A Very Improving State: The Simpson Family in North Carolina, 1755 – 1804
Kirke Wilson
1995
The country appears to be in a very improving state,
and industry and frugality are becoming much more
fashionable…Tranquility reigns among the People…
George Washington, 1791
Introduction
This is the third in a series of narratives tracing the route and experiences of Simpson and related families as they moved across the nation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Beginning in the seventeenth century Maryland settlement at the north end of Chesapeake Bay, these families, over several generations, uprooted and moved to new frontiers in North Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri and eventually Oregon. Over a period of less than one hundred years, members of these families migrated from near the Atlantic Ocean, across the continent to land near the Pacific.
Over that century, their pattern of settlement and migration accelerated. Their stops became shorter, one generation rather than two or three, and their moves became longer until, in 1846, they followed the Oregon Trail from Missouri to the Williamette Valley of Oregon. The Maryland period, 1688-1760, is described in A Most Healthful and Pleasant Situation (1991). It follows the first four generations over seventy years from Thomas and Elizabeth Gilbert, their daughter Anne and her husband Richard Simpson in Old Baltimore County through Thomas and Eleanor Simpson to the second Richard Simpson, his wife Elizabeth and their son, the second Thomas. Sometime in the 1750s, the second Richard Simpson and his family move to the frontier in North Carolina where they remain more than forty years on farms in what becomes Guilford and Rockingham Counties.
This chapter, in chronology the period after Maryland and before Tennessee, covers the period 1755 to 1804. In conjunction with For We Cannot Tarry Here (1990), it completes the story of the Simpson family from 1688 to 1820 when the Simpsons prepare to move from Tennessee to Missouri. The story of the Simpson family in Missouri, their marriage into the pioneer Cooper family and their emigration across the continent to Oregon will be published in the next few years.
The North Carolina period, like the Maryland period, is about three generations in length. It is marked, in public life, by the turmoil of the Revolutionary War but, in private life, it appears stable and secure. What little record survives, suggests a growing clan of hard-working farmers. They keep to themselves, conduct business with relatives and neighbors while remaining rooted for fifty years in a small area immediately north of what is now Greensboro, North Carolina. They buy and sell land and earn the respect of their neighbors. Like their experience in Maryland, the Simpson families of North Carolina live in an area where their more prosperous neighbors own slaves. The Simpsons, whether as a matter of economics or conviction, do not own any slaves as they had not owned slaves in Maryland.
ii
The surviving documents, mostly land transactions and court records, suggest that this family was law-abiding and, in alter years, devoted to the Methodist Church and its circuit-riding preachers. The Simpsons somehow remained outside most of the political ferment of their time and place while living long and uneventful lives.
Thomas Simpson was born and raised in Maryland but lived most of his adult life in North Carolina. He appears to have lived on or near his father’s Guilford County farm until middle age when he moved with his adult sons to land in nearby Rockingham County. From the surviving evidence, the Simpson family remained close-knit over three generations in North Carolina and during their nineteenth century move over the mountains to Tennessee.
The documentary evidence from North Carolina explains the family legend about Thomas Simpson’s alleged friendship with George Washington. Although circumstantial, the evidence also suggests that it is unlikely that the Thomas Simpson of Guilford County was not the same person who signed the Watauga petition of 1776 in what is now Tennessee. He may have served in the North Carolina militia in 1776 but the Watauga episode, while possible, seems entirely out of character for Thomas Simpson. The record is ambiguous but suggests, as family legend has it, that Thomas Simpson was blind for much of his adult life but regained his sight in old age.
The Simpson family devotion to the Methodist Church in North Carolina raises questions about why and how Thomas Simpson’s son William became a lay preacher among the Anti-Missionary Baptists in Tennessee, Missouri and Oregon. The father was a devout Methodist during his adult and later life while the son, living in the same household, followed a different and more controversial spiritual path.
Like everyone engaged in historical research, I am exceedingly dependent on the work of others. I am the beneficiary of the meticulous scholarship of historians, archivists and genealogists as well as the patience and guidance of librarians in many states. I am grateful for the information and assistance I received at the Caldwell Jones Room at the Greensboro Public Library, the Library of Congress, the Los Angeles Public Library, the Library of the Mechanics Institute in San Francisco, the Library of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, the Rockingham County Library at Reidsville, the Edith M. Clark history Room of the Rowan County Library at Salisbury, the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville as well as the Sterling Memorial Library and its Franklin Collection at Yale University.
iii
In addition to these institutions and their reference staff, I am dependent on the efforts of numerous local historians including, in North Carolina, William D. Bennett, Fred Hughes, Jo White Linn, Mamie G. McCubbins and Irene B. Webster. Finally I am particularly grateful to several remote Simpson cousins for their advice and encouragement. These include: Donald R. Simpson of Salt Lake City, the primary researcher of the Haw River Simpsons, whose articles, scholarship and guidance helped me to locate the Simpson properties in Guilford and Rockingham Counties; Wayne C. Simpson, the Rowan County Tax Collector, whose hospitality and understanding of the people and area made my 1992 trip to North Carolina pleasant and productive; Winona Williams of Ben Lomond, California, the editor of The Simpson Family Clan newsletter, who brought us all together and made my task possible.
For all the assistance and encouragement I have received from others, any errors of fact or interpretation are mine alone.
San Francisco, California February 1995
NORTH.CAROLINA. 1750-1804
In truth it is the Best poor mans Cuntry I Ever heard of.
Alexander McAllister,
c.17701
1
The Carolina Colony
In 1663, Charles II granted an area called Carolina to eight court favorites including ”beloved cousins and counsellors…our high chancellor…master of our horse…chancellor of our exchequer…vice chamberlain of our household” and other worthies. The grant included the land along the coast from Virginia to Florida and the land across the continent from the Atlantic Ocean “to the west as far as the south seas”.2 The crown divided Carolina into North and South in 1713 and established South Carolina as a separate royal colony in 1719. By 1729, the original proprietors had died and the crown was able to purchase most of Carolina for 22,500 pounds from descendants of seven of the eight original proprietors. John Carteret, Baron Carteret of Hawnes (1690- 1763), a descendant of one of the proprietors of 1663, refused to sell his one-eighth share.3 Because Carteret’s share was an undivided part of the whole, land title in Carolina was clouded and settlement was delayed.
2
Lord Carteret agreed, in 1743, to exchange his one-eighth share in the larger territory for sole ownership of a tract of 26,000 square miles comprising the northern half of what is now North Carolina. The land was sixty miles from north to south and more than 350 miles wide from the Atlantic coast to a western boundary, like the one in the Carolina grant of 1663, that was undefined. From 1744, when Lord Carteret succeeded to the title Earl of Granville, this area of Carolina was known as the Granville District.
The royal deed of grant of September 1744 specified that the northern boundary of the Granville land would be the line surveyed in 1728 between Virginia and Carolina. The southern boundary, the Granville line, was at 35 degrees 34 minutes north latitude. It had been surveyed from the coast to a point eleven miles west of Bath in 1743. In 1746, the boundary line was continued 103 miles west beyond the Haw River and, in 1747, an additional 87 miles to Coldwater Creek, just west of the traditional Catawba Trading Path and 14 miles southwest of what is now Salisbury in Rowan County.4 The line was marked by four trees growing in a square and marked with blazes, including one with the initials of King George.5 The same year, the proprietor opened a land sales office on the frontier.6
The royal grant provided that Granville would respect existing land ownership in the District but required the payment of an annual quitrent to the proprietor by all land owners. The quitrent for each 100 acres was three shillings sterling or four shillings proclamation money for land sold by Granville and somewhat less for land patented before 1744.7 While the Proprietor had right to rents from all his lands in the district,
3
he did not have the broad governmental authority the Lords Proprietors had received in the grant of 1663. Granville could not, for example, establish courts, appoint government officials or levy taxes. The proprietor could appoint agents to sell his land and collect rents but he could not control the courts and local officials who enforced rent collection.8 By 1763, when Lord Granville died and his land office was closed, land agents had issued nearly 5000 grants totaling more than three million acres in the Granville District.9
Settlement of the North Carolina Piedmont
Despite the availability of vast amounts of cheap land in North Carolina, the pace of settlement during the first half of the eighteenth century was slow. As one royal governor explained, “Land is not wanting for men in Carolina, but men for land.1110 The Granville District, at the time of the 1744 grant, had a population of about 30,000 living on one million acres of patented land leaving more than fifteen million acres of land for the proprietor to rent or sell. To encourage settlement, Granville offered to sell land in fee simple rather than leaseholds. He set the price of land at a reasonable level equivalent to approximately six pounds sterling for 640 acres reserving only certain mineral rights. The proprietor did not impose limitations on the uses or transfer of his lands or require that the landowners contribute labor to the maintenance of roads and bridges. At six pounds per section, land in the Granville District was far cheaper than
4
land in Pennsylvania where the price, since 1732, had been fifteen pounds per hundred acres and the quitrent was in excess of four shillings.11
Clouded land title was a continuing impediment to settlement in the Granville District. Bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg, the head of the Moravian Church in the United States, visited the North Carolina backcountry in 1752 seeking a large tract of land for a church colony. In his diary, he observed:
Land matters in North Carolina are also in unbelievable confusion, and I do not see how endless law-suits are to be avoided. A man settles on a piece of land and does a good deal of work on it (from the Carolina standpoint), then another comes and drives him out–and who is to definitely settle the matter?…This much is sure,–My Lord’s Agent cannot now give a patent without fearing that when the tract is settled another man will come and say “That is my land.”12
Despite his well-founded misgivings, Bishop Spangenberg purchased nearly 100,000 acres of Granville land between the Yadkin River and the Dan River where he established the Moravian community of Wachovia at the site of what is now Winston-Salem. Other settlers also risked the consequences of uncertain land title on the North Carolina frontier. Between 1751 and 1762, the proprietor’s agents sold nearly two million acres of land in the Granville District. The Granville land was sold in relatively large tracts. In Rowan County, the initial grants averaged about 500 acres each. Many of these large tracts were resold in smaller parcels as new settlers arrived.13
The western half of the Granville District, the land to the foothills of the Blue Ridge, was the area that would become Rowan and other counties. A rolling country of many streams but few trees, this area was 200 miles inland from the North Carolina coast
5
and had been crossed repeatedly by traders and hunters but was unsettled until the 1744 grant to Lord Granville. The availability of cheap land in the North Carolina piedmont attracted settlers from the colonies to the north where the high land costs of Pennsylvania, the soil depletion of Maryland and the growing population of both colonies had blunted opportunity. The pioneers followed a traditional route, sometimes called ”The Great Indian Warpath”, more than 400 miles from the densely-populated agricultural area of Pennsylvania through the recent settlements of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia into the North Carolina backcountry. The route, later called “the Great Wagon Road” or the “the Carolina Road”, began near Philadelphia, crossed the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg before turning south toward Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, Hagerstown, Maryland and the Valley of Virginia between the Blue Ridge on the east and the Allegheny Mountains on the west.
In Pennsylvania, the road connected to the population centers of Lancaster County and York County as well as the Upper Chesapeake Bay counties of Maryland and Delaware. In Virginia, the road followed the Shanandoah Valley to Roanoke where it divided. One road continued down the Valley toward the Cumberland Gap and the Wilderness Road into Kentucky and Tennessee. The Carolina Road turned south at Roanoke and climbed over the mountains, following the present route of U.S. Highway 220 to Martinsville, Virginia and into that part of the piedmont that would become Rowan County, North Carolina in 1753.14 One 1758 emigrant from Maryland recalled traveling in the autumn, “…in a wagon drawn by four horses and a cart drawn by two
6
horses” with his parents and all the family belongings.15 Women and children rode in the wagons while men and older boys walked or rode horseback. From 1730 to 1770, the Great Wagon Road was the primary route that the Scotch-Irish and German residents of the middle colonies traveled to the new lands opened for settlement in the Granville District of North Carolina.16
The first land grants in the area were made in 1749. By 1751, 812 families, most of them from Maryland and Virginia, had settled in three areas between the Yadkin and Catawba Rivers. In 1753, Anson County was divided and the northwest quarter of North Carolina became Rowan County. The Rowan County of 1753 included an area that would become part or all of 29 modem counties including the areas that would later become Guilford County and Rockingham County.17 More than half the early Rowan County settlers were from Pennsylvania, primarily Lancaster and Chester Counties. Another 21% were from Maryland, including both the Western Shore and Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay. Delaware contributed 9% of the settlers and New Jersey 5% with small numbers from Virginia and other parts of North Carolina. From their origins, it is likely that virtually all the early Rowan County settlers arrived from the north on the Great Wagon Road.18
The piedmont plateau suffered scattered Indian raids during the 1750s. The original native inhabitants of the region, including the Tuscarora to the east and the Catawba to the south, had withdrawn as European settlement traditional territory. As
7
part of the global conflict between the empires of France and Great Britain, agents of the two European powers enlisted their Indian allies in the frontier battles of the French and Indian War. French agents encouraged Shawnee from Ohio to raid English settlements while British agents persuaded the Cherokee to send warriors to defend the Virginia frontier against the French and their allies. Several hundred Cherokee warriors joined British and colonial troops in battle against the French but scattered groups of Cherokee, while returning to their homes, clashed with settlers on the Virginia and Carolina frontier.19
In 1753, a party of French and Indians from the north attacked local Catawba Indians in a battle two miles from the recently-established Rowan County Courthouse. Although no settlers were killed or injured in the battle, the North Carolina Assembly was persuaded to appropriate money it did not have to send two militia units to the frontier. When Braddock and an army of British regulars and colonial militia were defeated by an army of French and Indians in Western Pennsylvania in 1755, the North Carolina Assembly appropriated an additional 10,000 pounds to build a fort and support three militia companies on the frontier.20
Fort Dobbs, named for the incumbent provincial governor, was constructed near the Yadkin River approximately twenty-seven miles west of Salisbury in what is now Iredell County. The fort was 53 feet long and 40 feet wide with walls of oak logs 24 feet high and 6 to 16 inches thick. Fort Dobbs had three levels so that as many as 100
8
muskets could be fired at once. Although it was the only government post on the North Carolina frontier, Fort Dobbs had a garrison of but 46 officers and men at its peak.
When the Indian threat appeared to subside in 1758, Captain Hugh Waddell, the commanding officer, departed leaving but two soldiers to defend the frontier. The Cherokee resumed attacks in North Carolina late in 1758 and in 1759 attacked the fort. Captain Waddell reported,
… the Indians were soon repulsed with I am sure a considerable loss…they could not have had less than 10 or 12 killed or wounded…On my side I had 2 men wounded one of whom I am afraid will die as he is scalped, the other is in a way of recovery and one boy killed near the fort whom they durst not advance to scalp.21
The Shenandoah Valley of Virginia experienced extensive but episodic Indian attacks during the French and Indian War with 135 settlers killed or wounded and 161 captured between 1754 and 1758. The casualties were less numerous in the North Carolina backcountry where there were fewer settlers. The population of Rowan County had reached 1531 taxables by 1756 but declined to about 800 by 1759 during the Indian raids. During this period, a young Daniel Boone, whose family had been among the early settlers on the Yadkin, left North Carolina and found temporary work driving a tobacco wagon in Culpeper County, Virginia.22
Indian raids in the North Carolina backcounty continued into 1760. The Moravians at Wachovia reported that they provided emergency shelter for 220 of their
9
Rowan County neighbors who had lost homes between 1757 and 1760.23 The Wachovia Church Book reports that 1760 “was a year of fierce Indian War”.
