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History of Mecklenburg County and the City of Charlotte (1740 - 1903) E-Book

Daniel Augustus Tompkins

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Herausgeber: Jazzybee Verlag
Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
Sprache: Englisch

Beschreibung

This volume is one of the best county histories which have appeared in the South. It does not confine itself to genealogical and patriotic matters; but it very properly goes into the field of industrial and social history. This piece of good sense is, no doubt, the result of the author's long identification with the business interests of his county. He was known far and wide as a successful manufacturer, and, as a writer on topics connected with the cotton industry, he has done much good work. He has drawn from the "North Carolina Colonial Records" for his account of the early settlement of Mecklenburg; he has wrought into his book much of the revolutionary history of the period. In regard to the long-disputed matter of the "Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence" he has been content to tell the story simply in support of the "Declaration." He has not gone into the features of the controversy, but lets the reader judge from the documents given in the second part of this book to substantiate the theory. It is fortunate that this is so, for Mecklenburg county, aside from its disputed "Declaration," has had a history full of romantic interest. No other county in the State has surpassed it in its firm adherence to liberty and democracy.

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Leseprobe

History Of Mecklenburg County And The City Of Charlotte

(1740 To 1903)

DANIEL A. TOMPKINS

History of Mecklenburg County, Daniel A. Tompkins

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9

Deutschland

ISBN: 9783849658113

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

[email protected]

VOLUME ONE— NARRATIVE.

"All hail to thee, thou good old State,

the noblest of the band!

Who raised the flag of Liberty, in

this our native land!

All hail to thee, thy worthy sons were

first to spurn the yoke,

The tyrant's fetters from their hands,

at Mecklenburg they broke."

EXPLANATION.

This history is published in two volumes. The first volume contains the simple narrative, and the second is in the nature of an appendix, containing ample discussions of important events, a collection of biographies and many official documents justifying and verifying the statements in this volume. At the end of each chapter is given the sources of the information therein contained, and at the end of each volume is an index.

INTRODUCTION.

History of a county is closely associated with history of the State, as the health of an arm is with the condition of the whole physical structure. An account of the life of a prominent man in a community is a history of that community in the same way that, the history of a representative county is a history of the commonwealth. This book is written primarily to preserve Mecklenburg history for the inspiration of present and future generations of Mecklenburg people, but the aim extends further than this on the presumption that this is a typical southern county and hence, by deductive reasoning, its growth portrays the effects subsequent to certain industrial activities throughout the South.

Prominent among the author's incentives was the desire to investigate, from an industrial standpoint, regarding the lack of industries until within the last half century and the causes of business revival since. He had no personal opinions to illustrate, but investigated and brought forth this accumulation of facts so that he and others might be enabled to form opinions based on truth. The history preaches no doctrine and leans to no side. It is the result of five years of almost continuous work, of painstaking and laborious investigations, of considerable financial expenditure, and of a guiding desire to learn and to record the historical events of the county.

The author is not a native of Mecklenburg. He was raised on a farm in South Carolina, and was educated at the South Carolina College and at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, and though active participation in Charlotte life in recent years has made him a thorough citizen, he feels that he can view in an impartial manner the events herein discussed. The data was gathered from a library of North Carolina history and literature, unpublished State and county records and manuscripts, the Colonial and State Records, private correspondence and diaries and business records, testimony of aged and reliable citizens, and files of Charlotte newspapers from 1824 to 1903.

D. A. Tompkins. October 1, 1903.

CHAPTER I. THE COLONISTS.

October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus landed on one of the Bahama Islands named by him San Salvador. He never touched the mainland of North America, though on his third voyage he visited the coast of South America. In 1499. Americus Vespucius, a bold and intelligent navigator, published a map of the coast of North America, and wrote vivid descriptions of the lands he visited, so that his contemporaries named the continent America, in his honor. In 1497, an Englishman, John Cabot, discovered the continent of North America, and hence England assumed the right of exclusive possession on account of prior discovery. In 1498, John Cabot and his son, Sebastian, explored the whole coastline from Labrador to the mouth of Chesapeake Bay.

The Spaniards were the first settlers of the new land — along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, in what is now Mexico. In 1535, Jacques Cartier, a Frenchman, sailed up the St. Lawrence as far as Montreal, and planted a fort on the heights of Quebec in 1541. In 1562, and the years following, the French Huguenots made a settlement in Florida, but were destroyed by the Spaniards, who had established St. Augustine in 1565. from which the French were unable to drive them. The French planted more settlements in what is now Nova Scotia — then called Acadia, and all the way up the St. Lawrence, at the beginning of the Seventeenth century. From the year 1600. France and England were the only real rivals for the colonization of North America. The resistance of the Dutch in the Netherlands and the destruction of the Spanish Armada broke the power of Spain.

In 1578, the English fitted out an expedition to settle Labrador. But the hundred settlers were afraid to be left alone on that bleak coast, and the colony returned without accomplishing anything. In 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh, as representatives of England, went through the form of claiming Newfoundland, whose valuable fisheries were already supplying Europe with fish, a hundred and fifty vessels from France and forty from England being engaged in that trade. In 1584, Raleigh sent out two ships to take a more southerly course from England, and they came to Roanoke Island, North Carolina. The whole country then between the parallels of 33 degrees and 45 degrees north latitude was named by Raleigh, Virginia, in honor of England's virgin queen, Elizabeth. The first colony on Roanoke Island was of men only, and it failed. The idea was exploration rather than colonization. The second colony, on the same island, contained women and men, and here, April 18, 1687, the first white child born in America, Virginia Dare, first saw the light. The colony was left in good condition with promises of succor from England. But when the ships came, the colonists had all disappeared. The Indians of Roanoke Island had been described by one of these colonists to be "most gentle, loving and faithful, and such as live after the manner of the golden age." The disappearance of the colony has remained a mystery, though it is claimed that the whites intermarried with the Indians, and that the Croatan Indians of Robeson county are the descendants of the mixed race. This is the only answer that has ever been given to the question, "What became of the lost colony?"

