USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 1584 1783, Volume I > Part 17
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
After the close of the war the settlement grew more rapidly. Two towns, Bethabara and Bethania, were founded before 1760, but from the first the Brethren intended that the chief town should be in the center of Wachovia, and they thought the closing of the Indian war and the re-establishment of peace a favorable time to begin it. The first act in the founding of this new town, which received the name of Salem, took place January 6, 1766. During the singing of a hymn, work was begun by clearing a site for the first house, and on February 19th eight young men moved into it. Other houses were then erected in quick succession, and during the next years many of the Bethabara community moved to
176
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
Salem, where they were joined by more Brethren from Beth- lehem, and by a goodly number directly from Germany. Sa- lem soon became the principal settlement of the Moravians in North Carolina. In 1773, an Englishman who visited Salem, left an interesting description of the town and its people as they appeared just upon the eve of the Revolution. "This society, sect or fraternity of the Moravians," he wrote, "have everything in common, and are possessed of a very large and extensive property. * From their infancy they are instructed in every branch of useful and common literature,
* * as well as in mechanical knowledge and labour. *
The Moravians have many excellent and very valuable farms, on which they make large quantities of butter, flour and pro- visions, for exportation. They also possess a number of use- ful and lucrative manufactures, particularly a very extensive one of earthenware, which they have brought to great perfec- tion, and supply the whole country with it for some hundred miles around. In short, * they certainly are val- uable subjects, and by their unremitting industry and labour have brought a large extent of wild, rugged country into a high state of population and improvement." 7
As a rule the Germans came into North Carolina as or- ganized bodies. The Moravians, as has been seen, kept their organization intact and distinct from all others, but Reformed and Lutheran congregations frequently united to build churches and support ministers. Two such congregations, desiring to build a church in common, drew up an agreement in which they stated as their reason for uniting that "Since we are both united in the principal doctrines of Christianity, we find no difference between us except in name." Prior to the Revolution many such union churches were built through- out the present counties of Guilford, Alamance, Orange, Randolph, Davidson, Davie, Iredell, Cabarrus, Stanly, Union, Mecklenburg, Lincoln, Catawba, and Burke. The first of these settlements was made about 1745. In that year Luther- an congregations were organized on Haw River. In the same year Henry Weidner, a Pennsylvania-German, entered what is now Catawba County as a hunter and trapper; before 1760 he had been joined by other German settlers in number suf- ficient to form a congregation. The first Germans in Rowan County appeared about 1750. Three years later, Matthew
7 Smyth, J. F. D .: A Tour in the United States of America, Vol. I, pp. 214-17.
177
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
Rowan, acting-governor, wrote that "our three fruntire County's are Anson, Orange, and Rowan. They are for the most part settled with Irish Protestants and Germans, brave, Industrius people. Their Militia amounts to upwards of three thousand Men and Increasing fast." We are not with- out evidence of how fast this increase was. A correspondent of the South Carolina and American General Gazette, writing from Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1768, says: "There is scarce any history either ancient or modern, which affords an ac- count of such a rapid and sudden increase of inhabitants in a back frontier country, as that of North Carolina. To justify the truth of this observation, we need only to assure you that twenty years ago there were not twenty taxable people within the limits of the county of Orange; in which there are now four thousand taxable. The increase of Inhabi- tants, and the flourishing state of the other adjoining back counties, are no less surprising and astonishing." Four thousand taxables means about 16,000 people. Most of these, of course, were Scotch-Irish, but the Germans formed a large percentage of the total. In 1771, the vestry of St. Luke's Parish, Salisbury, stated that in Rowan, Orange, Mecklen- burg, and Tryon counties there "are already settled near three thousand German protestant families, and being very fruitful in that healthy climate, are besides vastly increasing by numbers of German protestants almost weekly arriving from Pennsylvania and other provinces of America." Ac- cording to Governor Dobbs, the frontier families generally embraced from five to ten members each; on this basis, therefore, allowing for probable exaggeration, the total Ger- man population of Rowan, Orange, Mecklenburg and Tryon counties in 1771 must have been not less than 15,000.8
Like the Scotch Highlanders, the Germans in North Caro- lina endeavored to preserve their language and customs. In 1773, an English traveller who had lost his way in the vicinity of Hillsboro, records in his journal: "It was unlucky for me that the greater number of the inhabitants on the plan- tations where I called to inquire my way, being Germans, neither understood my questions nor could make themselves intelligible to me." It was not until years after the Revolu- tion that English became the common language in the Ger- man settlements. The first English school among them was
8 Faust estimates the German population in North Carolina in 1775 at 8,000 .- manifestly an under-estimate .- The German Element in the United States, Vol. I, pp. 284-85.
