USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 1584 1783, Volume I > Part 15
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49
6 Waddell. A. M .: Historic Homes in the Cape Fear Country. (North Carolina Booklet, Vol. II, No. 9, p. 20.)
153
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
been enjoying, rose superior to such a feeling. Reaching Brunswick about eight o'clock in the morning of August 11th, on his departure from the colony, he says: "I set out from thence about nine, and about four miles from thence met my landlord of Lockwood Folly, who was in hopes I would stay at his house that night. About two I arrived there with much difficulty, it being a very hot day and myself very faint and weak, when I called for a dram, and to my great sorrow found not one drop of rum, sugar or lime juice in the house (a pretty place to stay all night indeed) ** which made me re- solve never to trust the country again on a long journey." 7
Returning to Brunswick from his trip up the river, the English visitor "lay that first night at Newtown, in a small hut." With this slight mention he dismisses the place from his narrative, but had he returned twenty years later he would doubtless have given it. as much as a paragraph in a revised edition. Today a visitor describing the Cape Fear section might possibly mention Brunswick for its historic interest, but Newtown, though masquerading under another name, would form the burden of his story. The former, in spite of its name, was not popular with the royal governors who threw their influence to the latter, and the rise of Newtown was fol- lowed by the decline of Brunswick. Newtown was laid off just below the confluence of the two branches of Cape Fear River. It consisted originally of two cross streets called Front and Market, names which they still bear, while the town itself for lack of a better name was called Newtown. From the first Brunswick regarded Newtown as an upstart to be suppressed rather than encouraged. Rivalry originating in commercial competition was soon intensified by a struggle for political supremacy. The chief factor in this struggle was Gabriel Johnston, who, in 1734, succeeded George Burrington as gov- ernor. The new governor became one of the most ardent champions of Newtown and used not only his personal in- fluence but also his official authority to make it the social, commercial and political center of the rapidly growing prov- ince. Encouraged by his favor, Newtown in March, 1735. petitioned the governor and Council for a charter. but the prayer was refused because it required an act of the Assembly to incorporate a town. To the Assembly, therefore, Newtown appealed and as a compliment to the governor asked for incor- poration under the name of Wilmington, in honor of John-
7 Georgia Historical Collections, Vol. II, p. 59.
154
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
ston's friend and patron, Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilming- ton, afterwards prime minister of England. The granting of this petition meant death to all the hopes of Brunswick. By it Brunswick would be compelled to surrender to Wilmington the courthouse and jail, the county court, the offices of the county officials, the office of the collector of the port, and the election of assemblymen, vestrymen and other public officials. Brunswick, therefore, stoutly opposed the pretentions of Wil- mington and kept up a bitter struggle against them for four years. The end came in the Assembly of February of 1739. Apparently no contest was made in the lower house, for Brunswick evidently looked to the Council for victory. The Council was composed of eight members, four of whom were certainly of the Brunswick party. Accordingly when the Wil- mington bill came before the Council four voted for, and four against it. Then to the consternation of the Brunswickers, the president declared that as president he had the right to break the tie which his vote as a member had made, and in face of violent opposition, cast his vote a second time in the affirmative. The Brunswick party entered vigorous protests, but they availed nothing with the governor, who, in the pres- ence of both houses of the Assembly, gave his assent to the bill.
Brunswick did not accept defeat gracefully, nor did Wil- mington bear the honors of victory magnanimously. The feel- ings aroused by the long struggle and the manner in which it was finally brought to a close strained their commercial and political relations and embittered their social and religious intercourse for many years. This hostility made it necessary to divide the county into two parishes-St. James, embracing the territory on the east side of the river, and St. Phillips, em- bracing that on the west side. But this division did not help matters much at first, as there was only one minister, and he does not seem to have had the inexhaustible amount of tact that was necessary to deal with the situation. Says he: "A missionary in this river has a most difficult part to act, for by obliging one of the towns, he must of course disoblige the other, each of them opposing the other to the utmost of their power. Notwithstanding the majority of the present vestry at Wilmington are professed dissenters and endeavored by all ways and means to provoke me to leave that place, yet they cannot endure my settlement at Brunswick. While I was their minister they were offended at my officiating frequently among them." But Brunswick struggled in vain against the
155
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
Wilmington tide. Nature had given to Wilmington a better and safer harbor, and this was an ally which Brunswick could not overcome. Besides far more important matters than the supremacy of one straggling village over another soon claimed their united consideration, and they found that factional quar- rels and jealousies would result only in injury to both. After a short time, therefore, when the actors in the early struggle were all dead, when their animosities had been mellowed by time, and when danger from a common enemy threatened the welfare of both, their differences were buried and forgotten, and the two towns stood side by side in the struggle for inde- pendence. This union was never broken, for the ties formed during those days of peril proved stronger than ever their differences had been, and Brunswick abandoning the old site united fortunes with Wilmington.