In April, 1607, the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States, was made at Jamestown, in Virginia. The Spaniards had been upon the very spot eighty years before, but they had given up, and the English remained permanently. After Jamestown came Henrico, Hampton, New Bermuda, and other settlements in Virginia. In 1619, a Virginia Assembly met. In that year also a Dutch vessel brought the first negro slaves, twenty of them, to America. The Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock the next year, in 1620, making a permanent colony there. Between them and the Virginia Colony the Dutch had established themselves in the New Netherlands. As early as 1610, they built a fort on the Hudson at Albany, and had put up a few log huts on Manhattan Island, which they called New Amsterdam. Captain Argall was sent from Virginia to subdue New Amsterdam and did so, but so soon as he went back the Dutch threw off the English yoke. In 1651 they conquered a Swedish colony and became the rivals of the Puritans in trade with the Indians. The Dutch extended their settlements from Connecticut to the Delaware. In 1664, they gave up their town. New Amsterdam, to Colonel Nicholas, acting for the Duke of York, and both New Netherlands and New Amsterdam changed their names to New York.

In 1633, .the Colony of Maryland, with its liberal charter, was founded by Lord Baltimore, and it was settled from Virginia, from the New Netherlands and by the Catholic immigrants from England. Delaware had been first settled by the Swedes, who had acknowledged the authority of the Dutch. The Swedes had also been the first settlers of Pennsylvania. In 1681, Charles the Second granted a charter for the whole country to William Penn, the Quaker, and named it Pennsylvania. The same year a party from Germany settled in what is now known as Germantown. The Quakers, who were persecuted in England, came over in great numbers. Other Germans followed and colonized Western Pennsylvania. From about this time began the immigration of the Scotch-Irish, from Ulster county, Ireland, in scattering bands, into New England, in larger numbers into New York and New Jersey, and by the thousand into Pennsylvania, settling Philadelphia and then going beyond the German settlements still farther west.

In 1670, a few emigrants from England settled at Port Royal, South Carolina, moving the next year to the western bank of the Ashley river and again to Oyster Point, at the junction of the Ashley and Cooper rivers where, in 1680, the foundations of Charleston were laid. They were reinforced in 1673 by an immigration of Dutch from New York, seeking new homes after the English conquest of the New Netherlands. In 1686 there was a large immigration of the Huguenots who fled from religious persecution in France. After long controversies between the English and these Dutch and French dissenters, the latter were admitted to all the rights and privileges of the former. The South Carolina Colony was constantly .threatened by the Spaniards to the south of them. Later in history, Georgetown became an important point. The Scotch-Irish also made Charleston a port of entry. A large Swiss settlement was made near the coast, but was so much reduced by the too great change in climate from their native mountains that the survivors moved westward toward the up country.

"The Carolinas" is the name given by the French who explored them in 1563, in honor of Charles the Ninth. The first permanent settlements in North Carolina were made from Virginia and by English immigrants, along the Chowan river, adjacent to Virginia. Some of these lands, although lying in North Carolina, were deeded by Governor Berkeley, of Virginia, as the boundary line of 36 degrees and 30 minutes was not determined until 1728. The first settlements of importance were made in 1653. All along the border of eastern and middle North Carolina, the Virginia settlers poured over the line. The land grants in this colony were more desirable and the taxes and levies less than in Virginia. But for sixty years the population was mostly confined to the territory north of Albemarle Sound, which gave its name to Albemarle county, one of the two divisions of. the colony. A colony from the Barbados settled at the mouth of the Cape Fear in 1665, but in 1690 the last of these settlers left and moved south to Charleston. This colony was called the county of Clarendon. In 1663 the counties of Clarendon and Albemarle were united under the government of Lords Proprietors. There was an open revolt in Albemarle until the people were persuaded that their liberties would be preserved. This was in 1669, when there met an Assembly composed of the Governor and his Council and twelve delegates elected by the people. In 1709 and 1710, several thousand Swiss and German immigrants from the Palatinate settled at New Bern, which was named for the Swiss city. Baron De Grafrenreid was their leader. There was a dreadful massacre by the Indians in 1712, in which many of these and other settlers lost their lives. So the progress of the colony was slow. In 1717. the taxable inhabitants numbered only 2,000, and in 1729 the number had grown to 13,000. Then the tide of immigration began to pour in all at once, and on account of late settlement, the foreign population was greater in North Carolina, and the immigration from the other colonies as compared with English immigration was also larger. The population of 20,000, including the negro slaves, in 1730, had grown to 393,000 by 1790. This growth was largely by immigration from the other colonies.

The first known land grant was made in 1633 to a Quaker named Durant, at the mouth of the Little and Perquimans rivers, which became the nucleus for a large Quaker settlement — a refuge for those who were persecuted in both Virginia and New England. Other dissenters, from Nansemond county, Virginia, one colony being composed of sixty-seven persons, settled in the territory just over the line.

After Bacon's Rebellion, especially, "fugitives from arbitrary tribunals, non-conformists, and friends of popular liberty, fled to Carolina as their common subterfuge and lurking place." In 1672. there was organized resistance against England for the oppressive laws, taxing tobacco a penny a pound and requiring its shipment to England for taxation before it could be sent elsewhere. The people arrested the Deputy Governor and Council and elected a Governor of their own, an Englishman named Culpepper. Says Bancroft of this incident: "Are there any who doubt man's capacity for self-government — let them study the history of North Carolina. Its inhabitants were restless and turbulent in their imperfect submission to a government imposed on them from abroad; the administration of the colony was firm, humane and tranquil when they were left to take care of themselves. The uneducated population of that day formed conclusions as just as those which a century later pervaded the country."

The main settlers in Eastern Carolina were English from Virginia, and as the country was settled along the coast they gradually moved westward. Henry McCulloh settled a colony of Scotch-Irish direct from Ireland in Duplin county in 1736. From the year 1740 a stream of Scotch-Irish and German immigrants from Pennsylvania and the Valley of Virginia poured southward along the whole of the Piedmont section. In 1746 occurred in Scotland the Battle of Culloden, in which the Scotch Highlanders, who were still loyal to the House of Stuart, were defeated. In the following year and for years afterward colonies of these Highlanders came to Wilmington and then up the Cape Fear, settling what are now Bladen, Sampson, Cumberland, Harnett, Moore, Robeson, Richmond and Scotland counties. In 1750, the Moravians purchased 100,000 acres of land from Lord Granville, in Surry County. In the meantime there began an immigration over the southern line of the colony from Charleston and Georgetown as ports of entry, and from the several nationalities that, had already settled South Carolina. This northward movement from South Carolina and the migration westward from the settled portions of the eastern counties, and the movement southward from Pennsylvania and Virginia, met and mingled in the southern Piedmont region now occupied by Mecklenburg and adjacent counties.

