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Since 1705, the town of Bath has nestled on the point of land between Bath Creek and Back Creek facing out on the beautiful little bay which opens into the Pamlico River. For hundreds of years before 1705, however, a town had stood on the same spot facing the bay, for the red men, who once roamed the shores of the Pamlico River and its tributaries, favored Bath as the site of one of their villages.

Not until 1585 does the story of these Indian inhabitants of Bath and the Pamlico area first find its way into recorded history. In that year the first of the Raleigh colonies was planted on Roanoke Island. Led by Captain Ralph Lane, a soldier of fortune, and Sir George Grenville, one of the foremost of the Elizabethan mariners, the colonists carried out extensive explorations of the Carolina sound region. They found the region about Pamlico Sound occupied by an Indian tribe or confederation to which they gave the name, Secotan. Behind the Secotan, roughly within the area of present day Beaufort County, lay another tribe which the Raleigh colonists called the Pomouik (or Pamlico). Whether the site of Bath in the late sixteenth century lay within the bounds of Secotan or Pomouik territory is today a matter of dispute among ethnologists. Maurice A. Mook, one of the leading authorities on the Indians of the Carolina sound region, believes the site of the Secotan town of Cotan which appeared on the map of this area engraved by Theodore De Bry "was situated at or near the historic town of Bath."

At this period the Secotan towns occupied the great lowland wilderness which lies roughly east of the Pungo and Scuppernong rivers on the peninsula between Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds as well as an area on both sides of the mouth of Pamlico River. This tribe was far from the strongest tribe in eastern Carolina and its villages were small in size and number. Eight of these villages are known by name. It was this tribe that the Raleigh colonists on Roanoke Island knew best and to it belonged Manteo, Wanchese, Wingina, and Granganimo. It is chiefly members of this tribe whom John White immortalized in his famous paintings. The relations between this tribe and the Raleigh colonists were bitter from the beginning and before the Lane colony returned to England in 1586, had flared into open warfare.

The Pomouik, or Pamlico, tribe which lay to the south and west of the Secotan was allied with the Neusiok who inhabited the river of that name. The chief of the Pomouiks, Piemacum, with his allies the Neusioks carried on "mortall warre" with the Secotan tribe until about the year 1582 when a peace was arranged, "But," an English explorer noted, "there remaineth a mortall malice in the Secotanes, for many injuries and slaughters done upon them by that Piemacum. They [the Pomouik] invited divers men and thirtie women to the best of his country to their towne to a feast, and when

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they were altogether merry and praying, before their Idol . . . the captaine or Lord of the town came suddenly upon them and slewe them every one, reserving the women and children."

Such exploits had left the Secotans thirsty for revenge, and they constantly sought to enlist English aid in an attack on the Pomouik. The only known Pomouik town in this period was Pananaioc which was located on the south bank of the Pamlico River perhaps in the vicinity of Blount's Creek. During this period it has been estimated that the Pomouiks had a population of 1,000, although this figure is perhaps too large.

This is almost the extent of our knowledge of the tribes about Bath in the late sixteenth century. As can be seen, the immediate Bath area lay in the border region between the Secotan and the Pomouik tribes. Mook's identification of Bath as the site of the Secotan town of Cotan must be placed in the realm of conjecture, well informed as his guess may be.

With the disappearance of the "Lost Colony," Raleigh's efforts to plant a settlement on the Carolina coast ended, and for nearly one hundred years, the story of the Indians about Bath is lost in the obscurity and darkness of unrecorded history. When during the last quarter of the seventeenth century explorers and fur traders began to push into Pamlico Sound and up the rivers which empty into it, they found the old Secotan confederation gone, split into several tribes, and the Pampticough or Pamlico tribe now dominant in the area about Bath. While identification is not certain, it is reasonably safe to assume that the Pomouik of the Raleigh colonists and the Pamlico of this period are one and the same. In 1681 the site of Bath was occupied by an Indian town styled "Pamticoe," taking its name from the tribe whose village it was. During this period, the tribe appears to have been populous and strong, but sometime prior to 1696, Governor John Archdale reported that the tribe was nearly decimated by a "great Mortality," perhaps smallpox which nearly always proved fatal to the American Indian. By the time of the incorporation of Bath in 1705, only the name for present day Bath Creek, "Old Town Creek," preserved the tradition of prior settlement by the Pamlico tribe. By 1709, the once proud Pamlico tribe was reduced to one town called "Island" indicating perhaps that the tribe had chosen present day Indian Island, located in the Pamlico River a few miles below Bath, as their last stand against the encroaching civilization of the white man. At this time the tribe could boast about fifteen fighting men indicating a total population of fifty to seventy-five persons.

The Pamlico tribe was the most southerly representative of the great Algonkian linguistic family whose tribal components stretched along the Atlantic seaboard from the icy wastes of Canada to the sound region of North Carolina. Through the efforts of the explorer, author, and founder of Bath, John Lawson, a small vocabulary of 37 Pamlico words has been preserved. From this we learn that weesoccon means rum; rig-cosq, tobacco; pungue, gunpowder; tosh-shonte, Englishman; gau hooptop, gun; chuwon, paint; and onnossa, a pine tree.

In 1709, the neighboring tribes included the Machapunga Indians, in

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present-day Tyrrell, Dare and Hyde counties, who could muster thirty fighting men from their single village of Mattamuskeet. In present day Pamlico County was the Bear or Bay River tribe with a fighting strength of fifty men. In the Core Sound and lower Neuse River area were the Coree and Neusiok tribes with a force of about forty men between them. Behind these coastal tribes, further up the Pamlico and Neuse Rivers and particularly in the region about Contentnea Creek, was the Tuscarora tribe, the dominant Indian nation of eastern Carolina with 1,200 to 1,400 warriors and a population of at least 5,000 souls in fifteen towns.

The story of the Pamlico tribe and the neighboring tribes during the period of the early settlement of the Pamlico will be told later. Prior to 1700 very little of the history of these tribes is known. Much of the story of these early inhabitants of Bath and its vicinity can be told only after a great deal of work by the scientifically trained archaeologist. Perhaps indicative that this much needed work is not far off were the preliminary explorations and diggings at Bath by two trained archaeologists from Louisiana State University during the summer of 1955.

While the Pamlico-Neuse region of North Carolina can boast of the State's oldest towns, it cannot claim the oldest permanent settlements. The cradle of North Carolina lies in the Albemarle Sound area where settlements about Salmon Creek in present-day Bertie County and along the many south-flowing rivers which empty into the Sound were begun sometime in the latter part of the 1650's. Thus when Charles II granted the region of Carolina to eight of his friends and debtors in 1663, the settlement of North Carolina had already begun. The charter of 1663 (as modified in 1665) granted to the eight Lords Proprietors an empire extending from 36 degrees to 29 degrees north latitude and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean with full and complete authority to govern this territory in their own best interests. In 1664 the Proprietors created the county of Albemarle, which came to include the territory bordering all sides of Albemarle Sound north to the Virginia line. This area, given its own governor and assembly, began to develop independently of the Proprietors’ settlements about Charleston in the county of Craven, separated as these two settlements were by almost impenetrable forests, swamps and rivers.

On October 21, 1676, the Lords Proprietors wrote their deputies and Assembly in the Albemarle that "the Rivers of Pamphleco and Newse should have bin before this welplanted." Neglect to do this had delayed closer relations between the Albemarle and the Charles Town settlements, and the Proprietors declared this "has bine the Cause that hitherto wee have had noe more Regard for you as looking upon you as a people that neither understood your own nor regarded our Interests." Despite these urgings and promptings of the Proprietors the movement southward could not be hurried, and it was not until late in the 1680's when large portions of the choicest lands in the Albemarle area began to be filled that interest in the lands which lay to the south of Albemarle began to develop.

The first persons to take an interest in this area were a few adventurous

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explorers and fur traders, but land speculators were not far behind. In 1681, Seth Sothel, a Proprietor and governor of Albemarle, issued to himself a patent for 12,000 acres of land on the Pamlico. Included in this area was the land along Old Town Creek (now Bath Creek) which included the future site of the town of Bath.

Not until the 1690's did the first settlers push their way into this virgin wilderness and begin the job of clearing fields and erecting homes. The removal of an immediate Indian menace, as a result of the plague (already noted) which decimated the ranks of the Pamtico tribe, aided and encouraged this settlement.

The Lords Proprietors in 1694 authorized Governor John Archdale "for ye Incouragement of settling those parts wch lye north of Cape Fear" to dispose of lands at moderate and reasonable rates so long as they were not below a half penny per acre.

Sometime prior to 1696, the Pamlico settlement became known as the Precinct of Pampticoe in the county of Archdale, but in that year the Governor and Palatines Court formally proclaimed that this region was hence-forth to be known as the county of Bath, in honor of the Proprietor, John, Earl of Bath. Orders were also issued at this time authorizing its inhabitants to elect two representatives to sit in the General Assembly of the province.

By the close of the century the lands along the Pamlico River were attracting settlers in ever increasing numbers. Along the creeks and waterways of the region houses and small fields became ever more frequent.

Close on the heels of the Pamlico settlement came the settlement of the region along the Neuse and Trent rivers. The first settlement in this area was made at the mouth of the Neuse on the north shore of that stream. This settlement was soon followed by a French Huguenot colony planted along the banks of the Trent. Plantations soon began to spread up both sides of the Neuse and Trent, and later in 1710, over 400 Swiss and Palatine colonists migrated into the region, under the leadership of Christoper Von Graffenried, where they founded the town of New Bern.

