
Mrs. Spier Whitakek. Mr. R. D. W. Connor.
Professor D. H. Hill. Dr. E. W. Sikes.
Mr. W. J. Peele. Dr. PiIchard Dillard.
Professor E. P. Moses. Mr. James Sprtjnt.
Dr. Kemp P. Battle. Judge Walter Clark.
Mr. Marshall DeLancey Haywood.
OFFICERS OF THE NORTH CAROLINA SOCIETY
DAUGHTERS OF THE REVOLUTION,
1906-1908.
regent :
Mrs. E. E. MOFFITT.
vice-regent
:
Mrs. WALTER CLARK.
honorary regent:
Mrs. spier WHITAKER.
(Nee Hooper.)
RECORDING SECRETARY:
Mrs. J. W. THACKSTON.
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
:
Mrs. W. H. PACE.
TREASURER:
Mrs. frank SHERWOOD.
REGISTRAR
:
Mrs. ED. CHAMBERS SMITH.
GENEALOGIST
:
Mrs. HELEN De BERNIERE WILLS.
Founder of the North Carolina Society and Regent 1890-1902;
Mrs. spier WHITAKER.
REGENT 1902:
Mrs. D. H. HILL, Sr.''
REGENT 1902-1906:
Mrs. THOIMAS K. BRUNER.
*Died December 12, 1904.
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
Vol. VI JULY, 1906 No. 1
THE FOREWORD.
The sources of information regarding our Indians are both
meagre and unsatisfactory, history lends but little aid, tradi-tion
is silent, you must seek elsewhere than in books. There
is a way we may study—even see them if we will—let me
tell you the secret; I came upon it one evening just after
sunset when I was hunting wild forget-me-nots along an idle
brook away off in Pleasant Valley. If you wander alone
through the deep everglade of a southern dismal you will
sometimes stop suddenly to examine what you know is the
faded footprint of a moccasined foot, or, if the hour is pro-pitious,
you will listen and listen -again as you catch the
sound of a warwhoop echoing and re-echoing through the
deepening twilight of the forest. Or it may be that you will
find an arrowhead or a broken tomahawk in a ramble through
a summer field.
One night when the moon was full, and I sat under a tree
by the deep mirror of a certain silver stream, the air grew
suddenly heavy with the drowsy sweetness of the lotus in
blossom, there was a troubling of the waters as by the angel's
touch upon the Pool of Bethesda, the leaves clapped fitfully
together like elfin cymbals at a fairy dance, a few, twisting
from their stems, came fluttering down upon the river, and
went sailing off like a phantom squadron ; the sedges rustled
violently at the water's hem—it was an enchanted spot, and
I saw as in a dream two painted warriors drag a bound vic-tim
hurriedly into a canoe, and push off into the stream, but
as I turned to obser^^e them closely they blended into the
dreamland of the other shore—the trick then lies in the
imagination—in the embroidered fantacy of a midsummer-night's
dream.
THE NORTH CAKOLINA BOOKLET,
HE INDIAN TRIBES OF EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA.
BY RICHARD DILLARD, M.D.
"Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple,
Who have faith in God and nature,
Who believe that in all ages
Every human heart is human.
That in even savage bosoms
There are longings, yearnings, strivings
For the good they comprehend not,
That the feeble hands and helpless,
Groping blindly in the darkness.
Touch God's right hand in that darkness
And are lifted up and strengthened;
Listen to this simple story."
The first Indian tableau upon wliicli the curtain of our
history rises isi the royal reception of Aniidas and Barlow by
Granganameo "in the delicate garden abounding in all kinds
of odoriferous flowers" on the Island of Wocokon. The last
is when, chagrined by the defeat and failure of the Tuscarora
War, they are driven forever from the shores of the Albe-marle.
The scenes between are interspersed with acts of
kindness and of cruelty, bloody massacres and the torch, with
long interludes, in which the curtain is so closely hauled
down that not a ray of light reaches us, so that the path-finders
of history can scarcely discern a single blazed tree to
guide them through that untrodden solitude.
The mural frescoes by Alexander in the Congressional Li-brary
most beautifully tell the story of the evolution of learn-ing
in five allegorical paintings; the first is a picture of a
cairn built by a prehistoric man to coaumenorate some im-portant
event; the second is oral tradition, an ancient story-teller
surrounded by a group of attentive listeners ; the third
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. &
is represented by hieroglyphics carved upon an Egyptian
obelisk ; the fourth is the primitive American Indian painting
upon his buffalo skin the crude story of the chase, the con-flict,
or the war-dance, while the last is the beautiful consum-mation
of them all—the printing press. Our own alphabet,
tlirough a long series of elaboration covering many cen-turies,
originally came from picture-writing. All knowledge
began with units, and the compounding of those units in dif-ferent
ways like the grouping of atoms to form various chemi-cal
substances produced classified knowledge, or science in all
of its labyrinthine detail. The language of the Indian is
metaphorical, and essentially picture-writing, not only picture-words
representing material objects, but sound-pictures, that
is the formation of words in imitation of the sounds they are
intended to represent. He speaks mostly with his eyes, using
gestures, grimmaces and grunts where his language is inade-quate,
and emphasis is required. The Iroquois, which were
composed partly of Eastern J^orth Carolina Indians after the
Tuscarora War, are especially metaphorical, and of course
in studying their language we study the language of the dif-ferent
tribes which compose them. When the weather is
very cold they say "it is a nose-cutting morning." They use
the hemlock boughs to protect them from the snow, and when
one says "1 have hemlock boughs" he means that he has warm
and comfortable quarters. It is said that twelve letters an-swer
for all Iroquois sounds, viz. lAEFHIKISrOIlST
W. The Algonquins, the Iroquois and the Mobilians are con-sidered
the three primitive stocks, and the dialects now
spoken throughout the country are traced by ethnologists di-rectly
to them.
Thoreau says in his Walden that the Puri Indians had but
one word for the present, the past, and the future, expressing
its variations of meaning by pointing backward for yester-day—
forward for tomorrow—and overhead for to-day.
6 THE NOETH CAEOLINA BOOKLET.
The beautiful eup'honeous Indian names are so inter-mingled
with our own names and history that time cannot
erase them. Let us analyze a few of their words and our
application of them. I suggest the following derivation of
the word Roanoke as applied to both Roanoke river and Roan-oke
Island. Wampum, the Indian money, their current
medium of exchange and equivalent of gold, was of two
kinds
—
Wampum Peak, and Wampum Roanoke: It was
made of a species of conch-shell (Buccinum Undatum), and
shaped like beads, the darker colors being the most valuable.
This was usually strung and worn around the waist as a
belt, and served the double purpose of ornament and money.
These belts were passed from one nation to another in making
treaties and in other important transactions, e. g., "By my
wampum belt I pledge thee." l^ow when Menotoscon, king
of the Chowanokes, found that the English were principally
in quest of gold, he beguiled them with all kinds of rococo
stories about a great river, evidently our Roanoke, which rose
in a western country, and abounded in mussels filled with
pearls, and that the sands of this river were of gold, hence
the English named it Roanoke, and as Roanoke meant money
or gold, by metonomy Roanoke river means river of gold,
a name not inappropriate at this day, considering the wealth
of its fields and the richness and vastness of the forests
which girt its shores. By the same fanciful analysis Roanoke
Island may mean island of money or gold, from the great
quantity of wampum shells abounding in that vicinity. The
suffix peak appears in the words Chesapeake, Dessamonpeak,
Corapeak and others, and also gives them a significance of
profusion or wealth. Mattercomock or Machicomock Creek,
to the west of Edenton, means Temple of God, doubtless
from the exquisite beauty of the stream and the tall cypress
trees along its banks, which stand like huge elaborately
carved Corinthian columns supporting the dome of the sky.
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 7
The name of the section of country along the Chowan above
Edenton now called Rockyhock was derived from the Indian
word Rakioch, meaning cypress tree, which by metathesis
and the corruptions of successive generations is now spelled
Rockyhock, meaning literally the Land of Cypress Trees.
Chowan means paint or color—hence the county is the land
of rich colors, from the variety and magnificence of its flora,
and the myriad hues of its emerald forests, or it might have
been that the Indians obtained their dyes and paints there.
To the beautiful reflection of trees and sky upon a placid
stream they gave the name of glimmerglass, shimmering mir-ror.
The proximity of the Chowanokes to the Tuscaroras
brought them into frequent communication, and there was
in consequence some similarity of dialect, a great many of
their words had in common the suflix ocli, e. g., Uppowock,
Mattercomock, Rakiock, Moriatock and Ohanock. The origi-nal
spelling of Currituck was Coratuc, Tar River was Tau,
meaning river of health, and Hatteras was Hattorask. Little
River was Kototine, Perquimans River was Ona, Albemarle
Sound was called Weapomeiock, Yeopim was originally Jau-pin.
Durant's l^eck was Wecocomicke. The Chowan River
was called ]*^omopana. Captain John Smith, in his map of
Virginia made in 1606, changes the vowels and spells Cho-wan
Chawon, and gives tO' that tribe a large portion of the
territory southeast of the Powhattan River, now the James.
Theodore de Bry's map, 1590, gives the Chowans the vast ter-ritory
along the upper Albemarle and Chowan River. Pas-quotank
at one time was spelled Passo-Tank, and was derived
from the Indian PassaquenoJce, meaning the woman's town.
Resting upon the very bosom of nature, amid the most
picturesque and beautiful surroundings they possessed neither
music nor poetry. Grave, imperturbable and mute, their
souls did not burn with the glowing tints of the autumn
forest, or thrill at the echo from the hills, or at the grandeur
8 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
and mystery of the great solitudes, fresh with the virginity
of nature, or the long light upon the rivers. They hearkened
not the song of the summer bird whose flight of ecstasy drew
bars of golden music across the sky, nor the soft reed notes of
Dio Pan's flute, nor the arpeggios swept from Apollo's lyre^
—
the star-embroidered peace of the midnight heavens they
heeded not, but without any of the embellishments of civiliza-tion
they had a picturesqueness and beauty of costume en-tirely
in harmony with the wild state of nature.
We are well assured that the early Indians had a good idea
of botany, knew the uses of the different plants, and gave
them names descriptive of their qualities and physical ap-pearances,
though they knew nothing of classification. A
great deal of the flora which existed here then is now en-tirely
extinct, the law of the survival of the fittest applying
more strongly to the vegetable kingdom than to any other
;
during my own observation one species of ground-pine in
this country has entirely disappeared. Many of the wild
flowers we know and see every day are really adventives
from Europe, or plants which have escaped from cultivation
in gardens, and are literally tramping it over the country.
The botanical characteristics of our forests reveal the fact
that some parts of them were in cultivation very many years
ago, for pine is the original growth, and in successive rota-tion
come gum, oak, etc: I^ature does not falter, she has
her own ways—her owm days for doing her work, man can
meddle, but cannot hinder her. Remove the earth from a
piece of land, deep enough to destroy all remains of the pre-viously
existing vegetation, and when the soil reforms upon
it again she will persistently repeat the law by first produc-ing
pine, and then on in regular rotation again. !N"ow the
occurrence of oak thickets in most unexpected places argues
strongly that the Indians had small clearings or assarts
where thev grew their tobacco and maize.
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 9
It is difficult to believe that they did not love and enjoy
the wild flowers which grew so profusely about them. Did
they not pause in the chase to exult in the fragrance of the
pine and the myrtle, or linger to inhale the delicate perfume
of the wild grape in blossom, or to be lifted up by the redo-lence
of the jessamine ? Was there no ''impulse from the
vernal woods," no swelling of the heart in the springtime
—
" When daisies pied and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight?"
Thanks to the fertile pen and sharp-eyed observation of
Harriot we know something of their plants and their uses.
He says they dyed their hair and persons with the roots of
Chappacor, of which I cannot conjecture the English equiva-lent
unless it be the Sanguinaria or Bloodroot, still flourishing
in our forests, but the secret is hidden down deep in the
chalice of its corolla, its beautiful white petals are silent, and
cannot be invoked. Kaishackpenauk was a root eaten as
food, and resembled very much our Irish potato, while Ope-nauk
was nothing more than the Apios Tuberosa, growing in
our lowlands, it also served them as food. Coscushaw may
be the Tuckaboe or Arrowhead, of which hogs are fond, and
grows in muddy pools and bogs. Ascapo was the Myrtle, and
the Sassafras they called Winauk. The Prince's Pine was
Pipsissewa, and Habascon was the horse-radish. One of our
beautiful wild trailers wears gracefully the name of Cherokee
Rose, but I condemn the sentiment which named Lobelia, a
very poisonous plant, Indian Tobacco, and the Indian Tur-nip
is also most inappropriately nanted. The Squaw Vine
still paints its berries red in autumn to honor tbe Indian
maiden. They knew different poisons and did not hesitate to
use them stealthily and without scruple upon their personal
enemies. Prominent among their list of poisons was a white
10 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
root which grew in fresh marshes, and may have been Cicely,
or Fool's Parsley, belonging to the poisonous hemlock family.
In Hyde County was the Mattermuskeet or Maramikeet of
the Machapungo Indians, Lake Mattermuskeet was called by
them Paquinip, or Paquipe. Upon the shores of this lake
grows and flourishes as nowhere else an apple called the Mat-tennuskeet,
maturing late but succulent and full of excel-lence.
The tradition is that an early settler and hunter killed
a wild goose upon the lake and upon opening its craw found
an apple seed which he carefully preserved and planted, and
which grew rapidly, and bore luscious fruit.
The North Carolina grape called Scuppemong was origi-nally
found on Scuppernong River, a tributary of Albemarle
Sound, by an exploring party sent out by Amidas and Bar-low.
