USA > North Carolina > Wake County > History of Wake County, North Carolina, with sketches of those who have most influenced its development > Part 2
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When we think of the dislike of all America for the word "taxes" at that date, and when we remember how unwilling our fathers then were, and their descendants still are, to spend money for governmental show and glory, Tryon is in this matter shown to be a com- manding and astute manager of men. His ascendancy over the lower house of deputies, and his gaining so much of his desires from them seem little short of marvelous.
He received fifteen thousand pounds in all for building his "palace" as it began to be call- ed, and when this was finished it was the finest building of the kind in all America. Tryon reconstructed there, as best he could, the
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HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY
English ideal of polite society, and held social festivities with all dignity and due decorum; but the accomplishment of his heart's desire brought him a thriving crop of jealous com- ment from the wealthy planters who did not relish his sitting to receive them in his "elbow chair," nor his haughty airs in his fine house.
As to the western farmers in their log-cabins, although they were a thousand times better off than their brethren of the English country- side, and though they did not call themselves either poor or miserable, they lived hardily and had little respect for luxury, and no pa- tience at all with what seemed to them sinful extravagance. Moreover they had a set of excellent grievances. They justly complained of the large fees for the grants and deeds to their land, extorted by the sheriffs and county clerks. The amounts of these fees are not set down as so enormous, but the King's officers were constantly accused of over-charging, and of charging twice and pocketing the difference. Also these dues must be paid in real money, of which there was very little in circulation in the Colony and which then had a much greater purchasing power than now.
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INTRODUCTORY
Thus the men of the back country were fer- menting with a spirit of obstinate opposition to constituted authority, while taxes were some years in arrears. That there was op- pression and abuse seems quite certain, and also that this oppression was caused by the arbitrary and offensive behavior of the men in charge of the tax collecting.
Mingled with the ever-growing dislike of their tyranny was indignation over the ex- pense of building that great fine palace, and added to that, an ill-defined irritation against what we might call pernicious high-brow-ism in some of the more prominent officials, es- pecially Edmund Fanning and John Frohock.
Fanning was called Tryon's son-in-law, but authority for that is wanting. He was a graduate of Harvard College and a man tact- less and arrogant, who felt and showed con- tempt for these frontier folk. The hatred that centered upon him cannot be accounted for in any other way. Not one voice has been raised in vindication of his doings until more than a hundred years had passed since he left North Carolina. The sting of disdain out- lasts blows and injuries in the memory, and
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HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY
Fanning and Frohock were so hated that they became the subjects of the first popular bal- lads native to North Carolina, mere prose not expressing the strong feelings of the people against them, and an ante-Revolutionary "Hymn of Hate" being necessary.
The Governor went to the western part of the State in 1770 to compose the trouble that was brewing there, which was the beginning of what is called the Regulators War, but he does not seem to have gone to the root of the matter. He simply told the people to be good, and while he had Fanning tried, allowed him to be white-washed and fined only a penny for each of the extortions as proven. Tryon could not read the signs of the times and left discontent behind him.
The Regulators were full of bitterness. It was a feeling rather than a reasoned opinion. The War of the Regulation, as it seems to our partial information, was the rising of a ground- swell of Democracy.
It bore some analogy to the spirit of oppo- sition which has sometimes possessed the mountain folk of our own and adjoining states when they thought of revenue collectors and United States revenue officers.
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Mr. Frank Nash has called this "political near-sightedness" in one of his historical papers, and that expresses the condition better than any other phrase.
The backwoodsman who had traveled far and subdued a bit of the wilderness for his own, wished to be let alone in possession of what he had so hardly won. He had fought and fended for himself against crude nature and savage foes, had made his clearing and built his cabin with unaided arm. He could scarce- ly acknowledge the right of any one to dictate to him. Like the Irishman who said he owed nothing to posterity by reason that posterity had never been of any benefit to him, the frontiersman considered talk of this govern- ment, and of taxes owing to it, quite imperti- nent, while the British throne and the king over the water had no sentimental appeal to him.