Vol. 1-12
178
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
opened in Cabarrus County in 1798. English made its way slowly against the opposition of the older people who clung tenaciously to the language of their cradles, and finally won only because their children, wiser than their parents, were unwilling to go through life under the handicap of being ignorant of the very language in which they had to transact their daily affairs. In one respect the fate of the Germans was harder even than that of the Scotch Highlanders,-the former lost not only their language, but their names also, for as time passed, most of the German names became Angli- cized. Thus Kuhn became Coon, Behringer became Bar- ringer, Scheaffer became Shepherd, Albrecht became Al- bright, Zimmerman became Carpenter, so that many families in North Carolina today whose names indicate an English ancestry are really of German descent.
Estimates of the population of North Carolina prior to the census of 1790 vary widely, and when attempts are made to go still further and estimate the proportion of the various racial elements in that population the divergences are greater still. Nevertheless, taking all these estimates into considera- tion, and adopting a very conservative course, one can scarcely resist the conclusion that, placing the total popula- tion in 1760 at 130,000 is certainly not open to the criticism of exaggeration. The same data on which this estimate is based lead to the conclusion that the number of negro slaves in the colony at that time was about one-fourth of the total population. Doubling Faust's estimate of the German popu- lation, which the data seem to justify, accepting Hanna's es- timate of the Scotch as one-third of the total, and rejecting all other elements, i. e., French, Swiss and Welsh, as too small to be taken into account, and the Indians, who were not included in any of the estimates, we arrive at the following analysis of the population of North Carolina in 1760:
English
45,000
Scotch
40,000
German
15,000
Negroes
30,000
Total
130,000
The English and Scotch were born subjects of the British Crown, and the Germans, therefore, were the only important foreign element in the white population. To place them, and
179
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
those who claimed titles to property derived from them, upon an equality with the English and Scotch, the Assembly, in 1764, enacted "that all Foreign Protestants heretofore inhabiting within this Province, and dying seized of any Lands, Tene- ments, or Hereditaments, shall, forever hereafter, be deemed, taken, and esteemed to have been naturalized, and intituled to all the Rights, Privileges, and Advantages of natural Born Subjects."
CHAPTER XII
SOCIETY, RELIGION AND EDUCATION
It is obviously impossible in the brief space of a single chapter to give an adequate account of the social, religious and educational ideals and practices of any large and complex community through a century of its history. All that will be attempted here, therefore, will be a very brief statement of some of the more important of these ideals and practices in colonial North Carolina to whichi nothing more than mere ref- erence can be made in the general narrative which makes up this volume.