On the 12th of March many Indians were in our neighborhood; eight miles away, on the Yadkin, houses were burned; two men were killed at the bridge over the Wach; two persons were killed on the Town Fork…Among our neighbors more than fifteen people were slain… 24
With the defensive strategy proving ineffective in protecting the backcountry, the Carolina colonies shifted to a more aggressive approach in 1760. South Carolina mobilized 1650 militia under Col. Archibald Montgomery for an invasion of Cherokee territory in what is now northwestern South Carolina and northeastern Georgia. The South Carolina army destroyed five Cherokee Lower Towns but was defeated before reaching the Middle Towns. The following year, North Carolina sent an army of 2250 militia under Colonel James Grant into the Cherokee Middle Towns in the far western tip of North Carolina.25 Grant’s troops destroyed fifteen Indian villages and 1500 acres of crops in what is now Macon County, North Carolina. In 1763, officials of North Carolina and other southern colonies met with twenty-five Cherokee and Catawba chiefs and agreed to a treaty of “Perfect and Perpetual Peace and Friendship.”1.6 The military expeditions effectively rolled the Cherokee into the mountains and permanently eliminated the Indian threat to the Rowan County settlers. With the Indian danger removed, settlement resumed in Rowan County. By 1766, the royal governor of North Carolina could report to the Board of Trade in London,
I am of opinion this province is settling faster than any on the continent, last autumn and winter, upwards of one thousand wagons passed thro’ Salisbury with families from the northward to settle in this province chiefly.27
10
The Richard Simpson Family in North Carolina
Sometime in the 1750s, the second Richard Simpson (1714-1795) moved with his family from Maryland to North Carolina. It is likely that he delayed the move until the fall of the year when he had completed harvesting his crops and had disposed of his property. He loaded his family and possessions in a wagon and followed the Great Wagon Road south bringing livestock, seed, farming equipment and the supplies necessary to survive the winter and begin farming in the spring. By then in his 40s with six children, Richard Simpson settled in the Haw River area of Rowan County approximately thirteen miles north of what is now Greensboro, North Carolina.28 The Haw River is 130 miles long. It flows northeast through what is now Guilford County into Rockingham County before joining Deep River to form the Cape Fear River and flow into the Atlantic Ocean.
By May 1758, Richard Simpson had lived long enough in Rowan County to be summoned for service on the grand jury. The county seat at Salisbury was an 80 mile horseback ride, three days if the roads were dry, from his home. When he failed to appear, the county court ordered that he be fined along with six other county residents.29 In 1759, Richard Simpson paid taxes in Rowan County.30 In August 1764,
he purchased 100 acres of land on the south side of Mears Fork in what was then Rowan County. Mears Fork is a tributary of the Haw River that flows northeast across Guilford County. Mears Fork follows a narrow valley that widens as it approaches the confluence
11
with the Haw River near the present line separating Guilford and Rockingham Counties.31 Simpson paid twelve pounds North Carolina money to William Williams for land that Lord Granville had granted George Jurdan, Jr. in 1753.32 William Williams was a Haw River farmer who engaged in land transactions with various members of the Simpson family over a thirty-year period. He was not the William Williams who was a hatter and real estate speculator in Salisbury during the same period.
The Simpson land was the western and upstream part of a 320 acre parcel that Williams had acquired in 1758. The land was bounded on the north by Mears Fork and on the east by Line Branch. Williams continued to live on adjacent property east of Line Branch running to the mouth of Mears Fork at the Haw River.33 The land was located near the small Haw River bridge that today marks the boundary between Guilford County and Rockingham County. The property was immediately west of what was called Iron Works Road in the 18th century and is now Church StreetExtension.34 Church Street begins in downtown Greensboro and runs north into Rockingham County through gently rolling hills of suburban housing, small farms, open fields and woods. The Mears Fork land is two miles north of Gethsemane United Methodist Church and the crossroads store at State Route 150 and two miles south of the village of Midway at the intersection of US 158 in Rockingham County.35 Mears Fork, Haw River and Troublesome Creek to the north are narrow streams, shaded by thick growth of vines and trees with little bottom land for cultivation. Since colonial times, these streams have offered little or no obstacle to traffic between the primary roads, like State Route 150
12
and US 158, that follow the flat ridges separating the many streams. Land is fertile red clay with crops planted on the gentle, upland slopes away from the streams.36
Richard Simpson and his family continued to live on the Mears Fork property for thirty years. At some point after arriving in North Carolina, Elizabeth Simpson died and Richard Simpson remarried. His second wife, Mary, was the mother of Richard Simpson’s step-daughter Elizabeth, the wife of Cain Carroll who acquired 100 acres south of William Williams’ property in 1779.37 What little record survives suggests that
Richard Simpson was a stable and respected figure. He and his sons acquired several parcels of land in the Mears Fork area over thirty years and Richard Simpson was asked, by prominent neighbors, to assume responsibility in settling their affairs. In October 1765, Richard Simpson appeared in Rowan County Court as a witness in the probate of the estate of a prosperous neighbor, John Hallum, Sr.38 Hallum had obtained a Granville grant on a branch of Mears Fork in 1762 and owned 220 acres and one slave at the time of his death in 1764.39
The following year, another Haw River neighbor died naming Richard Simpson co-executor of his estate and guardian of his children. David Rothera left his 320 acre homeplace and mill seat on Troublesome Creek to his youngest son David. Young David and his sister Rachel were the “two small children left to the care of Richard Simpson & his wife Mary.” In his 1765 will, the father also provided for the “schooling” of the two Rothera children for whom the Simpsons were guardians.40
13
For the next thirty years, Richard Simpson farmed with his family on the Mears Fork property. Like others on the frontier, he earned money in every possible way including, on one occasion, as a bounty hunter. In 1765, he was one of 110 Rowan County residents filing claims for 11woolfs, panthers and cats” they had killed. In addition to bounty claims totalling 289 pounds, residents sought reimbursement for other services provided the county including “making a pillory…repairing the goal (sic) & Irons, etc.”41 The Rowan County Court set the tax rate at one shilling, six pence proclamation money on each of the estimated 2800 taxables in the county. Suffering from the uncollected taxes that, in subsequent years, would be part of the tax protest of the Regulators’ Revolt, the Rowan County Court,
Order’d that, the Clark pay unto the persons mentioned to have claims on the County for the, Year-1764, four-Fifths of their claims Only as he has no more money in his hands, by reason of the delinquent Taxes for that year.42
For his claim of one wolf killed, Richard Simpson received a partial bounty payment of twelve shillings.43
Although they were young adults, Richard Simpson’s three sons continued to live with or near their father on Mears Fork. In 1768, when the Rowan County Court ordered taxes collected, Thomas Donnell, the Justice for the Haw River area of the county, reported 254 titheables subject to taxation including eighteen slaves. Donnell reported that Richard Simpson, Senior and Samuel Marshall, presumably a hired man, were living at one location and that the three sons, Thomas, Richard, Jr. and Nathaniel were living nearby, perhaps on adjacent properties. None of the four Simpsons owned
14
slaves. In addition to the four Simpsons, Haw River residents in 1768 included the Reverend David Caldwell, a Princeton-trained Presbyterian minister, as well as William Williams, Thomas Knight and William Moorland.44 The Simpson family engaged in several real estate transactions with Williams from 1759 to 1792 and members of the Simpson family married members of the Knight and Moorland families.
In addition to tax payments, colonial North Carolina also required adult males to perform voluntary service in the militia and the construction and maintenance of roads, bridges and other public works. Free males between the ages of 16 and 60, unless they were members of groups exempted by occupation, were obligated to participate in a regular schedule of musters. The frequency of North Carolina musters varied between 1760 and 1775. Captains were responsible for assembling local companies of approximately fifty men for “private” musters three to five times a year and colonels were responsible for the “public” muster of county regiments once or twice a year. Members of the militia were required to provide their own equipment including firearms, powder and shot. Musters included military drills as well as social events and attendance was enforced with fines of five and ten shillings.
Like the practice in 16th and 17th century England, men in colonial North Carolina were also required to provide labor in the construction and maintenance of public roads. Men were required to provide as much as one day a month in road service, if it were needed, and were subject to fines of a day’s wage, two or three shillings, for
15
failure to participate.45 In 1769, Richard Simpson was one of eleven Rowan County residents appointed to a “jury” with responsibility “to View and Lay off a Road from the Forks of Silver Creek Road to Sherrells Ford on the Catawba River.1146 Roads were a chronic problem in the North Carolina piedmont. They were poorly-designed, often little more than paths through the woods, and were inadequately maintained. They were often impassable due to boulders, fallen trees and flooding. The roads were rutted, often muddy and difficult to follow. An Act of 1764 required that roads be cleared of brush 20 feet wide with 12 foot wide bridges, mileposts and signposts at forks. The roads remained neglected and were an obstacle to the economic and social development of the piedmont well into the 19th century.47
The Mears Fork area of Rowan County became part of Guilford County in 1770.48 At some point, Richard Simpson, denoted “Esquire” in the county records, purchased land from someone named Southwell who had acquired the land from Lord Granville. By the end of 1773, the Simpson portion of the Southwell land had been sold. William Nunn, Esquire, owned part of what had been the Simpson land and William Triplette sold another 100 acres for 100 pounds, one shilling to a buyer from York County, Pennsylvania.49 In 1777, William Nunn, Junior sold 519 acres, including his father’s home, to a buyer from Orange County for 400 pounds. This land is described as being on High Rock Creek. Richard Simpson, presumably the former owner of part of the Nunn property, was a witness to the 1777 transaction.50 In 1779, Richard Simpson
16
owned 150 acres on “Mares” Fork of Haw River adjacent to the northwest comer of property owned by Cain Carroll.51
In later years, two of Richard Simpson’s sons acquired adjacent properties on the south side of Mears Fork. Thomas Simpson bought land on the east side of his father in 1779 and south of his father in 1782. In 1783, the state of North Carolina granted 63 acres to Richard Simpson, Junior. The 63 acres was along the west side of the property his father had purchased in 1764.52 By 1785, Richard Simpson qualified for exemption from the poll tax, presumably based on his age. His exemption was approved by the Guilford County Court at the August 1785 session.53
Richard Simpson died sometime early in 1795 on the Mears Fork property he had owned since 1764. He left “all the land on which I now live” as well as two other parcels of twenty acres each to his third son Richard (c. 1748-1804). To his son Thomas, he left “one breeding sow & a chair” and to his son Nathaniel “a white mare”. To his three daughters and one step-daughter, Richard Simpson left household goods including a feather bed, trunk, chair, a stone quart mug, a spinning wheel and several basins including two of pewter. He specified that his supply of feathers “be equally divided” among his daughters. He also left property to his grandchildren including a three year old heifer to Elizabeth Rees Hicks, a chest to Elizabeth the daughter of his son Thomas and a ”young cow named Rock” to Nathaniel, a son of Thomas. Four other grandsons, including Richard Simpson, a son of Thomas, shared the proceeds from the sale of the
17
remainder of their grandfather’s personal property. His will, naming his sons Thomas and Richard as executors, was admitted for probate in Guilford County in May 1795.54
After nearly forty years on the North Carolina frontier, Richard Simpson had successfully acquired real estate and personal property and, with his wives, raised a large family. He had been a pioneer who had settled land and prospered as a farmer despite the political and social turbulence of the Carolina frontier during the colonial and revolutionary period. He appears to have gained the respect of his neighbors and was asked to administer their estates and assume responsibility for their children. Although a few of his neighbors owned slaves, there is no record that Richard Simpson owned slaves at any time during his forty years in North Carolina. The Regulator rebellion was active in Guilford County but there is no evidence that Richard Simpson participated. By the time of the Revolution, he would have been too old for militia duty but lived in an area that was crossed repeatedly by Continental troops fleeing the British and then returning to fight the Battle of Guilford Court House. The Haw River area was used by the Continental Army and state militia as a staging area before the battle and as a place of rest and recovery after the battle. Although there is no direct evidence, it is likely that the Simpson family and their neighbors were called upon to provide whatever grain and meat they could to supply the Continental army camped at Troublesome Creek.
18
Life on the Caro1ina_Frontier
The frontier area of North Carolina that became Rowan, Guilford and Rockingham Counties settled quickly in the third quarter of the eighteenth century. From wilderness in 1750, the area filled with small farmers from the crowded colonies of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware. The settlers in the western part of the county experienced brief but intense Indian danger during the French and Indian War but, by the early 1760s the Indians had withdrawn from the area leaving the settlers in peace. The pioneers promptly planted crops and erected crude wooden houses. Charles Woodmason (c.1720-c.1780), an itinerant minister from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the evangelical arm of the Church of England, was merciless in his criticism of the settlers, their morals and their living conditions. In 1766, he observed,
The People all new Settlers, extremely poor. -Live in Logg Cabbins like Hogs and their Living and Behavior as rude or more so than the Savages.55
In his travels, Woodmason slept in many Carolina backcountry homes. He complained that they were cold, poorly furnished, unfinished and lacking privacy. He found that most had dirt floors and that some were open to the sky. Others he found were dirty, smokey and crowded.56
While the frontier homes may have appeared crude and crowded to recently arrived British observers like the Reverend Mr. Woodmason, they were typical of the frontier houses of the eighteenth century and they were improved or abandoned as
19
pioneers decided to remain or move on. The North Carolina houses were usually one or two room cabins constructed of logs and heated by a fireplace at one end. The fireplaces and chimneys were usually constructed of sticks caulked with dry mud. As families grew in size and prosperity, their houses became larger and somewhat more comfortable. Families added sleeping lofts or rooms constructed as a “lean-to” on the side or back of the cabin. The frontier houses were simply furnished with hand-made tables, benches and beds.
Most of the early settlement in the Carolina piedmont was on farms where families could produce the meat, vegetables and fruit to be nearly self-sufficient. The first few years were very difficult for the pioneer families of Rowan County. Their diets, augmented by the game they could hunt, were limited to the corn and hogs they could produce and preserve. Like other frontier settlers, they dried and ground the corn they prepared as cakes, bread, mush or corn pone. They preserved pork by dry salting and smoking and served the salt pork boiled or fried while using pork fat to fry the multiple and repetitive forms of corn. For Charles Woodmason, the Carolina diet was no better than any other aspect of frontier life. He reported,
All the Cookery of the People being exceedingly filthy and most execreble…fat rusty Bacon, fair water with Indian Corn Bread.57
As pioneers became more settled, they would plant gardens that would contribute turnips, potatoes, squash and other vegetables to their diet.58 From 1755 to 1765, Rowan County farmers experienced the loss of crops and livestock to droughts, unusually
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harsh winters and hot summers. The crop failures, for many Rowan County farmers, meant that there was little or no surplus production for sale or export. With nothing to sell, the subsistence farmers of Rowan County were unable to accumulate wealth or obtain cash to pay their taxes.59
In contrast to the Chesapeake Bay settlements where the export trade was accessible for anyone with goods to sell or the means to buy imports, the Carolina settlements were isolated 200 miles from the nearest port. The economic isolation entailed diversification of agricultural production and greater self-sufficiency. Where British and New England merchants were buying agricultural products and selling manufactured goods along the Atlantic coast, rural stores and taverns scattered throughout the southern backcountry were the primary site of economic transactions among the Carolina settlers. These merchants bought wheat, corn and other grains from local farmers when available as well as livestock, fruits and vegetables. The stores and taverns had a distribution function trading the surplus commodities of one farmer for different commodities from another. They also had a manufacturing function milling grains or distilling liquor for local consumption. The stores and taverns also acted as banks offering credit to customers, accepting deposits in the form of prepayments or surplus accounts and exchanging currency. Since there was a chronic shortage of money on the frontier, most transactions involved some form of barter.