The people whom the English visitor found on the lower Cape Fear in 1734, were mostly of English origin, but had he continued his voyage up the river as far as the head of navi- gation, he would have found a small settlement lately made by representatives of another race destined to play no small part in the history of North Carolina. These settlers were the vanguard of that army of Scotch Highlanders which began to pour into North Carolina about the middle of the eighteenth century, as the result of political and economic conditions in Scotland. In 1746 occurred the last of those periodical efforts of the Highland clans to restore the Stuarts to the thrones of Scotland and England, which ended in disaster at Culloden. Thereupon, exasperated at these repeated rebellions, the Brit- ish government determined upon a course of great severity toward the clans. To overthrow the clan system which fos- tered this rebellious spirit, the government abolished the authority of the chiefs, confiscated their estates, and under heavy penalties forbade the Highlanders to carry arms and to wear the costumes of their clans. The estates of the High- land chiefs were distributed among the British soldiers who, of course, felt none of those natural ties that held chief and clansmen together and cared nothing for the fate of Highland rebels. These new landlords soon introduced a new economic factor in the Highlands. Finding sheep-raising more profit- able than farming, they turned thousands of acres which be- fore had been under cultivation into pasture lands. thus depriving large numbers of people of their homesteads. This complete overthrow of their social and economic systems left
156
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
the people helpless. Rents increased, hundreds of families lost their means of livelihood, and distress became universal.
To enforce these harsh measures, an English army under the Duke of Cumberland, afterwards known in Highland his- tory as "Butcher Cumberland," established headquarters at Inverness, and from that base fell upon the inhabitants and laid waste their country in every direction. Their cattle were driven away or slaughtered; the mansions of the chiefs.and the huts of the clansmen were laid in ashes; captured High- land soldiers were put to death with brutal ferocity; women and children, without food, without homes, without husbands and fathers, wandered helplessly among the hills and valleys to die of hunger, cold and want. It became the boast of the English soldiery that neither house nor cottage, man nor beast could be found within fifty miles of Inverness; all was silence, ruin, and desolation.
One ray of light penetrated the darkness. After Culloden, the king offered a pardon to all Highland rebels who would take the oath of allegiance and emigrate to America. Many clansmen hastened to avail themselves of this act of clemency and to the ruined Highlanders America became a haven of refuge. Of all the American colonies North Carolina was perhaps the best known in the Highlands. A few Highlanders had made their way to the upper Cape Fear as early as 1729. Here they found a genial climate, a fertile soil, and a mild and liberal government, and they filled their letters to their friends and relatives in Scotland with praise of the new country. An- other influence was introduced in 1734, when Gabriel Johnston, a Scotchman from Dundee, was sent to North Carolina as governor. Johnston is said to have been inordinately fond of his fellow-countrymen, his enemies even charging that he showed favor to Scotch rebels and manifested a woful lack of enthusiasm over the news of "the glorious victory at Cullo- den." Be that as it may, he certainly took a praiseworthy interest in spreading the fame of North Carolina in the High- lands and was successful in inducing Scotchmen to seek homes in the colony. In the summer of 1739, Neill McNeill, of Kin- tyre, Scotland, sailed for North Carolina bringing with him a "shipload" of 350 Highlanders who arrived in the Cape Fear River in September of that year. They landed at Wilmington where, it is said, their peculiar costumes and outlandish lan- guage so frightened the town officials that they attempted to make the strangers give bond to keep the peace. This indig- nity McNeill managed to avoid, and taking his countrymen
157
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
