Further Back Blackshears (Week 8)

Tracing Back the Blackshear Line, part 21

When we last looked at Alexander Blackshear, it was 1754.  He had been in Craven County, North Carolina for anywhere between seven to fourteen years by that time.  The French and Indian War had just begun, and Alexander had acquired an additional 281 acres of land, giving him nearly 400 acres total.  

Whereas last time we focused primarily on this accumulation of land, today we are going to begin by taking a closer look at Alexander's children.  The Blacksheariana tells us that he had three sons and three daughters:

Husband:	Alexander BLACKSHEAR
born	c. 1708
married	Btw. 1730-1735
Wife:	Agnes [STOUT]
born	c. 17??
Children:
	James                 b. c.1735, DE
	Eleanor              b. NC
	Elisha Stout       b. c.1736, DE
	Abraham            b. c.1742, DE or NC
	Sarah                  b. NC
	Daughter (name unknown, married                                  Fordham)

(I don't know what the deal is with this chart - Blogger has a 

new format and it adds all of that extra space to the lines!)

These six children are named in this order in Alexander's 1785 will.  Now, quite often, a will from back in the day will name all of the sons first, in order of birth, while giving out land and horses, and tools, and other manly things, and then name the daughters by order of their birth, when parceling out the leftover household goods.  Alexander didn't write his will that way, so we can assume that his children were born in the same order as they were actually named.  

But what about the daughter with the unknown name?  Well, his will lists his daughters with their married last names.  And after naming Eleanor and Sarah, he names a granddaughter with a different last name, indicating that he had a third daughter who was deceased by the time he wrote his will.  Whether she was the third daughter or not, we don't know - the granddaughter was most likely named third because she was of a lesser "rank" than Alexander's own daughters.  

Okay.  That was simple.  But what if this isn't the whole picture?

Now, I mentioned a couple of posts back that it was likely that there were additional children born to Alexander and Agnes.  Not only did the average family have about eleven children during the 1700's, but there is also the fact that we don't see traditional family names for the sons.  (Except for Abraham, which is a name we see given to a cousin who arrived in the colonies around the time his grandfather was born.)  

If we are only concerned with genealogy, it doesn't really matter if there are missing kids in our chart, especially if they died without having offspring, since nobody is going to be tracing their line through that child anyway.  But if we are actually trying to write a person's story, any of those potentially missing children become relevant, or should I even say, important.  

Let's take a look at Alexander's oldest son, James.  The Blacksheariana bases his birth year on the suspected marriage of Alexander and Agnes, which Mr. Blackshear extrapolates from land records as being between 1730 and 1735.  I guess he wanted to be careful to not give James a birth year before the last date that his parents might have been married, so he chose c. 1735.  The funny thing is, his book also shows that James made his first purchase of land in 1753 (which I have confirmed as his earliest land transaction on record), but he would have needed to be twenty-one years old in order to do so.  1753 minus 21 gives us a birth year of 1732.  Of course, this is assuming that he had managed to save enough money that he was able to jump up and purchase land as soon as he came of age.  If not, he could have been born even earlier.

And this is where we see how difficult this whole assigning birth dates thing is.  Alexander first appears in the land records in 1734 (a land grant), suggesting that he wasn't married until that year or even later.  But his son's appearance in the records implies that he was born two years before that.  This contradiction leaves us scratching our head and having to say things like, Well, maybe Alexander's mother was already dead, and there was no woman of the house, so when Alexander got married they just lived in his father's household, and then he got his own land after that because . . . collecting land was the thing to do?  Oh wait.  I just looked back at my Week 6 post, and my research revealed that it was very common for men to claim a piece of land and squat on it while they made improvements, all before they ever applied for a land grant.  (Do you see what happens when I go so many weeks between writing these posts?  I completely forget these things!!)  So I guess we should probably be looking at the evidence for James' birth year (i.e. later land records) to tell us when Alexander was married instead of the other way around.

Uuugghhhh.

(And, in case any of you care, this earlier birth date also suggests that James might have had a wife who died before he married Catherine Franks Bush c. 1758, since he would have been at least twenty-six years old already by that time.)

The next child that appeared in Alexander's will was his daughter Eleanor (who the book says was born in North Carolina but must have actually been born in Delaware), and then his son Elisha Stout is named.

Now, Elisha's birth year is listed as 1736 in the Blacksheariana, but I don't think he was actually born so early.    

He appears to have not owned any property until 1764, when he both bought land and received a land grant.  After that, he is all over the place in the land records - buying, selling, and getting grants left and right.  Of course, he might have had to save up some money before he could purchase land, but he might have been working on that for some time before he turned twenty-one.  Now, if he purchased land in 1764 (which he did, on January 6), he must have come of age some time before that.  Now, I suppose it is possible that he had ants in his pants and ran out and purchased land on his birthday (we have good evidence that his son, Jacob, received his first deed of land within the month he turned 21), which could give him a birth year as late as 1743, but it is more likely that he had recently had a birthday, perhaps at the end of 1763, in which case, he could have been born as late as 1742.  Either way, though, he might have been born as much as ten years after his brother James!

