Living on the Yadkin Valley Frontier
The majority of the first settlers in the Yadkin Valley were not immigrants fresh from the old country… that group would come later. These first settlers were second and third generation colonists who knew what to expect and how to survive in a backwoods economy that demanded near complete self-sufficiency. That experience would prove invaluable, for the nearest towns and the “civilization” of the coastal areas were many days… or even weeks… away.
They generally planned their arrival for late fall or winter, bringing seed and food from the last harvest at their previous home.1 If all went as planned, the food would sustain them while they went about establishing themselves; for there was much to do…
One of the first tasks was finding land. While land was readily available, the new settlers wished to find tracts of fertile soil with good water and few defects such as swamps or irregular ground.
Some of the first settlers, notably those Jersey Bottoms settlers who came from Hopewell, New Jersey, had hired an agent to find suitable land for them. Similarly, the Moravians had sent an advance party whose search ranged from the eastern parts of the colony to the mountains.
Others like the Bryan Camp settlers came with a “guide” who led them to suitable acreage. And there were those who came to find land on their own, led only by the recommendation of acquaintances or relatives who had reached the Valley before them.2
Next came the process of acquiring the land. The steps in that process are described in a previous section. There seem to have been only a few squatters, who settled on land with no attempt to acquire it legally. Most of the newcomers had sold land elsewhere prior to their arrival so they were prepared to pay the sums needed for fresh land in Carolina.3
On arrival on the new land they faced the problem of constructing shelter for themselves and their families and preparing for getting a crop into the ground. Shelter came first and time, not comfort, was the factor that determined what form it would take. The answer for many of them was a quickly constructed log cabin.
We’re fortunate that the Moravians who settled in present day Forsyth County had a propensity for keeping detailed records. Among their earliest records of the Wachovia settlement is a detailed description and drawings of a log cabin they found on their arrival in 1752. It typifies the first cabins built on the Carolina frontier.
The cabin had been built only a short time earlier by Hans Wagner, a settler and a miller by trade.
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A 1740's era cabin was constructed at Boone's Cave Park in 2006.
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Although it was meant to be the Wagner family dwelling, it had only a single room and could boast neither floor nor chimney. The roof was made up of rived boards rather than the more time consuming split shingles. At one end of the hard packed dirt floor of the cabin was an open fire pit under a “smoke hole” in the roof. There was a single unglazed window with no shutters and a single wooden door.
As crude as it was, the Wagner cabin was actually somewhat better constructed than many in the area. Wagner had taken the time to hew the log walls rather than leaving the logs round, as would have been typical of most backcountry cabins.4
Although we have no records of what the Wagner family had for possessions, a pioneer family’s furnishings would have been minimal, being limited to what they could bring with them on horseback or packed into a wagon.
The limitations placed on what a settler family could reasonably bring with them and the relatively small population, which couldn’t support a large number of specialized tradesmen,5 meant that self-sufficiency was a requirement. Most of the new settlers grew their own food and provided all but a few necessary services.
Agriculture existed in a primitive form. The hoe was often the only available implement beyond a pointed stick, or “dibble,” used for planting. Crops were planted around the stumps left from clearing the fields, as there was no means of removing them. Further, the basics of crop rotation were unknown so a field might only be expected to produce for a limited number of years before its reduced production would signify the need to clear additional acreage.
Even so, prodigious amounts of corn could be planted and harvested. Hogs also were a common commodity due to their ability to forage for themselves. This prevalence of corn and pork led to the frontier’s repetitive diet of “hog and hominy.” Of course, excess corn production also led to the production of distilled whiskey.
The Yadkin Valley’s natural resources were also “harvested,” particularly deerskins, herbs, and dyestuffs. In the year 1768 alone, nearly 2,500 deerskins were shipped to Great Britain through North Carolina ports and undoubtedly an even greater number were shipped from the backcountry through Charleston.
While self-sufficiency was the norm, some trades were essential. Among the trades represented in the first few years of settlement were: millers, blacksmiths, tailors, shoemakers, tanners, carpenters, and weavers. The presence of most of the trades among the Moravian settlers caused some of the “outsiders” to seek their services, a situation the Moravians had not foreseen.
Noticeably lacking in this list is a medical practitioner, although the Moravians would soon add a “surgeon.” The medical care that was available fell into the realm of home remedies and herbal cures perhaps supplemented by a self-help volume such as John Tennent’s “Every Man His Own Doctor…or the Poor Planter’s Physician,” published in several American editions in the late 1730’s.6
But, the backcountry was growing, its rate of growth far exceeding any other place in the American Colonies. It wouldn’t be long before Salisbury and Salem would offer goods and trades much like any American city. But before that happened there would be setbacks.