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Alexander Lowrance established a tavern and store on Beaverdam Creek ten miles west of Salisbury in 1755. After his death in 1762, his son John Lowrance operated the business until 1796. The Beaverdam Creek store and tavern bought and sold locally grown wheat, corn, rye and barley as well as fruits, vegetables, cattle, sheep and pigs. The Lowrance’s milled wheat flour and corn meal and produced beer, peach brandy, whiskey, butter, vinegar and linseed oil for local sale. The Lowrances bought deerskins from local hunters which they shipped, along with local agricultural products, more than 200 miles by wagon road to Charles Town on the South Carolina coast. In three or four weeks, the wagons would return with manufactured goods including cloth, glass, pewter and tinware. The Lowrances also purchased manufactured goods from itinerant peddlers or agents of port city merchants. These eighteenth century salesmen travelled the primitive roads and trails of the Carolina backcountry with pack animals or wagons exchanging manufactured goods for local products. They supplied the frontier merchants with sugar, salt, coffee, rum, buttons, paper, nails, flints, shot, gunpowder and other necessities the settlers could not provide for themselves.60
The Upper Haw River area of Rowan County was remote from the county seat at Salisbury. For families living near what is now the line between Guilford and Rockingham Counties, the first center of commerce may have been the mill erected in 1758 or 1759 at the confluence of Mill Creek and the Haw River. The mill, later called Patrick’s Mill was located in what is now Rockingham County approximately two miles
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from the Simpson family property on Mears Fork and is likely to have been the mill the Simpson family patronized for nearly forty years.61
In some areas, frontier stores and taverns would locate near each other forming towns and trading centers. Salisbury, the county seat of Rowan County, had but seven or eight buildings in 1755 two years after the county was formed. By 1762, the town had grown to 35 buildings and an estimated population of 150. Salisbury could boast of sixteen licensed inns and a variety of professions, crafts and businesses including a:
candlemaker, a doctor, two lawyers, a potter, three hatters, an Indian trader, a weaver, a tailor, a tanner, a butcher, two merchants and a wagonmaker.62
Despite this growth and apparent prosperity, the town of Salisbury had no church, school, library or newspaper in 1762. The first church was built by Lutherans in 1767 and the first school at a later date. The first newspaper in Salisbury was not published until 1799.63
Educational opportunity was limited in colonial North Carolina and nearly non- existent in the backcountry. Charles Woodmason, writing in 1768, found that,
Very few can read–fewer write…They are very poor–owing to their extreme Indolence…Few or no Books are to be found in all this vast country…for these People despise Knowledge…64
There were few schools of any kind in North Carolina and little tradition of seeking higher education outside the province. The first schools in Rowan County were established sometime after 1760 when self-styled schoolmasters accepted students for a fee.65 Some of these schoolmasters were only slightly better educated than their
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students but others were well-educated Presbyterian ministers augmenting the modest salary of the frontier preacher. The Rev. David Caldwell (1725-1824), established the first school in that part of Rowan County that became Guilford County. He began preaching in North Carolina about 1764, after graduating from Princeton, and organized his academy in 1767 at his farm about three miles from present-day Greensboro. Caldwell’s school enrolled as many as fifty students from throughout North Carolina and operated more than thirty years, interrupted only by the Revolutionary War. Five graduates of Caldwell’s academy became state governors.66
Apart from the educated clergy sent out by the Presbyterian Church, the general level of education in North Carolina, even among the well-established families, was relatively limited. No student from North Carolina attended the College of William and Mary in Virginia until 1771. While the neighboring colonies of Maryland, South Carolina and Virginia sent a total of 58 students to Oxford or Cambridge between 1720 and 1776, North Carolina sent none. The other three colonies sent a total of 124 students for law training at the Inns of Court while North Carolina sent but eight.67
Religious life on the Carolina frontier was vigorous and contentious. In contrast to older colonies where an established church was dominant, North Carolina was settled by pioneers of various denominations. Although the Church of England was the established church in North Carolina until 1776, it was weak. There were only six Church of England clergy in North Carolina in 1765.68 In the frontier areas, the settlers
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brought with them the religions they had practiced in the tolerant colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland. The backcountry settlers were primarily Protestant dissenters and included Baptists, Methodists, Quakers and Presbyterians as well as the Reformed Church of the Moravians. As missionaries were quick to point out, many of the settlers had no religious affiliation at all.
Charles Woodmason, dispatched to Carolina to gather souls to the Church of England, criticized the character, behavior and origins of the backcountry residents he encountered in 1765,
The Manners of the North Carolinians in General, are Vile and Corrupt-The whole Country is a Stage of Debauchery, Dissoluteness and Corruption…The People are compos’d of the Out Casts of all the other Colonies who take Refuge there.6
A year later, Woodmason observed little improvement in his prospective flock,
The People around, of abandon’d Morals, and profligate Principles-Rude Ignorant-Void of Manners, Education or Good Breeding-No genteel or Polite Person among them…The people are of all Sects and Denominations-A mix’d Medley from all Countries and the Off Scouring of America.70
Woodmason was equally critical of his fellow preachers. The Baptist and Methodists he found “low and ignorant persons”, the circuit-riders, “a Sett of Rambling Fellows…Bigots, Pedantic, illiterate, imprudent Hypocrites…” and Presbyterians possessed of a “persecuting Spirit”.71
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The Revolt of the Regulators
The independent and self-sufficient frontier farmers of the North Carolina piedmont were people who had left other places where they had found opportunity and freedom constrained. By the 1760s, they began to experience problems with the remote governing authorities in eastern North Carolina. In 1766, the residents of Orange County, immediately east of Rowan County, began organizing protests against unfair taxation and corruption among local officials appointed by the Royal Governor. Two years later, the protesters announced,
…we are determined to have the officers of this country come under a better and honester regulation.72
The protesters, now called Regulators, formed an “association for regulating public grievances and abuses of power.”73 At the same time the Regulators in Orange County were formalizing their protest, residents of adjacent Rowan County, including particularly that area that would become Guilford County in 1770, were also refusing to pay taxes. The Rowan County sheriff reported that 2042 of 3000 taxables refused to pay their taxes for 1766. By 1770, there was no sheriff in Rowan County.74
In April 1768, the protest escalated when 70 Regulators rode into Hillsboro and reclaimed a horse and saddle that had been confiscated by the local tax collector. In June 1768, the Governor of North Carolina responded to the protest by ordering the Regulators to cease meetings, stop publishing their “advertisements” and respect local authorities. When several protesters were brought to trial the following September, 3700
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Regulators appeared at the Court House in support. Herman Husband (1724-1795), one of the leaders of the protest and a gifted propagandist, displayed the heated rhetoric of the period describing government officials as
…these cursed hungry Caterpillars that will eat out the very Bowels of our Common-wealth if they are not pulled down from their Nests in a very short time.75
The Regulators, despite the inflated imagery, had relatively modest goals. Like many of the early revolutionary patriots, they were slow to recognize that the abuses they experienced were inherent in the colonial system. They believed, or at least said they believed, that their problems could be resolved if the governor understood how unfairly they had been treated and agreed to replace the corrupt local officials he had appointed. The Regulators did not want to depose the colonial government or remove the British. They merely wanted to be treated fairly and with respect.
As part of their growing protest, Regulators disrupted courts, threatened local officials and refused to pay taxes. In March 1771, Governor William Tryon responded with massive force. He mobilized the North Carolina militia and marched to Orange County to restore order. On May 16, the governor and 1452 militiamen encountered 2000 Regulators at Great Alamance River, 16 miles southeast of Greensboro. The Regulators, many of them unarmed and none organized into military units, hoped to discuss their grievances with the governor. When the Regulators ignored an order to disperse, the militia opened fire. Two hours of battle left nine dead on each side and many wounded before the Regulators abandoned the battleground.
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Gov. Tryon, accompanied by the militia and displaying prisoners in chains, swept through Guilford and neighboring counties. He demanded that local residents provision his troops and offered clemency to those Regulators who agreed to disarm and swear an oath of allegiance to the king. Within six weeks, he and his troops had exacted the oath of loyalty and obedience from 6400 former Regulators and backcountry residents assumed to have been active in the Regulation. Although most of the leaders of the Regulation eluded the pursuing troops, the Governor arrested fourteen Regulators who were brought to trial in June. Two were acquitted and six were hanged.76
With the Regulators suppressed, the President of the Governor’s Council reported optimistically to Lord Hillsborough in England that,
“those detestable Rebels…have submitted to government…at this time the province remains in perfect tranquility and I am under no manner of apprehension of any future attempts to disturb the quiet of the country.”77
Within four years, the “quiet of the country” would be disturbed by events that would depose the colonial government and expel the British.
The Revolution in North Carolina
The bloody defeat at the Battle of Alamance and subsequent repression destroyed the Regulator movement. Leaders of the movement fled and followers were bound by the oath of loyalty. Having once suffered the consequences of rebellion against British authority, residents of the North Carolina backcountry were cautious in their
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response to the surge of liberty sweeping the colonies. Because they were remote from the coast and trade with Great Britain, the backcountry residents were relatively unconcerned about the series of taxes imposed by the British since the end of the French and Indian War in 1763 but they were aware of the growing movement for independence. In August 1774, a meeting of Rowan County residents adopted revolutionary resolutions. The Rowan County Resolves were taken from resolutions adopted in Prince George County, Virginia the previous June. The resolves opposed taxation without representation and urged a boycott of imports from Great Britain. Rowan County also sent delegates to a provincial convention that elected North Carolina representatives to the First Continental Congress.78
News of the April 1775 battle at Lexington, Massachusetts reached the North Carolina piedmont in letters and newspapers the following month. Twenty or more residents of Mecklenburg County convened at the Court House in Charlotte as a Committee of Safety. They discussed the fast-moving events and prepared a list of resolutions, later known as the Mecklenburg Resolves, declaring their independence from Great Britain, its laws and officials.79 At the same time, the royal governor was organizing Loyalist support in eastern North Carolina before withdrawing to the safety of a British warship. A North Carolina Provincial Congress convened in August to form a government and to defend against counter-insurgencies from local Tories and from backcountry Indians allied with the British.
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Although the backcountry residents were cautious about the revolt against the British, the majority ultimately aligned themselves with proponents of liberty and independence from Great Britain. For those who had sworn allegiance to the king after the Battle of Alamance, joining the Whigs required that they violate a sacred oath. David Caldwell, the Presbyterian minister and schoolmaster in Guilford County, reassured his neighbors, torn between conflicting obligations. Dr. Caldwell explained that the oath of 1771 was no longer binding because the crown had severed its reciprocal responsibility to protect its loyal subjects. Released from the oath of allegiance, many former Regulators joined the Revolution.80 Contrary to the analysis of many historians, former Regulators did not become Tories in large numbers. While some Regulators may have remained neutral during the Revolution, far more became Whigs than remained Loyalists.81
North Carolina sent Whig militia to suppress Loyalists in South Carolina in December 1775. The following month, Guilford County Whigs under Captain William Dent ambushed and dispersed local Tories organized by four brothers named Field.
North Carolina Loyalists attempted to recruit a militia offering 200 acres of land and rent relief to all who volunteered. The inducements attracted 1600 volunteers, many of them unarmed, but only 130 from the Regulator counties where loyalty to the Crown had been assumed to be strong. In response, minutemen and Whig militia from four North Carolina counties around New Bern mobilized to attack the Tories. In late February, approximately 800 Whigs under Colonel Richard Caswell trapped 1600 Tories at Moore’s
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Creek Bridge. The Patriots, with the advantage of surprise and discipline, killed or captured 850 Tories as well as large supplies of money, weapons and ammunition. The victory at Moore’s Creek Bridge neutralized the Tory threat in eastern North Carolina for the first several years of the Revolutionary War.82
In July 1776, while the Continental Congress was debating independence in Philadelphia, the East Tennessee pioneers at Watauga were petitioning North Carolina “to share in the glorious cause of liberty.” On July 5, 1776, 111 settlers signed the Watauga petition including one named Thomas Simpson.83 Within days and with the urging of British agents, a Cherokee army of 700 warriors launched coordinated attacks on frontier settlements. Armed by British agents, Dragging Canoe attacked the Holston settlements, The Raven attacked Carter’s Valley and Old Abram attacked on the Watauga and Nollichucky Rivers. The settlers withdrew into forts and survived the attack losing livestock, crops and outbuildings in the raids but gaining the justification for a punitive invasion of the Cherokee settlements in the western part of the Carolinas and Tennessee.84
In an unusual display of unity, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and South Carolina mobilized 5600 troops for a retaliatory expedition against the 40 towns in which the Cherokee lived. In a coordinated campaign, South Carolina troops were to attack the Lower Towns, North Carolina the Upper Towns in North Carolina and Valley Towns in eastern Tennessee and Virginia the Overhill settlements on the Little Tennessee River.
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Brig. Gen. Griffith Rutherford, commander of the North Carolina militia for the Salisbury District, assembled the Guilford County militia at Martinsville July 23, 1776. Rutherford, whose strategic vision extended beyond mere retaliation, confidently predicted to his superiors the “Final Destruction of the Cherroce (sic) Nation.”85 The Guilford regiment was part of 2600 troops that North Carolina dispatched against the Cherokee towns. Rutherford sent 300 troops to reinforce the army from Virginia and assigned 400 troops to forts defending Rowan and adjacent frontier counties. On September 1, Rutherford marched west with 1700 troops. Encountering only token opposition, he sent 1000 troops to destroy the undefended Valley Towns that Grant and a North Carolina army had burned fifteen years earlier.
General Rutherford then took 900 troops over the mountains to attack the Valley settlements. Unfamiliar with the mountains, the North Carolina militia took a little-used route over the Blue Ridge at Swannanoa Gap and avoided an ambush by 500 Cherokee waiting on the customary route at Wayan Gap. The North Carolina troops penetrated the Indian territory of the Tennessee River Valley where they burned corn crops in the field, destroyed 36 undefended Cherokee towns, drove off cattle and confiscated supplies valued at more than 2500 pounds. Rutherford’s troops killed or captured 21 Indians while suffering but three casualties. The North Carolina troops were joined in the Valley settlements by the battle-weary South Carolina militia under Col. Andrew Williamson.
The South Carolina troops, following the war plan, had destroyed the Lower Towns but had suffered heavy losses crossing the Blue Ridge where Williamson’s troops had to fight
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their way out of the ambush that Rutherford’s troops had avoided two days earlier. With the Cherokee towns devastated and the Indians in flight, Rutherford and Williamson concluded that their mission had been accomplished. On September 26, the two armies began the long march to their homes. In October, the Virginia troops reached the remote Overhill settlements on the Little Tennessee River where they destroyed five Cherokee towns and withdrew.86
The North Carolina troops returned to their homes and disbanded in October 1776. Several prominent frontier leaders including Evan Shelby and John Sevier were among the 272 troops who served under General Rutherford.
Thomas Simpson was also among the members of the North Carolina militia who served under General Rutherford in the Cherokee campaign of 1776.87 Since several of General Rutherford’s troops were signers of the Watauga petition, it is possible that the Thomas Simpson who participated in the 1776 expedition against the Cherokee was the same Thomas Simpson who signed the petition earlier that July.
The Cherokee campaign of 1776 pushed the Indians over the Blue Ridge but was only temporarily effective in discouraging Indian raids on frontier settlements. By the Spring of the following year, scattered Indian raids had resulted in the deaths of twelve frontier settlers and the remobilization of North Carolina militia. In May 1777, the North Carolina General Assembly adopted measures that South Carolina had found effective. The General Assembly offered the militia a bounty of ten pounds for every Indian scalp
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and fifteen pounds for every Indian prisoner. For volunteers who were not members of the militia, the bounties were forty pounds for scalps and fifty pounds for prisoners.
Recognizing their increasing vulnerability, the Cherokee agreed to peace terms with South Carolina in May 1777 and Virginia and North Carolina the following July. The treaties ended all hostilities and ceded all Cherokee land east of the Blue Ridge to the states. The peace treaties acknowledged the territorial rights of the Overhill Cherokee in Tennessee and resulted in several years of relative tranquility between North Carolina and the Cherokee population it had forcibly expelled from its boundaries. Although the Cherokee remained allied with the British, the treaties neutralized the Cherokee threat during the Revolutionary War.88
The Thomas Simpson Family in Guilford County
Thomas Simpson (1739-1833), the oldest child of Richard and Elizabeth Simpson, was a teenager when his family moved from Maryland to North Carolina. He appears to have lived with his father on Mears Fork for several years before moving to his own farm on adjacent property. He first appeared on the Rowan County tax list in 1768.89 At about the same time, Thomas Simpson married a woman whose name is unknown. Together they had four sons and three daughters between about 1765 and 1780.90
In the 1770s, Thomas Simpson may have been at a point of transition in his life. His first wife, the mother of his seven children, had died. He had lived and farmed near
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his father all his adult life but he may have considered moving out on his own. He may have left his family at Mears Fork, where his children would have been old enough to support themselves by working on their grandfather’s farm, and explored opportunities on the new frontier opening on the North Carolina-Tennessee-Virginia border 150 miles to the West. While this is possible, it is somewhat out of character for Thomas Simpson. He made several moves during his long life but, in every other case, he appears to have moved with his family. He does not appear to have had other military service and it is uncertain whether he could sign his name. While he may have had an opportunity to explore frontier opportunities in 1776, it is most likely that the Thomas Simpson of Mears Fork was not the same man who signed the Watauga petition and served briefly as an elected member of the Washington District Court in what later became Tennessee. While Thomas Simpson of Haw River could have been at Watauga in July 1776, it would have been inconsistent with his life before or after the Revolution.
