Jason Tomberlin – Page 32

Hurricane Season

June 1st marks the beginning of this year’s hurricane season, so I thought I’d look through the Colonial and State Records of North Carolina to see if I could find any descriptions of hurricanes in the 18th century. I found what can only have been a hurricane described in a letter from Alexander Stewart, Church of England missionary to North Carolina, to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in London. Writing on 6 December 1769, Stewart describes a “most violent Gale of wind” that hit New Bern on 7 September 1769:

“The tide rose in a few hours at my house 12 feet higher than I ever before knew it, and the wind blew so violent nothing could stand before it: Every Vessel, Boat or Craft were drove up in the woods and all the large Oaks, Pines &ca, broke either off or torn up by the roots, Our Indian Corn (which was not quite ripe, and which is the common Bread of the country) was mostly destroyed and in many places together with the Cattle, Sheep, Hogs &ca washed quite away. But no place has suffered so much as this Town of Newbern, one entire Street, Houses, Store Houses, wharves &c., to the amount of near 20,000 pounds were destroyed and swept off together with several of the Inhabitants in a few hours time…”

Stewart goes on to describe the hurricane in more detail, including the injuries he suffered during the storm.

Biological Warfare in the 18th Century

I have to admit that I thought biological warfare was a 20th-century invention, but after a little research, I have discovered that it has been around for quite some time.

During the Revolutionary War, Brigadier General Jethro Sumner wrote to Major General Horatio Gates to inform him that:

“A Woman who passed about 15 days ago I am apprehensive has proceeded towards Hillsborough, from the enemy, with the small-pox. I doubt not but she has been sent on purpose to spread that Contagion among the Troops. The Ferry man at this ford, I am informed by Doctor Pasteur & Alexander, whom I sent to examine him, has got it. I have had him removed, & shall take such precaution in my power to prevent the infection spreading.”

[Sumner to Gates, 8 October 1780. Colonial and State Records of North Carolina, Vol. XIV, pp. 678-679]

Carolina, The Blue Waves Are Breaking

While looking for something totally unrelated, I stumbled across this poem in the December 1853 edition of The North-Carolina University Magazine. For those Tar Heels who have had the unfortunate pleasure of emigrating elsewhere, this poem may make you hop the next flight back home.

Carolina, the blue waves are breaking,
Soft, soft on thy shell-spangled shore;
And the wild birds, their songs are making
In sweetness and gladness once more.

And the sun rays are softly reclining
On the sweet dimpled waves of thy tide,
And as gently are heaving and shining,
As the gems on the breast of a bride.

Carolina, mid the pines of thy wildwood
The breezes are passing away,
Like the fast fleeting memories of childhood,
Or the last dying tints of the day.

Carolina, I love, I adore thee;
Thy valleys, thy mountains and shore
Will e’er be in memories before me,
Altho’ I should see them no more.

Yet no matter what skies are above me,
Tho’ a wanderer to many a strand;
Carolina, I ever will love thee
And call thee my own sunny land.

By A. Perry Sperry (pseud.?). Greensboro, Nov. 10, 1853.

Happy Halifax Resolves Day!

On this day in 1776, North Carolina’s fourth Provincial Congress passed the Halifax Resolves, authorizing the state’s delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence from Great Britain. North Carolina was the first state to take this action.

Read more about the Resolves at the North Carolina Collection’s This Month in North Carolina History.

April 1776: The Halifax Resolves

This Month in North Carolina History

North Carolina claims several contentious superlatives: first in flight (disputed by Ohio since Orville and Wilbur Wright lived in Dayton, Ohio), the first state university (disputed by Georgia since its university was chartered first, though North Carolina’s opened first), and the first declaration of independence, though most historians dispute the veracity of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. Even with its questionable credentials, the date of the “Meck-Dec” still adorns North Carolina’s state flag. The other date on the flag, April 12, 1776, however, honors a first that no other state can claim, the “Halifax Resolves.” Though it was not an outright declaration of independence from Great Britain, this resolution, which was unanimously passed at the fourth Provincial Congress meeting in Halifax, North Carolina, was the first official action in which a colony authorized its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence.

Just eight months earlier, North Carolina’s official attitude toward independence was a bit more ambivalent. Facing increasing uncertainties and dealing with the divided loyalties of its populace, the third Provincial Congress issued an “Address to the Inhabitants of the British Empire.” This statement, which sought to justify congress’s actions (such as stockpiling weapons, raising units of soldiers, and preparing for self-government), denied that the colony desired to separate from Great Britain. It claimed allegiance to the crown, asserted that Parliament was at fault for passing undesirable legislation, and reiterated the colony’s desire to return to the relationship that existed between Great Britain and the American colonies in the years prior to the French and Indian War.