CHAPTER II. INDIANS OF THIS SECTION. (1753 to 1763.)

American Indians were much the same everywhere. In the clays when the white people began to settle this section, they found the American Indian in possession of the land, it is not necessary to discuss Indian characteristics or to lament the exit of the Red Man from the field of action, or to accuse our ancestors of barbarity in their treatment of this race of people. The Indian was not capable of civilization, and he, for that reason more than all others, is not with us today. But the Indian character in its general features was the same everywhere, and needs no special discussion for the reason that the Indians originally living in this section displayed no marked differences from those found all over the country when the English began to found their colonies.

Originally, the Catawba Indian nation inhabited the valleys of the Catawba river and its tributaries, and claimed all the country adjacent thereto as far west as the Blue Ridge mountains. West of the Blue Ridge the Cherokees held sway. The Catawbas, like other Indians, delighted in pomp and show, painted their faces and wore feathers and showy trinkets. Their religion consisted largely in warding off evil spirits by charms, totems and incantations. They burned off their hair with live coals, wore furs, used the bow and arrow and the stone axe. The conjurer and the medicine man were little less than gods among these people. The dance and the masquerade were similar to those held everywhere by Indians. Their feasts and their methods of warfare were the same as among other tribes. Hence, it seems that these Catawbas were no better Indians than were to be found elsewhere on the American continent. If they were sometimes well disposed towards the whites, it was for reasons other than those springing from innate goodness, as their history will show.

In order to get an idea of the Indian and his doings in this section, it will be necessary to note the Indian troubles which took place here from 1750 and up to and after the organization of this county. The first thing to be noted is that foreign Indians were always passing back and forth through this section, committing all kinds of lawlessness upon the English settlers at the instigation of the French. Generally, these roving bands were small in numbers. As early as June, 1753, three "French Indians" and five northern Indians met thirteen Catawbas about two miles from Salisbury and fought a small battle. The Catawbas killed five of their enemies, suffering no loss themselves. The white people who lived along the routes taken by these roving bands always suffered either personal violence or loss of property.

June 16, 1754, Colonel John Clark, of the Anson Militia Regiment, reported that the Indians had recently killed sixteen white persons on Broad river. This proceeding was the work of the Catawbas or the Cherokees, and was thought to be the beginning of an attempt to cut off the frontiers from the more thickly settled portions of the province. This event, as well as the threatening attitude of all the Indians in this section, led the whites to cultivate closer friendship with the Catawbas than ever before. The Governor of the province, at the solicitation of the whites of .this section, appointed James Carter and Alexander Osborne, of Rowan, to treat with the Catawbas and settle the troubles then existing between the two races. Accordingly, on the 29th day of August, 1754, the commissioners met "King Hagler and sundry of his head men and warriors" at Matthew Toole's house, and proceeded to discuss affairs relating to the whites and the Catawbas, Toole acting as interpreter. At this meeting the whites presented their grievances against the Indians and the Indians explained the cause of their own offenses, and in turn presented their grievances against the whites. The Indians were accused of going to the mill of one William Morrison and attempting to throw a pail of water in the meal trough, and, when Morrison tried to prevent them, of attempting to strike the miller over the head with their guns. The Indians replied to this charge, that they only intended to put a few handfuls of meal in the pail to make a drink, according to their custom.

The whites then brought up the murder of a little girl below the Waxhaw settlement by Indians. Hagler said that his warriors had killed the drunken Indian who had committed this crime, forcing the Indian's own cousin to kill the murderer in the presence of an assembled band of warriors and whites, thus demonstrating to the white people that the Indians were willing to punish such an offender. Other charges were then preferred by various persons, accusing the Indians of taking bread, meat, clothes, of trying to earn away a child, and of attempting to stab men and women who opposed them in the commission of such petty lawlessness. In reply to these latter charges, Hagler said that the Indians were often at war with their enemies, and that it was not always possible for them to hunt and to get bread for themselves; that under such circumstances they had gone to the houses of white people and had asked for something to eat, but that the whites would hide everything from them and say there was nothing for them. Hagler, continuing, said the Indians under such circumstances had often searched the houses of the whites for food and found it. He averred that one of his wild young men merely pretended he was going to carry away the child mentioned by the whites in order to surprise the child's parents and have a joke at their expense.

The whites then accused Hagler's warriors of other acts of theft, and Hagler replied that he had some warriors who had stolen knives, clothes, and the like, although cautioned not to do so. Hagler told the whites that they themselves were responsible for many of the crimes they charged against the Indians, as they rotted grain in tubs and made strong drink of it and sold and gave it to the Indians, causing them to get very drunk and to commit all manner of excesses. Hagler recommended that the whites take some steps to prevent the selling of liquor to the Indians.

The commissioners then presented the charge of horse stealing against the Indians, a crime which they said was punishable by death among the whites, Hagler replied by saying that the Indians had also had many of their own horses stolen by white people; that they had lately caught one white man with some of their horses and carried him before a South Carolina justice of the peace, but the man was not punished.

The Indians made many speeches during this meeting, all professing friendship for the whites. In one of his talks Hagler said that the Great Man Above made us all, as well as this island; that he fixed the Indian's forefathers here; that in the early days the Indians had no instruments to make a living, only bows and arrows of stone; that they had no knives, and cut their hair by burning it off their heads and bodies with live coals of fire; that they had only stone axes; that they bled themselves with fish teeth, and wore clothes of skin and furs. But now Hagler said that his brethren enjoyed the clothes which they got from the whites, as well as many other conveniences, and that the Indians wished to live in peace with their white neighbors. Hagler was very urgent in calling the attention of the commissioners to the selling and giving away of whiskey to the Indians, and asked that such practices be stopped. The chief said that many of his warriors had lately died from the effects of whiskey, and that many of the crimes committed by his people were directly traceable to the use of liquor. The conference broke up and a better understanding between the Catawbas and whites seems to have resulted.

