USA > North Carolina > Biographical history of North Carolina from colonial times to the present; > Part 6
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1 Bancroft, Vol. 2. p. 134.
2 At that time the year began March 25th, and not January Ist.
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hold no longer under Indian titles, but that he would grant patents to those desiring them : and Catchmaid proposed to take out pat- ents for the land occupied by both Durant and himself.
As a matter of fact Governor Berkeley did go to England, and while there mentioned to the King these new plantations in Caro- lina outside of Virginia, and asked for instructions, and the King directed that he should require those settlers who had bought their lands from the Indians to take out patents and grants from Virginia. Berkeley returned in the Summer of 1662: so Wat- ridge's arrival on Durant's Neck was in the Fall of 1662.
Catchmaid accordingly procured a patent for 3,333 acres of land, the date of the same apparently being prior to the 13th day of March, 1662 (1663), for on that day he made an agreement in writing to convey Durant's part of the land to him, which, however, he failed to do; and thus arose the occasion of the law- suit many years after his death.
Besides this grant of more than three thousand acres, made before March, 1662 (1663), Governor Berkeley, as Governor of Virginia, also made another grant to Catchmaid for importing thirty persons into the Colony of Virginia, dated 25th of Sep- tember, 1663, six months later. This last grant was in the vicin- ity of the former one, but appears to have been entirely distinct from it. It would seem that in addition to the sixty-seven per- sons that Bancroft says "Catchmaid established in Carolina," he also brought into the Colony of Virginia thirty other persons. On that same day, September 25, 1663, Governor Berkeley made grants, which have been preserved, for lands at Albemarle, indi- cating that at least one hundred persons had been brought into Virginia by those to whom these lands were granted. It would therefore seem that planters of considerable substance were con- cerned in this first settlement ; such indeed is the statement of John Lawson, the first historian of North Carolina, who wrote in 1708 and knew what the people of Albemarle said about it. He says :
"A second settlement (after Walter Raleigh's) of this country was made about fifty years ago, in that part we now call Albemarle County, and chiefly in Chowan Precinct, by several substantial planters from Virginia and other plantations."
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After mentioning some of the difficulties of the new settlement, he continued :
"Nevertheless, I say, the fame of this new-discovered Summer country spread through the neighboring Colonies, and in a few years drew a con- siderable number of families thereto."
The next resident to write of North Carolina was Doctor Brickell, who, after residing in Albemarle, substantially repeats what Lawson wrote: and so Lawson's account of the settlement would seem to have been in agreement with local traditions.
Conditions of freedom continued to exist in Virginia until after the Restoration, when a political revolution set in which eventu- ated in restoring the old order of things, religious as well as tem- poral. If Roger Green, clerk, was a minister of the Church of England, and in 1653 designed to lead his flock into the wilder- ness because of the overthrow of the Church of Virginia, ten years later the requirement that the whole Liturgy should be read, and that no Nonconformists might teach even in private under pain of banishment, doubtless tended to drive the Independents into Caro- lina. Thus it may be that after the first settlements, subsequent accessions to the inhabitants of Albemarle were influenced by re- ligious intolerance in the Old Dominion; and after the grant of Carolina to Governor Berkeley and his brother and the other Pro- prietors, Berkeley probably viewed such a movement with satisfac- tion, as it promoted his personal interests. Yet it is to be remem- bered that Woodward, the surveyor, in 1665, does not mention such an influence as aiding the settlement of the Colony. In 1664 Drummond was appointed governor, Carteret the secretary, and Woodward the surveyor. The Proprietors limited grants to fifty acres and charged half-penny an acre quit-rent, while in Virginia the rent was one shilling for fifty acres. The first Assembly that met petitioned the Proprietors for the same terms as existed in Virginia, and Woodward in June, 1665, wrote urging their ac- quiescence. He mentioned that he had many years been en- deavoring and encouraging to seat Albemarle, and he urged a larger apportionment than fifty acres to the person, saying : "To
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think that any men will remove from Virginia upon harder con- ditions than they can live there, will prove, I fear, a vain imagina- tion, it being land only that they come for." This would seem to be in line with the traditions of the settlement as perpetuated by Lawson, and apparently negatives the idea that the settlers were seeking the wilderness to escape from religious oppression.
