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

8 Introduction In early December, 1753, colonial representatives for John, Lord Carteret (Earl Granville), granted sixteen tracts of land along the Piedmont s rolling hills within the bounds of Buffalo and Reedy Creeks in the extreme northeastern portion of Rowan (Guilford) County, North Carolina, on the eastern edge of the backcountry. 1 (figure 1) One grant declared that the tract of land was one of thirty reserved for the Nottingham Settlement in March Before 1771, when Guilford County was created from Rowan and Orange Counties, more families would purchase grants within a central section of Guilford County approximately sixteen miles wide and nine miles long and join the eleven initial purchasers and their families in creating a loosely knit community in the North Carolina Piedmont bound together by common traits property (landownership, material possessions and wealth), kinship, Scots-Irish heritage, and Presbyterianism. 3 1 The county name used to identify the location of the land purchased by those associated with the Nottingham Settlement changed three times within the era of the pioneering generation s arrival. First named Anson County in 1749, the section known as Rowan County separated from the parent county in Then in 1771, the colonial authorities created Guilford County out of the extreme northeast section of Rowan County and the extreme western section of Orange County. In order to differentiate between modern Rowan County which is located to the far south and west of Guilford County and the location of the Nottingham Settlement land tracts in Guilford County, Rowan (Guilford) County will be used throughout this essay to designate the geographical location of the land before Guilford County s creation in Robert Thompson, 350 acres, Rowan (August 2, 1760), Secretary of State Record Group, Granville Proprietary Land Office: Land Entries, Warrants, and Plats of Survey. North Carolina Department of Archives and History, Raleigh (NCDAH) (referred to as Granville Grants ).... being one of the 30 Entries of the Nottingham Settle[ment]. Use of the term Settlement in this essay refers to a group of land plots and not an organized settlement by a colonial religious sect (e.g., Puritans, Moravians) or a Utopian society. No formal contract binding the settlers to a land venture survives, whether one existed or not. Most local and family historians refer to the Nottingham Settlement as the Nottingham Colony. Because the Granville land grants refer to the Nottingham Settlement, I will use Nottingham Settlement. 3 Fred Hughes, Guilford County, N.C.: a Map Supplement (Jamestown, N.C.: The Custom House, 1988), 52. To account for the manner in which tracts were numbered, Hughes explains that the grants were numbered according to the issuance of the warrant [in 1750] not the survey of the land. He continues, saying that the number does not indicate the order of the final grant. 1

9 Many of the initial settlers (or pioneering generation) were related either by birth or marriage. 4 Before migrating to North Carolina, most of the families had resided in southeastern Pennsylvania and extreme northern Maryland. 5 (figure 3) A majority of the men and their wives were either first-generation Scots-Irish immigrants or children and grandchildren of immigrants from Scotland or Northern Ireland. 6 These men established themselves early on as responsible landowners within then Rowan County, serving as jurors, justices of the peace, constables and overseers of the roads. 7 All of the families participated in the founding of or were affiliated with the Buffalo Presbyterian Church located within the community. 8 With the exception of those who died within a 4 Throughout this study, I use the term pioneering generation to differentiate between the men and women who first settled in the Rowan (Guilford) County area in the 1750s and 1760s and those who either arrived or were born after The pioneering generation was also multigenerational and depending on the family, included both parents and their adult progeny. Use of this term will limit not only the individuals involved but the period studied. 5 George Johnston, History of Cecil County, Maryland, 1881; repr. Baltimore: Regional Publishing Company, 1967, Prior to 1715, the proprietors of Pennsylvania took advantage of the internal religious and political struggles faced by Maryland s colonial government and its Catholic landlord Lord Baltimore during the English Revolution and granted land to Protestants looking for acreage in the region just south of the original Pennsylvania-Maryland line (known as the Nottingham Lots ); essentially annexing a small section of Maryland into Lancaster County. The establishment of the Mason-Dixon Line officially placed this section of land under Maryland s jurisdiction in (See figure 3.) 6 While the immigration dates for many in this community are unknown due to the practice at the time of not documenting the arrival in America of immigrants from the British Isles, the descendents of several men have relied on family tradition when making this claim. Based on land records and wills found in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, two of the men, John Cunningham and Samuel Scott, were at least second-generation immigrants. Depending on the situation, some scholars prefer to use the terms Scots Irish, Ulster Scots or Ulster Presbyterian in place of Scotch-Irish, which seemed to be the term of choice for historians until more recent times. Throughout the following chapter, I will defer to the choice made by the author whose work is reviewed. When discussing the Nottingham Settlement, I will use the term Scots Irish. For further information on the evolution of the various terms applied to Protestant immigrants from Ulster, see Kerby A. Miller, Scotch-Irish Ethnicity in Early America: Its Regional and Political Origins, in Ireland and Irish America Culture, Class, and Transatlantic Migration (Dublin : Field Day, 2008), Rowan County Minutes of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions (referred to as Rowan Co. Minutes ) 2:59, 79, 93, Samuel Rankin, A History of Buffalo Presbyterian Church and Her People, Greensboro, N.C. (Greensboro, N.C.: Jos. J. Stone & Co, [1934?]),

