On North Carolina Politics: Then and Now!

Alfred Moore Waddell

Re:  “Cracking the Solid South:
Populism and the Fusionist Interlude”
by Dr. Jeffrey J. Crow

For historian Dr. Jeffrey Crow, there exists a myth that a “solid South” developed from the dark years of Reconstruction.  This myth of a unified South does not seem so reliable in view of North Carolina politics leading up to the twentieth century.  Crow sees a different reality.  He introduces this reality with this definition:  the “solid South came to stand for the Democratic party, white supremacy, and a benign upper-class hegemony over millhands, tenant farmers, and sharecroppers, black and white alike.”   Republican rule ended after only a decade to be replaced with a planter-dominated upper class, even once at gunpoint.  In Crow’s belief, if historian Donald Higginbotham’s “reconstruction that took” really took hold in North Carolina, then the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 would not have happened.   Reconstruction in North Carolina, as in the rest of the South, fell beside the peace table during negotiations following the Southern Rebellion and the Herrenvolk, or “master race” remained in power.  If anything, Democratic one-party rule grew more entrenched “promoted by industrialization, and the social order firmly fixed by rigid class and caste definitions.”   Thus goes the myth.

Crow agrees partly that a hierarchy existed.  He places the few elite planters at the head of the hierarchy in North Carolina in this period.  Secondly, he introduces merchants, lawyers, and factory managers as necessary elements for an industrialized economy.  Thirdly, the farmers represent the most numerous group that lay steadfastly upon the freedmen at the bottom of the social scale.  The story that unfolded involved the independent farmer class that, after the decades-long agricultural depression of the late 1800s, began to erode.  They fought to maintain their position in the social scale, for security’s sake (both social and economic) and literally for sustenance.  Also important to them, ex-confederates and their sons, they did not stand for being classed with the Negro.  Still, no matter how low the farmers had become, they felt assured that their skin color would always keep them above the lowly freedmen.  Moreover, the closer the comparison, the more uncomfortable they became.

The Democrats’ armor, however, had a dent in it.  In North Carolina, Republicans, including the newly liberated freedmen, sided with western subsistence farmers or Whigs from before the war.  Therefore, the Republican Party still remained as a political force, if culled by Redeemer or Bourbon Democrats.  Crow disagrees with a “solid South” and argues that North Carolina had “the most competitive two-party system in the South before 1900.”   A new political force evolved in response to the great class distinction, the poor farmers’ plight against the rich Bourbon Democrats.  In the early stages, it functioned within the existing power structure.  The Southern Farmer’s Alliance, a democratic reform movement that included the South and West developed in the 1880s and 1890s from independent farmers seeking relief from high tariffs and low prices on their goods.  The Alliance also opposed corrupt tactics of the business-oriented, ex-slaveholding eastern Bourbons of the reigning Democratic Party. 

The political spectrum encountered another variable, a liberal and reforming one led by an aristocratic leader in touch with the people’s plight, Leonidas L. Polk from Anson County and later a president of the national Alliance.  Polk held all the qualities of the intelligentsia: charisma, wealthy, and educated.  Historian William Link regards Polk as widely popular for his leadership, but “was clearly not from the bottom rung of the social order.”   The Alliance created a statewide cooperative, including tobacco warehouses in an attempt to alleviate elite planters’ control of prices.  The Alliance also helped to reduce tariffs that made foreign necessaries so expensive for the independent farmer.  Crow states that “the furnishing merchant and landlord could be bypassed,” but not without repercussions.   The Alliance had outgrown the Democratic Party which had grown corrupt in their eyes, especially after Redeemer Zebulon Vance’s political betrayal.  In all political arenas, there exist such historical and inevitable patterns.

Thus, a third party formed as a response to Democratic corruption in North Carolina politics.  The Populists or People’s Party mobilized Alliancemen and made an clean break with the planter-industrialist faction of the Democratic Party.  They wanted Polk as their leader, but upon his sudden death, found another in Sampson County-born Marion Butler.  Butler shared intelligentsia qualities with Polk, but elevated Populist pragmatic politics to the state level.  He attempted to side with reform-minded Democrats against the entrenched Bourbons, but found Republicans a more willing partner. 

Daniel Lindsay Russell, Jr., a Whig from the Lower Cape Fear, leaned far to the left on the political spectrum, despite his elitist eastern planter beginnings.  As a Radical Republican, Russell had grown weary of the Democrats’ use of race to hold the entire state hostage.  He also did not like black efforts to gain full control of the Republican Party.  In 1892, Russell predicted that, by combining forces, the Republicans and the Populists could defeat Democratic hegemony.  The next year, Democrats attempted to curtail the Populists’ power even further.  This caused them to seek out Republicans to increase their effectiveness against the Democrats.  Russell attempted to dispense with the race issue and the combined Fusion Party easily threatened the old Democratic Party in the vote.

Crow argues that the Populist and Republican Parties made a matching pair in that they both wanted electoral reforms.  This, they did to defeat Democratic partisan election laws designed to disfranchise blacks and illiterate whites, arguably tactics in today’s Southern politics.  Democrats understood the nature of power and ruled from the veritable throne of the state’s legislature to negate local influence across the state.  Still, the combined power of the Fusionists gained control of that legislature in 1894 and began enacting reforms, including sending Marion Butler to the United States Senate and filling the late Zebulon Vance’s empty seat with Jeter C. Pritchard.  Furthermore, Daniel Russell won the governorship thanks to last-minute Fusion cooperation that combined against Democrats. 