When we try to look at the proposed birth years of his children, it is an even bigger mess than Alexander's, because it's not even clear if all of his proposed children are his children, not to mention the lack of evidence for birth order or year!  

The Blacksheariana names five sons for Elisha (we'll talk about them later), but only three have enough remaining records to establish credible birth years.  The earliest of these has a marriage bond dated 1782, which gives him a range of about 1760 to 1764 for his birth.  Hmmmm.  If we surmise that Elisha turned 21 around the time he started acquiring his own land (1764), and it is plausible that he married as young as eighteen (which would then have been in 1760/61), then a birth year of 1742/43 makes perfect sense in relation to the birth of this son.  Even if we keep the proposed (but not backed up by a single record) date of 1758 for the birth of another proposed (but once again, unproveable) son, Elisha could have easily been born as late as 1740 instead of 1736.

So why does the Blacksheariana give Elisha such an early birth date?  It isn't to accommodate a marriage date, because that date is unknown.  And as we've just seen, it isn't necessary to fit the births of his children in.  So my guess is he was trying to squeeze the children of Alexander that he knew about into a relatively close time frame.  You know, because he didn't have another name to stick into those missing years.

I propose a different approach - that we assume that there were two or three other children born between James and Elisha.  One of those could have been the unnamed daughter on the chart above who married a Fordham.  Or . . . .

The Blacksheariana makes an easily overlooked remark in the "chronologically arranged documentation" for Alexander:  

Well, that's interesting.  If this Alexander Blackshear is the right Alexander Blackshear - really, I don't know what other Alexander Blackshear it could possibly be - it means that there was another daughter that nobody (not even the author of the book himself) has seemed to notice!

Now, I looked up the will of Benjamin Simmons, and it doesn't actually say "Alexander" Blacksher.  See?

Last Will and Testament of Benjamin Simmons

Craven County, North Carolina - 1761

In case you think it's too much trouble to enlarge this and can't read that tiny writing, here is the portion in question:

Okay.  So the will actually calls him "Elexander" Blacksher.  But hey, what are the chances that there was a different guy living in Craven County at the same time with that name?  Since he was named as one of the executors, I decided to look at the papers accompanying the will to see if he "signed" his name on any of those.  This is what I found attached to one of the inventory pages:

So, same spelling, but it was obviously written down by somebody else, since Alexander didn't know how to write.  (If you look closely, you can see that the will was written out by one of the witnesses - William Brown - he makes all the "B's" the way he signed his own name - but the document was then signed by Benjamin Simmons himself.  This inventory page appears to have been written and signed by two different hands, making one think that this was "Elexander's" actual signature, and thus not our Alexander, but again I say, really, what are the chances . . . .)

In his will, Benjamin Simmons names Alexander as his "loving father." He was obviously not his father, because he had a different surname.  But it just so happens that the relationship terminology was a bit fluid back then, with words like son-in-law and step-son being used interchangeably.  (I've noticed the prefix "grand" being regularly used as an entirely separate word as well.)  Benjamin Simmons left all of his land and property (minus 150 acres he reserved for a friend) to his daughter Louise, to be divided between his own brothers and sisters if she should die without an heir.  This tells us that his wife had already died (quite possibly in childbirth), and that he had no other children besides the one daughter.

This will was made in 1761, at which point this unnamed daughter had already reached an age to have been married and have a child, which allows her birth to be neatly placed into the years just prior to or just after Elisha's.

(This really makes me wonder how many other genealogical tidbits like this are hiding in other people's documents!)

So.  Most likely one and maybe two additional daughters were born between James and Elisha.  But it is also a real possibility that there were one or two additional sons born in those early years of Alexander's marriage as well - sons who died before they came of age and showed up in the land records.  

I think that this is something that we should seriously consider, for a couple of reasons.  First, an astounding number of children died before the age of five back then.  Don't believe me?  Check out this life expectancy graph that I found on an excellent (meaning, go check it out!) living history blog called Passion for the Past:

The average life expectancy jumped dramatically back in the day if we only count those who just managed to make it past those first five years.  So it's almost downright silly not to assume that Alexander had one or more children who died while still quite young.  

And then we have the French and Indian War.  Fought between 1754 and 1763, this was the first time that the colonies had been called upon to provide men for their common defense.   Although there would be no fighting in the colony of North Carolina except on the extreme western border, they were actually one of the first colonies to call up the militia and send them to the fighting.   The following table is a partial transcription of a document in the North Carolina Archives that is slated to be digitized soon:

This shows that in 1756 there were 989 taxable white males (everyone aged 16 and up) in Craven County.  There were 934 taxable black persons, which, up until 1784, would have included free black males age 16 and up, as well as all slaves, both male and female, age 12 and up.  I have seen a few free black men in the land records for Craven County, and even a few mentioned on militia lists from the 1750's, but I am guessing that there weren't that many, which means there were probably about a thousand free taxable males altogether.  

Now, all males of the designated age were taxed, but not all had to serve in the militia.  Only men through the age of 60 were required to serve.  Anyone who was crippled or otherwise unable to fight would have been exempted as well.  The chart shows that there were 631 men registered in the Craven County's militia, which, of course, is about 63% of the free taxable males.

