USA > North Carolina > Sketches of North Carolina, historical and biographical : illustrative of the principles of a portion of her early settlers > Part 19
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perhaps in all the United States. And his religious creed as to doctrines, and also as to experience, has been the creed of the Presbyterians of Mecklenburg. Soundness of doctrine, according to the Confession of Faith, has been maintained by his congregation at all hazards-and a standard of warm-hearted piety and ardent de- votion has been handed down as a legacy from their fathers to suc- ceeding generations to which the church has always looked with kindling desire. Mr. Caruthers tells us, Mr. Craighead was sub- ject, in the latter part of his life, to dejection of spirits. This of course lessened his capability to labor ; and may account for the application from Rocky River for supplies in 1761, as he was the only minister in the country.
Besides this double influence of the man, living and speaking after him, much of his spirit has been inherited by his descendants, and with it the affections of the people. He left two sons, and several daughters. One son, Thomas, licensed in 1778, supplied the congregation of his father for some time ; but declining a set- tlement in North Carolina, he ultimately removed to Tennessee ;- an eloquent preacher and warm-hearted man. He died a few years since near Nashville ; the latter part of his life rendered less useful by his difference with his brethren on the subject of the agency of the Word in the conversion of men. His third daughter, Rachel, was married to the Reverend David Caldwell of Guilford, whose life has been given to the public by his successor, the Reve- rend Eli W. Caruthers, and became the mother of Samuel C. Cald- well, whose whole ministerial life, with small exception, was devot- ed to this, his grandfather's charge. His memorial, testifying to his service for thirty-five years, is near the new brick meeting-house.
After the removal of Dr. Morrison to Davidson College, a great grandson of Craighead succeeded to his pulpit, John Madison Mc- Knitt Caldwell, the son of S. C. Caldwell, and served them till the year 1845.
" Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, from henceforth, yea, saith the spirit, that they may rest from their labors, and their works do follow them."
The immediate successor of Mr. Craighead was Joseph Alexan- der, a connexion of the McKnitt branch of Alexanders, a man of education and talents, of small stature, and exceedingly animated in his pulpit exercises. Licensed by New Castle Presbytery in 1767, in October of that year he presented his credentials to Hanover Presbytery at the Bird church, in Goochland, and accepted a call from
13
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Sugar Creek. His ordination took place with that of Mr. David Caldwell on March 4th, 1768, at Buffalo. He read his lecture on John, 3d Chapter, 3d to 5th verse, on the third of March, and also his trial sermon on the words-" There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus." Mr. Pattello presided at the in- stallation. On the third Friday in May, Mr. Caldwell performed the services of his installation as pastor of Sugar Creek.
A fine scholar, he, in connection with Mr. Benedict, taught a clas- sical school of high excellence and usefulness. From Sugar Creek he removed to Bullock's Creek, South Carolina, and was long known in the church as a minister and teacher of youth for profes- sional life. A volume of his sermons was given to the public after his death.
While the Presbyterians were laboring in vain to get a charter for a college, in Charlotte, confirmed by the king, the notorious Fanning offered to get a university of which he himself should be chancellor, and Mr. Joseph Alexander, who was noted as a teacher, should be first professor. But much as the people desired a col- lege and loved Alexander, they could not take one with such a chancellor.
Returning to the Brick church, we enter the grave-yard by the roadside on the south. The first white stone that meets the eye, marks the grave of S. C. Caldwell, directly beneath the communion table of the log church he long occupied as minister, the spot where he stood when he took his ordination vows, and where he chose to be buried when he should have finished his course. Around the preacher sleeps the congregation who worshipped in the house that stood here during the Revolution. The pastor and people and building are passed away. The children that assembled here, in Revolutionary times, have grown old, and scarcely here and there one remains to tell the history of the exploits and sufferings of the war, and the traditions of the settlement. The man that sleeps in that grave led the flock of his grandfather through the troublesome times that succeeded the Revolution, when the infidelity of France rolled its burning waves with fury across the whole continent.