up the river found for them a hearty welcome among the High- landers there. At the next session of the Assembly, a memo- rial was presented in behalf of these new settlers, accompanied by a statement, "if proper encouragement be given them, that they'll invite the rest of their friends and acquaintances over." The General Assembly hastened to take advantage of this opportunity, exempting the new settlers from all taxation for ten years. A similar exemption "from payment of any Pub- liek or County tax for Ten years" was offered to all High- landers who should come to North Carolina in groups of forty or more, and the governor was requested "to use his Interest, in such manner, as he shall think most proper, to obtain an Instruction for giveing encouragement to Protestants from foreign parts, to settle in Townships within this Province." On the heels of this action came the disaster of Culloden, the rise in rents, and the harsh enaetments of the British Parlia- ment; and the liberal offers of the North Carolina Assembly, together with the active exertions of the Highlanders already in the colony, produced in Scotland "a Carolina mania which was not broken until the beginning of the Revolution. The flame of enthusiasm passed like wildfire through the Highland glens and Western Isles. It pervaded all classes, from the poorest erofter to the well-to-do farmer, and even men of easy competence, who were according to the appropriate song of the day
'Dol a ah 'iarruidh an fhortain do North Carolina. ' "? 8 Shipload after shipload of sturdy Highland settlers sailed for the shores of America, and most of them landing at Charles- ton and Wilmington found their way to their kinsmen on the Cape Fear. In a few years their settlements were thickly scattered throughout the territory now embraced in the coun- ties of Anson, Bladen, Cumberland, Harnett, Moore, Rich- mond, Robeson, Sampson, Hoke, and Scotland. With a keen appreciation of its commercial advantages, they selected a point of land at the head of navigation on Cape Fear River where they laid out a town, first ealled Campbellton, then Cross Creek, and finally Fayetteville.
The Highlanders continued to pour into North Carolina right up to the outbreak of the Revolution, but as no official records of their number were kept it is impossible to say how numerous they were. Perhaps, however, from reports in letters, periodicals, and other contemporaneous documents an
8 "Going to seek a fortune in North Carolina." Maclean, J. P .: The Highlanders in America, p. 108.
158
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
estimate may be made with some degree of accuracy. In 1736, Alexander Clark, a native of Jura, one of the Hebrides, sailed for North Carolina with a "shipload" of Highlanders, and settled on Cape Fear River where he found "a good many Scotch." Three years later, as we have seen, McNeill brought over a colony of 350 Highlanders. But the real immigration did not set in until after the battle of Culloden. Seven years after that event, colonial officials estimated that there were in Bladen County alone 1,000 Highlanders capable of bearing arms, from which it is reasonable to infer that the total popu- lation was not less than 5,000. The Scot's Magazine, in Sep- tember, 1769, records that the ship Molly had recently sailed from Islay filled with passengers for North Carolina, and that this was the third emigration from that county within six years. The same journal in a later issue tells us that between April and July, 1770, fifty-four vessels sailed from the West- ern Isles laden with 1,200 Highlanders all bound for North Carolina. In 1771, the Scot's Magazine stated that 500 emi- grants from Islay and the adjacent islands were preparing to sail for America, and later in the same year Governor Tryon wrote that "several ship loads of Scotch families" had "landed in this province within three years past from the Isles of Arran, Durah, Islay, and Gigah, but chief of them from Argyle Shire and are mostly settled in Cumberland County." Their number he estimated "at 1,600 men, women, and children." A year later the ship Adventure brought a cargo of 200 emigrants from the Highlands to the Cape Fear, and in March of the same year Governor Martin wrote to Lord Hillsborough, secretary of state for the colonies: "Near a thousand people have arrived in Cape Fear River from the Scottish Isles since the month of November with a view to settling in this province whose prosperity and strength will receive great augmentation by the accession of such a number of hardy, laborious and thrifty people." In its issue of April 3, 1773, the Courant, another Scottish journal, reports that "the unlucky spirit of emigration" had not diminished, and that many of the inhabitants of Skye, Lewis and other places were arranging to sail for America in the following summer. In subsequent issues, during the same year, that journal records that in June between 700 and 800 emigrants sailed for America from Stornoway; in July, 800 from Skye and 840 from Lewis; in August, another 150 from Lewis; in Septem- ber, 250 from Sutherlandshire and 425 from Knoydart, Locha-
159
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
bar, Appin, Mamore, and Fort William; and in October, 775 from Moray, Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness.