In colonial times, class distinctions were sharply drawn. The highest social group was that which was composed of the large planters, professional men, and public officials. Many of them were connected by family ties with the gentry of England, Scotland, and Ireland and they sought to maintain in America the social distinctions which characterized their class in the Old World. Speaking broadly they were men and women of education, culture, refinement and character. Evi- dence of their social rank is found in the application to them of such terms as "gentleman," "esquire," "planter," all of which had a technical significance when used, as they commonly were, in such official documents as wills, deeds, and court records. The general use of such insignia as fam- ily crests and coats-of-arms was also indicative of the social rank of the planters. Says a scholarly Virginia historian : "There is no reason to think that armorial bearings were as freely and loosely assumed in those early times as they are so often now, under republican institutions; such bearings were then a right of property, as clearly defined as any other, and continue to be in modern England, what they were in colonial Virginia. In the seventeenth century, when so large a proportion of the persons occupying the highest position in the society of the colony were natives of England, the un- warranted assumption of a coat-of-arms would probably have
180
181
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
been as soon noticed, and perhaps as quickly resented, as in England itself. The prominent families in Virginia were as well acquainted with the social antecedents of each other in the mother country as families of the same rank in England were with the social antecedents of the leading families in the surrounding shires; they were, therefore, thoroughly competent to pass upon a claim of this nature; and the fact that they were, must have had a distinct influence in prevent- ing a false claim from being put forward. In a general way, it may be said it was quite as natural for Virginians of those times to be as slow and careful as contemporary English- men in advancing a claim of this kind without a legal right on which to base it, and, therefore, when they did advance it, that it was likely to stand the test of examination by the numerous persons in the colony who must have been familiar with English coats-of-arms, in general. The posses- sion of coats-of-arms by the leading Virginian families in the seventeenth century is disclosed in various incidental ways. Insignia of this kind are frequently included among the per- sonal property appraised in inventories. And they were also stampt on pieces of fine silver-plate." 1 A more frequent use was to stamp impressions on seals of letters and valuable papers. That what Mr. Bruce says of the use and significance of such insignia in Virginia is equally true of North Caro- lina, is shown by an examination of the wills and other val- uable papers of colonial families, many of which are sealed with crests and arms which show close relationship between their signers and the gentry of the mother country.
Just below the planters in social rank was the largest single social group in the colony which was composed chiefly of small farmers, who tilled the land with their own hands. Their life was crude. They enjoyed few luxuries and fewer refinements. They worked hard, played hard, lived hard. Brickell declares that some of them "equalize with the Ne- groes in hard Labour." On holidays, or between working seasons, they indulged in such sports as horse-racing, cock- fighting, wrestling, and on these occasions generally drank hard and deep of strong liquor. "I have frequently seen them," wrote Brickell, "come to the Towns, and there remain Drinking Rum, Punch, and other Liquors for Eight or Ten Days successively, and after they have committed this Excess,
1 Bruce : Social Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, pp. 105-108.
182
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
will not drink any Spirituous Liquor, 'till such time as they take the next Frolick, as they call it, which is generally in two or three Months." Despite crudities and excesses, due chiefly to the hard, circumscribed life of a frontier community, they possessed the sterling qualities characteristic of English yeomen. They, too, had a keen class consciousness and took as much pride in being able to write after their names, as their wills and other records testify, such terms as "farmer," "husbandman," "yeoman," as the planters did in using terms similarly descriptive of their social rank. "I, Thomas West, of Bertie County and Province of North Carolina, Yeoman," thus Thomas West begins his will. A strong, fearless, independent race, simple in tastes, crude in manners, provincial in outlook, democratic in social relations, tenacious of their rights, sensitive to encroachments on their personal liberties, and, when interested in religion at all, earnest, nar- row and dogmatic, such were the people who chiefly deter- mined the character of the civilization of North Carolina.
Next in the social order were the indentured white servants among whom were represented many classes and conditions. Some-fortunately a negligible number-were convicts sold into bondage as a punishment for crime. Another class en- tered in the official records as criminals were guilty only of political offenses. Many of the followers of the Duke of Monmouth after his defeat at Sedgemore in 1685 were de- ported to the colonies under sentences of servitude. An even more unfortunate class were the women and children who had been kidnapped in London and other large cities and sent to the colonies to supply the increasing demands for labor. But the largest number of indentured servants were those who had voluntarily taken upon themselves the obligations of serv- ice in order to pay for their passage across the Atlantic. Some of this class were of low moral and intellectual develop- ment, but most of them were energetic, industrious and thrifty persons who had simply taken the only means open to them to leave the Old World for the greater opportunities of the New World. At the expiration of their terms of service their mas- ters were required by law to fit them out decently with food and clothes; in the case of a man-servant, the master must also furnish "a good well-fixed Gun." An indentured serv- ant, at the expiration of his term, was also entitled to take up fifty acres of land. Thus many of this class entered the ranks of the small farmer group and by industry and frugal- ity became good, substantial citizens.