Samuel C. Caldwell, the son of David Caldwell of Guilford, and grandson of Alexander Craighead, was licensed to preach the gos- pel, when but nineteen years of age, by the Presbytery of Orange. Dr. Hall, of Iredell, used his influence, and none knew how to exer- cise it better with young men, in persuading him to accept the call made by his grandfather's congregation ; and preached the ordina- tion sermon on February 21st, 1792, at which time Mr. Caldwell
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became Pastor of Sugar Creek and Hopewell churches. The five years that elapsed between his licensure and ordination had much of it been spent in these congregations ; and the success attending his ministry led the people earnestly to desire his settlement. Dr. Hall, in a note to the sermon delivered on the occasion of his ordi- nation, says,-" Under Mr. Caldwell's first ministrations in those congregations, it pleased God to send a reviving time, in conse- quence of which, there were upwards of seventy young communi- cants admitted to the Lord's table in one day."
He resided for a time with David Robinson by the famous Spring ; and John Robinson, the son, afterwards pastor of Poplar Tent, pur- sued his studies for the ministry in the same room with him.
Being united in marriage with Abigail Bane, the daughter of John M'Knitt Alexander, he took his residence in Hopewell. After her death, which occurred in 1802, leaving him with two motherless children, circumstances occurred which led to his giving up the charge of Hopewell in 1805, and he removed to Sugar Creek, giving three-fourths of his time to Sugar Creek; the other fourth of his labors he expended at Charlottetown for a time ; then at Paw Creek till a church was organized, which he relinquished to Mr. William- son ; and then at Mallard Creek till a church was organized there. In 1805 he opened a classical school, which he carried on for years with the approbation of Presbytery, as expressed on their minutes.
His second wife was a daughter of Robert Lindsay, of Guilford, who bore him nine children.
Of great self-command, clear in his conception of truth, and plain in his enunciation both in style and manner, amiable in his dispo- sition and manners, kind from his natural feelings, and from the benevolence of the gospel he loved and preached, a lover of the truth, he passed his whole ministerial life, after his ordination, in connection with the prominent congregation that had called him to be pastor. His modesty and mildness might have led an inexperi- enced or hasty enemy to suppose that he might be easily turned from his purpose, or driven to silence by vehement, clamorous oppo- nents. But the manner in which he met opposition, so kind and yet so entirely unflinching, so willing to do justice to his opponents, and so devoted to the cause of truth and righteousness, made all. friends feel that any cause was safe in his hands; and his enemies, that it was easier to attack him than to drive him from his position, or come off honorably from the contest.
In the infidel controversy which came upon him soon after his settlement, men learned to love him, even if unconvinced by his ar-
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guments. And when he was harshly charged, because he would not yield his own pulpit and his long accustomed hour of preaching to his people, for the purpose of permitting efforts to be made to divide his congregation, the perfect coolness and unwavering resolution with which he met the assault, tempered the storm to a harmless breeze. He had enough of the cool and calm resolution of his father, David Caldwell, of Guilford, the sixth minister in Carolina, to make him immoveable, when he felt convinced ; and enough of the warm heart and ardent piety of his mother, the daughter of Craighead, to make him both lovely and beloved.
Hall of Iredell came down like a torrent, a storm, a tempest ; his friend Wilson, of Rocky River, poured out his common sense views of gospel truth like a steady day's rain ; his neighbor and inti- mate Robinson, of Poplar Tent, was like a summer day with a storm of lightning and thunder rending the oaks; Wallis, of Providence, like a hot sun that melted by its direct rays; while Caldwell, of Sugar Creek, was like the sunshine and showers of April. His people loved him; and felt they could do nothing else. The memory of the righteous is blessed.
His epitaph was drawn up by his friend Wilson, of Rocky River.
SACRED to the memory of the late REV. SAMUEL C. CALDWELL, who departed this life Oct. 3d, 1826, in the 59th year of his age, and the 35th of his pastoral office of Sugar Creek Congregation. His long and harmonious continuance in that relation is his best Eulogium.
The Rev. Hall Morrison, his successor, became the pastor of the church in 1827, and continued for ten years, preaching a fourth part of his time in Charlotte-town. In 1837, he was removed to the Presidential chair of Davidson College.
His successor was John M. M. Caldwell, the son of S. C. Caldwell and Abigail Bane Alexander, who resigned his office in 1845, and removed to Georgia. A younger son is a minister of the gospel in South Carolina. Who shall say that the covenant of God is not vi- sited from the fathers to the children, in the infinite mercy of God ?
