In Ancient Albemarle Part 8

As the population of the colony increased, facilities for carrying on commerce and for traveling through the country became one of the crying needs of the day. The numerous rivers of Albemarle made provision for ferries imperative, and as early as 1700, we find record made of "Ye ferre over ye mane road" in Perquimans. In 1706 it is recorded that Samuel Phelps was appointed "Keeper of ye Toll Boke at ye Head of Perquimans River."

A council held at the home of Captain Saunderson in 1715 ordered: "That for the better convenience of people pa.s.sing through the country, a good and sufficient ferry be duly kept and attended over Perquimans River, from Mrs. Anne Wilson's to James Thickpenny, and that Mrs. Wilson do keep the same, and that no other persons presume to ferry over horse or man within five miles above or below that place."

As time went on, the crowds attending the courts and a.s.semblies became too large to be accommodated in private dwellings. As early as 1722, the General a.s.sembly ordered a court-house to be built at Phelps Point, now the town of Hertford, and tradition states that the old building was erected on the point near the bridge, where the home of Mr. Thomas McMullan now stands.

One of the most interesting spots in Perquimans County is the strip of land lying between the Perquimans and the Yeopim rivers, known as Harvey's Neck. This was the home of the Harveys, men who for over a century bore an important part in the history of our State. It was in older days, as now, a fair and fertile land. Herds of deer wandered through its forests; and great flocks of swan and wild geese floated upon its silver streams, feeding upon the sweet gra.s.s which then grew in those rivers. The waters were then salt, but with the choking up of the inlets that let in the saline waves of the Atlantic, the gra.s.s disappeared, and with it the wild fowl who wintered there.

Of all the members of the famous Harvey family whose homes were builded on this spot, none proved more worthy of the fame he won than John Harvey, son of Thomas Harvey and Elizabeth Coles.

Elected when just of age to the a.s.sembly of 1746, he continued to serve his State in a public capacity until his death in 1775.

Resisting the tyrannical endeavor of Governor Dobbs to tax the people against their rights, he nevertheless stood by the same governor in his efforts to raise men and money for the French and Indian War. Serving as Speaker of the House in 1766, he took an active part in opposing the Stamp Act, and boldly declared in the a.s.sembly that North Carolina would not pay those taxes. In the a.s.sembly of 1769 he proposed that Carolina should form a Non-Importation a.s.sociation; and when Governor Tryon thereupon angrily dismissed the a.s.sembly and ordered its members home, Harvey called a convention independent of the Governor, and the a.s.sociation was formed.

When Governor Martin refused to call the a.s.sembly of 1774, for fear that it would elect delegates to the Continental Congress, John Harvey declared: "Then the people will call an a.s.sembly themselves"; and following their intrepid leader, the people did call the convention of 1774, elected their delegates to Philadelphia, and openly and boldly joined and led their sister colonies in the gigantic struggle with the mother country that now began.

In the time of Boston's need, when her ports were closed by England's orders, and her people were threatened with starvation, John Harvey and Joseph Hewes together caused the s.h.i.+p "Penelope" to be loaded with corn and meal, flour and pork, which they solicited from the generous people of Albemarle, and sent it with words of cheer and sympathy to their brethren in the New England town. In 1775 Harvey again braved the anger of the Royal Governor and called another people's convention, whose purpose and work was to watch and circ.u.mvent the tyrant in his endeavor to crush the patriots in the State.

"The Father of the Revolution" in Carolina, he was to his native State what Patrick Henry was to Virginia, in the early days of the Revolution, and what Hanc.o.c.k and Adams were to Ma.s.sachusetts. His untimely death, in 1775, caused by a fall from a horse, was deeply mourned by patriots throughout the land.

Among other eminent sons of Perquimans during the Revolutionary period the names of Miles Harvey, Colonel of the regiment from that county; William Skinner, Lieutenant-Colonel of the same regiment; Thomas Harvey, Major, and Major Richard Clayton, are recorded in history. Among the delegates to the People's Convention called by Harvey and Johnston we find the Harveys, Whedbees, Blounts, Skinners and Moores, men whose names were prominent then as now in the social and political life of the State.

As time went on, Phelps Point at the Narrows of the Perquimans River became so thickly populated that by June, 1746, a pet.i.tion was presented to the General a.s.sembly, praying for an act to be pa.s.sed to lay out 100 acres of land in Perquimans, including Phelps Point, for a town and a town commons.

