Sunday's Child

SUNDAY’S CHILD By Brendan Camp LeGrand Copyright 2010 For my friend, Margaret Jay, who wanted to hear the stories. To my family-I thank my God upon every remembrance of you- Philippians 1:3 PREFACE Telling stories from one generation to another is the best way to remember ancestors and to pass on history. As a tribute to our heritage, this book is my attempt to share the stories of the Camp family, who came to America from England in the 1600’s, settled in Virginia and migrated to the western region of North Carolina before the Revolutionary War. Descendents became doctors, teachers, soldiers, tradesmen, farmers, and textile workers. Generations of family men were drawn to the clergy. We have been called devout, God fearing, 1 stubborn, prejudiced, salt of the earth, products of the slow South, rednecks, hillbillies, lint heads, and hayseed plowboys. We were all this and more. PROLOGUE My brothers told me they were flying a kite that January Sunday of 1948 when I was born. Sister Polly ran to the field to tell them I was a girl. The day they brought me home from the Shelby Hospital, they said there was snow on the ground. I was three weeks early and born in the Doctors’ Lounge because Mama had heart problems and needed to be monitored. Dr. Vic Moore, who delivered me, signed fourteen-year-old Edwin, eldest of the eight kids still at home, out of school to help out. Edwin cooked and cleaned and helped take care of me. I am the youngest of John Madison Camp’s eighteen children. Daddy was sixty-five when I was born and Mama was thirty-nine. I am the ninth generation of the Camp family in America. COMING TO AMERICA The first inhabitants of America were the more than one million Indians belonging to over 200 tribes north of Mexico. They probably descended from the prehistoric immigrants who left the frigid Siberian hunting ground during the ice age searching for game. They are believed to have crossed the land bridge 25,000 to 35,000 years ago that extended across the Bering Sea and Strait that then linked Asia to Alaska. They spread across the continent settling into the forests, prairies, deserts, and mountains. The first known European to set foot on the New World was Norsemen sailor, Leif Ericsson, about A. D.1000. America was next visited in 1492, when Italian Christopher Columbus sailed on a voyage financed by Spain, and reached the Bahamas. John Cabot, an Italian explorer and navigator, landed on the island of Newfoundland in 1497, and began the futile search for a navigable Northwest Passage. Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian born explorer who moved to Spain in 1491, helped Columbus get his ships ready for his second and third visits to the New World. Vespucci went on two, and possibly four, voyages for Spain to Central and South America from 1497 to 1504. After his exploration in 1501-1502, he was one of the first explorers to come up with the idea that the places he had explored were not part of Asia, as Christopher Columbus had thought, but were part of a New World. In 1507, a pamphlet was published called, The Four Voyages of Amerigo. The author of the pamphlet suggested the new land Amerigo Vespucci had explored be named in his honor. At first, the name only applied to South America, but later both continents of America were known by his name. Ferdinand Magellan, a native of Portugal, explored for Spain from 1519-1522, in search of a Westward route to the “Spice Islands.” In 1521, he led the first expedition to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. His expedition was the first to circumnavigate the earth, although he was killed in the Battle of Mactan in the Philippians and did not complete the voyage himself. Explorers who were sailing to the Orient in search of spices found North America was a huge obstacle in their path. But they were pleased to discover that the new land held untold treasures that could be claimed for the countries of Europe. For the next 200 years, Spanish adventurers searched the Southeast coast and the Southwest for gold. The Spaniards established St. Augustine, the first permanent settlement north of Mexico, and a chain of forts and missions in Florida and along the Gulf coast. In the Southwest, 2 they established New Mexico, which included all of Texas, as well as a chain of missions up the Pacific Coast of California. French explorers hunted in the Canadian wilderness for furs, and lay claim to the land in the Northeast around St. Lawrence River, the Great Lakes, and Quebec. They sailed down the Mississippi River all the way to New Orleans, and claimed all the land in the vast river system for France. Dutch and Swedish traders established outposts on the Northeast coast in the area that is now New York and Delaware. England fought Spain, France and the Netherlands for the continent. The English also came in search of riches, but perhaps they were more adaptable that the others, for they not only claimed the land, but settled it. During the reign of King James I, colonization of North America began. The history of British America started in North Carolina with Sir Walter Raleigh’s colonization attempts, which resulted in the Lost Colony of Roanoke in the 1580s. Among those 118 men and women was Governor John White’s granddaughter, Virginia Dare, the first English baby to be born in the New World. The haunting mystery of their disappearance remains unsolved to this day. Paul Green wrote a play called “The Lost Colony,” which is given each summer at Roanoke Island on the exact spot where Governor White had his fort, and where the unlucky settlement stood. Because North Carolina was a part of America from its beginning, it has emerged as one of the most historic places in the United States. After a short pause, other English settlements began. In 1607, Jamestown was founded in Virginia, and in 1610, Cuper’s Cove was established in Newfoundland. William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony, at Plymouth in 1620. The new settlers were unprepared for the rigors of colonial life and many of them succumbed to Indian raids, starvation, and disease. In the Jamestown settlement, more than half of the settlers who arrived in 1607 died before the end of the year. Of the 102 Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock in December 1620, 44 were dead by the following spring. Another peril faced by the early immigrants was piracy on the seas. During the late 17 th and early 18 th century, numerous rogues preyed upon the ships, seizing their contents and sometimes killing those who resisted. Because of the shallow waters of its sounds and inlets, North Carolina’s Outer Banks became a haven for many of the outlaws, including Blackbeard, the most notorious pirate in the history of seafaring. His lawless career lasted only a few years, but he captured over 50 ships. With a long flowing beard that almost covered his face, crimson coat, two swords at his waist and bandoleers stuffed with numerous pistols and knives across his chest, Blackbeard’s menacing appearance frightened his victims enough to make most of them give up without a fight. He was killed in a bloody battle at Ocracoke Inlet on November 22, 1718. The reputation of his reign of terror long outlived him. Despite the dangers, hardships, and uncertainty of life in the New World, settlers continued to emigrate from Western Europe and Britain in search of riches, land, and religious and political sanctuary. By early 1700, there were thirteen English colonies from Maine to Georgia. Settlers were adventurers, soldiers, farmers, and tradesmen. They were from every social and economic status, except for nobility. Dukes and Earls did not emigrate. The poorest could and did. Astonishing stories of America were told in the capitals of Europe, tales of land for the taking, gold and pearls for the gathering,--tales enticing immigrants to come to the new land where people could start anew, a land of opportunity and hope, limited only by the boundaries of one’s imagination, a vision that is the appeal of America to immigrants still. 3 A few settlers came to America through the port of Charleston, South Carolina, but the main port of entry for settlers in America was Philadelphia. Migrants traveled south by the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road, from Lancaster, through Gettysburg, and down through Staunton, Virginia to Big Lick (now Roanoke), Virginia where the pathway split. The Wilderness Road took settlers west into Tennessee and Kentucky and the main road continued south through Virginia into North Carolina through Bethabara (Winston-Salem), Salisbury, and Charlotte. Some families stayed in Virginia or Maryland and their children migrated south. The Camp family followed this pattern. The Camps were among the first settlers of mostly English, Scottish, Irish, French, and German immigrants who began arriving in the foothills of the Western Piedmont along the border of North and South Carolina in the 1750’s to what was then Anson County, the westernmost county in North Carolina. Anson County gave birth to all the counties in the western half of the state. Established in 1750 as the fifteenth county in the colony, Anson once stretched westward from Bladen County all the way to the Mississippi River, including all the land that is now the state of Tennessee. Anson County was named for Baron George Anson, British admiral who circumnavigated the globe from 1740-1744.

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