USA > North Carolina > Beaufort County > Some colonial history of Beaufort County, North Carolina Vol. 14 No. 2 > Part 4
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
The next morning found both Maynard and Teach ready for a deadly combat. The ships maneuvered, each trying to obtain the advantage of the other, and here it seems as if the pirates held the advantage, for they were familiar with the bars and shoals, whereas the attacking vessels had to feel their way, so to speak. Soon one of Maynard's ships grounded, and a broadside from Teach killed or wounded some twenty of his crew. But the brave lieutenant had come there either to take Teach or to be killed in the attempt; he did the former. After a series of maneuvers,
"O. R., II, 342.
"Ibid.
"Ibid., 341-349.
"Ashe, Our Own Pirates. "Booklet," v. 2.
36
JAMES SPRUNT HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
and a hand-to-hand struggle, the pirates were taken, only after Black Beard had fallen, faint and mortally wounded. There is one story that says Teach's head was cut off and was affixed to the bowsprit of Maynard's ship as she sailed into Bath Creek. Certain it is, however, that the pirates were taken; that their plunder was carried to Virginia and sold at auction by the gov- ernment upon the recommendation and testimony of Captain Brand, the confiscated goods bringing the large sum of 2,238 pounds; and that the commerce of the colonies again began to flow along at its normal pulse.47
In the narrative of the story of the capture of Teach, Maynard . is probably due most of the credit. His vessel remained clear, unlike that of Brand, which grounded. It is well to note that Maynard was responsible to Captain Brand, who was commander- in-chief of the two sloops.48 It is also to be noted that Major Steed Bonnett was not at hand when Teach was taken, but that he continued his life of a sea-marauder until he was finally cap- tured and hanged in Charleston by Colonel William Rhett. Thus passed two pirates whose daring and bloodiness and whose inti- mate knowledge of and interest in our county form remarkable contrasts to our knowledge of present-day life on and around Pam- lico and Albemarle sounds.
These pirates were products of their times, just as we today are products of the times in which we live. They often began with good intentions, and lived within the law, for they usually had permits to prey upon the commerce of France and Spain, who were in those times almost continually at war with England. But when French or Spanish merchantmen were scarce, it was too great a temptation to many of these buccaneers to allow a richly laden vessel flying the English flag to pass unmolested. When they had once broken the law it was the next and only logical step to become a pirate, as a great many of these commis- sioned privateers did.
Piracy, even, was not regarded as such a dreadful crime except by the unfortunate shipowners or ship crews who suffered as a result of their depredations. Pirates often received favor from
"O. R., II, 384.
"Ibid., 322.
1
.
37
SOME COLONIAL HISTORY OF BEAUFORT COUNTY
high officials in the Colonial Government; respect was almost uni- versally accorded them. It appeared after the capture of Teach that both Governor Charles Eden and Tobias Knight, the secre- tary of the Council, must have been aware of the real nature of the life and business of this pirate.49 Knight was caused to appear before the Governor and his council, and, though he did apparently clear himself, he was never secretary again, dying a month or so afterwards.
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE COUNTY.
Early social life in Beaufort County, as well as in all other counties of the colony, was hardly worthy of the name. The people were kind, and meant well, but owing to the very nature of early life in the vast wildernesses of the eastern part of the State, there was little time to be spent in merriment or diversion. There was always danger from the Indians; there was almost incessant toil for both the masters and their slaves in the clearing of the plantations, in the case of the wealthy planter, or of the small field in the case of the less opulent settlers; there was also such a sparseness of settlement that intercourse between a man and his nearest neighbors might take up the best part of a week.
About the beginning of the eighteenth century there came over what was then Bath County a change in social conditions. The county was becoming more thickly settled, and the hastily con- structed huts of the first settlers began to be replaced by the fore- runners, at least, of that type of southern home which is easily distinguished as the colonial mansion. Some few of these houses were constructed of brick, but the great majority of them were frame buildings, not particularly handsome structures, but com- modious and possessing an aspect of quiet and dignified honesty. The life in this early colonial period was, as I have said, strictly rural, each plantation or farm being of necessity its own social center, unit, and life. Right here we are able to account for the origin of what is so widespreadly known as "true Southern hospi- tality." People, secluded as they were, were always glad when visi-
"C. R., II, 341-349.
38
JAMES SPRUNT HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
tors or travelers came their way, for human nature likes and will have the companionship of other men's society whenever it is pos- sible to obtain it. Thus the traveler, whether stranger or friend, was a bearer of news; he was one who could break the monotony of the seclusion of early colonial farm life. Hence it was that the latch-string always hung on the outside, and hence it is that the southern colonies generally were characterized by their hospi- tality.