One small vine, with roots, waiS transplanted to Roanoke
Island in 1584, where it is still growing and bearing grapes
every year. In 1855 it covered nearly one and one-half acres.
Some contend that the proper spelling should be Noscupper-nong,
but the late Rev. Wm. S. Pettigrew, who was deeply
versed in Indian legend and lore always held that it should
be Escappernong. Messrs. Garrett & Co. have named one
of their excellent wines made from these grapes Escapper-nong.
An old writer of jSTorth Carolina history says "there
are no less than five varieties of grapes found about the Albe-marle
Sound, all of which are called Scuppernongs, to-wit,
black, green, purple, red and white." The darker varieties
are generally conceded to be seedlings, as the original grape
can at present be reproduced only by layering or by grafting
upon the wild grape. The cause of the change in color of
this grape is beautifully woven by Mrs. Cotten into the
Legend of the White Doe or the Fate of Virginia Dare.
The transposition into prose has been so graphically made
that I give it verbatim. "Okisko, a brave warrior of the
tribe that had given shelter to the unfortunate Lost Col-
""^"^^-Ssi-''^:^- I''.
VIRGINIA DARE.
From a fanciful sketch by Porte Crayon in 1857.
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 11
ony of Sir Walter Raleigh, fell in love with the governor's
granddaiighter, Virginia Dare, the first white child born on
American soil. The jealous rage of Chico, the great magi-cian,
changed her into a white doe which baffled all the
hunters' attempts to capture it, for it had a charmed life and
nothing but a silver arrow or an arrow dipped in the magic
fountain of Eoanoke could slav the beautiful creature. Now
Wanchese, the great hunter of Pomouik, has crossed the
waters, and there had received as a present a silver arrow.
Armed with this he lay in wait for the white doe. Near him
also was Virginia Dare's faithful lover, Okisko, armed with
an arrow that had been dipped in the magic fountain. The
magician Wenaudon, rival of Chico, had explained to Okisko
that only by piercing to the heart the white doe with this
magic arrow could the fair Virginia be liberated and restored
to him, thus unknown to each other the two warriors awaited
the coming of the white doe, one armed with the silver arrow
that meant death, the other armed with the magic arrow that
meant restored life the Okisko's love. Suddenly out in the
clearing jumped the startled doe ; twang went the bowstrings,
both arrows fled straight to the mark. To the wonder of
Wanchese he saw a beautiful white girl laying where he had
seen the doe fall. To the horror of Okisko he saw the arrow
piercing his loved one's heart. As if shocked by the awful
tragedy the magic spring died away. In its place Okisko saw
growing a tiny grapevine, it seemed a message from his lost
love, he watched it grow and blossom and bear fruit. Lo ! the
grapes were red ; he crushed one and lo ! the juice was red
—
red as his dear Virginia's blood. Lovingly he watched and
tended the vine, and as he drank the pure red juice of the
gTape he knew that at last he was united to his love—that her
spirit was entering into his—that he was daily growing more
like her, the being he loved and worshipped—^the joy he had
lost, but now had found again in the magic seedling." It is
12 THE XOIITH CAKOLI]N"A BOOKLET.
a fact that a species of white deer is still seen in the country
around Pungo and Scuppernong Lakes, but the penetrating
ball of the Winchester possesses a counter chann to the magi-cal
spell of the Indian magician Chico, and the white doe
often falls a victim before its unerring aim.
The mother Scuppernong vine implanted upon the Island
of Roanoke, as ancient as our civilization, has sent its
branches like the English speaking race over our broad land,
the excellence of its amber clusters dropping the honej-dew
of knowledge and delight—spreading like a banyan, its broad
arbor is a sacred aegis of Minerva, which will shield and
hide for aye the mysterious secret of the Lost Colony.
Who gave us Indian Corn the Agatowr, that beautiful
tasseled staff of life whose waving fields are a symbol of our
country's bounty and wealth—this maker of brawn and
muscle and of the gray stroma of the brain ? I answer each
red ear blushed with the red man's skin. It was cultivated
and eaten here before the granaries of the Pharaohs were
overflowing from the wheat fields of Egypt, or the Libyan
threshing-floors were groaning under the fatness of the
harvest. The Indian method of preparing it for food was by
hollowing out the end of a large stump and pounding the
grain by means of a log, suspended to an overhanging bough.
Who gave us LTppowock, the divine tobacco? That com-panion
of solitude and life of company ! The fabled Assidos
of the middle ages, which drives away all evil spirits ! The
nerve stimulant destined to supplant hashisch, opium, betel,
kava-kava, and all others ! Emissaries from China and Japan
are buying- American tobacco with the purpose of substituting
it for the injurious opium habit of those countries. This is
the herb which that rare old cynic philosopher so' beautifully
praises and censures by antithesis in his wonderful Anatomy
of Melancholy, the book Doctor Johnson missed his tea to
read, as ''divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 13
beyond all the panaceas, potable gold and philosophers'
stones—a sovereign remedy to all diseases, a virtuous herb if
it be well qualified, opportunely taken and medicinally used,
but as it is commonly abused by most men 'tis a plague, a
mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands and health—devil-ish
and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and
soul."
The Indians held Uppowock their tobacco in high esteem,
attributed to it magical powers. It was the gift of the gods
;
they often burnt it upon their sacred fires, and cast it upon
the waters to allay the storm, they scattered it among their
weirs to increase the catch of fish, and after an escape from
great danger they would throw it high into the air as if to
requite the gods themselves.
Eastern N^orth Carolina is rich in literature based upon
the history, the legends, the traditions of its Indians. The
White Doe or Fate of Virginia Dare is as musical as Hia-watha,
and tells the story of the change of Virginia Dare
into the shape of a white doe to which I have alluded else-where.
That erudite scholar, Col.R. B. Creecy,in his chef d'oeuvre,
the Legend of Jesse Batz, tells delightfully the story of Jesse
Batz, a hunter and trapper who dwelt upon an island in the
Albemarle Sound, opposite the mouth of Yeopim River, now
called Batz's Grave (the U. S. G-eog. Soc. gives the spelling
Batts), but then called Kalola from the number of sea gulls
congTegating there. Hunting, trapping, and frequently en-gaging
in the chase with the Indians Batz became intimately
associated with the Princess Kickawana, the beautiful daugh-ter
of Kilkanoo, the king of the Chowanokes. Batz loved her
at first sight, and she in turn loved the white man.
When Pamunkey made war upon Kilkanoo Batz fought
with the Chowanokes, and in a hand-to-hand encounter took
Pamunkey prisoner and helped to drive the hostile tribe back
14 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
into Virginia. For this act of bravery he was adopted into
the Chowanoke tribe with the name of Secotan or Great White
Eagle. The current of love between him and Kickawana ran
along smoothly, and with an immunity from sorrow beyond
the usual lot of mortals until one night when the Indian
maiden was paddling in her canoe across from the mainland
to the island, as she frequently did to visit her lover, a thund-erstorm
swept the Albemarle like the besom of destruction:
"The wind was high, and the clouds were dark,
And the boat returned no more."
Batz never more left his island home, and to this day it is
called Batz's Grave. Its azure outline in dim perspective
upon the glistening page of the Albemarle seems the far-off
island of some half-forgotten dream. At one time it belonged
to George Durant, Jr., and contained many acres ; the erosion
of the tideSi has been so continuous and rapid that scarcely
an acre now remains. This constant sloughing of its banks
causes the magnificent timber to fall into the water in great
windrows, like broad swaths of grain beneath the sturdy
stroke of some giant reaper, but the ceaseless murmur of
each receding wave upon its lonely beach will sigh out for-aye,
in a throbbing tumultuous undertone, the story of those
unfortunate lovers. One of the few landmarks left by the
Chowan Indians is a part of the soundside road leading to
Drummond's Point, which curves and re-curves upon itself
at least a dozen times in a distance of two miles. The tradi-tion
is that the road was made by the early settlers along the
course of the old Indian trail ; over this road doubtless passed
and repassed Kickawana on her visits to the island home
of Jesse Batz, and it takes but a touch of fancy for the be-nighted
traveler along this lonely road to see the lithe form
of Kickawana just receding around the next. bend.
THE ^TOKTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 15
One of the most interesting chapters in our history is the
account given bj Dr. John Brickell, of Edenton, in his history
of North Carolina of a trip among the Indians. He was ap-pointed
by Gov. Burrington to make an exploration into the
interior, with a view of securing the friendship of the Chero-kee
Indians. He left Edenton in 1730 with ten men and two
Indians, and traveled fifteen days without having seen a
human being. At the foot of the mountains they met the In-dians,
who received them kindly and conducted them to their
camp where they spent two days with the chief, who reluct-antly
permitted them to return. They built large fires and
cooked the game which the two Indians killed and served it
upon ]>ine-bark dishes, at night they tethered their horses and
slept upon the gray Spanish moss (Tillandsia Usneoides),
which hung from the trees. They lived in truly Robin Hood
style, and the tour seems to have been more for romance and
adventure than for scientific search. It is a counterpart in
our history of the adventures of the Knights of the Golden
Horse Shoe to the Blue Ridge of Virginia under Gov. Spotts-wood.
Dr. Brickell had a brother who settled in Hertford
County in 1739, the Rev. Matthias Brickell, from whom is
descended some of the best families of that county.
The Indian Gallows, a poem by William H. Rhodes, pub-lished
in 1846, deserves the highest place among the Indian
classic literature of JSTorth Carolina.
The Indian Gallows was located in the Indian woods of
Bertie County, a tract of land formerly owned and occupied
by the Tuscaroras. It was a remarkable freak of nature in
that the branch of one oak grew so entirely and completely
into another oak some twenty feet asunder that it was im-possible
to discern from which tree the cross-branch grew.
The cross-branch also had large limbs growing upward from
it. This natural curiosity stood until 1880, when a severe
16 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
storm uprooted one of the oaks, the other soon commenced
to decay and was cut down in 1892 and made into relics.
The story of it runneth thus : A band of pilgrims exiled
by religious persecution from England were hurled tempest-tossed
upon the shores of North Carolina, they made their
way under all sorts of difficulties and contentions with ad-verse
fates up the Albemarle Sound to the settlement now
called Edenton. The parents of the heroine Elnora, invited
by the friendly chief of the Tuscaroras, decided to make
their homes in the wilds across the sound. Roanoke, the son
of the old Tuscarora king, soon fell in love with Elnora, and
at the planning of the Indian Massacree in 1711, set out on
foot to warn his white friends of their danger, but arrived
just in time to see their cabin in flames and a band of Tusca-roras
cut down Elnora's aged parents. Elnora herself by a
superhuman effort eluded the grasp of the murderous chief
Cashie and hid in the Indian Woods, w^here she was after-wards
found by the faithful Roanoke. Enduring all sorts
of hardships they eventually found a boat, and steering safely
down the Moriatock River, reached the sound. On and on
they paddled through the darkness of the night under the
midnight sky, not knowing whither they were going, each
angry wave greedy to swallow up their little canoe. Elnora
exhausted, and wnth hands all blistered, often despaired, and
would have throwTi herself into the dark waters had she not
been sustained and comforted by Roanoke. Just at the cru-cial
moment of their despair Aurora with her dew-drop touch
tJirew open the rosy chambers^ of the Elast, and the streaks of
dawn went ploughing golden furrows in the wake of the
morning star. Dawn is- the hour of resignation and peace,
they were comforted and cheered as they sighted the headland
at the entrance of Edenton Bay, they soon reached the shore
where they told the story of their misfortunes to a crowd of
eager listeners, among whom was Henry, Elnora's lover, just
North Carolina State Library
Raleigh
THE ]SrORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 17
arrived on a ship from England. The Thscaroras, when they
found out that Roanoke had fled to Edenton with Elnora,
infuriated bj his action and the escape of the white maiden,
set out at once with a flotilla of canoes to take the fort at
Edenton^ and massacre the inhabitants, but they were driven
hopelessly back by the well-prepared settlers, Henry and
Roanoke fighting gallantly side by side. After the rout of
the Indians Roanoke lingered sadly at Edenton. Elnora
showed him every kindness and consideration, but her heart
belonged unreservedly to Henry.
"As time fled on Roanoke forgot to smile,
And lonely walks his saddened weeks beguile:
A secret grief sits gnawing at his soul,
Deep are the sorrows that his mind engage.
Kindness can soothe not—friends cannot assuage."
Desperate and dejected at his disappointment in love he
returned to his tribe in Bertie and met with resignation his
fate. At the council of the chiefs he was condemned to be
burned at the stake the next morning at dawn, when the sen-tence
was pronounced the tragic Cashie exclaimed
—
"No—not the stake!
He loves the paleface ; let him die
The white man's death ! Come let us bend a tree
And swing the traitor, as the Red-men see
The palefaced villian hang. Give not the stake
To him would the Red man's freedom take.
Who from our fathers and our God would roam.
A*nd st*rives t*o rob u*s of o*ur land*s and*home. They seize him now and drag him to the spot
Where death awaits, and pangs are all forgot."
1 Opposite the old Hathaway lot, on Water Street, could be seen a few years ago the
foundation of what is supposed to have been the old fort built to defend the town
against the attacks of the Indians,'and this might have been the one in which Elnora
and Roanoke took refuge. Watson, in his Journey to Edenton in 1777, says that It
was then defended by two forts.
2
18 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
There is a striking analogy between the motif of the Indian
Gallows and Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming. Koanoke
and Outalisse, the Mohawk chief, were very similar char-acters.