In 1708, the region embraced in present-day Carteret County began to attract settlers also. This settlement grew rapidly and many families moved into the area about North River which soon acquired the name of "the Core Sound" settlement.

Until the arrival of the German and Swiss settlers on the Neuse in 1710, the center of population in Bath County remained unmistakably on the Pamlico and its tributaries. One of the centers of this Pamlico settlement lay along the banks of Old Town Creek (now Bath Creek) where Joel Martin, Simon Alderson, David Perkins, William Barrow, William Brice, John Lawson, Levi Truewhite, David Depee, Richard Collins, Robert Daniel, John Burras, Collingwood Ward, and many others owned plantations in the years immediately following the turn of the century. Into this vicinity also, about 1704 or 1705, came a group of French Huguenots from Virginia where they had settled in 1699 at a place known as Mannakin Town on James River. Discontented over economic conditions there, this group moved into

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Bath County, attracted by its fertile and plentiful lands. Here they proved an industrious people noted for the excellent linen cloth and thread which they made and exchanged "amongst the Neighborhood" for other commodities which they desired. While some of these Huguenots appear to have settled permanently on the Pamlico River, the majority of them soon moved on to the Trent River where Von Graffenried and his colonists found them in 1710. Almost nothing is known of these French Huguenots and their settlement, and one authority has termed them the "Lost Colony" of the coastal midlands. (While legends persist of a French Huguenot settlement in Bath County about the year 1690, there is no available proof that such a settlement was ever made. It appears to have developed from a confusion of the French settlements in the first decade of the eighteenth century with plans advanced by Dr. Daniel Coxe of England, claimant under the Heath patent of 1629 to all of Carolina, to settle a group of French Huguenots on the Pamlico River in the 1690's. This plan, like so many of those advanced by Dr. Coxe, was never carried into effect.)

As Bath County became more populous, it was divided in 1705 into the three precincts of Pamptecough, Wickham, and Archdale. Sometime prior to 1712 the names of these precincts were changed in honor of three Proprietors to Beaufort, Hyde and Craven precincts respectively. From 1705, these precincts were each given the right to elect two representatives to the General Assembly.

From its first settlement, the possibilities of developing Bath County as a center of trade had been recognized. Roanoke and Currituck inlets, through which most of the seaborne trade entered the Albemarle area during the seventeenth century, had by the late 1690's become nearly choked with drifting sand. For this reason Ocracoke Inlet became ever more important as an entry into the Carolina sounds. As this inlet lay closer to Bath County than the Albemarle it was assumed that this region would become within a short while the commercial center of the colony. If a region hoped to develop commercially however it needed a city or town where shipping could concentrate and where business could be transacted with the minimum amount of trouble and inconvenience. Such a possible center of commercial activity was lacking in Bath County in the first years of the eighteenth century, and despite the close proximity of Ocracoke Inlet, the Albemarle region continued to dominate the commercial life of the colony.

To end this domination, plans were laid about 1704 by several of the planters and leaders about Old Town Creek (now Bath Creek) to establish a town which might be expected to develop in a short while into the commercial and political center of the colony.

Despite the Sothel grant of 1681, the land about Old Town Creek, which includes the site of Bath, had been treated as unpatented land and patents had been issued for this land by the North Carolina government either through ignorance of the Sothel patent or else in contempt of the same. The area which became a part of Bath was taken up and settled by David Perkins. On March 2, 1705/6, David Perkins received a patent from Governor Thomas

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[image: Pamlico River Indian Village. The Indian town of Secotan, depicted here, is believed to have been located on the south side of Pamlicl River in the 1580's. The Indian town of Cotan, a member of the Secotan Confederation, is thought to have been located on the site of Bath during this same period and in all probability resembled the town shown here in many respects. This engraving was made in 1590 by Theodore De Bry and was based upon the painting of this scene made by John White when he accompanied the Lane Colony to North Carolina in 1585. Fields of corn, tobacco, and pumpkins surround the town where some type of ceremony and a feast is being held.]

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Cary for one hundred and sixty acres of land on Old Town Creek adjoining the land of William Barrow. Six days later, on March 8, 1705/6, a portion of this grant was incorporated as the township of Bath by the General Assembly. The closeness of these two events makes it probable that the Perkins patent of March 2, was a regrant of an old patent, perhaps lost, to make certain that Perkins’ sale of a portion of this area for a town site was valid and legal in all possible respects. When Perkins sold the site of Bath is not known, but sometime, probably in 1704 or 1705, he transferred about sixty acres of his property to John Lawson, Joel Martin, Sr., and Simon Alderson, Sr. These men then proceeded to lay out a town and probably began to sell or give options on the town lots. The records are far from clear on this last point but what evidence is available indicates that lots had been sold or at least assigned before the incorporation of the town on March 8, 1705/6. Only a few of the names of these original lot holders in Bath can be ascertained today. About 1705, French Huguenots, evidently discontented members of the French Huguenot community of Mannakintown on James River in Virginia, migrated into the Pamlico settlements. It appears that a number of these recent arrivals in Bath County planned to make Bath Town their home. These included Dr. Maurice Luellyn, a Mon. Perdree and a Mons. Jardrian. That the town not to be entirely French in complexion is proven by the inclusion as early lot holders of Giles Shute, Nathaniel Wyersdale, John Lawson, Simon Alderson, David Perkins, Joel Martin, Jacob Carrow.

The only actual record of the transfer of a lot in Bath Town prior to the incorporation of the town was the sale by Simon Alderson, Jr., on February 11, 1705/6 of "a certain Lott in Bath Town formerly called Jacob Conrow's Lott lying about the middle of Town, a front lott and all the back ground." This sale was made to Nathaniel Wyersdale, a North Carolina merchant. What claim Jacob Conrow at one time possessed over this lot is not clear from the records. It is interesting however in showing that the name Bath Town had been chosen prior to its incorporation and was not arbitrarily chosen by the General Assembly at the time of the Act's Passage.

It became evident to the promoters of the new town that to function effectively their town must be incorporated. And, as has been noted, on March 8, 1705/6 the General Assembly meeting at the home of Captain John Hecklefield in the Albemarle passed an act incorporating this proposed town and creating a township to be known as Bath-Town "with divers privileges and immunities therein and thereby invested in . . . John Lawson, Joel Martin, and Nicholas Daw." The latter being the first commissioners of the Town of Bath. With the passage of this act Bath came into official being and began an uninterrupted existence which has continued down to this day.

When the idea for establishing Bath was first conceived and who was its originator is not known. The possibility is great however that the plan for a town on Old Town Creek and the impetus which carried it through was the work of one of its first commissioners, John Lawson. While little is known of the early life of Lawson, he is, nevertheless, one of the most remarkable men to grace the pages of colonial North Carolina history. It is believed that

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he came of the distinguished Lawson family of Yorkshire, England and in all probability he graduated from one of the English universities in the late seventeenth century. In 1700, being the year of Jubilee, Lawson decided to visit Rome, but becoming intrigued by an acquaintance's suggestion that he visit North Carolina, he embarked from England for Charlestown, where he arrived after a voyage in which he touched at New York. Arrived at Charlestown, he determined to follow the Indian trails of the interior into the North Carolina settlements with a few English companions and some Indian guides. Lawson undertook this remarkable journey, on account of which he later published. Lawson's journey ended when he reached the plantation of Richard Smith on the Pamlico. Once arrived in North Carolina, Lawson quickly adapted himself to the life of the frontier. He appears to have been possessed of some small amount of wealth and he acquired holdings throughout the Pamlico-Neuse region and emerges from the records as a successful planter, fur trader and surveyor. After the founding of Bath he made his home there building on the two lots he owned, and during the period from January, 1706/7, to August, 1708, served as Clerk of the Court and Public Register of Pampticough Precinct. Lawson appears to have had an inquiring mind and correspondence with Sir Hans Sloan, the great British scientist and father of the British Museum, about the natural history of North Carolina, has been preserved to this day.

In August, 1708, Lawson returned to England where he prepared his journal of his trip through the interior of Carolina, along with a description of North Carolina's land, history, settlers, flora and fauna, and Indian inhabitants. This work was published, in 1709, as A New Voyage to Carolina and remains today the one significant contribution of a North Carolinian to the literature of colonial America. That same year Lawson returned to the colony with a commission from the Lords Proprietors as Surveyor General of North Carolina. On his return voyage Lawson was in charge of the Palatine settlers on their way to found the settlement at New Bern. Two years after his return Lawson suffered death at the hands of the Indians, an event which will be noted later.

The two remaining commissioners of Bath Town--Joel Martin and Nicholas Daw --were not of the calibre of Lawson but were respected planters and pioneer settlers in the Pamlico region. Martin had a plantation along Old Town Creek on which he appears to have lived.

Although specific evidence is not at hand there can be little doubt that John Lawson laid out the town of Bath. The original plan which has been lost appears to have called for seventy-one lots, each of which contained one acre and four poles. Despite the provision in the act of incorporation of 1705 only the street, known as Front Street, which paralleled Old Town Creek, reached the 100 feet in width required by the act of incorporation. The exact plan of the town in this early period has been lost but in all probability was quite similar to some of the later surveys which survive to this day. Adjoining the Northern boundaries of the town and fronting along Old Town Creek was Bath Town Common, which served as park, pasture, and

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woodlot for the citizens of the town. East of the town and apparently adjoining it was a glebe of nearly 300 acres granted by the Lords Proprietors in 1706 to the parish of St. Thomas to encourage the settlement of a minister of the Church of England at Bath. This was the first and one of the few valuable glebes ever established in North Carolina. (Glebes were farms set aside for the use of ministers in colonial America.)

