Further Back Blackshears (Week 10)

Tracing Back the Blackshear Line, part 23

As I began working on this post, I was reminded that I've been putting up titles that say things like "Week 9", which seems a bit ridiculous now, doesn't it?  I think I was posting pretty regularly when I first began talking about our Blackshears, but I don't know what I was thinking when I decided to imply that I would prepare a new post (so . . . research, write, research, write, proofread, rewrite, proofread three more times, edit and correct) every single week!  Ah well, it seems a bit late to change the titles now!

Even though I usually only have time to write on the weekends now, I do occasionally read through old documents in the evenings, and I usually spend some time each day pondering what I've found.  This past week, while reflecting on this whole investigating-our-ancestors-and-writing-a-blog-about-it thing, I've come to realize that a certain pattern presents itself each time I move on to a new generation.  

When I first begin my research, I usually start with the most readily available information.  For W. C. Cheatham, that was the family history and census records.  For each of the Blackshears, it was the Blacksheariana and (for the more recent generations) census records.  I try to piece together the information from those sources, create a rough timeline of the ancestor's movements, and then throw in their children.  Of course, then I have a question I want to research, such as when exactly did they move from one place to another or where exactly in that place did they live?  This leads me to the land grant, deed, and tax records.  Then I have other questions, like when exactly did this person die or get married, which leads me to wills, probate, cemetery, and marriage records, as well as newspaper articles if any have been preserved.  After that, I'm like, well let's see if we can find out anything else about this person, which sends me off in search of court records and anything else that might be remotely relevant and thus contain a reference to the ancestor being studied.  (I actually found some of the most interesting things about W. C. Cheatham - like the fact that he was the lone Justice of the Peace in Capitan, New Mexico - just by doing a Google search!)

What I've discovered about this process is that, each time, it begins with a very patchy picture and a whole lot of speculation.  And of course, some of my initial guesses are bound to be wrong.  As I look through more and more original documents, and as I do more and more accompanying historical research into the time and place in which the person lived, I start to get a better understanding of what was most likely going on.

For example, I learned from my research way back when that W. C. Cheatham helped to organize a farmer's alliance when he moved to Laveen.  (Sorry, but - b.o.r.i.n.g.)  I then learned from my research that, before that, he was an officer in the farmer's alliance when it was first organized in Taylor County, Texas (for some reason I can't explain . . .  a little less boring).   I also learned from my research that, even before that, while living in Lampasas County during the late 1870's, W. C. ran as a candidate on the Greenback ticket, which was a short-lived political party that was closely tied to the farmer's alliance movement.  All of those bits of information were like pieces of a puzzle - completely random facts when taken on their own, but which began to form a picture in my head when put together . . .  and the picture was of  W. C. Cheatham being an ardent believer and active participant in the Farmer's Alliance movement.  And then, just a few months ago, I stumbled upon an article that was all about the fact that the Farmer's Alliance movement actually arose in Lampasas County, Texas . . . during the exact same three-year period that W. C. was living there.  And I said to myself, OMG, W. C. was probably sitting in the very room with that guy (I forget his name) who is known as the founder of the whole thing.  In fact, W. C. Cheatham was most likely one of the founding members of the movement.  I never would have taken such a leap without having enough pieces of the puzzle.  (I know, I never shared this with you because it wasn't worth a whole entire post and I was on to a different branch of the family by then - Hey!  Maybe sharing this sort of thing in little mini-posts isn't such a bad idea . . . .)

More recently, in one of my early posts about Alexander Blackshear, I was wondering whether he travelled from Delaware to North Carolina over land or by ship.  At the time, I was mostly exploring what the old maps had to tell us, and what they told us was that there were very few roads and very, very many rivers cutting those roads into pieces.  Since then, however, I have read through twenty-seven years of court minutes from Craven County, North Carolina, which has led me to do more historical research, and I have learned that a) there were ferry crossings all over the place and b) there were more "ordinaries" (the colonial name for an inn, which provided food, drink, lodgings, and horse boarding) than you could shake a stick at!  This means that, even though Alexander was making the move with five or six children and maybe two elderly parents in tow, and even though there would have been miles and miles of unpaved roads and tons of rivers to cross, an overland trip would not have been nearly as hard as I first imagined it to be. 