1
183
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
The lowest social group was, of course, composed of negro slaves. From the beginning of the colony the soil of North Carolina was dedicated to slavery. It was recognized in the Concessions of 1665 and in the Fundamental Constitutions. The Lords Proprietors encouraged it by granting fifty acres for each slave above fourteen years of age brought into the colony. At a court held in February, 1694, several persons appeared and proved their rights to land by the importation of negroes. Besides negroes the whites early adopted the custom of reducing to slavery Indians captured in battle.
Necessity made the slave code harsh and cruel. Stringent restrictions were thrown around the movements of slaves. They were not to be permitted to leave their masters' planta- tions without proper tickets of identification stating the place from which, and the place to which they were going; and simi- lar restraints, under severe penalties, were placed on their right to hunt, to bear arms, and to assemble together or com- municate with one another at night. The Fundamental Con- stitutions gave masters "absolute power and authority over negro slaves," but the king, after purchasing the colony, sought to mitigate this law by securing to the slave his right to life. It was not, however, until 1754 that the Assembly considered making the wilful killing of a slave punishable by death, and even then the Council rejected the bill. In 1773 a similar measure introduced by William Hooper passed both houses and was rejected by the governor. The following year such an act was passed by both houses, and was the last law, but one, that was signed by a royal governor of North Caro- lina. Barbarous punishments were inflicted upon slaves con- victed of crimes. Brickell records that he had frequently seen negroes whipped until large pieces of skin were hanging down their backs, "yet," he added, "I never observed one of them shed a tear." A negro, mulatto, or Indian convicted of per- jury was punished by being compelled to stand for one hour with his ear' nailed to pillory, after which he was released by having his ear cut off; then a similar proceeding was followed with the other ear; and the punishment was completed by the infliction of thirty-nine lashes on his bare back, well laid on. Negroes guilty of rape were often castrated. There are on record instances of negroes, who had been convicted of mur- der, being burned at the stake by order of the court. It would be easy, however, to make too much of the severity of these punishments, and, to draw unwarranted conclusions from thiem, for it ought not to be forgotten that they were inflicted
184
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
at a time when the criminal codes of all nations were disgraced by cruel and barbarous practices.
The earliest slaves in the colony were undoubtedly pagans, and their masters as a rule were willing enough for them to remain so. This attitude was due less to indifference than to a widespread belief that it was illegal to hold a Christian in bondage. In 1709, Rev. James Adams reported that there were 211 negroes in Pasquotank Precinct, "some few of which are instructed in the principles of the Christian religion, but their masters will by no means permit them to be baptized, having a false notion that a Christian slave is, by law, free." This belief, however, was not universal and some masters per- mitted their slaves to be baptized. Gradually it died out alto- gether and the baptism of slaves who professed Christianity became general.
The hold which the institution of slavery secured on the colony is indicated by its rapid growth. Careful estimates, some of which are official, show the population of negroes at various times as follows : 1712, 800; 1717, 1,100; 1730, 6,000; 1754, 15,000; 1756, 19,000; 1765, 30,000; 1767, 39,000. The increase was due chiefly to births. In 1754, only nineteen negroes were entered in the customs-house at Bath; and during the preceding seven years the average number annually brought in at Beaufort was only seventeen. The stronghold of slavery was in the East where, as early as 1767, the negroes out-numbered the whites.