10 Figure 1. Location of the Nottingham Settlement s pioneering generation in Rowan (Guilford) County, N.C., (Drawing by Wendy L. Adams with assistance by Rachel M. Popma. Points of reference based on Fred Hughes map of colonial Guilford County, North Carolina (Jamestown, N.C.: Custom House, 1980).) 3

11 decade of receiving their land grant(s), the pioneering generation increased their land holdings within the county. 9 Many of the descendants of the Nottingham Settlement s pioneering generation remained in the vicinity of the original land grants after the Revolutionary War. 10 Although land conveyances, poll tax lists and court records remain, personal documents (such as diaries and account books) have not survived to provide the details of the lives of early Nottingham Settlement members. Local and regional histories give the most basic of information about their existence in the early formation of the county. What is known (e.g., names, birth and death dates, and descendents) fails to present a comprehensive account of either the individuals involved or the creation and existence of the community itself. What physical and social boundaries defined the inclusion of settlers in this informally constructed community? What individual characteristics and accomplishments identify them as members of this community? Exploring proximity and social, cultural, and religious experiences as well as material wealth of the settlers aids in identifying the Nottingham Settlement s pioneering and subsequent generations. Investigating the Nottingham Settlement s communal identity in turn speaks to a larger question what external influences motivated these individuals to relocate their families from southeastern Pennsylvania to central North Carolina and how characteristic was this resettlement to the colonial experience? 11 9 I base this on the many land indentures made by Settlement members as recorded in deed books for both Rowan and Guilford Counties from 1753 to See appendix A for further information on land acquisitions made by individual settlers. 10 Some families, such as the Adam Mitchell family, left Guilford County after the Revolutionary War and migrated to Tennessee or further west. 11 Much of what is known about the Nottingham Settlement and its members comes from Rankin s A History of Buffalo Presbyterian Church, which provides the barest of facts about both the individuals and the community as a whole. 4

12 To determine the motivation behind the Nottingham Settlement members migration to and settlement in Rowan (Guilford) County, I propose that factors used to identify the Nottingham Settlement, such as proximity, society, culture and religion, establish a model for the North Carolina backcountry community in the mid-eighteenth century. The following study supports this thesis by providing local and family historians with an in-depth view of the lives of those associated with the Nottingham Settlement as well as others residing nearby in colonial Guilford County. Exploring the communal identity of the Nottingham Settlement, I rely on the methods employed in similar backcountry community studies but subject to variations due to the availability of extant source materials for this specific set of colonists. My study of the Nottingham Settlement centers on twenty-one individuals the eleven who purchased the initial Granville land grants in December 1753, and ten other participants in the community (men and women who purchased tracts initially reserved for the Nottingham Settlement as well as other landowners associated with the Settlement.) I determined the qualifications of those included in the sample based on information gleaned from the individual Granville grants as well as later land conveyance records. In many instances, the grants do not mention the Nottingham Settlement or the number of the tract allotted to the Settlement. Therefore, when necessary, I relied on Samuel M. Rankin s early-twentieth-century history of the Settlement (A History of Buffalo Presbyterian Church and Her People, Greensboro, N.C.) for information about the group s beginning and used the date (on the contract) of December 1753 as a basis for deciding who purchased one of the thirty tracts. 12 I also based my sample of the 12 Although some of the original thirty tracts cannot be discerned (based on the contract s description), I have endeavored to assign Nottingham Settlement tract numbers to individuals when 5