Democrats, facing a perceived “black rule,” with an alienated business community, used blistering propaganda to sway popular opinion and win back control.  The uneasy alliance of Populists and Republicans became an easy target for these powerful Democrats.  When Gov. Russell attacked the J. P. Morgan Southern Railway lease of the state-owned North Carolina Railroad, with their higher rates, he lost Republican support.  Fusion quickly died and Russell alienated his own party just in time for the 1898 election. 

The Democrats saw their chance and went for the Populist jugular.  Although economics sat at the core, Democrats waged this election on race.  Furnifold Simmons, Charles B. Aycock, Josephus Daniels of the Raleigh News and Observer, terrorist groups Red Shirts and Rough Riders, waged virtual war against all of their foes, particularly blacks.  “Armed men broke up fusionist political rallies, disrupted black church meetings, whipped outspoken blacks, and drove black voters from the polls,” as Crow outlines.   Former Confederate officer, Alfred Moore Waddell initiated a coup d’etat two days after the 1898 election in Russell’s hometown of Wilmington.  The Herrenvolk mentality in North Carolina violently forced the political spectrum back to the conservative side.  In Wilmington specifically, it resulted in burned buildings and death.  As Crow details “eleven to thirty blacks were killed” in the takeover of Wilmington’s government.   The numbers probably go higher and he gives no figures for how many suffered exile from the city and county.  Democrats dismantled the Fusionist reforms and ensured that “a coalition of blacks and… low born quondam slaves [poor whites]… would never triumph again.”   The violence of this anti-governmental coup never again saw its equal in the United States.  No author can effectively express it in mere words.

Crow implies that Democrats removed poor whites and blacks from the political equation and assumed the role of reformers to alleviate further disruption of their power.  With virtually all of the dissenting voices silenced, they still understood that the largest majority in the state, the farmers, could effectively offer resistance and did, before 1898.  Thus, they pandered to them as little as possible to sway their numbers to their side of the ballot.  For the most part, however, North Carolina returned to the Democratic status quo for the so-called “Progressive” movement which gave Aycock the semi-sweet moniker of the “education governor.” 

Crow’s article reveals many complicated truths about North Carolina and simplifies a complex issue.  His original point of “cracking” a “solid South” myth appears to have focused upon a short-lived episode in North Carolina’s political history.  Still, the “solid South” did, in fact, remain solid, especially after 1898 in the Tar Heel state.  The same Democrats ruled after Reconstruction as after the government takeover that year and, as Crow admits, into the twentieth century.  No problem existed with the historiography, only with its representation. 

Rebellious North Carolina

Historian Noeleen McIlvenna regarded the development of North Carolina as an emerging utopian community, yet “very mutinous,” in the “shadows of the British empire” (McIlvenna, 1).   McIlvenna’s reasons center primarily upon geography and its affects upon the human psyche.  Early North Carolinians lived a subsistence-level existence amidst the swamps and shoals, remarkably less aristocratic than their plantationist neighbors of Virginia and the later South Carolina.  McIlvenna posited “a remote, swampy, hurricane-prone region where communication with the outside world meant a struggle through boggy terrain, where every household had to fend for itself… where life did not lend itself to dreams of great prosperity” (McIlvenna, 1).  Other factors associated with North Carolina’s rebellious nature include absentee proprietary rule and the strain posed by conflict with a strange, aboriginal, and alien culture while obtaining little support from their own. 

Another North Carolina historian, Lindsey S. Butler could not agree with McIlvenna more, although he regards his home state’s geography with less ambivalence.  In his essay on the Culpepper Rebellion, Butler sees the outright neglect of Carolina’s owners, the Lords Proprietors as a greater influence on its inhabitants’ rebellious nature.  Early Carolinians “tested” the proprietors’ absentee rule.  The proprietors in England rarely visited America and left the government of their faraway lands to local officials with appointed governors.  These English governors presided over the local Assembly, who often disagreed with, and objected to his authority.  They annoyed their governors, however, no less than they did each other.

Only two proprietors ever lived in America, one as the governor of Virginia who never ventured south of the Dismal Swamp on the Carolina border.  The other, Seth Sothel, became known as the worst governor that Carolina ever had.  The rest remained in England or Europe, relying heavily upon the Assembly and the Fundamental Constitutions to function in their absence.  Arguably not one of John Locke’s best ideas, the Fundamental Constitutions of 1669 opaquely provided for liberal characteristics of representative government (the Assembly) and religious freedom.  Its older feudalistic aspects, however, attempted to recreate English ideals of a titled, landed gentry, a class order that could not have worked well in a wilderness environment verging on social liberalities.  Thus, the Constitutions failed before it began and added to the political uncertainties that fueled the rowdy discontent of McIlvenna’s “mutinous people.” 

The development of proprietary and anti-proprietary parties became a pattern for North Carolina particularly that revolved around the nature of power, or the ability to influence others.  John Culpeper came from Charles Town to influence the distressed people of the Albemarle to revolt and dispense with proprietary rule, much like Thomas Cary and John Gibbs not long after.  Drunk sheriffs, prohibitive Virginia tobacco statutes, and the occasional refusal of a governor to return to the colony contributed to rebellion.    This unrest hinted at the cultural divergence building between England, the proprietors, and their colony. 

This divergence later grew to separate eastern and western North Carolina in the War of Regulation, just prior to the American Revolution.  “Arising from the demographic changes, social and economic tensions, and political turmoil” found in the colony, the Regulation arose as an internal civil dispute affecting thousands of North Carolinians (Butler and Watson, 102).  That dispute centered primarily upon excessive government corruption, made painfully obvious to Mecklenburg residents by Governor Tryon’s extravagant palace in New Bern. 

