1728, and tells us that its forty or fifty houses were mostly small
and poor, and that only the better sort had brick chimneys. He says
that the Court-House looked like a tobacco barn, and that it was, as
he supposed, the only “metropolis” in the world which had no house of
worship of any kind, and no religious teacher or minister. This may
have been true as to the corporate limits of the town, but we know
that a church had been built at “Queen Anne’s Creek,” the former name
of the point where Edenton stands, twenty-five years earlier; and
a few years after Colonel Byrd’s visit the church still standing was
begun, and after many years was completed in such fashion that to-day
St. Paul’s Church, Edenton, remains the most admirable example we
have of our Colonial architecture, and a stately and becoming temple
of Christian worship. About the same time the present Court-House was
also built. It fronts upon an open square, sloping gently down to the
margin of the bay, so that the judge, sitting on the bench and looking
through the front windows, enjoys a beautiful view of the waters
across the sound towards Plymouth. This has not always been conducive
to the despatch of business. A very able and learned judge from the
up-country, upon his first holding court in Edenton, is said to have
stopped the eloquent counsel in the midst of his speech, and to have
declared that it would be impossible for him to attend to his argument
until it could be explained to him how two vessels, which he saw out in
the bay, could be sailing in exactly opposite directions on the same
wind.
[Illustration: ST. PAUL’S CHURCH, EDENTON, N. C., FROM THE SOUTHEAST.
BEGUN IN 1736.]
Edenton never became a very large town. The sloops and schooners and
brigs which carried the wheat and corn and pork and lumber to the
Northern or West Indian markets, could very often run up the deep
creeks and inlets almost to the farmers barn, or to the lumberman’s
camp in the swamp; and a few merchants were enough to do the limited
business of a purely agricultural community. But from 1722 to 1743
the Assembly met here, with few exceptions, and the General Court
was held here, so that it was the first settled seat of government.
And even after the growth of the Province to the southward demanded
a more central location for the government, Edenton still grew and
prospered, and became a place of wealth and importance, and the centre
of a society as cultivated and refined as could be found anywhere in
the country. It was a port of entry, though the official title of
the collector was Collector of the Port of Roanoke; and thither, in
1769, came James Iredell, a lad of seventeen, as deputy under his
kinsman, Henry Eustace McCulloh. He afterwards became an Associate
Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and had a county of North
Carolina named in his honor. He was one of the most truly admirable
characters in our history, and his correspondence is our richest mine
of information concerning the social life of his times, as well as the
most instructive view we have had left us of the civil and political
history of the State during its sub-revolutionary period. He has left
us a bright and pleasing picture of the old times in Edenton, when
Samuel Johnston, Joseph Hewes, Charles Johnson and Hugh Williamson were
its leading men, and, with the other notables of that region,--Blounts,
Skinners, Hoskinses and others,--made up a society whose traditions
remain and give to Edenton a distinction which time has not entirely
destroyed. After it had long ceased to be the seat of government it
retained to a considerable extent its prestige in all the northern
section of the State, commercially and socially.
Newbern, laid out by Colonel Thomas Pollock on his own lands about the
time of the coming of De Graffenreid, was not incorporated until 1723.
In 1738, Governor Gabriel Johnston called the Assembly to meet there,
and in 1746 the Assembly designated it as the seat of government. With
a few exceptions the subsequent sessions of the Assembly were held
there during the continuance of the royal authority. Tryon, the first
of the royal governors who wholly abandoned residence in the country,
built his famous “Palace” there, in which he and his wife _sat_ while
receiving their company, with an assumption of royal state which
offended the pride of the Colonial gentry, who did not lack a sense of
their own dignity.
Into the Cape Fear River adventurers from New England had come as early
as 1661, and had begun the raising of cattle on the abundant natural
pasturage of the country. They soon abandoned the enterprise, driven
off, it is said, by the Indians, whose children they had sent to be
sold for slaves in New England.
In 1665, Sir John Yeamans, a wealthy planter of Barbadoes, brought in
a colony from that island, and began a settlement at “Old Town,” eight
miles below the site of Wilmington. This was also abandoned after a few
years, Yeamans going back to Barbadoes, and the settlers going either
north to the Albemarle section, or south to the new city Charleston, at
the confluence of the Ashley and the Cooper Rivers.