Historians do not agree in their delineation of the char- acter of the settlers of North Carolina. There are those, of whom perhaps George Davis, the historian of the Cape Fear, was the most eminent, who would have us believe that they "were no needy adventurers, driven by necessity- no unlettered boors, ill at ease in the haunts of civiliza- tion, and seeking their proper sphere amidst the barbarism of the savage," but that "they were gentlemen of birth and education, bred in the refinement of polished society, and bringing with them ample fortunes, gentle manners, and cul- tivated minds."2 On the other hand there are others who, like John Fiske, could see in colonial North Carolina nothing more than "a kind of back-woods for Virginia," "an Alsatia for insolvent debtors," "mean white trash," and "outlaws," from the northern colony. Fiske divides the early settlers of North Carolina into two classes: First, the thriftless, im-
2 University Address, 1855.
1
185
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
provident white servant class who could not maintain a respectable existence for themselves in Virginia; second, the "outlaws who fled [from Virginia] into North Carolina to escape the hangman." 3 Neither picture is true, for if Davis insists that the shield is all gold, none the less does Fiske insist that it is all of a baser metal. The truth lies between. Undoubtedly there were enough well-born, educated leaders among the population to give a cultured tone to the best so- ciety in the colony; and undoubtedly there were enough escaped outlaws to stimulate the vigilance of the officers of the criminal law. But both together constituted no larger percentage of the population of North Carolina than of the other colonies and in none of them were they ever more than a very small minority. Between the two extremes, constitut- ing them as now the bone and sinew of the population, were those sturdy, enterprising, law-abiding, and liberty-loving middle class Englishmen who have always from Crecy and Agincourt to Yorktown, Gettysburg, and Mons formed the strength and character of English-speaking peoples. After the middle of the eighteenth century came that great tide of Scotch peoples who renewed and strengthened but did not essentially alter these characteristics of the great mass of the population of colonial North Carolina.
The best contemporary account of the social and industrial life of the colony during the first seventy-five years of its ex- istence is that found in Brickell's "Natural History of North Carolina," published in 1737. The author was a physician and scientist of ability whose residence for several years in the colony gave him ample opportunity for observation. Says he: "The Europians, or Christians of North-Carolina, are a streight, tall, well-limbed and active People. The Men who frequent the Woods, and labour out of Doors, or use the Waters, the vicinity of the Sun makes Impressions on them; but as for the Women who do not expose themselves to the Weather, they are often very fair, and well-featured, as you shall meet with any where, and have very Brisk and Charming Eyes; and as well and finely shaped, as any Women in the world. They marry generally very young, some at Thirteen or Fourteen; and she that continues unmarried, until Twenty, is reckoned a stale maid, which is a very indif- ferent Character in that Country. * The Children
* are very Docile and apt to learn any thing, as any
3 Old Virginia and Her Neighbours, Vol. II, p. 316.
.
186
HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
Children in Europe; and those that have the advantage to be Educated, Write good Hands, and prove good Accountants.
* *
* The young Men are generally of a bashful, sober Behaviour, few proving Prodigals, to spend what the Parents with Care and Industry have left them, but commonly Im- prove it.
* * The Girls are not only bred to the Needle and Spinning, but to the Dairy and domestic Affairs, which many of them manage with a great deal of prudence and con- duct, though they are very young. The Women are most Industrious in these Parts, and many of them by their good Housewifery make a great deal of Cloath of their Cotton, Wool, and Flax, and some of them weave their own Cloath with which they decently Apparel their whole Family though large. Others are so Ingenious that they make up all the wearing apparel both for Husband, Sons and Daughters. Others are very ready to help and assist their Husbands in any Servile Work, as planting when the Season of the Year requires expedition : Pride seldom banishing Housewifery. * * The Men are very ingenious in several Handycraft
Businesses, and in building their Canoes and Houses
**
*
Their Furniture, as with us, consists of Pewter, Brass, Tables, Chairs, which are imported here commonly from England : The better sort have tolerable Quantities of Plate, with other convenient, ornamental and valuable Furniture. There are throughout this settlement as good bricks as any I ever met with in Europe. All sorts of handicrafts, such as carpenters, coopers, bricklayers, plasterers, shoemakers, tanners, tailors, weavers, and most other sorts of tradesmen, may with small beginnings, and good industry, soon thrive well in this place and provide good estates and all manner of necessaries for their families."
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.