USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 1584 1783, Volume I > Part 16
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From Ireland descendants of these Scotchi settlers came to America. Anomalous as it may seem, it is nevertheless true that the immediate causes of this second emigration arose out of the fact that the Scotch settlement in Ireland had succeeded too well. Planted there in 1610 to develop the country industrially and establish a strong Protestant civili- zation, a century later the success of their industrial enter- prises was the envy of their competitors in England, while the tenacity with which they held to their religious convic- tions gave offense to the bishops and clergy of the Established Church. By the close of the seventeenth century, the linen
1 A Short History of the English People, Revised Edition, p. 458.
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and woolen manufactures of Belfast, Londonderry, and other cities of Ulster had grown so prosperous that English manu- facturers complained of the competition, and at their solici- tation, the British Parliament passed a series of acts that greatly restricted the output of the Irish factories and placed them at the mercy of their English rivals. About the same time, the High Church party in England secured the passage of laws making it illegal for Presbyterians in Ireland to hold office, to practice law, to teach school, and to exercise many of their other civil and religious rights. "All over Ulster there was an outburst of Episcopalian tyranny."
In these two sources, one economic, the other religious, originated the Scotch-Irish emigration to America. During the fifty years preceding the American Revolution thou- sands of thrifty Protestants left Ireland never to return. In 1718 there was mention of "both ministers and people going off." In 1728, Archbishop Boulter, Primate of Ireland, stated that above 4,200 had sailed within the past three years. In 1740, a famine in Ulster "gave an immense impulse" to emi- gration, and during the next several years the annual flow to America was estimated at 12,000. During the three years, 1771 to 1773, emigration from Ulster is estimated at 30,000, of whom 10,000 were weavers. This movement, says Froude, "robbed Ireland of the bravest defenders of the English inter -. ests, and peopled the American seaboard with fresh flights of Puritans. Twenty thousand left Ulster on the destruction of the woolen trade. Many more were driven away by the first passing of the Test Act. * *
* Men of spirit and energy refused to remain in a country where they were held unfit to receive the rights of citizens; and thenceforward, until the spell of tyranny was broken in 1782, annual shiploads of families poured themselves out from Belfast and London- derry. The resentment which they carried with them con- tinued to burn in their new homes; and, in the War of Inde- pendence, England had no fiercer enemies than the grandsons and great-grandsons of the Presbyterians who had held Ulster against Tyrconnell." 2
Occasional settlers of Lowland Scotch and Scotch-Irish descent were found in North Carolina at a very early date. In 1676, William Edmundson, the Quaker missionary, re- cords his visit to James Hall, who with his family "went from Ireland into Virginia," whence he removed into North
2 The English in Ireland, Vol. 1, p. 392.
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Carolina. John Urmstone, the missionary of the Church of England, in 1714, lists among his numerous grievances the fact that three of his vestrymen were "vehement Scotchmen Presbyterians." The Pollock family was of Lowland stock, and while Thomas Pollock himself came to North Carolina, some of his brothers emigrated to the North of Ireland. But one must be careful not to make too much of the presence of these pioneers of the Lowland Scotch and Scotch-Irish in North Carolina. They were simply isolated instances of indi- viduals of an adventurous spirit who broke away from their home ties to seek their fortunes in a new land, and cannot be considered as a part of the great Scotch-Irish immigration of the eighteenth century.