From August 1775 to April 1776, the deteriorating situation in North Carolina and other colonies changed how many North Carolinians and their delegates to the provincial congress viewed their relationship with Great Britain. Following the Battles of Lexington and Concord, King George III declared the colonies to be in a state of rebellion and withdrew his protection from the colonists. In January 1776, royal governor Josiah Martin issued a call for loyalist troops to assemble and rendezvous with a contingent of the British army that was sailing for North Carolina’s coast. Though patriot militia and Continental Line soldiers intercepted the loyalists and routed them on February 27, 1776, at the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge, the skirmish still sent shock waves through the province. In addition, British agents continually worked to incite Native Americans, including the Cherokee, along the colony’s frontier, while along the coast, the British navy maintained several war ships. These events and several others forced North Carolina’s patriot leaders to the conclusion that reconciliation on amiable terms was no longer possible.

After the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge, the fourth Provincial Congress convened in Halifax on April 4, 1776. Over the first few days, the congress organized itself and formed committees to oversee aspects of the province’s government and military preparations. On April 8, 1776, it created a select committee to consider the “Usurpations and Violences attempted and committed by the King and Parliament of Britain against America, and the further Measures to be taken for frustrating the same, and for the better Defence of this Province.” Four days later, on April 12, the group, which consisted of Thomas Burke, Cornelius Harnett (chairman), Allen Jones, Thomas Jones, John Kinchen, Abner Nash, and Thomas Person, presented a report detailing British atrocities and American responses. The committee believed that further attempts at compromise and reunion would fail, and they offered the following resolution:

That the Delegates for this Colony in the Continental Congress be impowered to concur with the Delegates of the other Colonies in declaring Independency, and forming foreign Alliances, reserving to this Colony the sole and exclusive Right of forming a Constitution and Laws for this Colony, and of appointing Delegates from Time to Time, (under the Direction of a general Representation thereof) to meet the Delegates of the other Colonies, for such Purposes as shall hereafter be pointed out.

The full congress took the recommendations into consideration and unanimously approved of them. The resolution was immediately copied and sent to Philadelphia, where Joseph Hewes, a member of North Carolina’s delegation, shared it with other American representatives. Soon thereafter, other colonies followed North Carolina’s lead, and the foundation was laid for the summer of 1776.

Sources
R. D. W. Connor. “North Carolina’s Priority in the Demand for a Declaration of Independence.” Reprinted from the South Atlantic Quarterly, July, 1909.

Robert L. Ganyard. The Emergence of North Carolina’s Revolutionary Government. Raleigh, N.C.: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 1978.

The Journal of the Proceedings of the Provincial Congress of North Carolina, Held at Halifax on the 4th Day of April, 1776. New Bern, NC: Printed by James Davis, 1776.

Happy Birthday Old Hickory

Happy Birthday to Andrew Jackson–the president claimed as a native son by North and South Carolina, but who was elected while a resident of Tennessee. As a person who was educated entirely within the confines of and by the State of North Carolina, I was convinced that our southerly neighbor’s claim to Old Hickory was bogus. Yes, he was born on March 15, 1767, in the nebulous Waxhaw region, which lies along the border of the Carolinas near present-day Charlotte, but we had a statue on the State Capitol grounds in Raleigh claiming him (along with James K. Polk and Andrew Johnson) as our own. Well, I can’t offer the definitive answer on the controversy and different opinions still exist, but according to Robert V. Remini’s biographical sketch of Jackson in American National Biography, Old Hickory “always believed and repeatedly stated that he was born in South Carolina.” I wonder if a similar disagreement will arise if John Edwards is elected as president.

The Perfect Season

This year is the 50th anniversary of McGuire’s Miracle…32-0…the perfect season…UNC’s 1957 NCAA National Championship. On March 23, 1957, the Tar Heel men’s basketball team, coached by Frank McGuire and led by All-American Lennie Rosenbluth, defeated Wilt Chamberlain and the University of Kansas Jayhawks in a triple-overtime thriller in Kansas City, Missouri.

The North Carolina Collection honors this anniversary with “McGuire’s Miracle: UNC’s 1956-1957 Championship Basketball Season.” The website features individual and team photos, action shots from league and tournament games, game results, and a list of references for further research on this remarkable season.

Snooping

It seems that privacy concerns during times of conflict are not a new problem. On February 2, 1776, Anglican clergyman James Reed wrote a letter to the secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. In the letter, Reed comments on the “exorbitant passions of Men” and the “desolating progress of civil discord” occasioned by the American Revolution. As a loyalist sending a letter to London, he obviously realized that the correspondence would arouse suspicion and would likely be opened. So, he added a nota bene, which stated:

“Any person prompted by curiosity to open this Letter is desired to Seal it up again in a Cover and forward it.”

This letter made it to London, but we unfortunately do not have any record about how it arrived–opened, sealed, or opened and resealed.

January 1870: North Carolina State Penitentiary Opens

This Month in North Carolina History

On January 6, 1870, North Carolina’s State Penitentiary accepted its first prisoners, housing them in a temporary log structure that was surrounded by a wooden stockade. Charles Lewis, a twenty-two-year-old African American convicted of robbery in Johnston County, was the first person to be admitted, and his accomplices, Eliza and Nancy Richardson, were the second and third individuals received by the prison and the first women.

