USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 1584 1783, Volume I > Part 14
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The people of the colony heard the announcement of the transfer with great satisfaction. The Council at once pre- pared a memorial to the king in which they declared that it
1 The shares were then held as follows: Clarendon's share by James Bertie of Middlesex ; Albemarle's by Henry Somerset, Duke of Beaufort. and his minor brother Noell Somerset; Craven's by William Lord Craven : Lord Berkeley's by Joseph Blake of South Carolina; Ashley's by John Cotton, a minor, of the Middle Temple. London; Colleton's by Sir John Colleton of Devonshire; Sir William Berkeley 's by Henry Bertie of Buck's County, or Mary Danson of Middlesex, or Elizabeth Moore of London, the title being in litigation ; and Carteret's by John Lord Carteret, Baron of Hawes. afterwards Earl of Gran- ville. Carteret though surrendering all his rights of political control, refused to sell his share; accordingly, one-eighth of the original grant was reserved from the purchase and in 1744 was laid off for him wholly within North Carolina.
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was "with the greatest Pleasure we Received the Notice of your Majesty's having taken this Government under your Immediate direction." Throughout the colony the change was celebrated with great rejoicings. At Edenton, wrote Gov- ernor Everard, "the utmost demonstrations of joy was shewn by all people in generall and the night concluded wth a Com- pleat illumination and Boon Fires and drinking his Majtys health and all the Royall Familys long life."
The people had cause for their joy. Crippled by the com- mercial policy of their powerful northern neighbor, neglected by the Lords Proprietors, antagonized by the Crown, what those early Carolinians had obtained they got through their own unassisted exertions and without favor from anybody. None of the English colonies had passed through a more des- perate struggle for existence. The geographical position of North Carolina was such as placed its commerce at the mercy of Virginia, and there was then, as Saunders observes, no Federal Constitution to prevent unneighborly legislation. The inefficient government of the Proprietors was unable to preserve either order or safety in the province, and was just strong enough to be a source of constant irritation. The Cul- pepper Rebellion, the Cary Rebellion, the Indian wars and the struggle with piracy severely tested the character and the capabilities of the people. Their situation, for instance, at the close of the Indian wars was almost desperate. Most of the people have "scarcely corn to last them until wheat time, many not having any at all;" "the community miserably reduced by Indian cruelty," and "the inhabitants brought to so low an ebb" that large numbers fled the province; "our in- testine broils and contentions, to which all the misfortunes which have since attended us are owing;" "a country pre- served which everybody that was but the least acquainted with our circumstances gave over for lost"-these are typical ex- pressions with which the correspondence of the period abounds. That the colony survived these conditions is better evidence of the character and spirit of the people than the sneers and jibes of hostile critics, either contemporary or mod- ern. Had the greater part of the population of North Caro- lina, or even a considerable minority of it, been composed of "the shiftless people who could not make a place for them- selves in Virginia society," as William Byrd and John Fiske would have us believe, all the aristocracy of Virginia and South Carolina combined could not have saved the colony from anarchy and ruin. Yet between the years 1663 and 1728
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somebody laid here in North Carolina the foundations of a great state. The foundation upon which great states are built is the character of their people, and the "mean whites" of Virginia are not now, nor were they then, the sort of people who found and build states. No colony composed to any extent of such a people could have rallied from such disasters as those from which North Carolina rallied between 1718 and 1728. Those years were years of growth and expansion. The population increased threefold, the Cape Fear was opened to settlers, new plantations were cleared, better methods of hus- bandry introduced, mills erected, roads surveyed, ferries established, trade was increased, towns were incorporated, bet- ter houses built, better furniture installed, parishes created, churches erected, ministers supplied, the schoolmaster found his way thither, and the colony was fairly started on that course of development which brought it, by the outbreak of the Revolution, to the rank of fourth in population and impor- tance among the thirteen English-speaking colonies in America.
CHAPTER X ENGLISH AND SCOTCH-HIGHLANDERS ON THE CAPE FEAR
The first three decades of royal rule in North Carolina were decades of growth and expansion. In 1730, the popula- tion was confined to the coastal plain and certainly did not ex- ceed 30,000; in 1760, it stretched all the way to the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains and numbered probably not less than 130,000. Much of this growth was due to natural in- crease, for large families were characteristic of the people. Not only did the women marry young, but as Brickell takes pains to record they were "very fruitful, most Houses being full of Little Ones, and many Women from other Places who have been long Married and without Children, have removed to Carolina, and become joyful Mothers."1 But much the greater portion of the increase was from immigration. From South Carolina on the south; from Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey on the north; from England, Scotland and Ireland; from the mountains of Switzerland and from the valleys of the Rhine and the Danube, thousands of hardy, en- terprising pioneers poured into North Carolina, filling up the unoccupied places in the older settlements, moving up the banks of the Roanoke, the Neuse, and the Cape Fear, and spreading out over the plains and through the valleys of the Piedmont section.