His case was parallel to that of the moun- taineer who finds a far-away government lay- ing hands upon his home-made whiskey. He has made it out of his own corn, which he has often cultivated by hand on a hillside too steep to plough, and he knows that this indul-
THE OLD SASSAFRAS TREE ON THE CAPITOL SQUARE STILL ALIVE IN 1922. FROM THIS FAMOUS "DEER STAND" FORTY HEAD OF DEER WERE SHOT BY ONE HUNTER, WITHIN THE MEMORY OF THOSE ALIVE IN 1800.
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INTRODUCTORY
gence is denied him by an outside influence and not of his own consent.
No brief is held for the moonshiner, but who can not understand the point of view of the ignorant mountaineer? Our frontiersman reasoned much in the same way, and his fees and taxes seemed enormous to him, and in- deed were so, measured by his ability to pay in real money.
It was in 1771 when Tryon returned west with the eastern militia to quell this distur- bance in Orange and Rowan, which grew daily more severe, and it was in that very year that Wake County came into existence. The Regulators were most active in Orange and Rowan, and the best opportunity for getting together and talking politics was then even more than it is now, court week, for that was the only time when the whole settle- ment turned out in a general manner.
Tryon thought it would be a good thing to divide the counties, and, so doing, divide the courts and prevent so general a free discus- sion. He therefore influenced his council to set off four new counties, Guilford, Chatham, Surry, and Wake, as a measure for dividing
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HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY
up the Regulators and silencing their general discussions. The reason given in the enact- ment, however, is one of distance and greater convenience in attending court. This meas- ure was signed by Tryon in the spring of 1771.
In the record of the expedition of that same spring against the Regulators, we find Tryon camped at Hunter's Lodge, the home of Theophilus Hunter in Wake County, and said to have been about four miles from the present southern boundary of the City of Raleigh.
It is also of record that the (Ramsgate) Rhamkatt Road was laid off through the woods towards Hillsborough so as to avoid the rough hills of the Granville Tobacco Path, in hastening Tryon's military wagons.
We also note that the sign and countersign of one of those days of delay in camp at Hunt- er's Lodge, as they waited for recruits, were the words "Wake" and "Margaret," which suggests strongly the origin of the name of the new county. The maiden name of the Gov- ernor's lady was Margaret Wake, and the new county might well have been named for her, especially as the parish was named St. Margaret's, after her baptismal name. Es-
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INTRODUCTORY
ther Wake, that lovely vision whose tradition is so persistent, cannot be absolutely proved to be more than an imagination of the gallant Shocco Jones. She probably existed, but we cannot be certain of it now, and the name Wake is easily accounted for without her aid. It has very recently been noted that in January, 1771, "the Honorable Miss Wake" gave two pounds sterling for the founding of a minister and teacher for the German settle- ment. This shows Esther a very kindly, lovely girl.
Wake County was carved out of Orange for the most part, and included also a bit of John- ston and a little of Cumberland. In making of new counties around it later, it lost part of its first extent; but it was then, as now, the midmost county between the low country and the mountains, and is approximately central between the Virginia line and the boundary of South Carolina. It is the level where the long-leaved pines of the lower lands yield to forests of hardwood trees, and the sandy soils pass definitely into red clay. Its wonderful diversity of products is directly re- ferable to this variety of soil, and the two
A PERFECTLY PRESERVED EXAMPLE OF THE SIMPLER FARM-HOME OF THE EARLY DAYS OF WAKE COUNTY STANDING NEAR APEX. THIS HOUSE HAS A BRICK BUILT INTO THE UPPER PART OF ITS CHIMNEY BEARING THE DATE "1775" AND ITS WOODWORK CORRESPONDS WITH THAT DATE
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INTRODUCTORY
edges of the county, eastern and western, are as distinct as though a hundred miles separat- ed their boundaries.
The first ridges of any regularity of extent which cross the State from north to south, the first ripples of those folds which rise into the great Blue Ridge, cross Wake County. Al- most all varieties of soil not strictly alluvial are found in some part or another of Wake, and indeed there is often the greatest differ- ence in the constitution of the soil of different sides of the same field. The climate also is about the medium between the damp of the east and the keen light air of the mountain section. Neuse River and its tributary creeks drain and water it well. Raleigh, the Capital of the State for more than a hundred years, occupies almost a central point in the County, and has been until now the only large town of the County.