One of the largest and most remarkable Indian mounds in
Eastern l^orth Carolina is located at Bandon on the
Chowan, evidently the site of the ancient town of the Cho-wanokes
wdiich Grenville's party visited in 1585, and. was
called Mavaton." The map of James Wimble, made in 1729,
also locates it at about this point. The mound extends along
the river bank five or six hundred yards, is sixty yards wide
and five feet deep, covered with about one foot of sand and
soil. It is composed almost exclusively of mussel shells taken
from the river, pieces of pottery, ashes, arrow heads and
human bones, this may have been the dumping ground of the
village. The finding of human bone» beneath the mound
might suggest that it is the monument of their distingTiished
chiefs, just as the ancient Egyptians built pyramids above
their illustrious Pharaohs. Pottery and arrow heads are
found in many places throughout this county, especially on
hillsides, near streams, and indicate that they were left there
by temporary hunting or fishing parties. Even the Indians of
the present day are averse to carrying baggage of any kind,
and the frail manner in wdiich some of their pottery was
made sliows that it was for temporary purposes only. Certain
decorations on their pottery occur sufficiently often among the
Indian tribes of the different sections to be almost character-istic
of them.
A sort of corn-cob impression is found on a great deal of
the Chow^an pottery and also in Bertie, there is however
considerable variation in different localities, the corn-cob im-pression
in some specimens being much coarser. There are
also pieces with parallel striations, oblique patterns, small
sThe station on the Suffolk and Carolina Railroad was named by the author for
this town.
THE NORTH CAKOLINA BOOKLET. 19
diamond patterns formed by transverse lines, evidenilj made
bj a sharp stick. Some are decorated witln horizontal lines,
while a few are perfectly plain. In the deposits on the
Chowan River, at the site of the ancient Chowanoke town of
Mavaton, the decorations on the potteiy are both varied and
artistic, and I am inclined to believe that each clan or family
had its own distinctive and individual pattern of decora-tion—
it was their coat of arms. On this same mound I
found the wild columbine growing, stragglers from Menotosr
con's flower-garden, and at a nearby spring flourished the
spear-mint, whose ancestors two hundred years ago doubtless
seasoned Okisko's venison stew. I have never seen so many
distinct patterns occurring in the same mound as at Avoca,
left there by the Tuscaroras. The ancient Tuscarora town
of Metackwem was located in Bertie County just above Black
Walnut Point, and most probably at Avoca, from the exten-sive
deposits there. The Tuscaroras showed a more ad-vanced
civilization than any of the Eastern tribes, they
were jealous and revengeful, had more numerical strength,
more prowess an.d were more belligerent, and influenced the
weaker tribes near them. They were originally descended
from the Monacans, a powerful nation whose territory ex-tended
from the domains of Powhattan down into Carolina,
and who were well known to many of the early discoverers,
they are believed by some to have been the aborigines of East-ern
jSTorth Carolina. Although amalgamated with the Iroquois
Confederation the Tuscaroras have even to this day pre^
sem'-ed, in a great measure, their individuality. The Cho-wanokes
evidently worshipped the maize, and decorated their
pottery freely with the corn-cob. We do not know the exact
shape of their cooking utensils, but judging from the frag-ments
of pottery they must have been shaped very much like
the modern flower pot. Calculating the diameter and ca-pacity
of the vessels from the segments found there was great
20 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
unifomiity both of size and shape. The Indians knew the
principle of the wedge, and applied its shape to their axes
and tomahawks. There is a great similarity in them to the
English axe, that implement and coat-of-arms of our civiliza-tion,
this similarity of implements argue strongly the nni-versal
brotherhood of mankind.
In the great dismal surrounding Lake Scuppernong is a
chain of small islands surrounded by pitfalls, which are be-lieved
to have been dug by the Indians to entrap large game,
along the shores of the lake a vessel of soapstone, almost in-tact,
was exhumed some time ago, and at the spot where the
best j)erch abound.
To the east of Centre Hill, which forms the di^ade between
Chowan and Perquimans Rivers, lies a vast tract of land
called Bear Swamp, depressed fifteen or twenty feet below
the surrounding country, and a number of years ago some
parties in making an excavation just east of Centre Hill,
where the land falls off into this great basin, discovered a boat
of considerable dimensions, fairly well preserved, six or more
feet below the surface : it is supposed to be of Indian origin,
as there is an ancient tradition that it was centuries ago a
great lake.^
The numerical strength of the Indians of Eastern ISTortli
Carolina in 1710 was as follows: The Tuscaroras had
fifteen towns ; Haruta, Waqui, Contahnah, Anna-Ooka, Con-auh-
Tvare, Harooka, Ilna-I^rauhan, Kentanuska, Chunaneets,
Kenta, Eno, I^aurheghne, Oonossoora, Tosneoc, Xonawhar-itse,
[N^uhsoorooka and twelve hundred warriors ; the Wacons
two towns, Yupwarereman and Tooptatmere, one hundred
sin the branch of Pollock Swamp, which drains the southern extension of Bear
Swamp, is a most remarliable natural formation in the shape of a salt deposit in the
bottom of the swamp. It was tirst discovered by cattle going there to lick during
long drouths when the bottom of the swamp was dry. During the Civil War. when
salt was gold, some parties dug a well there, collected the water, and evaporated it
In pans, making a very good quality of salt. When I visited this well several years
ago, though the bottom of the swamp was entirely dry, the well was full of a sea-green
water, which I examined and found strongly impregnated with salt.
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 21
and twenty warriors; the Macliapiingas one town, Maramis-keet,
thirty warriors ; the Bear River Indians one town, Ran
daii-qiiaquank, fifty warriors ; the Meherrins one town on
Meherrin River, fifty warriors ; the Chowans one town, Ben-net's
Creek, fifteen warriors ; the Paspatanks one town on
Paspatank River, ten warriors ; the Poesketones one town on
ISTorth River, thirty warriors ; the jSTottaways one town,
Winoak Creek, thirty warriors ; Hatteras Indians one town,
Sand Banks, sixteen warriors ; Connamox Indians two towns,
Coranine and Rarnta, twenty-five warriors ; the Jaupins
(probably Yeopims), only six people; and the Pamtigough
Indians one to^^T.i, an island, fifteen warriors. Upon a basis
that three-fifths were old men, women and children there
must have been at that time at least ten thousand Indians in
Eastern jSTorth Carolina.
September 22, 1711, marks the day of the bloody Indian
massacre in Eastern ISTorth Carolina, when 112 settlers and
80 infants v/ere brutally murdered, and that day was kept
with prayer and fasting throughout the colony for many
years. With tomahawk and torch they swept like fiends in-carnate
over Eastern Xorth Carolina, their bloody trail ex-tending
even to the northeastern shores of Albemarle Sound
and Chowan River. The desperate war which followed was
finally brought to a successful close by a series of victories
through Col. James Moore and his allied Indians ; Capt.
Barnwell also contributed largely to the success of the war,
killing more than five hundred Indians. The last of June,
1713, the Tuscaroras, wlio were occupying Fort Carunche,
evacuated it and joined the rest of their nation on the Roan-oke,
soon to abandon Xorth Carolina forever.
They migrated to the southeastern end of Lake Oneida,
]^ew York, where they joined the Iroquois Confederation,
which was composed of five nations, viz. : the Mohawks,
Onondagas, Cayugas, Oneidas and the Senecas ; the Tusca-
22 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
roras with their allies, the Chowans, the Saponas and some
others, formed the Sixth iSTation of this Confederation : a part
of the Canadian Indians are descended from the Iroquois.
King Tom Blount* and a few of his faithful warriors re-mained
in Bertie for awhile, but just before the Kevolution
the few Tuscaroras who were left in that county then mi-grated
to the ISTorth, and joined their brethren of the Six
ISTations. Before leaving they sold all their vast domain
(53,000 acres) except a tract in Bertie County about twelve
miles square, called Indian Woods, which they were com-pelled
to lease for a long term of one hundred and thirty-seven
years.
Succarusa, an old chief of this tribe, visited Bertie about
1830 to collect the rents due his people on that long lease, and
while there he went to take a look at the Indian Gallows, this
was the last footprint of the Indian upon the shores of the
Albemarle.
A part of the Tuscarora tribe still reside in Western ISTew
York where they maintain a tribal government, divided into
clans called Otter, Beaver, Wolf, Bear, etc. The title of
Sachem Chief is still given to their governor. Thomas Wil-liams
(Takeryerter), belonging to the Beaver Clan and rather
a young man, was Chief Sachem in 1890, and Elias Johnson
(Towernakee), was then the historian of the tribe. In 1901
there were three hundred and seventy-one Tuscaroras, all
wearing citizen's clothes, entirely civilized, the majority of
them could read and write, and about five-sixths of them
could speak English.
In 1768 they numbered 200
In 1779 they numbered 200
In 1822 they numbered 314
(Then residing at Lewiston, on Lake Ontario.)
In 1825 they numbered 253
In 1867 they numbered 360
4The late King Kalakaua was a lineal descendant of King Tom Blount, one of his
descendants having married into the royal family of the Sandwich Islands.
THE XORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 23
In 1775 three departments of Indian Affairs were created
bv CongTess, and Willie Jones was one of the commissioners
of the Southern Department. The Tuscarora reservation in
'New York in 1771 (from an old map made by order of Gov.
Tryon, the erstwhile notorious Governor of ISTorth Carolina),
comprised 6249 acres. After their removal to 'New York
they were loyal to us in the Revolution and in the War of
1812 ; during' the Civil War they furnished volunteers to the
United States government. They are now peaceable and
orderly, with very few laws, and fewer disturbances of the
public peace ; their income is small and they are poor, though
there are very few paupers. The Tuscaroras have substantial
churches with Sunday schools fairly well attended, the most
of them are Baptists and Presbyterians, while some are still
pagans. They farm, raise stock, make maple-sugar, also
baskets and bead-work ; hunt, trap and fish. The sewing
machine has been introduced among the women. A part of
the original Six ISTations are also living in Wisconsin and
Indian Territory. As with other people without a history
the Six [N^ations rely greatly upon their myths, their legends,
and their traditions. They account for the presence of the
Seven-Stars or Pleiades in the heavens by a most remarkable
story. Many years ago seven little boys wanted to give a
feast by themselves, which was denied them by their parents,
in defiance they secretly secured and cooked a little white dog,
and while dancing around him in great glee some unseen
spirit translated them to the heavens, and changed them into
a constellation ; and now when they watch the twinkling of
the Seven Stars at night in the blue grotto of the skies they
say it is the seven little boys dancing around the little white
dog.
The Yeopims were never very strong and were settled
along the shores of Perquimans and Little Rivers. They
granted to George Durant two tracts of land, one deed dated
24 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
March 1, 1661, conveying a tract called Wecocomicke, now
Durant's Neck, signed by Kilcocanen or Kistotanew, King of
Yeopim, and recites "for a valuable consideration of satisfac-tion
received with ye consent of my people" .... "adjoining
the land I formerly sold to Samuel Pricklove." Another
deed dated August 4, 1661, and signed by Cuscutenew as
King of Yeopim. These deeds were both registered October
34, 1716, and are now in Book "A," Register of Deeds ofHce
of Perquimans County.
An exploring party sent out by Sir Richard Grenville in
1586 sailed up the Chowan as high as the confluence of the
Meherrin and Xottoway Rivers, just below which they found
an Jjidian town called Opanock (not very far from the pres-ent
town of Winton). These Indians were very numerous
then and had seven hundred warriors in the field : they were
the Meherrins.
Col. Byrd in his History of the Dividing Line, 1729, de-scribes
in his own unique, original fashion his visit to the
towTi of the Nottoway Indians near the line, then about about
200 strong, "The young men had painted themselves in a
Hideous Manner, not so much for Ornament as terror. In
that frightful Equipage they entertained us with Sundry War
Dauces. wherein they endeavoured to look as fonnidable as
possible. The Instrument they danced to was an Indian drum,
that is a large Gourd with a skin bract tort over the Mouth of
it. The Dancers all Sang to this Musick, keeping exact Time
A\ith their feet, wliile their Heads and Arms were screwed
into a thousand Menacing Postures. Upon this occasion the
Ladies had arrayed themselves in all their finery. They were
Wra]-)t in their Red and Blue Match-Coats thrown so Negli-gently
about them that their Mehogany Skin appeared in Sev-eral
Parts like the Lacedaemonian Damsels of Old."
There is a body of distinct people, mostly white, now living
in Robeson County, North Carolina, who are recognized by
THE DAXCE OF THE CAEOLINA INDIANS AS REPRESENTED
BY JOHN WHITE IN 1585.
(Original in the British Museum.)
The Roanoke Indians at their festivals and councils drank the Cassine,
which served tnem as a sort of stimulant : it was a decoction made from
the dried leaves of Ilex Yupon, now drank under the name of Yupon
Tea.
The reader is referred to ^Ir. Edward Eggleston's able discussion of
the DeBry pictures in the Nation and Century magazines.
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 25
the State as the Croatans and given separate schools, and who
by their own traditions trace their genealogy directly from
the Croatans associated with the lost Raleigh Colony. Prof.
Alexander Brown, of the Royal Historical Society of Eng-land,
has discovered some old maps dating back to 1608-1610
clearly confirming, it is stated, the traditions of these people
in regard to their lineage, and the reader is respectfully re-ferred
to those able pamphlets upon that subject by Mr. Ham-ilton
McMillan and Dr. Stephen B. Weeks.
After the Tuscarora War was over the Chowanokes, who
had remained all the while the faithful friends of the whites
and were residing at their ancient town on the Chowan, called
Mavaton, were allotted about four thousand acres of land
between Sarum" and Beimet's Creek, mostly poquosin, and
ordered to move there. Of this once populous tribe only
about fifteen warriors then remained. They had originally
two good to^vns, Muscamunge and Chowanock—Muscamunge
was not very far from the present to^vn of Edenton ; they had
also at one time more than seven hundred warriors in the field.