Explanation of this extraordinary movement is to be found in a variety of causes, all of which acted and reacted upon each other. Land syndicates exploiting the mildness of the climate, the fertility of the soil, and the cheapness of the land, induced many immigrants to come. A spirit of adventure moved others. Hunters and trappers were at- tracted by the great variety and number of fur-bearing ani- mals in the West. A lofty missionary zeal to preach the
1 Grimes, J. Bryan. (ed.) : The Natural History of North Caro- lina, by John Brickell, M. D. (Dublin, 1737), p. 31.
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Gospel of Christ to their scattered countrymen and to the savages of the wilderness inspired a choice few. Economic conditions in Scotland; economic and religious conditions in Ireland; economic, religious, and political conditions in Ger- many drove thousands from those countries to seek new homes on the Carolina frontier. To all these causes should be added the activity of the royal governors, Burrington, Johnston, and Dobbs, who showed a laudable zeal to make known to the people of the Old World the boundless resources of the New World.
During the first decade, 1729-1739, most of the new set- tlers occupied lands in the section that had been settled dur- ing the proprietary period, i. e., the section north and east of Cape Fear River. Into this region immigrants came slowly but steadily. In 1733, Burrington, the first royal governor, wrote: "The Reputation this Government has lately acquired, appears by the number of People that have come from other Places to live in it. Many of them are possessed of good American Estates. I do not exceed in saying a thou- sand white men have already settled in North Carolina, since my arrival [in 1731], and more are expected." Twenty fami- lies had cut their way through the forest to the head of navi- gation on the Tar River. A hundred families had planted a "thriving" settlement on New River. Others, singly and in groups, had penetrated into the interior as far as the North East River. A small colony of Scotch Highlanders had found homes on the upper Cape Fear. Such was the expansion of settlements, that by 1734 three new precincts were necessary for their convenience. In 1734, the General Assembly finding that New Hanover precinct had "become very populous," erected the New River settlements into a separate precinct called Onslow. Similarly the settlements on Tar and North East rivers were erected into Edgecombe and Bladen pre- cincts. At the close of his administration, Burrington esti- mated that there had been an increase in the population of more than 5,000 in five years.
None of the new settlements had made such rapid progress as that which Burrington had done so much, when governor for the Lords Proprietors, to plant on the Cape Fear River. The first attempt to plant a settlement on Cape Fear River was made without success by some New England adventurers in 1660. Four years later a party of royalist refugees from Barbados established a colony near the mouth of the river, where, in 1665, they were joined by other Barbadians under
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Sir John Yeamans who had been appointed governor. The settlement, which contained a population of about 800 and ex- tended for several miles up the river, was erected into the county of Clarendon. Its prospects were not good and Gov- ernor Yeamans soon abandoned it, returned to Barbados, and later joined the colony which the Lords Proprietors had planted on the Ashley and Cooper rivers of which he was ap- pointed governor. The Lords Proprietors, who directed all their energies toward building up the rival settlement to the southward, took but little interest in the Cape Fear colony, and the settlers, after suffering many hardships, abandoned it in 1667.
After the failure of the Clarendon colony, the Cape Fear region fell into disrepute and nearly fifty years passed be- fore a permanent settlement was planted there. Four causes contributing to this delay were the character of the coast at the mouth of the river, the pirates who sought refuge there in large numbers, the hostility of the Cape Fear Indians, and the closing of the Carolina land-office by the Lords Propri- etors.