Step a little further into the middle of the yard, under the shade of these old oaks, and you may read on an humble stone, the name of one that will never be forgotten in Carolina, the Chairman of
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the Convention of 1775, and of the Committee of Public Safety that succeeded, and an elder of the church.
ABRAHAM ALEXANDER, died April 23d, 1786, Aged 68 years. " Let me die the death of the Righteous, and let my last end be like his."
That he was a leading magistrate of the county, will be seen, by inspecting the records of the court of Mecklenburg, now in the clerk's office in Charlotte, the county seat.
As you look round upon the numerous headstones, you perceive that the Alexander family must have been very numerous in the time of the Revolution, and since, in Mecklenburg. Of the same original stock, they were of different degrees of consanguinity. The tradition of their emigration from Ireland to America is sin- gular. Among the emigrations from Scotland to Ireland, and from Ireland to Scotland, during the period intervening 1610 and 1688, to which the Presbyterians were driven as the means of escape from persecution for conscience sake, there was one to Ireland, in which seven brothers of the name of Alexander formed part. Un- able to endure the harassing interference which became more and more grievous the few years preceding the Revolution in 1688, many of the ministers being put in prison for holding a fast, and the private members of the church suffering oppressions equally intolerable, they turned their eyes to America. A plan was formed for their transportation to the New World. On the eve of their departure, they sent to Scotland for their old preacher, to baptize their children, and administer the consolations of the gospel. The minister, a faithful and fearless man, came ; the families and their effects were embarked, the ordinances of the gospel were ad- ministered in quietness, on board the vessel, and with a solemnity becoming the occasion. An armed company, that had been prowling about, came on board, broke up the company, and lodged the minis- ter in gaol. Towards night, the old matron, who had been piously covenanting for her grand-children, addressed the alarmed com- pany, " Men, gang ye awa', tak our minister out o' the jail, and tak him, good soule, with us to Ameriky." Her voice had never been disobeyed. Before morning, the minister was on board, and the vessel out of the harbor. Having no family, the minister cheerfully proceeded on the voyage, and with many prayers and
.
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thanksgivings, they were landed on the island of Manhattan, where the city of New York now stands. Part of the company remained on Manhattan, and one of their descendants, William Alexander, was known in the war of the Revolution, a Major-General in the American service, and commonly called Lord Sterling, having suc- ceeded to an estate and the title. The others took up their abode for a time in Jersey, and then removed to Pennsylvania. There they intermarried, and mingled with their countrymen, and their de- scendants, in great numbers, emigrated to the Catawba.
Families by the name of Alexander were the most numerous in Mecklenburg at the time of the Revolution; next to them was the Harris connexion ; these two, with their kindred, embraced at that time about one-third of the county.
The log meeting-house that stood here, whose foundations you may in part see, the second occupied by the congregation that now worship in that brick house, was the place of worship while Mrs. Jackson, and her son, Andrew, inade Sugar Creek their refuge. The widow, an emigrant from Ireland, had buried her husband on the Waxhaw, then claimed by North Carolina, but now within the settled bounds of South Carolina, and, compelled by the sufferings of war, had fled for refuge to Mecklenburg.
After the fall of Charleston, the British army spread out over the country. Col. Buford, from Bedford, Virginia, moving along the Waxhaw, as he supposed, out of danger, was suddenly set upon by Tarleton, who had been upon his trail. The soldiers were pre- paring their breakfast, and as the British came in sight, there was much discussion whether they should fight a superior force, or abandon the field to the enemy. It was finally resolved to fight it out to the last, by the determined course of Capt. Wallace, from Rockbridge, Virginia. Tarleton, in his account of the battle, says, that he sent a flag, and proposed a surrender ; that, finally, the ne- gotiation was broken off by the two following communications :
1st. From Tarleton to Buford. May 29th, 1780.
(After making preparations for Buford's surrender in five articles, which, he said, could not be repeated.) " If you are rash enough to reject them, the blood be upon your head."
2d. The laconic reply of Buford. Waxhaw, May 29th, 1780.
" Sir,-I reject your proposals, and shall defend myself to the last extremity.
" I have the honor to be,
" ALEX. BUFORD, Col."
The event of the battle is well known. Before night, the Wax-
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haw meeting-house was a hospital, and Buford's regiment killed, wounded, or dispersed. The females and children fled to escape the ravaging track of the relentless enemy. Mrs. Jackson took up her abode with her two children, in Sugar Creek congregation, with widow Wilson, and remained a part of the summer.