War on the Yadkin Valley Frontier
By the early 1750’s, hostility between the European settlers and Native American tribes to the north had inspired many settlers to come to North Carolina where the Cherokee and Catawba had existed peacefully with the colonists. The absence of Native American populations from the Yadkin Valley had further reduced the possibility for conflict, although the Valley remained a major north-south avenue of passage. Moravian Bishop Spangenberg noted, “Our land lies in a region much frequented by the Catawbas and Cherokees, especially for hunting. The Senecas, too, come here almost every year, especially when they are at war with the Catawbas.”
The conflict that we call the French and Indian War (1754 – 1763) was characterized by French agitation of the Native American tribes. All along the northern frontiers, raids on isolated settlements increased. Far west of the Yadkin Valley, French agents and traders from the Mississippi River went among the “Overhill” Cherokee and urged them to attack the Carolina backcountry settlements. At first there were only isolated incidents, but by 1754 the situation had become critical.
Governor Dobbs persuaded the colonial assembly to provide funds for raising a company of 150 men to patrol the western frontier and to build a fort. In August of that year the Catawba chiefs met at Salisbury and declared themselves ready to come to the aid of the colony against the Cherokee and northern Indians. Soon their services were called upon as parties of Cherokee began to raid settlers’ farms along the Catawba River.
By 1755, sporadic Cherokee raids had spread northward into the Yadkin Valley. Construction began on a log fort between Third and Fourth Creeks near present day Statesville. It was named for the Royal Governor, Arthur Dobbs,7 and commanded by Captain Hugh Waddell. The Moravians built a stockade around the village of Bethabara and took in fleeing settlers from nearby farms. A smaller fortification called “Fort Waddell” was built in the forks of the Yadkin.8
Over the next few years the situation continued to deteriorate. Settlers fled the Valley for safer places to the east or in Virginia. Those who remained were under constant threat day or night.
In early 1760 a large party of Cherokees attacked Fort Dobbs but were driven off after several hours of conflict. The raiders seem to have then moved north into the Forks region and the Moravian settlements, for later that year a large party of “Overhill” Cherokee under their chief “Little Carpenter” came to attack the stockade at Bethabara. Their attack was never carried out as the ringing of the night watchman’s bell within the fort alarmed the Indians. Believing they had been detected, the Cherokee slipped away.
In 1761 it was determined that the only way to end the raids was to take the war into the “Overhill” Cherokee country. A mixed force of British Regulars and militia9 from North and South Carolina and Virginia crossed over the mountains and destroyed 15 of the Cherokee villages, bringing the raids on the frontier to a halt. Peace came once again to the Yadkin Valley and the influx of settlers resumed.
Politics and Economics in the Backcountry
The Yadkin Valley was separated from the older eastern North Carolina settlements in several ways. One was a geographic separation. There were few roads that led from the Yadkin Valley into the eastern settlements while the rivers that could be used for navigation generally flowed into South Carolina. Trade from the backcountry mostly went through Virginia or South Carolina, both of which offered large port cities.
Next was a cultural separation. While the Valley settlers were mostly Scotch-Irish and Rhineland Germans who were newcomers to the colony, the eastern settlements were predominantly English who had been in the colony long enough to become established in the political power-base. Rather than being a homogenous population with common interests, the colony was strongly sectionalized.
Further, although the population of the backcountry was growing at a great rate the newcomers were under-represented10 in North Carolina’s colonial assembly. Single towns in the old Albemarle Sound region held as many votes in the assembly as the entire county of Rowan although that county made up the northern half of western North Carolina.
This political disparity and division of interests would soon contribute to widespread dissatisfaction and eventually to armed conflict.
Also contributing to dissatisfaction was the administration of government within the colony. Like most colonies at the time, most officials weren’t salaried but were paid on a “fee” basis. An individual paid the “fee” to the official for services rendered according to a rate table set in 1736 and updated in 1748. Those that didn’t use the services didn’t pay.
Unfortunately, this system proved to be an open invitation to abuse, as the 1748 instructions were unclear as to how the fees were to be applied. Did the fee for recording a deed also include the charge for filing it, or was that an incremental charge?11
Attempts to have crooked officials removed were often thwarted by an election process that allowed “courthouse rings”12 to control who was elected. Regular complaints and petitions to the Colonial Assembly went unanswered. An additional irritant was the lack of hard currency13 in all the colonies. North Carolina had issued “Proclamation Money”14 on several occasions, and on a local basis, barter, or the use of “commodity notes”15 might suffice, but payment of taxes required hard currency. It was stated by more than one North Carolina official that there wasn’t enough hard currency in circulation to pay the tax bill for any given year.