With the town formally incorporated and official authority lodged in the three commissioners to sell lots, the sale of lots proceeded vigorously. Although Nicholas Daw was named a commissioner of the town by the act of incorporation, he appears to have taken little part in the affairs of the town or at least in the sale of lots as nearly all conveyances of lots were made under the signatures of John Lawson and Joel Martin, Sr. The first sale of lots under the terms of the act of incorporation, which the records disclose, was made on September 27, 1706. On this date conveyances were entered to thirteen different individuals. By the end of October at least twenty-five individuals owned lots in Bath. The names of these early lot holders are worthy of being preserved. They included: Nathaniel Wyersdale, Richard Odeon, Jr., Maurice Luellyn, Thomas Cary, Christopher Gale, George Birkenhead, Thomas Peterson, John Porter, John Worsley, John Lawson, David Perkins, Henry Robinson, Simond Worsley, Nicholas Daw, James Beard, Daniel Mathews, Otho Russel, Giles Shute, Lyonell Reading, Thomas Sparrow, Thomas Worsley, James Walsh, Edmund Pearces, Joel Martin and one Capt. Raymond.

Throughout the next few years Lawson and Martin continued to convey lots to individuals and some of the early landowners in turn sold their lots to others. These early Bath landowners were an interesting cross-section of colonial North Carolina society. In this group was a governor, Thomas Cary; many merchants such as Nathaniel Wyersdale, Thomas Sparrow, Thomas Peterson, James Beard, and John Robinson who saw this as a future commercial center; a later Chief Justice of North Carolina, Christopher Gale; the author and explorer, John Lawson; the physician and "Chirurgeon," Dr. Maurice Luellyn; citizens of Albemarle County, Maryland and Philadelphia ; and several prominent pioneers and planters of the Pamlico region] and John Jordan, a cooper by trade.

One of the most difficult things to determine about the first few years of Bath's existence is the names of those who actually lived in the town. Many of the early lot owners never made their homes or conducted their businesses in Bath. John Lawson, Dr. Maurice Luellyn, Giles Shute, Nathaniel Wyersdale, John Jordan and perhaps David Perkins, Thomas Roper, Richard Odeon and John Mackay, Jr., are the only residents of Bath whose names have survived to the present.

Life in the town during its first years must have been colorful and interesting. By 1708 the town could boast about twelve houses which indicates a population of fifty to sixty souls. The houses with their outbuildings, probably wood frame construction, straggled along Front Street. John Lawson's home lot and perhaps those of others were enclosed by a fence. A "town

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pen," perhaps located on Bath Town Common, was maintained where the cattle and horses of Bath's citizens could be kept, although rooting hogs were plentiful enough to play havoc with the town's streets and lots.

In the creek in front of the town at various times rode ships of the mother country and her colonies. From these ships came the necessary staples which the citizens of Bath and the surrounding plantation owners purchased in exchange for their provisions, pork, hides, furs, tobacco, lumber products, and naval stores. Here at Bath, beginning in the October term of 1706, were held the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions for all of Bath County. At these times settlers from all parts of the vast Pamlico-Neuse area gathered to plead their cases. Even at this early date inns and taverns were being operated in Bath although the accommodations proved too few during court days. Sometime before 1712, the citizens along the Neuse River complained of the inconveniences of attending Court at Bath and petitioned for the right to establish their own Court on the Neuse.

". . . to Ease us of that long and tedgous (tedious) journey to Bath Town where we are forct to Expost our Selves and our neighbours to a great deale of Charg and inconveniance for passage over ye River and when wee with a great deale of hardship doo cum there ye ordinary (tavern or inn) keepers have not beads (beds) to Lodge us in which constrains us either to be burthinsum to yet gentel-men in town or Else to lay by ye fire side which y’ Honrs cannot chuse but imagine to be great Hardship."

Merchants maintained small stores, probably in their homes, where the bare staples could be purchased. Indians loaded with furs which they sought to exchange for cloth, trinkets, rum, guns, powder, and lead must have been a common sight at this time on Front Street. Social life in Bath at this period must have been of the most simple kind, for Bath in this period was a frontier settlement, a mere clearing amidst the forests of eastern Carolina. It was the Dodge City, Abilene, and St. Joseph of its day. There were men of education and refinement in Bath and its vicinity from the first, but most were hardy pioneer stock oftentimes unable to write their name but past masters at wresting a living from a stump-filled clearing.

The chief business of Bath in the earliest days was trade, but now and then a cooper or a shoemaker plied their trades along Front Street and Dr. Maurice Luellyn doubtless found an urgent need for his ministrations. Here, too, a young attorney found work in the courts of the county and province. In 1707, industry came to Bath in the form of a horse-mill which Dr. Maurice Luellyn, John Lawson, and Christopher Gale erected on a lot in Bath owned by Gale. These three citizens of Bath entered into an agreement that no owner would grind any grain but what was properly for his own family's use nor grant permission for anyone else to grind their grain at the mill without the consent of the other owners.

Despite their ability to boast the colony's only glebe the citizens of Bath were unable to attract a minister and only an occasional clergyman on his

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[image: Queen Anne. Last of the Stuart line to occupy the throne of England, Queen Anne has long been considered the patron saint of Bath, for it was during her reign that the town was founded in 1705. Local tradition states that the bell of St. Thomas Church, cast in 1732, was given to the church as a result of a purchase made possible by funds she bequested to charitable purposes in her will. She died in 1714.]

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way through the province, bound for other plantations, was seen in early Bath. This plight and the makeshift solution was described by the Rev. Benjamin Dennis who stayed at Bath for a few days en route to his parish in South Carolina. He wrote:

". . . During my stay here I lodged at one Major Gale's, a very civil gentleman, at whose house the people met each Sunday, where a young gentleman, a lawyer, was appointed to read prayers and a sermon, they having no minister. I understood they had a gentleman sent them by the honorable society, but he could not live among such an unaccountable sort of people, and was removed up in the country."

While ministers found living in Bath a difficult undertaking and religion failed to flourish to any great extent, the town boasted a unique possession for a frontier settlement--a public library--the first and for many years the only one in North Carolina. The library was actually five years older than the town. In 1700 the Reverend Doctor Thomas Bray, the Anglican founder of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, had purchased the library from funds which he had collected for the express purpose of establishing libraries and supporting missionaries in the colonies. At the urging of some person whose identity is unknown to this day, Dr. Bray was prevailed upon to prepare a library for North Carolina's newest parish--St. Thomas --and at the same time dispatch a missionary to the colony. Bray chose as missionary the Reverend Daniel Brett , who was promised a salary of £50 per annum, and on December 2, 1700, Bray turned over to him for delivery in the colony a library valued at £50. Early in 1701, Brett delivered the library safely to the inhabitants of St. Thomas Parish and sometime in 1701 or 1702 the General Assembly passed a law designed to preserve and protect the new library, a law which unfortunately has not been preserved.

The library was actually planned as two libraries, one being termed the parochial library and designed to meet the needs of the minister of the parish, and the other, the layman's library, designed to aid the spiritual welfare of the parishioners. In actuality the two libraries appear to have been combined soon after their arrival, and reference is always made to them as a single unit. The parochial library contained 153 titles in 176 volumes, while the "Layman's Library" contained 36 titles in 874 volumes. A large number of the volumes in the "Layman's Library" were mere tracts or pamphlets which could be given away or loaned out at the discretion of the minister. There were one hundred copies each of seven of the titles and five to twenty copies of the great majority of the rest. Only seven of the titles in the "Layman's Library" were represented by one volume. All of the thirty-six titles in the "Layman's Library" dealt with religious topics or problems. Representative titles included: Serious Invitation of the Quakers to Return to Christianity (100 copies), Earnest Exhortations to the Religious Observations of ye Lord's Day (100 copies), Short Discourses of the Doctrine of ye Baptismal Covenant (20 copies), and Dr. Ashton on Deathbed Repentance (5 copies).

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It was the 153 titles in the parochial library which formed the backbone of the Bath library and made it the envy of the rest of the parishes of North Carolina. This was a carefully selected library designed to enable the minister of a lonely colonial parish, in the words of Dr. Bray, "to Instruct his people in all things necessary to Salvation." To Bray this meant a well-rounded library, rich not only in works of a religious nature, but containing as well the classics, biographies, general literature, history, descriptive works and geographies. It was with such an idea in mind that the parochial library of Bath was collected and prepared. While a majority of the works are religious in nature and specifically designed to aid the minister in his study of the Bible, in the preparation of his sermons, and in his general ministry, many of the works deal with such varied topics as history, biography, natural science, medicine, geography, classical literature, poetry, heraldry, sports, and general literature.

The volumes dealing with religion were chiefly those of the leading seventeenth century Anglican divines and included many of the collected works and sermons of the more noted ministers and scholars. Some of these were: The Works of Joseph Mede, George Gowname's A Treatise of Justification, John Wilkin's Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions Before the King, at White-hall, and Nathaniel Whaley's two sermons: To aid the Church of England ministers in their fight against the Quakers, known to be strong in North Carolina, Bray included such works as Charles Leslie's The Snake in the Grass and the ex-Quaker George Keith's The Arguments of the Quakers . . . Against Baptism and the Supper Examined and Refuted. Also included were such aids to the ministers as Bibles, commentaries, Latin and Greek lexicons, and dictionaries.

