‘The most barbarous place in the Continent’

“The London-based Society [for the Propagation of the Gospel] sent the first missionary to North Carolina in 1704, John Blair, a graduate of Glasgow College. On his arrival in the province he observed that the population was ‘exceedingly scattered’ and the people ‘backward in religious matters and little disposed to assist in the support of a minister of the Church of England.’

“After a brief period he returned to England ‘enfeebled with poverty and sickness,’ having found North Carolina ‘the most barbarous place in the Continent.’ ”

– From “A War of Religion: Dissenters, Anglicans and the American Revolution” by James B. Bell (2008)