[Illustration: HARNETT’S HOUSE, “HILTON,” NEAR WILMINGTON.]
At the end of the proprietary period the whole of what was known as
Clarendon County had only about five hundred white inhabitants. In
spite of its noble river and fertile lowlands it had a bad name. Two
attempts to settle it had failed, as we have seen; and, added to the
terrors of the coast, which its very name, Cape Fear, advertised, the
lower river had been for years the refuge and rendezvous of bands of
pirates. As early as 1684 they are known to have resorted to these
remote and solitary waters, and early in the eighteenth century it was
the headquarters of that nefarious band among whom Stead Bonnet and
Teach, or Black Beard, were leaders, who with unparalleled insolence
lay off the harbor at Charleston and sent a deputation into the city to
hector the very Governor and Council, and to demand and obtain certain
medical supplies which they needed. This insolence, however, proved
their ruin: Governor Johnston and Colonel Rhett attacked Bonnet and his
party in their Cape Fear retreats, and carried off all whom they did
not kill, to be tried and hanged at Charleston; at about the same time
Teach and his crew were attacked and killed or hanged by an expedition
from Virginia under officers of the royal navy, so that the Cape Fear
was permanently freed from these pests.
The settlers from the Albemarle and the Neuse now began to press down
toward the fertile bottoms along the northeast branch of the Cape Fear,
while about the same time a movement from South Carolina brought a
number of its distinguished men into the same region from the opposite
direction. The names Moseley, Lillington, Swann, Porter, Ashe, Harnett,
Rowan and others, first prominent in the Albemarle settlements, became
the leading names in the southern section; while the Moore brothers,
descendants of Sir John Yeamans, and already distinguished in the
Province of South Carolina, led a number of their best families to seek
a new home and to extend the culture of rice into this region.
[Illustration: “ORTON HOUSE.”]
The town of Brunswick, in the new county of New Hanover, was laid out
by Maurice Moore in 1725 or thereabouts, though not incorporated until
1745. It was intended for the county town, and affords even now in its
ruins many evidences of the wealth and culture of its inhabitants. All
about it are remains of Colonial plantations and residences of whose
owners we have in most cases very insufficient knowledge, but who
must have been people of wealth, culture and taste. The most notable
Colonial residence now remaining in North Carolina is the mansion
known as “Orton,” built by Roger Moore before 1734, a mile or so above
Brunswick, though part of the building is of more recent date. The new
Church of St. Philip was solemnly dedicated Tuesday in Whitsun-week,
1768, by the Rev. John Barnett and the Rev. John Wills, with a special
service approved by Governor Tryon, who declared this to be “the King’s
Chapel.” Its dimensions were seventy-five feet by fifty-five; and its
walls, nearly three feet thick, and still standing almost untouched by
time, though for the better part of a century roofless and abandoned,
indicate the dignified character of the original building. The size
and workmanship of the gravestones in the churchyard, no less than the
names and inscriptions thereon, attest the wealth and intelligence of
the worshippers. The King sent over a communion service of massive
silver, which some have supposed to be the service now the property
of Christ Church, Newbern, transferred to Newbern when Governor Tryon
built his “Palace” there, and made Christ Church the “King’s Chapel”
of the Province. St. Philip’s, though dedicated in 1768, had been
begun more than twenty years earlier, and had probably resounded to the
strains of that remarkable “Thanksgiving Hymn” composed by Governor
Arthur Dobbs upon the capture of Quebec by Wolfe in 1759.
[Illustration: THE WALLS OF ST. PHILIP’S CHURCH, BRUNSWICK, SHOWING
PART OF THE CORNER-STONE BROKEN OUT AND RIFLED BY FEDERAL SOLDIERS IN
1865.]
But the glory of old Brunswick was transient, and its life was absorbed
by the new settlement fifteen miles higher up the river. In 1739, the
Assembly passed an act by which it was provided that the county offices
of New Hanover, and the office of the Collector and Officer of the
Port of Brunswick, should thereafter be established at the “village
called Newton,” at the confluence of the two branches of the Cape Fear
River; and this village was incorporated as a town by the name of
Wilmington, in honor of Spencer Compton, Baron Wilmington, the friend
and patron of Governor Gabriel Johnston. Its more favorable situation
attracted the increasing trade which came down the two branches of the
river, and afforded greater security against the severe storms as well
as the privateers which now and then threatened vessels lying in the
roadstead at Brunswick, while its more healthful climate made it a more
desirable place of residence. The wealth and influence of Brunswick for
a while prevailed, and it fought hard to retain its superiority, but it
fought in vain. For some years before the beginning of the Revolution
Wilmington was securely established as the chief town of the Cape Fear
section, and in a manner the heir-apparent to the culture and influence
of Brunswick.