But a disturbance arose in the State about that time concerning the right of the northern counties to send five delegates each to the a.s.sembly, while the southern counties were allowed to send only two.

Governor Gabriel Johnson sided with the southern section, and ordered the a.s.sembly to meet at Wilmington in November, 1746, on which occasion he and the southern delegates proposed to make a strong fight to reduce the representation from the Albemarle counties.

The northern counties, tenaciously clinging to their rights, established in the early days of the colony when the counties south of Albemarle Sound had not been organized, refused to send delegates to this a.s.sembly; whereupon that body, though a majority of its members were absent, pa.s.sed an act reducing the representation from the Albemarle region to two members from each county. Indignant at this act, which they considered illegal, the citizens in the northern counties refused to subscribe to it, and for eight years declined to send any delegates at all to the a.s.sembly; and the bill for establis.h.i.+ng a town in Perquimans was heard from no more until the trouble between the two sections was settled.

Finally the people of Albemarle sent a pet.i.tion to George III, praying him to restore their rights in the General a.s.sembly, and the King graciously granted their request. In 1758 an a.s.sembly met at New Bern, at which delegates from all sections of the colony were present; and in answer to a pet.i.tion presented by John Harvey, it pa.s.sed an act for the erection of a town at Phelps Point in Perquimans County.

The little village was called Hertford, a word of Saxon origin, signifying Red Ford. It was named for the Marquis of Hertford, an English n.o.ble who moved for the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766, and who was amba.s.sador at Paris in the reign of George III, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

The settlement at Phelps Point was already an important rendezvous for the dwellers in the county. The cypress trees under which Fox had stood and preached to the little band of brethren still stood, as they stand to-day, bending lovingly over the stream, close to the end of the point.

A little Church of England chapel farther down had since 1709 been the center of the religious life of its members in the county, and the court-house on the point since 1722 had been the scene of the political and judicial gatherings in Perquimans.

The a.s.sembly of 1762, realizing the importance of the little town to the community, decreed that a public ferry should be established "from Newby's Point to Phelp's Point where the court-house now stands," and in 1766 Seth Sumner, William Skinner, Francis Nixon, John Harvey and Henry Clayton were appointed trustees of the ferry; a three-penny tax was laid on all taxable persons to defray the expenses of the ferry, and "All persons crossing to attend vestry meetings, elections, military musters, court martials and sessions of the court" were to be carried over free of charge.

The site of the town, described in Colonial Records as "healthy, pleasantly situated, well watered and commodious for commerce," was the property of John Phelps, who gave his consent to the laying off of 100 acres for the town on condition that he should retain his own house and lot, and four lots adjoining him. The public ferry having fallen into his hands, the further condition was made that the town should allow no ferry other than his to be run so long as he complied with the ferry laws. The subscribers for the lots were ordered to build within three years, one well-framed or brick house at least 16 feet square; and in one month from purchase, were to pay the trustees the sum of 45 s.h.i.+llings for each lot.

As early as 1754, before the little settlement began to a.s.sume the airs of a town, the old Eagle Tavern still standing on Church street, was a registered hotel; and there when court week appeared on the calendar, the representative men of the county and the surrounding precincts would gather.

Quiet Quaker folk from Piney Woods, eight miles down from Newby's Point, Whites and Nicholsons, Albertsons, Newbys and Symmes, jogged along the country roads behind their sleek, well-fed nags, to answer with serene yea or nay the questions asked on witness stand or in jury room.

Powdered and bewigged judge and lawyer, high and mighty King's officers from Edenton or New Bern, or Bath, brilliant in gay uniform, rolled ponderously thither in c.u.mbersome coaches. Leaving their great plantations on the adjoining necks in the hands of their overseers, Harveys and Skinners, Blounts and Whedbees, Winslows and Gordons, Nixons and Woods and Leighs, dashed up to the doors of the tavern on spirited steeds. Hospitable townsfolk hurried to and fro, greeting the travelers, and causing mine host of the inn much inward concern, lest their cordial invitation lure from his door the guest whose bill he could see, in his mind's eye, pleasantly lengthen, as the crowded court docket slowly cleared.