During the year 1755. Governor Dobbs visited this section and selected a site for a Fort on Fourth creek, in the territory between Salisbury and the present town of Statesville. This fort, named in honor of the Governor, was erected and a company of soldiers under Hugh Waddell sent to occupy it and to guard the frontiers. It was built of oak logs, fifty-three by forty feet, twenty-four and a half feet high, with three floors in it, and room for the discharge of one hundred muskets at one time. It is said that a garrison of forty-eight men remained there during the year 1756.

During 1756, a fort was begun at the Catawba nation. Governor Dobbs visited the Catawbas in 1755, and no doubt selected the site for this fort, as well as the one in Rowan. The government of the province procured a tract of six hundred and forty acres, on which to erect the fort, at a cost of £60, but it appears that the work was never completed, as the Catawbas did not like the idea of its erection so near them, thinking, no doubt, the whites would use it to oppress them. When the Indians became restless on account of its erection, they were, by the Governor's order, given presents amounting to £42 12s. 0.d. The work done at the fort was finally abandoned after something like £1,000 had been expended.

While the white people were busy trying to erect the fort at the Catawba nation, the settlers on Broad river sent another complaint to the Legislature, reciting the perpetration of several robberies by strolling bands of Indians, presumably Cherokees, headed by some French and Northern Indians, who hoped thereby to provoke the settlers to some violence that they might have a pretext to murder or to bring on a general Indian war. These acts of villainy continued all through the summer of 1756, and until late in the fall. The people on the frontiers said that the. garrison at Fort Dobbs and the militia aiding that garrison could do little in case of a general Indian uprising, and hence the back settlers were being forced to retire from their lands and take up their residence in the inner settlements. Many of the settlers, forced from their homes, took refuge, in the fall of 1756, with the Moravians at Bethabara, which town was enclosed with palisades.

Notwithstanding the Catawbas had been well treated by the whites and had been given guns, clothing and presents of various kinds, and even a fort had been begun in their border as a protection both to themselves and to the whites, and had been abandoned at their behest, these Indians became restless and cruel in the year 1757, and began to insult the whites and do many acts of petty violence. They went so far in their violence as .to go to Salisbury while the District Court was in session and insult the Chief Justice.

In May, 1758, the Rowan people informed the Assembly that the frequency of Indian outrages on the head waters of the Dan river had caused the settlers on the forks of the Yadkin to leave their homes and retire "farther inland." Outrages on the Dan continued, as well as murders and robberies all along the western frontiers, during the year 1758 and in the spring of 1759, so much so that Governor Dobbs laid the condition of the frontier settlers before the Assembly and Colonel Hugh Waddell was given two companies of provincial troops and power to order out the militia of Anson, Rowan and Orange counties to punish the Cherokees.

In the fall of 1759, Governor Lyttleton, of South Carolina, appealed to Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia to aid him in an expedition against the Cherokees. Colonel Waddell was requested by Governor Dobbs to order out the militia of Orange, Rowan and Anson counties and join the militia with his regular troops and march to the aid of the South Carolina Governor. But the great body of the militia refused to leave the borders of the province, only eighty out of five hundred militiamen remaining with Colonel Waddell; the others either deserted or went home without leave, an action on their part which Governor Dobbs attributed to lack of education and schools and a pious clergy. Waddell's remaining force was. however, met and turned back, as Governor Lyttleton had made peace with the Indians and no fighting became necessary, the treaty being signed October 26, 1759. The Indians soon broke this peace, the garrison at Prince George Fort, where the Cherokee chiefs were imprisoned as hostages, being enticed away and murdered. This was the signal for a general Cherokee uprising, and massacre and assassination began. The Creeks were drawn into the war. Fort Loudon fell and the frontiers of this province were again at the mercy of the Cherokees.

In 1760 the Cherokee depredations forced the Moravians to guard their town day and night. Refugee settlers in large numbers crowded into Bethabara, which forced the building of Bethany, three miles from Bethabara, for the accommodation of these refugees and the protection of the Moravians themselves. Only extreme vigilance and the constant ringing of the church bells prevented an Indian attack. But the Cherokees were not content to rob and murder the frontier people and to threaten the Moravians and their refugees; they openly attacked Fort Dobbs February 27, 1769, and were repulsed by Waddell and his garrison. Ten or twelve Indians were killed or wounded, one white boy was killed and two white men were wounded, one of whom was scalped.

These events determined the whites to put an end to Indian outrages. Troops from Virginia and both Carolinas were assembled, the North Carolina troops under Waddell. The Virginians and North Carolinians entered the upper Cherokee country, while Colonel Grant, with the South Carolinians, entered the lower country of the Cherokees. Grant's forces met the Indians near the present town of Franklin and defeated them. During the next month, the whites destroyed the Indian towns and corn fields and inflicted such a heavy blow upon the Cherokee nation that it was forced to sue for peace. This Indian campaign of 1761 broke forever the power of the Cherokees and reduced their strength so much that they, like the Catawbas. became friends of the whites, as they knew it was now to their advantage.

These Indian troubles had continued for seven years. Many of the settlers were driven away, some were killed, others were scalped. Farming and home-building were much retarded, and new settlers who would have moved in from Pennsylvania and other colonies were frightened away. It was not until the beginning of 1763 that the frontier people began to take up life again where it had been interrupted, and the militia of Mecklenburg and adjoining counties could be said to be able once more to feel that Indian troubles had ended.

CHAPTER III. EARLY SETTLERS. (1740 to 1762.)