The character of the coast, of course, could not be changed, but those who were interested in the development of the Cape Fear section employed pen and tongue to change the reputa- tion which its very name had forever fastened upon it. "It is by most traders in London believed that the coast of this country is very dangerous," wrote Governor Burrington, "but in reality [it is] not so." The fact remains, however, that this sentence stands as a better testimonial of the governor's zeal than of his regard for truth. A different spirit inspired a later son 2 of the Cape Fear who, with something of an honest pride in the sturdy ruggedness and picturesque bleakness of that famous point, wrote thus eloquently of it: "Looking then to the cape for the idea and reason of its name, we find that it is the southernmost point of Smith's Island, a naked, bleak elbow of sand, jutting far out into the ocean. Immediately in its front are the Frying Pan Shoals pushing out still farther twenty miles to sea. Together they stand for warning and for woe; and together they catch the long majestic roll of the At- lantic as it sweeps through a thousand miles of grandeur and power from the Arctic towards the Gulf. It is the playground of billows and tempests, the kingdom of silence and awe, dis- turbed by no sound save the seagull's shriek and the breakers'
2 George Davis.
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roar. Its whole aspect is suggestive not of repose and beauty, but of desolation and terror. Imagination cannot adorn it. Romance cannot hallow it. Local pride cannot soften it. There it stands today, bleak and threatening and pitiless, as it stood three hundred years ago, when Grenville and White came near unto death upon its sands. And there it will stand, bleak and threatening and pitiless, until the earth and sea give up their dead. And as its nature, so its name, is now, always has been, and always will be the Cape of Fear."
But the very dangers that repelled settlers attracted pi- rates, and the Cape Fear became one of their chief strong- holds on our coast. As late as 1717, it was estimated that more than 1,500 pirates made their headquarters at New Providence and Cape Fear. Darting in and out of these har- bors of refuge for many years they preyed upon French, Spanish, British and American commerce with the utmost im- partiality and with impunity. The capture of Bonnet in 1718 was the beginning of the end. The following day several other pirate vessels were taken off Cape Fear, and as a result of these captures a hundred freebooters were hanged at one time on the wharves of Charleston. When the Cape Fear ceased to be the refuge of crime it became the home of law and industry.
The Cape Fear Indians "were reckoned the most barba- rous of any in the colony." Their hostility to the English was implacable. They made war on the Clarendon settlers which was one of the reasons for the failure of that colony. In 1711-13, they joined the Tuscarora; and two years later took an active part in the Yamassee War. Occupying an im- portant strategic position between the two colonies, they made cooperation between them difficult. In the summer of 1715, they cut off a band of friendly Indians whom North Caro- lina was sending to the aid of South Carolina, but later were in turn defeated by the forces under Col. Maurice Moore. Their power, much weakened by the defeat of the Tuscarora on the north and of the Yamassee on the south, was finally de- stroyed in 1725, in the battle of Sugar Loaf, opposite the town of Brunswick, by a force under Roger Moore.
But the struggles of the Carolina settlers with the forces of nature, the freebooters of the sea, and the savages of the wilderness would have availed nothing had they yielded obedience to the orders of the Lords Proprietors. In 1712, the Lords Proprietors resolved that no more grants should be issued in North Carolina, but such sales of land only as were made at their office in London were to be good; and two years .
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later, the governor and Council ordered that no surveys should be made within twenty miles of the Cape Fear River. But there were men in North Carolina who were not willing that a group of wealthy landowners beyond the sea should pre- vent their clearing and settling this inviting region, and about the year 1723 the ring of their axes began to break the long silence of the Cape Fear. They laid off their claims, cleared their fields, and built their cabins with utter disregard of the formalities of law. When Governor Burrington saw that they were determined to take up lands without either acquiring titles or paying rents, he decided that the interests of the Lords Proprietors would be served by his giving the one and receiv- ing the other. At his suggestion, therefore, the Assembly pe- titioned the governor and Council to reopen the land office in Carolina, and the governor and Council finding officially what they already knew personally that "sundry persons are al- ready seated on the vacant lands for which purchase money has not been paid nor any rents," granted the Assembly's prayer.