CHAPTER II The First Twenty-five Years
ROM Theophilus Hunter's in Wake County, Tryon marched direct to the Battle of Alamance, where the Regulators were beat- en, their army dispersed, and six of their ringleaders quickly hung for treason.
So thorough were his methods that all ac- tive hostility was then over. But although their armed resistance was quelled, the "em- battled farmers" of North Carolina went to their homes with that bewildered feeling of frustration and utter disaster that left them neither self-confidence for future attempt, nor expectation of any redress for their crying grievances. The public debt which Tryon incurred in this expedition, added to the ar- rears bequeathed to him by his predecessors, was never paid; nor would it have been easy to collect from a people more and more indig- nant, more and more weaned from its alleg- iance to Great Britain.
The New England Colonies treading the self-same path, sent emissaries to North Car-
[40]
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THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS
olina to test the temper of its people, and never did sentiments of liberty meet greater sympathy, or aspirations for independent ex- istence more favor. The people of North Carolina were ripe for revolution. Wrote Thomas Jefferson at this time, "There is no doubtfulness in North Carolina, no state is more fixed or forward."
In this year of transition and bitter brood- ing was held the first court in the new County of Wake, and we know who located the coun- ty seat at Wake Cross Roads, and named it Bloomsbury, which name had never appeared before in this place. This was also done by the Tryons, and the name of Bloomsbury must be referred to them, as being the name of a new suburb of London, just then being "developed" as we say of real estate ventures.
Russell, Earl of Bedford, was building this part of London on a portion of his ancestral acres, and he is said also to have been re- sponsible in some way for Tryon's appoint- ment as Colonial Governor. Russell Square, which is so often mentioned in Thackeray's novel, Vanity Fair, as the home of the heroine, was in Bloomsbury, and is the actual name of
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HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY
a street there. This name must have meant something of home and London to the Try- ons, as is shown by their giving it to this cor- ner of the wilderness. Here is a likely con- nection.
On the contrary, we cannot see any reason why Joel Lane, born on this side of the ocean, and busy, enterprising wild-westerner as one might call him, should fancy and insist upon the name of Bloomsbury more than any other English name. He probably was glad to adopt a name which the Governor suggested for his tavern. This western Bloomsbury was a mere stopping place beside the Hillsborough Road, and the first court was held in the resi- dence or tavern of this Joel Lane, already one of Wake County's most prominent citizens. There was a jail of logs, and our first sheriff was named Michael Rogers. Theophilus Hunter was a justice, and so were Joel Lane and several other of the men whose names occur first on the records. The old court corres- ponded to the English Quarter Sessions and has been long superseded by the later con- stitutional arrangements of North Carolina.
There still stands, in the western part of Raleigh, a rather small house with a very
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THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS
steep gambrel roof, in the style of architec- ture common at the beginning of the nine- teenth century and before, called the Dutch Colonial. This house used to face Boylan Avenue, standing a little back from the street, but was moved a few years ago, and now faces the south side of Hargett Street near the State Prison.
The exact year of its erection is not known, but its architecture is of the same order as that of the house at Yorktown, Virginia, where Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington.
It also resembles in angle of roof the little "Andrew Johnson Birthplace" which stands restored in Pullen Park, and another historic house at Edenton, where was held the Eden- ton Tea Party. The peculiar, quite steep slant of the roof over the second story has been disused in more modern houses, and serves as a means of dating the erection.
This house on Hargett Street was once known as the "First Capitol," and was built by and belonged to Joel Lane. It may well have been new at the time we are describing It was considered a very fine house in its day, and is called the "best house within a hundred miles."
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HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY
Probably those same old walls that we all have seen were those that sheltered the first county court, and there Tryon certainly stopped on his return from the military ex- pedition against the Regulators. It could scarcely have been built during the troubled times of the Revolution, and could well have been in existence in the year 1772, as it is of record that it was in 1781.
On the street corner near to its first situa- tion a boulder has been placed, and a bronze tablet let into its side bears the following in- scription, placed there by the Daughters of the Revolution, Bloomsbury Chapter, in the year 1911.
