Also refer to Gwen Boyer Bjorkman
http://ancestoryarchives.blogspot.com/2013/06/hannah-baskel-phelps-phelps-hill-quaker.html
The land configurations of Albemarle made the area attractive and accessible. Laced with small streams, creeks, and deep rivers, the easy access by water into the untamed region offered ports for ocean-going ships able to take the settlers' products directly to Caribbean ports and to the other colonies. Abundance of water also aided the farmers with their crops and for their homes (Fig. 12). The Chowan, Perquimans, Pasquotank, and Little Rivers were linked with the smaller streams making a veritable water highway throughout the area. The source of these rivers was the Great Dismal Swamp, where the color of the water was a deep red, caused by the waters passing through the roots of the cypress trees. The water, however, was perfectly clear, tasted by no means unpleasant, and was quite wholesome. It had a diuretic effect on those who drank it, and prevented agues and fevers, or so it was claimed. Filled with the perils of virgin forests, native Indians, wild animals, insects, snakes, and reptiles, this area south of the Great Dismal Swamp was also more isolated from the English authorities.
Following the first landowners who settled
along the main rivers and shores of Albemarle Sound, new arrivals were finding
homesites father up near the heads of the four main rivers. When the word spread that this was a place
where people were able to worship in freedom and that the Virginia government
had less influence in the region, the Quakers in southern Virginia came to
Albemarle in increasing numbers. They
were an industrious, plain, sober, and hardy people who had already endured
much hardship and privation. They were
soon joined by other Quakers from the New England colonies who had heard that
new Quaker settlements were being started in the south (Fig. 13). One of these couples who came in the 1660’s
was Henry and Hannah (Baskel) Phelps from Salem, Massachusetts (Fig. 14). The records of the Quaker Chuckatuck
Monthly Meeting in Isle of Wight County list the deaths in the James Hill
family from 1674 to 1677. One of these
deaths was probably his wife, but which wife is not clear --Rachel, Elizabeth,
or Ann. James Hill later married Hannah
Baskel, widow of Nicholas Phelps and Henry Phelps. James Hill died after 1681 and is recorded in the Diary of
William Edmundson, the Quaker Missionary who visited him in Isle of Wight
County and had known him previously in Ireland. James Hill was Deputy to the Duke of Albemarle in Virginia. Records show that Hannah Hill, his widow,
later claimed head rights for Samuel and Martha Hill for importing them into
Carolina from York Co., Virginia, indicating a family relationship. Among those who came from the Charlestown
settlement in southern Carolina were Patrick Henley, John Culpeper, and Edward
Mayo who had come originally from Barbados in the Caribbean.
Figure 13. Map of Albemarle. Early sites
of Quaker meetings in Perquimans and Pasquotank Counties are shown.
Figure 14. Hannah (Baskel) Phelps Phelps Hill Smith was typical of the
Quaker lady shown here who would have testified at the Meeting. She was the first Quaker woman to organize a
meeting in her home in Albemarle.
On February 6, 1665, the first group of
six freeholders met beneath a giant oak tree on the banks of Hall's (Hill's ?)
Creek in Pasquotank Precinct1 to organize community affairs. William Drummond, one of those present at
that meeting, had been appointed the first Governor of Albemarle in 1664 by Gov. Berkeley, acting on orders of the
Lord Proprietors. George Catchmaid of
Perquimans was chosen Assembly Speaker.2 Samuel Pricklove and George Durant were probably also among the
original six at the meeting. Both
served as local officials and were the first two settlers of the area (Fig.
15). The isolation of Albemarle and the
independent nature of it's people were factors contributing to unstable
government in the young colony in its first years of existence.
Figure 15. Map of early Albemarle plantation owners in Perquimans
County. Some owners were second or
third generation owners with names derived from subsequent marriages. The homes of Samuel Pricklove and Henry
White are clearly shown.
In
1676 Drummond returned to Virginia where he became actively involved in Bacon's
Rebellion. He was an ardent supporter
of Nathaniel Bacon and thereby angered Governor Berkeley. When the rebellion was put down after Bacon’s
death from illness, the Governor made Drummond the first of the rebels to pay
the price for their disloyalty to his authority. Drummond was sentenced to be hanged. Mrs. Drummond and the children were put out of their home and
were left wandering in the swamps near starvation.
The Lord Proprietors next named Samuel
Stephens as Governor of Albemarle. He
served from 1667-1669. Stephens was
born in Jamestown in 1629 and was the first governor of any colony to be born
in America. He was married to Frances
Culpeper, the sister of Lord John Culpeper.
When Stephens died in1669, she married Governor William Berkeley. After Berkeley's death in 1677, she married
thirdly Phillip Ludwell, Governor of Charlestown, in 'south' Carolina.3 Stephens had owned a tract of 4,000 acres of
land in Albemarle which was sold upon his death to John Hill of York
County. In 1693 this same tract of
land was sold by John Hill's son, Samuel Hill of Warwick Co. and his wife,
Mary, to Governor Seth Sothel (Southwell).
Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia had
reverberations in Albemarle. Some of
Albemarle's residents had been active in the Virginia revolt, and they returned
to Albemarle to continue stirring up discontent there. John Culpeper, who had come to Pasquotank in
1675 from the Charlestown settlement where he had been accused of inciting the
people against their government, was one of these. He left Pasquotank in 1676 to become Nathaniel Bacon's lieutenant
during the rebellion in Virginia. When
the revolt was put down, he escaped to Albemarle, where he continued to sow
seeds of discontent.
Disagreement between the early settlers
who bought their lands from the Indians and those who had received land patents
from the Lord Proprietors was an underlying cause of dispute. In addition, conflict between Quakers and
non-Quakers, while government attempts to restrict export of tobacco (the money
crop) also resulted in discontent. Nine
Friends were fined and imprisoned in 1680 for refusing to bear arms. Samuel Hill of Warwick was one of these
men.
When unrest in Albemarle broke out in
Culpeper's Rebellion, in 1677, Thomas Miller, an apothecary from Pasquotank,
was serving as Deputy Governor in place of Thomas Eastchurch. The rebels, led by John Culpeper, arrested
Gov. Miller and Customs Collector, Timothy Biggs, and took over the
government. In Pasquotank County, Culpeper is proudly claimed as
America's first governor of a free people in this country and Albemarle as the
first independent colony in the new world.4 Culpeper's widow, Sarah Mayo, daughter of
Edward Mayo, again married in 1693 to Patrick Henley, the earliest Henley
ancestor of the family that later became closely associated with the Hills.
Bacon's and Culpeper's Rebellions came
perilously close to the members of the Hill family. As Quakers they did not take active roles in the insurrection,
but they were closely associated with the officials who did.
For the first thirty years Albemarle was
governed by independent men, and Quakers served in all levels of political
office. While there was a steady
conflict for governmental control in Albemarle between members of the
established church and the Quaker faction, the Quakers dominated in early
Pasquotank. John Archdale followed
Culpeper as Governor from 1694-1696. He
was a Quaker and a Lord Proprietor, having purchased John Berkeley's
share. When a law was passed requiring
officeholders to take an oath to serve the English crown, the Quakers, who
believed oaths should be made only to God, met opposition and were prohibited
from holding public office. From that
time on their influence waned.
In this new setting life was a constant
challenge for survival. Families were
more isolated and vied with the Indians for sustenance off the land. Living on lands bought from the Indians
meant they were living among the natives.
Early on the Quakers learned how to treat the Indians with respect and
to coexist with them. In the process
their children acquired the Indian skills of living with nature. In the next generation these were skills
that enabled the young men to lead their people into newer untouched lands to
the west.
In Albemarle life spans were short. With little medical resources other than the
remedies handed down from generation to generation and surrounded by accidental
risks, fevers, poisonous snakes and wild animals, men and women often were
suddenly widowed and left with small children to care for without a home-maker
or protector-provider. The widowed
remarried quickly and often, some having three or four wives or husbands in
their lifetimes. New marriage partners
often came from within the small circle of neighboring families. These families came to be linked by
intermarriage many times over. Marriage
occurred at a young age for girls in particular. They learned the skills of home-making as a necessity to assist
their mothers. Providing food,
clothing, and health care for a family in the wilderness was no easy task and
required the help of every hand at an early age. Without a pair of hardworking parents, a family could not
survive. Families were large and
children learned early to contribute to the work.
SAMUEL PRICKLOVE: AGITATOR
Samuel Pricklove was one of the first residents
of Perquimans Precinct, arriving even before settler George Durant, in 1662.5 Pricklove was the first known purchaser of
Indian lands in Albemarle and held a grant from Governor Berkeley of Virginia
for a large tract on the Perquimans River near Durant, where the two men
became life-long friends. Pricklove
had moved from Nansemond County in Virginia with his wife, Rachel Lawrence,
whose brother, Thomas Lawrence, was one of Nathaniel Bacon’s supporters in Bacon’s
Rebellion. Pricklove held the offices
of Registrar of deeds and Clerk of the Inferior Court under the
administrations of two early Quaker Governors of Carolina in the 1650’s:
Governor William Drummond (executed by Governor Berkeley in Bacon's
Rebellion) and Governor Archdale.6
Both Pricklove and Durant took part in
the Culpepper Rebellion of 1677 and assisted in "leading the
rabble" to depose the Deputy Governor Thomas Miller. For this crime of activism, Pricklove was
sentenced to have his right ear amputated and be banished from the colony. The sentence was never carried out because
Miller was deposed. Samuel Pricklove
died in Perquimans County in 1692.7 He and his wife left two sons, Samuel and John. John Pritloe and his wife, Elizabeth, had
six daughters, all of whom married men of substance and influence in
Albemarle:
·
Priscilla married John
Sanders
·
Judeth married Abram
Sanders, son of John Sanders of Virginia
·
Rachel married Robert
Wilson, son of a Virginia Burgess
·
Elizabeth married William
Elliott
·
Rebecca married Zacariah
Chancy
·
Leah married Joseph Smith
Leah and
Joseph Smith were the grandparents of Mary Smith, wife of William Hill. John Smith, brother of Mary Hill, was one
of the founders of Richmond, Indiana.