Good titles thus assured settlers were not wanting. Con- spicuous among the leaders, were Governor Burrington and Col. Maurice Moore. Burrington's claims to this credit were repeatedly asserted by himself and acknowledged by contem- poraries who bore him no love. The grand jury of the prov- ince, in 1731, bore testimony to the "very great expense and personal trouble" with which he "laid the foundation" of the Cape Fear settlement; while the General Assembly, in an address to the king declared that his "indefatigable industry and the hardships he underwent in carrying on the settlement of the Cape Fear deserve our thankful remembrance." Such testimony to His Sacred Majesty was doubtless very flattering and duly appreciated, but Burrington evidently expected something more substantial, for he complained more than once that the only reward he ever received for his losses and hard- ships "was the thanks of a House of Burgesses." The first permanent settlement on the Cape Fear was made by Maurice Moore, who, while on his campaign against the Yamassee In- dians in 1715, had been attracted by the fertility of the lower Cape Fear region and determined to lead a settlement there. This plan he carried into execution sometime prior to the year 1725, accompanied by his brothers, Nathaniel and Roger Moore. Burrington, in a letter to the Board of Trade in 1732, after he had broken with the popular party, refers to these men in the following passage: "About twenty families are
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settled at Cape Fear from South Carolina, among them three brothers of a noted family whose name is Moore. They are all of the set known there as the Goose Creek faction. These people were always troublesome in that government, and will, without doubt, be so in this. Already I have been told they will expend a great sum of money to get me turned out." Bur- rington's reference to their conduct in South Carolina is evi- dently to the fact that James Moore, their oldest brother, in 1719, led the revolt in South Carolina against the Lords Pro- prietors and after its success was elected governor. A cen- tury and a quarter later, George Davis, himself an eminent son of the Cape Fear, paid the following tribute to Maurice and Roger Moore: "These brothers," said he, "were not cast in the common mould of men. They were 'of the breed of noble bloods.' Of kingly descent,3 and proud of their name which brave deeds had made illustrious, they dwelt upon their magnificent estates of Rocky Point and Orton, with much of the dignity, and something of the state of the ancient feudal barons, surrounded by their sons and kinsmen, who looked up to them for counsel, and were devoted to their will. Proud and stately, somewhat haughty and overbearing per- haps, but honorable, brave, high-minded and generous, they lived for many years the fathers of the Cape Fear, dispensing a noble hospitality to the worthy, and a terror to the mean and lawless. * They possessed the entire respect and con- fidence of all; and the early books of the register's office of New Hanover County are full of letters of attorney from all sorts of men, giving them an absolute discretion in managing the varied affairs of their many constituents."
Besides the Moores, conspicuous among the early settlers of the Cape Fear were the Moseleys, the Howes, the Porters, the Lillingtons, the Ashes, the Harnetts, and others whose names are closely identified with the history of North Caro- lina. Of them, Mr. Davis says: "They were no needy adven- turers, driven by necessity -- no unlettered boors, ill at ease in the haunts of civilization, and seeking their proper sphere amidst the barbarism of the savages. They were gentlemen of birth and education, bred in the refinements of polished soci- ety, and bringing with them ample fortunes, gentle manners, and cultivated minds. Most of them united by the ties of blood, and all by those of friendship, they came as one house- hold, sufficient unto themselves, and reared their family altars
3 This is a reference to the tradition that the Moores were de- scendants of the ancient kings of Leix.
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in love and peace." 4 After these leaders had cleared the way, they were joined by numerous other families from the Albe- marle, from Barbados, and other islands of the West Indies, from New England, from South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, and from Europe.
The oldest grant for land on the Cape Fear now extant, is one to Maurice Moore for 1,500 acres on the west bank of the river, dated June 3, 1725. From this grant Maurice Moore, in 1725, laid off, fourteen miles above the mouth of the river, a tract of 320 acres as a site for a town, and his brother Roger, "to make the said town more regular, added another parcel of land." To encourage the growth of the town, Maurice Moore donated sites for a church and graveyard, a courthouse, a market-house and other public buildings, and a commons "for the use of the inhabitants of the town." The town was laid off into building lots of one-half acre each to be sold only to those who would agree to erect on their lots, substantial houses. Moore then made a bid for royal favor by naming his town Brunswick in honor of the reigning family. But the career of Brunswick did not commend it to the favor of crowned heads or their representatives; it never became more than a frontier village, and in the course of a few years, during which, however, it played an important part in the history of the province, it yielded with no good grace to a younger and more vigorous rival sixteen miles farther up the river, which was named in honor of Spencer Compton, Earl of Wil- mington.
The settlement grew rapidly. Writing from the Cape Fear in 1734, Governor Johnston said: "The inhabitants of the southern part of this government, particularly of the two branches of this large river, * are a very * sober and industrious set of people and, have made an amazing progress in their improvement since their first settlement, which was about eight years ago." Large tracts of forest land had been converted into beautiful meadows and cultivated plantations; comfortable, if not elegant, houses dotted the river banks; and two towns had sprung into exist- ence. The forest offered tribute to the lumberman and tur- pentine distiller; a number of saw mills had been erected while some of the planters were employing their slaves chiefly in "making tar and pitch." A brisk trade in lumber, naval stores, and farm products had been established with the other
4 University Address in 1855.
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colonies, the West Indies, and even with the mother country, and before the close of the decade the governor was able to declare that the Cape Fear had become "the place of the greatest trade in the whole province." The collector's books at Brunswick showed that during the year 1734 forty-two vessels cleared from that port. At that time the population of the Cape Fear settlement numbered about 1,200; by 1740 it had increased to 3,000.