North Carolinians rebelled against authority for many reasons, not least of which included religion.  Religious freedom, a seed planted by Locke’s Fundamental Constitutions, matured behind the virtual wall of isolation provided by the Dismal Swamp and the Outer Banks and their dangerous, shifting shoals.   Since the founding of the Massachusetts Bay colony, America had become a refuge for many types of religious dissidents.  Quakerism brought to these shores by George Fox and others established itself early in the Albemarle.  A Quaker became the first known minister to preach in the area in 1672.  Other sects felt welcome as well, such as Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians. 
England’s official, or Anglican Church, never found a place in North Carolina.  Nevertheless, the Vestry Acts of 1701 and 1703 attempted to enforce Anglican worship over dissenting religions in the colony.  Anglican ministers sent to North Carolina, often destitute and inebriated once they realized their situation, reflected England’s opinion of the colony.  Furthermore, their many letters to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) told of their opinion as well.  Rev. C. E. Taylor found North Carolinians “very ignorant” and complained that they “busy themselves with the most Mysterious Parts of Scripture” (Butler and Watson, 98).  The earlier Rev. John Urmstone often felt worse of his flock, especially in Pasquotank.  He found “a very factious[,] mutinous[,] and rebellious people… ready to oppose either Church or state” (McIlvenna, 139).  The fundamental and personal efforts to gain immortality through God could not be legislated, as England discovered.  These arbitrary acts fueled even more unrest.  

Perhaps the greatest distress upon a driver of the human condition, having a strong influence upon the security of early North Carolinians, became the presence of the Native American.  Since the arrival of the earliest English, Sir Walter Raleigh’s colonists in 1584, conflicts have occurred with Native Americans.  The English anticipated conflict even before landing on Roanoke, evidenced by Thomas Hariot’s ethnographic/logistic report to Raleigh.  Hariot referred to the Indians’ tendency to “turn up their heeles” and run away (Butler and Watson, 14).  These conflicts built steadily, through cultural misunderstandings and ideological differences until English domination triumphed in the colony with the end of the Tuscarora War.  Today, only two million Native Americans exist out of over three hundred million Americans, or less than one percent.  While historian Herbert Paschal attributes this result to assimilation, his essay on the “Tragedy of the North Carolina Indians” indicates virtual elimination of the comparatively inferior native culture (Butler and Watson, 3). 

Still, fear of the unfamiliar and the physical nearness of the Native American to early North Carolinians resulted in conflicts that created a uniquely American experience.  This further differentiated Americans from the English, as well as North Carolinians from Native Americans.  For North Carolina, the Tuscarora War best represented a turning point in local Indian relations.  Christopher Gale called the Indian attack of Chief Hancock’s Tuscarora faction a “nefarious villainy,” in which he found English settlers “butchered after the most barbarous manner” (Butler and Watson, 17).  These words once described an old enemy of the English most feared in the Elizabethan era – the Spanish.  Conflict with both the Spanish and Algonquians from 1584-1590 had been a learning experience for the English, yet not quite like the Tuscarora War.  The enemy in this case lived next door, not six hundred miles away in La Florida. 

Dissention in British North Carolina had a long history that began with the first Englishman to step onto its soil.  Land disputes with natives, quitrent disputes with governors, religious disputes with the Anglicans, and land tenure problems with the Granville agents created an internal problem unique to the future state.  The War of the Regulation that appeared in 1766 and lasted until 1771 represented a vague reflection of the larger rebellion to come.  It prepared all North Carolinians to meet this challenge. 

Still, the battle between eastern and western North Carolina stemmed from many factors not found in other British colonies, factors that affected the colony since Nathaniel Batts first arrived in 1655.  Geography played a large role.  The lack of economic potential that drew so little attention from the Lords Proprietors further separated the colony from its plantationist neighbors.  Furthermore, events in North Carolina helped to set the tone in America’s relations with the Native American, a relationship which ultimately spelled their doom.  All of these divergent factors created a unique North Carolina identity that joined with twelve others in the War for Independence. 





References:


McIlvenna, Noeleen.  A Very Mutinous People: The Struggle for North Carolina, 1660-1713.  Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.

Butler Lindley S. and Watson, Alan D., ed.  The North Carolina Experience:  An Interpretive and Documentary History.  Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.
 

From Roanoke to Hatteras: A Two-day Hunt for Clues to the Lost Colony

Baylus C. Brooks & Dawn F. Taylor in Roger & Celia Meekin’s Roanoke Island backyard on the Croatan Sound north of Manteo. 

The latter part of this week in July was a scorcher!  But, the archives at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site in Manteo, North Carolina is very cool, indeed.  Lost Colony Research Group (LCRG) members, Dawn Taylor and Baylus Brooks visited with National Park Service’s Cultural Resources Specialist Doug Stover on Thursday, July 21, 2011.  They were accompanied by Celia Meekins, wife of Roger Meekins, owners of one of the island’s more prominent original homes (originally given by Edward Mann to his daughter and her husband, Daniel Meekins as a wedding gift in the early 19^th century).  Celia is another cousin of Dawn’s through Bateman Williams from Hatteras Island.  Did you know that Dawn is related to everyone in the Outer Banks?