13 Settlement s pioneering generation on kinship, church association and further information provided by Rankin. The reader should not consider my choice of persons or families as comprehensive. The sample of twenty-one men and women includes: James Barr (? 1805?), John Blair (abt abt. 1772), David Caldwell ( ), John Cunningham ( ), William Denny ( ), Robert Donnell Sr. (1728? 1816?), Thomas Donnell ( ), George Finley ( ), Adam Leakey/Lackey/Leckey (? 1800), John McClintock ( ), James McCuiston Sr. ( ), Robert McCuiston/McQuiston/McQuestion Sr. ( ), Thomas McCuiston Sr. (1704 abt. 1758), John McKnight IV (? 1770), Adam Mitchell ( ), Robert Mitchell (abt ), John Nicks/Nix ( ), Lydia (Steele) Rankin Forbis (abt bef. 1789), Robert Rankin (? 1795), Samuel Scott (? 1777), and Robert Thompson ( ). Using Germans on the Maryland Frontier: A Social History of Frederick County, Maryland, , Elizabeth Kessel s 1981 dissertation on a German community in colonial Frederick County, Maryland, as an example, I divide my study into two sections the first supplies historical context related to members experiences before their migration to North Carolina, and the second analyzes settlers lives after the pioneering generation purchased land in Rowan (Guilford) County. 13 possible. (See table 3.1 in chapter 3.) Without an extant comprehensive plat map or register for the Granville grants, I cannot explain the numbering system employed (how a tract number was assigned whether based on location or time of assignment) or provide a complete listing of tract owners. 13 Elizabeth Augusta Kessel, Germans on the Maryland Frontier: A Social History of Frederick County, Maryland, , (volume I-II) (Ph.D. diss., Rice University, 1981). Kessel explores the subtle balance between cultural persistence and accommodation that [eighteenth-century Germanspeaking] settlers achieved after immigrating to America.(iv) In volume one, she explains the European circumstances surrounding the pioneering generation s emigration to America and supplies a brief, general history of colonial Maryland and Frederick County at the time of her target group s arrival. She also 6

14 In chapter one, I provide a review of the literature surrounding community studies and the southern backcountry. Written within the past thirty to forty years, the books, journal articles and dissertations I consulted represent the most recent research on community studies and colonial America. I separate the literature into four sections geography, kinship, cultural heritage, and religion. A summary at the end of this chapter links relevant information found within the literature to the experiences of the Nottingham Settlement. In chapter two, I present general background information pertinent to Settlement members prior to their arrival in Rowan (Guilford) County as well as events occurring during their lives in mid-eighteenth-century North Carolina. Because the families are predominantly first-, second- or third-generation Scots-Irish immigrants who first settled in southeastern Pennsylvania/northern Maryland, I briefly describe conditions in Ireland and southeastern Pennsylvania/northern Maryland that may have precipitated their migration to America and then the southern backcountry. In addition to this cultural overview, I come to similar conclusions regarding the idea of previous connections discusses the immigrant generations motives for emigrating and a general description of the settlers as a community (e.g., social and marital status). Kessel then analyzes the community s economic, religious, and social experiences after settling in Frederick County, utilizing available county (e.g., land conveyance, tax and court) and church records. Kessel investigates landownership the acquisition, use, and distribution to heirs of the pioneering generation to determine the settlers impact on Frederick County s growing economy. When exploring the influence of religion and religious institutions on the settlers, she analyzes the emphasis placed on education and literacy. In volume two, Kessel describes the German-speaking community s interaction with those outside their community, examining their civic and political involvement in the county. Lastly, she explores the contributions ethnicity makes to one s acculturation in English colonial America. To reinforce her conclusions about the pioneering German-speaking settlers of Frederick County, Kessel developed a codebook for regularized collection of the information found in probate, land, and church records and newspapers and prepared a genealogy for each family who had remained in the county five years after its initial land purchase.(352) 7