Immigrants to Mecklenburg county came from three directions. One wave rolled southward from Western Pennsylvania and Virginia — the Scotch-Irish, who had had large experience in the selection of good lands. These were followed closely by the Germans from the same region, who settled mainly the territory now occupied by Cabarrus, Lincoln, and Gaston counties, but who also peopled Mecklenburg proper and passed over into South Carolina with the Scotch-Irish, settling the northwestern portion. This wave of immigrants was met by another wave a little later from the south, coming by way of Charleston and Georgetown — a mixed multitude of English, Scotch, Germans, Huguenots and Swiss, who found in the low country by the sea too great a contrast to their own mountain homes. While these two waves were mingling, the third wave rolled in from the east, mainly English, and finding the best lands taken, settled the next best or passed through into the lands to the west and south. The sections which were settled by these different peoples retain the traces of nationality in their names and in the churches; the Scotch-Irish and Huguenots with the English dissenters uniting to build Presbyterian churches, while the Lutheran and German Reform churches mark the German settlements. By the beginning of the Revolutionary War the representatives of these different nationalities were fast intermingling by marriage.

A petition to the Council concerning the lands which were at first considered in Mecklenburg and then were put in South Carolina show 140 names of English origin, 47 Scotch, 7 German and 6 French.

In 1755, Governor Dobbs visited the present county of Cabarrus, where he owned large tracts of land, and he found seventy-five families already settled on his lands. He reported that these families contained eight or ten children each, and that some "Irish Protestants" had settled together in order to have a preacher and a school-teacher of their own. There were also twenty-two German and Swiss families on his lands. The actual settling of Mecklenburg county by permanent home-seekers began about 1748. From that time on a stream of settlers poured in from the north. In 1754, they had settled on Broad river and were asking for protection from the Indians. In 1757 the Selwyn tracts of land, one of which is now partly occupied by the city of Charlotte, contained something less than 400 souls.

In 1755, Rev. Hugh McAden made a missionary visit through Mecklenburg. He found the Scotch-Irish settled at, Rocky River, Sugar Creek, in the Waxhaws, and on what is now Broad river, in South Carolina. The earliest land grants are dated 1749, but between 1750 and 1758 many hundreds of such grants were issued. There was probably only a short time generally between the issuing of the grant and the settlement of the land. Rocky river and its tributaries were the first water courses occupied by the settlers, and by 1762 all the streams mentioned in the first chapter are recorded in land grants, patents and deeds.

To understand and appreciate the history of the people of Mecklenburg, we must know something of the origin and history of these early settlers. John Knox, the great Scottish reformer, was not only the apostle of religion, but of liberty as well, to his people. When he said, "If princes exceed their bounds they may be resisted by force," he set the rights of the people over against the right claimed for the king and sometimes called the "Divine right of kings." Mr. Froude calls this saying "the creed of republics in its first hard form." Knox was also .the apostle of popular education. Carlyle says of him: "He sent the schoolmaster into all corners, saying, 'let the people be taught.' Scotland was a different land after the life and labors of John Knox.

In the reign of James the First, of England and Scotland, two Irish nobles rebelled against him, and the king took possession of their lands in the north of Ireland. He wished to settle this region, about half a million acres of land, with Protestants, to balance the Catholic power which held the rest of Ireland, and so he offered inducements to the Scotch to emigrate to North Ireland. This country was called Ulster. Rev. Andrew Stewart, one of their ministers, wrote: "The king had a natural love to have Ireland planted with Scots, as being of a middle temper, between the English tender and the Irish rude breeding, and a great deal more likely to adventure to plant Ireland."

The Scotch emigrated to Ireland in great numbers. In the first fifty years of their settling they numbered 200,000. By the beginning of the Eighteenth century they numbered a million, and they carried with them to Ireland their fondness for education and their love of liberty. They were thrifty and industrious, and they prospered. Their prosperity excited the jealousy of their English rivals in manufactures, and the British Parliament began to pass laws restricting their woolen trade, so the Scotch-Irish, as they were afterwards called, began to leave Ireland. In 1698, 20,000 of them left Ulster for America. Not content with oppressive taxation, the Parliament began to interfere with the religion of the Ulsterites. They were forbidden to have school-teachers of their own and forbidden to hold any office higher than that of petty constable. Their ministers were forbidden to perform the marriage ceremony, and when they did, the marriage was declared to be illegal. So the Scotch left their Irish home in an exodus that has been compared to the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt.

In 1727 six emigrant ships full of Scotch-Irish arrived at Philadelphia in one week, and all through the first half of the Eighteenth century it was not uncommon for two or three emigrant ships a day to reach America from Ireland. Then just a little after Mecklenburg county was organized, the rents of the tenants who were left in Ireland were raised and thousands of them driven from their farms by force. Two years after this, 30,000 Scotch-Irish came to America in one year.

Some of them went to New England and settled there. There was one Scotch-Irish church which had 750 members. They settled a good part of New York. They peopled New Jersey. They took possession of the Quaker City, Philadelphia, and filled up Western Pennsylvania, with Pittsburg as the center of their colony. Then as the Pennsylvania lands were taken, they moved southward and westward. They were among the pioneer settlers of Kentucky and Tennessee. They occupied the fertile Valley of Virginia and peopled the western counties so that they soon outvoted their cavalier brethren in the eastern counties. Thomas Jefferson said of Patrick Henry, whom he styled "Our leader in the measures of the Revolution in Virginia," that "his influence was most extensive with the members from the upper counties."

As these upper counties of Virginia were filled and the best lands taken, the Scotch-Irish moved southward, as we have seen, into North Carolina, through Guilford, Orange, Alamance, Rowan, Iredell, Cabarrus and Mecklenburg counties. Mecklenburg was the center of this emigration southward from Virginia and Pennsylvania. Everywhere these Scotch-Irish people were advocates of education and of liberty. When we come to Revolutionary times, we learn that the great majority of the patriots in New York were Scotch-Irish; that the Scotch-Trish, numbering in Pennsylvania a third of the whole population, stood as a unit for independence and contributed a majority of the troops of the Keystone State. General Washington said that if he had been defeated at Yorktown, he would have fallen back upon the Scotch-Irish of the Valley of Virginia. We shall see that the Scotch-Irish of Mecklenburg were of the same spirit, and simply gave earlier expression to it than their brethren elsewhere.