The first of these settlers who came to North Carolina as an organized group were brought into the province by land companies. In 1735 Arthur Dobbs and "some other Gentle- men of Distinction in Ireland," associated with Henry Mc- Culloh, a London merchant, presented a memorial to the Council of North Carolina "representing their intention of sending over to this Province several poor Protestant familys with design of raising Flax and Hemp." For this purpose they sought a grant of 60,000 acres of land on Black River in New Hanover precinct. The grant was made and in the fol- lowing year the immigrants arrived and were settled in what is now Sampson and Duplin counties where they organized themselves into two congregations called Goshen and the Grove. Others followed, sent hither by Arthur Dobbs, him- self a Scotch-Irishman, who in 1753 was appointed governor of North Carolina. In November of that year there arrived at New Bern a brigantine "from Belfast, in Ireland, sent hither by his Excellency Governor Dobbs, with a great Num- ber of Irish Passengers, who are come to settle in this Prov- ince." A small colony of Swiss was also settled in the same community. In the meantime, in 1736, McCulloh, in asso- ciation with Murray Crymble, James Huey and others, among them Arthur Dobbs, had embarked upon a much vaster scheme. Upon their petition, an order in Council was is- sued, May 19, 1737, under which warrants for 1,200,000 acres were allowed them to be located in the back country chiefly along the Yadkin, the Eno, and the Catawba rivers. Under the terms of his grant, McCulloh, the moving spirit in the enterprise, was to settle within it a large number of "sub- stantial people" who were "to carry on the Pott Ashe Trade" and to raise "hemp and other naval stores." But these
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ARTHUR DOBBS
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grandiose schemes were never realized. As late as 1754, McCulloh had actually settled but 854 people within his grant. Innumerable difficulties arose, especially in Mecklenburg and Anson counties, between his agents and the people. There were disputes over boundary lines, quit rents, and titles, which led to frequent riots and bloodshed, and finally in 1767, forced McCulloh and his associates to surrender their grants to the Crown.
Of the Scotch-Irish immigrants who poured into North Carolina from 1735 to 1775, a few landed at Charleston and moved up the banks of the Pee Dee and Catawba rivers into the hill country of the two Carolinas, but the great majority landed at Philadelphia whence they moved into Western Vir- ginia and North Carolina. High prices of land deterred them from settling in Pennsylvania. In 1751, Governor Johnston expressed the opinion that Pennsylvania was already "over- stocked with people." In 1752, Bishop Spangenberg, the Moravian leader, declared that many settlers came into North Carolina from England, Scotland, and the northern colonies, "as they wished to own lands and were too poor to buy in Pennsylvania or New Jersey." To the same effect wrote Governor Dobbs who, in 1755, said that as many as 10,000 immigrants from Holland, Britain and Ireland had landed at Philadelphia in a single season, and consequently many were "obliged to remove to the southward for want of lands to take up" in Pennsylvania. Many of these immigrants were induced to pass through Virginia into North Carolina because of the severity of the' Virginia laws on religion in comparison with those of the latter colony. But there was still another reason why the Scotch-Irish were attracted to North Carolina in such large numbers. During the thirty years from 1734 to 1765 the chief executives of North Caro- lina were Gabriel Johnston, a native of Scotland, and Mat- thew Rowan and Arthur Dobbs, who were both Scotch-Irish- men from Ulster, and all three exerted themselves personally and officially to induce Scotch-Irish immigrants to settle here. The route which these settlers followed from Pennsyl- vania into North Carolina is plainly laid down on the maps of that day as the "Great Road from the Yadkin River through Virginia to Philadelphia." It ran from Philadel- phia through Lancaster and York in Pennsylvania, to Win- chester in Virginia, down the Shenandoah Valley, thence southward across the Dan River to the Moravian settlements on the Yadkin. The distance was 435 miles. Commenting on
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the movement by this route, Saunders says: "Remembering the route General Lee took when he went into Pennsylvania on that memorable Gettysburg campaign, it will be seen that very many of the North Carolina boys, both of German and of Scotch-Irish descent, in following their great leader, visited the homes of their ancestors and went hither by the very route by which they came away. To Lancaster and York counties, in Pennsylvania, North Carolina owes more of her population than to any other known part of the world,3 and surely there never was a better population than they and their descendants-never better citizens, and certainly never better soldiers." 4
This great tide of Scotch-Irish immigrants rolled in upon that section of North Carolina drained by the headwaters of the Nense and the Cape Fear, and by the Yadkin, the Cataw- ba, and their tributaries. As early as 1740 scattered families were living along the Hico, the Eno, and the Haw. In 1746, according to the family records of Alexander Clark, a few families removed from the Cape Fear to the "west of the Yadkin," where they joined others who had already broken into that wilderness. But prior to 1750 immigration into that remote region was slow, after that date, family followed family, group followed group in rapid succession. In 1751, Governor Johnston noted that "Inhabitants flock in here daily, mostly from Pennsylvania and other parts of America, and some directly from Europe. They commonly seat them- selves toward the west and have got near the mountains." Bishop Spangenberg, in 1752, declared that "there are many people coming here because they are informed that stock does not require to be fed in the winter season. Numbers of [Scotch-] Irish have therefore moved in." In 1775 Gov- ernor Dobbs, writing of seventy-five families who had set- tled on his lands along Rocky River, a tributary of the Yad- kin, said: "They are a colony from Pennsylvania, of what we call Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who with others in the neigh- boring Tracts had settled together in order to have a teacher [i. e., minister] of their own opinion and choice." This was a typical pioneer Scotch-Irish community, held together on
3 The accuracy of this statement is open to question; most of the Scotch-Irish and German settlers, who came thence into North Carolina, merely passed through Pennsylvania without ever residing there.