15 existing between Settlement members before 1753 by showing that Settlement members either lived within the same community or previously knew fellow members. 14 I demonstrate how these families may have known of each other previously, either before or after migration to America. To determine a possible Irish connection, I trace family name origins in Ulster during the mid to late seventeenth century and early eighteenth century using published Irish probate records. 15 Because eighteenth-century American Presbyterian church records have not survived, I rely on land conveyance records, tax lists and probate records in Pennsylvania (and Maryland when appropriate) to locate members in Lancaster County and nearby counties, such as Cecil County, Maryland, and then discuss the possibility that Settlement families lived near each other prior to their migration to North Carolina. 16 To compensate for a lack of consistently available documentation for each member, I follow Peter N. Moore s example in World of Toil and Strife and depend on the presence of others bearing the same surname living in the general vicinity (in probate, tax and cemetery records) of fellow Nottingham 14 Settlement members existence in Pennsylvania and Maryland is difficult to trace. Although a few of the men owned land in southeastern Pennsylvania and northern Maryland before their arrival in North Carolina, others do not appear in either colony s deed books. Other than land conveyance and tax records, additional sources tracking their existence in Pennsylvania and Maryland are scarce Presbyterians refrained from recording marriages with the local, civil authorities; congregational records of the Presbyterian Church are either incomplete or non-existent; and even though some court records of those residing in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, during the eighteenth century survive, the Settlement members use of commonly-held first names (e.g., John, William, James) makes discerning the identity of those entered in court proceedings difficult. 15 Thomas M. Blagg, ed., Indexes to Irish Wills, Vol. V (London: Phillimore and Co., 1920); and P. Beryl Eustace, ed., Registry of Deeds Dublin: Abstract of Wills, Vol. I, (Dublin: Stationary Office, 1956). 16 John Blair, John Cunningham, James McCuiston, Robert McCuiston, and Samuel Scott appear in Warrant Registers (Records of the Land Office, Pennsylvania State Archives) for either Cumberland or Lancaster County (in 1750, Cumberland County separated from Lancaster County), while surnames associated with the Nottingham Settlement, such as Black, Cummings, Mitchell and Rankin, also appear. 8

16 Settlement members to demonstrate the probability or possibility of their acquaintance with Settlement members. 17 Chapter three investigates and analyzes the social and religious factors shared by the Settlement s pioneering generation, addressing the residential proximity of members both before and after their arrival in North Carolina, their participation in the Presbyterian Church, their attitudes toward education, and the extent of their material possessions. In keeping with historical geographers such as James Lemon, Robert D. Mitchell and Warren Hofstra, I utilize North Carolina land conveyance records to confirm that Settlement members purchased contiguous parcels of land in Rowan (Guilford) County, North Carolina. 18 Because no official plat map of Rowan (Guilford) County exists for the eighteenth century, I have constructed a schematic plat of the properties associated with my sample group based on geographer Fred Hughes s work in Guilford County, N.C.: A Map Supplement and the book s accompanying map of colonial Guilford County. 19 (figure 1) Based on land conveyance, probate and poll tax records, I also explore the pioneering generation s material possessions and the distribution of their real and personal estates. To analyze the kinship and social relationships existing between the initial landowners, I have ascertained common experiences and personal events encountered by 17 Peter N. Moore, World of Toil and Strife: Community Transformation in Backcountry South Carolina, (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007), See appendix 2 in Moore s book. 18 James T. Lemon, The Best Poor Man s Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972); Robert D. Mitchell, Commercialism and Frontier: Perspectives on the Early Shenandoah Valley (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977); and Warren R. Hofstra, The Planting of New Virginia: Settlement and Landscape in the Shenandoah Valley (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). 19 Fred Hughes, Guilford County, N.C.: a Map Supplement (Jamestown, N.C.: The Custom House, 1988), Although individual Granville Grants include a surveyor s drawing of the tract in question, the lack of an existing comprehensive plat map from this time period hindered my ability to piece the individual plats together. Therefore, I had to rely on Fred Hughes work in order to provide an intelligent schematic of the Settlement s boundaries as well as the location of the pioneering generation s land. 9

17 Nottingham Settlement s members. Based on the example of short biographies published in Lois Green Carr, Russell R. Menard, and Lorena S. Walsh s Robert Cole s World, I first develop a standardized narrative of those included in the sample. 20 When necessary, I supplement personal facts from land conveyance records, probate records, county court session minutes, and tax records found in both Pennsylvania (or Maryland) and North Carolina with information provided by family and local histories (book and Web-based). I borrowed the concept of record stripping from both Kessel s dissertation and Darrett B. and Anita H. Rutman s A Place in Time: Middlesex County, Virginia, These short biographies allow me to assess the similarities and differences of members of the Settlement and develop tables to support my analysis. To better understand the Settlement s affiliation with the Presbyterian Church, I explore the community s church associations in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Based on a reference published in a twentieth-century history of the Presbyterian Church established by the Nottingham Settlement community, I investigate the possible connections between the Settlement s association with Old and New Side Presbyterian congregations in Pennsylvania (and Maryland) and the pioneering generation s subsequent migration to North Carolina. 22 In particular, I discuss the Settlement s 20 Lois Green Carr, Russell R. Menard and Lorena S. Walsh, Robert Cole s World: Agriculture and Society in Early Maryland (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991). 21 Darrett B. Rutman and Anita H. Rutman, A Place in Time: Middlesex County, Virginia, , vol. 1 (New York: Norton, 1984); and Kessel, "Germans on the Maryland Frontier. Kessel s method of organizing and analyzing individual lives to understand the community as a whole provides a model for studying other communities. Using available records (e.g., land conveyance, probate, tax), she gleaned facts for selected community members, quantified and codified each fact based on a numeric system within a database, and determined commonly-held characteristics of the community at large. From the database, she explored family and kinship, naming patterns, family size, and inheritance patterns. 22 The Great Awakening s focus on an emotional religious experience and expression of one s faith divided the American Presbyterian Church into two camps those who held to more conservative and traditional viewpoints, with their emphasis on holy living ( Old Side ) and those who embraced a conversion experience and an emotional expression of religious beliefs and practices ( New Side ). See chapter 2 for more on this topic. 10