Whether or not Thomas Simpson, then in his late 30s, visited Watauga in 1776, he participated in the Cherokee campaign of 1776 and returned to Guilford County. His grandson reported, more than a century later, that Thomas Simpson “served seven years and never received a scratch” in the Revolutionary War.91 Contrary to that legend,
there is no evidence of subsequent service by Thomas Simpson in the Revolutionary War that swirled around his Guilford County home.92 In February 1779, he purchased 50 acres from William Williams for 50 pounds. The land Thomas Simpson bought was on the east side of his father’s Mears Fork property. Triangular in shape, the land was
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bounded on the west by Line Branch and on the east by property William Williams had owned since 1758.93 According to a contemporary description, the land was,
…on Mairs Fork waters of Haw R., begin at the mouth of Line Br. joining Richard Simpson’s line, down the creek to a spanish oak, by a line of marked trees agreed upon between William Williams & Richard Simpson to the S line on William Williams cornering on a red oak…94
The Guilford County land Thomas Simpson purchased in 1779 was, like his father’s property, part of the 640 acres Lord Granville granted George Jurdan, Jr. on Mears Fork and the Haw River. The Thomas Simpson land was bisected by Iron Works Road. In 1780, North Carolina granted 558 acres to William Dixon. The Dixon land was on the south boundary of the Richard Simpson and Thomas Simpson land. In August 1782, Thomas Simpson purchased 50 acres from William Dixon. The 50 acres was on the north edge of Dixon’s land and extended across much of the southern boundary of the land Thomas Simpson and his father owned.95
The Southern Campaign of 1781
North Carolina, like the other Southern colonies, was spared much of the military price of the early Revolutionary War. Apart from the unsuccessful invasion of Charleston, South Carolina in June 1776, British military and political strategy was to crush the revolution where it was strongest in New England and the Middle Colonies. After failing to hold Boston in March 1776, the British concentrated forces on an invasion of the Middle Colonies from New York City across New Jersey into Pennsylvania in 1776 and an invasion down the Hudson River Valley from Canada in
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1777. The British captured the Continental capital of Philadelphia in September 1777 but the invasion from Canada was repelled at Saratoga the following month. When the military strategy to divide the colonies failed, the British withdrew from Philadelphia across New Jersey in 1778 but continued to occupy New York City.
Frustrated in New England and the Middle Colonies, British strategy turned south where Tory sentiment was assumed to be strongest. The British captured Savannah in December 1778 and, after a two-month siege, Charleston in May 1780. In June, Gen.
Griffith Rutherford mobilized the North Carolina militia to prevent the British from moving north. In a confused and bloody battle pitting neighbor against neighbor and cousin against cousin, 400 disciplined Whig militia defeated 1300 untrained and poorly armed Tory troops June 20, 1780 at Ramsour’s Mill one-half mile north of Lincolnton.96 Under the command of Major General Charles, Earl of Cornwallis (1738-1805), the British defeated a reinforced Continental Army at Camden, South Carolina in August 1780 and appeared poised for a triumphal march through the defenseless Carolinas into Virginia. Backcountry militia from the frontier settlements at Watauga destroyed a Tory army at Kings Mountain in October but the British continued to dominate Georgia and South Carolina.97
In December 1780, Washington appointed Gen. Nathanael Greene commanding officer of the remnants of the Continental Army in the South. Violating every military principle, Greene divided his meager forces enabling Daniel Morgan to defeat British
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troops under the command of the impetuous Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton at the Cowpens, January 17, 1781. With Greene and Morgan racing north in an effort to reunite the Southern Army, Cornwallis destroyed his wagons and supplies in a desperate attempt to improve his mobility. Greene successfully joined forces with Morgan and moved north through the rain and mud of the North Carolina winter. By February 9, when Greene’s little army arrived at the Guilford Court House, desertions and expiring enlistments made it risky for Greene to turn his weary and half-starved troops on his British pursuers. Greene and his depleted army crossed the Dan River into Virginia February 14 where they obtained supplies and reinforcements.
When Cornwallis tired of the chase and appeared to be moving into winter headquarters at Hillsboro in Orange County, North Carolina, Greene recrossed the Dan River and camped at the Speedwell Ironworks on Troublesome Creek in that part of Guilford County that would later become Rockingham County. Within a few days, Greene had crossed the Haw River and returned to Guilford Court House northwest of present-day Greensboro. Cornwallis, seeking an opportunity to engage the elusive Greene in the decisive battle that would destroy the Southern Army, advanced on the Court House from the South. Greene selecting the time and place of battle, deployed the undependable local militia in the front line of battle, the experienced Virginia militia in the second line and his few remaining Continentals, regiments from Maryland and Virginia, in a third line at the rear. He kept no troops in reserve.
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Knowing he was outnumbered, Cornwallis moved forward.with veteran cavalry and light infantry regiments into the face of Greene’s troops. Greene’s front line held briefly but the second and third lines vigorously resisted the disciplined bayonet charges and artillery fire of the British, inflicting heavy casualties before Greene ordered a retreat. At the end of the battle, the British held the ground but had suffered extensive casualties. Greene’s troops withdrew to the Ironworks eighteen miles away on Troublesome Creek while Cornwallis retired to winter quarters at Wilmington to resupply his exhausted and depleted troops.98 In a letter, Greene explained, “the enemy got the ground the other Day, but we got the victory.”99
During that cold and wet winter of 1781, Greene and Cornwallis moved their armies back and forth across the muddy roads, swollen rivers and ravaged farms of Guilford and surrounding counties, requisitioning food, shelter and horses. In order to travel swiftly, each army carried very limited supplies. Cornwallis had destroyed his supply trains in January while Greene’s troops, in their tattered clothing and worn shoes, depended on the food they could obtain from local farmers. Because it was winter, the food collected by foraging parties for either army was from the supply of grains and dried meats farm families had saved from the harvest of the previous fall.
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An observer described the behavior of the British troops camped on the Guilford County property of Rev. David Caldwell during the days leading up to the battle at the court house,
…every panel of fence on the premises was burned; every particle of provisions consumed or carried away; every living thing was destroyed except one old goose; and nearly every square rod of ground was penetrated with their iron ramrods, in search of hidden treasure.100
In his dispatch from the battlefield at Guilford Court House, Cornwallis confidently but inaccurately claimed “a signal victory” but explained that “the total want of provisions in an exhausted country, made it …impossible for me to follow the blow the next day.” As Cornwallis reported,
This part of the country is so totally destitute of subsistence, that forage is not nearer than nine miles, and the soldiers have been two days without bread.101
For residents of the North Carolina piedmont, the Southern campaign of 1781 was exhausting. Whether or not they had any preference between the two armies, they were compelled to provide food, shelter and whatever livestock they had for the troops of each army. The Continental Army and the North Carolina militia, when requisitioning or confiscating supplies or livestock, were required to obtain an independent appraisal of the value of the property and to “pay” residents with interest-bearing certificates that residents considered worthless.102 In the Haw River area of Guilford County, the foraging parties of both Greene and Cornwallis ranged widely in search of food during February and March 1781. Both armies were demoralized by hunger, frustrated by defeat and worn down by the winter march across the North Carolina piedmont. Each
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army was maneuvering to achieve the decisive victory that would attract the public support and the militia volunteers necessary to bring an end to the war.
Guilfor County After the Revolution
During the period he was acquiring land in Guilford County, Thomas Simpson married Mary Knight (c.1751-1836) and began a second family. Mary Knight was from a family that was closely associated with the Simpsons of Haw River. She was probably the daughter of David Knight of Rockingham and Grayson Counties, Virginia who lived in Orange County, North Carolina from 1755 until his death between 1775 and 1781. Her brother Thomas (c. 1740-1824) appears to have married Elizabeth Simpson, Thomas’ younger sister, in 1768 and her sister Sarah Elizabeth married Thomas’ younger brother Nathaniel in 1785.103 Thomas Knight served in the Revolutionary War from Guilford County and later settled on Jacobs Creek in Rockingham County. He sold his Rockingham County land to his son Thomas Knight, Jr. in May 1805 and moved to Wilson County, Tennessee about 1808. He died in Wilson County in 1824.104
Thomas and Mary Knight Simpson had four children between 1783 and 1793. The oldest child, James, (n.d.-1852) married Elizabeth Kimsey (1790-1865).105 Two daughters followed. Jane married Lazarus Matthews and Farraba married William Bragg (or Blagg). The youngest child, William (1793-1858), was born in Rockingham County June 27, 1793 and married Mary Kimsey (1797-1858), a younger sister of Elizabeth, in
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1813 in Tennessee. William Simpson would later become a frontier preacher in Tennessee, Missouri and Oregon.106 Although William Simpson would preach as a Baptist, his father was active as a Methodist in North Carolina and for the rest of his life. Two grandsons, writing a century later about the grandfather they had known as children, each remembered that he had been a devout Methodist.107
Raised in Maryland where the Church of England was the established church, Thomas Simpson became a Methodist sometime after the Revolution when the Methodist Episcopal Church began sending circuit-riding preachers to the mid South. By 1791, he was selling part of his Guilford County property to build a Methodist Church. He sold one and one-half acres on the south edge of the land he had acquired from William Dickson nine years earlier. The buyer was Francis Asbury (1745-1816), a tireless frontier evangelist and Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The most prominent Methodist clergyman of his time, Bishop Asbury traveled 270,000 miles preaching the gospel to frontier communities in Kentucky, Tennessee and the Carolinas between 1771, when he was selected by John Wesley to preach in North America, and 1816. At a time when roads were little better than trails in the wilderness, Asbury used horses, wagons and carriages to reach the homes, taverns, barns, court houses and open fields where pioneers gathered to hear the gospel. Over 45 years, he delivered 16,425 sermons while constantly on the move.
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In his Journal, Bishop Asbury recorded 72 visits to North Carolina including several to Guilford County and Rockingham County. Like Charles Woodmason, the Anglican evangelist in the Carolinas a generation earlier, Asbury was critical of the roads, housing and people he encountered. In July 1780, he passed through the area complaining about bad roads and inattentive congregations,
…over rocks, hills, creeks and pathless woods and low land…for there was no proper road…the people’s minds were in confusion; poor souls…they seem hardened and no preaching affects them, at least not mine; they are exceedingly ignorant withal.108
The following day, Asbury observed, “I can see little else but cabins in these parts built with poles.” After a sermon to a congregation of sixty, he expressed his frustration and relief, “I was glad to get away, for some were drunk, and had their guns in meeting.11109 The next day, encountering another piedmont congregation, Bishop Asbury recorded in his Journal,
…the people are poor, and cruel one to another; some families are ready to starve for want of bread, while others have corn and rye distilled into poisonous whiskey.110
During a 1786 visit to Newman’s Chapel in Rockingham County, Asbury found poverty and deprivation, “Provisions here are scarce: some of our friends…are suffering.”111 A few days later, vowing never again to return to nearby Orange County, he complained,
0, what a country this is! We can but just get food for our horses. I am grieved, indeed, for the sufferings, the sins, and the follies of the people.112
In 1787, after preaching at Newman’s Chapel, Asbury observed tersely, “…the people were rather wild.”113 Newman’s Chapel, where Asbury preached in March 1786 and
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April 1787, was on Iron Works Road near the boundary between Rockingham and Orange County approximately ten miles from the Simpson farm on Mears Fork.
The Methodist Church began sending circuit-riding preachers into the North Carolina backcountry before the Revolutionary War. Residents of the Haw River area received regular visits after the Yadkin circuit was formed in 1780. Within three years, a separate circuit was created to serve Guilford County and what would soon become Rockingham County. Bishop Asbury first visited the Yadkin circuit in 1783 and visited the Haw River area annually from 1786 to 1788 and from 1793 to 1795 as well as visiting the area again in 1799.114
Bishop Asbury completed his twenty-first visit to North Carolina in January and February 1791.115 He returned that March traveling with Bishop Thomas Coke and preached again at Newman’s Chapel and at Arnett’s in Rockingham County where he had conducted services in 1785 and 1786.116 By 1791, Thomas Simpson and his family are likely to have had numerous opportunities to hear the gospel from circuit-riding Methodists. During one of these visits, Thomas Simpson and Bishop Asbury appear to have concluded that there was need for a Methodist chapel in the northern part of Guilford County. In March 1791, Bishop Asbury paid Thomas Simpson five shillings for the one and one half acres described as:
…near the dwelling house of said Thomas Simpson…for the purpose of erecting thereon a church chapel meeting house for the worship of Almighty God.117
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The chapel, called Simpson’s Methodist Church, was located on Iron Works Road in northern Guilford County within a mile of the Haw River and Rockingham County line.118 In his Journal, Bishop Asbury does not mention his 1791 transaction with Thomas Simpson nor ever preaching at Simpson’s Chapel.
Thomas Simpson and his family continued to live in Guilford County until 1792. At the time of the first national census in 1790, Thomas Simpson and his wife were part of a twelve-person household including two male children over the age of sixteen, two boys under sixteen and seven women. They lived in the same area as the elderly Richard Simpson, Senior, and his wife and Richard Simpson, Junior, and his household of
eight.119 In 1790, Thomas Simpson also served on a Guilford County jury.120 Within two years, Thomas Simpson and his family decided to leave the Mears Fork area and move a few miles north into Rockingham County. His three oldest sons, Richard, Nathaniel and Peter Ryan, perhaps with financial assistance from their father, had each acquired land in Rockingham County. The young Simpsons all bought land in an area where Thomas Knight, a close family associate and relative by marriage, had lived since the Revolutionary War. In January and February 1792, Thomas Simpson sold his 98 1/2 acres in Guilford County to his neighbor William Williams and moved to Rockingham County.121
The Mears Fork land that Thomas Simpson sold his neighbor William Williams in 1792 was resold in 1795 to Stephen Gough and his teenage son Daniel Gough. In 1797,
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Daniel Gough followed the Thomas Simpson family to Jacobs Creek in Rockingham County where he bought 50 acres from Thomas Simpson’s son Richard and married Thomas Simpson’s daughter Sarah.122 When Thomas Simpson’s brother Richard died in 1803, his will left “50 ac. near where my bro Thomas did live” to his son William.123 Several descendants of Richard Simpson continued to live in Guilford County after Thomas Simpson moved across the county line into Rockingham County. Nathaniel Simpson, most-likely the son of Thomas Simpson, died in Guilford County in 1830 leaving his wife Sarah and sons named William and Thomas.124
George Washington in North Carolina
Victory in the Revolutionary War eliminated British domination of the colonies but did not settle all the issues related to governance and taxation in the new United States. The initial confederation of states, adopted by the Continental Congress in 1777, proved inadequate. The Confederation recognized the independence of the states but failed to establish a central authority with power to tax and resolve disputes among the states. The Constitution adopted in 1789 created a strengthened central government with George Washington as chief executive. The new republic, as it would for 200 years, experienced tensions between the authority of the federal government and the sovereignty of the individual states. In the Spring of 1791, General Washington, half way through his first term as president, decided to visit the southern states to observe
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conditions, ascertain attitudes and strengthen his bond with the remote and sometimes fractious citizens of the Carolinas and Georgia.
Traveling in a distinctive white coach drawn by four horses, Washington left his Mount Vernon home April 10 or 11 accompanied by a single military aide and five servants in red and white livery. In nine weeks, Washington and his elegant little party traveled 1887 miles across Virginia and along the Carolina lowlands to Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia before returning through the Carolina piedmont.125On May 30 he visited the Rowan County seat at Salisbury where he had tea with the ladies of the town and attended a formal dinner and ball. The following day, he traveled 31 miles to the Moravian Community at Salem where he was entertained with sacred music.126 On June 2, President Washington traveled from Salem to Guilford where he observed,
…there was a considerable gathering of people who had received notice of my intention to be there today and came to satisfy their curiosity.127
Washington and his entourage spent the nights of June 2 and 3 at the Guilford County home of Alexander Martin, a revolutionary war officer and North Carolina governor. Accompanied by Governor Martin, Washington visited the battlefield at Guilford Court House where ten years earlier the Continental Army lost a battle but severely weakened the British army under Lord Cornwallis.12.8
At dawn June 3, Washington and his party left the Governor’s home and traveled north, through intermittent rain, across Guilford County and the Haw River into
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Rockingham County. They followed Iron Works Road seventeen miles before stopping for breakfast with Benjamin Jones and his family at the iron works on Troublesome Creek. After eating, Washington continued north across Rockingham County stopping for the night about two miles from the Dan River. In his diary for June 3, he remarked ambiguously, “the Lands over which I passed this day were of various qualities…”129
The following day, his formal tour completed, Washington crossed the river into Virginia. On June 12, he reached his home at Mount Vernon concluding his four-state southern tour. He expressed optimism about progress and development in the South but was unimpressed by conditions in rural areas. He wrote a former aide,
The country appears to be in mproving state_, and industry and frugality are becoming much more fashionable …Tranquility reigns among the people…130
While Washington was impressed with the prospects for economic improvement in the South, he observed that housing, particularly outside of towns, remained relatively primitive. He commented in his diary that he did not see a single elegant country house, and that rural houses,
…are altogether of Wood & Chiefly of logs–some indeed have brick chimneys but generally the chimneys are of Split sticks filled with dirt between them.131
George Washington’s route, early the morning of June 3, 1791 through Guilford County, from Martinsville to the smelter on Troublesome Creek, took him north on Ironworks Road along the east side of the Mears Fork area of the Haw River. He crossed property that Thomas Simpson acquired in 1779 and 1782 as well as the property of William Williams and the bridge across the Haw River erected in 1782 by John
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Work.132 This 1791 tour through Guilford County and across Simpson property is likely to have been the basis for the family legend that Thomas Simpson “knew General Washington well.”133
North Carolina After the Revolution
The North Carolina piedmont was wilderness in 1750 but was quickly transformed by the pioneers into a backcountry community of small farms and crossroads villages. The area was densely populated by the late eighteenth century but remained rural. Isolated by long distances and bad roads, the farmers of what had originally been Rowan County were independent and self-sufficient. They lived on property they owned and, in many cases, property they had cleared. Because they were remote from markets, these farmers produced for their own use and traded their surplus for local services and crafts products. These farmers rarely owned slaves or hired workers but relied on family labor to cultivate their crops and care for their livestock. Their wealth, however modest, was the product of their own effort and was relatively independent of market forces or credit.