Although the law required all militia men to regularly drill with their individual companies and regiments, this rarely took place.  According to an article from the State Library of North Carolina, 

Governor Arthur Dobbs (1754-65) found the implementation of these laws inconsistent with the defense obligations of his office, because the militia regiments were understaffed, ill-equipped, and poorly trained. In addition, they lacked leadership, had no muster rolls, and were unable to take the field if needed.

Well, that's not a great situation to be in when war breaks out, is it?  

The problem was so bad, that "in 1758, Dobbs fashioned a stronger militia bill that increased fines for derelict behavior, improved record keeping, and required at least eight musters per year-four for each company and four general musters per regiment."

Here is a list of some militia officers appointed by the governor during the French and Indian War:

Col. Edward Griffith's Regimental Officer List

Craven County, North Carolina 1755

from Colonial Soldiers of the South, 1732-1774 by Murtie June Clark

You can see how many positions were not staffed.  The lists for most of the counties look pretty much the same, although some are even worse! 

At the outset of the war, North Carolina sent 300 men to join the troops gathering in Virginia, more than any other colony.  (They would have sent more, but they didn't have the money to pay the men or provide supplies.)  Not only were they poorly trained, but they were also very poorly supplied due to the colony's lack of money and a misunderstanding as to who was supposed to be responsible for their provisions.  There was a shortage of tents, half the men did not have a firearm (even though they were required by law to have one and bring it if called up), and they actually had to drive cattle and pigs north to Virginia to be sold there in order to buy food, because there was a shortage of gold and NC proclamation money wasn't good outside of the colony!  Needless to say, many of the men deserted.  

Now, 300 men is just a drop in the bucket compared to the total number of all militia men in the colony (around 12,000).  But more men would have been called up during the course of war.  I don't know how they decided which counties had to send men or which regiments went and all that, but I'm sure that some men from Craven County were called up at some point. 

It is a possibility then, that Alexander had a teenage son who served and died in the French and Indian War.  Any of his sons born between 1738 and 1747 would have been old enough to be in the militia during the course of the war.

Oh.  OHHHhhhhh.  Wait.   (Please imagine the sound of screeching tires now.)

I have just discovered something that I think might throw my teenage-son-who-might-have-died-during-the-French-and-Indian-War theory out the window.

I considered erasing everything that I just spent the last four hours researching and writing, but then I thought, hey, this blog is called 'my journey through discovering our family's story,' after all, emphasis on the word discovering, so I figured I'd leave it all in there to illustrate the difficult process of sifting through old documents to come up with a rough version of events that is even remotely justifiable!

So here we go . . . 

While looking through the North Carolina Digital Archives several months ago, I came across this undated document:

North Carolina Colonial Militia List

Alexander Blackshear, Seargeant

(front, back)

At the very top this says, "A List of Alexander Blackshare Serj: Belonging to the Company of Daniel Simmons Capt."

Let me tell you, I was ecstatic when I stumbled across this, because I hadn't seen it anywhere else online.  And do you know what was even more exciting?  The fact that the third and fourth names on the list are Alexander's own sons, James and Elisha Stout.  

I found this in the database labeled "Troop Returns," which from what I can tell is pretty much any document related to the military.  At the bottom of the page, the NCDA put a topic link that said:   North Carolina--History--Revolution, 1775-1783.

So, I set the document aside for the time when I finally got to my post on Blackshears and the Revolutionary War.  

But today, while working on this post, I decided to double-check before telling you all that there were no surviving records of the troops who served in the French and Indian War.  I found out that there was a book called Colonial Soldiers of the South, 1732-1774 by Murtie June Clark that has North Carolina militia lists.  I wasn't holding out much hope of actually being able to view it online, but lo and behold, it is on Ancestry!  

The book is full of typed transcriptions of original documents, so it is much easier to read.  Which is why, while scanning through the pages, I came across the transcription of the document that I thought was from the Revolutionary War.  Now, this document is undated, so I hadn't made the connection with the French and Indian War yet, but when I turned the page in the transcription, the name at the very top jumped out at me:  Benjamin Simmons.

Remember him?  The son-in-law of Alexander Blackshear who had died in 1761?  I instantly realized that this militia list was from the time period of the French and Indian War, not the Revolutionary War. 

(Those silly archivists! I assumed that they knew what they were talking about. I mean, they took the records out of the boxes to digitize them. They should have seen what else the document was grouped with. It turns out that some guy named Joel Russell was able to go down to the archives himself at some point and make a transcription of these documents - which I didn't find until today, after I figured out the whole mess I'm telling you about, because it was linked through a USGenWeb page devoted to the Taylor family of Craven County! - and he noted the dates of all of the dated documents that were grouped together with the undated documents.)