Until a comparatively late date there was but one church in our present county of Beaufort, and this was the church of St. Thomas Parish at Bath. The parish had been established long before the church was built in 1734, and the ministers were sent from England. But, aside from this, the religious life of Bath County was, like the farm life, isolated and necessarily self-con- tained and sustained on each farm. The head of the family always instructed his sons and his slaves in some of the funda- mental principles of ethics and religion, and in the case of the wealthier planters, where there was some one who could read, passages from Holy Writ were read to the family and the as- sembled dependent servants, sometimes at the close of each day, but usually at least once a week. Some misguided historians, in particular one George Chalmers, a British historian, and those who have been misled as a result of following this uninformed writer, have said that the colonists "derived no benefit from the coercion of laws, or the influences of religion." 50
Now, it has been proved beyond a doubt that these early settlers of Beaufort County were, as were all the other early colonial settlers, ardent believers in individual liberty and untrammeled religious freedom, but it is too condemnatory to say that the whole colony was essentially bad simply because they failed to support the ministers as they were expected, or to pay their tithes when money was the scarcest thing in the county. It would have been too unnatural, too radical a thing to happen for the colon- ists, who, either directly or somewhat indirectly (through the other colonies), came from England, to have so quickly departed from the observance of the rules of the Anglican Church, espe-
"Chalmers, Political Annals of the Present United Colonies, p. 166.
39
SOME COLONIAL HISTORY OF BEAUFORT COUNTY
cially so when they did not come to North Carolina for religious but for economic reasons.51 Hence, though churches were few and the parishioners at times disobedient, we may safely conclude that the Spirit among the early Beaufort County people was cher- ished and respected along with the Mind and the Body.
There were very few times when the people gathered together in comparatively large groups. They came to the courts and to the assemblies. They very seldom left their homes long at a time, for, if they did so, they might expect to return and find them plundered, robbed, or burned by the Indians. But on some occa- sions neighbors would come together to "log-rollings," by which was designated the process of cutting the primeval forests and clearing the land for tilling. Whole forests of the most beautiful long-leaf pine timber were cut and destroyed in this manner. Millions upon millions of feet of unmatchable pine lumber have been cut, rolled together by slaves and burnt, merely to get clear of it. How wasteful were our great-grandfathers, and yet they knew it not! On these occasions of neighborly aid there was a great deal of merriment, the brandy jug always being freely passed. Notwithstanding this, these log-rollings were a great factor in a social life that was otherwise very monotonous, if it was not positively dreary.
After the suppression, in 1713, of the Indian uprising of 1711, the county became more thickly settled than ever. The one great barrier to the peace and freedom of the settlers was removed when the power of the Indian tribes was broken, and the colony flour- ished between the years 1717 and 1735; the population of the North Carolina Colony increased from about 9,000 to about 50,000, for there were, according to McCulloh, about 40,000 whites then in the county.52 In 1732, according to the estimate of Governor Burrington, the whites were "full 30,000 and the negroes about 6,000." If we are to believe Mr. McCulloh's state- ment concerning the number of whites, and follow the same ratio of whites to blacks as given by Burrington, then the population of 1735 was, as I have said, about 50,000 souls, especially since
"1Raper, Social Life in Colonial North Carolina. "Booklet," v. 3. "O. R., II, xvii.
40
JAMES SPRUNT HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
the weight of authority seems to be against the historians who place the number at a smaller figure.
The beginning of the days of peace, plenty, and prosperity marked the establishment of some of the oldest and most renowned families in Beaufort County. The Readings, the Blounts, the Bonners, the Ormonds, the Roulhacs, the Respesses, the Browns, the Barrows, the Pattons and numerous other families whose names are familiar all over the county, came and settled immedi- ately after the Indian war of 1711, if they did not already live there. The greater part of these men were of the upper class, possessed of fine plantations and numbers of slaves, and the life they led was a gay one, despite the distance that often separated their estates. Balls were often given at these early colonial homes, where, according to tradition, "gay ladies in rich brocades trod the stately minuets with their gallant partners." The stately halls were resonant with music and the voices of the merry dancers, and the hospitable tables of the host were always laden with the choicest foods then to be had. The houses were furnished very richly; tapestry, plate, brocaded mahogany furniture and fine linen were very often imported from England. Altogether the social life in Colonial Beaufort County from 1725 to 1775 was gay and brilliant, this being true especially of the upper classes.