Dawn Taylor (LRCG & HIGPS), Doug Stover (Fort Raleigh NPS), and Celia Meekins in the cool (important for July) artifact room at Fort Raleigh Archives. Photo: Baylus Brooks

Doug was a terrific host, proudly guiding a tour through the temperature-controlled and oh-so-cool artifact storage area.  Yes, the “cool” reference was literal!  He showed his small audience the many artifacts found during the various excavations on Roanoke Island in the search for Sir Walter Raleigh’s elusive first colony in what is today, North Carolina. 

Doug allowed LCRG researchers access to the maps and photos collections available in their archives collection.  After the tour of the artifacts and a brief overview of the collections room, the researchers studied aerial photos from 1945-1958 revealing Hatteras island’s layout prior to the man-made structuring of Brigand’s Bay, purposeful terraforming of lakes and ponds on a significant scale, and even prior to the replacement of the island’s dirt roads with a comfortably-paved Highway 12, which opened the island to large scale development for the first time in 1952. 

Circa 1950 Aerial Photo of Hatteras Island’s King’s Point 

Photo: NPS Archives, Fort Raleigh, Manteo, North Carolina

Baylus Brooks holding one of the aerial photos and Doug Stover showing a Lifesaving Badge.

Doug demonstrates to Celia how the wooden artifact was used as a well by Roanoke’s 16^th-century Elizabethan visitors. Photos: Dawn Taylor

Many people contribute to LCRG.  The primary focus of research for the group is to study Hatteras Island through standard genealogical analysis, including deed records (paired with Dare County GIS data), logs, diaries, wills, court records, and archaeology in an effort to understand the families who lived on the island and how they arrived there.  Nancy Frey contributes her expertise on UK genealogy, a much more difficult task from 3,000 miles away.  Ultimately, the group employs DNA analysis and genealogical data correlation (LCRG president, Roberta Estes’ expertise) of Hatteras Islanders to be compared to members of John White’s final “abandoned” (not exactly “lost”) colony of 1587 in order to determine whether or not native Hatteras Islanders today are the result of “blending” between White’s colonists and Algonquian inhabitants of then-called “Croatoan” Island, today’s Hatteras Island.   Finally, LCRG employs archaeology (organized by Anne Poole and George Ray) to verify the physical existence of Croatoan villages and hopefully, to find actual evidence of the “Lost” Colony.  All of this study is backed up by historical records and analysis provided by ECU Maritime Studies graduate student, Baylus C. Brooks and Andrew Thomas Powell, former mayor of Bideford, England and author of the recently-published Grenville and the Lost Colony of Roanoke.  Other members of LCRG include our web-mistress Nelda Percival, blog administrator and librarian Janet Crain, blog and DNA project administrator Penny Ferguson, early English records researcher Joe Chandler, NC genealogist Jennifer Shepherd, Spanish researcher Dr. Ana Oquendo Pabon, specialty genealogist Robert Noles, with the contributions of myriad others.  Hopefully, the preponderance of data from these varied disciplines and analysis of LCRG’s many more devoted scholars will finally prove that White’s colony is still among our state’s citizenry today and that the colony was, after all, successful and not “lost” as previously supposed.

Dare County Geographic Information Systems Database (GIS) provides valuable information in the search.  For instance, the “Elks Indian” Grant of 1759 is still visible and fairly intact on similar graphic representations.  Photo: Dare County GIS. 

Dawn Taylor and Clara Scarborough at the “Graveyard of the Atlantic” Museum.  Photo: Baylus Brooks

Another goal for the two intrepid adventurers this steamy July involved the study of local Hatteras Islanders themselves and their families.  That is where Dawn Taylor steps into her role as the president of Hatteras Island Genealogical and Preservation Society (HIGPS).  One of the more significant finds was the John W. Rolinson “Wreck Log,” which holds a great deal more than information on simply wrecks which were quite common on Hatteras.  There are details about many local people, illnesses, marriages, deaths, and details of their maritime businesses in the Trent/Frisco area of the island.  Fishing for porpoise and trade with exotic Caribbean locales for sugar and molasses seem commonplace features of the book Rolinson kept. 

The pair of researchers stopped at Hatteras’ public library and also at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras Village for a visit with Clara Scarborough who guided them through the facility’s conservation and archives area in search of log books and local history.  The conservation lab contained many artifacts from old wrecks, including the Corolla wreck, the oldest known to our coast and originally surveyed by ECU’s Maritime Studies Program before its transportation to the museum by cooperating agencies where it is to be conserved and displayed.  The “Graveyard” Museum in Hatteras Village is one of three North Carolina Maritime Museums that also include Southport and Beaufort. 

Two excellent days of research and study ended with the perfect dinner cooked by Dawn Taylor’s culinary couplet, her father Kenneth Dickerson and her cousin Edith Jennette Bradley.  Perhaps the heat and humidity were made more bearable by the constant island breezes and the tropical atmosphere.  Then again, maybe it was the food!  Either way, a lot of work got done pleasantly despite the heat of this July’s summer swelter. 