But however it may have been in regard to the Independents, it is quite certain that the Quakers did not make the first settle- ment. In 1671, ten years after Durant's party had built their cabins, Edmundson came to Albemarle and found only one Friend there, Phillips, and he had been there only seven years. He and his wife came from New England. However, Edmundson made several converts at that time ; and Fox, who followed him the next year, says that he also made "a little entrance for the truth among the people in the north part of Carolina." Three or four years later Edmundson again visited Albemarle and "turned several to the Lord;" "people were tender and loving, and there was no room for the priests, for Friends were finely settled, and I felt things were well among them." Indeed, from a memorial made by the Quakers in 1677 it appears that there were then at least twenty members of that faith in the Colony who had settled in Carolina as early as 1663 and 1664. Necessarily their conversion was the work of Edmundson and Fox, and the Quaker element in the Colony is to be dated from that period, some ten or twelve years subsequent to the original settlement. To the same effect is the statement of Governor Walker in 1703,1 who then wrote:
"George Fox, some years ago, came into these parts, and, by strange infatuations. did infuse the Quaker principles into some small number of the people ; which did and hath continued to grow ever since very numer- ous, by reason of their yearly sending in men to encourage and exhort them to their wicked principles."
While the Friends constantly grew in strength, it was not until the end of the century that any other denomination of Christians had either a minister or a house of worship in Albemarle. It 1 C. R., Vol. I, p. 572.
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preword to
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would thus seem that the inhabitants were not particularly de- voted or interested in their religious affiliations.
Catchmaid was probably Speaker of the first Assembly, held prior to the month of June in 1665. He was Speaker of that held in the Summer of 1666. Tobacco-planting in Albemarle was then so considerable that in June, 1666, Maryland appointed commissioners to arrange with Virginia and "the Southward plantations" for the cessation of planting tobacco for one year in the three colonies; and the Legislature of Carolina assented to this. In transmitting the Act authorizing this agreement in the Summer of 1666 there was some delay because of an Indian War which prevented the messengers leaving Carolina.
It was doubtless while Catchmaid was Speaker that the Act was passed providing for civil marriages, similar to the law in Virginia from 1654 to the Restoration; and another providing that settlers should be exempt from actions for debt, that being a law earlier in force in Virginia. Certainly the Speaker of the As- sembly exerted no little influence in the new settlement and con- tributed much to its growth. It is apparent that a considerable number of settlers were received from Massachusetts, and that at a very early day New England traders established connections in Albemarle and sought to engross the trade and commercial dealings of the settlement. As Catchmaid was not only a man of substance, but a leader in directing public matters and a man of some social standing, "a gentleman," he must have made an impress as such on the colony.
His widow married Timothy Biggs, Deputy of the Earl of Craven, and Comptroller and Surveyor-General of His Majesty's Customs. His action as a customs officer had much to do with bringing on Culpepper's Rebellion in 1677. Biggs had the sym- pathy of the Quakers, but does not seem to have been of that faith; at any rate he was belligerent, for in 1678, when he had gone to England, he recommended to the Lords Proprietors to send an armed vessel to Albemarle, and to enlist a body of troops in Virginia to suppress the rebels. The Proprietors, however, warned him ta hold his peace, and his bloody plan was not favorably considered. S. A. Ashe.
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BENJAMIN CLEVELAND
F all the fierce frontiersmen whose activity spread consternation among the partisans of King George in the Southern campaigns of the American Revolution not one stood higher than Colonel Benjamin Cleveland, who was born May 26, 173S. Thanks to the splendid histori- cal effort of Doctor Lyman C. Draper in his volume entitled "King's Mountain and Its Heroes," as well as to the works of less importance, we are enabled to present for the consideration of our readers a sketch of the career of this remarkable man. Prince William County, Virginia, was the birthplace of Ben- jamin Cleveland ; and his father's home was on Bull Run, a stream whose name was later to be known in all quarters of the globe as the opening scene of the greatest of American wars in 1861. While still a child young Cleveland was carried sixty miles west- ward to Orange County, Virginia, when his father removed to the latter locality. His new home was about six miles above the junc- tion of Bull Run with the Rapidan River.