4 Prefatory Notes to Colonial Records of North Carolina, Vol. IV, p. xxi.
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the frontier by common religious sympathies. A good index to the rapid increase of such communities in North Carolina, from 1750 to 1755, is found in the number of "supplications for ministers" which they sent up to the annual Synod of Philadelphia. In 1751, Rev. John Thomson, whom the Synod had directed to correspond with "many people" of North Carolina who desired to organize congregations, visited the Scotch-Irish settlements along the Catawba. He was the first preacher of any church in all that region, yet when Hugh McAden came through the province four years later, he preached to more than fifty such Scotch-Irish congrega- tions most of which were west of the Yadkin. How rapidly the number of these immigrants increased is shown by a let- ter from Matthew Rowan, acting-governor, in 1753. He writes: "In the year 1746 I was up in the Country that is now Anson, Orange, and Rowan Countys. There was not then above one hundred fighting men: there is now at least three thousand for the most part Irish Protestants and Ger- mans, and dayley increasing." This means that within six years the population of about 500 had increased to at least 15,000.
Still another indication of the rapid increase of popula- tion on the western frontier is the dates of the formation of new counties in that section. One should bear in mind that these counties as they now exist, though still retaining their old names, have not retained their original boundary lines : the frontier county in colonial days had no western boundary, but ran as far westward as white population extended. Ac- cordingly every time a county was formed from the western end of an existing county, we know that white population had moved farther westward. In 1746, Edgecombe, Craven, and Bladen had such far-reaching western extensions. But so fast was population increasing and the colony expanding that in that year Granville was cut off from Edgecombe, John- ston from Craven, and three years later, Anson from Bladen. The boundaries of these new counties extended to the moun- tains and beyond. In 1752, Orange, still farther westward, was taken from Granville, Johnston and Bladen; and in 1753 Rowan was cut off from Anson. Nine years later another part of Anson, still farther to the westward, was taken to form Mecklenburg, which had become the center of the Scotch- Irish settlements. Thus within sixteen years, as a result of the influx of Scotch-Irish and German immigrants into Pied-
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mont Carolina, six new counties were found necessary for their convenience.5
It is difficult to arrive at a just estimate of the character of the Scotch-Irish. There is perhaps no virtue in the whole catalogue of human virtues which has not been ascribed to them; no great principle of human liberty which has not been placed to their credit; no great event in our history in which they are not said to have played the leading part. Eulogy has exhausted the English tongue in their praise. But eulogy is not necessarily history, and history must strive to preserve the true balance between praise and censure. We know that the Scotch-Irishman was domestic in his habits and loved his home and family; but we know also that he was unemotional, seldom gave expression to his affections, and presented to the world the appearance of great reserve, coldness, and austerity. He was loyal to his own kith and kin, but stern and unrelenting with his enemies. He was deeply and earnestly religious, but the very depth and earn- estness of his convictions made him narrow-minded and bigot- ted. He was law-abiding as long as the laws were to his liking, but when they ceased to be he disregarded them, peaceably if possible, forcibly if necessary. Independent and self-reliant, he was opinionated and inclined to lord it over any who would submit to his aggressions. He was brave, and he loved the stir of battle. He came of a fighting race; the blood of the old Covenanters flowed in his veins, and the beat of the drum, the sound of the fife, the call of the bugle aroused his fighting instincts. His whole history shows that he would fight. that he might be crushed but never subdued. In short, in both his admirable and his censurable traits, he possessed just the qualities that were needed on the Carolina frontier in the middle of the eighteenth century, qualities that enabled him to conquer the great wilderness of the Piedmont plateau, to drive back the savages, and to become, as Mr. Roosevelt has said, "the pioneers of our people in their march westward, the vanguard of the army of fighting set- tlers, who with axe and rifle won their way from the Alle- ghanies to the Rio Grande and the Pacific." 6
Moving over the same route as the Scotch-Irish, and also coming from Pennsylvania, flowed the stream of German
5 Hanna estimates the Scotch population in North Carolina in 1775 at about one-third the total population, i. e. 65,000 .- The Scotch- Irish in America, Vol. I, pp. 82-84.