I went back and looked at the original, and sure enough, there was Benjamin Simmons' name. And then I made the connection that Alexander was serving under Captain Daniel Simmons. (I checked, and there seems to be a consensus that the two men were brothers.) Huh. I was wondering why he was serving in a company of men from the New Bern District of Craven County, even though there were several other companies from his county, at least one of which must have been closer to his home. Now I am thinking that maybe it had something to do with the fact that his daughter had married into the Simmons family. Perhaps Daniel Simmons even asked him to join his own company as sergeant.

And now I'm having a v-8 moment here folks - I should have known that Alexander would have been too old to serve in the militia during the Revolutionary War!  If he got married about 1731, he would have been born around 1710, which means he would have been over 60 years old already in 1776!!

And speaking of ages, we know that boys had to be sixteen years old to serve in the militia.  That means that both James and Elisha Stout were sixteen or older when this list was made.  But when was it made?  

Although it is undated, the other lists from Craven County that it was filed with were all dated between 1754 and 1758, or after 1761.  And we know that it had to have been made before 1762, because Benjamin Simmons was still on the roll.  If we use the date range of the other lists, we can actually narrow down Elisha's birth year a bit.  If the document is from 1754, Elisha would have had to have been born by 1738.  He could have been born earlier, but I've already explained why I don't think that is the case.  If the document was from as late as 1758, Elisha could have been born anywhere up to the year 1742.  And, it is possible that it was from 1759, which would allow us to assign a birth year of 1743, which matches up with the flurry of activity we see with Elisha's land records.  (It would be just my luck that the document with our family on it didn't have a date!)

This document also helps confirm that Alexander's son Abraham, whom the Blacksheariana estimates was born around 1742, was indeed younger than Elisha, and not only that, but that he was still too young to serve when the document was made.  

As for a potentially lost son, well, if this list was from closer to 1754, it throws a bit of a monkey wrench into the idea that a son was lost during the war.  But since it could have been from several years later, not only does it not rule that scenario out, but actually makes it more likely, since there could have been several years between James and Elisha in which another son could have been born.

And to think, had I not been looking at the will of Benjamin Simmons in an attempt to prove that there was actually proof that Alexander had more children, I never would have realized that this document was from an entirely different war.  So you see, you always, always, always have to keep your eyes open and double check what you find online!

(I feel the need to point out, also, that the transcription mentioned above by Ms. Clark is not a completely true rendering of the actual documents.  Not only did she take liberties with the the arrangement of wording at the top of the documents, but she left out specific dates as well.  For example, the excerpt above is specifically dated 1755 on the original, but she only gives a date range in her transcription.  You can view the original here.)

Well, I actually had a lot more I had intended to talk about today, but I think this is the perfect stopping point.  Before I go, though, here is my new chart showing Alexander's family:

Husband:	Alexander BLACKSHEAR
born	c. 1708    why???
married	Btw. c. 1730-1732
Wife:	Agnes [STOUT]
born	c. 17??   c. 1710-1713 – assume married 1731-ish
Children:
	James                 b. c.1735, DE    1732
	Eleanor              b. DE (married Baily)
	Daughter (name unknown, married Simmons)
	Elisha Stout       b. c.1736, DE      c. 1738-43
	Abraham            b. c.1742, DE or NC
	Sarah                  b. NC (married Clifton)
	Daughter (name unknown, married Fordham)

Still a work in progress - sigh!

                                                                                                                                             - Therese

Further Back Blackshears (Week 7)

Tracing Back the Blackshear Line, part 20

Last time, we looked at Alexander Blackshear and saw that, by 1748, he was well on his way to being an established landowner in Craven County, North Carolina.  By 1754, things must have been going well for him, because he began to accumulate additional property.  Of course, that makes a whole lot of sense, seeing as how by that time he had teenage sons to help him work the land.

So, what do I mean when I say that things were going well for him?  Well, he must have been able to clear and cultivate the required five acres of land (for every hundred acres granted) per year, in addition to paying the annual quitrent (a rent to the king that was pretty much equivalent to a property tax) of 4 shillings (per hundred acres) per year in order to maintain his original grant and qualify for a second one.

If he got his first grant of 100 acres in 1748, by 1754 he would have had to have cleared thirty acres, and kept all of the cleared lands under cultivation.  That means that he would have been farming at least thirty acres by 1754.  Now, I asked myself, how many laborers were required to farm thirty acres?  Wouldn't you know, I couldn't find an answer from a trustworthy source anywhere online?  What I did find though, was an article called "Sense and Sustainability," which explained that colonial farmers had to use a hoe instead of a plow (remember how I mentioned that in an earlier post?) because there were too many tree roots on all that forested land they were clearing, so one person, working alone, could only manage to have about five to six acres in production at a time!  Of course, children could help with the planting and tending and probably even harvesting, once the older, stronger family member did the initial preparation of hoeing the "hills" in which the crops were planted.

I was also reminded by the article of the importance of crop rotation, and learned that most colonial farmers were not able to plant the variety of crops that would allow them to keep all of their lands under cultivation year after year, meaning that they had to let some of it lie fallow, which also meant that a sustainable farm needed to have at least 50 acres so that fields could be moved every five years.  So, I would think that between him and his sons, that might have been manageable, and he might have even hired extra help during the planting and harvesting seasons.