18 connections to two Presbyterian ministers John Thomson (father of Robert Thompson, initial owner of one of the thirty Nottingham tracts), a proponent of the Old Side; and New-Side advocate Samuel Findley (brother of George Finley, a Settlement member), from whose congregation (Nottingham Presbyterian Church) some of the pioneering generation are believed to have come. 23 I rely on three books E. W. Caruthers s A Sketch of the Life and Character of the Rev. David Caldwell, D.D. (1842), William Henry Foote s Sketches of North Carolina, (1846) and Samuel M. Rankin s A History of Buffalo Presbyterian Church and Her People, Greensboro, N.C. (1934) to provide information on the Settlement s involvement with the Buffalo Presbyterian Church. 24 I supplement the facts provided by Caruthers, Foote and Rankin with transcribed and published works on the local Presbytery, documentation from the national Presbyterian Synod, and the limited extant congregational record of Buffalo Presbyterian Church s first four decades. A cursory look at the North Carolina church s first ministers Hugh McAden, the itinerant preacher who held the first church meeting for the Settlement, and David Caldwell, the church s ecclesiastical leader between 1764 and 1820 augments my research. 25 In chapter four, I provide an overview and summary of the Nottingham Settlement information I have presented and develop conclusions concerning the 23 Rankin, Buffalo Presbyterian Church, 14. Prior to 1768, the Nottingham congregation considered itself a part of what was once lower Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Since 1768, it has been officially part of Cecil County, Maryland. 24 E. W. Caruthers, A Sketch of the Life and Character of the Rev. David Caldwell, D.D.: Near Sixty Years Pastor of the Churches of Buffalo and Alamance (Greensborough, N.C.: Printed by Swaim and Sherwood, 1842); and William Henry Foote, Sketches of North Carolina: Historical and Biographical, Illustrative of the Principles of a Portion of Her Early Settlers (New York: Robert Carter, 1846). Extant church records for the Buffalo Presbyterian Church (Greensboro, N.C.) are limited to session meeting records from 1777 to 1788, and do not include membership rolls or marriage information for the eighteenth century. 25 Without more complete church records for both the West Nottingham Presbyterian Church (in present day Maryland) and Buffalo Presbyterian Church (in North Carolina), I rely on the three histories and risk overlooking Settlement members not mentioned in them. 11

19 community s identity and possible motivations for their migration from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. I suggest that the Nottingham Settlement s pioneering generation migrated to central North Carolina for one reason chiefly, the opportunity to own land and increase property. Appendices include the brief biographies mentioned earlier as well as supplemental material. A bibliography of works cited and consulted follows. 12

20 Chapter One Review of the Literature on Community History At first glance, the Nottingham Settlement does not look like a community. These settlers did not live within the bounds of a village or town, and no extant document of incorporation or organization survives, if it ever existed. Yet a number of common experiences defined these individuals and their families as a community in the southern backcountry during the eighteenth century. Created by historians, the field of community studies includes an eclectic mix of social science disciplines that analyze social organizations, their members and their interactions. Historians of the colonial period utilize the techniques of social history to investigate the composition and relationships of colonial communities in discrete geographical locations and time periods. Relying on methods employed in sociology, geography, psychology and archaeology as well as history, they develop new insights based on common denominators within the community. 1 Early community study projects in the 1970s focused on colonial American Tidewater communities located on or near the Atlantic coast, especially in New England, Pennsylvania and Virginia. A decade later, research extended to those communities in the frontier region known as the backcountry, which includes both the Piedmont and Mountain regions of the thirteen colonies. 1 For a history of the community study movement during the 1970s, consult Kathleen Neils Conzens, Community Studies, Urban History, and Local History, in The Past Before Us: Contemporary Historical Writing in the United States, edited by Michael Kammen (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1980), For a more recent understanding of backcountry studies, read Michael J. Puglisi s chapter, Muddied Waters: A Discussion of Current Interdisciplinary Backcountry Studies, The Southern Colonial Backcountry: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Frontier Communities edited by David Colin Crass, Steven D. Smith, Martha A. Zierden and Richard D. Brooks (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998),