To summarize, then, we may say that the early colonial life of Beaufort County was a rather hard one; that for a time the most of the settlers were not planters on a large scale; that the dangers from the Indians, the troubles arising between the incompetent proprietary governors, and the pestilence of the swamps kept any great number of settlers from coming for thirty or forty years after the earliest settlements were made. We have also seen how the population, and hence the depth and expanse of social life increased after the Indian troubles were over, and after the county and colony passed from under proprietary rule to the royal gov- ernment of the King. We have also seen that with the growth of the county, and Bath in particular, that social life assumed a gayer aspect among the wealthier class, and a more enjoyable and satisfying aspect as far as all the people were concerned. The outbreak of the Revolution, then, found the people of Beaufort
41
SOME COLONIAL HISTORY OF BEAUFORT COUNTY
County a part of a rural colony, well content but ambitious, law- abiding but thoroughly infused with the ideas of liberty and inde- pendence, and, as a whole, as happy, as generous, as faithful, and as nearly independent as any section of any other of the original thirteen colonies.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON BEAUFORT COUNTY PERSONAGES.
Thomas Carey, 1678-1722, an owner of land in Bath Town, held several offices of public honor, profit, and trust in the colony, and was later one of the chief figures in the Carey Rebellion, as has been called the grand row that was stirred up over the gover- norship of North Carolina. He held offices in both North and South Carolina, being ex officio governor of this province from 1704 to 1710.
The only Colonial Governor who ever owned land and resided at Bath for any length of time was Charles Eden. He was Gov- ernor from 1712 until 1722, when he died. He lived at Salmon Creek in Bertie County, near Edenton, at the time of his death. He was too gentle a man to successfully cope with the times in which he lived, but under his rule the Indians were subdued, and the colony prospered. Eden it was who was accused of being one of Teach's accomplices, but this accusation lacks proof. Prob- ably there was only envy and malice back of the accusation.
Christopher Gale was an Englishman who came to North Caro- lina in the last decade of the seventeenth century. He was a man of considerable learning, and was justice of the General Court in 1703. Later he was appointed a member of the provincial council or deputy to the Lords Proprietors. He was major of militia; commissioner to South Carolina in 1712; captured by the French in the same year; collector of customs, and attorney-general. In
42
JAMES SPRUNT HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
1712 he became chief justice, holding this office until 1717. Again he was reinstated into the office in 1722, when he served two years. He was one of the original vestrymen of St. Thomas Parish, being appointed in 1715. He went to England in 1724, but soon re- turned, being made chief justice for the third time. In 1727 he was appointed one of the commissioners to run the boundary be- tween North Carolina and Virginia. His wife was Mrs. Sara Harvey, widow of Governor Harvey. He died at Edenton, in Chowan, though he resided at Bath for the most of his life.
Tobias Knight, secretary to the government of Carolina, ves- tryman in the original vestry of St. Thomas Parish, deputy to John Danson and Lord Craven, Lords Proprietors, lived at Bath. In Governor Eden's time he was suspected of being confederate with Edward Teach, the pirate. He was a collector of the cus- toms, and was chief justice for a short time before his death.
John Lawson, surveyor-general of North Carolina until his death in September, 1711, at the hands of the Indians, was a citi- zen and a landowner in Bath. He was our earliest historian, and was a good naturalist, in addition to being a good writer and sur- veyor. The debt that North Carolina owes to this consistent chronicler who wrote Lawson's History of North Carolina, as it is generally known today, is no small one.
Dr. Patrick Maule was another of the first vestrymen of St. Thomas Church. "Mr. Maule, my Deputy, is a man of learning, and has a plentiful fortune," says Edmond Porter, Esquire, judge of the admiralty court.53 He had been deputy surveyor, and was one of the trustees appointed for the Bath Library in 1715. He was also justice of the peace for Beaufort precinct, and lived at Maule's Point, below Bath, which still holds his name. He mar- ried Mary, daughter of John Porter, senior.54
"O. R., III, 514.
"See elsewhere in these notes.
43
SOME COLONIAL HISTORY OF BEAUFORT COUNTY
Edward Moseley was one of the purchasers of land in the Town of Bath. Moseley's name stands out clear in the annals of early North Carolina, though he is not very intimately concerned with the history of Bath and Beaufort County. He was a member of the council in 1705; Virginia boundary line commissioner both in 1710 and in 1728; public treasurer in 1715; surveyor-general in 1723; South Carolina boundary line commissioner in 1737; commissioner to revise laws in 1740; chief baron of the exchequer in 1743; commissioned to run Granville's line in 1746, and was speaker of the Assembly at various times after 1715.55
John Porter was one of the four men in whom was invested the oversight of the town of Bath after its reincorporation in 1715. He was speaker of the Assembly in 1697; he was a mem- ber of the general court, attorney-general, and a member of the council at later dates. He always espoused the cause of the people in their fight against tyranny for their chartered rights, taking the popular side in the Carey Rebellion.
Robert Palmer was a member of the assembly, of the council, and was a surveyor general of His Majesty's late in the colonial period. Palmer lived at Bath, and was a consistent member of St. Thomas Church, wherein the body of his wife lies buried.
John Worley, a vestryman of Chowan Parish, a member of the council, and a justice of the general court, lived on the tract of land on which Washington stands between the years 1727 and 1729.