King Hoyter was the last of the Chowanoke Kings in this
section. But restless and dissatisfied they finally requested
permission to cast their lot with the Saponas, who migrated
!N^orth to the Tuscaroras and helped to form the complement
of the Sixth Nation. In their intermarriage with various
tribes, their divisions, their numerous migrations and amal-gamations,
they have become scattered all over the !N'orth and
West, and it is impossible to trace them.
So passed the pure blood of the Chowanokes, and has been
lost and blended with the various tribes of our frontier—that
fantastic caravan which is marching sadly to its own funeral
5 An old map of this section shows a chapel just south of Bennet's Creek, which
must have been the Sarum Chapel of the early ministers of the S. P. G. A school
.
the first In North Carolina, was at one time located at Sarum for the religious and
educational training of these Indians. Lawson says that in 1714 they were still resid-ing
on Bennet's Creek.
26 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
pyre across the golden West, but when the drea'my Indian
summer spreads its blue hazj gauze over the landscape like
a veiled prophet, and the autumn leaves are painted upon the
easel of the first frost, and the grand amphitheater of the
forest is carpeted with the richest patterns of Axminster, and
the whole world is a wonderland spread upon a gigantic can-vass
of earth, and sky, and water—when the glittering belt of
Mazzaroth spans the heavens, and the jewels sparkle brightest
in the dagger of Orion, it is then that the grim phantom of
the red man returns to his old hunting ground, as erst he did
:
All feathered and with leather buskins, and bow put cross-wise
on his breast, in his periagua he crosses the Great Divide
of the Spirit Land, and from under the black zone of the
shore-shadows he glides into- the moonlight—out upon the
dimpled, polished mirror of the river—Hark! you can hear
each stroke of his paddle, if the wind down the river is fair.
GLIMPSES OF HISTORY IN THE NAMES OF OUR
COUNTIES.
BY KEMP P. BATTLE, LL.D.
No people can have a proper self-respect who are not fa-miliar
with the deeds of their ancestors. We ]^orth Caro-linians
have been deficient in this regard. Men will tell you
more of Bunker Hill and Brandywine than of the more im-portant,
more decisive battles of King's Mountain and Guil-ford
Court-House. They know fairly well the incidents of
past times in other countries, often very minutely—that
Caesar was bald and was subject to epileptic fits, that Cleo-patra
did not have the color and thick lips of a negro, that
Queen Elizabeth was red-haired and Queen Anne was fat
and had seventeen children, all of whom died young—but
when you ask them about the great men of l^orth Carolina
whose valor gained our independence, whose statesmanship
shaped our political destinies and whose teachings moulded
our minds and morals, their answers are va^ie and unsatis-factory.
The names of the counties of our State are especially in-structive,
x^ssociations with every epoch of our history are
wrapped up in or suggested by them. Only one seems to be
what is called a "fancy name," and even that, Transylvania,
in its sonorous beauty, recalls the fact of our kinship to the
great conquering, law-giving race inhabiting the imperial city
of the Old World on the banks of the Tiber, from whom we
derived much of our blood and more of our speech through
the ISTorman-Eoman-Celtic people, who followed William
the Conqueror into England. We find it first in the ambi-tious
but futile enterprise of Judge Richard Henderson and
his associates, the Transylvania colony.
Counties are created for the convenience of the people who
28 THE NOKTH CAROLHSTA BOOKLET.
reside in them. In a State gradually filled up by immigration
the times of their formation indicate quite accurately the
flow of such immigration. The names given to them by the
legislatures were as a rule intended to compliment persons
or things then held in peculiar honor. As the statutes do not,
except in two instances, mention those intended to be com-memorated,
we are forced to study the history of the times,
to look thro' the eyes of our ancestors and thus gather their
intention. Combining the dates of formation with the names
of the counties we gather many interesting and important
facts connected with the past.
I premise that the Spaniards once claimed our territory to
be Florida. Queen Elizabeth in the Raleigh charter named
it with other territory, Virginia. Charles I. (or Carolus), in
the Heath charter named it Carolina, so when Charles II. in
the grant to the Lords Proprietors retained the name Caro-lina,
of course our State name comes from his father. It
was not called from Charles IX., of France, as Bancroft and
others say.
North Carolina has, by the creation of the county of Co-lumbus,
to the extent of her power, repaired the wrong done
the learned and daring Genoese in allowing the name of
Americus Vespucius to be affixed to the JSTew World.
Our easternmost county, along which rolls the majestic
ocean, which has within its limits stormy Hatteras and the
lovel}^ island of Roanoke, its county seat named after the
good Indian Manteo, records only an infant's wail, a dark
mystery—a memory of pathos and of wonder.
What was the fate of Virginia Dare, the first infant born
to the impetuous, daring, energetic race, in a few short years
to replace the forests of her day with all the grand works of
eighty millions of civilized people ! Did the tomahawk crash
into lier brain ? Did she become the squaw of an Indian war-
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 29
rior, and did the governor's granddaughter end her days in
the wigwam of a savage ? Recent writers, Hamilton McMil-lan
and Stephen B. Weeks, have brought many plausible
arguments to prove that the lost colony wandered to the
swamps of Robeson, and the white man's desperate energy
and the red man's treacherous guile created the cunning,
cruel, ferocious, bloody Henry Berry Lowery and his gang.
ISTorth Carolina was the victim of a gigantic monopoly.
After restoration of Charles II., in the first flush of his
gratitude, to eight of his great lords he granted of his royal
prerogative a tract of land stretching across this continent
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the parallel which
divides l^orth Carolina from Virginia to that which passes
through Florida by Cedar Keys. ]^o claim, however, was
ever made west of the Mississippi river, and part of that east
of it was given up.
The names of these favored lords were: Edward Hyde,
Earl of Clarendon, George Monk, Duke of Albemarle, Wil-liam,
Lord Craven, John Lord Berkeley, Anthony, Lord Ash-ley,
Sir George Carteret, Sir William Berkeley, Sir John
Colleton. You find those names, besides in Albemarle Sound,
in the counties of Craven and Carteret. The county of
Colleton is in South Carolina.
Only one of these ever resided in America, Sir Wm. Berke-ley,
a member of a noble family which in the most dismal
days of Charles I. and his son, were staunch adherents to the
crown, suffering banishment and confiscation for its sake.
He was the Governor Berkeley of Virginia who suppressed
Bacon's rebellion in so bloody a way that Charles II. said
:
"That old fool has taken more lives without offence in that
naked country than I in all England for the murder of my
father," and who thanked his God that "there were no free
schools or printing press here, and I hope I shall have none
of them these hundred years."
30 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
Among them you will notice conspicuous lights in English
History. There was the Lord Chancellor, Hyde, Earl of
Clarendon, the eminent historian, whose daughter, wife of
James II., was the mother of two queens, Mary and Anne.
There was Anthony Ashley Cooper, the brilliant and wicked
Earl of Shaftesbury, who, notwithstanding his wickedness,
was one of the chief authors of that monument of liberty, the
Habeas Corpus Act. And there was General Monk, the
Cromwellian general, by whose skill and prudence Charles
II. was restored to the throne without bloodshed. His title
you will recognize not only in our eastern sound but in the
county seat of Stanly. Two of Shaftesbury's names may be
seen in the two rivers, Ashley and Cooper, which surround
Charleston, while a kinsman of Earl Clarendon became Gov-ernor
Hyde, of iSTorth Carolina, and his name was given to
an eastern county.
The Lords Proprietors contemplated a county called Clar-endon,
after Edward Hyde, the Earl of Clarendon, who took
his title from a royal hunting seat in Wiltshire, England,
but the settlers moved away and the county fell still-born.
The first successful municipal corporation in the State was
Albemarle, comprising all of the area around the Albemarle
Sound. The plan was to have very large counties, composed
of ''Precincts." Two only were created—Albemarle, composd
of Currituck, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Chowan, Tyrrell
and Bertie, and Bath, composed of Beaufort, Hyde, Craven,
Carteret, ISTew Hanover, Tyrrell, Edgecombe, Bladen, Ons-low.
These minor divisions were called Precincts.
Albemarle perpetuates the ducal title of General Monk.
In France it took the form of Aumale, and was the title of a
famous duke of recent years, a member of the Orleans family.
Until 1696 Albemarle was the only large political organiza-tion
in our limits. In that year Bath County was created
out of territorv bordering on Pamlico Sound and as far South
THE ^'ORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 31
as Cape Fear River. It was named in honor of John Gran-ville,
Earl of Bath, whose daughter Grace married Sir George
Carteret, grandson of the Lord Proprietor of the same name.
Sir George dying in 1695, the Earl of Bath represented his
infant grandson, Sir John Carteret, afterwards Earl Gran-ville.
In 1738 the great counties of Albemarle and Bath, with
their Marshals and Deputy Marshals and separate courts
were abolished and the Precincts became counties. For con-venience
sake I will call these latter counties from the bci-ginning.
In 1672 there were four, some say, others three, precincts,
the eastern being Carteret, the western Shaftesbury, the mid-dle
Berkeley (pronounced Barclay), and the other unknown.
Twelve years afterwards the names were changed to Curri-tuck,
Chowan, Pasquotank and Perquimans, the former
name of Pasquotank being lost, if it ever existed.
In 1729 the representatives of seven of the great lords find-ing
in their possessions neither honor nor profit but only con-tinual
torment, sold their rights to the crown for only $12,500
each, it being a wonderful illustration of the rapid growth
of the country, that about 170 years ago lands through the
heart of the continent were sold at the rate of 18,000 acres
for $1.00.
My father was a practicing lawyer at the time of this great
sale, when the lands of I^^Torth Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas
and California were disposed of at the rate of 100 acres for
one cent.
Sixty-six years, as in other sublunary matters, make great
changes in property and titles. Families die out, estates are
sold, men pass away and others stand in their shoes, and so it
came to pass that the Lords Proprietors of 1729, in the time
of George II., were different men from the Lords Proprietors
of 1663, in the reign of Charles II.
32 THE NORTH CAEOLINA BOOKLET,
We find the names of some of these new owners affixed to
counties in our State. There are Granville and Beaufort,
county and town, from Henry, Duke of Beaufort, Bertie
county from James and John Bertie, Tyrrell from Sir John
Tyrrell.
From 1729 the State was a colony under the government
of England until the war of the Revolution.
It was fashionable to compliment members of the royalty
or nobilit} or statesmen, connected officially with the colonies,
by giving their names to municipal organizations of the new
country. Hence we have Orang'e, after a collateral descend-ant
of the great King who banished the Stuarts, I^ew Han-over
and Brunswick in compliment to the Georges, Cumber-land
after the great duke who defeated Charles Edward at
Culloden, Johnston after good old Governor Gabriel John-ston,
Martin after Governor Josiah Martin. We had once
Dobbs and Tryon, after provincial governors. We have Ons-low
after Arthur Onslow, Edgecombe from Baron Richard
Edgecombe, Bladen, after Martin Bladen, Duplin, after
Lord Duplin, Baron Hay, Hertford, Halifax, Wilmington,
Hillsboro, Bute, Richmond, jSTorthampton after the father of
the Earl of Wilmington, after noblemen of those names, all
of whom held places of trust in the mother country. I will
tell particularly of others.
Of all the statesmen of England the most brilliant was the
first Wm. Pitt, fondly named by the people the Great Com-moner.
He was eminent for fiery and impetuous eloquence.
In a venal ag;e the purity of his morals were unquestioned.
He made Great Britain the first nation of the world. He
wrested Canada from the French. He founded the British
Empire in India. As Lamartine says, "He was a public man
in all the greatness of the phrase—the soul of a nation per-sonified
in an individual—the inspiration of a people in the
heart of a patrician."
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 33
In 1760, in tlie plentitnde of his fame, the year after
Wolfe fell victorious on the heights of Quebec, by the influ-ence
of the Royal Governor Dobbs, a new county formed
from Craven was called after the great English minister.
Lord Carteret, afterwards Earl Granville, refused to part
with his one-eighth share, and to him in 1744 was allotted a
territory 3,000 miles long and about 70 miles broad, between
the parallel near the centre of jSTorth Carolina, 35 degrees 34
minutes, and that which forms the Virginia line. The coun-ties
created while his land office was open for purchasers de-rived
their rectangular shape from being made conformable
to his boundaries, just as the counties of our new States are
not defined by running streams and mountain ridges and the
curved limits of swamps, but by the surveyor's chain and the
theodolite. The straight line north of Moore, Montgomery,
Stanly, Cabarrus, Mecklenburg, and south of Chatham, Ran-dolph,
Davidson, Rowan and Iredell shows on the map the
southern limit of Granville's great property.
In the beginning of this century there occurred at Raleigh
a battle of giants. The scene of the conflict was the Circuit
Court of the United States. The arbiter of the fray was
Judge Henry Potter. On the side of the plaintiffs the leader
was William Gaston. On the side of the defendant the most
eminent was Duncan Cameron. It was the heirs of Earl
Granville struggling to get back from the people of l^orth
Carolina the magnificent estate which they had won by the
sword. When the fight was ended all that remained to the
heirs of the noble Earl was the honor of naming one of our
counties Granville. They carried their futile quest to the
Supreme Court of the United States, but the war of 1812
was coming on and the plaintiff retired from the pursuit,
somewhat placated by a large indemnity from the British
Treasurv.
34 THE NORTH CAROLUSTA BOOKLET.
Lord Carteret took possession of his Xorth Carolina terri-tory
in 1744. He sent forth his agents, Childs, Frohock and
others, and opened his land offices and made his sales. His
practice was to require reservations of quit-rents to be paid
yearly. The settlers had the double burden of paying rents
on their lands to Granville and poll taxes to the royal gov-ernor
at i^ewbern.