21 A community s location dictates how the historian will approach its study, the research methods employed and the likely results. When investigating communities in the southern backcountry, historians consider varying combinations of key common denominators, such as property (landownership, material possessions and wealth), kinship, heritage and religion, which bind the individuals and their families into a community. Property (Landownership, Material Possessions and Wealth) Unlike the New England colonists whose settlements centered on a town or township, the settlers living in the middle colonies created communities within larger, more dispersed areas of settlement. The inhabitants of New England communities generally emigrated to America as groups from adjoining areas in Britain and practiced a form of communal government based on shared political and religious beliefs that psychologically bound them to their location. Pennsylvania and Maryland immigrants with more diverse ethnic backgrounds tended to seek farmland they could afford and personal opportunities for prosperity first within those colonies and later further south in Virginia and the Carolinas. In The Best Poor Man s Country (1972), historical geographer James Lemon explores the democratic and independent nature of settlers living in early southeastern Pennsylvania how they used the land and their ability to prosper from its use. 2 Utilizing land records and tax assessments, Lemon examines the cultural groups that settled in Pennsylvania (particularly the counties of Chester and Lancaster), their local 2 James T. Lemon, The Best Poor Man s Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972). 14

22 governments, and their land use patterns. Lemon maintains that early immigrants (those arriving before 1750) were largely from the middle stratum of western European society. 3 Whether German-speaking, English or Scots-Irish, the immigrants who came to Pennsylvania shared a quest for independence as it was developing in Europe s towns and countryside during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. According to Lemon, this desire for independence encouraged settlers to regard individual freedom and material gain over that of public interest. 4 Contrary to William Penn s initial concept of communal farming and a local government that reflected colonial New England s township model, Pennsylvania s settlers lived on their own farms and created countybased governments. 5 Expanding on the independent nature of the middling sort, Lemon discusses the premise that Pennsylvanian society and its practices in land organization (individual versus community owned) encouraged settlers, regardless of cultural background, to move freely both within the colony and further south into Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. Motivations for moving varied. Settlers migrated to land occupied by others who shared a similar language, culture, and religion. Pennsylvania s population grew due to an influx of German-speaking and Scots-Irish immigrants which created greater demand for farmland. As the amount of land available for purchase decreased, its value rose. Lemon also analyzes how Pennsylvanians used the land. Settlers produced a variety of grain crops, such as wheat and corn, and practiced crop rotation to increase production. Towns appeared as marketplaces and transportation hubs. Exchanged farm 3 Lemon, Best Poor Man s Country, 5. 4 Ibid., xv. 5 Ibid.,

23 products moved eastward while needed tools, food stuffs and manufactured goods moved westward. At its outer reaches the exchange system brought Pennsylvania s farmers into the world economy. Historian James A. Henretta, in Families and Farms: Mentalite in Pre-Industrial America, disagrees with Lemon s emphasis on the individual, arguing that communityoriented patterns of social interaction and existing lineal family values regarding landownership and farming inhibited the emergence of individualism prior to the midseventeen hundreds. 6 Yearly subsistence took precedent over individualistic inclinations. Maintaining the family s economic status and protecting the parents financial security superseded the sons desires. The discussion continues in 1980 when Lemon in Comment on James A. Henretta s Families and Farms: Mentalite in Pre-Industrial America poses that the accumulation of property delineated the leaders ( better sorts ) from the lesser sorts. 7 Lemon expounds on what he considers to be Henretta s three premises (individual status and community, the market and ideology) and concludes that Henretta leans toward detaching families from society. 8 Henretta, in his reply to Lemon ( ʻFamilies and Farms: Mentalite in Pre-Industrial America : Reply ), defends his interpretation of the farm family in pre-1750 America. 9 Although he admits that Lemon in his Comments adjusted much of what he (Henretta) found unacceptable in Best Poor Man s County, 6 James A. Henretta, Families and Farms: Mentalite in Pre-Industrial America, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 35, no. 1 (1978): 5, James T. Lemon, Comment on James A. Henretta s Families and Farms: Mentalite in Pre- Industrial America, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 37, no. 4 (1980): Ibid., James A. Henretta, Families and Farms: Mentalite in Pre-Industrial America : Reply, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 37, no. 4 (1980):