The personal prowess for which Cleveland was distinguished in the maturity of life was manifested in early childhood, and Draper tells us that at the early age of twelve he seized his father's gun and put to flight a party of drunken rowdies who were rais- ing a disturbance at his home while John Cleveland, the father, was absent. Having "an unconquerable aversion to the tame
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drudgery of farm-life," young Cleveland soon became famous as a hunter, and ranged the great forests of his neighborhood in search of big game. To him the life of a hunter was a source of profit as well as pleasure, for the hides, furs, and pelts won by his rifle brought him no inconsiderable income. Tradition says that Cleveland saw some service in the French and Indian War and there received his first schooling as a soldier. Before leaving Virginia he married, in Orange County, Mary Graves, daughter of a gentleman of some fortune, who later came with his own family and that of his son-in-law to North Carolina.
It was about the year 1769 that the above party settled in North Carolina. Cleveland first cultivated a farm on the waters of Roaring Creek, a tributary of the Yadkin River, later removing to a river bend of the Yadkin which ( from its horseshoe shape) was called "The Round About." In after years, when the cele- brated Daniel Boone was a resident of the Yadkin Valley, his tales of the hunting-grounds to the westward so stirred the rest- less blood of Cleveland that in 1772 he set out with a party of four companions-five men in all-to Kentucky. These men were set upon by a large band of Cherokee Indians, who robbed them of all their belongings, guns included, and ordered them to return to the place from whence they came. After a painful journey the half-famished hunters finally succeeded in reaching the settle- ment of the white race once more. Cleveland later returned to the Cherokee country for the purpose of recovering his horse, and accomplished that object with the help of some friendly In- dians furnished him by Big Bear, a chief of the Cherokee nation.
At the beginning of the Revolution Cleveland was com- missioned an ensign in the 2nd North Carolina Continental Regiment, commanded by Colonel Robert Howe, on September I, 1775: he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant in January, 1776, and became captain in November, 1776, later resigning from the Continental Line, or Regulars, and entering the militia. He bore some part in the Moore's Creek campaign in the Spring of 1776. In the Spring of 1777 Cleveland commanded a company of volunteers against the Cherokees; but in the following July
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peace with the Indians was effected by the treaty of the Long Island of Holston.
The County of Wilkes was formed in 1777, chiefly through the instrumentality of Captain Cleveland, and he was made colonel of the militia forces of the new county in August, 1778. In 1778 Colonel Cleveland represented Wilkes in the North Carolina House of Commons, and was State Senator therefrom in 1779. In this county he was also Presiding Justice of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions.
To tell in full of the desperate encounters in which Cleveland engaged would fill a volume. He was constantly engaged against the enemy, in 1777 serving in Indian campaigns, going on the ex- pedition to Georgia in 1778, and returning in 1779, and after- wards marching against the Tories at Ramseur's Mill, though he did not reach that place in time for the battle which was fought there on June 20, 1780.
"Old Round About," as Cleveland was familiarly known (tak- ing that sobriquet from his plantation of the same name), prob- ably had a hand in hanging more Tories than any other man in America. Though this may be an unenviable distinction, he had to deal with about as unscrupulous a set of ruffians as ever in- fested any land-men who murdered peaceable inhabitants, burnt dwellings, stole horses, and committed about every other act in the catalogue of crime. Draper gives a number of instances where this fierce partisan avenged with hemp the wrongs of his neigh- borhood. But Cleveland was not always a man of a relentless mood. On one occasion, related by Draper, a particularly ob- noxious character was finally captured, and Cleveland called out : "Waste no time !- swing him off quick!" Instead of being ap- palled by his approaching doom, the man turned to the colonel and remarked with perfect coolness: "Well, you needn't be in such a d-d big hurry about it." Struck with admiration at this display of bravery, Cleveland exclaimed: "Boys, let him go!" This act of magnanimity, from a source so unexpected, completely won over the Tory, who at once enlisted under Cleveland's banner and became one of his most faithful and devoted followers.