This brave woman, and two of her sons, perished in the war, and left her youngest son a solitary member of the family. Her death was occasioned by a fever, brought on by a visit to Charleston, to carry necessaries to some friends and relations on board the prison- ship, whose deplorable sufferings, she, with four or five other ladies, was permitted to relieve. On her way home, she was seized with the prison fever, and soon ended her days. Somewhere between what was then called " Quarter-house" and the city of Charleston is her unknown grave.
Men have often wondered how her son Andrew, in his most thoughtless days, always treated a faithful minister of the gospel so respectfully ; and why, after encouraging his wife in a religious life, he himself should, in his age, become a member of the Presbyterian church. The cause is found laid deep in his childhood. His mother was a member of the Waxhaw congregation, and he had seen and felt the influence of faithful ministers when a child.
Turning towards the middle of the yard, you may read the simple memorial of Mrs. Flinn, the widowed mother of the Rev. Andrew Flinn, D.D., who held an eminent place among the clergy of North and South Carolina, whose childhood was passed in Sugar Creek.
Along this great road that passes this yard and house, the British forces pursued the armed band that had been collected for the tem- porary defence of Charlotte; and a little beyond that hill, fell Major Locke, and a little further on, Graham was wounded. Near by, lives Aunt Susy, who, with her mother, watched and trembled over him the night he lay exhausted after that sad day's encounter, when, as the British historian says, " that company of horsemen be- hind the Court-house, kept in check the whole British army."
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CHAPTER XV.
HOPEWELL, AND THE RECORDS OF THE CONVENTION.
TEN miles west from Davidson College, and two east from the Catawba River, in Mecklenburg county, stands Hopewell church. Entering near the northwest corner, on the north side of the bury- ing ground which lies a little south of the church, and going diagonally to the middle of the yard, you will find a low grave- stone, on the top of which are sculptured two drawn swords, and beneath them the motto, Arma Libertatis. The inscription is-
In Memory of FRANCIS BRADLEY, A friend of his country, and privately slain by the enemies of his country, Nov. 14th, 1780, aged 37 years.
Tradition says that this man was the largest and stoutest man in the country-hated by the few tories-and much desired as a prisoner by the British officers, for the activity and energy with which he harassed their scouts and foraging parties, and the fatal aim of his gun in taking off their sentries, particularly while the army lay at Charlotte.
On the day of his death, seeing four tories lurking near his house, he took his gun and went to capture them, or drive them from his neighborhood. A scuffle ensued, in which one of the tories succeeded in wresting his gun from his hand, and with it gave him a fatal wound.
Near by this stone you may observe a brick wall about six feet long, and two feet high, without any inscription : that is upon the grave of GENERAL DAVIDSON, who fell by the rifle-shot of a tory, at Cowan's Ferry, a few miles distant from this place, as he was resisting the crossing of the British army, in 1781, when Morgan and Green were conveying the prisoners, taken at the Cowpens, to Virginia, for safe keeping. After the army of the enemy had
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passed on, his friend Captain Wilson, whose grave is near by, found him plundered and stripped of every garment ; laying him across his horse, he brought him hastily by night to this place of sepulture.
Congress voted a monument to this man-most beloved in his county-a sacrifice to the public welfare. But the resolution has slept on the records of the Congress,-and the grave of the general is without an inscription.
The college, patronized by his children and friends, bears his name, and is rising in usefulness and reputation.
By the east wall is a row of marble slabs, all bearing the name of Alexander. On one is this short inscription :-
John McKnitt Alexander, who departed this life July 10th, 1817. Aged 84.
This is upon the grave of the Secretary of the Convention in Charlotte, in 1775. By his side rests his wife, JANE BANE.
At a little distance southwardly is the grave of the late pastor of this congregation, JOHN WILLIAMSON.
Ephraim Brevard, the penman of the Declaration, and Hezekiah Alexander, the clearest-headed magistrate of the county, sleep in this yard in unknown graves.
Hopewell and Sugar Creek are cotemporaries in point of settle- ment, though, in church organization, Sugar Creek has the pre- eminence. The families were from the same original stock in the North of Ireland ; some were born in Pennsylvania, and some only sojourned there for a time ; they were connected by affinity and consanguinity ; and more closely united by mutual exposures in the wilderness, and the ordinances of the gospel, which were highly prized.