In itself, Wilmington was an inconsiderable place until some time
after the Revolution. But it was the centre of a most cultivated,
high-spirited and intelligent population, and, as it were, the stage
upon which all the eminent men of the country around performed their
parts. It was at once the head and the heart of the Cape Fear section.
Its history is not the history of the dwellers within its corporate
limits alone. The owner of a house and lot in the town could vote for
its member of the Assembly, though he left his house vacant and lived
in the country; and the qualification of its representative was not
residence in the town, but the ownership of town property. So it came
about that many of the most prominent characters in its history, those
who were actors in its most stirring scenes, and who are identified
with its memories and traditions, never resided within its limits.
There were wealthy and intelligent and public-spirited townsmen,--James
Innes, Louis and Moses John de Rosset, William and George Hooper,
Archibald Maclean, Eagles, Quince, Lloyd, Davis, Hogg, Campbell and
others; but the greater number of its most eminent names are those
of men living in the country around,--Ashe, Waddell, Moore, Burgwin,
Harnett, Lillington, Moseley and Swann. One of its notable citizens
was Colonel James Innes, who, having been an officer in the North
Carolina contingent sent to aid Admiral Vernon’s ill-fated expedition
against Carthagena, afterwards commanded the joint forces of Virginia
and North Carolina against the French in 1754. Another distinguished
man of this section, Major Hugh Waddell, commanded the North Carolina
troops sent to Virginia in the second French war.
[Illustration: COMMISSION OF LOUIS DE ROSSET AS CAPTAIN IN THE FRENCH
ARMY, SIGNED BY LOUIS XIV., AND COUNTERSIGNED BY TELLIER.]
It was in the dissensions preceding the Revolution that Wilmington
first assumed the position of leadership in the Province. She had no
single man superior to Iredell or Johnston of Edenton, but there were
in Wilmington, and residing in the country around, a larger number of
men than could be found in any other portion of the Province of like
commanding character and eminent ability.
Wilmington may fairly claim the first place among all the towns of
America for resistance to the Stamp Act. Governor Tryon, in his
despatches, tells us how Colonel Ashe, with the militia of New Hanover
County, came openly to the Governor’s house in Brunswick and compelled
William Houston, the stamp master, who had gone to the Governor for
protection, to go with them to Wilmington, and before the Mayor, Moses
John de Rosset, and the City Council, in the Court-House, to resign
his office and to take an oath that he would not receive the stamps.
He also says that upon the arrival of the sloop of war _Diligence_
at Brunswick with the stamps, they were not landed, as there was no
person to receive them. But he neglects to give the true reason, which
was that the men of New Hanover, under Colonel Waddell, assembled at
Brunswick and notified the commander of the _Diligence_ that they
would not allow the stamps to be landed. A few weeks later, when
Captain Lobb, of the _Viper_, had seized two vessels in the harbor
for the want of proper papers bearing the required stamps, the men of
Wilmington, this time under the lead of Moore, Harnett, Lillington,
Lloyd and Ashe, in defiance of two armed vessels, the _Viper_ and the
_Diligence_, compelled the surrender of the vessels which had been
seized, to the great disgust of the Governor. All these actions were
open and undisguised, the people of the country assembling in arms
under their chosen leaders, and compelling both the civil and the naval
authorities to yield to their demands.
[Illustration: HUGH WADDELL.]