I still think they probably took the coastal sea route, but that's not really the point here.  The point is, the longer I spend researching a person and place, the more documents I read and history I learn, which means I begin to get a much better understanding of things.

Of course, you all didn't read twenty-seven years of court minutes (because who has the time - or desire? - to go through 2,213 pages of barely legible handwriting?), and I usually only mention the stuff I discover that is specifically relevant to the person I am talking about, so you likely don't have all of the information that I gleaned from those pages . . . information about all of the Blackshears' neighbors, about ordinaries, indentured servants, what was done with orphans, the election of justices of the peace and sheriffs, punishments for all types of crimes committed by freeborn persons and slaves, the process for being excused from paying taxes, how juries were chosen, what the taxes were like, problems arising over inheritances and vindictive family members, overseers of the road, etc., as well as how each of these changed over time.  But I've got everything I've read so far in my head as I make my guesses about things - which means my guesses get better the longer I work on a person.

Sometimes I look back at my earlier posts and cringe a little at how limited my understanding of it all was at the point at which I wrote it!  So, if you notice that I keep changing my mind about things here and there, well, that's because I have finally learned enough to see the bigger picture.  And I guess I'm okay with posting an idea and later having to say Oops, that's not right! since this blog IS supposed to be a chronicle of my journey as I go through the process of making new discoveries about our forebears.  

So.  I mentioned those 2,213 pages of court minutes.  While finishing up my last post, I decided to look through the court records and see if there was anything mentioned about the guardianship of Benjamin Simmons' orphaned daughter.  I was actually hoping I would find some kind of smoking gun (like I did with the whole Sophena/Sophama thing) that would say something like, Her mother Agness already being deceased . . . or the fact that one of the Blackshear family took custody of her.  (Ha! I should have known that was too much to ask for!)  Of course, I didn't find a single mention of the child, which is strange because every other orphan seems to have had a court-appointed guardian, but then I started thinking, maybe I can use the court records to get a better idea of when Alexander Blackshear arrived in North Carolina.  That endeavor was a bust as well (he doesn't seem to be mentioned in the minutes until well after he became a landowner and was eligible to serve on a jury), but I did find some pretty interesting things.  So today, instead of talking about Alexander Blackshear himself, I thought it might be fun to share some of the things I found this past week in the Craven County court minutes.  Not only will they give you a better understanding of the life and times of Alexander Blackshear, but they will also give you a glimpse into what things were like in colonial America in general.

The minutes were from the Craven County Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions.   According to the NCPedia,

The Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions served as the civil, administrative, and judicial arms of North Carolina county government beginning in the Proprietary period (1663-1729). Staffed by justices of the peace and appointed by the governor, the court heard cases in which the amount of litigation was between 40 shillings and 20 pounds, as well as a variety of minor civil and criminal actions. The Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions played an important role in the daily administration of county life, as it oversaw the construction and maintenance of roads, bridges, and public buildings; the distribution of licenses for ferries, mills, and taverns; and the apportionment and collection of taxes by the sheriff. Justices also acted as an Orphans' Court for the county and supervised the settling of estates. At the close of the colonial period, the county Courts of Pleas and Quarter Sessions remained virtually intact, but the state legislature now appointed all officers of the court. Following the Civil War, the new state constitution replaced the justices of the peace with a county commissioner form of government in 1868.