Land Quarrels Between Indians and Colonists in NC... the Dudley/Blount Affair

North Carolina State Archives

Altercation between Christopher Dudley and a Tuscarora Indian

CCR 192 – 13 March 1728

North Carolina.  The Deposition of John Gardiner being of full age & sworn on ye holy Evangelist before us  Gyles Shute & Joshua porter Esqs  Two of his Majesties justices of ye peace of ye precincts of Beafort & hyde, Saith; that W^m Sighaea Blount came up; M^r Dudley ask^t where he was a goeing and he said to catch Beavers and M^r Dudley said he should not hunt here for it was his land  for; his dogs would seaze his chatle & hogs & ye said Blount made answer that his Doggs followed only Beaver Racoons & Deer and said that he would hunt  and M^r Dudley made answer will you[?] and so catcht up a board & struck ye said Blount and ye said Blount took up a stick to defend ye Blow, & then he advanced up to M^r Dudley & they had a struggle & M^r Dudley pushed him againt a barril  then I hauled ye Indian away, and I told M^r Dudley to let him alone, and Dudley Bid me then to keep of[f] from him; and then ye Indian catcht up ye end of a hoop poll and mad[e] towards him  So I desired ye Indian to stand of[f]  Soe went & left them and further saith not.      John Gardiner.        Jurat Corum Nobis  Gyles Shute  Joshua Porter

North Carolina.  The Deposition of Richard Nixson being of full age & Sworn on ye Holy Evangelist before us – Gyles Shute & Joshua Porter Esqs of his Maj^tes Justices of ye peace of ye precincts of Beufort & Hyde.  Saith that four or five Indians came up to his house & that M^r Dudley was at his house when they came so that when they came up he asked them where are you a goeing[?] & ye Indians satt down without giving him any answer; then one old Indian named Sighaeha Blount came up after ye rest & when he came up he asked what is ye matter[?] & replyd, English men here allwayes Scold, then M^r Dudley said you shall not hunt here, for this land is all mine, then old Sighacha said, that he would goe hunt & catch Beaver, with that M^r Dudley catcht up a board, and said will you goe[?] & struck him upon ye head, and caused ye Blood to run and then ye afor^d [aforesaid] Sighacha held up his arm to Defend ye Blow: and re^cd ye Blow upon his arm and M^r John Gardiner stept in between them and parted them and ye Indian satt down on a block, and said that M^r Dudley had broake his arm and w^th that I went to ye Indian and took hold of his arm & felt on it and to ye best of my understanding that there was one broak between ye elbow and wrist.  Two days after I soe ye Indian again and his hand & arm was very much swelld & ye Indian sd to me that ye Bone was broake & nine or ten days after I see ye Indian goeing home and his arm was splintered; and he said he would goe, and tell King Blount; for King Blount he said would go to Capt West; & peace make it and further saith not.    Rich^d (R) Nixson    Jurat corum Nobis    Gules Shute  Joshua Porter.

North Carolina.  Whereas Complanint is made unto me Christopher Gale Esq Chief Justice of this province that Christopher Dudley of Beaufort precinct in Bath county hath lately violently assaulted and beaten & broke the arm of an Indian man belonging to the Tuscarora Nation whereby many ill conveniencys are to be feared to the tranquility & pace of this Government.  These are Therefore in his majesties name to require & strictly charge you immediately upon receipt hereof to arrest the body of s^d Christopher Dudley & him bring before me to answer the said complaint here in fule  not at y^r perill as you will answer the contrary  and for so doeing this shall be sufficient warrant  Given under my hand & seale this 13^th day of March ano 1728   Gale CJ   To the Provost Marshall of Bath County or to his Deputy or to M^r Edw^d Travise   Summon M^r Richard Nickson and John Gardiner  Evidences[i]

The land specified above may have been the 640 acres that Christopher Dudley received April 5, 1720 upon the north side of Pamlico River and bordering White Church Creek.[ii]

This set of documents holds many clues as to the social setting of colonists as they relate to Indians in 1728.  Both depositions are nearly identical, indicating that the events almost certainly transpired in the order as indicated.  John Gardiner’s deposition abruptly ends without mention of the broken arm whereas Richard Nixson’s continues the tale beyond that point.  Gardiner probably did not want any further association in this affair.  Just as likely, he may have been a friend of Dudley’s and did not want to cause him any trouble.  Either way, he remained silent upon this detail.  Nixson’s account, however, reveals the most significant social detail.  Nixson states that he saw Sighacha Blount not once, “Two days after…,” but twice, “nine or ten days after [the last time]…,” indicating that Nixson had the opportunity to see Blount on a regular basis.  This may have been in town [Bath] or on a path to or from town, but it clearly indicates strong familiarity with each other.  This date is fifteen years after the Tuscarora War and the level of familiarity between colonists and Indians may have been rather open by this time, although with perhaps some lingering trepidation. 

            Chief Justice Christopher Gale did not want to upset the friendly relations that existed with the Tuscarora for the past fifteen years.  Therefore, he blamed Dudley for the violent act against Blount.  Clearly, he desired to maintain good relations and still treated the Tuscarora in a neighborly fashion, requiring that they have justice when so called for.

            Still, what does this say about dispossession?  First, Sighacha Blount, nor any of his companions, appeared to want to fight anyone.  For all intents and purposes, the Indians simply wanted to hunt beaver.  Clearly, they did not understand Dudley’s refusal of their right to hunt.  As they saw it, they had not sold him the hunting rights associated with the property (assuming that the property formerly belonged to the Tuscarora Indians).  Regardless of who claimed to own the land, the Creator allowed all men to use it.  Even an Indian might try to prevent another Indian from hunting in a specific area, but that act would have been tantamount to war.  The colonists and Indians, living in such close quarters, clearly had a “pact” or agreement of friendship.  To an Indian, that entitled them to hunt on the properties that all “friends” or family held in common.  Contrary to this belief, Christopher Dudley believed he had purchased full rights to the land and the Indians became trespassers if they came upon it.  Dudley probably knew that since the Tuscaroras were so depleted and weakened by the recent war that they would not retaliate for this minor indiscretion.  If there was an aggressor in this scenario, Dudley qualified.  Whereas, this misunderstanding was mostly unintentional, it may have had serious inter-cultural consequences, both immediate and later.  The Colonial Assembly would debate this Indian presumption of the right to hunt later in 1740.

