Peter Nathaniel Moore
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PETER NATHANIEL MOORE This World of Toil and Strife: Land, Labor, and the Making of an American Community, 1750-1805 (Under the Direction of PETER CHARLES HOFFER) This dissertation examines the eighteenth-century origins of southernness in the South Carolina piedmont. Looking through the lens of a single community – the Waxhaws, a predominately Scots-Irish settlement in the lower Catawba valley – “Toil and Strife” challenges the notion that the Carolina upcountry was a static, undeveloped backwater region until cotton planters transformed it after 1800. Rather, in the half- century preceding the cotton boom the Waxhaws underwent a comprehensive social, economic, and cultural transformation of its own making, one driven by the internal dynamics of the community itself – immigration patterns, neighborhood rivalries, changing religious and ethnic identities, population growth, and developing markets for slaves and wheat – not by land-grabbing speculators and aggressive planters. When cotton finally penetrated the piedmont in 1800, the Waxhaws bore little resemblance to the backcountry community of the late colonial period. The stress of economic, demographic, and generational change was felt most acutely in the community’s central institution, the Presbyterian church. For three decades neighbors and competing kin groups, divided by class, ethnicity, and doctrinal issues, struggled to control church location, leadership, worship, and the force of the Great Revival. This struggle ultimately set the church, once so vital to community life, on the path to obsolescence. In addition to religious history, this study examines contact and conflict between white settlers and neighboring Indians and underlines the importance of this encounter in shaping both the physical/spatial and mental world of white immigrants. It looks at how the insularity bred by the frontier played out in gender relations, sectarian conflict, the ambiguous relationships between masters and slaves, and neighborhood rivalries. It explores the social and economic impact of the Revolutionary War and looks at how class and neighborhood differences affected wartime allegiance. It reassesses the importance of land speculators both before and after the war from the local perspective. It also takes a long look at the Great Revival of 1802, moving beyond its impact on the local church and deep into its language and ritual structure, exploring the broader cultural context of its peculiar kind of somatic piety and the links between religious experience and generational change. INDEX WORDS: South Carolina, piedmont, community study, Waxhaws, Waxhaw settlement, Lancaster County, backcountry, religious history, Great Revival, Catawba Indians, land speculation, immigration, settlement patterns, wheat, sectarianism, frontier, Presbyterian Church, trial by touch, touching test, psalmody, hymnody, Revolutionary War. THIS WORLD OF TOIL AND STRIFE: LAND, LABOR, AND THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN COMMUNITY, 1750-1805 by PETER NATHANIEL MOORE B.A., East Tennessee State University, 1983 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2001 © 2001 Peter Nathaniel Moore All Rights Reserved THIS WORLD OF TOIL AND STRIFE: LAND, LABOR, AND THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN COMMUNITY, 1750-1805 by PETER NATHANIEL MOORE Approved: Major Professor: Peter Charles Hoffer Committee: John Inscoe Michael Winship Claudio Saunt Charles Hudson Allan Kulikoff Electronic Version Approved: Gordhan L. Patel Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia December 2001 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation began as an effort to understand the ordeal of Agnes Richardson, a young widow who in 1771 was suspected in the murder of her husband and was forced to prove her innocence by touching his decomposing corpse. Agnes and I have been through many interpretive twists and turns since the original seminar paper in 1999, and we have accumulated a great many debts along the way. I consider myself fortunate to have had an ideal dissertation committee, one that brought a range of expertise and tremendous depth to my project, that never let me settle for cliche arguments, and that forced me to ask new questions, think through my assumptions, and ground my conclusions in solid evidence. Peter Hoffer has been a model dissertation director, always engaged, available, supportive, and ready with a constructive critique. Michael Winship originally steered me toward Agnes and the Waxhaws and has provided invaluable comments ever since, especially relating to religion and ethnicity. John Inscoe taught me most of what I needed to know about early American communities, and