The minute books from the colonial period are actually a bit of a mess.  They begin in about 1712, but there are a whole lot of missing pages (sometimes months and even years), as well as pages from decades later that are mixed in with earlier stuff.  (I don't know if the pages were loose when they were microfilmed or if the clerk ran out of record books and grabbed an old one off the shelf because he had to record the minutes somewhere!)  Also, the years on the various volumes overlap, and sometimes a missing term from one volume shows up in another volume.  During the earlier years, the style of handwriting used is barely decipherable.  In addition, there are entire sections that have so much ink bleed-through or are so washed out or so damaged that they can't be read at all.  Add to all of that the fact that some of the pages have been microfilmed twice and some of them even - get this - appear to be the exact same minutes repeated again but this time written in a different hand. (?????!)

Most of the legible pages range from about 1730 up through the 1800s.  I have looked through the books from about 1738 - 1766 so far.  I began that early because the last evidence we have for Alexander Blackshear in Delaware was May or June (I think May) of 1740, which means he could have arrived in North Carolina any time after that.  (I went a bit earlier because I didn't want to miss any potentially mixed-up pages.)  I only got up to 1766 before I started writing this post, thinking that I'd only share excerpts up to 1759 (since that is as far as we've gotten on Alexander's timeline), but I think we'll get a better picture of things if I share it all.  Of course, 1766 is a weird random year to stop at, but if I spend any more time reading those minutes right now, I'll never get this post up.

So where to begin?

The court met four times a year, usually in March, June, September, and December.  Sometimes, however, the minutes were dated February, May, August and November.  So, anyway, four times a year (hence the court of pleas and quarter sessions).  The session lasted any number of days, with the court adjourning in the middle of the day for an hour (for lunch?  a bathroom break?), and also adjourning until the next day several days in a row.   

From what I can tell, the majority of the items heard in court during those earlier years dealt with the proving of deeds and managing of estates of the deceased.  Items concerning the appointments or replacements of constables, inspectors, clerks, and overseers of the roads were the next most common, followed by the reading of petitions, trials, and other miscellaneous things like levying taxes, dealing with orphans, and summoning people to court.  In the 1750's, deeds and estates still took up the bulk of court business, but there were a whole lot more items dealing with orphans, indentures, trials, and petitions for ordinaries.  Then, in the 1760's there is a definite uptick in the building of roads, presumably due to population growth (you know, all those people who were coming into town and staying at the ordinaries until they got settled).  

Each session of court usually began with the reading of acts recently passed by the North Carolina General Assembly: 

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

September 1740

So, they read a law concerning taxation to pay for the transportation of redcoats to North Carolina and for the colony's militia, a law about appointing clerks of the court, and a law for building a church in the only town in the (substantially sized) county, and for "Regulating the Said Town."  Pretty basic stuff.

I'd like to pause here and mention a couple of things before we go further.  First, you'll notice that this record has been colorized.  This is what most of the pages looked like on the microfilm:

Do you see what I had to contend with?  Of course, not all of the pages were quite so dark or had so much bleed-through, and of course most of them weren't just fragments like this.  Colorizing and adjusting the contrast (etc.) makes these pages soooooo much easier to read.  Not only that, but if you look at the digital scans of records from this time period that are in the NC digital archives, they all have a weird pink color to the paper.  So that's why I went pinkish with my colorization.  (If anyone ever wants the original black and white copy, let me know.)  Oh! I almost forgot - all of these came from the FamilySearch website, and you can access them here.)

Notice how all of the acts that were read were acts "of the assembly."  That would have been the colonial legislature, which, along with the governor, made up the government of the colony.  Of course, by this time the colony belonged to the king (the proprietors had all ceded it back to him), so he would tell the governor and the board of trade and whomever else he had running things for him what he wanted from time to time.