Most interesting, however, were the non-religious works which formed a good portion of the library. Here the library user could find such varied titles as Lewes Roberts’ defense of mercantilism, The Merchants Mappe of Commerce; John Guillim's A Display of Heraldry, travel and geographical works such as LeConte's Memoirs and Observations . . . Made in a Late Journey Through the Empire of China and Bernhard Voren's Descriptio Regni Japoniae et Siam and Nasen's Geographia Generalis; Nicholas Cox's The Gentleman's Recreation . . . Hunting, Hawking, Fowling, Fishing; Gilbert Burnet's Abridgement of the History of the Reformation of the Church of England; Thomas Sprat's True Account . . . of the Horrid Conspiracy Against the Late King (Charles II); Edmund Wingate's Abridgement of all Statutes in Force and Use; LeGrand's Historia Naturae, Variis Experimentis et Ratiouniis Eleicidatae; and the works of such classical authors as Horace, Virgil and Epsitetus.

The books in this rich and cosmopolitan collection were neatly bound in gold tooled leather. Each volume bore the gold stamped inscription on its cover: "Belonging to ye Library of St. Thomas Parish in Pamplico." While the library quickly became the pride of St. Thomas Parish, the choice of Daniel Brett, as missionary to North Carolina, proved a disastrous one. For the first six months of his ministry, Brett appears to have performed his

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functions with propriety and usefulness. Little is known of his ministry in this period, and it is uncertain whether he officiated in St. Thomas Parish. The only record of his performance of any of his ministerial functions are accounts of two marriages at which he officiated in Berkeley (Pasquotank) precinct in August and November, 1701.

Within a short while, however, this first Anglican missionary to North Carolina destroyed by his own behaviour what power for good he had in the colony and disturbed and confounded the friends of the Anglican church. What his failings were are unknown, but they led Governor Henderson Walker to write the Bishop of London that Brett, whom he called "ye Monster of ye Age," had acted "in a most horrid manner" and adopted "such an extravagant course that I am ashamed to express his carriage, it being in so high a nature." Bray himself, later likened him to one of "the Sons of the Devil."

Meanwhile the library, each of the books of which was unmistakably the property of St. Thomas Parish, found itself in a region without minister or church. Where it was housed on its arrival and where it was housed after the establishment of Bath is not known. There is a possibility that during its early years it found refuge in the home of Christopher Gale either in his house in Bath or on his plantation, "Kirby Grange," located just outside Bath. The long arm of coincidence was surely at work if this be true, for one of the volumes of the library, Opuscula Mythologica, Ethica et Physica was edited by Thomas Gale, Dean of York, and the uncle of Christopher Gale.

Loud and long were the cries of the more populous Albemarle region, which felt that this older and richer section deserved the honor and pleasure of possessing the library. With the outbreak of the Indian War of 1711, which threatened to overwhelm and destroy everything in Bath County, the ministers and vestrymen of the Albemarle turned from pleas to demands that the library be transferred to their care, and dire were the predictions made if such was not done.

In 1713 the vestry of St. Paul's in Chowan precinct wrote: "The first Library of great Value sent us by the Direction of the Reverend Dr. Bray thro’ an unhappy inscription on the Back of the Books or Title page. Vizt Belonging to the parish of St. Thomas of Pamlico in the then rising but now miserable County of Bath falsely supposed to be the Seat of the Government was lodged there and by that means rendered useless to the Clergy, for whose service it was chiefly intended, and in what Condition We Know not. We fear the worst by Reason of the late war."

In 1714, the Reverend John Vormston of Chowan precinct, who coveted the library for himself, wrote: "The famous Library sent in by Dr. Brays direction is in a great measure destroyed I am told the books are all unbound and have served for some time for waste paper." Later in the same year, he elaborated on this theme when he declared: "We expect to hear that famous city of Bath consisting of 9 houses or rather cottages once stiled the Metropolis & Seat of Government will be totally deserted & yet I cannot find means to secure that admirable collection of Books sent in by the Revd Dr.

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Bray for the use of the Ministry of this Province but it will in all probability serve for a Bonfire to the Indians. . . ."

Despite these predictions of doom and destruction, the library at Bath survived the dreadful holocaust of Indian warfare. Indeed nothing testifies so adequately to the esteem in which the citizens of Bath held their library than this fact. For amidst the destruction and death which was Bath County's lot, for nearly four years, with loving care and probably much sacrifice, the library was kept essentially intact.

Recognizing the need for continued care if the library was to remain essentially intact and useful the General Assembly in the revisal of 1715 again made provision for the library and enacted a law which in all probability was similar in its essentials to the earlier library law.

This law established a commission or board of trustees to supervise and watch over the Bath library. It was composed of Charles Eden, Christopher Gale, Tobias Knight, Edward Moseley, Daniel Richardson, Fred Jones, John Porter, Joel Martin, John Drinkwater, John Clark, Patrick Maule, Thomas Worsley, Lionel Reading, James Lee, and Thomas Harding. All of these were ex officio appointments. The first held important provincial offices and the last five were members of the precinct court or justices of the peace.

These trustees were to supervise a library keeper whom they were to name. The library keeper was to have charge of the books and the lending of them. He was to prepare several catalogues of the collection and on Easter Monday each year the trustees were to check the books of the library against the catalogue to make certain that none had been lost. The library keeper was directed to keep a journal and record the removal of any book from and the time of its return. Folio work could be kept out for four months, quartos for two months, and octavos for eight months.

Despite the provisions of this law, the Reverend John Vormston continued to work to obtain the Bath library for his own use, but he found that the citizens of Bath were determined to retain possession of their own. Led by Christopher Gale they thwarted his every move. When rumor of a threatened Indian attack (later proved false) reached him in 1718, he wrote his superiors once more: . . . "I am denied one of the greatest comforts of Life in Conversation, with either the living or the dead, the Library at Pamptichoe, sent in for the use of the Clergymen by Dr. Bray in all appearance will be to all destroyed, that place being abandoned and so will all the country be in a short time, for fear of 7 or 8 Indians, the remnants of some of the towns . . . destroyed in the late War, who with the assistance of some from the North and South, do great mischief and threaten the whole colony. . ."

The career of the library during the remainder of the colonial period is not known despite the elaborate precautions for its preservation and use. Who its caretaker was and where it was lodged in Bath are now unknown. Its ultimate fate is uncertain and by the 1760's at least it appears to have passed from existence. Probably the library was gradually reduced book by book through losses and normal wear and tear. As no replacements were

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[image: Dr. Thomas Bray. This famous minister of the Church of England, founder of three great missionary and benevolent societies, in the 1700, sent to St. Thomas Parish in Bath County the library, eventually located in Bath Town, which has been termed the first public library in North Carolina. One of the missionary societies which he founded, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, maintained at least three missionaries in Bath during the colonial period.]

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ever made the library gradually wasted away and eventually ceased to exist, the last of its books probably merging with the personal effects of its final caretaker.

Today only one volume of this library is known to exist. It is Gilbert Towerson's Application of the Church Catechism, a folio edition printed in London in 1685. This volume was discovered by the Reverend R. B. Windley of Bunyan, N. C., in the 1880's and presented as a gift to the Episcopal Diocese of East Carolina in 1890. It was first exhibited to the public at Tarboro in May, 1890. Thus that "admirable collection of Books sent in by the Revd Dr. Bray" has now been reduced to a single volume, yet this simple religious work will stand as a monument to a frontier library beloved and cherished through many vicissitudes by a frontier people.

The Pamlico settlement and the little town of Bath were not allowed the opportunity to develop themselves quietly and peacefully for both rebellion and Indian warfare soon turned the area into a battleground. Indeed the town was born amidst the strife which eventually culminated in the armed rebellion known to history as Cary's Rebellion.

The quarrel which rocked the North Carolina colony and led to this rebellion was essentially a religious conflict with political overtones. In 1672, George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends or Quakers, visited Albemarle County and established his church there. In the years which followed, this church grew and became strongly entrenched in the colony, where for several decades it was the sole representative of organized religion. In 1694 with the appointment of the Quaker, John Archdale, as governor, this church came to dominate all branches of the government. Those who professed the Anglican faith felt that they were being discriminated against in political matters. In 1699, a zealous friend of the Church of England, Henderson Walker, became governor, and in 1700, he induced the General Assembly to pass a vestry act establishing the Church of England as the colony's official church, for whose support taxes were to be levied on the inhabitants. At almost the same time Queen Ann came to the throne, thus necessitating the renewing of various oaths of loyalty and the like by the colony's officials and Assemblymen. The Quakers, unable to swear to an oath, offered to affirm as they had done in the past. This the friends of Anglican establishment now in power refused to accept as sufficient, thereby barring all Quakers from any public office in the colony. On these and similar issues the colony quickly split into two parties--the Church party which supported the establishment and the Quaker party which opposed it. Matters went from bad to worse, and politics became increasingly bitter as time went on. In 1705, the well known South Carolinian, Thomas Cary, was named governor. He quickly showed a marked preference for the Church party and its cause and harried the Quakers into sending Emanuel Low to England to secure his removal from office. Low accomplished his mission, but on returning to North Carolina found Cary in South Carolina and William Glover, president of the council, acting in his stead. It became clear to Low that Glover was a far more ardent supporter of the establishment than Cary,

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and he withheld the Lords Proprietors order removing Cary from office. Cary, meanwhile, switched his allegiance to the Quaker party, and in 1708, he managed to oust Glover from office and force him and the more ardent supporters of the Church party to flee to Virginia. From 1708 to 1710, Cary and the Quaker party dominated the political life of the colony.