Okay, so what about the paying of the quitrent?  How much of a burden was the four shillings?  Well, this one is just about as complicated to answer as the first requirement.  As I've mentioned in the past, it is pretty much impossible to gauge a relative value for items from the colonial days compared to today, because the whole nature of trade and production was so different.  If you recall, things like nice bedsheets cost more than the bed that they were put upon!  A family Bible cost an average tradesman more than a month's wages.  Add to that the wide range in incomes - a poor farmer might earn only 10 pounds per year, a skilled craftsman anywhere from 30 to 100 pounds per year, and a wealthy planter was capable of earning a whopping 1000 pounds per year.  If I remember correctly, those wealthy planters usually owned about 1000 acres of land, so we could probably wager that Alexander Blackshear would have earned around 100 pounds per year if all of his land was being used.  Obviously, even with dedicating some to grazing and using some for the production of naval stores, he wouldn't have been using all 100 acres in a profitable way within the first six years, so he was probably earning considerably less.  (For a fantastic article about this topic, visit the Breed's Hill Institute web article, The Price of Things.)

The whole quitrent thing gets even more complicated, because actual money was such a problem in North Carolina at the time that most men didn't have the cash to actually pay the four shillings, so a law was passed allowing them to pay in commodities instead (which was contrary to what the king had ordered, which is why the Board of Trade wrote the king in 1754 explaining why they were sending so little money to him and asking him to step in and do something about the situation).  It was all such a mess that half the time half the people didn't even bother to pay.

Anyway, Alexander obviously managed to do what needed to be done, because he was able to get a second grant of land six years after the first one.

Here is the page from the register of land warrants that shows Alexander's name:

North Carolina

Land Grant Index Book

I put the heading of the section (several pages earlier) up above the actual page so you could see what each of the columns is showing.  (Also, unfortunately, the county title was on a previous page.)

You can see that this is a list of the warrants granted between February 1, 1753 and November 1, 1754.  Alexander is way over in the right-hand column, and if you look closely, you'll notice that there are tiny 1753's and 1754's scattered all over the place.  I'm not sure what the clerk was doing, but I'm pretty sure that the date given for Alexander's warrant, August 29th, was for the year 1753, because the actual land grant was dated March 2, 1754.  (Remember, the warrant was for the survey, which, according to a 1749 law, had to be completed within six months and then the patent could be granted.)  Personally, I think it is just as important to note that Alexander entered his request for a land grant at the very least as early as the end of May, 1753, as it is to record the date of the actual patent, because it tells us that he was ready to take on the responsibility of more land only five years after he acquired the first 100 acre parcel.

Here is a description of the land from the Land Patent Book:

Alexander Blackshear

North Carolina Land Patents

Book 2, page 87

In the title under the image I said that the patent was recorded in a certain book and page.  But, for some weird reason, all of these early patents were recorded twice. This record can also be found in Book 10, page 409.  The wording is completely identical and the grant number is the same, but the file number is different.

In case anyone can't read this, it says that his new land was in Craven County "on Omits branch near said Alexander's home place."  I've looked on every single map I could find for the area and I couldn't find "Omits" branch named on any of them.  I even looked on extremely detailed maps from the 20th century and didn't find it.  I'm guessing that's because it doesn't exist anymore, and I'm guessing that's because it wasn't very deep to begin with, and since all of the rivers and creeks in the area are much more shallow today than they were 250 years ago (due to silting caused by - get this - earthworms unwittingly introduced to the New World by the colonists who brought plants with them!), the Omits branch has most likely ceased to exist.

Before I looked at all of the modern maps (and read about the earthworms) and came to this conclusion, I did some digging through the older maps trying to pinpoint the location.  I found the shuck for Alexander's grant on Ancestry, but it said pretty much the same thing, it just spelled the word with an "e" instead of an "i."  The index card from the North Carolina Archives said the same thing too.  But then I noticed on the NClandgrant website where I found the patent book that the archivist who microfilmed the records put a notation that it was on "Amyets" branch.  So I did a search for that name, and found a guy named Vincent Amyet who had a 1738 patent in Craven County on Tuckahoe Creek, and if you remember, Alexander's first patent was on the Rattlesnake branch of Tuckahoe Creek.  So I started thinking that maybe "Amyets" was actually "Amyet's" and it was named after Alexander's neighbor.  I did some more searching and found a lady with a patent in Craven County on "Omeats/Ommots" Creek, and I found one for a guy in Dobbs County with a patent for land on both sides of "Omeats" branch, and one for a guy with a patent on the south side of Tuckahoe Creek on the "Omiets" and Boar branches, and one more for a guy with a patent in Dobbs County on the south side of the Tuckahoe and west side of the "Omeits."

At this point I started wondering how in the world the name of the creek could be spelled so many different ways!  I figured in keeping with what we learned about the colonial dialect last time, they could all be spellings of the pronunciation "AHMyets" (Or even "AHMuts" with the e/u being an unstressed schwa and not really making much of a sound).

I also started wondering where this branch could actually be if it was in both Dobbs and Craven Counties.

Oi!  Let me put that map I made before back up!