The first Germans known to have reached this section were three young farmers. They were all probably Redemptioners. This term was used in connection with white apprentices, and afterwards applied to poor emigrants who were not able to pay their passage to America and were willing to enter into contracts in order to pay back the funds advanced for their passage across the ocean. The names of these three Germans were Barringer, Smith and Dry. When they had worked out their term of service they started on their perilous march from Pennsylvania to the South, passing by a savage Indian camp and the French frontiersmen, following the old buffalo trail, known as the Indian trading path, until they reached the Yadkin at the trading fort; but when they crossed the Yadkin they were surprised to find that the Scotch-Irish were just ahead of them, having taken up the choicest spots up and down the Catawba; so these Germans turned to the left, following the right bank of the Yadkin, and finally located on the high ground between the present Cold Water and Buffalo creeks. This was then Bladen county.

About the year 1745 the news of the good land of freedom went back to Pennsylvania and then reached the millions of the Fatherland. They came from all directions, chiefly from Pennsylvania, but often from Charleston and Wilmington, settling the northeastern borders of Mecklenburg as well as Rowan and Stanly. These Germans came from the upper regions of Germany. Wurttemberg, Baden, and especially from the Palatinate, which had been so mercilessly ravaged by Louis the Sixteenth. They were intelligent, labor loving, industrious Protestants, who fled from persecution. They built their houses here on high ground, often on the tops of the hills, after the fashion of the ancient German castles. They were hardy, self-reliant, frugal, and courageous. They clung to Luther's translation of the Bible. They tolerated no idlers among them. The children were trained and skilled in all hard labor and handicraft, and they defended their homes heroically when they were summoned to vindicate the rights which they had secured. They took part in almost every expedition against the Indians, and a very active part in General Rutherford's march against the Cherokees in 1776, a young German called Matthias Barringer being one of the very few killed. The Germans traded with Salisbury on the north and with Cross Creek, now Fayetteville, on the east, rather than Charleston. They did not figure as prominently in the affairs in which Charlotte was concerned on account of the rivalry which grew up between the Charlotte and Cabarrus sections.

These German Protestants respected just authority, were God-fearing, peaceful and law-abiding. They had their sports and their amusements, their Easter holiday and their Chris Cringle frolics. They were guiltless of dissipation and debauchery, and even their amusements partook rather of skill and labor than of useless sport. Their quiltings, corn shuckings, log rollings, house raisings, all tended to develop manliness and womanliness as well as to cultivate the social virtues. Their family government was excellent, combining for them the State, the Church and the School, and their thrift and economy laid the foundations for comfort and wealth.

The French settlers were mostly Huguenots who were also the victims of religious persecution in the Old World and sought freedom of conscience in the New. The Swiss were from the Palatinate and near akin to their German neighbors in religious belief. A large colony of Swiss in South Carolina was almost destroyed by the fever of the lowlands near the coast, where they first settled, and the mention of the Swiss families by Governor Dobbs is probably the explanation of what became of the survivors. They would naturally tend toward the hill country, as more nearly like their own home.

CHAPTER IV. INDUSTRIES AND CUSTOMS. (1745 to 1762.)

The early settlers of Mecklenburg were not idlers and many of them were skilled in various industrial arts. They had everything to do for themselves in the wilderness in which they made their home. When they came, there were no cleared fields, no roads, no schools or churches, no mills to grind their corn and wheat, no shops to make their hoes and plows and axes, and not even houses to shelter them. There were no sawmills and no brickyards. But the settlers had something that was even better than the possession of all these things. They had the knowledge and the skill to make the wilderness blossom as the rose. They knew how to make things and they made them.

As early as 1750, some of them were doing business with Charleston. In order to buy what they could not make, they must have something to sell. They sent to Charleston over an Indian trail, which passed near Charlotte and which is now the route of the Charlotte & Columbia Railroad, the products which their cattle yielded — tallow, cheese, butter and hull-. Then as they began to raise grain and fruits, they manufactured whiskey and brandy. With these they bought in Charleston salt, iron, and household goods, with now and then a slave to help in the work on the plantation. As the farmers could not afford to go to Charleston often, there began to be built country stores in the different neighborhoods — in Paw Creek, Hopewell, Steele Creek, Providence, Sugar Creek, Rocky River.

The people made their own hats and shoes, and wove their own cloth. They were hatters and shoemakers and weavers and tailors. They raised indigo for dyeing. They raised flax and made it into linen. They raised tobacco and it became quite a profitable crop, as the world was then learning how to smoke. But at first it was easier to raise cattle than anything else, and the settlers not only sent them to Charleston, but drove them to Philadelphia. Later Virginia bought all the cattle sent northward.

These pioneer settlers slept in their wagons until they built a house to shelter them, cutting down the trees of the forest and hewing the logs into shape. They daubed the spaces between the logs with clay and covered the roof with boards riven out of the logs. These houses had one room and one door and one window. Sometimes the people could afford a glass window. Generally they let in the air with the light and shut out both with a wooden shutter. When they did not have planks for a floor, they used the floor they found there — the ground. Inside the house were probably two beds, a trunk, some pewter dippers and plates, a dozen spoons, some wooden trenchers and piggins, and a few stools or chairs. The farmer would have a few plow irons, a hoe or two, a mattock, some harrow teeth, an axe, a broad-axe, an iron wedge, two or three mauls, a chisel, and an auger. These were all he needed at first, and he brought them with him from North or South. He would have fifty head of cattle, three or four horses, twenty hogs, and a few sheep and geese. The sheep gave their wool and the geese their feathers to make the folk comfortable by day and night. When the family began to buy cups and saucers, and glass and china ware from Charleston, they were considered wealthy.

The things they brought with them began to wear out and so the blacksmiths built their shops, and the weavers set up their looms and the tailor brought out his goose. And the hides were not all carried to Charleston to trade for leather, but tanneries were built to make leather at home. Then rude mills were set up on the water courses to grind the wheat and corn, and the carpenters and blacksmiths together built sawmills to turn the logs into boards. One of the first sawmills and flour mills was built on Rocky river and owned by Moses Alexander. Richard Barry had a tanyard in operation in Hopewell. Thomas Polk had a sawmill and grist mill near Charlotte before 1767. The mills did a good business and leather and flour began to be sold in Charleston instead of hides and wheat. The settlers were learning the great law of prosperity — that they could keep their money at home by manufacturing things for themselves and that the manufactured products brought more money in the markets than the raw products.