Charles Hudson and Claudio Saunt helped me understand the importance of Indians to an otherwise one-dimensional white immigrant community. In addition to my committee, I have benefited from the helpful suggestions and support of numerous colleagues and friends, including Allan Kulikoff, Gregory Nobles, Bryant Simon, Monica Chojnacka, Chris Schutz, Evan Ward, Todd Bennett, Richard Byers, John Keeling, Matt Hale, Randolph Scully, and Kirsten Wood. Thanks as well to Dan Richter and the McNeil Center for Early American Studies. My six-week visit to the Center was immensely helpful, enabling me to reconceptualize my project when I needed it most. iv v I would also like to thank the many folks who worked hard on my behalf to locate and retrieve source materials. The interlibrary loan staff at the University of Georgia is an exemplar of professional courtesy; their patience knows no bounds. The archival staffs at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, the Presbyterian Department of History, the South Caroliniana Library, the North Carolina Division of Archives and History, the Southern Historical Collection, and the Camden Archives were always eager to help. In addition, two outstanding local historians, Louise Pettus and Nancy Crockett, provided friendly advice and source materials in the latter stages of my project. Nancy is a direct descendent of Agnes Richardson and cares about her historical fate far more than I do; it is to her that this study is dedicated. Funding from several sources enabled me to finish this project in a timely fashion. A year-long dissertation-writing fellowship from the University of Georgia permitted me to set aside my teaching responsibilities and focus on research and writing. The UGA history department, Center for Humanities and Arts, and graduate school also provided generous support, as did the Georgia Chapter of the Colonial Dames of America. In addition, the McNeil Center for Early American Studies provided the warmth of office space and good conversation during this southerner’s cold winter stay in Philadelphia. Countless friends have provided much-needed moral support and encouragement to a slightly-above-the-median-age student returning to graduate school. Glenn, Andy, Sonny, Robert, Arnold, Steve, and John, to name just a few, have always been there when I needed them. Along with my sons Nathaniel and Matthew, they have never hesitated to remind me about what really matters. Finally, this dissertation would not have been possible without the love, encouragement, patience, not to mention financial support of my long-suffering wife and best friend, Kim, who believed in me when I doubted myself and postponed her dreams vi so I could pursue mine. Her tolerance and unwavering faith made the ordeal of graduate school bearable; her companionship and friendship made it a joy. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................ iv LIST OF MAPS ........................................................viii INTRODUCTION .......................................................1 PROLOGUE: THE LOWER CATAWBA VALLEY, 1540-1750 ...................16 CHAPTER 1 COMMUNITIES, COLONISTS, AND CONFLICT ................29 2 THE SOCIAL COST OF COLONIZATION ......................61 3 TOIL AND STRIFE .........................................97 4 HOME FRONT ...........................................124 5 A YEOMAN COMMUNITY IN DECLINE, 1785-1805 ............150 6 NEW LIGHT .............................................184 EPILOGUE: ORIGINS OF THE OLD SOUTH ...............................213 APPENDICES 1 POPULATION ............................................218 2 KINSHIP AND IMMIGRATION NETWORKS ..................222 3 MARRIAGE AND CHURCH AFFILIATION, 1745-1808 ..........224 4 CHURCH MEMBERSHIP AND ADHERENCE, 1801 .............227 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................229 vii LIST OF MAPS MAP 1: LOWER CATAWBA VALLEY AND PIEDMONT CULTURAL LANDSCAPE DURING JOHN LAWSON’S VISIT ....................26 MAP 2: SOUTH CAROLINA DURING THE REGULATOR ERA ................34 MAP 3: THE WAXHAWS’ CREEK SYSTEMS ..............................38 MAP 4: SETTLEMENT PATTERN IN THE WAXHAWS, 1757 ..................46 MAP 5: SETTLEMENT PATTERN IN THE WAXHAWS, 1765 ..................47 MAP 6: SOUTH CAROLINA ROADS IN THE LATE COLONIAL PERIOD ......103 MAP 7: SETTLEMENT PATTERN IN THE WAXHAWS, 1773 .................113 MAP 8: NEIGHBORHOODS, 1795 .......................................166 viii INTRODUCTION This is the story of an obscure and unexceptional place called the Waxhaws, a stretch of land in the central piedmont lying along the east side of the Catawba River near the North Carolina-South Carolina border and settled in the mid-eighteenth century by Scots-Irish farmers.1 Since the day