6 Winning of the West, Vol. I, p. 134.
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immigrants who came into North Carolina from 1745 to 1775. Various motives prompted their migration. Some eame in search of adventure and good hunting grounds. Others were looking for good lands and, like the Seoteh-Irish, turning their baeks on Pennsylvania because of the high price of lands in that eolony. Still others were inspired by religious zeal. The first and smallest of these three groups beeame hunters and trappers, and in the vast unexplored forests extending along the foothills of the Alleghanies and eover- ing the mountain sides, they ehased the fox and the deer, hunted the buffalo and the bear, shot the wolf and the panther, and trapped the otter and the beaver. With the opening of spring, they would gather up their stores of furs and skins and seek the settlements, frequently going as far north as Philadelphia and as far south as Charleston, to dispose of their winter's harvests. Typical of this elass of immigrants was Daniel Boone, who, though not of German ancestry, was born in a Pennsylvania-German settlement and came to North Carolina along with the tide of German immi- gration. Those who came in search of land found it of course plentiful, cheap and fertile. The only capital needed on the Carolina frontier was thrift, energy, and common sense, and these the Germans possessed in a marked degree. Accord- ingly many thousands of them, driven from the Fatherland by unfavorable economie conditions, carved handsome estates for themselves and their children out of the Carolina wilder- ness, dotting the banks of the Yadkin and Catawba rivers with their neat, pleasant farms, and their plain but eomfort- able eabins. A third class of Germans came to North Caro- lina in search of religious freedom and fields for missionary activity. Like their neighbors, the Seotch-Irish, they were inspired by a fervent religious zeal, but many of them came not so much to seek religious freedom for themselves as to carry the Gospel to the Indians. They represented three branches of the Protestant church,-the Unitas Fratrum, or Moravian Church, the Lutheran, and the German Reformed.
The most distinct of the German settlements in North Carolina was the one made by the Moravians in Wachovia. In 1752, the Moravians at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, moved by a desire to find a home free from all religious interfer- ence, by a purpose to carry Christianity to the Indians, and by a wish to develop a community on their own peculiar prin- ciples without outside meddling. determined to plant a settle- ment on the Carolina frontier. With that thoroughness which
AUGUSTUS GOTTLIEB SPANGENBERG
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was one of their most marked characteristies, they first dis- patehed an exploring party under the leadership of Bishop Augustus Gottlieb Spangenberg, to view the land and seleet the site for the colony. Spangenberg's party proceeded first to Edenton, thence crossed almost the entire length of North Carolina, and aseended to the very summit of the Blue Ridge Mountains where they viewed the headwaters of streams that rise in North Carolina and flow into the Mississippi River. A journal in which the good bishop recorded the minutest details of their expedition tells us in simple and impressive language the story of the dangers and hardships which the members of his party encountered. Sickness, cold and hun- ger were among the least of their sufferings. After a thor- ough and painstaking survey the party selected a traet of land in what is now Forsyth County containing about 100,- 000 aeres. "As regards this land," wrote the bishop, "I re- gard it as a corner which the Lord has reserved for the Brethren. * * The situation of this land is quite peeu- liar. It has countless springs and many ereeks; so that as many mills ean be built as may be desirable. These streams make many and fine meadow lands. * The most of this land is level and plain; the air fresh and healthy, and the water is good, especially the springs, which are said not to fail in summer.
** In the beginning a good forester and hunter will be indispensable. The wolves and bears must be extirpated as soon as possible, or stock raising will be pursued under difficulties. The game in this region may also be very useful to the Brethren in the first years of the colony."