In January, 1767, John McKnitt Alexander made "a great coat" for Andrew Bowman, which had nine large and three small buttons, the seam sewed and the button-holes worked with mohair thread. Three yards and three inches of broadcloth were used, costing two pounds and fifteen shillings; the buttons and thread cost two shillings. The charge for making the coat was seven shillings, and Mr. Bowman was no doubt sumptuously arrayed when he donned this raiment. The women made all their own dresses and the material for them. They spun the wool and cotton and wove it into linsey and checks and colored it according to their own fancy. When Jeremiah McCafferty set up his store in Charlotte, in 1770, he sold persian, camblett, mits, forrest cloth, oznaburgs, and calico. But with calico at eight shillings a yard, these were materials that only the wealthy could afford. Buttons, thread and pins were very costly, and the housewives had to be very economical with salt and sugar, as they were high priced and difficult to get.

Early title-deeds show the occupations of the people who bought and sold the lands in Mecklenburg, and it is recorded that these hardy pioneers were weavers, joiners, coopers, wheelwrights, wagon makers, tailors, teachers, blacksmiths, hatters, merchants, laborers, wine makers, miners, rope makers, surveyors, fullers and "gentlemen." "Gentlemen" denoted then a certain rank rather than the possession of certain qualities. The first Mecklenburgers were producers. They believed that any work, so it were faithfully and honestly done, was worth doing, and that manhood was more than wealth. Mecklenburg could have existed comfortably cut off from the rest of the world. That makes a people feel independent. And when a man has built his home in the woods with his own hands, and furnished it, and cleared his own little plot of ground, and is beginning to be comfortable, he does not feel much like paving taxes out of his small earnings to a King or a Parliament over the seas, without any representation in the matter for himself and his rights.

Nearly every farm had a distillery for turning grain and fruit into whiskey and brandy. These liquors were used freely by all, but it would be a mistake to suppose that the people were intemperate. Spirits were deemed a necessity on the plantations. It was cheaper to distill than to buy. Moreover, the distance from the markets, Charleston being the nearest, was so great that it was easier to carry the products of the granaries and orchards in liquid form than in bulk. Every teacher's account with the farmers contains a credit of whiskey, and the preachers were also temperate drinkers. Among the effects of Rev. Alexander Craighead, sold at his sale, were a punch bowl and glasses. One custom that seems singular to us was the use of liquor at funerals. The people came a long distance and refreshments were served at the graveyards and churches. Whiskey played a leading part in these refreshments, though wine, which was more expensive, was also used. In 1767, seven gallons of whiskey were consumed at one funeral, costing five shillings to the gallon, the same being charged to the estate. Another occasion on which whiskey was used was at the "vendue" or sale of an estate. The amount of whiskey charged to the estate varied with the size of the sale and the number in attendance. It seems to have been taken for granted that a liberal use of the beverage would be repaid in the higher price the buyers would bid under the mellowing effect of the liquor.

One of the famous institutions of these early days was the old-time tavern. The taverns sprung up along all the public roads. There were several in Charlotte. There was a good deal of travel through this section, between the North and the South, from early times. The tavern was not only a lodging place where meals were served, but a public house as well, where all kinds of liquors were served and where the punch bowl was an indispensable piece of furniture. From the variety of the liquors one is reminded of Dickens' tales of merry England in the stage-coach days. The host of these early days was a genial and popular fellow, and the tavern became a meeting place for the men of the community, where they exchanged their ideas or confirmed their prejudices as the case might be, getting now and then from the travelers passing through, the news of the outside world.

Horse racing, the game of "long bullets," shooting matches and other outdoor sports of like nature were the diversions for the early settlers. "Long bullets" was a famous game, played with a large iron ball, the effort of one side being to keep the ball from passing their goal and at the same time to force it beyond the goal of the adversary. One of the first ordinances passed by the town of Charlotte forbade this game being played in the streets. Betting at horse races was common, there remaining to this day evidences of money borrowed on occasions of this kind in order to indulge the gambling propensity at Thorn's or Campbell's Race Tracks. But while gambling was permitted, profanity was sternly forbidden, and was frequently punished by the county courts. After 1774, there are numerous instances of people being fined for profane swearing, the amount of the fine depending upon the number of oaths of which the culprit was convicted.

At the four county courts each year people came together from all parts of the county, and the court meetings were great occasions for trading wares and exchanging views. Then there was an annual election of the members of the Provincial Assembly, which was the signal for a gathering of all the leading men. The most prosperous of the people frequently visited Charleston and even Philadelphia, and they brought back with them newspapers and publications of the day. But one of .the greatest institutions for bringing the people together was the muster. While this was at first nominally a military assembly, it soon became a social and political occasion. The military companies were kept in efficient condition for muster day, and it grew to be the chief opportunity for the public discussion of political issues. Such questions as the McCulloh land disturbances, the boundary dispute, the vestry and marriage acts, the Regulation troubles, and all the questions relating to the issues between the colonies and the mother country were discussed at the muster meetings. So the people were by no means ill-informed as to what was going on in the world. The children generally received six months of "schooling" for two or three years, and at the outbreak of the Revolution there was a fair number of college-bred men in the community, perhaps more in proportion to the population than at present.

The first settlers of the county from Virginia and Pennsylvania doubtless brought the currency of those colonies with them, and this was probably the first paper money put in circulation in this section. The "hard money" of that day consisted of English, Spanish and German coins, with now and then one of French mintage. From the account of a loan to Jean Cathey by George Cathey, we learn that "ten silver dollars" were valued at four pounds English money, while "one dubloone in gold" was worth six pounds. After Charleston became the principal market for Mecklenburg, South Carolina currency became common, but there was never a sufficient volume of currency for the needs of the population. Chief Justice Hasell, who held Salisbury Court in 1776, says that there was scarcely any specie circulating among the people, not enough to pay the stamp tax.

CHAPTER V. FORMATION OF THE COUNTY. (1762.)