Basil Sanders, who left 860 acres of
land in Chowan County to a William Hill of Antigua in 1721, was likely the
son of one of the above Sanders couples.
The early Quaker communities were models
of life based on their Christian beliefs.
The Quaker believed that God speaks directly to the human heart, and that
no ministers or priests are needed to receive the blessings of God, which are
available to every man and woman. They
believed in the equality of men and women.
They used no hymns or outward manifestations in their worship, keeping
silent until a person felt moved by God to share a message. The Quakers tithed. They refused to take an oath of any kind, as
they owed their allegiance only to God.
They believed in simplicity which strips away the accretions of the
centuries and used the term Thee because Jesus used Thee to His Friends. The appellation, Quaker, came from their
enemies who accused them of Quaking in the presence of God, which they did.5
The Quaker dissenters in England had been
prohibited from attending the public schools there, leading the Friends to
establish their own schools to provide their young people with the education
and religious precepts of their faith.
A high priority was placed on having the best teachers and schools
possible in order to preserve their sect.
The Quaker Meeting House had two sides
separated by partitions which could be removed for general meetings. The men had their meetings on one side and
conducted their affairs with their own appointed committees. The women, treated as equals, had their own
meetings and committees to deal with their own particular concerns. Each group assigned overseers to monitor the
conduct of their members, arrange for disputes between members to be settled in
a peaceful and fair manner, and to "look into and approve or
disapprove" of the appropriateness of the intention of members to
marry. The poor and orphaned children
were provided for by funds set aside in each meeting from tithes for that
purpose, and new homes were arranged for the orphans where they would be
clothed, fed, and taught a trade.
In the frontier communities the safety and
welfare of the people depended on the cooperation of all and a commitment to
the good of the community. Because they
lived in primitive circumstances and close proximity to the Indians from whom
they had bought their land, the Quakers took care to treat the Indians fairly
and to learn their ways of survival off the land. They set up schools for the native children to help them come to
understand the ways of the white man.
The earliest religious meetings in Albemarle were held in the homes of
their leaders.
While the Quaker communities continued to grow in North Carolina
and in Isle of Wight Co., Virginia, there remained a lingering unease over the
tight control of the mother country affecting both the settler's religious and
economic lives. Young men were being
conscripted into the militia to fight Indians on the western borders of
Virginia and North Carolina and brought home with them news of the beautiful,
undeveloped lands in the western parts of those states. The Quakers were assessing their local
problems and the possibility of starting new settlements in the west (Fig.
16).
Figure 16. Map of Quaker Meeting Sites in Perquimans County. Marked are the sites of Meeting Houses and the
Plantations of early Friends living nearby.
From: Perquiman’s county Historical Society Year Book, Hertford, NC.,
1973.
Concerned with the question of slavery,
they knew they could not operate their farms without slave help. They preferred living in frontier areas
where they were free of the social pressures of concentrated population. Albemarle was becoming quite populated.
HENRY WHITE
One of the
earliest Quakers in Pasquotank County was Henry White who had come from Isle of
Wight County, Virginia, around 1670.
He had purchased lands at the head of Little River where a preparatory
meeting had been established as early as 1663. White served as Registrar for Little River Meeting and for the
Pasquotank Monthly Meeting which included four other meetings besides Little
River. He served on the North
Carolina Higher court and for short periods of time on the Precinct County
Court.
White gave
land for the building of a school alongside the meeting house which was the
first school built in North Carolina, and he taught in that school. A poem White wrote in 1698 as a teaching
tool for his students came to light at Guilford College in Greensboro,
NC. This long poem is said to be the
oldest extant work of poetry from the southern states. It apparently was used as a form of
communication with other Quaker meetings in various regions and to instruct
his pupils with a religious message of the Quaker faith at the same time.
As a young man White had attended school
in Isle of Wight County, where his father made a living as a cooper and
served as Justice of the Peace. His
grandfather, Henry White, had lived on Queen's Creek in York County, north of
Williamsburg.
In 1631
Governor John Harvey determined to secure the area between the James and York
Rivers by building a palisade across the peninsula between Archer's Hope
(College Creek) and Queen's Creek.
Incentives were offered to any settler who would relocate to that area
to defend and protect the development of the area. Fifty acres were offered to each man who would relocate there
for the first year, twenty-five acres for a second year. This may have been the incentive for
families like the Whites and the Hills to spend a short period at Queen's
Creek in York county, later returning to the counties south of the James
River.
1 comment:
Melissa, thanks to you, I think Christmas has just arrived early! While my intent in recently joining this group was to hopefully find some sources and facts that would take me backwards from the Albemarle Colony to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, I see so many familiar names within your blogs which will also help me greatly in pursuit of the other surnames I research. WOW!!!
Mary Modlin
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