The same prompt and intrepid spirit showed itself throughout the whole
struggle, which was just beginning in 1765. Nine years later this
little community, hardly to be called a town, raised eight hundred
pounds in a very short time in response to the appeal in behalf of
Boston; and sent to that city a ship-load of supplies. Its Committee
of Safety, whose minutes have been preserved from 1774 to 1776, when
its function was superseded by the organization of the State under its
Constitution, kept a very vigilant watch, and enforced most faithfully
the recommendations of the Continental Congress. One day they are
providing powder, preventing the importation of negroes, and compelling
the reshipment of those brought in; and the next day they are ordering
the discontinuance of public balls, and requesting ladies not to allow
them in their private houses, as being contrary “to the spirit of the
8th Article of the Association of the Continental Congress.” Their
courage and address interposed a constant obstacle between Governor
Martin in Fort Johnston and his party friends among the inhabitants;
and when they found that that fortification, in the Governor’s
possession, was a menace to the cause of American independence, they
encouraged and endorsed its destruction. Inspired by their sympathy,
Colonel John Ashe in July, 1775, resigned his office of Colonel under
the Provincial government, accepted an election as Colonel by the
people, marched with the militia to the fort and burned and demolished
it.
[Illustration: WILLIAM HOOPER OF NORTH CAROLINA, SIGNER OF THE
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.]
From 1773, the name of William Hooper becomes prominent in Wilmington.
The son of a Boston clergyman, he had come to Wilmington and begun the
practice of law some years before. At his first appearance in public
affairs he took his place alongside of Samuel Johnston, James Iredell,
Cornelius Harnett and John Ashe, as a leader of public sentiment. In
the proceedings of the Continental Congress during the Revolution and
in the fateful struggle for Federal union which followed, he was second
to none in integrity of character, in brilliancy of talents and in
the utility of his public services rendered to the State and to the
country. About the same time Archibald Maclean removed to Wilmington
from Brunswick, and was a fiery and caustic champion of liberty and of
constitutional government.
Wilmington suffered much during the Revolution. For almost the whole
of the year 1781 it was occupied by the British under the command of
Major Craig, a cruel and implacable enemy, and was the centre of active
enterprises, mostly carried on by means of the worst class of Tories,
extending as far as Chatham and Orange, and marked by circumstances of
rapine and atrocity. The brutal David Fanning, who captured Governor
Burke and all his suite at Hillsboro in August of this year, was one of
Craig’s favorite instruments. The most distinguished inhabitants, and
even women and children, as in the case of Mrs. Hooper, were treated
with inexcusable cruelty. Wilmington has few monuments, but the house
still stands where Cornwallis had his headquarters when passing through
towards Yorktown; and Cornelius Harnett’s house, the Harnett whom
Josiah Quincy called the Samuel Adams of North Carolina, was standing
near by the north boundary of the city only a few years ago.
[Illustration: HEADQUARTERS OF LORD CORNWALLIS, WILMINGTON.]
After those stormy and bitter days Wilmington saw many years of
prosperity and peace. There had been a distinctly literary element here
in Colonial days. The first American drama, _The Prince of Parthia_,
by Thomas Godfrey, was written here in 1759, and was years afterwards
produced on the stage by a company of local amateurs. Its author lies
buried in St. James’s churchyard. When peace had brought again plenty
and prosperity, and when commerce began to change the provincial town
into a bustling mart of trade, social refinement and intellectual
culture revived, and under changed conditions democratic institutions
the Cape Fear section asserted again its old pre-eminence.
[Illustration: COMMISSION OF LOUIS DE ROSSET AS CAPTAIN, GIVEN BY
WILLIAM AND MARY.]
During the war between the States, Wilmington was specially noted as
the centre of the important intercourse between the Confederate States
and foreign countries by means of the “blockade-runners.” A hundred
steamers are said to have been engaged in this traffic between
Wilmington and the West Indies, and for many miles north and south of
the inlets into the Cape Fear, the beach is still marked by the wrecks
of those run ashore to escape the blockading squadron. Some of them,
however, ran almost with the regularity of mail-boats, and one steamer
is said to have made over fifty successful trips. By these vessels
supplies of all kinds and munitions of war were brought in, and large
fortunes made by the owners and commanders of the successful steamers.
The State of North Carolina owned one of the most fortunate and famous
of these, the _Advance_, which eluded capture and continued year after
year to bring in shoes, blankets and clothing for the North Carolina
soldiers in the Confederate army, and cotton-cards for the women at
home, until a few months before Lee’s surrender. Even on her last fatal
voyage she had skilfully slipped between the blockading vessels under
cover of the darkness, and before day dawned she was well below the
horizon on her way to Nassau. But, unhappily, she had been obliged to
take in at Wilmington a quantity of coal mined in Chatham County, and
not suitable for her use, and a thick trail of smoke settling down over
the quiet sea betrayed her. The blockading steamers gave chase and
ran her down by her trail, the inferior quality of her coal making it
impossible for her to attain her proper speed.