To be self-sufficient, the farmers of the North Carolina piedmont during the last decades of the eighteenth century had to diversify their crops. They produced a variety of vegetables, grains, fruits and livestock for their families and for sale or barter. In addition to growing their own food, the middling farmers of North Carolina grew cotton
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and flax for home-spun clothing and kept geese for feather beds. In 1800, a typical farm in Iredell County, an area west of Rowan County and similar to Guilford and Rockingham Counties, had approximately 300 acres of which 60 acres were cleared and cultivated with the remainder in pasture and woods. Of the 966 farms in the county, 98 percent were owned by the farmers who lived on the property including 39 farms owned by women. The typical farm had a small house, barns, outbuildings and rail fences.
Houses were generally constructed of logs. They were built by their occupants using wooden pegs and hand-made nails. Houses often began as one-room cabins with dirt floors and crude chimneys but were expanded and improved as conditions allowed or needs dictated. The houses were small but often had a sleeping loft or a second story.
The more prosperous farmers were able to build fireplaces and chimneys of stone or brick rather than the sticks and mud observed by Washington during his 1791 tour. Of 1228 houses in Iredell County in 1800, one was built of brick and valued at $1800 but 97 were cabins with a value of $10 or less and 68 percent were valued at less than $100. The value of land ranged from 25 cents an acre to $2.50 an acre depending on quality. The average value of land in North Carolina in 1800 was $1.38 an acre including improvements.
Barns of the time were typically 40 feet to 60 feet long and 20 feet wide. Most farms also had stables and one or more outbuildings used as smokehouses, spring houses, stills, com cribs or for storage of other grains. The farms were located near springs.
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Grains and vegetables were planted in level areas near streams with orchards and fenced pasture nearby.134
The family farms of the North Carolina piedmont, because they were relatively small, relied on nearby merchants and craftspersons for specialized services. The 996 farms of Iredell County in 1800 were supported by 49 blacksmith shops, 34 grist mills, 13 sawmills, six stores, four tanneries and 25 assorted craftspersons including coopers, gunsmiths, hatters, potters, saddle-makers, and wagon makers. The farmers of the piedmont traded corn and other grains to owners of grist mills who used the abundant local water power to turn millstones and grind grain. In the same way, water-powered sawmills produced lumber for framing, flooring and furniture replacing the hand-hewn lumber of the frontier. Many farmers and merchants operated stills where surplus grains and fruits could be distilled into whiskey or brandy for local use or for shipment to distant markets.
The impulses that led to the North Carolina tax protests of the Regulation during the colonial period continued during the Revolution and the period following. In 1777, the North Carolina General Assembly adopted a property tax based on land value to raise money for government and military expenses. When severe wartime inflation reduced the value of Continental currency, the General Assembly increased tax rates in 1779 and 1781. Encountering persistent tax resistance, North Carolina was forced to borrow money to pay Revolutionary War expenses. In 1784, North Carolina abandoned
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the tax based on property value for a flat tax. The 1784 tax was based on the amount of property owned and on a poll tax similar to that used in Colonial times. The land tax equated a town lot, whatever its value, with 300 acres of farm land. Each of these was also equivalent to the poll tax charged on each free male over the age of 21 and each slave, whether male or female, between the ages of 12 and 60. Each county prepared a list of taxables each spring, calculated taxes due and sent the local sheriff to collect. The county also collected taxes for business licenses.135
The flat tax of 1784 was easier to administer than the tax based on land value but it was less fair. Small farmers who owned unproductive land that had not been cleared or planted paid the same amount as large landowners with productive land. The flat tax also benefitted plantation owners by taxing slaves as polls rather than property. The year after the flat tax of 1784 was enacted, the elderly Richard Simpson applied for and received an exemption to the poll tax from Guilford County. In 1791, as part of Alexander Hamilton’s plan to pay the national debt and promote commerce, the federal government imposed an excise tax on whisky production. Backcountry farmers in North Carolina, like their frontier counterparts in other states, used whisky as a barter item in lieu of cash. In North Carolina, farmers evaded the tax and defied the federal government until 1794 when President George Washington mobilized 15,000 militia from four states and crushed the Whisky Rebellion in western Pennsylvania.136 In 1815, North Carolina replaced the flat tax with a more equitable system based on land value. As one historian observed about the residents of North Carolina, “There seemed to have
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been a general expectation that freedom from England would mean freedom from taxes.”137
The rejection of civil authority implicit in the Revolution also extended to moral authority. To listen to the religious leaders of the Carolinas, frontier settlers were as resistant to the gospel as they were to taxation. The preachers, between complaints about conditions of living and travel, railed against the wild behavior of frontier residents. In his sermons, the Anglican Charles Woodmason excoriated any and all, particularly the adherents of other denominations, for a long list of sins including, in one 1768 sermon,
…failing to observe the sabbath…the Vice of Drunkeness…Fighting, Brawling, Gouging, Quarreling…Riots, Frolics, Races, Games, Cards, Dice, Dances…the horrid Vice of Swearing…Lasciviousness or Wantoness, Adultery or Fornication …138
In July 1770 sermons, Woodmason admonished his congregations about proper behavior in church,
Bring no Dogs with you–they are very troublesome…do not practise that unseemly rude, indecent Custom of Chewing or of spitting.139
The behavior of frontier residents does not appear to have improved after the Revolution. According to one observer,
Parties for dancing were considered by many as harmless…the use of spirituous liquors had become more free…horse-racing was tolerated as an innocent amusement…many considered freedom from moral obligation as part of civil liberty.140
Bishop Asbury, in his 72 visits to North Carolina, repeatedly expressed concern about widespread drunkeness and violence on the frontier and inappropriate behavior in
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church. Presbyterians in North Carolina responded to the deterioration of standards and behaviors by voting in 1789 to prohibit “dancing, reveling, horse-racing and card-playing” while also voting to require church attendance.141
With few exceptions, the preachers were better educated than the settlers and had higher standards of decorum but the persistence and similarity of the concerns expressed by preachers suggest that many settlers played as hard as they worked and brought their guns, dogs and frontier customs to church. For many of the settlers, the drinking, fighting and horse racing were the only interruptions in the hard work of subsistence farming.
The Thomas Simpson Family in Rockingham County
A few months after selling his Mears Fork property in Guilford County, Thomas Simpson purchased land approximately nine miles to the north on the upper reaches of Jacobs Creek in Rockingham County. Jacobs Creek flows north into Brush Creek and the Dan River draining a large area of Rockingham County north and west of State Route 65 and east of U.S. 220. The area is immediately north of the town of Bethany, North Carolina and approximately fifteen miles from the Virginia border.142 In June 1792, Thomas Simpson paid “25 pounds actual gold and silver” to Charles Bruce of Guilford County for 150 acres on Bear Branch of Jacobs Creek. The land lay high on a ridge on the north and south sides of the branch. Two streams entered the property on
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the east and joined to form Bear Branch in a steep valley in the southwest comer. The land was bounded on the south and west by the property of Samuel Short.143
In March 1796, Thomas Simpson’s oldest son Richard purchased 121 acres on the waters of Jacobs Creek from John Conner for 36 pounds. The Richard Simpson land was bounded on the south by William Conner, on the west by Samuel Short and Andrew Conner, on the north by Charles Bruce and on the east by former governor Alexander Martin. Thomas Simpson was a witness to the 1796 transaction.144 In August 1796, Peter Ryan Simpson, another son of Thomas Simpson, acquired 106 acres on Rocky Ford of Jacobs Creek. He paid 60 pounds currency to Adam and Allafa Trollinger for an oddly-shaped parcel north and east of Alexander Martin and south and west of Nathaniel Linder.145 The following year, Richard Simpson sold a 50 acre parcel to his brother-in law Daniel Gough for 15 pounds. The land was the southern part of land Richard Simpson had purchased eighteen months earlier.146
Rockingham County, the area immediately north of Guilford County to the southern boundary of Virginia, had been formed in 1785,
…by an east and west line, beginning at Haw River bridge, near James Martins…that other part of the said county of Guilford, which lies north of the said dividing line shall henceforth be erected into a new and distinct county by the name of Rockingham.147
The area was part of the Granville District and was first settled in the 1750s. The settlers established small farms along the Dan River and its tributaries and produced tobacco, grains and livestock.
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Alexander Sneed, a Rockingham County official, wrote in 1810 that lands along Jacobs Creek were among those that were second in value only to the bottom lands of the Dan River and were,
well adapted to the Culture of Tobacco, Indian corn, wheat, Rye, Oats, the Irish and sweet pittato (sic), and most of the Vegetable productions, necessary for the use of man…148
According to Sneed, local farmers shipped tobacco, cotton, beef and bees wax to Petersburg and Richmond, Virginia as well as wheat and flax seed to Fayetteville. Local farmers also produced apples and peaches which were made into cider and brandy for local consumption and sale. He reported that springs, particularly at the headwaters of streams, provided water of excellent quality throughout the county and that the larger streams offered promising sites for mills. Sneed was particularly enthusiastic about the abundant local hardwoods including oak, black walnut, cherry, hickory, chestnut, ash, beech, elm, birch, sycamore and maple as well as poplar for shingles and locust for fence posts. Sneed listed the many natural advantages of Rockingham County in 1810 but also observed that land on the ridges between streams had been exhausted, “eaten out” as he described it, by overgrazing.
Like neighboring Guilford County, Rockingham County was settled by hard working small farmers who cleared lands and planted crops for their own use and for sale. The Rockingham pioneers built log cabins with clapboard roofs, puncheon floors and shuttered windows. Like others on the frontier, they made much of their own furniture using axes, adzes and augers to fashion tables, stools and bed frames. With all
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cultivation and harvesting by hand, the Rockingham pioneers had a variety of hand tools for farming including hoes, mattocks, sickles and scythes as well as wooden rakes, forks and simple plows.149 As they became more prosperous, they expanded their houses adding cellars, second stories, outbuildings and fenced pasture. They expanded orchards and vegetable gardens. When they produced more than they used, they were able to trade surplus crops for salt, sugar, coffee and the manufactures of local craftspersons including the chairs, trunks, pewter goods and spinning wheel that the senior Richard Simpson had accumulated before his death in 1795.
As farmers expanded their production, grist mills were established to grind the grain and trade surplus products. In 1753, Aaron and Joseph Pinson built a mill at High Rock Ford on the Haw River. As the population increased, additional mills were established in Rockingham County in 1759, 1760 and 1764. In 1770, Joseph Buffington, a Pennsylvania Quaker, erected ironworks at Speedwell Furnace on Troublesome Creek. The ironworks closed in 1772 but were reopened and used as a camp before and after the Battle of Guilford Court House in 1781. At various times, Troublesome Creek was also the site of a grist mill, a saw mill and a store. The ironworks were in operation in 1791 when they were visited by George Washington. By 1800, more than twenty grist mills were operating in Rockingham County including one on lower Jacobs Creek owned by former governor Alexander Martin.150
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Although Rockingham and surrounding counties remained predominantly agricultural throughout the eighteenth century, there was also a substantial expansion of skilled crafts throughout the ten county area that had been Rowan County. In 1759, the area had 124 artisans in 23 crafts or trades. Over the 1753-1790 period, this number expanded to 617 artisans in 47 crafts or trades. These included 90 weavers, 83 blacksmiths, 68 spinsters, 55 shoemakers and 42 carpenters as well as two locksmiths, seven silversmiths, four clockmakers/watchmakers and one gravestone cutter. Of the artisans, more than one-third were engaged in clothing trades with approximately one seventh each in building trades, leather trades and metal trades. In 1759, Mary Boone, a spinner and sister-in-law of Daniel Boone, was the only woman artisan but over the 1753- 1790 period, many women were self-employed as spinners of yarn and weavers.151
As farmers became more established, they expanded their production for export. Farmers began planting cotton for processing in local gins and mills and for shipment to Petersburg and Richmond in Virginia. Rockingham farmers also expanded orchards and the production of brandy and cider. They built more than 100 stills and, by 1810, were producing 31,000 gallons of whiskey and brandy each year.152
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Francis Asbury, the circuit-riding Methodist evangelist, visited North Carolina for the 28th time in March and April 1794. After sermons and meetings in nearby counties, he visited Rockingham County. On April 11, he recorded in his Journal,
I went to Simpson’s house. I was greatly chilled and unable to preach. The house was very open…my fingers were nearly frozen.153
With Asbury too cold to conduct services, one of his associates gave the sermon. Asbury’s Journal provides no other information about the Simpsons he visited in April 1794. The location of these Simpsons and the previous relationship between Thomas Simpson and Bishop Asbury suggest that Asbury’s visit was to the Jacobs Creek home of Thomas Simpson and his family.
The importance of circuit-riding preachers declined in the North Carolina piedmont as growing population density supported the formation of small churches throughout the area. While these churches prospered, the religious life of the area was permanently altered in the early 1800s with the explosive success of the revival movement that came to be called the Second Great Awakening. Beginning with the first camp meeting in Kentucky in 1799 or 1800, word spread quickly to North Carolina. James McGready, a Presbyterian preacher and leader in the Kentucky revival movement, wrote friends in Guilford County where he had grown up and preached. By August 1801, ministers in Guilford and surrounding counties had organized the first camp meeting in North Carolina. Another revival was held later that fall at Hawfields and spread to other parts of North Carolina the following year. In March 1802, more than 8,000 people
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attended a five-day meeting in Central North Carolina where 23 preachers representing six denominations participated.154
The Rev. William H. Foote, writing a half century afterward, described a typical camp meeting,
People came in crowds to the meetings…on horseback, in wagons, and on foot, and remained on the grounds for days; and continued engaged day and night in religious services, with little intermission, listening to sermons and exhortations, and uniting in prayer and praise.155
The revival movement quickly spread throughout the North Carolina piedmont. While there was healthy dispute about the extent to which revival conversions were authentic and lasting, the camp meetings reinvigorated religious life in the North Carolina and surrounding states and contributed in fundamental ways to the national religious experience as residents of the mid-South moved to settle other areas of the nation.
In addition to controversy regarding camp meeting revivals, there was theological dispute within denominations. Baptist congregations found themselves torn between factions later called “Regular”, or “Missionary” and those called “Particular”, “Anti Missionary” or “Primitive”. According to an early statement of faith, the Primitive Baptists rejected,
…all Missionary Societies, Bible Societies, and Theological Seminaries, and practices heretofore resorted to for their support in begging money from the public. We hereafter discountenance them in those practices; and we will not invite them into our pulpits, believing these societies and institutions to be the inventions of men, and not warranted by the word of God.156
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The Primitive or Anti-Missionary churches rejected the term “Reverend” and referred to their preachers as “Elder”. Anti-Missionary sentiment was particularly strong among the Baptist Churches of Rockingham County where each of the three Baptist congregations formed between 1776 and 1786 voted to affiliate with the anti-missionary association.157 William Simpson, who grew up in his father’s Methodist household in Rockingham County, became a prominent Anti-Missionary Baptist preacher in Tennessee, Missouri and Oregon.