In January, 1711, Edward Hyde arrived in North Carolina claiming the governorship of the colony. While his commission as governor had not been technically perfected, Cary and the Quaker party seemed at first willing to have him assume the office, but when Hyde began to pursue a policy hostile to the Quaker interest soon after taking office, Cary refused to recognize him and claimed the governorship as legally his until such time as Hyde could produce his commission.

With this, the colony, already at fever pitch after years of the most bitter political and religious strife, split into two armed camps, and open warfare quickly ensued.

The Pamlico settlements and the little town of Bath, born amidst these troubles, quickly found themselves enmeshed in this web of factionalism. For Thomas Cary, about whose head the struggle raged, maintained his home and plantation on the Pamlico, and as an original lot holder of Bath was so closely identified with the town that it was often referred to as "the seat of government" during his governorship. Many of the inhabitants of Bath County were his loyal supporters and rallied to his side when arguments and legal processes failing, Governor Hyde declared him in open rebellion and determined to seize Cary by force.

Having resolved upon this policy, Hyde proceeded to gather an armed force which he considered sufficient to undertake this mission and assembled eighty men under arms at his home in the Salmon Creek area of present day Bertie County. On May 27, 1711, he crossed Albemarle Sound and entered the Roanoke River where he rendezvoused with seventy more men on its south shore. After a two day march this force arrived on the Pamlico River at the home of Colonel Cary who meanwhile had fled to the home of one "Colonel Daniels," only a short way down the river. (While identification is uncertain this was in all probability the plantation home of the former governor, Robert Daniel, located at Archbell's Point on Bath Creek.) On the 29th of May, Hyde and his armed force advanced on Daniel's home which had been well fortified with five pieces of cannon and contained about forty armed men. Hyde found the place too strong to storm, and after a futile attempt to persuade their surrender, he retired from the field and returned to the Albemarle region on June 1.

The failure of Hyde to take Colonel Cary heartened Cary's followers, and large numbers now rallied to his side. Cary proceeded to fit out a brigantine of six guns and several smaller vessels, declared himself the true governor of the colony, and on June 30, 1711, began an attack on Hyde and his council at the home of Colonel Thomas Pollock on the Chowan River with his armed brigantine. The followers of Hyde had only sixty men under arms and two cannon and affairs looked dark for them when two strong

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landing parties from the brigantine headed for shore. At this moment a lucky shot from one of the two cannon on shore severed the brigantine's mast and so frightened the Cary forces that they cut their anchor and sailed away.

Hyde then dispatched some of his best men in a sloop to overtake the brigantine. When this expedition entered the sound, they found the brigantine beached with only three men aboard, the remainder having fled in confusion to their homes. The brigantine was seized with all her guns and ammunition and the strength of Cary was thereby dealt a severe blow. However, Cary, with the aid of a recent arrival from England, Richard Roach, fortified an island in the Pamlico and began to gather and arm another large force of men. An attempt by the Hyde party to drive him out failed, and the cause of Colonel Cary momentarily brightened.

Meanwhile, Governor Alexander Spottswood of Virginia had determined to come to the aid of the Hyde faction, and militia were readied to march into Carolina. A company of royal marines from the guardships in Chesapeake Bay were immediately dispatched to the aid of Hyde in mid-July, 1711.

The Virginia militia were never sent into North Carolina for the arrival of the marines completely unnerved the followers of Colonel Cary, who, while willing to contest with Hyde for power, were unwilling to fire upon the royal standard and thereby become subject to a charge of treason against the Queen. Cary and his chief lieutenants fled their fortified homes on the Pamlico River and retired to Virginia, where they were seized and sent in chains to England. Here Cary's friends were able to secure his freedom and shortly thereafter he returned to Carolina where he soon slips into obscurity.

The disrupting effects of the Cary Rebellion on the life of Bath and the Pamlico region can hardly be exaggerated. As the stronghold of the Cary faction, the Pamlico area throughout the spring and summer of 1711 was in a constant turmoil. Many Bath citizens, such as George Birkenhead, Levi Truewhite, Thomas Sparrow, Simon Alderson, Jr., and John Porter, were among Cary's chief lieutenants. From 1708, until the collapse of Cary's Rebellion in July of 1711, the courts and government in general ceased to function. One observer noted that plundering and destruction had ruined many during the civil strife while on every side one could hear "the complaints of the poor men & families, who have been so long in arms that they have lost their crops & will want bread." Where crops were planted and tended, a severe drought during the summer of 1711 had severely damaged their yield. To add to the hardship and suffering of this fearful summer, yellow fever raged through the colony, bringing death to many.

Yet amidst these troubles, still more ominous clouds were gathering on the horizon, and a storm which would all but obliterate Bath County and "that famous city of Bath" was about to break. The scourge of all exposed frontier areas--Indian massacre and war--hung over the fever-racked settlers.

From the first, there had been an Indian problem in Bath County. While disease had broken the power of the Pampticough tribe in the neighborhood

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of Bath, there remained many other small tribes scattered throughout Bath County. Behind these small tribes lay the powerful Tuscarora, an Iroquoian tribe closely connected to the Five Nations in New York. The movement of settlers into Bath County and up the Pamlico and Neuse rivers had been watched with fear and resentment by the Tuscarora and the smaller tribes in this area. Favorite hunting grounds were being overrun and choice village sites were becoming sites for the settlers’ towns.

While the chief danger to the settlers from Indian attacks came from the populous Tuscarora, the first resistance the land-hungry settlers of Bath County faced came from the smaller tribes into whose territory they first moved. The first to resist the advancing tide of civilization were the Core and Nynee Indians who lived south of the Neuse River. In 1703 they were declared public enemies by the Carolina government which undertook to carry on a war against them. While the records of this war have been lost, the Indians evidently suffered defeat, for the next time they come upon the pages of history, they have moved into the interior where the Tuscarora have granted them land only six miles from one of their chief towns.

Throughout Bath County during the first decade of the eighteenth century rumors of Indian plots and conspiracies constantly disturbed the settlers. In 1703 Lionel Reading wrote that an Indian had told one settler that several villages had "fully resolved to make trail (trial) of it for to see which is the ardiest." The next year word spread that some of the Tuscarora towns near the Pamlico settlement were becoming unusually friendly with the Bear River Indians with the apparent intention of inciting them to attack the whites. About this same time the Machapunga Indians began a policy designed to annoy and harass the settlers, which took the form of threats, hog-stealing, and actual assault on one settler. The settler did not fail to note that the Machapunga moved their village "nigh a wildnernesse where upon the least Intimation they can easily repair without being pursued."

Throughout this period the Bear River and Machapunga Indians continued their petty annoyances, and petitions continued to go out from the settlers to the government begging that something be done to ease the situation. Little seems to have been done, however, for the settlers remained a prey to roving bands of Indians who would come into a settler's home, ransack his house, kill his hogs, and assault him if he protested.

In 1707, Robert Kingham reported that the settlers on the Pamlico told him that "they expected ye Indians every day to come and cutt their throat and yet they had no person to head ym [them] or Else they would goe and secure all ye Pamticough Indians."

It can be seen from the foregoing paragraphs that relations between the early white settlers and the Indians were not as sweet, peaceful, and friendly as many North Carolina historians have pictured. The Indians from the very first resented the colonists’ encroachment upon their domain and used every means in their power to show this resentment, at times resorting to out and out war. The Tuscarora, by all odds the dominant Indian power in North Carolina, had from the first watched the steadily growing settlements

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[image: Bath Library Catalogue. This shows the first page of the manuscript catalogue of the parochial library sent to St. Thomas Parish in 1700, through the efforts of the Reverend Dr. Thomas Bray. This page lists some of the folio works in this collection of 176 volumes. Valued at [pounds]50, this library was for many years the pride of Bath. The manuscript catalogue of the library has been preserved among the records of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts in London, England. It is here reproduced for the first time.]

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with distrust and had resented each movement into a new area. When the tide of civilization flowed into the Pamlico-Neuse region, they saw the handwriting on the wall. It was now evident that they must make a stand or gradually be inundated, and by the summer of 1711 the decision was reached to destroy the whites.

Other factors entered into this decision of the Indians. Perhaps no other one thing contributed more to their hatred and resentment of the settlers of Bath County than the kidnapping and enslavement of their people by the whites. This had reached such proportions by 1710 that the Tuscarora sought permission of the government of Pennsylvania to settle in that colony so that their children born and those soon to be born might have room to sport and play without danger of slavery. In their quaint phrases, they begged "a cessation from murdering and taking them, that by the allowance thereof, they may not be afraid of a moose, or any other thing that Ruffles the Leaves."

Closely akin to this problem was the ill-feeling and misunderstanding which accompanied the Indian trade. The natives found that the Indian traders were hard men who drove hard bargains. The Indians quickly came to realize that the whites were daily cheating them in their transactions, for the traders, Lawson tells us, esteemed it "a Gift of Christianity not to sell to them so cheap as [they did] to the Christians." The traders, knowing the Indians’ weakness for strong drink, often got the Indians drunk as a means of defrauding and stripping them of their property. One observer reports that the Indians were never "contented with a little, but when once begun, they must make themselves quite drunk; otherwise they will never rest, but sell all they have in the World, rather than not have their full dose."