It was Bishop Spangenberg who called the settlement Wachovia. The word is derived from two German words, "wach" a meadow, and "aue" a stream. Wachovia lay with- in the possessions of Lord Granville and from him the Mora- vian Brethren purchased it in August, 1753. Two months later their plans were all completed, and on October 8, 1753, twelve unmarried men set out from the Moravian settlement at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to break ground for the settle- ment in North Carolina. No better evidence is needed of the shrewd, common sense of those German settlers than the simple faet that this small band, whose mission was to lay the foundation of civilization in the wilderness, consisted of a minister of the Gospel, a warden, a physician, a tailor, a baker, a shoemaker and tanner, a gardener, three farmers, and two carpenters. In the community which they went out
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to establish there was to be no place for drones. It is also interesting to note that they were fully conscious of the significance of their undertaking. Looking far into the future they foresaw the growth and development of their community and the intense interest with which posterity would inquire into its beginnings. Accordingly from the very beginning they recorded their daily doings to the minutest and most trivial details.
The little band of Moravian Brethren made their journey from Pennsylvania to Carolina in a large covered wagon drawn by six horses. Nearly six weeks were required for the trip. When they left Pennsylvania they were oppressed with heat; when they reached North Carolina the ground wais covered with snow. At 3 o'clock Saturday afternoon, Novem- ber 17th, they reached the spot where now stands the town of Bethabara, better known in its immediate neighborhood as "Old Town." There they found shelter in a log cabin which had been built but afterwards deserted by a German trapper named Hans Wagoner. It was an humble abode, without a floor and with a roof full of cracks and holes, but in it the Brethren held their first divine service and had their first "love feast." Sunday was observed as a day of real rest, but was followed by weeks of earnest, manly toil. One of their first cares was to enlarge their cabin and to lay in a supply of provisions for the winter. Their rifles supplied them with game in abundance. Salt was procured from Vir- ginia, flour and corn from the Scotch-Irish settlements on the Yadkin, and beef from those on the Dan. In December they sowed their first wheat. A few days later came the Christmas season, and on Christmas Eve they gathered around the great open fire in their log cabin to hear again the wonderful story of Bethlehem. "We had a little love feast," says their faithful journal, "then near the Christ Child we had our first Christmas Eve in North Carolina, and rested in peace in this hope and faith. * All this while the wolves and panthers howled and screamed in the forests near by."
Throughout their first year the Moravian Brethren kept steadily at their tasks, and before the year had gone they had in operation a carpenter shop, a tailoring establishment, a pottery, a blacksmith shop, a shoe shop, a tannery and a cooper shop; had harvested wheat, corn, tobacco, flax, mil- let, barley. oats. buckwheat, turnips, cotton, garden vegeta- bles; had cleared and cultivated fields, cut roads through the
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forests, built a mill an l erected several cabins. They made long journeys to Philadelphia and to Wilmington. The physi- cian, Doctor Lash, made trips twenty, fifty and even a hun- dred miles through the forests to visit the sick and relieve the suffering. The Brethren had many visitors who came long distances to consult the physician or to secure the services of the shoemaker or the tailor. Within three months, during the year 1754, 103 visitors came to Wachovia. The next year the number was 426. Visitors were so numerous that the Brethren decided to build a "strangers' house." This was the second building in Wachovia. Four days after it was finished it was occupied by a man and his invalid wife who came to consult the physician. Travel between Wachovia and Pennsylvania was frequent and the little col- ony continued to grow. More unmarried men and later a few married couples came from Pennsylvania, and by 1756 the Bethabara colony numbered sixty-five souls. Until the outbreak of the French and Indian War, the Moravians were on friendly terms with the Indians. Indeed, one of their purposes in coming to North Carolina was to preach the Gospel to the Indians who soon began to speak of the settle- ment at Bethabara as "the Dutch fort, where there are good people and much bread." But with the breaking out of the war the savages became hostile, and their enmity gave the Moravian Brethren much trouble. The Brethren were com- pelled to build forts, to arm every man in the colony, and to place sentinels around the settlement. The Moravians were frequently called upon to go to the defense of their white neighbors. From thirty to forty miles around families sought refuge at Bethabara where all learned to love and re- spect the Moravian Brethren, and not a few applied for membership in the Moravian Church.
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