The Highlanders continued to come even after the Revo- lution was well under way. In June, 1775, the Gentleman's Magazine records that "four vessels, containing about 700 emigrants," had sailed for America from Glasgow and Green- ock, "most of them from the north Highlands." In Septem- ber of the same year, the ship Jupiter, with 200 emigrants on board, "chiefly from Argyleshire" sailed for North Carolina, and as late as October, 1775, Governor Martin notes the ar- rival at Wilmington of a shipload of 172 Highlanders. From 1769 to 1775, the Scotch journals mention as many as sixteen different emigrations from the Highlands, besides "several others." Not all of these emigrants came to North Carolina. Georgia, New York, Canada, and other colonies received a small share, but "the earliest, largest and most important settlement of Highlanders in America, prior to the Peace of 1783, was in North Carolina along Cape Fear River."9 In 1775 Governor Martin wrote that he could raise an army of 3,000 Highlanders, from which it is a reasonable conclusion that at that time the Highland population of North Carolina was not less than 20,000. Several of the clans were repre- sented, but at the outbreak of the Revolution the MacDonalds so largely predominated in numbers and in leadership that the campaign of 1776, which ended at Moore's Creek Bridge, was often spoken of at the time as the "insurrection of the Clan MacDonald."
Though unfortunate economic conditions lay behind this Highland emigration, it is not therefore to be supposed that the emigrants belonged to an improvident and thriftless class. They were, in fact, among the most substantial and energetic people of Scotland and they left the land of their nativity be- cause it did not offer them an outlet for their activities. "The late great rise of the rents in the Western Islands of Scotland," said Scot's Magazine in 1771, "is said to be the reason of this emigration." "The cause of this emigration," the same journal repeats in 1772, "they [the emigrants] as- sign to be want of the means of livelihood at home, through the opulent graziers engrossing the farms, and turning them into pastures." Some of the landlords became alarmed and offered better terms to tenants, but the offer came too late to check the movement. Governor Tryon says that many of them were skilled mechanics who "were particularly encouraged to
9 MacLean : The Highlanders in America, p. 102.
160
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
settle here by their countrymen who have been settled many years in this province;" and Governor Martin, in the letter quoted above, describes them as a "hardy, laborious, and thrifty people." Nor should it be supposed that they arrived in Carolina empty-handed. The Scot's Magazine in 1771 tells us that a band of five hundred of these emigrants had recently sailed for America "under the conduct of a gentleman of wealth and merit, whose ancestors had resided in Islay for many centuries past." Another colony, according to the same journal, was composed of "the most wealthy and substantial people in Skye" who "intend to make purchases of land in America"; while the Courant, in 1773, declared that five hun- dred emigrants who had just sailed were "the finest set of fellows in the Highlands," and carried with them "at least £6,000 sterling in ready cash." From the single county of Sutherland, in 1772 and 1773, about fifteen hundred emigrants sailed for America, who, according to the Courant carried with them an average of £4 sterling to the man. "This," comments that journal, "amounts to £7,500 which exceeds a year's rent of the whole county." It is not easy to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion as to the financial condition of the Highlanders after their arrival in North Carolina. On the whole they were poor when compared with their English neighbors, but their condition was undoubtedly a great im- provement over what it had been in Scotland.
From governors and Assembly the Highlanders received numerous evidences of welcome to their adopted country. The governor commissioned several of their leaders justices of the peace. In 1740 the Assembly exempted them from taxa- tion for ten years, and offered a similar exemption to all who should follow them. For the convenience of the new settlers, the region around Campbellton was erected into a county which, with curious irony, was named in honor of "Butcher Cumberland." The first sheriff of the new county was Hector McNeill, but the services of a sheriff seem to have been so little in demand that his fees for the whole year amounted to only ten pounds. Another important event in the development of the Highland settlements, was the passage by the Assembly of an act for the building of a road from the Dan River on the Virginia line through the heart of the province to Cross Creek on the Cape Fear, and another leading to it from Shal- low Ford on the Yadkin. These roads threw the trade of all the back country into Cross Creek which soon became one of the chief towns of the province.