In case you've forgotten, the squiggle line where Craven meets the corner of Onslow and New Hanover is the Rattlesnake Branch.  Somewhere along that creek is where Alexander's first land patent was located.

I found this nifty website that will map out the plat based on the description in the grant or deed, and I thought, wouldn't that be cool if I could put in the information for all of Alexander's land and get a map showing exactly where it all was?

I was pretty excited about that prospect, until I realized that a) there was never a patent recorded for the original land grant, nor is there a surviving copy of the survey, so I don't have a description of the plot, and b) I am pulling out my hair trying to figure out which subsequent transfer of property involved the land from the original grant.  So, I have no hope at the moment of placing the first tract of land on a map.

I was still somewhat excited, though, as I entered the description from the second, 1754 grant into the plotter . . . This is what the program gave me:

Ah, a nice rectangular plat.  Unfortunately, a) the patent book shows the distances in chains, but the plat plotter only has an option of poles, rods, feet, or meters, none of which are anywhere close to a chain, so when it sticks the nice little shape on a map, it is nowhere close to 100 acres like it should be, and b) since I don't know where Omets branch is, I don't know where to place my little flag as a starting point.  So that was pretty much worthless.  Blah.

There are actually a couple of clues in the description of this second patent that I didn't notice at first, though.  First, it says that this patent was located "near said Alexander's home place," which means that it was probably adjoining the first patent.  Second, it says that it ran from the fork made by the Omets and the Tuckahoe, to a pine, then to a point in a savanna, and then back to the start.  Since a lot of the old maps show swamps and other such areas, it might be possible to pin the area down further.  The fact that some of the other patents that mentioned the Omets were in Dobbs County suggests that that branch joined the Tuckahoe to the west, and in one it says south of the Tuckahoe on the Omits and Boar (I actually found Boar branch on a map, running through Craven and Dobbs counties over near the corner where it says "Pink Hill."), which would suggest that the second patent was also over in that western corner of the county.  This would mean that the earlier patent would have had to stretch from the Rattlesnake branch across to the main part of the Tuckahoe in order for the two patents to meet up.

So I guess I'll have to be satisfied with knowing the general area where his land was located.

Now, did you notice how all of these patents say that the land was on this or that branch of a river or creek?  That's because there weren't really any roads in Craven County back then.  Take a look at this map from 1770:

(Many of these really old maps show the Creek aha Creek.  As best as I can tell, that is probably the Rattlesnake Branch of the Tuckahoe, although modern maps show the Rattlesnake as Tuckahoe Creek and the tributary called Tuckahoe on the maps from the 1800's - like the one I used up above - is now called Tuckahoe Swamp, probably due to all of the silting.)

Okay, so this looks like a lot of roads, but when you consider that the area of modern Jones County (about one-third of this map) is 473 square miles (over 300,000 acres sq), and there were only basically two north-south roads and one east-west road, well, that doesn't sound like so much anymore, does it?  As I was searching through the Ancestry database of land warrants for Craven County, I only came up with two out of the first 740 pages that mentioned a road in the description of the land.

Apparently, owning land along a water course was very desirable, not just because it was good for farming, but also because it was a great way to transport goods to market.  We saw in an earlier post that the citizens of Craven County were regularly petitioning to have new ferry crossings established across the wider portions of the Trent and Nuese Rivers, but most successful planters probably had their own smaller scows to get their livestock, lumber, or other products from their own land to wherever it was being sold.  Here is a scale model reconstruction of a colonial ferry (although many were actually considerably longer than this one):

(For an excellent article on colonial ferries and the role they played in Washington's crossing of the Delaware, visit the Living in the Past website.)

Owning land on a watercourse was so desirable back in Alexander's day, that the governor of North Carolina lamented to the Board of Trade that settlers would stake out claims willy-nilly along the rivers and creeks in an attempt to get land in the most favorable location.  These grants were not laid out neatly one next to the other, which is why we see land patents for weird, random, smaller amounts, like 48 acres, during the latter decades of the 1700's!  (Interestingly, this scattered nature of settlement is also why there weren't very many towns back then.)  On top of that, many men tried to cheat the system:

As I have had an opportunity of seeing a great deal of the Country

and Settlements, I can the more fully mention to your Lordships how

far it may be necessary to enforce the Instructions of the Grants, as to

the Quantity and Cultivation and insisting upon Rights. It is not now

as it has been, when many valuable Tracts were lavished away in great

numbers of Acres in a grant, not with an immediate view of settling or

cultivating but to raise it upon the next Planter who should want valuable

Lands, which were scarce near navigable rivers, where the Lands

were generally swampy or sandy, one not valuable the other not to be

reclaimed without considerable expence, and were therefore thrown 

generally into the Patent without survey, as the surveyors to save trouble

would never enter into miry marshes and Thickets, nor indeed, as I have

observed, have they ever closed their figure, but beginning at the March

near the river, went round the 3 or more sides, until they approached the

river again and then conclude, and so on to the first station only entering

what the course ought to be to close the figure, without ever knowing

what curves were on that Line, or proving whether their survey was

right, which if wrong as too often it was, would have obliged them by

their Oaths if they valued them to go over it again to find the mistake,

frequently they have only marked a corner tree, then formed a square

which would take in the number of acres in their Warrant, laid down

the courses and lines according to that plan and that was their survey,

leaving it to the Planter to mark his Trees as he pleased, and take in

what more land he pleased within his marks, which were never after 

enquired into, some indeed exceeded this, & enquired what sort of timber

was upon it and at the fire side laid down their plan, if not joined to

any neighbouring Plantation then named an imaginery Tree, a pine red

white or black oak or hiccory etc and so enter beginning at a hiccory and

so name imaginery Trees at any angle and conclude as usual so on to the

first station, leaving the people when the patent was obtained to choose

on the Creek proposed what Lands they pleased and to mark it for

themselves according to the plan, if they knew it if not at random. You

may judge what confusion that has & does create where several Patents

interlock each other, and when these were not taken up other Warrants

issued and patents granted upon the same Tracts, and how any Draughts

can be made, had the surveys been preserved & patents regularly entered

or audited, so that no Draught of the Kings part of the Province can

be had without surveying the several Counties, and afterwards running

the particular Plantations, and as many of them are not contiguous,

running a line along the vacant land to know the distance and bearing

from each other. As to the granting the Lands by the Rights, I have

already mentioned in my former letter of November last that I thought

it would be prudent to relax me so far as to grant 640 Acres to any who

demanded it, and would settle upon it. The poor won't take so much,

because they won't engage for too much Quit rents, which they find now

they must pay, and can't cultivate so much as to save their Lands; the

rich think it not worth their while to settle, without a range for their

Cattle, as most of the lands along the navigable rivers have been taken

up for some time, there is little left, but large ranges of pine barren &

Savanna Lands with small marshes, or laurel thickets intermixed and

these lands which are all that are left (except large dismal Swamps,

Thickets near the Sea) to be settled . . . .

Okay, I know that was long, but if you skipped it, you really should read it, because it's actually kind of funny what was going on over there, but only if you read it in the governor's own words.

I wonder if the whole land dispute with the Bryan family was caused by this sort of inaccurate surveying?

Oh! And since the letter mentioned the savannas and swamps, I wanted to point out before I forgot, that swamps were rotten for farming (unless you had a massive plantation full of slaves to cultivate rice), but were apparently really great for grazing land, as the animals could graze on them year round.

I kind of got off track here, because I was supposed to be talking about roads.  Now, it just so happens that somebody got a land patent in 1760 for land adjoining Alexander Blackshear's land, and it mentions a road.  So at least one of Alexander's plats was near one of those roads.  The problem is, Alexander actually acquired a third parcel of land, this time 181 acres, in 1754.  So I don't know which one was actually by the road. (Now that I am proofreading this after I've finished writing it, I can see from the map that two of the three parcels were potentially near the road!)

The 1754 land purchase took place at the end of March, just a few weeks after Alexander's land grant was finalized:

Holden to Blackshear Craven County, NC Deed Book 6 pg 134

Holden to Blackshear Craven County, NC Deed Book 6 pg 135

Holden to Blackshear Craven County, NC Deed Book 6 pg 136

This deed begins by saying that the transaction was between Daniel Holden and Alexander Blackshear.  Neither one is named as "Planter," which tells us that up until that point Alexander was focusing on clearing his land and doing subsistence farming.  Probably the reason he was gathering another (almost) 300 acres was because he was ready to start expanding into farming/industry for profit.

He paid 72 pounds "Proclamation Money," which referred to paper money issued by North Carolina with a specified value.  The bills were necessary because there was not enough coin circulating in the colonies at that time, and these IOUs allowed transactions to be made without having to barter.  Here is an example of a 20 shilling bill from 1754:

72 pounds was probably somewhere near the equivalent of a year's wages for Alexander, so he'd either been saving money from the sale of his land back in Delaware, or he was doing something to turn a profit - maybe raising and selling livestock.





The next part tells where the land was located:

As you might have noticed, this is a relatively modern transcription (the typewriter wasn't widely used until the 1880's), so there might be some errors due to illegible handwriting in the original.  Or maybe just a clerk not paying attention.  I say this because it says the land was "being at a Place Called generally."  Well, that sounds like a word is completely missing, doesn't it?  It also mentions "Supress Creek," "Crabapple [Creek]," and "Long Spring."  Wouldn't you know, I couldn't find any of those on a map, because the second two just aren't there, and the first one is spelled wrong.  The deed also tells us that this tract of land was originally sold by Edward Franks back in 1748, so I went to the Craven County index of deeds and discovered that Mr. Franks actually sold the land to a Mr. Howard (which would explain why the deed says Thomas Howard was living on the land) before it came into the possession of Mr. Holden, who then sold it to Alexander.

