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The History of Alamance

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The History of Alamance THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA THE COLLECTION OF NORTH CAROLINIANA C971.1 586s c.2 UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL 00032761173 This book is due on the last date stamped below unless recalled sooner. It may be renewed only once and must be brought to the North Carolina Collection for renewal. £ COL. J. S. CARR. THE HISTORY OF ALAMANCE A WORK FOR THE DEGREE OF M. A. AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA. BY Miss S. W. Stockard. 9 9 W RALEIGH : Capital Printing Company. 1900. r TO GENERAL JULIAN SHAKSPERE CARR, A THANKSGIVING. INTRODUCTORY That our American Republic sprang into life full formed like Pallas from the head of Zeus seems miiaculous, but there is nothing wonderful about either. Both Eng- land and Zeus, you know, had been troubled with head pains. The English Church and Presbyterianism were sig- nificant. Runnymede, Magna Charta, the strength of the Anglo-saxon speech against the French and the Latin, the Cornish and the Celt, attest to the elasticity and might of the English consciousness. Every bill of rights foretold a possible America. Moore's Utopia was like an index finger pointing to Columbia, " The land of every land the pride." But to see things in their general light is easier than to dissect and vivisect particularly. And it might be pleas- anter to write a history of the Feejee Islanders, than to sit down among a people whose conflicting opinions have be- come a matter of history, and to try to tell the truth, abso- lute, unprejudiced. An account of the Indians is given, in the first place, for the children ; again, because they were the former land- owners. Haw River took its name from them. Alamance,* in Indian speech, they say, means all men's land, a universal sort of country ; and indeed it well might be so named ; Gov- ernor Morehead called the lovely sloping fields between Stinking Quarter Creek and the Big Alamance, his Eden. An Indian grave-yard has been found, not far from Glencoe ; the skeletons show them to have been buried in a sitting position. Their bones are crumbling back to dust ; two hundred years ago their huzzars rang loud and clear through forests and savannahs ; to-day a few arrow points, pots and skeletons remain to tell the story of that race, so relent- * Allemance, Alemany. It may be German. 6 INTRODUCTORY. lessly has time swept them away. Only their names enduring stay to ns. A thousand years are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a tale that is told This work is di proportionate, necessarily so. Some peo- ple preserve their family history while others do not. The Thompson family history is being prepared by Mr. Ed. Thompson, hence that is untouched. This history does not contain the whole of life as it once was in Alamance, the drama would come nearer that than history. I shall perhaps do better than this attempt when fortune smiles, and I can have more leisure. But those, who dared all things, whose courage was invin- cible, who, by their valiant hope and endeavor, gave us a name and a home, are too good to be forgotten. They came from Ireland, England, Scotland, Germany, by way of Pennsylvania in wagons to Alamance, a beautiful but a wild country, inhabited not bv Amalakites and Jebuzites, but by treacherous Indians. The vibrations of the energy of our forefathers should still make us tingle with desire to accomplish. Capt. Stockard lives on the old homestead, that James Stockard owned before the Regulation War. The land of Michael Holt, extending from Greensboro almost to Hills- boro, still belongs to his descendants, enough for the whole family. Dr. D. A. Long lives on the land he got by his great grandfather from the Crown—"Long Land." Mr. W. H. Trolinger, Mr. J. R. Garret, Mr. Van Montgomery, Mr. Nathaniel Woody, etc., received their land " to have and to hold " by right from the agents of King George. It is said that the purest race on earth live in North Carolina for these reasons. Her early settlers came, being driven by religious and political persecutions, to establish homes. The energy and cream of other nations, denomi- nations and parties settled this State between 1700— 1776 and while many have gone out to people the West there has been no immigration since. INTRODUCTORY. 