---

[i] “Altercation between Christopher Dudley and a Tuscarora Indian” (NC State Archives, CCR 192), John Henry Oden, III, Collection (#1150), Special Collections Department, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, USA.

[ii] “File No. 7, Christopher Dudley,” North Carolina State Archives,  Land Office: Land Warrants, Plats of Survey, and Related Records, Secretary of State Record Group, State Records [Microfilm S.108.452, Record: 12.14.31.7 (Folder)], (Raleigh, N.C.: State of North Carolina).

Azariah Dring of Rhode Island and the Drings of Hatteras Island, NC

Thomas Dring was born in 1666, presumably in Little Compton, Rhode Island.  This part of Rhode Island was most certainly a maritime province as can be seen in the picture to left. 

Thomas married on May 21, 1696 to Mary Butler, born about 1670.  Together they had eleven children.  In order of appearance, they were John, Mary, Mercy, Thomas, Elizabeth, Priscilla, Asariah, Ruth, Bathsheba, Freelove, and Nathaniel.  The naming pattern is common and may indicate that Thomas’ father was John. 

Another Thomas became a gunner on the sloop “Success,” and was captured by the British during the Revolutionary War (See” Recollections of the Jersey Prison Ship” by Albert G. Greene).  He was born in 1758, stayed in Little Compton, and died there in 1787. 

His uncle, Asariah was born March 28, 1710 and was destined to become a merchant mariner, working between New England and the West Indies for most of his career.    On February 28, 1732, Asariah (spelled Azariah later) left Boston harbor for Barbados, according to the New-England Weekly Journal.  By June 2^nd, the Boston Gazette records him returning to Rhode Island from Antigua.  In four days, he was again headed for Barbados, from Boston harbor (New-England Weekly Journal).

By that November, the Rhode-Island Gazette records this news:  “ Capt. Dring from Barbados, who sail’d on the 30^th of September last, the next Day met with a violent hurricane, which he supposed did considerable Damage in Barbados and the adjacent islands.”  The dangers of a Caribbean career revealed themselves in less than a year.  The same paper’s December 21^st issue showed Dring leaving that port for Jamaica, however, showing quick recovery. 

There seems to be a break in Dring’s record until July 4, 1734 when the New-England Weekly Journal records him returning from Jamaica to Rhode Island.  It is difficult to say if anything happened to him or his ship during that time.  A lack of reporting may be responsible.  Still, just prior to Azariah’s departure for Jamaica, trouble began with slaves on Jamaica, to which Major General Hunter, Governor of Jamaica, in mid-1732 passed the “Negro Act,” which tightened restrictions on slaves and passed duties on them, making owners even more protective of their property.

July 11, 1733:

“South Sea Company complains of the Act laying impost on negroes.

Two Orders of the Lords of the Committee of Council, of 22nd March, 1733–4, referring to the Board the petitions of the South Sea Company, and of several merchants trading to Jamaica, praying the repeal of An Act, passed there in 1733, laying a duty of 10s. per head on negroes imported that island, were read, as also Mr. Fane's report upon the said Act, and their Lordships resolved to consider thereof to-morrow morning.” [Journals of the Board of Trade and Plantations, Volume 6: January 1729 - December 1734, 399-403.] 

Was Azariah Dring one of these merchants?  Did he temporarily halt his merchant activities to protect his investment?  Should we call him a trader in African slaves?

Jamaica has long had a unique history regarding African slaves.  Escaped slaves known as “Maroons” established independent communities in the mountainous interior, away from the coast.  British authorities were unable to suppress them, despite major attempts in the 1730s and 1790s.  African slaves imported during the Spanish period may have provided the first runaways.  These Aricans apparently mixed with the Native American Taino or Arawak people that remained in the country.  Some may have gained liberty when the English attacked Jamaica and took it in 1655.  But, many continued to rebel, causing more trouble for the British than on any other Caribbean isle of which there were other Maroon communities.  Maroons stubbornly resisted conquest for about 52 years, until the 1737 peace treaty with the British rulers of the island - which is still in force. 

Several rebellions had broken out since September 1728, when more troops arrived to upset the balance against the escaped Maroons.  A slave rebellion broke out again in 1733, and in June of that year, several attempts were made to enslave the “rebellious negroes” which resulted in Maroons having “driven away the party sent against them.”

1728 Jamaica by Herman Moll

A further attempt was made under General Hunter that August for three raids, all without effect.  In November, Jamaica was divided into two districts to facilitate the forces.  By December, the Council of Trade and Plantations sent to the Duke of Newcastle a letter stating the following, "which all relate to the ill state of Jamaica with regard to the negroes in rebellion, weak condition of the inhabitants and the apprehensions they are under of a general insurrection of their slaves.”  Governor Hunter sent to them on December 24^th, “I can not without breach of duty conceal my opinion that this island is in a very defenceless condition in case of a war. The slaves in rebellion, who give us work enough, in that event are not the most dangerous ; here are men of desperate fortunes and more desperate principles who have too much influence on the majority, are gaping after change, and if I may judge from their pass'd conduct would readily joyn with any such.”  He was concerned for more than just a Negro rebellion, but for a general rebellion as well. 

A pamphlet titled, “The State of the Island of Jamaica, addressed to a Member of Parliament” was published in which the writer urges the "necessitty there is, that not only a revenue be settled equal to the annual expence of the Government, but also a provision be made by some new laws for the better recovery of just debts, and the better peopling and settling of the island, at the same time that the body of laws are re-enacted or confirmed by the Crown."  The problem became a fiscal one for the British which resulted in a treaty with the Maroons that lasts until this day. 