The money raised from these exactions was carried to
England or to iSTewbern, and no expenditure w^as made of
appreciable benefit to taxpayers. A few officials about
Hillsboro gathered large fees, and grew fat, and a grand Grov-ernor's
Palace was built in a far-oif town. So rage grew
fierce and tempers waxed fiery hot, and the old flint and
steel rifles were rubbed up and oiled and bullets were
moulded, and rusty scythe blades were sharpened for swords,
and from the hills of Granville to the secluded gorges of the
Brushy Mountains the Regulators banded together, and the
struggle against oppression had its beginning.
It was a duty that we the inlieritors of the liberty won in
part by their ^-alor, should show our appreciation of their
efforts, by giving to one of the most thriving counties in the
State the name of Alamance, from the name of the battle
which crushed them.
Let us proceed with our story. There were four counties
created by Governor Tryon a year before the battle of Ala-mance,
in 1770, Guilford, Surry, Chatham and Wake.
Whence these names ?
It is difficult for the present generation to understand the
feelings of our ancestors towards Lord Xorth. afterwards
Earl of Guilford. He was not a bad nor a cruel man.
He was in England personally wonderfully popular. He
combined, like our Vance, genius and power with multiform
wit and unfading o-ook] huuior. But he was in favor of tax-ing
America, aud we hated luui.
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. ' 35
Previous to 1770 the county of Rowan covered nearly aU
Granville's territory west of the Yadkin, and much east of
that river. Orange, then of extensive area, joined it on the
east. To prevent combination among the Regulators, Gover-nor
Tryon procured the incorporation of four new counties,
and wishing to please all parties he called one after the Earl-dom
of Guilford, of which Lord North was heir apparent,
another Surry, in honor of Lord Surrey, afterwards Duke of
Norfolk, a follower of Chatham; a third Chatham, after the
great opponent of Lord North, with its county-seat at Pitts-borough,
and the fourth after the maiden name of his wife.
The difference between the new and the old country grew
and became more angry and wide. Again was the sound of
cannon heard among our hills. With consummate general-ship
Greene baffled the trained soldiers of Comwallis, and at
Guilford Court House, though not technically a victor, pre-pared
the way for Yorktown.
The obstinate King and his minister were forced to yield
and a new ministry^ headed by one of the warmest friends of
the colonies, Charles Watson Wentworth, Marquis of Rock-ingham,
paved the way for the acknowledgement of our inde-pendence.
And, as if with a grim irony, our ancestors carved
from the territory of Guilford, as a punishment for its name-sake's
misconduct, its northern half, and gave to it and its
county-seat the names of his conquering rival. To the great
General who had snatched victory from defeat, and rescued
from British thraldom the Southern province, they expressed
their gratitude not only by a gift of 25,000 acres of land,
but kept his memory ever honored and his name ever green,
by assigning it to a rich county and county seat in the east,
and to the county seat of Guilford, destined to become a
prosperous inland city.
The gi-atitude of our ancestors for the services of those
abroad and at home, in legislative halls and in the conflicts of
36 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
war, who had fought for our liberties, did not end here. By
the neighbor of old Guilford on the south they commemorated
the labors and virtues of the first Pl-esident of the Conti-nental
Congress, Peyton Randolph, whose kinsmen, Edmund
Randolph and John Randolph, of Roanoke, afterwards be-came
so conspicuoais.
Different sections of old Surry bear the names of John
"Wilkes, the champion of liberty, the victorious foe of arbi-trarv
arrests, an ardent supporter of the Marquis of Rock-ingham,
and John Stokes, covered with honorable scars of bat-tle,
the first Judge of the District Court of jSTorth Carolina.
And dotted over the State are many other evidences of the
gratitude of our people for the sufferings and success of the
old heroes, not in brass and marble, but in the more enduring
forms of counties and town of fairest lands and noblest men
and women—such as Washington and Montgomery, Warren
and Gates, Lincoln and Wayne, Franklin and Madison, from
other States, and from our own limits, Ashe, Lenoir and Har-nett,
Buncombe and Caswell, Cleveland and McDowell, Dav-idson
and Davie, Nash and Person, Robeson and Sampson,
Rutherford and Stokes, Alexander and Iredell, Jones, Moore
and Burke. Their friends in England, the leaders of the
peace party which, after a long struggle, forced the obstinate
King to grant independence to the colonies, not only the Mar-j
quis of Rockingham and John Wilkes and Lord Surrey,
j
whom I have named, but Chief Justice Camden and the
Duke of Richmond were honored in this land so far from '<
the scene of their labors.
Governor Gabriel Johnston, the able Scotchma?!, who was j
by far the best Governor our State had prior to the Revolu- j
tion, died in 1752, a year memorable for the change of Old
Style into Xew Style Calendar. Shortly before his death
the county of Anson was created, including all the western ;
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 37
part of the State and Tennessee south of Granville's line.
After the death of Johnston, for a short while IS^athaniel
Rice, and on his death Matthew Rowan, an estimable man,
as President of the Council, acted as Governor until super-seded
by the Scotch-Irishman, Governor Dobbs.
It was found best to erect a new county, comprising all the
lands of Lord Granville west of Orange. The new county
was called Rowan, in honor of the acting Governor. I^ine
years afterwards, in 1762, Mecklenburg was cut off from
Anson and its county seat was called Charlotte.
In 1761, the Admiral George, Lord Anson, with all the
pomp and splendor which the British navy could supply, was
bringing from Germany a blooming bride to the young King
George III. Her name was Charlotte. She was a princess
of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
Few men stand out in English history more distingTiished
for romantic daring as a navigator, for the strong, sturdy
qualities of English sailors, descendants of the old ISTorth-men
who issued from their frozen fiords in Denmark, 'Nor-way
and Sweden, like an irresistible torrent to conquer the
nations, than George Lord Anson. He led a squadron around
Cape Horn in the perils of winter, and after many captures
of Spanish ships and towTis, circumnavigated the globe. He
was the pioneer of the great victories of the English navy.
George Lord Anson was the teacher of kelson. He it was
who gave the daring order which has led to so many victories
over overwhelming odds, by English over French and Span-iards
: "Close vvith the enemy, gun to gim, hand to hand, cut-lass
to cutlass, no matter what odds against you." In early
life he purchased lands on the waters of the Peedee, but his
dreams of forest happiness were broken by the alarm of war.
In 1749, when at the zenith of his popularity, his name was
given to the vast country which extended from the limits of
Bladen to the far waters of the mighty Mississippi.
38 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
George the Third began his reign in 1760, for a few skort
years, one of the most popular kings who ever sat on a
throne, both, at home and in the colonies. "When his bride,
the homely but sensible and pious Charlotte, came from the
north of Germany to England, she was the favorite of tlie
day. It was the fashion to admire everything Prussian from,
the stern Frederick, then striking some of the most terrific
blows of the seven-year war, to the blooming maiden, whether
princess or ganzemadchen. The bride was received in Lon-don
with enthusiastic ovations. Her manner, conversation
and dress were heralded as if she were a goddess. Her man-ners
were pronounced by no less a judge than Horace Wal-pole
as "decidedly genteel." Her dress was of white satin,
brocaded with gold, distended by enormous hoops. She had
a stomacher of diamonds. On her head wa& a cap of finest
lace, stiffened so as to resemble a butterfly, fastened to tke
front of the head by jewels. I quote one of her speeches.
When she arrived in front of St. James' Palace, where she
was to meet the groom, the bride turned pale. The Duchess
of Hamilton rallied her. The princess replied: ''Yes, my
dear Duchess, you may laugh, you are not going to be mar-ried,
but it is no joke to me." It was a tremendously ex-citing
time.
Horace Walpole writes, "Royal marriages, coronations and
victories come tumbling over one another from distant parts
of the globe like the words of a lady romance wi-iter—
I
don't know where I am—I had scarce found Mecklenburg-
Strelitz with a magnifying glass on the map before I was
whisked to Pondicherrv. Then thunder 2:0 the Tower snms
;
behold the French are totally defeated by Duke Ferdinand
of Brunswick, at the battle of Minden." The joy of this
period and the satisfaction over this marriage extended to
the wilds of North Carolina, and tlie good queen's name,
Charlotte of Mecklenburg, was afiised, as soon as the news
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET, 39
came, to a coimtv and its capital. She was a model of do-mestic
virtue, and the court, through her influence, was pure
in the midst of a corrupt society. And when our ancestors,
in the angry passions of war in 1779, expunged from the
map the hated name of Tryon, when the inhabitants of this
section were the fiercest fighters against her husband, their
swords as sharp as hornet stings, they allowed the name of
the good queen to remain as a perpetual tribute to all
womanly virtues.
Note the coincidence, that just as Admiral Anson intro-duced
Charlotte of Mecklenburg into England as its queen,
so in the distant colony the county of Anson in ISTorth Caro-lina
political history, went before and was usher to the county
of Mecklenburg.
It should be a warning lesson to all rulers that only 13
years after this ebullition of loyal affection the most defiant
resolutions and the most spirited action against England's
king came from those enlightened men whose county and
town bore the name of England's queen. The chords of sen-timental
devotion snapped when strained by hard and real
assaults on inherited liberties. With many a sigh over the
sweet past, now turned into bitterness, our ancestors ad-dressed
themselves to the stern task before them.
Some of our counties bear the names of Indian tribes
which once roamed over these hills and dales. There are
Cherokee and Currituck, Catawba and Chowan, Watauga
and Pasquotank, Alleghany and Perquimans, Yadkin* and
Pamlicoi, A miserable remnant of the Cherokees still live
under the shadow of the Smokies. As these people passed
away toward the setting sun they left here and there their
musical names, well nigh the sole relic of tlieir language,
their sepulchral mounds and mouldering skeletons and tawdy
*It is conteuded by some that Yadkin is a corrupt pronunciation of Adkin, the
name of an old settler on this liver.
40 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
ornaments within, almost the sole reminders of their stal-wart
warriors and graceful maidens; their arrows and toma-hawk
heads, the harmless mementos of their once dreaded
weapons of war.
CORNWALLIS VS. MORGAN AND GREENE.
Two of the Piedmont counties, Catawba and Yadkin, have
rivers flowing by and through them, bearing their names,
which bring to mind most thrilling incidents of the Revolu-tionary
war. The gallant Morgan, fighting in defiance of the
prudential maxims of war, had humbled Tarleton at Cow-pens
and captured many prisoners, guns and ammunition.
Cornv\'allis, only 25 miles distant, with his trained army of
veterans, hastened to avenge the disgrace. It was in the
dead of winter. The roads were softened by continued rains.
For twelve days the pursuit continued. ISTearer and nearer
rushed on the pursuing foe. Success seemed almost in Corn-wallis'
grasp. From the summit of every hill could be seen
only a fev\" miles off the retreating columns, foot-store and
weary, in front the luckless prisoners, in the rear the daunt-less
rear-guards. Softly and pleasantly flowed the river over
the pebbles of its Island Ford. Swiftly and easily through
the v/aters the flying cohunn passed. Up the steep hills they
toiled and then rested for the night, while the vengeful
British, only two hours behind, waited .until the morning light
should direct their steps to sure and easy victory,
MAN PROPOSES, GOD DISPOSES.
The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the
strong. As the Red Sea waves saved the trembling Israelites
from boasting Pharaoh's liordes, as Old Father Tiber drove
back Lars Porsena of Clusium from the gates of Rome, where
Horatius kept the bridge, so the mighty Catawba roused
himself in his fury to thwart the exulting Briton. From the
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 41
slopes of the Brushy, and South and Linville and the distant
Bine Ridge ^lonntains poured the angTy torrents, and when
the gray light of morning broke a yellow flood, swift and
deep and strong, raged in his front. The Greeks or the Ro-mans
A\-ould have deified the protecting river, and in a lofty
teirii^le, with splendid architectural adornments, would have
been a noble statue carved with wonderful art dedicated to
Catawba Salvator, the protecting river god.
After a short rest, Cornwallis, who was an active and able
officer, in later years distinguished as Viceroy of Ireland and
Governor-General of India, burnt the superfluous baggage of
his troo])s and hurried to overtake and destroy Greene's army,
then being gptliered out of the fragments of the forces of
Gates scattered at Camden. Small bodies of militia guarded
the fords of t!ie Catawba, now become passable. At Cowan's
ford was, a young officer, who bad gained promotion under
the eye of the great Washington at Brandywine, Germanto"wn
and Moumonth. He was in the place of Rutherford, cap-tured
at Camden, Brigadier-General of the militia of the sec-tion.
He was an active and able commander who had in-fused
his fiery energy and pluck into the people. Making a
pretended attack at Beattie's ford, Cornwallis directed all
the force of his army at Cowan's ford. A spirited resist-ance
was made against the overwhelming odds and the young
general was left dead on the bloody field. The Continental
Congress, in grateful recognition of his services, voted that
a monument be erected to his memory, but a hundred years
have not witnessed the inception of this worthy undertaking.
jSTorth Carolina has erected a far more enduring cenotaph
by giving the name of William Davidson to one of her most
prosperous counties.
Forward in rapid retreat push the thin columns of Greene,
forward press the strong forces of Cornwallis. The fortunes
42 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
of the entire Southern country tremble in the balance. If
Greene's army shall be saved, he will rally around him the
scattered patriots and soon confront his adversary, ready on
more equal terms to contend for the mastery. If it shall be
overtaken nothing- can save it from destruction, and from the
James river to the Chattahooche the standard of King George
will be raised over a conquered people. The eyes of all
friends of liberty are turned with alarmed anxiety toward
the unequal contest.
Again does the god of battle interpose to thwart the well-laid
scheme. Again do the descending floods dash their
angry waters against the baffled Britons. Again does the
flushed and furious foe stand powerless. The noble Yadkin
emulates her sister, Catawba, and interposes her swollen
stream, fierce and deep, between him and the object of his
vengeance.