7 Our young people should know the price of their liberty and our old people must not forget for " Good deeds dying tongueless Slaughter a thousand waiting on that." and If this work meets with approbation in Alamance helps to disseminate a knowledge so dear to us all, if it could but be an incentive to a more noble endeavor, then, that I have done it may be, has been granted one fond wish something. THE HISTORY OF ALAMANCE, CHAPTER I. North Carolina is as rich in noble deeds of daring men as Scotland. The knowledge of what Scotchmen endured and availed was an incentive to the Scotch. It also gave them self-confidence, less to fear in seeming failure, and a long look ahead. So may it be to us. The fact that the sturdy Scots are given a place in the shining temple of fame is due large'y to Percy's Reliques, to Burns, and to Sir Walter Scott's works. They merited this high honor. Their deeds were seeds that would have died in the embryo but for these men who preserved them to sow broadcast forever over the English speaking world. A comprehensive history of North Carolina would be invaluable. For the historian holds the same relation to the mind of man as the farmer does to his body. But the historian is a man of the most liberial culture, large grasp of ideas, leisure, no cares for daily bread, un- prejudiced, magnanimous. Such an one the ravens ought to feed and manna be sent him from heaven. History is a narrative not having beginning or end. Un- written history is a labyrinth, a jumble of incidents without the silver thread of agumentation or exposition. It is like the beads of a rotary, unconnected, disjointed, broken. Written history is fossilized life, a latent energy—stored strength for new endeavor. Prosperous wise and happy are that people who have a noble history and read it. To write a history of North Carolina would be work for a Ufetime. To write historical sketches of one's county is IO THE HISTORY OF ALAMANCE more within the range of one with limited facilities and leisure. Alamance was never a barren waste. Four hundred years ago the red man revelled here in luxurious nature. He could kill more deer than could be eaten on "Stinking Quarter" creek. Not only did he succeed in living like a lord but "writ his name in water." So the rivers and the springs ripple and sing to the music of the names he gave them—Altamahaw, Ossipee, Saxapahaw and Alamance. Besides the Indian and far above him in might there have lived among us great men in the high noon of their useful- ness. The names of Murphy, Ruffin, Bingham and Wilson adorn the county they have blessed. Their sun has set but the good deeds they've done come out to shine like the stars that glorify the night. In 1 77 1 Chatham and Lord North were "thundering in Parliament," the letters of "Junius" were attracting general attention, all sorts of political contentions were hurled against King George's government, and far away across the Atlantic the farmers of Orange county, North Carolina, were making resistance to the oppression of King George's representatives—Governor Tryon and Col. Edmund Fan- ning—at Hillsboro who were contributing to the oppression of American citizens. There lived in Southwest Alamance one Herman Hus- bands who hailed from Philadelphia and is said to have been a kinsman of Benjamin Franklin Charged with ani- mation but without that higher element of bravery, he ap- plied a spark to the fuse that flamed into the conflagration that burnt up the system of English domination. Husbands lived among men driven from home by civic and religious persecutions. Having prevailed over man and nature their spirit of freedom was epidemic. No wonder that he found it an easy task to organize such men into the famous " Regulators." These were to help each other in all trouble growing out of a refusal to pay the unlawful demands of the Rulers. THE HISTORY OF ALAMANCE. II On May 16, 1771 Governor Tryon met about two thou- sand Regulators on the plains of Alamance. Then was the first blood shed for freedom on American soil ; that was the first open resistance against the oppression of King George's rule. The battle of Alamance, N. C, and not the battle of Lexington, Mass., was the beginning of the Revolutionary war. It was a fight against the primal cause of the war for American Independence. It is interesting to know the names of some of the people who lived here then. By tradition we know who made opposition to tyranny. In some cases the old spelling shows the nationality. On the west side of Haw river, or Saxa- pahaw river, which runs length-wise of the county from north to south were the Houltz, the Strolingers, the Longs, the Stockards, the Trowsdales, the Freelands, the Albrights, the Shavers or Shepherds, the Whitesides now Whitsetts, the Thompsons, the Newlins, the Grimes now Grahams here, but not changed in other parts the Isleys, the Sharpes and the Hornadays.
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