Life on the Cape Fear was seen at its best not in the towns but on the estates of the planters scattered along the banks of the river and its branches. In the immediate vicinity of Brunswick the most celebrated were, Orton, the finest colonial residence now standing in North Carolina, where lived and reigned "Old King" Roger Moore, "the chief gentleman in all Cape Fear"; Kendal, the home of "Old King" Roger's son, George, whose wives, "with remarkable fidelity and amazing fortitude, presented him every spring with a new baby, until the number reached twenty-eight;"' 5 and Lilliput, adjoining Kendal, first the residence of Chief Justice Eleazer Allen, and later of Sir Thomas Frankland, the great-grandson of Oliver Cromwell. Farther up the river came then and later a succession of celebrated plantations. Forty miles above Brunswick on the east bank of North East River stood Lilling- ton Hall, the home of Alexander Lillington, who led the Cape Fear militia at Moore's Creek Bridge in 1776. On the oppo- site bank were Stag Park, the Cape Fear estate of Governor Burrington; the Neck and Green Hill, the residences of Gov- ernor Samuel Ashe and General John Ashe; Moseley Hall, where lived Sampson Moseley, afterwards a delegate to the famous Halifax convention of 1776; and Rocky Point, the estate of Maurice Moore, described by an English visitor in 1734 as "the finest place in all Cape Fear." Across the river farther down came a series of places, the most historic of which were Castle Haynes, owned by Hugh Waddell, who is buried there, and the Hermitage, owned by John Burgwin, for many years clerk of the Council and private secretary to the governor, which was one of the most celebrated homes in the Cape Fear country for a hundred years. "The great ma- jority of these residences were wooden structures, some of them being large, with wide halls and piazzas, but without any pretence to architectural beauty, and some being one story
5 Sprunt, James: Tales and Traditions of the Lower Cape Fear, p. 58.
ORTON
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buildings, spread out over a considerable space. A few were of brick, but none of stone, as there was no building stone within a hundred miles; but all, whether of brick or wood, were comfortable and the seats of unbounded hospitality." 6
Perhaps the best picture of the Cape Fear settlement at the close of its first decade is a pamphlet written and published in London by an English visitor who arrived at Orton in the afternoon of June 16, 1734. After four pleasant days with "Old King" Roger, his party set out on their trip up the river under the guidance of Nathaniel Moore. The first day's trip carried them past "several pretty plantations on both sides" of the river, which they found "wonderfully pleasant" and the following morning brought them "to a beautiful planta- tion, belonging to Captain Gabriel [Gabourell], who is a great merchant there, where were two ships, two sloops, and a brig- antine, loading with lumber." The night was agreeably passed at "another plantation belonging to Mr. Roger Moore, called Blue Banks, where he is going to build another very large brick house." The visitors were astonished at the fer- tility of the soil. "I am credibly informed," declared their chronicler, "they have very commonly four-score bushels of corn on an acre of their overflowed land. * I must con- fess I saw the finest corn growing there that I ever saw in my life, as likewise wheat and hemp." That night, they "met with good entertainment" at the home of Captain Gibbs, whose plantation adjoined Blue Banks; and the next day dined with Jehu Davis, whose house was "built after the Dutch fashion, and made to front both ways, on the river and on the land." The visitors were delighted with the "beautiful avenue cut through the woods for above two miles, which is a great addi- tion to the house." They left Davis's house in the afternoon and the same evening reached Nathaniel Moore's plantation, which was "a very pleasant place on a bluff upwards of sixty feet high." Three days after their arrival, "there came a sloop of one hundred tons, and upwards, from South Caro- lina, to be laden with corn, which is sixty miles at least from the bar. * There are people settled at least forty miles higher up," that is, in what is now Cumberland County. The visitor's last experience in the Cape Fear sec- tion was such a one as was calculated to leave with him a bitter prejudice against the country and its people, but for- tunately his mind, recalling the hospitality which he had just
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