The neglect of education that characterized most of North Carolina during the colonial period continued for many years after independence. The constitution adopted by North Carolina in 1776 had authorized public schools but none was established. Rockingham County, which had been settled since the 1750s, had no permanent school until the 19th century. A small number of wealthy families in North Carolina engaged private tutors to instruct their children in “home schools” and others sent their children to subscription schools. The subscription schools were often organized by itinerant school masters and were sometimes called “old field” schools because they used abandoned farm property. The schools operated intermittently and were of uneven quality. One 1809 school master in North Carolina offered instruction for one year at “An English School” for ten dollars tuition and boarding expenses of fifty dollars. The master assured parents that the “strictest attention” would be paid to instruction and morals. He also offered to accept “board payment…in Corn, Bacon, or Brandy…”158
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As late as 1792, only three academies in all of North Carolina offered the classical education then considered necessary preparation for college.159 Children from educated families in Rockingham County attended the private academy operated in nearby Guilford County for fifty years by the Rev. David Caldwell. The first academies in Rockingham County were established in 1820 and the first public school in 1840.160 While most North Carolina children received but rudimentary education in the late 18th and early 19th century, orphans and children from poor families often obtained no formal education at all but learned trades through apprenticeships.
In 1817, the North Carolina legislature considered a comprehensive public education program for all children. After extensive deliberation, the legislature declined to enact the program. The entrenched resistance to public education was described in 1830 by the first president of the University of North Carolina,
…our aversion to taxation, even to provide for the education of the poor children, is invincible…Through the influence of inveterate habit, large portions of our population have learned to look with indifference on education…161
It was not until 1839, when the state received a distribution of federal surplus, that North Carolina approved a plan for statewide public education.
It is unclear whether or not Thomas Simpson could read and write. He had grown up in Maryland in a farming family of modest means and had lived all his adult life in rural areas of North Carolina where education was limited and literacy was not essential. Rather than signing his name, Thomas Simpson made his mark in 1785 when
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acting as a witness at his brother Nathaniel’s marriage and in 1796 when his son Richard purchased land. He also made his mark in 1804 when selling land in Rockingham County.162 In other land transactions, he may have signed his name.163 It is possible that he was illiterate but it is also possible that there is another explanation for his inability to sign his name. According to a letter written by his grandson in 1897, Thomas Simpson
…was blind for many years–within a few years of his death, his eyesight came to him again. He could see to read common print without glasses.164
While the grandson may not have observed the recovery or have had direct knowledge of his grandfather’s reading ability, the dramatic story suggests that Thomas Simpson may have been blind rather than illiterate during the years in Rockingham County.
With poor education, literacy in North Carolina was limited. Those who were interested in reading were dependent on private libraries and on itinerant booksellers. The Reverend Mason Locke Weems (1759-1825), was an Episcopal clergyman and author who supported himself for thirty years selling books in Virginia and the Carolinas. He was best known for the biography of George Washington he published in 1800. Parson Weems traveled throughout the piedmont playing the fiddle to attract prospective buyers for the collections of sermons he edited and the popular moral tales he wrote like God’s Revenge Against Murder in 1807 and the 1810 sequel God’s Revenge Against Gambling. He also sold almanacs, Bibles and books by other contemporary authors. Despite the low literacy level in the North Carolina piedmont, the energetic and entertaining Parson Weems was very successful as a bookseller in the villages of the
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North Carolina backcountry from 1794 until his death in 1825.165 The libraries of North Carolina, like the schools, were slow to develop. Apart from private subscription libraries and parish libraries, the first public library in North Carolina supported by local taxes was established in 1897 in Durham.166 The first public library in Rockingham County was established in 1930.167
When Thomas Simpson moved to Rockingham County in the 1790s, the county population was 6219 including 1105 slaves. By 1810, the population had increased by 66 percent to 10,316 and the number of slaves had increased by 91 percent to 2114.168 As transportation improved, larger land owners shifted from self-sufficiency farming to export commodities like tobacco and cotton. The shift to an export economy also resulted in increasing concentration of wealth and increased used of slave labor. Like the pattern that drove the Simpson family out of Maryland a half century earlier, the increasing concentration of wealth pushed out many of the middling farmers who could not accumulate the wealth to acquire new land and slaves. The new land was necessary to prevent declining crop yields as land became exhausted as a result of repeated planting of tobacco or cotton. Slave labor enabled planters to increase production of commercial crops like tobacco and cotton.169
The Simpson family, over more than a century in areas where slaves were common, had never owned a slave. It is possible that the Simpsons were opposed to slavery on principle, for many of their contemporaries found the practice objectionable.
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It is more likely however that the eighteenth century Simpsons did not own slaves in Maryland or North Carolina because they were too poor. They were too poor to acquire large plantations and they were too poor to buy the slaves that were an essential component of the export economy. While they may have been too poor to acquire slaves, the Simpson family, relying on family labor, had prospered over three generations as middling farmers in Guilford and Rockingham Counties, North Carolina.
Thomas Simpson was 65 years old in 1804 when he began to prepare to move over the mountains to Middle Tennessee where it appears that his older sons Richard and Peter Ryan as well as his son-in-law Daniel Gough, all neighbors in Rockingham County, had preceded him. On May 31, 1804, Thomas Simpson sold an 101 acre parcel on Jacobs Creek to his brother-in-law and neighbor Thomas Knight for 100 pounds. The property is described as “waters of Jacobs Creek…beginning at black oak Thomas Knight’s corner” with neighbors including Rowland Williams, Jacob Periman and Charles Bruce.170 The land sold in 1804, although it was adjacent to property of Charles Bruce from whom he had purchased 150 acres in 1792, does not appear to have been the same property.171
At some other time, Thomas Simpson sold 50 acres on Brushy Fork of Jacobs Creek to Mary Patrick, whose family had owned Patrick’s Mill near the Simpson family properties at Mears Fork. It is unclear where the Brushy Fork property was located or why or when it was sold. Like many land transactions of the time, the sale of the Brushy
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Creek property remained unrecorded until 1807 when the estate of Mary Patrick sold the property.172 There is no record that Thomas Simpson sold the 150 acre parcel he owned but he may have transferred ownership, without recording the deed, to his son Nathaniel who continued to live in Rockingham County until at least 1830.173 Also preparing to move to Tennessee, Peter Ryan Simpson sold the 106 acres he had purchased from Adam and Allafa Trollinger in 1796 to Thomas Trollinger for $150 in November 1804.174
Sometime after the 1804 sale of his North Carolina property, Thomas Simpson, as he had fifty years earlier, loaded the wagons to move to a new frontier. Accompanied by his wife Mary Knight Simpson and their four children, he traveled over the mountains into Middle Tennessee. Leaving only his adult son Nathaniel in Rockingham County, Thomas Simpson and his family were in the early part of a vast migration from North Carolina that would continue for nearly fifty years. Between 1815 and 1850, one-third of the residents of North Carolina, like Thomas Simpson and his family in 1804, migrated to other states.175
Although North Carolina residents had claimed more than five million acres in Tennessee, including 2.8 million acres granted to veterans of the Revolutionary War, Thomas Simpson was not among those who had acquired Tennessee land while living in North Carolina.176 The Third Treaty of Tellico Blockhouse in 1805 had extinguished Cherokee land title in central Tennessee. The Thomas Simpson family settled on the
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former Indian lands on the highland rim of the Cumberland Plateau. In 1807, the area was organized as Warren County. Within twenty years, the Thomas Simpson family, swollen with grandchildren and in-laws, would again be loading the wagons for a move to the new lands available in the Boonslick region of central Missouri.177
North Carolina Notes
1 Alexander McAllister, letter to his cousin, c.1770, in A. Roger Ekirch, Poor Carolina: Politics and Society in Colonial North Carolina, 1729-1776 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1981), p. 29.
2 Charter of Carolina, March 24, 1662/3, in W. Keith Kavanagh, Foundations of Colonial America, Vol. Ill (New York, 1973), p. 1738-1739.
3 Act for Establishing an Agreement with Seven of the Lords Proprietors of Carolina, for the Surrender of Their Title and Interest in That Province to His Majesty, 1729, Ibid., 1807-1815. The Act of Parliament was 2 Geo.II c. 34. John Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, Vol. II (Boston, 1897), pp. 285-308.
4 William S. Powell, The North Carolina Gazetteer (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1968), 198. Thornton W. Mitchell, ”The Granville District and Its Land Records”, North Carolina Historical Review, April 1993, pp. 103-106.
5 John H. Wheeler, Historical Sketches of North Carolina from 1584 to 1851, Vol. II (Philadelphia, 1851, republished New York, 1925), p.11.
6 Margaret M. Hoffmann, The Granville District of North Carolina, 1748-1763, Vol. I, (Weldon, North Carolina, 1986). Robert W. Ramsey, Carolina Cradle: Settlement of the Northwest Carolina Frontier, 1747-1762 (Chapel Hill, 1964), p. 6.
7 Ibid., p. 153. Proclamation money was the exchange rate established by colonial proclamation for provincial currency. William S. Powell, North Carolina Through Four Centuries (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1989), p. 89.
8 Ekirch, Poor Carolina, pp. 128-129.
9 Mitchell, “The Granville District”, pp. 116-127.
10 Governor George Burrington, Ibid., p. 7. Burrington was governor of North Carolina under the lords proprietors 1724-1725 and royal governor 1731-1734.
11 Ramsey, Carolina Cradle, p. 18. The price of land in the Granville District was approximately one-seventeenth the price of land in Pennsylvania but the North Carolina land was remote from markets and seaports.
12 August Gottlieb Spangenberg, Diary entry, September 12, 1752, new style, in Adelaide L. Fries, ed., Records of the Moravians in North Carolina, Vol. I (Raleigh, North Carolina, 1922), p. 32.
13 Ekirch, Poor Carolina, pp. 128-131.
14 Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson, 11A Map of the most Inhabited part of Virginia…11 (London, 1751). The 1751 map shows the Great Wagon Road as 435 miles from Philadelphia to the Yadkin River in North Carolina. The map also shows Swans Point in Harford County, Maryland at the north end of Chesapeake Bay where the Simpson family lived before moving to North Carolina. A copy of the 1751 map is displayed at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Gallery, Williamsburg, Virginia.
15 William Few in Charles Christopher Chittenden, 11Overland Travel and Transportation in North Carolina 1763-178911, North Carolina Historical Review, July 1931, p. 253.
16 Marcus W. Lewis, The Development of Early Emigrant Trails in the United States East of the Mississippi River (Washington, D.C., 1978), p. 3. George Raynor, Pioneers and Indians of Back Country, North Carolina (Salisbury, North Carolina, 1990), pp. 17-21. Ramsey, Carolina Cradle, p. 172.
17 David Leroy Corbitt, The Formation of the North Carolina Counties (Raleigh, North Carolina, 1950, republished 1969), p. 185. Since 1836, modern Rowan County (pronounced Row-Ann) has comprised an area of 517 square miles. The county seat is at Salisbury. James S. Brawley, Rowan County: A Brief History (Raleigh, North Carolina, 1974), pp. 1-11.
18 Ramsey, Carolina Cradle, p. 216. The data are drawn from a sample of 546, non German early settlers of Rowan County, North Carolina.
19 Duane H. King, ed., The Cherokee Indian Nation (Knoxville, Tennessee, 1979), p. xii.
20 Ekirch, Poor Carolina, pp. 107-116. Ramsey, Carolina Cradle, pp. 193-196.
21 Hugh Waddell letter of February 29, 1760 to governor Arthur Dobbs in Ramsey, Ca_rQlina Cradle, p. 197. Fort Dobbs was located near present-day Statesville.
22 Kirke Wilson, For We Cannot Tarry Here (San Francisco, 1990), p. 27.
23 Ekrich, Poor Carolina, p. 179.
24 Fries, Records of the Moravians, Vol. I, p, 227.
25 Betty Anderson Smith, 11Distribution of Eighteenth Century Cherokee Settlements11 in Cherokee Nation, pp. 48-55.
26 Powell, North Carolina, pp. 100-101. Ramsey, Carolina Cradle, pp. 197-199. King, Cherokee Nation, p. xiii.
27 William Tryon letter of August 2, 1766 to the Board of Trade in Hugh Talmage Lefler, North Carolina History Told by Contemporaries (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1934), p. 69.
28 The Upper Haw River area was in Rowan County, North Carolina in 1759. In 1771, Rowan County was divided and the Upper Haw River area was combined with part of Orange County to form Guilford County. In 1785, Guilford County was divided. The northern part of Guilford County, including part of the Upper Haw River area, became Rockingham County. The Mears Fork area where Richard Simpson lived remained part of Guilford County.
29 Mamie G. McCubbins, ed., Rowan County. North Carolina. Abstracts of Court Minutes 1753 through 1795, Vol. 2, (Salisbury, North Carolina, n.d.}, p. 595, May 22, 1758. The amount of the Richard Simpson fine is not recorded. At the November 1758 session of the court, a fine of three pounds was imposed on Anthony Hutchins for failure to appear for grand jury duty. The records are in the McCubbins Collection, Rowan County Public Library, Salisbury, North Carolina.
30 Clarence E. Ratcliff, North Carolina Taxpayers. 1701-1786 (Baltimore, 1984}, p. 184.
31 The Mears Fork area is in Lake Brandt (North Carolina) Quadrangle, United States Geological Survey map N 3607.5-W7945/7.5. Mears Fork is pronounced 11Meyers11 locally and was frequently spelled 11Mairs Fork11 or 11Mares Fork11 during the eighteenth century.
32 Jo White Linn, ed., Rowan County. North Carolina Deed Abstracts. Vol. II 1762-1772 (Salisbury, North Carolina, 1972), p. 52. Rowan County Deed Book 6, p. 32, August 31, 1764. The transaction also appears in the records of the Rowan County Court, Minute Book, p. 549, October 1764. Jo White Linn, ed., Abstracts of the Minutes of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions. Rowan County. North Carolina. 1763-1774. Vol. II (Salisbury, North Carolina, 1979), p. 31. Also Rowan County Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions, Minute Book 2, p. 549, October 1764. Williams had purchased 320 acres of land granted to Jordan in 1753 from Robert Harris in 1758.
33 Donald R. Simpson, 11Lands of the Haw River Simpsons and their Neighbors,” The Simpson Clan, Fall 1992, pp. 2-4.
34 Fred Hughes, Guilford County, North Carolina. Historical Documentation No. IX (Jamestown, North Carolina, 1980, revised August 1988). I am grateful to Wayne C. Simpson of China Grove, North Carolina for bringing this map to my attention.
35 Peter Simpson (1802-1857) and his wife Martha Deens Simpson (1806-1857) are among the members of the Simpson family buried in the Gethsemane Church cemetery.
36 Part of the Simpson family Mears Fork land is in a 65 acre parcel subdivided into 29 residential lots along Church Street Extension in 1993. The land is part of a larger tract that had been donated to Guilford College in recent years. Apart from a small cornfield on bottom land, the Mears Fork property is overgrown with trees and vines and does not appear to have been farmed in recent years. At the time of the 1993 subdivision, there were no structures on the property.
37 Simpson, 11Lands of the Haw River Simpsons11, p. 2, p. 5. Cain Carroll sold the property in 1780. After his death, Elizabeth Carroll married John Winchester, Sr., another Haw River neighbor. Mary Simpson died between 1790 and 1793.
38 Linn, Abstracts of the Minutes, p. 48. Will of John Hallum, Sr., from Book 2, p. 610, October 9, 1765.
39 Jo White Linn, Abstracts of Wills and Estates Records of Rowan County. North Carolina, 1753-1805 and Tax Lists of 1759 and 1778 (Salisbury, North Carolina, 1980), 5, from Book A, p. 60.
40 Ibid., p. 11, from Book A, p. 139. Jo White Linn, ed., Rowan County, North Carolina Will Abstracts, Vol. I, 1753-1805, Books A-F (Salisbury, North Carolina, 1970), p. 10. The will was filed September 17, 1765. Rothera, also spelled 11Rederah,11 left 302 acres on 11bigg trobilsome” to his son. Ibid., p. 97. Rowan County Will Book A, p. 139. Linn, Deed Abstracts, p. 74, Deed Book 6, pp. 303-304. Troublesome Creek begins in Guilford County and flows northeast into Rockingham County where it joins Haw River. It is unclear whether or how the 11schooling” was accomplished since there were no schools in the area in 1765.
41 McCubbins, Abstracts of Minutes, October 1O, 1765, pp. 148-150.
42 Ibid., p. 150.
43 Linn, Abstracts of the Minutes, pp. 49-50. The bounty claim is Book 2, p. 615.
44 Jo White Linn, 11List of Taxables in Rowan County, 176811, North Carolina Genealogical Society Journal, November 1983, pp. 210-211. The 1768 list was lost for many years but is now in the North Carolina State Archives, Box CRX 244. See also, 11A List of Taxables for the year 1768 taken by Thos. Donnell” in William D. Kizziah, ed., Rowan County, North Carolina Tax Lists, 1759-1787 (Salisbury, North Carolina, 1933), p. 20.