Wilmington is still the largest town and the most important port of
entry in the State. Its population, like that of the State at large,
has been but little diluted by foreign immigration. It retains its
traditions of culture, of hospitality, of loyalty to the Anglo-Saxon
heritage of freedom and independence, and is as ready now as ever it
was in the past to resist the aggressions of power.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHARLESTON
BY YATES SNOWDEN
“In Pompeii, the tourist, looking from blank wall to dusty floor,
wonders what there is to see in that little hall, but a native goes
down upon his hands and knees; with a few brisk passes of his hand
the sand is brushed away, and a Numidian lion glares forth from the
tesselated pavement.”--VIRGINIUS DABNEY’S _Don Miff_.
Forty-five years before the English colonization of Virginia, fifty-two
before the Dutch settlement of New York and fifty-eight before the
Puritans landed at Massachusetts Bay, Captain Jean Ribaut, of Dieppe,
commanding the first Huguenot emigration to North America, on the
1st of May, 1562, entered the beautiful harbor of Port Royal, South
Carolina.
In his journal, as translated in one of Hakluyt’s black-letter tracts,
he describes the country as “full of hauens Riuers and Ilands of such
fruitfulness as cannot with tongue be expressed ... the fairest,
fruitfullest, and pleasantest of al the world.”
Internal dissensions weakened the infant Huguenot colonies, and they
were finally utterly destroyed by the Spanish bigot, Menendez. Though
in after years the Huguenot was to be an important element in the
peopling of the colony, the crafty Spaniard forever prevented the
domination of the Fleur-de-Lis on the South Carolina coast, and made
the way clear for the Lion of St. George.
In 1670, one hundred and eighteen years later, the first permanent
settlement of the Province was made by the English under Governor
William Sayle, at Albemarle Point, on the western bank of the Kiawah
(Ashley) River, three miles from the present site of Charleston. This
expedition had also headed for Port Royal, but the Cacique of Kiawah, a
friendly Indian, advised that the land farther up the coast was better
to plant, and the colonists acted more wisely than they knew, for a few
years later, in 1686, the Spaniards utterly destroyed the Scotch colony
established at Port Royal by Lord Cardross.
On August 17, 1669, the frigate _Carolina_, the _Port Royall_ and the
sloop _Albermarle_ were at anchor in the Downs with ninety-three
passengers all aboard and ready for sea. A few days later they sailed
for Kinsale, Ireland, and thence for Barbadoes, which they reached in
October. A West Indian gale wrecked the _Albermarle_ on the Barbadian
coast and another vessel was procured, and on the voyage to Carolina,
their objective point, the _Port Royall_ was wrecked on one of the
Bahamas. The ship _Carolina_, badly battered, eventually reached
Bermuda, where a sloop was engaged to assist the expedition to its
destination. En route from Barbadoes they passed through dreadful
hurricanes, and the Barbadian sloop did not reach Ashley River until a
month after the arrival of the two other vessels. It will be seen that
it was through storm and stress the English made the first settlement
of Carolina, and that of the three ships that left England with the
emigrants, the _Carolina_ was the only one to reach these shores.
Sir John Yeamans, who had taken charge of the expedition when it left
Barbadoes, withdrew from its management when it reached Bermuda,
and inserted the name of Colonel Wm. Sayle as Governor in the blank
commission which he had from the Lords Proprietors. A contemporary
writer describes this, the first Governor of South Carolina, as “of
Bermuda, a Puritan and Non-Conformist, whose religious bigotry,
advanced age and failing health promised badly for the discharge of the
task before him.” Governor Sayle died within the year and the colonists
selected Joseph West as his successor. When the news of Sayle’s death
reached England, the Lords Proprietors again appointed Sir John Yeamans
Governor, in which position he served most unsatisfactorily to the
Proprietors until his death in 1674.
The settlers of Charles Town had not been two years on the western bank
of the Ashley before they recognized the unfitness of its location,
and settlements were soon made on the peninsula called Oyster Point,
two miles away, and in sight of the sea. These settlements increased,
and in 1680 the public offices were removed to the present site of
Charleston.