Settlers in the Yadkin Valley and throughout much of the Granville District who were unable to pay taxes in hard currency faced the danger of having their property distrained, or taken to be sold for taxes. Some members of the Courthouse Rings were able to enrich themselves by buying valuable properties at a fraction of their cost at tax sales.
The unrest brought about by these abuses and frustration at the lack of responsiveness of the Colonial Assembly led to the “War of the Regulation,” a struggle that ended with the “Battle of the Alamance” in 1771 when the backcountry Regulators were soundly defeated by the North Carolina militia led by Governor William Tryon.
The “War of the Regulation” is worthy of a study on its own, but is far beyond the scope of this present work. It does, however, provide a convenient milestone to end the 100-year period from the 1670 arrival of the first English-speaking explorers into the Yadkin Valley to 1770 when our region had become well settled while progressing from a raw frontier to a rural but economically vital portion of what would soon become the State of North Carolina.
Copyright J. M. Daniel, 2006
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Notes:
1. Joseph Doddridge, who was a young man when his father settled in the Virginia Piedmont in 1763, explained that his father chose to come in the early spring which led to their food supplies running out long before they could be replenished from crops planted on the new land.
2. Doddridge explains the backcountry “test” for fertile ground thusly, “The test is this: dig a hole of any reasonable dimensions and depth. If the earth which was taken out, when thrown lightly back into it, does not fill up the hole the soil is fruitful, but if it more than fill it up the soil is barren.” Doddridge, pg. 86.
3. Those who came after the 1763 death of Earl Granville found that Granville’s Land Office had closed. They were therefore unable to acquire legal title to land unless they bought it from a previous settler. It would be 1777 before the colony of North Carolina, then in rebellion against Great Britain, would open a land office, allowing those settlers who had occupied land for as much as 14 years to lay claim to it. This inability to secure their land and improvements was one of the many contributing factors to the Regulator controversy in North Carolina.
4. Using the Wagner cabin as reference, the Davidson County Historical Museum was able to guide the construction of a similar cabin at Boone’s Cave Park. This structure will become part of a new interpretive plan that will allow Park staff to demonstrate both the history and lifestyles of the settlement period along with the impressive natural resources that attracted our settler ancestors to the Yadkin Valley.
5. Moravian Bishop Spangenberg noted, “Almost nobody has a trade.” Moravian Records, Vol. I, pg. 39.
6. Tennent stated that his work was “...design'd for those who can't afford to dye by the Hand of a Doctor” and intended “...to lead the Poorer sort onto the pleasant Paths of Health; and when they have the Misfortune to be sick, to shew them the cheapest and easiest Ways of getting well again.”
7. Fort Dobbs is a North Carolina State Historic Site located just north of Statesville off US 21. Although at present the site contains only the remains of a recent archaeological excavation, construction of a restored fort is planned.
8. “Papers of Archibald D. Murphey,” quoted in Douglas Rights’ The American Indian in North Carolina.
9. The militia was the primary means of defense in all the colonies. With only a few exceptions, all free men between the ages of 16 and 60 were required to serve in local militia companies and to defend their home territory when called to duty. By law the militia companies met once a month for drill and exercise under their appointed officers and twice a year with the other companies from their county.
10. Among the Yadkin Valley settlers, the Scotch-Irish showed the greatest interest in politics. Many would become the early leaders of the region.
11. Edmund Fanning, a personal friend of Governor William Tryon and one of the most abusive officials of the era was tried and found guilty of extorting improper fees. Despite his conviction, his fine was reduced to a single penny, as no one in the court was able to determine from the 1748 rate table what the correct fees should have been.
12. In simple terms, the county sheriff managed the election, which was by open ballot. The election chose the magistrates and officials, who in turn nominated the sheriff. Those who challenged this power structure were likely to suffer retribution.
13. In 1765, Governor William Tryon said that the amount of hard currency in the backcountry was “inconsiderable.”
14. Proclamation Money was paper currency issued by a colony. Its value was based only on the Assembly proclaimed statement of its worth. As such it circulated at a discount and might be refused for payment. Other colony’s proclamation money also was in daily circulation, notably that of Virginia.
15. “Commodity Notes” is the term used for an exchange medium based on certificates for farm commodities that were stored in a government warehouse. Commodity Notes were an official exchange unit in North Carolina beginning in 1748. …Watson, Money and Monetary Problems in Early North Carolina, pg. 6.