Very sure were the guests at the tavern that horse and man would be well cared for by the genial landlord; for the law required that the host of Eagle Tavern should give ample compensation for the gold he pocketed.

When business was ended, the strangers within his gates wended their way homeward. No skimping of the bill of fare, no inattention to the comfort of the wayfarer did the landlord dare allow, lest his license be taken from him for violation of the tavern laws.

Many an ill.u.s.trious guest the ancient inn has known, and a story cherished by the Hertford people ascribes to the quaint old structure the honor of having on one occasion sheltered beneath its roof the ill.u.s.trious "Father of his Country," George Was.h.i.+ngton.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EAGLE TAVERN, HERTFORD, NORTH CAROLINA]

Whether our first President came to Hertford on business connected with lands in the Dismal Swamp in which he was interested, or whether he tarried at the old tavern while on his triumphal journey through the South in 1791, no one now knows, but the room is still shown, and the tale still told of the great man's stay therein.

Diagonally across the street from the Eagle Tavern, at the end of the yard enclosing the old Harvey home, may be seen two great stones which are said to mark the grave of a mighty Indian chief. Possibly Kilc.o.konen, friend of George Durant, lies buried there. The Hertford children in olden days, when tales of ghost and goblin were more readily believed than they are to-day, used to thrill with delicious fear whenever in the dusk of the evening they pa.s.sed the spot, and warily they would step over the stones, half-dreading, half-hoping to see, as legend said was possible, the spirit of the old warrior rise from the grave, swinging his gory tomahawk and uttering his blood-chilling war cry.

During the long years that have pa.s.sed since the white man came into Albemarle, old Perquimans has borne an enviable part in making the history of our State.

Hertford itself felt little of the fury of the storm of the War of Secession, though during the awful cataclysm the peaceful Perquimans was often disturbed by the gunboats of the Northern Army. One brief battle was fought in the town, in which one man was killed on each side. And the old residents still love to boast of the heroism shown by the courageous Hertford women, who, while the skirmish was going on, came out on their piazzas, and, heedless of the shot and sh.e.l.l flying thick and fast around them, cheered on the soldiers battling to defend their homes.

A ball from one of the gunboats on the river, while this skirmish was taking place, went through one of the houses down near the sh.o.r.e and tore the covering from the bed on which the mistress of the house had just been lying.

The cruel war at last was over, the darker days of Reconstruction pa.s.sed heavily and stressfully by; the South began to recover from the ruin wrought by the awful struggle and its aftermath; and in the quiet years that followed, the Spirit of G.o.d brooded over her rivers, hills and plains, and brought peace and prosperity to the troubled land. Her farms were tilled again, the wheels of mills and factories were set whirling, and new business enterprises offered to the laboring man opportunities to earn a fair living.

And the old colonial town of Hertford, sharing with her sister towns and cities in the Southland the prosperity for which her children for many weary, painful years had so bravely and manfully striven, sees the dawn of a new day, bright with the promise of a happy future for her sons and daughters.

CHAPTER XIV

CURRITUCK, THE HAUNT OF THE WILD FOWL

Currituck County is known the country over as the sportsman's paradise.

Thither when the first sharp frost gives warning that the clear autumn skies will soon be banked with gray snow clouds, the wild fowl from the far North come flocking. And as the swift-winged procession skims through the starry skies, and the hoa.r.s.e cry of the aerial voyagers resounds over head, then do the dwellers in eastern Albemarle know for a surety that the year is far spent, and the winter days close at hand.

Guided by unerring instinct, the feathered tribes of the North pursue "through the boundless sky their certain flight" till the shallow waters of Currituck Sound and its reedy sh.o.r.es greet their eager sight. There they find the wild celery and other aquatic plants upon which they love to feed, growing in abundance; and there they make their winter home "and rest and scream among their fellows," preferring the risk of death at the hands of the sportsman to the certain starvation that would confront them in their native Arctic clime.

Vast as are to-day the clouds of wild fowl that every year descend upon the sh.o.r.es and waters of Currituck, their numbers were far greater in years long gone, before the white man with shot and gun came roving among the reedy marshes. Long before George Durant's advent into the State, the Indians with that aptness for nomenclature for which they are noted, had given to this haunt of the wild fowl the name of "Coretonk,"

or Currituck, as now called, in imitation of the cry of the feathered visitors.