Scattered settlements were made along the Catawba, from Beattie's to Mason's Ford, some time before the country became the object of emigration to any considerable extent, probably about the year 1740. As the extent and fertility of the beautiful prairies became known, the Scotch-Irish, seeking for settlements, began to follow the traders? path, and join the adventurers in this south- ern and western frontier. By 1745, the settlements, in what is now Mecklenburg and Cabarrus counties, were numerous ; and about 1750, and onward for a few years, the settlements grew dense for a frontier, and were uniting themselves into congrega-
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tions, for the purpose of enjoying the ministrations of the gospel in the Presbyterial form. The foundations for Sugar Creek, Hopewell, Steel Creek, New Providence, Poplar Tent, Rocky River Centre, and Thyatira, were laid almost simultaneously : Rocky River was most successful in obtaining a settled pastor. The others received the church organization and bounds during the visit of Rev. Messrs. McWhorter and Spencer, sent by the Synod of Philadelphia for that purpose, in the year 1764. Mis- sionaries began to traverse the country very early, sent out by the Synod of Philadelphia, and the different Presbyteries of New Brunswick, New Castle, and Donegal.
The enterprising settlers, inured to toil, were hardy and long lived. The constitutions that grew up in Irelard and Pennsylva- nia seemed to gather strength and suppleness from the warm cli- mate and fertile soil of their new abodes. Most of the settlers lived long enough to witness the dawning of that prosperity that awaited their children. They sought the union of liberty, and property, and religious privilege for their posterity. Year after year were " supplications " sent to Pennsylvania and Jersey for ministers, or missionaries, and effort after effort was made to re- tain these visitors as settled pastors, but all in vain, previously to 1756; when the troubles from the Indian war, called Braddock's war, united with the wishes of the people, and three Presbyterian ministers were settled in Carolina in that year, or preparations were made for their settlement-Craighead, and M'Aden, and Campbell. Those were days of log cabins and plain fare, when carriages were unknown, and the sight of wheels was an era in the settlements. "That man was the first that crossed the Yadkin with wheels," designated the man in whose house the first court in Mecklenburg was held.
" Times are greatly altered," said old Mr. Alexander some thirty years ago, on a summer evening, to the Rev. Alexander Flinn, D.D., of Charleston, South Carolina, who came to visit his venerated benefactor, in his carriage, with his wife and servants, "times are greatly altered, Andy, since you went to college in your tow cloth pantaloons," said the old man, with a welcome of gladness mingled with fear, lest the simplicity of his youth had been perverted in that flourishing city.
And times were greatly altered with both, since their youth, when the one came to Mecklenburg just " out of his time," and the other left his widowed mother under the patronage of his friend, to enter upon a college life. Both commenced life in hon
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orable poverty,-both were enterprising in a young country,-and both were eminently successful in that course of life in which choice, and providential circumstances, had led them to put forth their strength.
John McKnitt Alexander, descended from Scotch-Irish ances- tors, was born in Pennsylvania, near the Maryland line, in 1733. Having served his apprenticeship to the tailor's trade, he followed the tide of his kinsmen and countrymen, who were then seeking an abode beyond the Yadkin, in the pastures of the deer and buf- falo. The emigrants, a church-going and church-loving people in the " green isle," carried to their new home all the habits and manners of their mother, the wild and strange residence in Caro- lina permitted. A church-going people are a dress-loving people. The sanctity and decorum of the house of God are inseparably associated with a decent exterior ; and the spiritual, heavenly ex- ercises of the inner man are incompatible with a defiled and tat- tered, or slovenly mein. All regular Christian assemblies culti- vate a taste for dress, and none more so than the hardy pioneer settlers of Upper Carolina, and the valley and mountains of Vir- ginia. In their approach to the King of Kings, in company with their neighbors, the men, resting from their labors, washed their hands and shaved their faces, and put on their best and carefully preserved dress. Their wives and daughters, attired in their best, as they assembled at the place of worship, were the more lovely in the sight of their friends. The privations of the new settle- ment were for a time forgotten ; and the greetings at the place of assemblage, from Sabbath to Sabbath, or whenever they could assemble to hear the gospel, spoke the commingled feelings of friendship and religion.
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