THE NOTTINGHAM SETTLEMENT, A NORTH CAROLINA BACKCOUNTRY COMMUNITY

Transcription

1 THE NOTTINGHAM SETTLEMENT, A NORTH CAROLINA BACKCOUNTRY COMMUNITY Wendy Lynn Adams Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in the Department of History Indiana University November 2009

2 Accepted by the Faculty of Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Elizabeth Brand Monroe, Ph.D., Chair Marianne S. Wokeck, Ph.D. Erik L. Lindseth, Ph.D. ii

3 Acknowledgements Although my name is listed as the author of this backcountry community study, I am humbly aware that I could not have completed it without the assistance and support of a number of individuals. Without their various contributions, I most likely would have rethought my decision to tackle this aspect of the graduate degree. And so, with a grateful heart, I wish to acknowledge and thank the following people: My thesis chair, Dr. Elizabeth Brand Monroe, for her direction, editorial comments and endless hours spent reading and re-reading my rough drafts. Her guidance allowed me to expand my preliminary concept for this project and kept it from becoming bland and inarticulate. My thesis committee, Dr. Marianne Wokeck and Dr. Erik Lindseth, for their recommendations on what to include and exclude in order to provide a fuller picture of the eighteenth-century Scots-Irish. Those who assisted me in researching my topic at the North Carolina State Archives in particularly, Meghan Bishop, a fellow IUPUI history graduate, for traveling from her new home in New Bern, N.C., to Raleigh to fill my research requests, and Vann Evans, an employee of the Archives and history graduate student researching colonial Rowan County, N.C., for pointing out primary sources pertinent to my topic. My colleagues and fellow history graduate students at IUPUI (Janna Bennett, Christine McNulty Braun, Kelly Gascoine, Nancy Germano, Jessica Herczeg- iii

4 Konecny, Meredith McGovern, Alison Smith, and Elizabeth Spoden) as well as my internship supervisors and co-workers (Dr. Elizabeth Osborn, Deborah J. Baumer, Traci Cromwell, Gaby Kienitz, M. Teresa Baer and Rachel M. Popma) for patiently listening as I verbally worked through each crisis. My family (especially my mother, Marilyn J. Adams, and my grandmother, Dorothy A. Adams) and friends (in particularly, Jenny Carroll, Mike and Susan Forkner, Jeanne Fox, April Stier Frazier, Shawn and Katie Holtgren, Connie Mow, Angela Myers, Debbie Oke and Lisa Staples) for supporting my desire to return to graduate school and encouraging me through the lengthy process of researching, writing and editing. Lastly, I wish to acknowledge and thank the Most High God, in whom all things find meaning and life, for providing me with the ability to accomplish something I could never have done on my own. For only through the grace and love of God have I been able to complete this project. iv

5 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables vi List of Maps vii Introduction...1 Chapter One 13 Chapter Two 40 Chapter Three..68 Chapter Four 97 Appendices Appendix A Brief Biographies for a Selection of the Pioneering Generation.105 Appendix B Complete List of Rowan County Signatures on 1756 Vestry Tax Petition..145 Bibliography.147 Curriculum Vitae v

6 LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Surnames Found in the Province of Ulster, Ireland, 1600 to Table 2.2 Surnames Found in Southeastern Pennsylvania and Northern Maryland, 1700 to Table 3.1 The Nottingham Settlement s Thirty Tracts and the Purchasers...71 Table 3.2 Amount of Land Purchased, Sold and Bequeathed...77 Table 3.3 Example of Increased Ownership of Enslaved Persons in Settlement Households Table 3.4 Age and Size of Families When They Migrated to North Carolina in the 1750s and 1760s 81 Table 3.5 Partial List of Rowan County Signatures on the 1756 Vestry Tax Petitions.88 vi

7 LIST OF MAPS Figure 1 The Nottingham Settlement in Rowan (Guilford) County 3 Figure 2 The Counties of Ulster, Ireland...42 Figure 3 Southeastern Pennsylvania in Early 1700s..49 Figure 4 The Great Wagon Road...54 Figure 5 Depiction of Colonial North Carolina (after 1760).58 vii