DAVIE AND THE UNIVERSITY.
Davie was the Father of the University. Joseph Cald-w^
ell was its first President, cared for it in its early years,
while Swain carried on his work. Alfred Moore, and John
Haywood, an able Attorney-General and Judge of the Su-preme
Court of the United States, assisted as Trustees in
selecting its site, while Mitchell lost his life in her service.
After all these were counties named. One of the most
active co-fighters \\'ith Davidson in checking the enemy and
gaining time for gathering strength to meet him in the field
was William Richardson Davie, at first a cavalry officer
and then in the more arduous but more useful position of
Commissary General. He was a strong staff on which General
Greene had leaned. He was conspicuous in civil pursuits ; an
able lawyer, an orator of wide influence. He was afterwards
Governor of the State ; one of the Envoys of the United States
to the Court of France, who averted a threatened wax. 1
THE NOKTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 43
Unci him styled in the Journal of the University in 1810,
"the Father of the University," and he well deserves the
title. We have his portrait at the University. His face
shows his character, elegant, refined, noble, intellectual, firm.
It was most fitting that Davidson and Davie should be side-by-
side on the banks of the rivers which witnessed their
patriotism, and in the country whose liberties they gained.
The county of Wayne brings to our minds the great sol-dier,
the military genius of whom electrified the well-nigh
despairing colonists by the brilliant capture of Stony Point.
James Grlasgow was one of the most trusted men of the
Revolution. In conjunction with Alexander Gaston, the
father of Judge Gaston, and Richard Cogdell, grandfather of
George E. Badger, he was one of the Committee of Safety of
Newbern District. He was Major of the Regiment of the
county of Dobbs.
When North Carolina, on the 18th of December, 1776,
adopted its constitution and took its place among the free
States of the earth, Richard Caswell was its first Governor
and James Glasgow its first Secretary of State. A grateful
Legislature gave to a county formed out of old Orange,
mother of counties of great men, the appellation of Caswell.
And when it expunged from our map the odious remem-brance
of Dobbs, no name was found more worthy to desig-nate
one of the counties carved out of its territory than
Glasgow.
Behold the reward of dishonesty and crime : The name of
Greene has supplanted on the map that of the obliterated
Glasgow, and on the records of the Free and Accepted Ma-sons
the black, dismal lines of disgrace are drawn around the
signature of the poor wretch, who was weighed in the balance
and found wanting.
Among the heroic men who poured out their life-blood on
distant battlefields—on the far-away hills of Canada—there
44 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
was none more gallant than Benjamin Forsyth, whose name
survives in one of the most flourishing counties in our State.
The war of 1812 does not seem to have stirred the hearts
of our people to great extent, as I find no county names from
its heroes except Forsyth. I feel sure that Jackson was hon-ored
for his Presidential and Creek Indian services as much
as for the victory of iNew Orleans and Clay for his popu-larity
with his party, long after his service as War Speaker
of the Hoirse of Representatives.
EASTERN AND WESTERN CONTROVERSY.
The constitution of 1776 was formed at a time when hatred
and fear of executive power and of kingly government were
at the utmost. Hence resulted an instrument under which
nearly all the powers were in the hands of the General As-sembly.
This body appointed the Governor, and chief State
officers, the Attorney-General and Solicitors, the Judges and
all the militia officers, and likewise controlled their salaries.
Then, as now, it elected the Justices of the Peace, and these
officers elected the Sheriffs and other county officers. The
Assembly thus controlled the executive and judicial branches.
It had unlimited power of taxation and could incur unlimited
public debt. It could, and did, tax one kind of property,
and exempt others.
Th.e powers of the Legislature of 1776 being so great it
was important that the different sections of the State should
have in the elections of the members equivalent voice. But
this was very far from being the case. The Senate consisted
of one member froni each county. The House of two from
each county and six, afterwards seven, Borough members.
In 1776 there were 25 Eastern and 8 Western counties. In
both branches the West was outnumbered 3 to 1.
The wonderful invention which is effecting greater changes
in behalf of mankind than all the inventions the world ever
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 45
saw before, the railroad, inflamed to fever heat, the hostility
of the Western people to the old constitution, which had
been quickened a dozen years before when canal digging
everywhere had been inaugurated by the finishing of the
Erie Canal, of j^ew York. An agitation ensued which shook
the State from the Smoky Mountains to Chickamicomico
—
the West demanding in thunder tones the correction of the
abominable inequality and injustice of representation by
counties.
One of the most prominent leaders in this movement so im-portant
to the West was Wm. Julius Alexander, in 1828
Speaker of the House of Commons, afterwards Solicitor of
the Western District, in his prime one of the most popular
and able men of this section. He was, young people will be
interested in learning, likewise distinguished for having won
the hand of a most beautiful and admired belle, Catharine
Wilson, whose charms attracted visitors from distant regions.
Some of the other prominent actors in this struggle, such
as Cabarrus, Macon, Gaston, Yancey, Stanly, Swain, Hen-derson,
Graham, are represented in your list of counties.
The deep valleys which separate the hills of Devonshire
in England are called ^^coombes," or as w^e spell it, "combes."
On the margin of the Tamar, which with the Plym, forms
tlie noble harbour of Plymouth, rises a hill noted for its
picturesque loveliness. It is called Mount Edgecombe (the
edge or margin of the valley). It is the territorial title of
an English Earl. In 1733 Sir Richard, Baron Edgecombe,
was a lord of the Treasury, and it was in his honor that the
new-born county in jSTorth Carolina was called. The emi-nent
Admiral, George, Earl of Edgecombe, w^as his son.
The name Wilson brings to our minds one of the best types
of Xorth Carolina statesmen. He was long the trusted rep-resentative
in the State Senate of a people who required of
their public men, prudence, economy, and strictest integrity.
y
46 THE NORTH CAEOLINA BOOKLET.
It was when he might have been seeking the repose of an
honorable old age that Louis D. Wilson offered his services as
a volunteer in the war with Mexico. It was a grateful act
on the part of the General Assembly, on the motion of the
people who loved him and whom he loved, and to whose poor
he bequeathed the bulk of his fortune, to name the county
cut off mostly from his native Edgecombe in his perpetual
honor.
The county of I^ash is, like Wilson, the danghter of Edge-combe.
In one of the darkest hours of the Revolution, after
famine and freezing cold had reduced our troops almost to
despair, fell General Francis Nash, brother of Governor
Abner IsTash, at Germantown. The General Assembly in
the year of the battle' created this county as his monument.
All who knew his nephew, the late Chief Justice Frederick
Nash, so distinguished for Christian virtues and the natural
courtesy of the perfect gentleman, could trace in him the
features of the chivalric military hero. It was reserved for
a large-hearted citizen of Pennsylvania, Mr. John F. Wat-son,
with the aid of his townsmen of Germantown, to erect a
marble' shaft over his dust at Kulpsville^ where his shattered
body was interred in the presence of Washington and his
gallant army in 1777, amid the falling of the October leaves.
In a distant part of the State, among the peaks and ra-vines
of the Blue Ridge, is the memorial county, as is stated
in the charter, of another Revolutionary hero, who was
wounded when Nash was killed, who fought also at Brandy-wine,
Camden, Guilford Court House and Eutaw, and was
a leading citizen for half a century after the achievement of
our independence. Lieutenant-Colonel William Polk, one of
our earliest and wisest friends of higher education.
Another epoch in onr history I will mention and my paper
will be finished. It is the great Civil War, in which
North Carolina struggled for the victorv mth all the con-
THE NORTH CAEOLINA BOOKLET. 47
scioiTsness of rectitude, with all the devotion of patriotism
and the desperate energy of a high-spirited race unused to
defeat and fighting for what thej thought their rights. She
threw without grudging the sacrifice into the tremendous vor-tex
the most valued of her treasures and the noblest of her
sons. Although defeated and for a season crushed, she could
not forget those who at her bidding served so faithfully and
strove so manfully, albeit vainly, mth muscle and brain to
carry out her orders. She bows obediently to the decision of
the God of Battles, yet in her gTeat warm heart she cherishes
the fame and the sufferings of her sons, and hence we find
on the map of the State the name of one of Lee's best gen-erals,
the gallant Pender, whose blood stained the heights of
Gettysburg, and of him who after a short, faithful service at
the front, became the best War Governor of the South, who
in the direst needs of the Confederacy fed and clothed our
Xorth Carolina soldiers and re-animated their drooping
spirits ^vitli fervid eloquence, our beloved Senator, Zebulon
Baird Vance. Illustrating this and other periods in legisla-tive
halls is, in the front ranlv of our statesmen, William A.
Graham.
It is most fitting that the extraordinary advancement in in-dustrial
enterprise, first inaugurated in the town of Durham,
slioukl be recognized by our law-making power in the creation
of the county of the same name. May it be an incitement to
and prognostication of the develop^ment of our resources and
the increase of wealth in our borders. The name is all the
more fitting because to the Lords Proprietors were given the
almost royal powers of the Bishop of Durham.
In conclusion, the county last created transfers to our map
the name of the land so full of associations of beauty and of
grandeur, from which, partly by direct immigration, partly
by way of JS^orth Ireland, so many of our ablest and best
people came—Scotland.
48 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
And now let us point the moral of these glimpses of past
history. When you hear the names of our counties, do not
stand with vacant eyes. Let them bring to mind the teach-ings
associated with their names, the various epochs of our
history, Indian traditions, hereditary aristocracy, colonial
systems, the horrors of war, the upward march toward consti-tutional
liberty, the triumphs of industry, the advance of
civilization and of Christianty. In remembering the lead-ers
do not forget the humble followers, "the unnamed demi-gods
of history," as Kossuth calls them, who gained so much
for their descendants and for mankind generally, and lie in
forgotten graves.
From the exterminated Indians learn a great political les-son.
If their warring tribes could have united and opposed
their combined strength against the European invaders, they
might for many years have held their homes, and in the end
amalgamated with their conquerors. Let us all discard past
differences and cherish the union of the States, for in that
Union, the States "distinct as the billows, yet one as the sea,"
in the words of the poet, or in the language of the Supreme
Court, an "undissoluble union of indestructible States," lies
our strength. Let the hatreds of our great Civil War be
buried forever. The God of Battles has decided against the
idea of secession. On the w^alls of the Atheneum in Boston
are two swords crossed, their deadly mission ended. Under
them is an inscription showing that they belonged to tlie an-cestors
of the historian, Prescott, who fought on opposite
sides on Bunker Hill. The old warfare of A^Tiigs and Tories
has long since ceased, and in like manner let the descendants
of those who followed the Stars and Stripes, shoulder to
shoulder with those above whom waved the Stars and Bars,
strive to gain all moral excellence and all material prosperity
for the great Eepublic of the World.
ADMIRAL SIR THOMAS FRANKLAND.
A COLONIAL ADMIRAL OF THE CAPE FEAR.
BY JAMES SPRUNT, BRITISH VICE-CONSUL AT WILMINGTON, N. C.
Tlie Colonial plantations on the lower Cape Fear River
have long yielded to the patient and persevering student of
local literature a generous contribution of interesting history
pertaining to the eventful years which marked the destiny of
a brave and generous people. Throughout the Colonial pe-riod
these important estates were held by men of eminence
and of action, and from that time to the present day their
owners have been gentlemen to the manner born, fitted by
birth and education for the highest social and civic stations.
Read, for example, the line of "Orton" proprietors who have
lived upon this land for nearly two hundred years.
Originally obtained by patent from the Lords Proprietors
under Charles II. in 1725, to Col. Maurice Moore, then
"King" Roger Moore, William Moore 2nd, Governor Arthur
Dobbs, Governor Wm. Tryon, Richard Quince 1st, Richard
Quince 2nd, Richard Quince 3rd, Governor Benjamin Smith,
Dr. Fred J. Hill, Richard Currer Roundell (a nephew of
Lord Selboume, Lord Chancellor of England), and, lastly,
to the late Col. K. M. Murchison.
The lordly residence of the Chief Justice Eleazer Allen,
upon the adjacent plantation of Lilliput, which was distin-guished
in his day by a large and liberal hospitality, has long
since disappeared, but the grand old oaks which lifted their
majestic branches to the soft south breezes in Colonial times,
still sing their murmured requiem above a "boundless conti-guity
of shade."
Here, upon the banks of our historic river, which
stretches two miles to the eastern shore, is heard the booming
of the broad Atlantic as it sweeps in its might and majesty
50 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
from Greenland to the Gulf. Along the shining beach, from
I'isher to Fort Caswell, its foaming breakers run and roar,
tlie racing steeds of Neptune, with their white crested manes,
charging and reforming for the never ending fraj.
The adjacent larger plantation of Kendal, originally
owned by "King" RogerMoore, from whom it passed to others
of his descendants, was later the property of James Smith, a
brother of Governor Benjamin Smith's, and it was here, near
the banks of Orton creek, which di^ades this estate from the
splendid domain of Orton, with its 10,000 acres, that the
quarrel between the Smith brothers ended by the departure
of James to South Carolina, where he assumed his mother's
name, Rhett, leaving his intolerant and choleric brother
Benjamin to a succession of misfortunes, disappointments
and distresses, which brought him at last to a pauper's grave.
Aide de camp to Washington, a General of the State Militia,
a Governor of the State, a benefactor of the University, a
melancholy example of public ingratitude.
Behind Kendal is McKenzie's Mill Dam, the scene of a
battle between the British troops and the minute men from
Brunswick and from Wilmington.
We linger at Orton, the most attractive of all the old Eng-lish
estates on the Cape Fear. For a hundred and eighty-one
years it has survived the vicissitudes of war, pestilence
and famine, and until the recent death of its last proprietor
has maintained its reputation of Colonial days for a refined
and generous hospitality. Here in the exhilaration of the
hunter, the restful seclusion of the angler, the quiet quest of
the naturalist, the peaceful contemjjlation of the student, is
found surcease from the vanities and vexations of urban life.