Two British regiments arrived by 1734.  Thus, Dring may well have returned to Rhode Island and his merchant activities by that time, but with Jamaica firmly on his mind.  Did Azariah Dring get caught up in this state of legislative affairs?  Did he fight against the taxes on slave imports?  Quite possibly, he did. 

New England had a tremendous role in the slave trade – especially Rhode Island.  Quoting from Brown University’s Steering Report, “In all, about sixty percent of slave trading voyages launched from North America – in some years more than ninety percent – issued from tiny Rhode Island.”  Furthermore, his son would later demonstrate zero tolerance against escaped slaves in the colony of South Carolina.  Dring very possibly was a slave trader.  This occupation would have peaked his interest in the 10s duty on importation/exportation of slaves passed in 1732 and so hotly debated through 1734 when the latest rebellion began.  He may have paused in his business to fight this legislation.  It seems he stalled in his activity for more than a year. 

The Caribbean sugar isles concentrated so heavily on production, that they had to transport everything else.  From the Steering Report:  “Rhode Island dominated this trade, operating, in essence, as the commissary of the Atlantic plantation complex.  Rhode Island ships cleared for the Caribbean on an almost daily basis, their holds laden with a cornucopia of local products – beef and butter, hay and horses (Narragansett pacers were much prized by Caribbean planters), candles, shoes, iron, barrel hoops and staves, timber, tar, tobacco, and vast quantities of salt cod, the staple protein source of West Indian slaves. (Rhode Islanders sometimes referred to cod as “Jamaica fish,” reflecting a clear understanding of the commodity’s destination.) Between the transatlantic slave trade and the West Indian provisioning trade, it is hard to imagine any eighteenth century Rhode Islander whose livelihood was not entangled, directly or indirectly, with slavery.”

The New England Weekly in Boston published in May 1732 an address from Joseph Maxwell, clerk of the Jamaican Council, asking for more troops to help them defend against rebellious Negroes.  He stated that, “We are, of late Years, deprived of the most Beneficial branch of our Trade, the carrying of Negroes and Dry Goods to the Spanish coast [Assiento Trade].” 

Whatever his reasons, Dring’s activities demonstrated a change in his routine away from other locales toward Jamaica, perhaps supplying fresh slaves or to support the continual military effort against the Maroons.  The rebellion made keeping slaves on Jamaica a hazard, fearing that new slaves would simply run off and join the Maroons.  This strongly affected slave traders and their business.  Maxwell told the Board of Trade that they “gave Employment to a considerable Number of Shipping & People to cut and carry Logwood from thence,” which was stolen by the Spanish routinely and that the French were undercutting the price of slaves. 

By October of 1734, Dring left Newport bound again for Jamaica (Weekly Rehearsal of Boston, Mass.).  The Boston Post-Boy of October 27, 1735 told of his departure from Rhode Island three days earlier bound again for Jamaica.  New-England Weekly Journal of May 18, 1736 shows him arriving in Boston from Jamaica and leaving again on May 24^th, bound for Rhode Island (Boston Evening-Post).  Any evidence of what he carried in his hold would be extraordinarily helpful. 

On the 3^rd of May, 1737, Azariah Dring was made a freeman for the province of Rhode Island by the Proceedings of the General Assembly for Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations.  He was again outbound for Jamaica in July 1737, according to the Boston Post-Boy and there, undoubtedly discovered a truce had been arranged with the rebels.  In all, there were seven references for Dring going to or coming from exclusively Jamaica for over four years.  He did nothing else.

The first deviation in Dring’s Jamaica pattern occurred in February 1738, when the American Weekly Mercury recorded him as inbound from Honduras, just after the 1737 treaty was signed with Jamaican Maroon rebels and the military actions ceased, necessitating their withdrawal.  By this time, presumably, the British on Jamaica needed no further supplies from Capt. Dring.  Just as well, Dring’s possible hopes of capturing cheap Maroon slaves to be sold also disappeared. 

The next year, in March 1738, Dring cleared out of Boston harbor again for Rhode Island and then left there for the Leeward Islands in April (Boston Gazette).  Very few reports reveal his activity after this, for no Dring is recorded as mariner until May 1746, leaving from New Providence, the Bahamas.  Only one other notation further, the New-York Mercury records on December 10, 1753, “Novem. 12. (Charlestown, South Carolina) Monday last put into this port a Schooner bound from Winyah for Boston, Dring Master, that had been out three Weeks, and had met with very bad Weather.” 

Azariah Dring must have been worn out by his hapless arrival in Charlestown, for there he stayed, dying three years later in Craven Precinct, in 1756 (SC Colonial Probate 464).  The year before this, his legal dispute with James Baber occurred. 

South Carolina marriage records show a (Mrs.) Margaret “Dringat,” possibly Azariah’s widow marrying on October 30, 1757 to a John Andrews Dehay.  Those records also show a Percival Dring (bachelor of Prince George Parish, born about 1741-1744) marrying on March 18, 1761 to Elizabeth Crook(s) (spinster of Prince George Parish) and an Elizabeth Dring marrying May 19, 1764 to Charles Coulbourn. 