24 Henretta continues to disagree with Lemon s analysis of the farm family, the chronology of historical change, and the effects of the cultural environment on their lives. 10 In Tenancy in Colonial Pennsylvania: The Case of Chester County (1986), Lucy Simler counters Lemon s claims, arguing that tenant farmers were more common in colonial Pennsylvania than owner farmers, and that economic changes during the eighteenth century created a surge and subsequent decline in tenancy before the Revolutionary War. 11 Declaring smallholding meant upward mobility, she attributes a decrease in the number of smallholding owners to the lack of opportunity to change economic status to that of middling farm owner. 12 Simler supports her argument with a study of one township in Chester County, Pennsylvania, utilizing land records, tax schedules and plat maps to differentiate between tenants and landowners. George W. Franz, in Paxton: A Study of Community Structure and Mobility in the Colonial Pennsylvania Backcountry (1989), relies heavily on landownership to determine the characteristics of one mid-eighteenth-century community in Lancaster County. 13 He claims that conditions in Paxton resulted in an ad hoc community that provided its inhabitants with no sense of communal identity and promoted an individualistic [attitude] at the expense of community solidarity. 14 He argues that the lack of an effective political structure, the temperament of the settlers, the style of landownership 10 Henretta, Families and Farms : Reply, Lucy Simler, Tenancy in Colonial Pennsylvania: The Case of Chester County, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 43, no. 4 (1986): Ibid., George W. Franz, Paxton: A Study of Community Structure and Mobility in the Colonial Pennsylvania Backcountry (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989). 14 Ibid., 7, 8; Franz defines Paxton s ad hoc community as one in which the community structure and its institutions were minimal and latent and functioned effectively only in times of crisis or in order to meet a specific problem. 17

25 practiced, and the economic and social structure of the community contributed to members participation in the Paxton Boys march on Philadelphia in Although Franz uses extant tax lists, probate and land records as well as manuscript collections located in Pennsylvania to determine and identify the community s identity, Franz fails to develop a fuller picture of the Paxton community. Surprisingly, he ignores kinship, the dominant approach in mentor Philip Greven s work, which would have supplemented his emphasis on landownership and prevented him from presenting a one-dimensional view of Paxton. 16 Franz s dependence on old secondary source material weakens his argument further and ignores methods employed by social historians of the 1980s. The desire of settlers in the mid-atlantic region to own land rather than lease it led to their search for economic independence in the southern backcountry. In Colonial North Carolina in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Historical Geography (1964), historical geographer Harry Roy Merrens paved the way for later geographers to write about the history of the land, not just the people who occupied it. He proposes that investigating the changes generated by man upon North Carolina s geography supplements the traditional historical research and supports scholars interpretation of colonial American history. 17 Merrens divides the book into three sections, discussing the land itself, the people who settled within the colony and their economic practices. 15 This popular protest of the colonial government s failure to protect the backcountry from possible attacks by Native Americans took its name from Franz s subject community. 16 This published version of Franz s 1974 dissertation was written under the direction of Philip Greven, whose community study of Andover, Massachusetts, (Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts) in the early 1970s became one of three works to set the early standard for community studies. I discuss Greven s book on pages Harry Roy Merrens, Colonial North Carolina in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Historical Geography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964). 18

26 Producing topical (e.g. distribution of settlers, taxables, and crops) and historical maps from court and probate records, tax lists, travel accounts, customs reports, and period newspapers and geographies, Merrens examines the history of landownership of North Carolina, as well as the state s geological composition. He tracks the flow of population into the region and the location of ethnic groups through demographic information found within colonial records and migration patterns identified by historians. And, he illustrates how North Carolinians utilized the land the methods employed to clear forest, brush and grass; the agricultural practices employed within specific regions of the colony; and the existence of trading centers (urban versus decentralized trade) based on location. Because his focus covers the colony as a whole, Merrens does not investigate the lives of individuals in any one region or community. Robert D. Mitchell argues in Commercialism and Frontier: Perspectives on the Early Shenandoah Valley (1977) that commercialization influenced land utilization in backcountry Virginia, transforming communities from subsistence farming to commercial farming for national and international markets. 18 Using land conveyance records as well as scholarly works, Mitchell examines the landowning practices, population characteristics, and economic development of the Shenandoah Valley during the eighteenth century. He addresses the methods of landownership and land speculation, arguing that the economic motivations of frontier settlers went far beyond the needs of immediate sustenance, and proposes that the economic development of the region was three-fold. 19 Subsistence farming provided for the needs of the local community. A 18 Robert D. Mitchell, Commercialism and Frontier: Perspectives on the Early Shenandoah Valley (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977), xi. 19 Ibid.,