For nearly two centuries it has been a haven of rest and recre-ation
to its favoured guests. The house, or Hall, built by
^"King" Roger Moore in 1735, with its stately white pillars
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 51
gleaming in the sunshine through the surrounding forest, is
a most pleasing vista to the passing mariner. The river
view stretches for ten miles southward and eastward, includ-ing
"Big Sugar Loaf," Fort Anderson, Fort Buchanan and
Fort Fisher.
We love its traditions and its memories, for no sorrow came
to us there. The primeval forest with its dense undergrowth
of dogwood blossoms which shine with the brightness of the
falling snow; the thickets of Cherokee roses, which surpass
the most beautiful of other regions; the brilliant carpet of
wild azaleas, the golden splendour of the yellow jessamine,
the modest drosera, the marvellous dionea mucipula, and the
trumpet saracenias ; the river drive to the white beach, from
which are seen the distant breakers ; the secluded spot in the
wilderness commanding a wide view of an exquisite land-scape
where, safe from intrusion, we sat upon a sheltered
seat beneath the giant pines and heard the faint "yo ho" of
the sailor, outward bound ; a place apart for holy contempla-tion
when the day is far spent, where the overhanging
branches cast the shadow of a cross and where later, through
the interlacing foliage, the star of hope is shining; the joy-ful
reception at the big house, the spacious hall with its ample
hearth and blazing oak logs; around it, after the bountiful
evening meal, the old songs were sung and the old tales were
told, and fun and frolic kept dull care beyond the threshold.
Through the quiet lanes of Orton to the ruins of the Pro-vincial
Grovernor Tryon's palace, is half a mile. Here is the
cradle of American independence, for upon this spot, now
hidden by a dense undergrowth of timber, occurred, between
six and seven o'clock on the evening of the 19th of February,
1766, the first open resistance to the British Stamp Act in
the American colonies, by 150 armed men, who surrounded
the palace and demanded the surrender of the custodians of
the obnoxious symbols of the King's authority.
52 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
Ten miimtes walk farther down brings us to the ruins of
the Colonial Parish Church of St. Philip, the scene of many
notable incidents and the resting place of the early pioneers.
It was built by the citizens of Brunswick and principally by
the landed gentry about the year 1740. In the year 1751,
Mr. Lewis Henry deRosset, a member of Governor Gabriel
Johnston's council, and subsequently an expatriated Royalist,
introduced a bill appropriating to the Church of St. Philip
at Brunswick and to St. James' Church at Wilmington,
equally, a fund that was realized by the capture and destruc-tion
of a pirate vessel, which, in a squadron of Spanish
buccaneers, had entered the river and plundered the planta-tions.
A picture, "Ecce Homo," captured from this pirate,
is still preserved in the vestry room of St. James' Church in
Wilmington. The walls of St. Phillip's Church are nearly
three feet thick, and are solid and almost intact still; the
roof and floor have disappeared. It must have possessed
much architectural beauty and massive grandeur with its
high-pitched roof, its lofty doors and beautiful chancel
windows.
A little to the west, surrounded by a forest of pines, lies
Liberty Pond, a beautiful lake of clear spring water, once
stained with the blood of friend and foe in a deadly conflict,
hence its traditional name. It is now a most restful, tran-quil
spot—the profound stillness, the beach of snow-wliite
sand, the unbroken surface of the lake, which reflects the
foliage and the changing sky line.
Turning to the southeast, we leave the woodland and
reach a bluff upon the river bank, still known as Howe's
Point, where the Revolutionary patriot and soldier, General
Robert Howe, was born and reared. His residence, long
since a ruin, was a large frame building on a stone or brick
foundation, still remembered as such by several aged citizens
of Brunswick.
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 53
A short distance from the Howe place, the writer found
some years ago, in the woods and upon a commanding site
near the river, under many layers of pine straw, the clearly
defined ruins of an ancient fort, which Avas undoubtedly of
Colonial origin. Mr. Reynolds, who lives at his place near-by,
says that his great-grandfather informed him forty years
ago that this fort was erected long before the war of the Revo-lution
by the Colonial Government for the protection of the
colonists against buccaneers and pirates, and that he remem-bers
having heard of an engagement in 1776 beirween the
Americans who occupied this fort and the British troops who
landed from their ships in the river, in which battle the
British drove the Americans from the fort to McKenzie's
Mill Dam.
Hence to the staid old county seat is a journey of an hour
;
it was originally known as Fort Johnston, a fortification
named for the Colonial Governor, Gabriel Johnston. It was
established about the year 1745 for the protection of the
colony against pirates which infested the Cape Fear River.
The name was subsequently changed to Smithville in honour
of Benjamin Smith, to whom reference has been made, who
had behaved with conspicuous gallantry under Moultrie
when he drove the British from Port Royal ; he was subse-quently
elected fifteen times to the Senate and became Gover-nor
of the Commonwealth in 1810. By recent authority of
the State Legislature the name was again changed to South-port.
In the old Court-house, which is its principal build-ing,
may be seen the evidence that on the death of Mr. Allen,
17th January, 1749, aged 57 years, at Lilliput, where he
was buried, this plantation became the property (and it is
said the residence for a brief period) of the great-grandson
of Oliver Cromwell, Sir Thomas Frankland, Admiral of the
White in the British navy, a position of great distinction,
which he attained at the early age of 28 years, and of his
54 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
wife, who was Sarah Rhett, the daughter of Colonel Rhett,
of South Carolina, and a niece of Chief Justice Allen.
It appears also from the Colonial Records, in a letter from
Rev. John McDowell, who served the twin parishes of St.
Philip's at Brunswick and St. James' at Wilmington, ad-dressed
to the Secretary of the Honourable Society which
supported him, in London, and written from Brunswick
April 16, 1761, and also by subsequent letters with particu-lar
reference to the long delayed completion of the Parish
Church of St. Philips, that Admiral Frankland and Lady
Prankland contributed substantial sums of money for its
support.
The records of these two interesting personages in the
early history of our settlement are too obscure for a connected
narrative. All of my endeavors to obtain sufficient material
for a sketch of this Colonial Cape Fear Admiral, in Charles-ton,
in Boston, in the IsTational Library at Washington and
in London, were in vain until I obtained an introduction to
the present head of the house, the great-grandson of Admiral
Frankland, Sir Ralph Payne Gallway, of Thirkleby Park,
Thirsk, Yorkshire, one of the most beautiful county seats in
England, who has been good enough to compile for me the
following notes with reference to Sir Charles Frankland, the
Colonial Collector of the port of Boston, and his romantic
marriage with Agnes Surriage, and, to his successor. Sir
Thomas Frankland, the youthful Admiral and rover of the
seas, of whose life upon the Carolina station and in Charles-ton
and on the Cape Fear River at Lilliput, there is unfor-tunately
but fragmentary and unsatisfying evidence.
Sir Charles Frankland was born in 1716 in Bengal, India ;
he died at Bath in 1768. He was the eldest son of Henry
Frankland, Governor of Bengal, who died in 1728, who was
a brother of Sir Thomas Frankland, third Baronet of Thirk-
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 55
leby, the latter being a descendant of Cromwell and also of
Charles I. Sir Charles was on a visit to Lisbon during the
great earthquake of 1755. He returned to Lisbon as Consul
General of Portugal in 1757. In 1763 Sir Charles re-turned
to Boston, where he resumed his duties as "Collector
of the Customs of the Port," though he at the same time held
his office as Consul General of Portugal till 1767, in which
year he returned to Thirkleby and died the following one.
Sir Charles Frankland's romantic marriage with Agnes
Surriage at Lisbon, where she rescued him from the ruins of
the earthquake, has been the subject of several books and ro-mances,
even plays, as well as the beautiful ballad of "Agnes,'
by Oliver Wendell Holmes." The history of Sir Charle-s
and Agnes Surriage, or "Boston in Colonial Times," is to be
found in a book by thei Rev. Elias Mason. A more recent
work on the same subject is called "Agnes Surriage." It is
by Edwin Lasetter Bynner, 1886. Agnes Surriage was the
daughter of a poor fisherman at Marblehead, near Boston.
Sir Charles was buried for several hours in the remains of a
church that was thrown down. Agnes Surriage searched for
him until she heard the sound of his voice, and then, by large
offers of money, and all the jewelry she wore at the time, she
persuaded some terrified people near, who chanced to be
uninjured, to excavate her lover. On his recovery from his
wounds Sir Charles at once married his rescuer as a proof of
gratitude. The person who was buried alive with Sir Charles
at Lisbon, under the fallen stones of the church, in her mad-ness
and pain tore a piece out of his coat with her teeth.
This coat, with the rent in it, was preserved at Thirkleby as
a memento of an awful experience 'till it, at length, fell to
pieces from age.
In 1751 Sir Charles built a good house and purchased a
fair estate at Hopkinston, near Boston. This house was de-stroyed
by fire January 23d, 1758, but on the same site a
56 THE NORTPI CAROLINA BOOKLET.
new house was ere long erected, which was built to resemble
the old one. In 1747 Sir Charles succeeded his uncle, the
third Baronet, but, owing to a disputed will, did not for
some years inherit the estates at Thirkleby and elsewhere.
His uncle, whom he succeeded in the title, was 11.P for
Thirsk, 1711-1747, and a Lord of the Admirality ; he died in
1747. He, Sir Thomas Frankland, third Baronet, made
three wills. In the first, dated 1741, he left Thirkleby and
his other estates to his nephew, afterwards Sir Charles. In
1744, he altered all this and left Thirkleby to his widow for
her life. In his last and third will he left Thirkleby and
all his estates to his wido^v absolutely. It was contended by
Sir Charles, his successor, that the last will was made when
Sir Tliomas was of unsound mind, and under undue influ-ence.
A lawsuit was, therefore, entered on by Sir Charles
to set aside Sir Thomas's last will, and in this he was suc-cessful,
and hence gained Thirkleby and the other family
estates.
Sir Charles died in 1768 at Bath, and in Weston Church,
in the suburbs of Bath, there is a long inscription to him.
He was twice in residence at Lisbon as Consul General of
Portugal.
Lady Frankland (Agues Surriage) returned to Hopkinton,
near Boston, after her liusband's death, near where she was
born, and lived until Sir Charles took her away. She re-sided
at Hopkinton 'till the declaration of war, and for a
short, time after. She witnessed from her house the battle
of Bunker's Hill, a bullet breaking the glass of the window
she was looking through.
Being a Loyalist, she returned to England, and paid a long
visit to Thirkleby. She then moved, in 1782, to Chichester,
where she married Mr. John Drew, a banker. She died the
following year and is buried at Chichester ; aged 57 years.
THE Js^ORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 57
Admiral Sir- Thomas FranMand succeeded, as fifth. Baro-net,
his elder brother, Sir Charles, in the family estates and
title. He was born in 1718, and died at Bath, 1784, aged
66. Member of Parliament for the Borough of Thirsk 1747-
1784. Successively Admiral of the Red and then of the
White in the King's navy. Buried at Thirkleby. Married
Sarah, the daughter of Colonel William Rhett, of South
Carolina, May, 1743 ; she died April, 1808, aged 84. Sir
Thomas, the Admiral, was the great grandson of Oliver
Cromwell and the great grandfather of the writer of these
notes. The inscription to the Admiral in Thirkleby Church
is as follow^s
:
''Sir Thomas Frankland, second son of Henry Frankland,
Governor of Fort William in Bengal. Admiral of theWhite,
who represented the Borough of Thirsk in six Parliaments.
He died at Bath on the 21st of j^ovember, 1784, aged 66.
He married Sarah, daughter of William Rhett, Esq., of
South Carolina, by whom he left seven sons and three
daughters."
When in Boston, in 1742, Captain Thomas Frankland, as
he then was, paid a -^dsit to his elder brother. Sir Charles,
whom ho eventually succeeded in title and Thirkleby estates.
Whilst at Charlestovni he fell in love with. Sarah Rhett, and
on his su.bsequent visit there he married her. He was at
that time Captain of H. M. Frigate Rose, though only 25
years of age. Some very effusively complimentary verses
were printed in the Boston Evening Post on the occasion of
Captain Frankland's visit to Boston in 1742. A few of these
lines I quote, but the poem is too long to give in full here
:
"From peaceful solitude and calm retreat
I now and then look out upon the great.
Praise where 'tis due I'll give, no servile tool
Of honorable knave, or reverend fool
;
Surplice or red-coat, both alike to me.
Let him that wears them great and worth v be."
58 THE NORTH CAKOLINA BOOKLET.
"We see thee Frankland dreadful o'er the main
Not terrible to children, but to Spain.
Then let me lisp thy name; thy praise rehearse
Though in weak numbers and in feeble verse.
Though faint the whisper when the thunder roars,
And speak thee great through all Hispanios shores! "
I have had a photograph purposely done of Admiral Sir
Thomas Frankland's picture here tO' accompany these notes.
I have also had one done at the same time of his ship pre-served
in model form in the hall here. Though this model
is six feet long and most minutely made, and also, no doubt,
most faithfully copied from the original vessel at great ex-pense
; yet we do not know her name. My brother, lately a
Post Captain in the navy, did all he could to ascertain from
the Admiralty, and from other sources her name, but with-out
success. I should be very glad if the name could be dis-covered.
On the sides of the model G. R. (George Rex) is
painted in several parts. That the model is an exact copy of
the original there can be do doubt, and it could not be built
now at less than £300, at least so an expert in marine model
building assures me. From the figure-head of the model she
should be "Ajax," "Achilles," "Centurion," "Warrior," and
the most likely of all, "Perseus," as on the shield borne by
the figure on the prow is carved the head of "Medusa." ^one
of the foregoing names belonged, as far as I can discover, to
any ship which Admiral Frankland was connected with.