Prior to 1870, North Carolina, unlike the majority of other states, did not have a central, state-operated prison. Responsibility for housing convicts and administering punishment rested with the counties. As local jails became overcrowded and expenses mounted, public officials began to examine the possibility of opening a state-funded institution to house long-term inmates. In 1846, there was a statewide vote on the desirability of a state penitentiary, but North Carolina’s voters, many of whom still believed in the efficacy of corporal punishment, such as whippings, croppings, and brandings, overwhelmingly disapproved of the plan. Not until mandated by the Reconstruction-era Constitution of 1868 did North Carolina fund and build a state penitentiary.

Operating under this more progressive plan of government, the General Assembly created a penitentiary committee in August 1868 and charged it with selecting a location for the new structure and contracting to have it built. This committee chose and purchased land near Lockville, a community in the Deep River Valley of Chatham County, but the legislature nullified the purchase and began anew after an investigation discovered that the entire process had been fraudulent. The assembly disbanded the original committee and selected a new commission, ordering them to locate the prison near the state capital and giving explicit limitations on acreage and price. The new committee, of which Alfred Dockery was president, purchased about twenty-two acres in southwestern Raleigh. This site had easy access to a railroad line and was adjacent to a stone quarry from which material to build the structure could be removed. With the location chosen, construction of a temporary facility began in late 1869.

The prison into which Charles Lewis and the other inmates were admitted on January 6, 1870, differed greatly from Central Prison, the modern structure that now occupies the same location. A report submitted by the penitentiary’s assistant architect on November 1, 1870, describes the original wooden edifice as such:

“The Work has been as follows: 2965 ft. Prison Stockade made of long leaf pine poles, hewed on two sides placed close together and set four (4) in the ground, standing fifteen (15) ft. above ground. In which are two (2) large Wagon gates, one (1) Railroad gate, and one small gate for entrance of Persons on foot.

There are twenty (20) Prison Cells, two (2) Hospital Rooms and (2) Rooms for Lockups, all of which are 19×19 ft. square, 8 ft. pitch, built of logs, and sealed with heavy boards on the inside, and all covered with one continuous roof…

There is 850 ft. Railroad Track running in the grounds, and connecting with The N. C. Railroad, also 870 ft. heavy plank stockade enclosing the quarry.”

Believing that the state penitentiary should be self-supporting and that manual labor was beneficial for the prisoners, state officials utilized the readily available and inexpensive inmate work force to construct the permanent buildings, walls, and fences. The process took almost fifteen years and over one million dollars, but in December 1884 the permanent buildings were completed and occupied. The old log cells, which were eventually used as storage bins for animal feed, survived for several more years, with some burning in 1887 and others removed over time.

Sources
Brown, Roy Melton. “The Growth of a State Program of Public Welfare.” Typescript in North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, ca. 1950.

Murray, Elizabeth Reid. Wake, Capital County of North Carolina. Raleigh, N. C.: Capital County Publishing Company, 1983.

North Carolina. Board of Public Charities. First Annual Report of the Board of Public Charities of North Carolina. February, 1870. Raleigh, N.C.: Printed by Order of the Board, 1870.

North Carolina. Penitentiary Commission. Report of the Penitentiary Commission, to the General Assembly of North Carolina, Made December 8th, 1870.Raleigh, N.C.: The Commission, 1870.

North Carolina. Penitentiary Commission. Rules and By-Laws for the Government & Discipline of the North Carolina Penitentiary During its Management by the Commission. Raleigh, N.C.: M. S. Littlefield, State Printer & Binder, 1869.

Olds, Fred A. “History of the State’s Prison.” The Prison News, vol. I, no. II (November 1926): 4-7.

Image Source:
Ralph, Julian. “Charleston and the Carolinas.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, No. 536, January 1895.

Tidbits from the CSR

For those of you who haven’t heard, the North Carolina Collection and Documenting the American South are digitizing the Colonial and State Records of North Carolina, a thirty-volume set of transcribed documents covering the history of North Carolina from the 1600s to 1790. Now, before you start searching Google for the electronic versions of this wonderful resource, let me warn you…we’re still at least two years from being finished with the project! However, I occasionally run into interesting tidbits that simply have to be “published,” and I think the North Carolina Collection’s blog is the perfect outlet. I can’t promise weekly postings, but I’ve already seen index entries for “Beer, lack of” and “Girls and Soldiers,” so I can’t imagine they’ll be far between.

The first tidbit involves Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, an influential pamphlet published in Philadelphia in January 1776. On February 14 of that year, John Penn, one of North Carolina’s delegates to the Continental Congress, wrote from Philadelphia to Thomas Person in North Carolina concerning military matters and troop requisitions. With the letter, Penn enclosed a copy of Common Sense and in the postscript stated, “I send you a pamphlet called ‘Common Sense,’ published here abt. a month ago.” Is this the first copy of Paine’s pamphlet to find its way into North Carolina? I can’t say, but it is most definitely one of the earliest.