27 surplus of cash crops (wheat, hemp, tobacco) prompted the creation of county seats and towns, enabling trade along the Valley. The need to dispose of these surplus commodities outside of the immediate community led to the improvement of transportation systems and an increase in trade both nationally and internationally. Mitchell s discussion covers the geography, population, and economics of communities rather than the situations of their individual inhabitants. As a result he barely scratches the surface of information available on community life. With the exception of the American Revolution, Mitchell does not consider the effects of outside events upon the community s commercial development, and his isolated view of community lacks comparison with similar communities throughout the backcountry. In The Evolution of the Southern Backcountry: A Case Study of Lunenburg County, Virginia, (1974), Richard R. Beeman argues that the culture of the backcountry in Virginia did not mimic that found in the Tidewater but was no more backward in its practices than the Tidewater counties that considered themselves more civilized. 20 Using legislative, probate, tax and land conveyance records, local Anglican Church histories, and Baptist Church minute books, he claims that political, economic and ethnic differences influenced the Virginia backcountry and created a unique southern culture or identity. He supports his claims by examining Lunenburg County and comparing it to Richmond County in the Tidewater. Beeman finds that the Lunenburg County authorities and Anglican Church leaders lacked the power to control the community. The Lunenburg landholding gentry did not have the same political sway or authority as Tidewater gentry. The ethnically diverse 20 Richard R. Beeman, The Evolution of the Southern Backcountry: A Case Study of Lunenburg County, Virginia, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984). 20

28 backcountry settlers refused to participate in the established Anglican Church and ignored the attempts of Anglican Church leaders to influence local affairs. These settlers evangelical practices threatened the formal Anglican-gentry style of religious and social organization. 21 Dissenter congregations acted as a substitute for and supplement to the legal agency of the county court. 22 According to Beeman, the tobacco culture adopted by backcountry Virginians demanded that the community fully embrace slave labor and limited the availability of inexpensive land. The lack of affordable land forced less affluent farmers to migrate, leaving only landowners with slave labor and creating a middle-class, slave-based society. 23 Beeman also explores the attitudes of the non-english settlers who migrated south from Pennsylvania into the county, claiming these Scots-Irish and Germanspeaking settlers chose to live their lives based on their ethnic cultures rather than abide by the English culture of the Tidewater region. Several flaws arise within Beeman s presentation. In an effort to negate the idea that the term backcountry referred to the cultural backwardness of the region, Beeman emphasizes how Lunenburg compared with the Tidewater culture rather than fully exploring the frontier nature of the community. Although he calls attention to the use of slavery, Beeman does not scrutinize further the slave culture which might have reinforced a major aspect of the emerging southern identity. Relying heavily upon Mitchell s chapters on landownership and speculation, Warren Hofstra maintains in The Planting of New Virginia (2004) that the Shenandoah Valley landscape evolved from open-country farms to urban-centered communities 21 Beeman, Evolution of the Southern Backcountry, Ibid., Ibid.,

29 because of the presence of the particular settlers who migrated there in the early eighteenth century. 24 Employing economic concepts and models as well as land conveyance and court records and first-hand accounts, he supports his evolution of landscape thesis by examining the broader political situation, the effects of an exchange economy on the land, the transformation of local government, and the interaction between land use and the world economy. Specifically Hofstra analyzes the Opequon community, employing economic concepts pertaining to central-place theory which postulates that a central market location allows trade to evolve from subsistence to surplus production. In Opequon this change from subsistence farming to commercial farming (specifically that of wheat and other grain) facilitates the adaptation of an exchange economy to a cash-oriented society. Hofstra also analyzes the material culture connected to the community from the initial landowners recognition of the qualities of natural resources to their buildings and belongings and discusses the colonial government s involvement in planting settlers on family-sized farms (compared to the larger plantation holdings in the Tidewater), the burgeoning economic activity (local, inter-colonial, and imperial), and the incorporation of economic practices like the slave labor. Hofstra initially connects landscape transformation to kinship and ethnicity, but then places less emphasis on the community s initial familial and religious affiliations and relies instead on economic and political circumstances to support his thesis, providing occasional glimpses of individuals to substantiate the broader context. Although he acknowledges that African/African-American slaves lived in the Opequon 24 Warren R. Hofstra, The Planting of New Virginia: Settlement and Landscape in the Shenandoah Valley (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). 22