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Says the historian above quoted :
"Cleveland was literally 'all things to all people.' By his severities he awed and intimidated not a few-restraining them from lapsing into Tory abominations; by his kindness, forbearance, and even tenderness winning over many to the glorious cause he loved so well."
The battle in which Cleveland gained his greatest renown was that fought at King's Mountain on the 7th of October, 1780. The rendezvous preparatory to this ever-memorable engagement was at Quaker Meadows, a plantation owned by the McDowell family in Burke County, near the present town of Morganton. Here the members of Cleveland's command were joined by their com- patriots. The battle of King's Mountain was fortunately a great and overwhelming victory for the Americans; and among all the desperate fighters there engaged not one showed more personal courage than Colonel Cleveland. A description in detail of the battle could not be placed in a brief sketch such as the present, and so for fuller particulars we must refer the reader to works which have been devoted to that great event. When the victory was complete, and the British commander, Colonel Ferguson, had been killed, that officer's horse was, by common consent, turned over to Colonel Cleveland because the latter "was too un- wieldy to travel on foot," and had lost his own horse during the battle. In view of Cleveland's size-weighing, as he did, more than four hundred pounds -- it is wonderful that he could have led a life of such activity.
After the victory at King's Mountain more than thirty Tories were condemned to death, and nine were executed-the others being reprieved. The executions here alluded to were, for the most part, punishments for past crimes-house-burnings, out- rages against women, desertions and betrayals, assassinations of non-combatants, etc. These measures were also in retaliation for past British cruelties-a few days before this eleven Americans having been hanged at Ninety-Six in South Carolina, and many more having been accorded similar treatment at other times. Cleveland was a member of the court (or court martial)-the nature of the tribunal being of a perplexing character-which
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tried and condemned these Tories. The Battle of King's Moun- tain restored comparative order to western North Carolina, yet there was more fighting to be done, and Colonel Cleveland as usual bore more than his share, serving under General Griffith Rutherford.
After the war Colonel Cleveland's plantation, "The Round About," in North Carolina was lost to a litigant who had a better title therefor, and Cleveland soon removed to South Carolina, where he became, first, an Indian fighter, and a judge, after peace with the Cherokees had been effected. Before he died Cleveland attained the enormous weight of four hundred and fifty pounds.
The death of Colonel Cleveland occurred in what is now Oconee County, South Carolina, in October, 1806. He left two sons and a daughter, and many of his descendants are now living. Gov- ernor Jesse Franklin (elsewhere noticed in this work) was a son of Cleveland's sister. Robert and Larkin Cleveland, brothers of the colonel, and "Devil John" Cleveland, the colonel's son, were all brave and efficient officers in the Revolution, as was also Jesse Franklin, above mentioned.
By Chapter 9 of the Laws of 1840-41 a county was formed out of Lincoln and Rutherford and named for Colonel Cleveland. In this act the name was misspelled Cleaveland, but by another legislative enactment-passed many years later-the error was remedied.
Marshall De Lancey Haywood.
RICHARD CLINTON
T HE county-seat of Sampson County is called Clinton, as a compliment to Colonel Richard Clinton, one of the Revolutionary patriots of that vicinity. The Clintons along with the Kenans and others came over from Ireland with Colonel Sampson about 1736, and were among the first to settle in the wilderness on the head-waters of the northeast branch of the Cape Fear. Because of this Irish set- tlement it was at first proposed to call that region the county of Donegal, but when in 1749 the upper part of New Hanover was cut off to form the new county it was named Duplin, in honor of Lord Duplin, one of the Board of Trade at that time; and Duplin County during the Revolution extended far to the west, embrac- ing the territory of Sampson County and covering a large and ex- tensive region.
Whether the subject of this sketch was born before or subse- quent to this first Irish settlement is unknown ; he may have been one of the very first white children born in that part of the State. It is said that he was a nephew of Colonel Charles Clinton, the father of Governor George Clinton and of General James Clinton, of New York ; and in person and characteristics he was not inferior to those distinguished gentlemen. He was remarkably handsome, was always cool and self-possessed, a thoughtful man, and one of much dignity of character.
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On November 29, 1768, Governor Tryon commissioned him one of the justices for the county of Duplin ; so at that early age he had attained a position of influence and was a man of conse- quence in his community ; and by successive appointments he held this position until the Revolution.