In North Germany are two little duchies that, go by the name of Mecklenburg, Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz. From Mecklenburg-Strelitz, in the year 1761, went a young princess to be the wife of George the Third and Queen of England, and her name was Charlotte. The marriage was a popular one, and there was great rejoicing in England, and after a while the news of it reached the Piedmont section of North Carolina, where the people were just about to make two counties out of one. The name of the old county was Anson, named for .the Admiral Anson whose good ship carried the young princess, Charlotte, to England. The new county was named Mecklenburg in honor of the queen who had come from old Mecklenburg, in Germany, and to do her still more honor, they called their town Charlotte. It must have been very pleasant to the king to think how loyal to the mother country and the royal family were the people of Mecklenburg and its "Queen City" of Charlotte, in St. George's Parish, in the Colony of North Carolina. It was his own fault if he afterwards had cause to change his mind about them.

The year 1761 was memorable in the history of the world. England and France had been fighting on land and on sea, and some of the land fighting had been done in America. During the war the Americans learned that they could fight as well as or better than the English soldiers could in this wild forest-land. In the year 1762, the war was finished and the Treaty of Paris was signed. By that treaty the French practically gave up North America to the British, and Spain gave England part of Florida in return for Havana, in Cuba. The colonists observed another thing in the war. and that was that they were not so dependent as before upon the protection of the mother country, now that the French armies did not threaten them. They began to talk more independently. In England, there was at that time, and is now, an "Established Church" supported by taxes levied on the people. This was the Church of England, or what is now known in America as the Protestant Episcopal Church. At home, its bishops and other clergy had the right, to levy church taxes or tithes, and this system was put into operation in the American colonies. The next year after the passage of the act creating Mecklenburg county, a young lawyer stood up before the judges, in Hanover county, Virginia, to defend the rights of the people against the oppressive taxation by the clergy. His name was Patrick Henry, and the jury that heard his eloquent defense gave the parsons "penny damages," and the brave words of the young lawyer rang throughout the colonies.

Charlotte, Princess of Mecklenburg.

Arthur Dobbs was Governor of the colony. James Hasell was President of the Council and John Ashe was Speaker of the Assembly, when the act was passed creating the county of Mecklenburg, December n, 1762. The bill had been introduced by Anthony Hutchins into the Assembly, accompanied by a petition "of several of the inhabitants of Anson county;" and Nathaniel Alexander, afterwards Governor of North Carolina, who represented the Rocky river section, used his influence in having the wishes of his constituents carried out as to the new county. December 31, of the same year, at the meeting of the Governor's Council, Alexander Lewis, Nathaniel Alexander, John Thomas, Robert McClenahan, Paul Barringer, Henry Foster. Robert Miller, Robert Harris. Richard Barry, Martin Phifer, Robert Ramsey, James Robinson, Matthew Floyd. Abraham Alexander, Thomas Polk and James Patton, were appointed His Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the new county, and they represented the Rocky River. Clear Creek, Sugar Creek, Waxhaw, Hopewell and Broad River settlements. And when, on the 26th of February, 1763, Moses Alexander, as High Sheriff, and Robert Harris, as Clerk of the Court and Register of Deeds, took charge of their respective offices, the history of the county may be said to have begun.

This Piedmont country was being rapidly settled, and the people did not want to travel so far to the county seat to have their legal business transacted. So, just as Anson was formed out of Bladen, then the most westerly county, and just as Rowan and Mecklenburg grew out of Anson, so in November, 1768, a bill, introduced by Martin Phifer, was passed dividing the original Mecklenburg county into two, one called Mecklenburg county and St. Martin's Parish, and the other Tryon county and St. Thomas' Parish. Later still, in 1792, Cabarrus county was cut off from Mecklenburg, and again in 1842, Union county was made out of Mecklenburg territory. But as Mecklenburg included both Cabarrus and Union during the whole Revolutionary period, the history of one is the history of all three.

It was a wild and strange country which the early settlers found. There was probably little cleared land, though some accounts speak of the country between Sugar creek and Rocky river as a fertile plain, covered with pea vines and grass. But the hills and probably most of the valleys were covered with primeval forests. The old title-deeds mention as marks on the dividing lines, an ash, an oak, post-oak, white oak, black oak, red oak or water oak, a maple, a poplar, a beech, or a hickory. Through these forests roamed deer and buffalo, and in the dense undergrowth, panthers, wild-cats, black bears, and wolves made their lairs. There were squirrels and turkeys and pheasants in abundance. There were beaver dams on Paw creek and Steele creek. The only road was one Indian trail through Mecklenburg, from the Yadkin river to the Catawba nation, with here and there the beaten path of the buffalo herds.

CHAPTER VI. BEGINNING OF CHARLOTTE. (1762 to 1772.)

Mecklenburg county, as at first constituted, contained all of .the present county, Cabarrus, Gaston, Lincoln and a part of Union. The total area was four or five times as great as it is today. In 1766, the population of Mecklenburg was about five thousand, and this grew to six thousand within the next two years. Increase in population and development of the natural resources were rapid and continuous after government was firmly established.

In the latter part of 1765, Henry Eustace McCulloh donated a tract of three hundred and sixty acres of land to John Frohock, Abraham Alexander and Thomas Polk, as commissioners, to hold in trust for the county of Mecklenburg, on which to erect a courthouse, prison and stocks. McCulloh was the agent of Augustus Selwyn, who owned several immense tracts of land on a grant from the king, making it obligatory upon him to settle them with an average of one person to every two hundred acres. He foresaw that the interests of his employer would be advanced by the location of the county seat on his land. The courts before this time had been held at Spratts, just outside the present city limits, and as the proposed .town was near the center of the county, circumstances were apparently favorable to his plans, but objection was made by the people in the Rocky river section, who desired the court house to be located nearer to them.

The first representatives of Mecklenburg in the General Assembly were Martin Phifer, from Rocky river; and Thomas Polk, who favored the new town. In 1766, Mr. Phifer introduced a bill to enable the commissioners of Charlotte to lay off the town in squares and streets and lots, and to erect a courthouse, prison and stocks. Nothing was said about the county seat or where courts should be held, and on this account, the bill was defeated by the friends of Charlotte led by Polk.