The deed from Howard to Holden says the land was "being at a place called "Gormany" on "Sypress" Creek.  Hmmmm.  I think we are getting closer to something that makes sense.  The deed from Franks to Howard survives in the original handwritten deed book:

Craven County, NC

Deed Book 4 pg 192

(Frank to Howard)

Oh.  So the land was located at a place called "Germany," on "Cyprus" Creek.  Well.  That makes a whole lot more sense.  I had actually been looking for the location of this so-called Germany for weeks now, because I knew that the Franks held a ton of land in that settlement.  The first Franks (Franck), John Martin, was an immigrant from the Palatine who came over as a part of the expedition, headed by Baron de Graffenried, that founded the town of New Bern back in 1710.  The following year, the settlement was all but destroyed by the Tuscarora Indians, and the surviving settlers scattered, only to come together again and take up land further inland, along the banks of the Trent River.  (You can read all about it here if you are interested.)  I searched high and low, trying to find out exactly where they all moved to, and finally found it last night.  The settlement was actually called New Germany - you know, because it was a group of German settlers - and it was on the stretch of land between Cyprus (now Cypress) Creek and the Tuckahoe.  You can see the area on the map above; or on the map above that, it is the area around and above the town of Comfort.  By 1725, John Martin Franck had accumulated some 20,000 acres (yes, really) in the area, and his son sold this 181 acre portion upon his father's death.

All of these deeds mention that this parcel was adjoining land held by the Bryan family.  In the court case that we read about (months ago now?) involving the disputed land that Jacob Blackshear inherited, it says that the land was on the east side of Cypress Creek.  I put the description of Alexander's 1754 purchase into the plat plotter and guess what?  It shows that the tract would be on the east side of Cypress Creek.  The Bryans actually bought their land from the Francks in 1742 and 1745 (they bought another piece in 1750, but it was nowhere close to Cypress Creek), so I don't know if the dispute came about because of the survey descriptions given in the deeds or what.  It's pretty impossible to tell, because the measurements are all based off of trees.  This might have been one of those cases mentioned in the governor's letter above where the surveyors didn't really complete the survey and people were staking their corners based on imaginary trees.  Or maybe one of the marked trees came down somehow, and somebody (meaning a Blackshear!) took advantage and planted a hedge on their new version of the boundary line, either hoping nobody would notice or knowing that it couldn't be proved.  So, who knows.

What I have concluded, though, is that the disputed land was part of the 81 (or so) acres that Jacob inherited from his grandfather, which was situated on the south side of the Trent River, and Cypress Creek is on the south side of the Trent River.  Not only that, but this parcel was 181 acres, and that would be a really weird coincidence that there would be another 81 acre parcel, so this is probably the disputed land that we are looking at right now.

Both of the deeds from Howard and Holden make it very clear that there were no encumbrances on it, meaning that the land was held free and clear, and all transactions were for money in hand, so maybe the surveys really did overlap and when it went to court during the period in which Elisha Blackshear held the land, he won the case on a legal technicality.  I do find it a little weird that both of the subsequent deeds make a point to say that the land was originally deeded over by Edward Francks in 1748, and that the deed was recorded in the Register's Office in Craven County.  (As if they were expecting somebody to challenge it or something!)

And here are a few other things I noticed about the deeds:  Mr. Holden bought the land from Mr. Howard on Dec 6, 1753, it was proved in court in February of 1754, and then he sold it to Alexander Blackshear on March 19th for the exact same amount he had bought it for.  So, either he bought it and discovered that he wasn't going to be able to keep it, or Mr. Howard refused to sell to Alexander and so he found a middleman to make the deal.  (Ha! I have no idea why the guy would buy a large tract of land and then sell it three months later, but I've seen enough convoluted transactions in my research to think anything's possible!)

And if that wasn't strange enough, even though the second deed says that Daniel Holden paid Robert Howard 72 pounds for the land, for some reason he also paid Daniel's wife a separate five shillings!

Finally, the quitrent on the land was only six pence, which was way less than the 4 shillings that Alexander had to pay for his first grant.  I don't know if that is because Alexander's grant came directly from the king whereas John Martin Franck's grant was originally from a proprietor, or if the rates were grandfathered in or something.

Anyway, by 1754 Alexander was the owner of nearly 400 acres of land, and as we will see next time, this allowed him to make the jump to being considered an actual "Planter."

Before we go, though, there are two more things I would like to mention:

First, Alexander Blackshear's son, James, later married a daughter of John Martin Franck.  This is where the erroneous tradition that the Blackshears were from Germany came from.  (We'll talk a bit more about James, as well as Alexander's other children, in the next post.)

Second, 1754 marked the beginning of the French and Indian War, which, for those of you who have forgotten your history, was a war between Britain and France, and the various Native American tribes picked sides based on what kind of relationship they had with the colonists in their area.  (And we'll talk a little bit more about that in the next post, too.)

Oh, and for anyone interested in reading the rest of the governor's letter from which I posted a portion above, you can find it through the BLACKSHEAR publications link, or just click here.  It begins on page 354 of the book and is really quite fascinating, giving an account of the relations with the various Indian tribes, as well as a more thorough yet very interesting description of the ways the farmers would clear and plant and otherwise use their land.  (It also discusses the difficulties settlers had in keeping up with the cultivation and quitrent requirements for their grants.)


                                                                                                                                            - Therese