His military career began in the civil commotions which dis- turbed North Carolina prior to the Revolution, he being a major in Governor Tryon's army, which marched against the Regulators and routed them at the Battle of Alamance. Before that time, be- tween 1762 and 1765, he married Penelope Kenan, a sister of Colonel James Kenan, and he was a man so highly regarded that he held the office of register of the county of Duplin under the Crown.
When the troubles with the Mother Country came on he was an active Whig, and was elected to represent Duplin County in the Provincial Congress which sat at Hillsboro in August and Sep- tember, 1775. By that body he was elected lieutenant-colonel of Duplin County, when the militia of the State was organized for Revolutionary purposes on September 9, 1775. The next Provincial Congress, April, 1776, selected him as one of the com- missioners to procure arms and ammunition for the army, and he was energetic and efficient in that service. When the last Pro- vincial Congress met in December, 1776, it adopted a State Con- stitution and established a State Government and organized Courts of Pleas and Quarter Sessions under the Constitution, and he was appointed by the Congress a justice for Duplin County. In the early stage of the Revolution the Provincial Congress had adopted a Test Oath, which all the Revolutionists took, and the Legislature at its session of November, 1777, prescribed an Oath of Allegiance and Abjuration. This oath was taken by the citi- zens of the different counties, and the record is preserved wherein Colonel Clinton took it in Duplin County. He represented his county in the House of Commons continuously from 1777 to 1784. In that year Sampson County was formed out of Duplin, and he represented Sampson County in the Senate in 1785 and until 1795, with the exception of one year. He thus served his
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people in the Legislature during nearly the whole period of the Revolutionary War, and participated in the adoption of those measures which were relied on to protect the State from the in- cursions of the enemy.
After the Battle of Moore's Creek and the departure of the British fleet from the Cape Fear in the early Summer of 1776, quiet reigned in North Carolina until the opening of 1781, al- though detachments were sent to the aid of South Carolina when that State was invaded. What share Colonel Clinton had in the operations to the southward is not recorded, nor has the par- ticular part he played in 1781 been perpetuated. He was, how- ever, the right arm of his brother-in-law, Colonel Kenan, during the troublous times that were ushered in when Major Craig oc- cupied Wilmington on the 28th of January, 1781. At that time the militia of Duplin and of other counties were ordered down to the great bridge twelve miles above Wilmington; but Craig had hastened to demolish the bridge, and had then returned to the town, which he immediately fortified to protect the garrison. When Colonel Kenan, Colonel Clinton and their forces had reached the bridge and found it destroyed, they fortified themselves on the northern bank to hold that pass and prevent the enemy from mak- ing excursions into the country. There were about seven hun- dred militia collected there under General Lillington when about the first of March Major Craig attacked them with artillery from across the river, the contest being maintained for two days, and then having accomplished nothing the British returned to their fortifications at Wilmington. In April Cornwallis began his march northward, and Lillington retreated to Kinston, where on ยท the 28th of April he discharged all the militia, and the men re- turned to their homes to protect their several communities from the Tories, who became very active in Duplin as well as in every part of the country where the British Army had passed. At length Colonel Kenan and Colonel Clinton got together in July some four hundred men and took post near Rockfish Creek, when Major Craig marched out against them with his main army and field. pieces and dispersed the militia, who were badly armed and had
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but little ammunition. Major Craig remained several days in Du- .. plin and then marched on to New-Bern. The Tories were reani- mated by the presence of this British force and were more auda- cious than ever. Kenan and Clinton collected some light-horse and formed a little flying camp and made frequent sallies on their ene- mies ; and when Craig heard that General Wayne was approaching Halifax, and hurried for protection to his fortifications at Wil- mington, the Whigs of Duplin embodied to the number of eighty light-horsemen, and marching quickly into the neighborhood where the Tories were embodied, surprised them, killed many, and put to instant death all the prisoners they took. This bloody ac- tion struck such terror into the Tories of Duplin that they sub- sequently gave but little trouble. During that period Colonel Clinton and his associates were as active and as zealous as any of the famed partisan leaders of the Revolution.
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