ON AND AROUND THIS SPOT STOOD THE OLD TOWN OF BLOOMSBURY OR WAKE COUNTY COURT HOUSE
WHICH WAS ERECTED AND MADE THE COUNTY SEAT WHEN WAKE COUNTY WAS ESTABLISHED IN 1771. THIS PLACE WAS THE REN- DEZVOUS OF A PART OF TYRON'S ARMY WHEN HE MARCHED AGAINST THE REGU- LATORS IN 1771
HERE MET THE REVOLUTIONARY ASSEMBLY IN 1781, AND TO THIS VICINITY WAS REMOVED THE STATE SEAT OF GOVERNMENT WHEN THE CAPITAL CITY OF RALEIGH WAS INCORPORATED IN 1782.
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THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS
Tryon and his lady left North Carolina in 1771 for New York State, he to become Gov- ernor there, and North Carolina never saw either of them again. It is said that they were glad to go in spite of having to leave the fine house they had built in New Berne, be- cause the climate had not suited their health nor the spirit of the colony their minds. When the Revolution came on, Tryon County in the west was promptly divided into Lin- coln and Rutherford and the Governor's name thus expunged from our County roll; but the name of Wake spoke neither of de- feat nor oppression.
Gallant North Carolina would not flout the Governor's lady, and Wake remained the name of a county, and shall ever remain so called, whether named originally for that lovely shadow, Esther Wake, or for her fair sister, Lady Tryon.
The Revolution called on every man to rally to his colors. Tories were plentiful and active in North Carolina. The former Regulators strangely did not come to the help of the Con- gress very freely, but seem to have been cowed or disgusted with fighting, and stood aloof,
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HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY
not enlisting on either side. The Wake County militia volunteered, and from the sparse population many men went to war. We will not follow these, but, remaining at home, will mention a few points of distinctly Wake County history.
We have already described Joel Lane's home, called the "First Capitol," and it was there that the General Assembly of North Carolina met in the month of June, 1781. The Capital of the State had been a movable institution for some time previous, being ap- pointed to meet at first one town and then another, according to the necessities of a country at war. Records were thus many a time lost, and it is wonderful that we possess intact as many as we do, considering the dif- ficulty of keeping up with such a shifting capital. As a measure of safety perhaps, Wake County was made the choice of this troubled year, almost the lowest ebb of the American cause. At this meeting Joel Lane was voted the sum of fifteen thousand pounds for the lodging and food of the General As- sembly and the pasturage for their horses. His guests must have been as addicted to
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THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS
fried chicken as the preachers are accused of being, for the next item of allowance is one to Vincent Vass, "for candles and fowls" eigh- teen hundred pounds.
These are not such great sums as they sound, for the colonial currency of paper money became extremely depreciated as the Revolution went on, just as the Confederate paper money did years afterward in the war between the States; and by this time it was worth no more of its face value than is in- dicated in the saying, "not worth a Continen- tal."
A good horse would bring twelve hundred pounds in the money of that year, and we may estimate by this that the members of Assem- bly probably had no more chicken than they needed.
Another event of this Wake County session of the Assembly, much more noteworthy, was the inauguration of a Governor of North Caro- lina, which was, prophetically, held for the first time in Wake County inside the area of the future capital of the State, while as yet it was not. The war-time Governor was Thomas Burke of Orange County, and the announce-
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HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY
ment of his election to the Governor's office was formally conveyed to him at the tavern at Wake Court House, at the beginning of this first Assembly there convened.
His speech of acceptance, his inaugural, on that occasion, refers to the difficulty of his task, and especially mentions the activities of the Tories, the condition of the colony al- most verging on civil war, and the lack of proper support from the people to the State Government.
Burke was a well educated man, and had assisted in drafting the State Constitution adopted for North Carolina at the time of the Declaration of Independence at Philadel- phia. He was an Irishman from Galway and a Catholic, but although he lived in a far more intolerant age than ours, the fact of his relig- ious belief was never mentioned against him. According to English law, which was the foundation of the law of the colonies, none but Protestants could hold office, and of Pro- testants only Church of England men. In the colonies, however, this rule had already been ignored before the Revolution, and dissenters had become governors of North Carolina
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THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS
under the old government. No one now asked anything of Governor Burke save as to his patriotism.