Certainly another fundamental reason for their decision to take up the tomahawk was the indignities and humiliations to which the white settlers subjected them. The Indians were a proud, dignified, and lordly people and unaccustomed to the condescending and oftentimes insulting treatment which they received at the hands of the whites. Just a few days before they sought their bloody revenge their only complaint to a settler, who had been unfortunate enough to fall into their hands, was that they "had been very badly treated and detained by the inhabitants of the Pamtego, Neuse and Trent Rivers, a thing which was not to be longer endured." That the whites, who looked upon the Indians "with Scorn and Disdain" and considered them "little better than Beasts in Human Shape," eventually felt their wrath cannot be too surprising.

During the summer of 1711, the inhabitants of North Carolina were far too plagued with rebellion, drought, and disease to observe the actions of the Indians closely. There had been one alarm during the summer when word spread that the followers of Cary were attempting to incite the Tuscarora to fall on the followers of Governor Hyde. This both Cary and the Indians vehemently denied, and it was quickly forgotten.

While it is very doubtful that Cary, or any of his followers invited the Indians to take the warpath, there can be little question that the Indians

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saw the confusion which the rebellion created as the opportune moment for them to strike.

The Indians began their plotting in complete secrecy and until the moment they struck no hint of their plans reached the settlers. The chief leader in the conspiracy appears to have been King Hancock, chief of the Tuscarora town of Catechna. Acting in accord with the chief men of the other tribes in the Pamlico-Neuse area, Hancock was able to persuade the Bay River, Machapunga, Neusiok, Coree, Woccon, and Pampticough tribes to join in the plans. These tribes together had a fighting force of about 250 men. Hancock, himself, was able to furnish about 250 Tuscarora, although the greater portion of the Tuscarora under the leadership of Chief Tom Blunt refused to join him. The plans of the hostiles called for the massacre of all settlers and the complete destruction of every plantation in Bath County. It was agreed among the conspirators that the attack was to fall without warning at dawn on September 22, 1711.

As these plans were maturing, the ever adventurous John Lawson persuaded Christopher Von Graffenried, leader of the Swiss and Palatine colonists at New Bern, and Christopher Gale, receiver-general of the colony, his friend and neighbor at Bath, to accompany him on an exploring trip up the Neuse. At the last moment Christopher Gale was forced to withdraw from the expedition to return to Bath where his wife and brother had been stricken by yellow fever.

Despite Gale's withdrawal, Lawson and Von Graffenried set out in a canoe up the Neuse accompanied by two Negro slaves and two Indians from the neighborhood of New Bern about the 10th or 12th of September. On the second or third day out about dusk the small party was suddenly surrounded by a force of sixty armed Indians who seized them and carried them captive to the nearby Tuscarora town of Catechna, King Hancock's town and the center of the conspiracy. Here they were carried before King Hancock who ordered them held until a council could decide their fate. On the following night a great assembly or war council was held to which chiefs from many neighboring villages came. The two white men were given seats in the council ring, questioned as to the motive of their trip, and then, after much deliberation by the council, informed that they might go free on the morrow.

The next morning as Lawson and Von Graffenried were preparing to leave, some chiefs, who had not been present at the council the night before arrived and demanded the privilege of questioning them further. At this point Lawson became involved in a violent quarrel with Cor Tom, a chief of Coree Town who had long been known for his unfriendly feeling toward the whites. As a result of this quarrel, Lawson and Von Graffenried were seized, bound, and carried back to the council ring of the night before. There another council hastily condemned the two to death.

That night a great execution dance was held. The prisoners were placed beside a large fire and a conjurer or medicine man began prancing before them muttering conjurations and threats. Behind this group stood two rows

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of armed guards. Around all danced the painted whom Graffenried later described as looking "more like a troop of devils than like other creatures; if one represents the devil in the most terrible shape that can be thought of. . . ."

Meanwhile Graffenried's threats of reprisals by the Queen of England if he were harmed had alarmed the Indians and they sought the council of Chief Tom Blunt as to what course they should follow. Blunt advised them to spare Von Graffenried but to do as they willed with Lawson. Acting upon this advice the Catechna council determined that Von Graffenried might live, but Lawson must die. Graffenried was then led away from the terrible scene and imprisoned in a hut, being unable to make even a sign to the condemned Lawson, who throughout the ordeal had maintained a stoical silence.

While Graffenried was kept a prisoner within the hut, John Lawson, father of "that famous city of Bath," was executed. The manner in which Lawson was killed was kept from Von Graffenried although he appears to think Lawson's throat was cut with a razor he had carried on the trip. One of the Negro slaves whose life had been spared reported that he was hanged. Another account says Lawson was stuck full of small lightwood splinters and set gradually on fire, a method of execution which Lawson had described in great detail in his history of Carolina.

Meanwhile Von Graffenried was informed of the Indian's plans for their attack on the Bath County settlement. Von Graffenried, unable to stop the massacre, was held in close captivity and eventually released several weeks later.

Three or four days after the death of Lawson about five hundred fighting men gathered at Catechna. From this village they went out to attack the settlements on the Pamlico, Neuse and Trent rivers and in the Core Sound region. These little groups filtered into the settlements in which they were well known and where their presence would not arouse suspicion. Here among the settlers who looked on many of them as members of their family, the Indians awaited the fatal hour with what Christopher Gale says was "smiles in their countenances, when their intent was to destroy." Daybreak on Saturday, September 22, was the signal for the attack. At that time the painted and befeathered warriors struck simultaneously along the Neuse and Pamlico river systems. One description of the Indians bedecked for war says that about one eye was a circle of black and about the other was a circle of white, all of which was designed to terrify their enemy and to keep their identity hidden. The Indians were well armed with guns and ammunition and made short work of those taken at the first surprise. Men, women, and children, regardless of age or condition fell victim to their vengeance. Houses were pillaged and burned, crops were trampled and destroyed, and livestock driven off or killed. Looting and killing, the Indians devastated Bath County, particularly about the head of the Neuse and along the south side of the Pamlico River.

Tradition states that the home of John Porter, Jr., at the head of Choco-

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winity Bay on the Pamlico was among the first houses attacked and that Porter and Dr. Patrick Maule, who was visiting him at the time were able to beat off the Indians and make their escape with the women and children in a boat. Many of the people butchered were also mutilated by the Indians. The family of a Mr. Nevil, who probably resided near the mouth of Blounts Creek on the Pamlico River, were treated in a barbarous manner by the Indians. Mr. Nevil, "after being shot, was laid on the house-floor, with a clean pillow under his head, his stockings turned over his shoes, and his body covered with new linen. His wife was set upon her knees, and her hands lifted up as if she was at prayers, leaning against a chair in the chimney corner, and her coats turned up over her head. A son of his was laid out in the yard with a pillow laid under his head and a bunch of rosemary laid to his nose." Even the Negro slaves were not spared, for a slave belonging to Mr. Nevil was killed and his right hand cut off. The nearest neighbor of Nevil's was shot and his body laid upon his wife's grave. Gale says that "women were laid on the house floors and great stakes driven up through their bodies. Pregnant women had the unborn children ripped out and hung upon trees."

Amid such scenes of brutality the whites who had survived the first onslaught fled their homes and gathered together at some reasonably defensible point. Bath Town, New Bern and the Brice plantation on the Trent were soon filled with refugees. For about three days the Indians burned, plundered, and killed without molestation from the survivors who dared not to venture out to bury the dead who were left prey for dogs, wolves, and vultures.

At last, loaded with plunder and prisoners, the Indians withdrew to their towns. They had killed some 130 or 140 people and left many others dangerously wounded besides taking some 20 or 30 prisoners. The Swiss’ and Palatines’ losses were the heaviest. They accounted for about 60 or 70 of those slain. The town of New Bern was spared by the Indians from whom Von Graffenried had secured a promise not to harm the village. The prisoners were women and children, who having seen their families butchered before their eyes, were carried back to the villages to serve the Indians as slaves.

From stricken Bath County went messengers to the Albemarle requesting immediate help. Albemarle County had emerged unscathed from the massacre saved by the neutrality of a portion of the Tuscacora. Governor Hyde immediately dispatched messengers to Virginia and South Carolina requesting aid and began to collect a force to be sent to the beleaguered and stunned settlers on the Pamlico and Neuse. The Quakers, who formed a large portion of the population of Albemarle County, refused to bear arms, and the ill will which Cary's rebellion had engendered hampered North Carolina's efforts throughout the entire Indian war.

In the Pamlico and Neuse area the plantations were generally abandoned for a few more easily defended points. Probably the larger refugee center was the town of Bath where there were reported to be over 300 widows and orphans in that area in a pitiful condition. While records are vague on this point, it appears that Bath was not overrun at the time of the massacre, and it is not likely that many were killed within the limits of the town. A

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[image: Early Plan Of Bath. This map is apparently based on the plan made by order of the General Assembly in 1715, although it is actually a copy made in 1807, of a draft drawn on Febuary 28, 1766. There is much interesting detail on this map. Note particulary the designations on lots 61 and 62, John Lawson's

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[image (continued): home once stood on lots 5 and 6. Governor Charles Eden once owned lots 9 and 10, while Chief Justice Christopher Gale maintained a home on lot 16 and half of lot 17. The original of this map is now preserved in the John Gray Blount Papers in the State Archives in Raleigh.]