161
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
The Highlanders desired to reproduce in Carolina the life they had lived in Scotland, but changed conditions, as they soon found, made this impossible. True no law made it illegal for the clans to maintain their tribal organizations, or forbade the chiefs to exercise their hereditary authority, or made it a crime for the clansmen to bear arms or wear tar- tans. But as the basis of the clan system was military neces- sity, in the absence of such necessity the system could not flourish. In Scotland the clansmen had obeyed their chief in return for his protection against hostile neighbors ; in Caro- lina there were no hostile neighbors, law reigned supreme, and under its benign sway the humblest clansman was assured of far more effective protection of life and property than the most powerful chief in the Highlands could possibly have given him. As soon as the clan system became unnecessary it became irksome and irritating, and rapidly disappeared. With its passing passed also the meaning, and therefore, the usefulness, of the Highland costume, which was soon laid aside for the less picturesque but more serviceable dress of their English fellow countrymen. Their language was des- tined to a similar fate. When preaching in English to the Highlanders at Cross Creek in 1756, Hugh McAden found that many of them "scarcely knew one word" he spoke. The Gaelic made a brave struggle against the English, but a vain and use- less one. Entrenched in an impregnable stronghold as the lan- guage of all legal, social, political and commercial transac- tions, the English tongue effected an easy conquest, and the Gaelic soon disappeared as a common medium of expression. Under these circumstances the peculiar institutions and cus- toms of the Highlanders gave way before those of their adopted country, and after the second generation had fol- lowed their fathers to the grave nothing remained to distin- guish their descendants from their English neighbors save only their Highland names.
Vol. 1-11
CHAPTER XI
THE COMING OF THE SCOTCH-IRISH AND GERMANS
While the Highlanders were moving up the Cape Fear River, two other streams of population were flowing into the province and spreading out over the plains and valleys of the Piedmont section. Though flowing side by side, they origi- nated in widely separated sources and throughout their courses kept entirely distinct one from the other. One was composed of immigrants of Scotch-Irish, the other of immi- grants of German descent.
The term Scotch-Irish is a misnomer, and does not, as one would naturally suppose, signify a mixed race of Scotch and Irish ancestry. It is a geographical, not a racial term. The so-called Scotch-Irish were in reality Scotch people, or de- scendants of Scotch people who once resided in Ireland. Into Ireland they came as invaders and lived as conquerors, hated as such by the Irish and feeling for the Irish that contempt which conquerors always feel for subjugated races. From one generation to another the two peoples dwelt side by side, separated by an immense chasm of religious, political, social, and racial hostility, each intent upon preserving its blood pure and uncontaminated by any mixture with the other. Thus the Scotch in Ireland remained Scotch, and the term "Irish" as applied to them is merely a geographical term used to distinguish the Scotch immigrants who came to America from Ireland from those who came hither directly from Scot- land. In fact the term "Scotch-Irish" is American in its origin and use, and has never been known in Ireland, where the descendants of the Scotch settlers are distinguished from the Irish proper by the far more significant terms of "Irish Protestants" and "Irish Presbyterians." Another name, "Ulstermen." often applied to them, especially within recent years, is derived from the province in which they are chiefly found.
-
The ancestors of these people came originally from the
162
163
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
Lowlands of Scotland, and were introduced into Ireland by James I in pursuance of his policy of displacing the native Irish, always so bitterly hostile to the British Crown, with a new people upon whose loyalty the government could depend. For the success of his plan he needed a people whose aversion to the Irish and to their religion would operate as a barrier to any intermingling of the two races. Of all his subjects, the Scotch Presbyterians of the Western Lowlands were best suited for his purpose. Possessed of intense racial pride, they would not intermarry with the Irish. The most uncom- promising of Protestants, they would resist to the uttermost the attacks of Catholicism. Tenacious of their property rights which they would owe to the generosity of the king, they would maintain and defend his Crown at all hazards. Accordingly, having confiscated the Irishi estates in Ulster, in 1610, James brought from Scotland a colony of Lowlanders whom he settled upon them. This was the beginning of a great migration from Scotland to Ireland. During the decade from 1610 to 1620, 40,000 Scotch Presbyterians were thus settled in Ulster. They were among the most industrious, thrifty and intelligent people in the world. In Ulster they drained the swamps, felled the forests, sowed wheat and flax, raised cattle and sheep, and began the manufacture of linen and woolen cloth which they were soon exporting to England. As Greene says: "In its material result the Plantation of Ulster was undoubtedly a brilliant success. Farms and home- steads, churches and mills, rose fast amid the desolate wilds of Tyrone. * The foundations of the economic pros- perity which has raised Ulster high above the rest of Ireland in wealth and intelligence were undoubtedly laid in the con- fiscation of 1610." 1
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.