Percival Dring became a constable in charge of hunting down escaped slaves in South Carolina.  In 1765, he earned the most of ten such constables, £56 17 06 for four separate accounts.  No one else had more than a single account.  Two years later, the number of constables increased and Percival Dring only made £14 15.  By January 2, 1771, Percival Dring, a carpenter by trade, had passed away and his personal effects given to his next of kin, Margaret Dring.  This note is fascinating since his wife of ten years should have been Elizabeth.  Margaret should have been his mother.  Indeed, it may have happened this way.

Elizabeth could have passed away between 1761 and 1771, when her husband died.  This could easily be accounted for by childbirth, deadly for females in the eighteenth century.  It is quite likely that there were two children born to Percival and Elizabeth, Percival Dring Jr. and Azariah.  Both of these men appear in the records of Currituck County, North Carolina and on deed records associated with Hatteras Island, remarkably as “free persons of color.”  This enigma must be explained somehow.  For the children and grandchildren of men who fought fervently against slaves to appear as “colored” individuals in the census records, one or both must have married a black, mulatto, or as the case may be best defined on Hatteras, an Indian… or, Elizabeth was already an Indian.  In that case, she may have found herself unable to inherit her husband’s estate.  She turns up again.

This interesting will appeared in Abstracts of Currituck Co., NC Wills 1760-1800:

Josiah Basnet, Oct 9 1782, oct 10 1785, will bk 1, planter, son Alexander Scarborough, Jr, Letisby Scarborough.  Wit Azariah Dring, William Whidbee.

Azariah Dring… of witness age in 1782?  He must have been at least sixteen, which puts his birth at no later than 1762.  Following common naming practices of the time, the first male child is usually named for the male’s father… in Percival of SC’s case, Azariah.  He very well could have been the first child born to Percival and Elizabeth Dring.  Josiah Basnett’s will is interesting enough because it seems to reflect matrilineal naming patterns with Basnett’s children all possessing the mother’s name of Scarborough, a possible indication of Indian heritage.  Still, they could be step-children, but Alexander appears to later take the name of Basnett.

The second Dring Hatteras occurrence is 1783, in which Shibboleth Dring (by his father) sues Joseph Stow for “with force and arms he made an assault upon the said Shibboleth Dring and did beat wound and evilly treat so that his life was despaired of.”  Who was the father?  Percival or Azariah?  Unfortunately, none of the court records, lasting until November 1784 tell his name.  The only Dring later recorded with children was Percival, but since the 1810 and 1820 census recorded no Drings, the appearance of Azariah and his wife in 1830 at age 50-60 (births 1770-1780) indicate no children.  Drings do not seem to last on Hattera.

The first census for the United States in 1790 recorded a “Price” Dring in Currituck County, on Hatteras Banks.  There were four people in his household, all “free persons of color” or FPC.  In 1797, Cornelius Howard sells to Percival Dring, two pieces of land that fell to his wife, Elizabeth (Smith?) from the will of John Smith Senr.  One parcel is very close to the land the Elizabeth Dring sells to John Clark in 1798, land on the sound bordering Isaac Brooks.  This land is east of Brooks point and west of Wahab’s new grant.  Percival sells 62.5 acres of this same land to Francis Farrow in 1799 while he buys land from Willoughby Basnett (son of another FPC who became “white” in 1800, Robert Basnett) who also obtained property through the John Smith estate the same way as Reuben Burrus.  (Currituck County Deed Records).

Then, in 1800, a “Prissilor Dring” is enumerated as a white man with a white family of three male children, born between 1774-1784, four female children born between 1784-1790, a wife the same age as “Prissilor” and an older woman, born before 1755.  He himself is born between 1755-1776. 

Elizabeth Crook(s) Dring is still alive in 1800 and living with her son and his family on Hatteras Banks in an area known for its peculiar “free persons of color” who suddenly become white by 1800.  She is probably the “Elizabeth” who sold John Clark the land in 1798. 

Then, in 1809, William Clark sells land bordering Francis Farrow to Percival Dring in about the same area on the sound side of Hatteras Island.  Percival had already made his will by 1807, however, naming his brother Azariah and his executors, wife, Amy and friend Willoughby Basnett.  Witnesses are Daniel Stow and Sarah Brooks.

As indicated previously, 1810-1820 show no Drings enumerated, but 1830 shows only one, Azariah and his wife, both listed as “white” as expected by 1830.  The discrimination against anything other than “white” became unusually strong in North Carolina, finally culminating in the 1835 North Carolina Constitution that made everyone but whites a second-class citizen.  It was much more favorable to be white than Indian or black.  No other clues exist for what became of the Drings of Hatteras except another Azariah Dring appears in Caswell County, North Carolina, born between 1800-1810, a young lad starting a new family with a wife, a young son and two little girls.  At least the name lived on. 

The story of Azariah Dring from Rhode Island made a startling turnaround from a mariner who made a name for himself fighting black/Indian Jamaican Maroons in the Caribbean, then crash landed in Charlestown, South Carolina, and died there three years later.  Then his son, Percival obviously marries an Indian or black woman in 1761 and has two sons who later come to Hatteras.  But, if Elizabeth Crook(s) Dring had been born black or mulatto, her chances of being recognized as “white” in 1798 enough to sell land and in 1800 to be enumerated as “white” are not good.  She must have been Indian.  Combined with the family’s association with other families known to follow the same change from 1790 when they were found as FPCs until their miraculous transformation in 1800 to “white,” these Hatteras Islanders may very well have collected on Hatteras for the sole purpose of enjoying the anonymity.  Hatteras must have become a home for Native Americans that asked no questions.  For many, Hatteras remained a place inured by outside influence, possessing their own unique colloquialisms/language, and preferring a high level of independence.  It still is like that today.