But not alone as the winter home of the winged creatures of the Northern wilds was Currituck noted in the early days of our State. This county, formerly much larger than it is to-day, for many years embraced the region known as Dare County, and to Currituck belongs the distinction of having once included within its borders the spot upon which Raleigh's colonies tried to establish their homes.

The history of that event is too well known to bear repet.i.tion. The story of Amadas' and Barlowe's expedition, of Ralph Lane's bold adventures in exploration of Albemarle Sound, Chowan River and Chesapeake Bay, of the return of his disappointed colony to England in Drake's vessels, and the tragic fate of little Virginia Dare and of John White's colony, have all been told in fiction, song and verse.

The failure of Raleigh's colonies to establish a permanent settlement in the New World discouraged the English for many years from making any further attempts to settle America. From 1590, the date of Governor White's return to Roanoke, and of his unsuccessful search for the "lost colony," that lovely island for many years disappears from the white man's gaze; and save for a few scattered, unrecorded settlements in northern Albemarle, Carolina itself was almost unknown to the world.

But in September, 1654, according to the Colonial Records, a young fur trader from Virginia had the misfortune to lose his sloop in which he was about to embark for the purpose of trading with the Indians in the Albemarle country. For reasons not stated he supposed she had gone to Roanoke, so he hired a small boat, and with three companions set out in search of the runaway vessel. "They entered at Coratoke Inlet, ten miles to the north of Cape Henry," so reads the ancient chronicle, "and so went to Roanoke Island, where, or near thereabouts, they found the Great Commander of those parts with his Indians a-hunting, who received them civilly and showed them the ruins of Sir Walter Raleigh's fort, from which I received a sure token of their being there."

A few months before this journey of the young fur trader, Charles II had bestowed upon eight of his favorites all the territory in America lying between the thirty-first and thirty-sixth parallels of lat.i.tude, a princely gift indeed, and worthy of the loyal friends who had devoted their lives and fortunes to the Stuart cause during the dark days when that cause seemed hopelessly lost. This grant embraced the land adjacent to the north sh.o.r.e of Albemarle Sound, and extending to Florida; but it failed to include a strip of territory about thirty miles broad, lying between the thirty-sixth degree and the Virginia line. In this fertile region George Durant and other settlers had as early as 1661 established their homes, buying from Kilc.o.konen, the great Chief of the Yeopims, their right to the lands; and there these hardy pioneers were swiftly converting the primeval wilderness into fertile and productive fields.

Governor Berkeley, of Virginia, looked with covetous eye upon this fair strip of land, and with a view to planting settlements there in order to establish Virginia's claim to the territory, he had offered in the name of King Charles extensive grants in this region to planters who would bring a certain number of people into Albemarle. In 1663 Berkeley granted to John Harvey 600 acres of land "lying in a small creek called Curratuck (probably Indian Creek to-day), falling into the River Kecoughtancke (now North River), which falls in the Carolina River (known to-day as Albemarle Sound). The land was given Mr. Harvey for bringing into the colony twelve new settlers."

Many other settlers in this region had acquired their lands by patents from Virginia; but after the King's gift to his friends, Berkeley, himself one of the Lords Proprietors, was no longer desirous to consider the Albemarle region a part of the Virginia Colony; and henceforth the grants of land were all issued in the name of the Lords Proprietors. For several years, however, the Albemarle counties were really separate, and to all practical purposes, independent territory. The proprietors had no legal claim to the region, and there was nothing in Virginia's charter to show that she could rightfully lay claim to it. Nevertheless the proprietors did claim it, and authorized Berkeley to appoint a governor for that region. Berkeley therefore journeyed into the settlement, organized a government, and appointed Drummond Governor of Albemarle.

In 1665 the Lords, realizing the confusion that would arise unless their claim to the land was made good, induced the King to include Albemarle in their grant.

But Virginia was by no means ready to relinquish her claim to this promising settlement, and after Berkeley's day a long struggle began between the Royal Governors of that colony over the question as to who should collect the rents and taxes from the inhabitants of this disputed tract. As late as 1689 the quarrel was still going on, and the Governor and Council of Virginia appealed to William and Mary to restrain the Governor of North Carolina from collecting taxes in Currituck County; and the question of the boundary line between Virginia and Carolina still being uncertain, the sovereigns were asked to have the bounds surveyed and settled.