Burke lived near Hillsborough, and was further distinguished as being the very first of the poets in this State, except only those nameless ballad-makers among the Regulators. His further adventures are of interest.
In September of that same year, 1781, the Tories under David Fanning (a name of bad odor, but no relation that we know to that Edmund first mentioned) came up in force from the southern counties, with the publicly avowed aim of capturing the Governor of North Carolina.
They raided Hillsborough, then called the capital. David Fanning was a nativeof Wake County, and a Tory bushwhacker; he knew the lay of the land. His band surprised the defenceless village of Hillsborough one night, and while Burke and his friends seem to have been expecting them, and to have resisted with spirit, the Tories were too many for them, and Burke was captured and carried to Wilming- ton, then in British possession. Thence he was taken to Sullivans, and later to James
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HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY
Island off the coast of South Carolina. Being held imprisoned by the expanse of ocean about this island, he was set free on parole there. He felt most unsafe, his life being threatened by a lawless band of Tories living on the is- land, and was forced to hide from place to place.
Being, as he said, in such danger of his life, he broke his parole and escaped, returning to North Carolina. Arrived there he immedi- ately resumed his office as Governor. The leaders of the army and of civil affairs do not seem to have known quite what to do about his actions. A man at liberty on parole, even though supposedly confined by the limits of an island and who had broken that parole to escape, appeared to them not quite an hon- orable man, much less a hero, and as such, unworthy to hold the office highest in the state. Burke, however, felt himself justified, and showed no scruples on the subject.
On April the twenty-second, 1782, Burke having at last found that the sentiment of the people and the Assembly was against him, asked of his own accord to resign, and the Assembly consented with great alacrity.
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THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS
The name of Alexander Martin was pro- posed to supersede Burke, while a vote of thanks and recognition of his service was pass- ed to permit his retiring with full dignity.
Burke died during the next year at Hillsborough, his home. Burke County, North Carolina, was named for him, not for the other greater Irishman, Edmund Burke, who gave expression in England to the creed of American freedom. Burke Square, where our Gover- nor's mansion stands today, was also named for him and no other, and had he not fallen upon such trying times and puzzling cir- cumstances, his name might shine undimmed by even a bit of poor judgment.
It has always appeared to the careless reader of history that the interval between the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown and the association of this state with the rest of the Union was an eneventful and negligible time, because it was not signalized by drama- tic events, as was the period of Revolutionary struggle just past.
We are required to count those seven or eight years long years, and to conceive the various perplexities they brought, in order to
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HISTORY OF WAKE COUNTY
see what a risk and what an experiment this government of ours was considered at first, and how many new questions pressed for so- lution upon the leaders everywhere, especially upon the members of the Constitutional Con- vention of Philadelphia.
It was clear enough that the Articles of Confederation which had been strong enough to unite the colonies against a common foe during the Revolution, could not sufficiently hold together the differing interests of the different states, during their period of recov- ery from the damage of the war. It was to meet those new internal dangers that the Con- stitution of the United States was framed.
Our fathers builded better than they knew. When drawn up, the Constitution was sub- mitted to each of the states for its approval by vote of its representatives. Nine states, by approving the articles, would make the Constitution valid for all. North Carolina summoned her Constitutional Convention to consider the new Constitution and recommend any amendments considered necessary to its adoption by herself.
This was done, and those amendments which were recommended stand mostly em-
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THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS
bodied in the United States Constitution today, all four being concerned with personal and states rights, which were not considered sufficiently guarded in the first draft, to satisfy our individualistic ideas in old North Carolina.
At the second Constitutional Convention in Fayetteville, amendments had been adopted by the Philadelphia convention, many states had already ratified, and North Carolina was content to fall into the procession. This assembly voted to ratify the Constitution at once, this being in November, 1789, and North Carolina being next to the last state to enter the Union. This is all general history, but what makes it necessary to review it here is the fact that the location of the City of Raleigh, and its choice as our permanent capi- tal, was mixed and sandwiched in with the grave and searching consideration of the Articles of Constitution. This was because the task was set for this first convention, not only of criticising and later ratifying the Con- stitution of the United States, but also of choosing a proper seat of government or state capital for North Carolina.
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