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fort, located on the rising ground in the center of the Bath peninsula, appears to have been hastily constructed to protect the citizens and refugees. The furthest westward garrison on the Pamlico was located at the Lionel Reading plantation, on the south side of the river, across from the mouth of Chocowinity Bay. Some having gone unscathed through the massacre attempted to fortify their homes and remain, but these isolated plantations fell one by one to the Indians who picked them off at their leisure. Elsewhere on the Neuse and in the Core Sound area forts were established, and by October, a total of eleven garrisons had been established in Bath County.

By mid-October plans for an attack on the Indians had been perfected. Thomas Pollock of Chowan precinct, as major-general of the North Carolina forces, had managed to raise 150 men to undertake the attack. These were dispatched to Bath Town and were to join forces with a group which had been raised on the Neuse and placed under the command of Captain William Brice. Brice, under orders from Pollock, marched his company of fifty or sixty men up the Neuse to an abandoned Indian village where the forces at Bath were to join him. The troops at Bath, however, refused to go out, and Brice found himself in the Indian country with no support.

Despite the lack of support from Bath, Brice continued to advance into the Indian country until overwhelmed by at least 300 Indians. He was forced to fall back to his fortified plantation on the Trent River.

Here matters stood while aid from neighboring colonies was awaited. Virginia, despite promises and much talk, never dispatched a single soldier to the aid of North Carolina. Governor Alexander Spottswood of Virginia eventually dispatched a small amount of powder and cloth to North Carolina. Efforts were also made by the Virginia government to keep the neutral Tuscarora under Tom Blunt out of the war and to turn them against their fellow tribesmen.

It was from South Carolina that effective aid came. An expedition was quickly dispatched from that colony led by Captain John Barnwell composed of 33 whites on horses and 495 allied Indians. This force marched through the interior of North Carolina and on January 29, 1712, reached the Neuse River far above New Bern. Attempting to surprise the Tuscarora town of Narhantes, Barnwell found the Indians aware of his presence and barricaded in nine small forts. Barnwell at once attacked the largest of these which he carried by storm, killing fifty-two and taking thirty prisoners. Barnwell then advanced through the heartland of the Tuscarora burning their towns and destroying their crops. Eventually deserted by many of his Indian allies, Barnwell decided to make contact with the North Carolina settlements before attempting to take King Hancock's town, Catechna, and began moving toward the Pamlico and Bath Town.

On February 6, Barnwell reached the Pamlico River some five miles below Uncouh-He-runt, one of the three Tuscarora towns on that river. During the crossing, Barnwell's rear guard was attacked by fifty or sixty Tuscarora who were soon put to flight. The expedition, now reduced to 25 white men

Page 29

and 178 Indians, then moved down the north shore of the Pamlico "passing well ruined English plantations" and fording the many broad creeks that abound in that area.

On February 10, Barnwell sent out a patrol which reached Bath Town, and on the next day the entire force was transported there in three perogues. Barnwell and his company were greeted with such joy by the inhabitants that it brought tears to the eyes of the rough South Carolinians.

Barnwell remained idle on the Pamlico with his force from February 11 to February 27, awaiting supplies and men for his relief. On February 26, Barnwell was joined by sixty-seven North Carolinians most of whom had no ammunition. Barnwell then stripped the Pamlico garrisons of their ammunition. On February 27, Barnwell left Fort Reading on the Pamlico and began his advance on Hancock's fort a short distance above Catechna on the west bank of Contentnea Creek.

When he at last made his attack on the fort, he found the fort contained many white captives, whom the Indians at once began to torture and whose pleas and cries could be heard by the besiegers. Many North Carolinians in the attacking force had relatives within the fort and Barnwell was begged to treat with the Indians for their release. Barnwell entered into negotiations with the Indians, who agreed to release the twelve prisoners within the fort if he would withdraw. Barnwell agreed to this and the Indians promised to meet him on March 19, at Batchelours Creek near New Bern to discuss terms for a general peace.

Barnwell withdrew but the Indians failed to keep their rendezvous on March 19, as promised. Barnwell then established a garrison at Qurhous on the south side of the Pamlico across from Bath Town to keep open land communication between the Pamlico and the Neuse and began to plan a second attack on Hancock's Fort. After constructing a fort, Fort Barnwell, on the Neuse some thirty miles above New Bern, he surrounded Hancock's fort on April 7, 1712, with 153 white men and 128 Indians. A ten day siege followed, which was ended by the surrender of the fort on rather generous terms requiring that only King Hancock and three other Indians be delivered up and several lesser articles of surrender be carried out.

The failure of Barnwell to destroy the Indians brought upon him the censure of the North Carolina government. Despairing of a generous reward for his efforts to aid North Carolina, Barnwell seized some of the surrendered Indians for slaves and returned to South Carolina. This breach of the surrender terms brought on a new wave of Indian attacks along the Neuse and Pamlico and the war broke out again in all its fury.

Governor Hyde then determined to gather the militia of Albemarle County and march at the head of these forces into Bath County. He declared it was his intention to fix his headquarters at Bath Town and on the Neuse and there, he wrote, ". . . end the war with honor or make such a peace as shall not reflect upon the British Glory. . . ." This was not to be, for yellow fever, which added its horrors to the dreadful summer of 1712 in North Carolina,

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[image: Lawson Awaiting His Death. A rare drawing by Baron Christopher Von Graffenried, founder of New Bern, showing John Lawson, a Negro slave, and himself in the hands of the Tuscarora Indians in 1711. At the left of the three captives can be seen the war council and armed guards and on the right a medicine man and dancing Indians. Von Graffenried depicts himself praying while Lawson talks to the Negro slave. Von Graffenried drew this scene to illustrate his account of his capture and near execution at the hands of the hostile Tuscarora in September, 1711. The more unfortunate Lawson, founder of Bath, was killed by the Indians a few hours after the scene which this drawing depicts.]

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claimed Governor Hyde as its victim on September 9, 1712. With his passing Thomas Pollock assumed the leadership of North Carolina as President of the Council and Commander-in-Chief of the government.

Pollock made every effort to supply the garrisons in Bath County and to maintain the small forces operating there. Meanwhile South Carolina had assembled a new force designed to give further aid to North Carolina. This force contained 33 white men and nearly 900 Indians under the command of Colonel James Moore. Early in December, 1712, Moore arrived at >Fort Barnwell on the Neuse, where supplies were lacking. He then moved down the river to New Bern and then on to the fortified town of Bath. Finding no supplies at Bath, Moore then marched into Albemarle County where the harassed North Carolina government attempted to feed the over 900 men.

Every effort was made by Thomas Pollock to ready the almost exhausted colony for a final attack on the Indians. With everything in readiness, Moore moved out of Albemarle County on January 17, 1713. Extremely bad weather and an unusually deep snow forced Moore to halt at Fort Reading on the Pamlico until February 4, when he resumed his march on the Tuscarora towns.

The chief Tuscarora stronghold was now Fort Neoheroka located a few miles above old Fort Hancock on Contentnea Creek. About March 1, 1713, Moore laid seige to this well protected log and earthen fort with a force of over 1,000 whites and Indians. On March 20, the final attack was launched but it was not until March 23 that the last resistance was crushed. The victory was a complete one and crushed forever the power of the Tuscarora nation. In the engagement, the Tuscarora lost at least 392 killed and burned within the fort and 166 killed or captured outside the fort. In addition the attackers captured 392 of the Indian defenders, making the total loss of the Tuscarora in the engagement--950 men, women, and children killed or captured. The remaining hostile Tuscarora abandoned their other strong points and fled deep into the interior towards the Virginia border, most of them eventually going to New York where they joined the Five Nations.

The war was not over, however, for at the very time Moore was conducting his attack on Fort Neoheroka the Machapunga and Coree had been striking at the settlements along the Pungo River, a short distance below Bath, and in the vicinity of Mackays. Following the fall of Neoheroka, Thomas Pollock decided to stamp out this resistance at once and requested Moore to send some of his Indians into the Pamlico area to hunt them down.

Moore gathered the 120 or 130 Indians who had not returned to South Carolina and proceeded to the Pamlico where in June, 1713, he attempted to crush these remaining hostiles. He was only partially successful, for as one contemporary account states, the trackless wilderness from which these Indians operated lay "between Matchapungo River and Roanoke Island which is about 100 miles in length and of considerable breadth, all in a manner lakes, quagmires, and cane swamps, and is . . . one of the greatest deserts in the world, where it is almost impossible for white men to follow them." After Moore's swamp campaign matters quieted down for several

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months and about September 1, 1713, Colonel Moore returned to South Carolina.

By the spring of 1714, one or two small bands of Indians were once more spreading terror among the Bath County plantations. One account describing their activities says "they rove from place to place cut off 2 or 3 families today and within 2 or 3 days do the like a hundred miles off from the former. They are like deer--there is no finding them." Throughout 1714 Bath County was kept in a constant turmoil and Fort Reading on the Pamlico, along with other strategic points, continued to be garrisoned by a force of whites and Indians.

Not until February 11, 1715, did these groups of hostiles sign a peace treaty with the North Carolina government and agree to accept a reservation in Hyde County near Lake Mattamuskeet. With this treaty the war came to a final end and the citizens of Bath County and Bath Town were free once more to follow the pursuits of peace. The war's cost in lives and property is incalculable. The Indians had had their revenge for real or fancied wrongs in full measure.