45 E. Milton Wheeler, 11Development and Organization of the North Carolina Militia11, North Carolina Historical Review, July 1964, pp. 312-323. Marvin L. Michael Kay and William S. Price, Jr., 11To Ride the Wood Mare: Road Building and Militia Service in Colonial North Carolina, 1740-1775″, Ibid., October 1980, pp. 361-387.
46 Linn, Abstracts of the Minutes, p. 97. See also, McCubbins, Abstracts, Vol. 1, p. 200. The jury was approved by the court August 9, 1769, Inferior Court, p. 23. Sherrell’s Ford, in what is now Catawba County, was a long distance from the Simpson property on Mears Fork. The Simpson and Sherrell families were remotely related by marriage.
47 Chittenden, “Overland Travel”, pp. 239-252.
48 Corbitt, North Carolina Counties, pp. 1i 3, 186. Modern Guilford County comprises an area of 651 square miles. The county seat has been at Greensboro since 1808.
49 William D. Bennett, Guilford County Deed Book One (Raleigh, North Carolina, 1990), 28-29. The December 7, 1773 sale is page 227 of the Guilford County Deed Book. The property description includes 11… a large white oak..a white oak saplin on side of a branch…”
50 Ibid., p. 57. The sale was October 10, 1777 and is page 408 of the Deed Book. In contrast to the 1773 property which is measured in paces, the 1777 property is measured in chains.
51 A.B. Pruitt, Abstracts of Land Entries: Guilford County, North Carolina 1779-1796 and Rockingham County, North Carolina 1790-1795 (no location, 1987), p. 4. The entry is dated November 23, 1779 and is number 1900.
52 Simpson, “Lands of the Haw River Simpsons,11 pp. 5-6. The Mears Fork lands of Richard Simpson and his son were sold in 1808 by heirs who were then living in Kentucky.
53 August 1785 session, Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions of Guilford County in Nancy Hawlick Stein, Old Guilford, North Carolina Court Minutes, 1781-1788 (Hartford, Kentucky, 1978), p. HH.
54 Irene B. Webster, ed., Guilford County, North Carolina Will Abstracts, 1771-1841 (Madison, North Carolina, 1979), pp. 56-57. The three daughters of Richard Simpson were Eleanor Hicks, Elizabeth Knight and Jane Marsilliot and the step-daughter was Elizabeth Carroll. The deceased Richard Simpson had two grandsons of the same name. One was the son of Richard Simpson, Junior and one was the son of Thomas Simpson. The will is in Guilford County Will Book A, file number 0344. The will was written December 24, 1793 and the probate was May 1795. The last Marsilliot in Rockingham County died in 1971.
55 Charles Woodmason Journal, September 28, 1766 in Richard J. Hooker, ed., The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution (Chapel Hill, 1953), p. 7.
56 Ibid., pp. 16, 18, 33, 55. No aspect of frontier life in the Carolinas escaped Woodmason’s acid criticisms.
57 Woodmason Journal, January 25, 1767, Ibid., p. 13.
58 Sam B. Hilliard, “Hog Meat and Cornpone: Foodways in the Antebellum South”, in Robert Blair St. George, Material Life in America, 1600-1860 (Boston, 1988), pp.311- 328.
59 Ekirch, Poor Carolina, p. 180.
60 Daniel B. Thorp, “Doing Business in the Backcountry: Retail Trade in Colonial Rowan County, North Carolina”, The William and Mary Quarterly, July 1991, pp. 387-408.
61 Robert W. Carter, “Mills in Simpsonville Township,” The Journal of Rockingham History and Genealogy, Vol. 3, No. 1, p. x. The David Rothera and Richard Simpson families may have both used Patrick’s Mill. Donald R. Simpson, “Research Notes”, Simpson Clan, December 1986, p. 6.
62 Ramsey, Carolina Cradle, p. 169.
63 Ibid., pp. 168-169.
64 Woodmason Journal, August 5, 1768, in Hooker, Carolina Backcountry, pp. 52-53.
65 Ramsey, Carolina Cradle, p. 190.
66 William Henry Foote, Sketches of North Carolina (New York, 1846, reprinted Durham, North Carolina, 1912), pp. 231-242. James W. Albright, Greensboro, 1808- 1904 (Greensboro, North Carolina, 1904), p. 19.
67 Ekirch, Poor Carolina, pp. 43-44.
68 Ramsey, Carolina Cradle, p. 131.
69 Charles Woodmason, “A Report on Religion in the South”, in Hooker, Carolina Backcountry, pp. 80-81.
70 Woodmason Journal, September 21, 1766, Ibid., pp. 6-7.
71 Ibid., pp. 20, 42, and 43.
72 Regulator Advertisement of March 22, 1768 in Wheeler, Sketches, Vol. 11, p. 306.
73 Regulator Advertisement of April 1768, Ibid., Vol. I, p. 55.
74 Brawley, Rowan County, p. 17.
75 Herman Husband, “An Impartial Relation of the First Rise and Cause of the Present Differences in Public Affairs in the Province of North Carolina” in Hugh Talmage Lefler, North Carolina History Told by Contemporaries (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1934), p. 89.
76 Hugh Lefler and Paul Wager, ed. Orange County, 1752-1952 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1953), pp. 30-39. Foote, Sketches, pp. 47-66. Wheeler, Historical Sketches, Vol. I, pp.54-63; Vol. 11, pp. 12-18, 170. Ekirch, Poor Carolina, pp. 186-205. Powell, Nortb Carolina, pp. 148-159.
77 James Hasell letter of July 4, 1771 to Earl Hillsborough in William L. Saunders, ed., The Colonial Records of North Carolina, Vol. IX (New York, 1968), p. 9.
78 Brawley, Rowan County, pp. 19-20.
79 The original Mecklenburg Resolves of May 20, 1775 declaring independence were lost in a fire and scholars are divided about the authenticity of the surviving texts. The Resolves of May 30, 1775 were more measured but declare the power of the king null and void in North Carolina. Foote, Sketches, pp. 34-41. Powell, North Carolina, pp. 176-181.
80 E.W. Caruthers, A Sketch of the Life and Character of the Rev. David Caldwell (Greensborough, North Carolina, 1842), pp. 172-173. Foote, Sketches, p. 239.
81 Of 883 persons identified as Regulators by historians, 289 were Whigs during the Revolution and 34 were Tories with the affiliations of the others, if any, unknown. Lefler and Wager, Orange County, p. 39.
82 Hugh F. Rankin, “The Moore’s Creek Bridge Campaign, 177611, North Carolina Historical Review, January 1953, pp. 35-60.
83 Wilson, For We Cannot Tarry Here, pp. 46-47.
84 John P. Brown, Old Frontiers (Kingsport, Tennessee, 1938, reprinted New York, 1971), pp. 148-154.
85 Griffith Rutherford letter of July 5, 1776 to the North Carolina Council of Safety in Robert L. Ganyard, “North Carolina and the Cherokee Threat from the West”, North Carolina Historical Review, January 1968, p. 56.
86 Ibid., pp. 59-64. Brown, Old Frontiers, pp. 156-161. Wheeler, Historical Sketches, Vol. II, pp. 383-384. Dale Van Every, A Company of Heres: The American Frontier, 1775-1783 (New York, 1962), pp. 66-73.
87 North Carolina Archives, Accounts of the United States with North Carolina, War of the Revolution1 Book E-G, pp. 73-80. Thomas Simpson is listed on page 80.
88 Ganyard, “Threat from the West”, pp. 61-64.
89 Linn, “List of Taxables,” pp. 210-211.
90 The children, in approximate birth order, were Richard, Nathaniel, Peter Ryan, Elizabeth (who married Joseph Cunningham), David, Sarah (who married Daniel Gough, sometimes spelled Goff) and Sinah (who married Thomas Crumpton.)
91 David Simpson letter of March 26, 1897 to Sylvester C. Simpson, possession of the author. Thomas Simpson is listed in Alice Kinyon Houts, editor, Revolutionary Soldiers Buried in Missouri (Kansas City, 1966), p. 220.
92 National Archives, Index to Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Soldiers who Served During the Revolutionary War in Organizations from the State of North Carolina (Washington, D.C., 1958). The records show ten Simpsons, including a private named Richard, who served but show no service by Thomas Simpson.
93 Simpson, “Lands of the Haw River Simpsons”, pp. 2-3.
94 Bennett, Guilford Deed Book, p. 70. The sale was February 18, 1779 and is page 483 of the Deed Book. Richard Simpson was a witness to the transaction.
95 Simpson, “Lands of the Haw River Simpsons11, pp. 2-5. The deed was recorded August 19, 1782. Stein, Guilford Court Minutes, p. I.
96 Wheeler, Historical Sketches, Vol. 11, pp. 189-190, 227-232. According to tradition, two Simpson brothers, cousins of the Haw River Simpsons, fought on opposing sides at Ramsour’s Mill.
97 Christopher Ward, The War of the Revolution (New York, 1952), Vol. 11, pp. 679-796. Hugh F. Rankin, The North Carolina Continentals (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1971}, 284-298.
98 Henry Lee, The Campaign of 1781 in the Carolinas (Philadelphia, 1824, reprinted Spartanburg, South Carolina, 1975), pp. 167-191. Banastre Tarlton, A History of the Campaigns of 1781 in the Southern Provinces of North America (London, 1787, reprinted New York, 1968), pp. 222-259. Wheeler, Historical Sketches, Vol. 11, pp. 170-180. Rankin, Continentals, pp. 299-318. George W. Kyte, 11Victory in the South: An Appraisal of General Greene’s Strategy in the Carolinas”, North_Carolina Historical Review, July 1960, pp. 321-347.
99 Greene letter of April 2, 1781 to Gen. Frederick Baron von Steuben in Rankin, Continentals, p. 310.
100 Foote, Sketches, p. 274.
101 Cornwallis dispatch number 8 from Guilford Court House to Lord George Germaine, March 17, 1781 in Wheeler, Historical Sketches, Vol. 11, pp. 176-179.
102 Wheeler, 11North Carolina Militia11, pp. 320-321.
103 Ruth F. Thompson and Louise J. Hartgrove, Abstracts of the Marriage Bonds and Additional Data, Guilford, North Carolina, 1771-1840 (Greensboro, North Carolina, 1984), p. 167. Donald R. Simpson reports, in an 1993 letter, that the marriage of Elizabeth Simpson and Thomas Knight remains uncertain.
104 Ibid., p. 4. Mary Knight may have been a second cousin of Thomas Simpson. Kirke Wilson, A Most Healthful and Pleasant Situation: The Simpson Family in Maryland, 1688-1760 (San Francisco, 1991), p. 48.
105 James Simpson married Elizabeth Kimsey in 1805, served in the War of 1812 from Warren County, Tennessee and died in Platte County, Missouri in 1852. Nona Williams, ed., The Simpson Clan, Winter 1992-1993, p. 11.
106 Wilson, For We Cannot Tarry Here, pp. 116-117 and 124-125. It is unclear how many of the eleven or twelve children of Thomas Simpson were from the marriage to Mary Knight. Nona Williams, who attributes seven children to the first marriage, points out that David and Senah were common names in the Knight family and not previously used by the Simpsons. A grandson reported in 1897 that Thomas Simpson had three or four children with his first wife as well as six daughters and two sons with his second wife. Benjamin Simpson letter of April 12, 1897 to Sylvester C. Simpson, possession of the author.
107 David Simpson letter.
108 Francis Asbury Journal, July 22 and July 23, 1780 in Grady LE. Carroll, ed., Francis Asbury in North Carolina (Nashville, Tennessee, 1966), p. 45.
109 Asbury Journal, July 24, 1780, Ibid., p. 46.
110 Asbury Journal, July 25, 1780, Ibid., p. 46.
111 Asbury Journal, March 1, 1786, Ibid., p. 76.
112 Asbury Journal, March 10, 1786, Ibid., p. 77.
113 Asbury Journal, April 15, 1787, Ibid., p. 82.
114 Elmer T. Clark, Methodism in Western North Carolina (Nashville. Tennessee, 1966), 54-61. Michael Perdue, “The History of Wentworth United Methodist Church”, The Journal of Rockingham County History and Genealogy, June 1986, p. 2.
115 Carroll, Asbury in North Carolina, p. 105.
116 Ibid., pp. 111-112.
117 March 1791 deed in Simpson Clan, Vol. 1, No. 9, p. 1. The deed from Thomas Simpson to Francis Asbury was proved in 1792. Virginia Redman, “Guilford County, North Carolina Court Minutes, 1781-1811,” p. 188, Simpson Clan, Spring 1991, p. 8.
118 Hughes, Guilford County Historical Documentation No. IX. Simpson, “Lands of the Haw River Simpsons”, p. 3, p. 5. Don Simpson places the chapel on the east side of the present Church Street Extension at the north end of the pond 3/4 of a mile north of State Route 150.
119 United States Bureau of the Census, Heads of Families at the First Census of the United States Taken in the Year 17901 North Carolina, (Washington, 1908, republished Baltimore, 1966), p. 155. None of the three Simpson households in Guilford County included slaves in 1790.
At the end of the Revolutionary War, North Carolina and other states conducted a census. The statewide census of North Carolina failed to include the residents of Rowan County, Guilford County and the newly-formed Rockingham County. Alvaretta Kenan Register, ed., State Census of North Carolina. 1784-1787, second edition (Baltimore, 1973), p. 5.
120 Redman, “Guilford County Minutes,U p. 99.
121 The 50 acre parcel was sold to Williams January 16, 1792 and the 48 1/2 acres February 22, 1792. The transactions were recorded in 1792, Redman, “Guilford County Minutes,” p. 164. The 1790 census shows Nathaniel Simpson, Thomas Simpson and three Knight families living in the Jacobs Creek area of Rockingham County. Nathaniel was the son of Thomas Simpson of Mears Fork. U.S. Census, Census of 1790, p. 167.
122 Simpson, “Lands of the Haw River Simpsons”, pp. 5-7. The northern part of the Thomas Simpson land on Mears Fork was purchased in 1798 by Thomas Kirkman whose brother George married Pharaby Simpson, a niece of Thomas Simpson. The southern part remained in the Gough family until 1811 when it was purchased by James Tomlinson.
123 Webster, Guilford Will Abstracts, pp. 61-62. The will is in book A:0372. This third Richard left a widow Selah, three daughters and four sons including a fourth Richard. Richard Simpson also left a “young sorrel mare” to his nephew Thomas Knight.
124 Ibid., p. 108. Several generations of Richard Simpson’s descendants owned Guilford County property to the east of Mears Fork on the upper branches of Reedy Fork into the 1850s. Donald Simpson, “More Lands of the Haw River Simpsons”, Simpson Clan, Spring 1993, pp. 3-8.
125 Archibald Henderson, Washington’s Southern Tour. 1791 (Boston, 1923), pp. 17-18, 41, 46, 338. The coach used by George Washington in his 1791 tour of the South has not survived. There is a duplicate coach, manufactured at the same time and place, on permanent display at Mount Vernon.
126 Archibald Henderson, North Carolina, the Old North State and the New, Vol. I (Chicago, 1941), pp. 429-431.
127 Douglas Southall Freeman, George Washington, Vol. 6 (New York, 1954), p. 320.
128 Alexander Martin (1738-1807) was a native of New Jersey and graduate of Nassau Hall (Princeton) who settled in the Rowan, Guilford and Rockingham County area about 1760. He was a colonel in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and commanded North Carolina troops at Bradywine and Germantown. He was elected governor of North Carolina six times, served in the United States House of Representatives and Senate and was a member of the Constitutional Convention. In addition to his Martinsville home in Guilford County, he owned a home and plantation at Danbury on lower Jacobs Creek in Rockingham County. Henderson, Southern Tour, pp. 311-322.
129 George Washington diary, June 3, 1791, Ibid., p. 323.
130 George Washington letter of June 20, 1791 to David Humphreys, Ibid., p. 338. Humphreys was the United States minister to Portugal in 1791.
131 George Washington diary, June 4, 1791, Ibid., p. 326.
132 Simpson, “Lands of the Haw River Simpsons”, pp. 2-3. Robert W. Carter, Jr., “Mills in Simpsonville Township, Part 1111, Journal of Rockingham County History and Genealogy, October 1978, pp. 58-68. The Troublesome Ironworks was approximately 1.5 miles north of Monroetown on State Route 2423.