Family tradition declares that the model is of the ship which
Admiral Franldand was aboard when he captured a Spanish
galleon. The galleon is said to have had so much treasure on
board that from his share of the prize-money the Admiral
settled five thousand pounds on each of his eight daughters,
though only three of these survived him. However, I con-sider
the very rich Spanish (so-called) ship that Frankland
captured is the one described in the following extract from
"A New Naval History, by John Entick, M.A., 1757":
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 59
"Tlie Rose, man of war, 20 guns, commanded by Captain
Frankland, being cruising on the Carolina station on Jan-uary
12th, 1744, fell in with the Conception, a French ship
with a Spanish register of 400 tons, 20 guns and 326 men,
bound from Carthagena to- Havana. After a smart engage-ment
of eleven glasses, in which the Conception had 110
men killed, the Rose, with the loss of only 5 men, took the
prize into Charleston, in South Carolina, where she proved
a very valuable acquisition. Her cargo consisted of 800
serons of cocoa, in each of which was deposited a bar of gold,
of the total value of 310,000 pieces of eight; wrought plate
of equivalent value ; a complete set of church plate ; a large
quantity of pearls, diamonds, and other precious stones, and
gold buckles and snuff boxes; a curious silver chaise, the
wheels, axles and other parts of it being all of silver. There
was, besides, 600 pounds weight of gold, the whole of which
was worth £200,000."
From this account it will be seen that the Rose, of only
20 guns, cannot be the three-decker, the model of which is
now at Thirkleby. The model is of a man of war that has
as many as 74 guns in three tiers, including deck guns, and
she must have been a large line of battleship such as an Ad-miral
might hoist his pennant on when in command of a fleet.
Perhaps from the photograph of the figure-head of the model
some information may be obtained regarding its name, which
I have always been so anxious to obtain. There is no doubt
that—
1. The model is a copy of a ship commanded by Cap-tain
(or Admiral) Frankland at one time of his naval career.
2. Or, that the model is a copy of a ship captured from the
enemy by Captain (or Admiral) Frankland, and afterwards
converted into a British man of war.
We know that the model has been here at Thirkleby for
some 150 years.
60 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
You desire to know about Sir Thomas Frankland's resi-dence
at Lilliput Plantation on the Cape Fear River in IsTorth
Carolina, and particularly in regard to his life in K"orth
Carolina, and his estates on the Cape Fear River.
It occurs to me that the Admiral was too busy chasing
French and Spanish ships of the enemy to have retired to an
estate in Carolina, and to have had a house on a plantation
there, especially as he was so active and constant in his ser-vices
in the King's l^avy. The only suggestion I can find
that the Admiral (at that time Captain) did retire from ac-tive
service for a short time is hinted in the first two lines of
the poem I have quoted, and which run
—
"From peaceful solitude and calm retreat,
I now and then look out upon the great."
The old early Elizabethan Hall at Thirkleby was pulled
down in 1793, when the present house was completed. The
old house, of which we have a picture, was the home of Ad-miral
Frankland. Many flowers of the old gardens still
force their heads above the soil every summer. As a boy of
about twelve years of age I very well recollect an old family
game-keeper who lived at Thirkleby, who at that time of my
life was just 90 years of age. His name was W. Hudson.
He often pointed out to me the walnut tree in the park here,
up which, when he was a boy of ten or twelve, the Admiral
used to order him to climb to gather the walnuts; and which
the Admiral used to throw his big crook-handled stick up
among its boughs to try and knock the walnuts down himself.
As Hudson was born in 1770 and the Admiral died in 1784,
the reminiscences of the old keeper were no doubt correct,
and enables me to say that I knew a man who knew Admiral
Sir Thomas Frankland, who was born in 1718, and it is quite
probable that the Admiral knew a man, who, as a child, saw
Charles the First's head cut off at Whitehall.
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 61
On the subject of reminiscences, though rather out of
place here, as it has nothing to do with the Frankland fam-ily,
I may relate that an old friend of mine, now alive and
well and but 72 years of age, perfectly recollects his grand-father,
who lived to a great age. The grandfather in ques-tion
took a purse of gold concealed in a basket of strawber-ries
to Prince Charlie (the Young Pretender) when he was
keeping court at Hobgood Palace in 1745. The messenger
with the strawberries was, of course, a child at the time, and
was, as such, selected, by partisans of the Stewarts, to allay
suspicion as to the real object of his visit to Hobgood, which
was to aid the Prince with money to establish his rights to his
throne in Scotland. This incident, (with many others of a
similar kind, I found here in the muniment room among the
papers of my great uncle. Lord Lavington, who was Governor
of some of the West Indies Islands and was buried there), I
had printed and sent to the late Queen Victoria of blessed
memory. Her Majesty was greatly interested in the book I
compiled and sent her, the only thing she took exception to
was my allusion to Prince Charlie as "A Pretender." The
young pretender was tall and handsome, and the beau ideal of
a gallant cavalier, but he died, alas, at Florence, as a dissi-pated
and drunken wreck, morally and physically.
On the following page I have attached a photograph I have
had specially taken tO' illustrate these notes.
(iST. B.—The g'entleman who for many years has con-ducted
in the most able manner, at very moderate cost, in
British Museum, a great deal of research for me, historical,
documentary and otherwise, and who is also a most excellent
copyist of old illustrations, is William Woodrow, E'sq. The
Reading Room, British Museum, Bloomsbury, London.)
62 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
THE BADGE OF ULSTER.
Given to Sir William FranMand, first Baronet of Thirkle-bj,
by Charles II. in 1660 as a credential of bis title. The
only Ulster badge in existence, excepting one tbat is supposed
to be a copy of it. It was worn as a proof of his rank and
person by Sir Thomas Frankland, third Baronet, when on a
mission abroad at the service of his King.
(Illustration is full size. The Red Hand, or Bloody
Hand, is on white porcelain oval set round with stones. The
date of confer and name of Baronet and his creation on
reverse side.) The tradition is that the King of Ulster and
another disputed the ownership of an estate. They agreed
to race to it from a certain distance, and the one who first
touched the land with his hand was to possess it. Ulster,
finding himself a few yards behind at the finish, cut off his
left hand and threw it in front of him over the boundary
fence, and thus won the estate.
A characteristic letter from Admiral Frankland, in which
he refers tO' the death of a gardener who has been inadvert-ently
stifled in his master's hot-house.
^'Bond Street (where the Admiral owned a house) 1760.
A. P. G.
"Mr. ISTugent, they say, spoke an hour against opening the
distillery, and when they divided, voted for it, so the joke
goes that he acted in the character of his country. Surely
money never was so scarce, we can hardly get enough to
carry on common house expenses. We shall have no peace
this year its believed, and I think another year makes us
stop payment, as our enemies have done, and what must we
do who have our all in the stocks.
"^'Have you read Tristam Shandy? The ladies say (my
wife and daughters read it not) its very clever ; now pray is
it indelicate or not fit? Upon my word I am abused and
called a Prude for saying its scandalous for a Clergyman to
write such (I was going to say Bawdy), a rapsody of hard
words.
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 63
"I hear yoii are in low spirits about the death of your
gardener. Good God, what wretches we sailors must be. I
order 40 men aloft and ye mast goes and they are drowned.
Their deaths are not at my door. I order the ship to be
smoked to prevent sickness, and some fools stay below in the
smoke and dye ; Sir, am I to charge myself with their deaths ?
"We have expeditions fitting out now, where bound a
secret.
(Signed) Thos. Franklajstd.
(1) There is a long article on Admiral Frankland, his
life and adventures, to be found in Gharnock's Biographic
Vavalis, Vol. V—1797—page 19.
(2) Also see Schomberg's ISTaval Chronology, Vol. I, page
220—1745. In this latter book the following curious inci-dent
is related
:
"Another fortunate circumstance was the discovery caused
thro' a little French boy that Capt. Frankland had taken
into his service. This boy made a complaint against one of
the sailors for having taken from him a stick in appearance of
no value. Captain Frankland recovered it for the boy, and
on returning it to him gave him a playful tap on the shoulder.
The head of the stick fell off then and diamonds were found
inside it worth 20,000 pistoles. When the enemy surren-dered,
the Captain gave the stick to the boy in the hopes of
saving it, not imagining that such a trifle would ever be
noticed."
In Charnocks Chronicles a graphic account is given of Cap-tain
Frankland's fight with (1742) three of the enemies
ships, all of which he captured and took into Carolina. One
of these ships tried very hard to escape, the reason being
that its captain was the notorious "Fandino," who some years
before had cut off the ears of Jenkins, an English Captain.
Frankland sent this man at once to Hyland to be tried for his
life.
64 THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET.
I see Captain Frankland married Miss Rhett (1743),
daughter of Chief Justice of Carolina, by whom he had six
sons and eight daughters. (He had nineteen cliildren in
all; several died infants.)
June, 1756, made Rear Admiral of the Blue; retained the
command of the Pvose 'till October, 1746, when he was pro-moted
to the Dragon. In 1755 appointed Commodore on the
Antigua Station and hoisted his broad pennant on board the
Winchester, 50 guns, at Spithead, 10th August, and sailed
very soon after for the West Indies. On his arrival there
he at once quarrelled with the retiring Commodore, Pye, be-cause
this sailor had condemned his ship, the Advice. Ad-miral
Frankland reported Commodore Pye for doing so, and
to prove he was wrong, actually fitted up the Advice for him-self
and started on a cruise in her to show she was seaworthy,
with the result that Admiral Frankland and ship nearly went
to the bottom of the sea together. This quarrel and Admiral
Frankland's career is to be found in a story that appeared
in the London Magazine of 1774-1775, under the title of
"Edward & Maria," by Capt. Ed. Thompson, R. :N'. In this
story Admiral Freeland is "Frankland," and Commodore
Pye is "Sir Richard Spry," as he afterwards became.
British Museum, Add. MS. 32, 935, p. 447.
Sir:—The Barons of the Exchequer, having ordered me
immediately to Lay before the Hon'ble and Rev'd. Mr. Chol-mondeley,
Auditor General of his Maj'ts Revenues in
America, the Amount of the French Ships and Cargoes de-tained
bv me at the Leeward Islands before the Declaration
of War.
The Charge attending the Dieting the Crews of those being
refused to be allowed me in those i\.ccounts, and as it cannot
be imagined that I can bear those Expenses, Lett me entreat
your assistance to get a Dispensing Order to the Sick and
Hurt Office that the Account there may be paid me. As they
THE NORTH CAROLINA BOOKLET. 65
require Vonchers Bj their Establishment which the Nature
of Those Captures could not produce.
The Governors of the Three Islands absolutely refused to
give any Receipts for the French men Landed, or written
Orders for their Discharges.
Their Constant Answers were they never had received the
least Orders about their Detention.
]^o Cartel was settled or Commissarys appointed. There-fore
how could I produce Vouchers from the Latter.
The account for the subsistance of those men, which I have
now Laying before the Sick and Hurt Office is such, as I am
ready to make any affimiation to. It has passed thro the
Kavy Office, in regard to the names, and Entrys and Dis-charges
of the Particular Crews.
The Men sent into Hallifax and Jamacia have been paid
By the Publick. But as where I commanded there was
neither Hospital of the Kings to send them to, or Contract
subsisting for me to have ordered them Agents to have vic-tualled
them or had I ships sufficient to have keep them on
board and victualled them afloat, I had no other method to
follow.
As this is the only obstacle that hinders my finally closing
these Accounts let me again beg your aid, and I am, sir.
Your most obedient and very humble servant,
Old Bond Street Thos. Franklanb.
18th March, 1762.
(Endorsed) Ad^l. Frankland.
Public Becoro Office—Frankland Letters.
(Adm. Sec. M. Letters.)
There are two series letters—one covering the period when
stationed at the Bahamas as Captain of the Rose (about 40).
Another series when stationed at the Leeward Islands as
Admiral, (about 80 to lOO) (l755-'59), Pye incident. These
letters are of varying interest and would suggest a selection
of which specimen given re-taking the Conception.
66 THE NOHTII CAROLIXA BOOKLET.
(Ad. Sec. M. Letters, ^^o. 1782.)
•Captain Thomas Frankland to Secretary of the Admiralty
:
His Majesty's Ship "Rose," Cooper Riveb,
South Carolina, Jan. ye 23rd, 1744-5.
My last was dated 'Rov. 14th acquainting you of my de-livering
the letters as I Avas directed by Sir Chaloner Ogle.
I proceeded afterwards off St. Jago de Cuba, and so between
the south side of Cuba and the IsT. side of Jamaica down to
the Grand Comanon, where I watered, wooded and heel'd,
for I was hurryed out of Jamaica without time to get or do
either there. I then intended to go and cruize between the
Rogiies Cape Florida and the Pan of Matanzas (on the IST.
side of Cuba), but on my way on (about 35 leagues to the
w'ward of the Havanna) the first day of December just be-fore
daylight I found myself almost on board a large ship.
We were to windward and astern withall ; I kept my wind
until the day broke, then finding she had but one tier of guns
but full of men by her working, for before I showed my
colors, she run her courses up, bunted her mainsails, and I
observed everything ready to engage and her decks crowded
with people. About seven in the morning we began our en-gagement,
which lasted until half after noon ; we had a
fresh gale and a great sea, and yet we were alongside of one
another three or four times, for he would, as I observed,
fought till night at a distance; he at last struck, for he had
near a hundred men killed outright and four of his guns on
one side disabled. The ship is called the Conception of St.
Male, Mons. Adrien Mercan, Master from Cartagena bound
to C