"Grimes, Some Short North Carolina Biographies. North Carolina Day Program, 1904.
44
JAMES SPRUNT HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
MEMBERS OF THE ASSEMBLY.
According to the law of 1741, Beaufort County was entitled to two seats in the general assembly, and Bath Town, by virtue of the Bath Town Act, was entitled to one member. The assemblies usually met once every two years, except in the case of called meetings, at different towns within the colony, Bath, Newbern, Wilmington, and Halifax being the towns most frequently honored with meetings. The assembly passed such laws as were neces- sary to the welfare of the colony which were not embraced in the royal statutes of Great Britain. It provided for the safety and welfare of the province, and in short, it performed functions very similar to the functions performed by a session of the general assembly today. When a member was duly chosen to represent his town or county, there was nothing to keep him from represent- ing the people for the rest of his life, provided he looked out for the welfare of his people, made a good public servant, and deported himself in a proper fashion in the assembly.
A list of the members of the general assembly from Beaufort County and Bath Town from 1731, the year in which Beaufort County was regarded as a separate county, up to and including the year 1775, the year of the outbreak of the Revolution, follows :
Year From Beaufort County
From Bath Town
1731 Edward Salter, Simon Alderson Roger Kenyon
1733 Maj. Robert Turner, Dr. Patrick Maule. John Lahey
1734 Edward Salter, Maj. Robert Turner. Roger Kenyon
1735 Maj. Robert Turner, Dr. Patrick Maule .Roger Kenyon
1740 Simon Alderson, Benjamin Peyton. . Roger Kenyon
1742 Simon Alderson, Benjamin Peyton . Robert Turner
1744 John Barrow, Benjamin Peyton. . Michael Coutanch .
1746 John Barrow, Benjamin Peyton
Wyriot Ormond
1747 John Barrow, Benjamin Peyton.
Michael Coutanch
1749 John Barrow, Wyriot Ormond.
.Michael Coutanch
1753 John Barrow, Wyriot Ormond.
Michael Coutanch
1754 John Hardy, William Spier
Michael Coutanch
1755 John Hardy, William Spier
. Michael Coutanch
1758 John Hardy, William Spier
Michael Coutanch
1760
John Barrow, John Simpson
Michael Coutanch
1761
John Barrow, Thomas Respess Michael Coutanch
1762
John Barrow, Thomas Respess. Robert Palmer
1762 John Barrow, James Ellison. .
Wyriot Ormond
1764 John Barrow, Thomas Bonner
Wyriot Ormond
1766 John Barrow, Thomas Respess.
Patrick Gordon
.
45
SOME COLONIAL HISTORY OF BEAUFORT COUNTY
Year From Beaufort County From Bath Town
1767 John Barrow, Thomas Respess.
Peter Blinn
1769 James Bonner, Moses Hare. . Wyriot Ormond
1771 Thomas Bonner, Moses Hare .John Maule
1773 Thomas Respess, Roger Ormond.
. Wyriot Ormond
1773 Thomas Respess, Roger Ormond (Special sess.) . Wyriot Ormond
1774 Thomas Respess, Roger Ormond. William Brown
1775 Thomas Respess, Jr., Roger Ormond William Brown
Beaufort County was well represented at each of the provincial congresses which met to provide for the safety and welfare of the state. In the provincial congress which met at Newbern, August 25, 1774, Roger Ormond and Thomas Respess represented Beaufort County, and William Brown sat for Bath.
In the second provincial congress which met at Newbern, April 3, 1775, were present Roger Ormond and Thomas Respess, Jr., rep- resenting Beaufort County, and William Brown represented Bath.
At the third provincial congress which assembled in Hillsboro August 25, 1775, Roger Ormond, Thomas Respess, Jr., John Pat- ten, and John Cooper represented Beaufort County at large, and William Brown Bath.
At the fourth congress, met at Halifax, April 4, 1776, Roger Ormond, Thomas Respess, Jr., and John Cooper represented the county, and William Brown again represented Bath.
At the last provincial congress which met at Halifax on Novem- ber 20, 1776, Messrs. John Barrow, Thomas Respess, Jr., Francis Jones, and Robert Tripp sat for Beaufort County, and William Brown for Bath Town.
The third provincial congress, meeting at Hillsboro, appointed as officers in the Continental Regiment of Beaufort County James Bonner, Colonel; Thomas Bonner, Lieutenant-Colonel; Roger Or- mond, 1st Major, and William Brown, 2d Major.
.
PB-31548-SB 19-A J-5
STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Stanford, California
PRINTED IN U.S.A.
1
-
-
1
-
1
1
975.606 J29 V. 14 110.21 1916
Stanford University Libraries Stanford, California
Return this book on or before date due.
MAY 25 !
MAY 25 1989
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.