133 Benjamin Simpson letter. At best, this letter by a grandson exaggerates the relationship more than a century earlier between Thomas Simpson and George Washington.
134 Hugh Hill Wooten, “The Land Valuations of Iredell County in 180011, North Carolina Historical Review, October 1952, pp. 523-539.
135 Paul W. Wager, 1’History of the County Government”, in Lefler and Wager, Orange County, pp. 176-179.
136 Jeffery J. Crow, 1The Whiskey Rebellion in North Carolina”, North Carolina Historical Review, January 1989, pp. 4-28. Herman Husband, who had been a leader of the Regulation in North Carolina, was among the leaders of the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania.
137 Wager, Orange County, p. 176.
138 Charles Woodmason, Sermon Book Ill, c. 1768, in Hooker, Carolina Backcountry. 96-99.
139 Woodmason, Sermon Book II, Ibid., p. 88.
140 Foote, Sketches, p. 371.
141 Presbyterian Synod of the Carolinas, Session II, September 2, 1789, Ibid., pp. 282- 283.
142 The Price-Strother map of 1808 shows a road from the Haw River bridge northwest across Big Troublesome Creek and lower Jacobs Creek to Danbury on the Dan River. Jean Anderson, “Carmel Church Records, Rockingham County, North Carolina”, North .Carolina Genealogical Society Journal, February 1983, p. 14. The Jacobs Creek area is in the western part of Bethany (North Carolina) Quadrangle, United States Geological Survey map N3615-W7952.5/7.5. The Simpson property is likely to have been in the area between Bethany Road, State Route 65 and Huffine Mill Road. In 1993, Bethany was a crossroads with an elementary school, a firehouse, a Daughters of the Confederacy building and two churches.
143 Irene B. Webster, ed., Rockingham County Deed Abstracts, 1785-1800 (Madison, North Carolina, 1973), p. 42. The transaction was recorded June 20, 1792 in Rockingham County Deed Book C, p. 208. The land was a rectangle 180 poles on the west and east and 134 poles on the north and south. A pole is 16 1/2 feet. According to Fred Hughes, Rockingham County Historical Documentation, the 1792 Thomas Simpson property in Rockingham County was on the headwaters of Mill Creek of Jacobs Creek. Mill Creek may have been the same as Bear Branch.
144 Rockingham County Deed Book E, p. 130. The deed was recorded March 24, 1796.
145 Rockingham County Deed Book E, p. 165. The deed was recorded August 13, 1796.
146 Rockingham County Deed Book E, p. 242. The deed was recorded October 4, 1797.
147 Corbitt, North Carolina Counties, pp. 184-185. Modern Rockingham County comprises an area of 572 square miles. The county seat is at Wentworth. Simpsonville, one of twelve townships in Rockingham County, was formed in 1868 and comprises several communities in the southern part of the county.
148 Alexander Sneed, 11Rockingham County11, North Carolina Historical Review, December 1982, p. 72. Huntington Hobbs, Jr., North Carolina: An Economic and Social Profile (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1958), p. 104.
149 Hugh Hill Wooten, “A Fourth Creek Farm from 1800 to 1830”, North Carolina Historical Review, April 1953, pp. 167-173.
150 Carter, “Mills in Simpsonville Township”, pp. 58-65.
151 Johanna Miller Lewis, “Women Artisans in Backcountry North Carolina, 1753-1790”, North Carolina Historical Review, July 1991, pp. 221-233.
152 Lindley S. Butler, Rockingham County: A Brief History (Raleigh, North Carolina, 1982), p. 24.
153 Asbury Journal, April 11, 1794, in Carroll, Asbury in North Carolina, p. 131. In January 1805, Asbury reported dining with another Simpson family in Bladen County, Ibid., p.220.
154 Foote, Sketches, pp. 376-386.
155 Ibid., p. 378.
158 Minutes of the Kehukee Association, in Maloy A. Huggins, A History of North Carolina Baptists, 1727-1932 (Raleigh, North Carolina, 1967), p. 88. See also pp. 90-91, 207, 260 and 394.
157 Robert W. Carter, Jr., 11A History of the Wolf Island Primitive Baptist Church11, The Journal of Rockingham County History and Genealogy, June 1984, pp. 1-14.
158 Archibald Wills advertisement, January 26, 1809, Raleigh Star in Lefler, North Carolina History, p. 170.
159 Powell, North Carolina, pp. 245-247. As late as 1840, one-third of the adults in North Carolina were illiterate.
160 Butler, Rockingham County, pp. 44-45.
161 Joseph Caldwell, in Lefler, North Carolina History. p. 186.
162 Thompson and Hartgrove, Abstracts of Guilford, p. 107 and p. 167 (1785 wedding). Rockingham County Deed Book E, p. 130 (1796) and Deed Book M, p. 55 (1804).
163 Redman, “Guilford County Minutes,” 1792, p. 164 and p. 188.
164 David Simpson letter. David Simpson would have been about five years old when his grandfather died.
165 James S. Purcell, 11A Book Peddlar’s Progress in North Carolina”, North Carolina Historical Review, January 1952, pp. 8-23.
166 Hobbs, North Carolina, p. 254.
167 Butler, Rockingham County, pp. 11-23. U.S. Census, Census of 1790, pp. 10-11. Charles Dyson Rodenbaugh, ed., The Heritage of Rockingham County, North Carolina (Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 1983), pp. 2-23.
168 Hugh Hill Wooten, “Westward Migration from Iredell County, 1800-185011, North Carolina Historical Review, January 1953, pp. 62-71.
169 Rodenbaugh, Rockingham County, p. 80.
170 Rockingham County Deed Book M, p. 55. The deed was recorded May 31, 1804. In addition to the land Thomas Knight purchased from Thomas Simpson in 1804, Knight had also acquired 100 acres in Rockingham County in 1794 that “includes Thomas Simpson’s improvement”. Pruitt, Abstracts of Land Entries, p. 134. The January 1, 1794 entry is number R209.
171 The 1792 property was 180 poles by 134 poles. The 1804 property was 80 poles on the east and 210 poles on the south with a 6 pole by 105 pole section missing in the northwest corner.
172 Rockingham County Deed Book N, pp. 45-46. The estate sale was recorded November 2, 1807.
173 Donald Simpson, “Research Note #7”, Simpson Clan, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 1-2.
174 Rockingham County Deed Book N, p. 64.
175 Powell, North Carolina, p. 249. At the time of the 1850 census, 31 percent of all persons born in North Carolina were living in other states.
176 National Archives, List of North Carolina Grants in Tennessee, 1778-1791 (Washington, D.C., 1944).
177 Wilson, For We Cannot Tarry Here, pp. 123-125. There is no evidence whether or not the Thomas Simpson family moved directly from Rockingham County to Warren County. Apart from family records, there is little documentation of the Simpson family in Tennessee, 1804-1823. The 1820 census shows an elderly Thomas Simpson in Warren County, Tennessee.
INDEX
Alamance, Battle of 27, 29
Anson County 6
Arnett’s 43
Asbury 42
Asbury, Bishop 41, 43, 52, 58
Asbury, Francis 41, 58
Baptist 24, 41, 59
Battle at Lexington 28
Battle of Alamance 27, 29
Battle of Guilford Court House 17, 56
Bear Branch of Jacobs Creek 53
Beaverdam Creek 21
Bethany, North Carolina 53
Boone, Daniel 8
Boone, Mary 57
Boonslick region 66
Bragg, William 40
Bruce, Charles 53, 54, 64
Brush Creek 53
Brushy Fork of Jacobs Creek 64
Buffington, Joseph 56
Cabins 42
Caldwell, David 29
Caldwell, Rev. David 14, 23, 39, 61
Caldwell’s academy 23
Cambridge 23
Camden, South Carolina 36
Cape Fear River 10
Carolina Road 5
Carroll, Cain 12, 16
Carroll, Elizabeth 17
Carter’s Valley 30
Carteret, Lord 2
Caswell, Colonel Richard 29
Catawba 6, 9
Catawba Indians 7
Catawba River 6, 15
Catawba Trading Path 2
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania 5
Charles II 1
Charles Town 21
Charleston 35, 46
Cherokee 7-9, 33
Cherokee army 30
Cherokee campaign 34
Cherokee campaign of 1776 32
Cherokee Lower Towns 9
Cherokee towns 31
Chesapeake Bay 5, 6
Chester Counties 6
Church of England 23, 41
Church Street Extension 11
Coke, Bishop Thomas 43
Coldwater Creek 2
College of William and Mary 23
Conner, Andrew 54
Conner, John 54
Conner, William 54
Continental Army 36, 39
Continental Congress 30
Continentals 37
Cornwallis 36-38
Cowpens 37
Culpeper County 8
Dan River 4, 37, 53-55
Deep River 10
Delaware 5, 6
Dent, Captain William 29
Dickson, William 41
Diet 19
Dixon, William 35
Donnell, Thomas 13
Dragging Canoe 30
Durham 63
Earl of Granville 2
Economic 20
Education 60, 61
Education in North Carolina 23
Educational 22
Elizabeth Simpson 40
Elizabeth, Richard Simpson’s step-daughter 12
Farraba 40
Fayetteville 55
Field 29
First Continental Congress 28
Foote, Rev. William H. 59
Fort Dobbs 7
French and Indian War 8
Frontier merchants 21
General Rutherford 31
Georgia 9
Gethsemane United Methodist Church 11
Gough, Daniel 44, 54, 64
Gough, Stephen 44
Grant, Colonel 9
Granville District 2-4, 6, 54
Granville line 2
Granville, Lord 3, 35
Grayson Counties 40
Great Alamance River 26
Great Indian Warpath 5
Great Wagon Road 5, 6, 10
Greene 37, 38
Greene, Gen. Nathanael 36
Greensboro 10, 11, 26, 37
Guilford 18, 21, 27, 46
Guilford County 6, 10, 15, 17, 25, 34, 37, 39, 40, 42, 43
Guilford County militia 31
Guilford Court House 37, 46
Guilford Court House, Battle of 17
Hagerstown, Maryland 5
Hallum, John Sr. 12 Harrisburg 5
Haw River 2, 10, 11, 39, 46, 47
Hawfields 58
Hicks, Eleanor 17
Hicks, Elizabeth Rees 16
High Rock Creek 15
Hillsboro 37
Hillsborough, Lord 27
Holston settlements 30
Homes 18
Houses 18, 49
Housing 47
Husband, Herman 26, 51
Inns of Court 23
Iredell County 7, 49, 50
Iron Works Road 11, 35, 43, 44, 47
Jacobs Creek 40, 45, 53, 55, 56, 58, 64
John Carteret, Baron Carteret of Hawnes 1
Jones, Benjamin 47
Jurdan, George Jr. 11
Jurdan, George, Jr. 35
Kimsey, Elizabeth 40
Kimsey, Mary 40
King George 2
Kings Mountain 36
Kirkham, Thomas 45
Knight, David 40
Knight, Elizabeth 17
Knight, Mary 40
Knight, Thomas 14, 40, 44, 64
Knight, Thomas, Jr. 40
Lancaster 6
Lancaster County 5
Lexington, Battle at 28
Libraries 62
Lincolnton 36
Linder, Nathaniel 54
Line Branch 11, 35
Little Tennessee River 32
Local militia 37
Lords Proprietors 3
Lowrance, Alexander 21
Lowrance, John 21
Lutherans 22
Macon County 9
Marshall, Samuel 13
Marsilliot, Jane 17
Martin, Alexander 46, 54, 56
Martinsville 5, 47
Maryland 5
Matthews, Lazarus 40
McGready, James 58
Mears Fork 10, 11, 15, 16, 22, 33, 34, 44, 47
Mecklenburg County 28
Mecklenburg Resolves 28
Methodist 24, 41
Methodist Church 43
Methodist Episcopal Church 41
Middle Tennessee 64
Midway 11
Militia 14, 29
Mill Creek 21
Mills 56
Monroetown 48
Montgomery, Col. Archibald 9
Moore’s Creek Bridge 30
Moorland, William 14
Moravian Church 4
Moravians 8, 24
Morgan, Daniel 36
New Bern 29
New Jersey 6
Newman’s Chapel 42
Nollichucky 30
North Carolina militia 26, 32, 36, 39
Nunn, William 15
Old Abram 30
Orange County 25, 26, 40, 42
Oxford 23
Patrick, Mary 64
Patrick’s Mill 21
Peace treaties 33
Pennsylvania 4
Periman, Jacob 64
Petersburg 55, 57
Philadelphia, 5
Pinson, Aaron and Joseph 56
Presbyterian. 23, 24, 53
Primitive Baptists 59
Primitive or Anti-Missionary churches 60 Prince George County, Virginia 28
Quakers 24
Ramsour’s Mill 36
Raven 30
Regulators 26, 27, 29
Regulators, Revolt of the 13, 25
Religious life 23, 58
Revival movement 59
Richmond, Virginia 55, 57
Roads 42
Roanoke 5
Rockingham County 6, 10, 11, 18, 21, 37, 42-44, 47, 53-55, 61, 63
Rocky Ford of Jacobs Creek 54
Rothera, David 12
Rowan County 2, 4-6, 8-10, 18, 19, 22, 25, 33
Rowan County Courthouse 7
Rowan County Resolves 28
Rutherford, Brig. Gen Griffith 31
Rutherford, General 32, 36
Ryan, Peter 44, 64
Salem 46
Salisbury 2, 7, 10, 22
Savannah 36, 46
Second Great Awakening 58
Sevier, John 32
Shawnee 7
Shelby, Evan 32
Shenandoah Valley 5, 8
Sherrells Ford 15
Short, Samuel 54
Silver Creek Road 15
Simpson, Benjamin 41
Simpson, David 33
Simpson, Elizabeth 12, 33
Simpson, Elizabeth (daughter of Richard) 12
Simpson, Elizabeth (daughter of Thomas) 16
Simpson, George 45
Simpson, James 40
Simpson, Jane 40
Simpson, Mary 12
Simpson, Mary Knight 65
Simpson, Nathaniel 13, 16, 33, 40, 45
Simpson, Nathaniel (brother of Thomas) 62
Simpson, Nathaniel (son of Thomas) 16, 44, 65
Simpson, Peter Ryan 33, 54, 65
Simpson, Pharaby 45
Simpson, Richard 10, 12, 13, 15, 33, 45, 51
Simpson, Richard (his wife) 44
Simpson, Richard (son of Thomas) 16, 45, 54, 62, 64
Simpson, Richard, Jr. 13, 16, 44
Simpson, Richard, Junior 17
Simpson, Richard, Sr. 44
Simpson, Sarah 33, 45
Simpson, Sarah Elizabeth 40
Simpson, Sinah 33
Simpson, Thomas 13, 16, 17, 30, 32-35, 40, 43, 44, 47, 53, 54, 58, 61, 63-65
Simpson, Thomas (son of Nathaniel) 45
Simpson, William 45, 60
Simpson, William (son of Nathaniel) 45
Simpson’s house 58
Simpson’s Methodist Church 44
Slave 63
Slave labor 63
Sneed, Alexander 55
South Carolina 1, 9
South Carolina militia 31
Southern campaign of 1781 39
Southwell 15
Spangenberg, Bishop August Gottlieb 4
Speedwell Ironworks 37
Susquehanna River 5
Swannanoa Gap 31
Tarleton, Lieutenant Colonel Banastre 37
Third Treaty of Tellico Blockhouse 65
Tomlinson, James 45
Triplette, William 15
Trollinger, Adam and Allafa 54, 65
Trollinger, Thomas 65
Troublesome Creek 11, 12, 17, 37, 47, 56
Troublesome Ironworks 48
Tryon, Governor William 26 Tuscarora 6
Upper Haw River 21 Wachovia 4, 8
Waddell, Captain Hugh 8 Warren County 66
Washington 45, 46
Washington, George 56
Washington, President George 51
Watauga 30
Watauga petition 30, 32
Weems, Parson 62
Weems, Rev. Mason Locke 62
Whisky Rebellion 51
Wilderness Road 5
William Nunn 15
Williams, Rowland 64
Williams, William 11, 12, 14, 34, 44, 47
Williamson, Col. Andrew 31
Wilmington 38
Wilson County, Tennessee 40
Winston-Salem 4
Woodmason, 18, 22, 24
Woodmason, Charles 18, 52
Work, John 47
Yadkin circuit 43
Yadkin River 4, 6-8
York County 5