As the Tuscarora War came to its dreary end, a normal way of life gradually returned to Bath and its vicinity. Bath's abnormally swollen population gradually dispersed as settlers returned to their burned plantation homes and weed-choked fields and as orphans and widows found refuge with relatives and friends. Forts, garrisons and sentry duty no longer held their old importance.

To many, however, Bath County appeared finished. A frontier region, poor before the Indian War, now lay completely devastated and ruined, many of her leaders the victims of tomahawk and disease. Yet, the last of the hostile Indians had not surrendered when the work of rebuilding got under way.

The town of Bath where life had not ceased in the darkest days of the war appears to have experienced a minor boom in the period immediately following the conflict. Lots were purchased from the Town's commissioners, resold and resold again. New mercantile houses were opened; Governor Charles Eden honored the little town by purchasing several lots and a home on Bay Street; Christopher Gale sold his plantation, "Kirby Grange," and moved into his town house on Bay Street, probably to make easier the performance of his duties attendant on his new post as North Carolina's first Chief Justice; Maurice Moore, hero of the late war, purchased lots and a home beside that of Gale; Edward Moseley, long-time speaker of the General Assembly and perhaps the colony's finest citizen, acquired a home and lots in the town; and Edward Travis, physician, settled in a house on Bay Street in late 1716.

Many lesser figures found their way to Bath--bricklayers, coopers, planters, carpenters, innkeepers, and public officials, from public registers to collectors of his Majesty's customs. They came from the old settlements in Albemarle County, from Virginia, from Maryland, from Pennsylvania, from New England

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and old England, and surely Patrick Flannikin who acquired Lot No. 71 in 1717 must have called the green hills of Ireland home.

Many of these drifted into Bath and out again, as quickly and quietly as they had come, others paused long enough to purchase lots and sell them before going on their way, still others acquired a house and lived there for a short while before moving on to more distant fields, and a small number called Bath their home throughout their lifetime. Most of the great figures who adorn Bath's roster of citizens and landowners lived there but a short while, if at all. Bath's most permanent citizens were a number of merchants, a few skilled artisans, and a handful of public officials. Among these in the decade or so that followed the Tuscarora war were the merchants: John Porter, Giles Shute, William Jones, Edmund Porter, Thomas Sparrow, John Clark, Roger Kenyon; the artisans: Thomas Harding, Thomas Roper and William Sidley; and the public officials: John Drinkwater and John Baptista Ashe.

Whenever rogues or sea-faring men gather, one citizen of Bath in this period will never be forgotten, for here in the turbulent years which followed the Tuscarora War of 1711 the most notorious pirate of them all cast anchor. His name was Edward Teach, but he was known as Blackbeard.

Born in Bristol, England, famous since the days of the Cabots for its fearless seamen, he first appears on the pages of history in 1716, as a trusted lieutenant of the buccaneer, Captain Benjamin Hornygold. Many of his biographers claim he started his career as an honest privateersman sailing out of Jamaica in Queen Anne's War, and that unemployment and a love of adventure turned him to piracy at the war's end. Others contend that he was a black-hearted knave from birth and never drew an honest breath.

Be that as it may, the company of Hornygold and Teach proved a profitable one and ship after ship fell victim to their piratical crew. Sometime during the summer of 1717, Hornygold, taking advantage of the king's offer of pardon to all pirates who would surrender themselves, abandoned his trade and threw himself upon the mercy of the king. Not so Blackbeard, who assumed the command of a recently captured French Guineaman, rechristened her the Queen Ann's Revenge, mounted her with forty guns, and stood out to sea, prepared to make his ship the scourge of the seas and his name the terror of the Atlantic seaboard.

And indeed it was not long before his very name, bellowed across the water to some hapless merchantman, was enough to cause her to strike her colors. Cargo followed cargo into the hold of Queen Ann's Revenge, and crew after crew found themselves marooned on some bleak island in the West Indies. Soon after putting to sea Blackbeard ran afoul of H.M.S. Scarborough, of thirty guns. The engagement which followed lasted for several hours and is notable chiefly for the fact that at its close the Scarborough broke off and ran for her station off Barbadoes. During this period, Blackbeard persuaded the "gentleman pirate," Major Stede Bonnet, to join him as his lieutenant.

Having ravaged the West Indies, Blackbeard turned his attention to the

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mainland. In a matter of weeks he disrupted shipping off the Carolinas and forced the proud city of Charleston to pay ransom to be done with him. By this time Blackbeard had acquired a small fleet consisting of the converted Guineaman, the Queen Ann's Revenge, two sloops, and a tender. By this time, also, the loot of countless merchantmen had satiated even the covetous Blackbeard, and his chief problem now became one of cheating the majority of his crew and making off with their share of the money.

He did this through the simple expedient of wrecking his ships off Topsail Inlet in North Carolina and then leaving the majority of his crew marooned on a barren island on the Outer Banks while he escaped in the tender with about twenty of his favorite cronies--and the loot.

Blackbeard and his companions then made their way to Bath, where apparently through previous arrangement with Governor Charles Eden, they received the King's pardon as prescribed under the recent Act of Mercy, which offered a complete pardon to all pirates who surrendered within a prescribed time. This event was followed by the meeting of a court of Vice-Admiralty at Bath, where under the benevolent eye of Governor Charles Eden, the pirates were declared honest privateersmen and thereby allowed to keep a captured Spanish ship although there was no war between Spain and England at that time.

Crowded the small town of Bath must have seemed in 1718, as Blackbeard and his crew caroused along its streets and in its taverns. Yet to the citizens of Bath and the surrounding countryside the arrival of Blackbeard and his motley crew was an economic windfall, for the gold and silver which they spent in money-starved Bath County fell like rain upon a parched field. Yet, to many, the cost probably seemed too high, and only the apparent friendliness of Governor Eden and the Secretary of the Colony, Tobias Knight, guaranteed the pirates shelter.

The appearance of Blackbeard or Captain Edward Teach, as he now styled himself, must have been awe-inspiring on the quiet streets of Bath and on the deck of a ship, locked in battle, terrifying. It was the beard which all who beheld never forgot, and according to one writer, "frightened America more than any comet that has appeared there a long time." The beard was jet black and of great length. It grew up to his very eyes and fell down across the whole of his broad chest. An early writer notes that he was accustomed "to twist it with ribbons, in small tails . . . and turn them around his ears. In time of action he wore a sling over his shoulders, with three braces of pistols hanging in holsters like bandaliers, and stuck lighted matches under his hat, which, appearing on each side of his face, his eyes naturally looking fierce and wild, made him altogether such a figure that imagination cannot form an idea of a fury from hell to look more frightful."

While at Bath, Blackbeard took unto himself a bride of about sixteen years of age, the daughter of a Bath County planter. This according to some accounts was his fourteenth wife, while others say this is exaggerated and that it was actually only his thirteenth.

Blackbeard was far from through with his piratical exploits, however, and

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with the ship which Governor Eden had so kindly ruled was rightfully his, he began once more to steal away on voyages to the West Indies to tend to his "business interests" there. A few weeks after his departure on these voyages he would return with a ship loaded with a valuable cargo and inform the curious that he had found it drifting deserted on the open sea. On one of these occasions Governor Eden is reported to have received sixty barrels of sugar, as his share of the plunder, while Secretary Knight was forced to content himself with only twenty barrels.

As time passed and Blackbeard and his crew became more obnoxious, the Carolina merchants, who had their ships looted more than once by the pirate, and several of the planters, despairing of any relief from Governor Eden, sent a deputation secretly to Governor Alexander Spottswood of Virginia, begging his help in ridding them of the monster.

Spottswood promised his aid and issued a proclamation offering £100 reward for the capture of Blackbeard, dead or alive. He then purchased two sloops, fitted them out for battle, and manned them with sailors and marines from two ships of His Majesty's navy, then in Virginia. The command of these two sloops was entrusted to Lieutenant Robert Maynard, R.N., and the expedition embarked for North Carolina on November 17, 1718. In the evening of the 31st of the same month, Blackbeard was sighted at Ocracoke Inlet. Maynard did not attempt to cross the bar that evening, but on the following morning entered Pamlico Sound and attempted to close with Blackbeard who had awaited his coming throughout the night. Blackbeard then cut his cables and attempted a running gunfight but soon ran aground on one of the innumerable shoals in Pamlico Sound. After a devastating broadside from Blackbeard's ship which cost Maynard twenty men killed and wounded, one of the sloops, containing Maynard, managed to close with Blackbeard's ship and a fierce hand to hand encounter followed. The battle raged fiercely until the very sea about the ships turned red with blood. Then, just as the fight grew more desperate, the terrible Blackbeard dropped dead at the feet of Robert Maynard, having received twenty sabre wounds and five pistol balls in his body. With the death of their leader the remaining pirates quickly surrendered. The scourge of Carolina was no more--the world's most notorious pirate was dead.

With his passing, pirates ceased to haunt the streets of Bath and today Blackbeard is but a legendary figure in a town which once knew him well. Only the problem of where he buried his ill-gotten plunder remains. Perhaps the treasure seekers should abandon their hunt, for on that fateful night as Blackbeard awaited the coming of Maynard on the morrow, some brave soul asked him if his wife knew where his treasure was hidden. Blackbeard lurched drunkenly from his stool and, amidst curses, shouted, "That nobody but himself and the Devil knew where it was, and the longest liver should take all." And those who know say pirates don't lie when they drink.

Included in the famous revisal of 1715 enacted by the General Assembly was the Act of Incorporation for Bath Township which re-enacted the law of 1705 with several revisions.