Now, read this excerpt:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

June 1748

I don't know if people back in the day had a different way of making a capital L, or if I just keep getting unlucky enough to be reading all of the court documents written by clerks who didn't learn proper cursive.  This says that they "Read the Law for preventing the Stealing of Cattle & Hogs", and then we have a weird shorthand notation that I can't figure out.  The clerks used shorthand quite a bit - for people's names, words like "Said" (which was a favorite term in these legal documents) and the like.  This excerpt continues to say "according to the direction of the same Act," so maybe the law itself required it to be read at every term of court.  I say this because they seemed to be reading it all the time.  I am pretty sure that I read an entry in the minutes that said that there was originally a law against stealing cattle and at some point hogs were added to it, but for some reason I didn't make a note of the image number, nor did I download it - all I have is a note in the top margin of my research notebook that says  "Act to Prevent the stealing of Hogs" (or Hoggs as they spelled it more often than not).  This makes sense, really, considering how much of eastern North Carolina (the area first settled by people of European descent - you can read a nice summary of the migration patterns here) was comprised of swamps and forests.  If you remember, I mentioned a few posts ago that swamps were great places to raise hogs, and forests were hard to farm, so . . . . I guess hog stealing was quite a problem back then.

It seems that the law wasn't a deterrent to everyone though:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

1753

This shows the jury members that heard the case of Thomas Smith, who was indicted for Hogg Stealing, as well as their verdict - not guilty.  Notice how the plaintiff in the case was not Craven County or the colony of North Carolina, but instead "our Lord the King."

Okay, so I just discovered how lucky this Thomas Smith guy was, because as I was going to post this excerpt showing somebody having their "mark and brand" recorded . . . I stumbled upon something else.

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

September 1749

Now, for several years there were people coming into court left and right having their marks recorded.  At first I thought it was their mark, as in the way they signed legal documents if they were illiterate, but usually the marks were described with words like "a swallowtail in the left ear" and I was like, is that some fancy jargon for which corner of the letter had that little serif thing or whatever?  (I know, that's a stretch!)  But I just did a search for "colonial North Carolina recording of marks and brands" and guess what I found?  A transcript of the actual law for preventing the stealing of cattle and hogs!  You can read it here (scroll down to the portion marked pg 166), or you can just be content with this summary:

The law, which was enacted in 1741, was actually called "An Act to prevent stealing of Cattle and Hogs, and altering and defacing Marks and Brands, and mismarking and misbranding Horses, Cattle and Hogs, unmarked and unbranded."

It began like this: "Whereas many Wicked Men in this Province, being too lazy to get their Living by honest Labour, make it their Business to ride in the Woods and steal Cattle and Hogs, and alter and deface the Marks and Brands of others, and mismark and misbrand Horses, Cattle and Hogs, not marked or branded;"

The law stated that any free person convicted of stealing or defacing the mark or brand of any other person's hogs, horses, or "neat" cattle (meaning a bovine, since the word cattle was also used to mean any farm animal - wow, the things I discover while working on this blog!), had to pay the price of the animal plus ten pounds proclamation money for each animal, as long as the owner prosecuted within six months' time. Weirdly enough, after the six months was past, anybody could sue for damages as long as they did it within one year, in which case the guilty party would pay the said fine and "receive Forty Lashes on his Bare Back, well laid on, and for the Second Offence, shall pay the Fine above mentioned, and stand in the Pillory Two Hours, and be branded in the left Hand, with a red hot iron, with the letter T."  (T for thief?)

The monetary fine was applied to anyone mismarking or misbranding somebody else's cattle as well.  And then, in order to "prevent the Concealing of such Offenses," anyone who witnessed the stealing or defacing of marks and did not report it to a magistrate within ten days could be sued by anyone else and if convicted, they would have to pay the sum of five pounds "for every time."  (Did that meant each count, as in for each animal he witnessed?)  

The law goes on to say that, since it is difficult to convict a crime such as witnessing a crime if the accused denies he saw it, if anyone testifies that the alleged witness told them he saw the crime, well, that would be sufficient evidence.  

And then it says, that because it was "common Custom in this Province of killing of Cattle and Hogs in the Woods, great Opportunities are given to steal the Cattle and Hogs of other People," that anyone who killed any neat cattle or hogs in the woods had to show the head and ears and/or the hide with the ears still attached to a magistrate or "two substantial freeholders" (meaning rich guys, I guess) within two days, and if he didn't, anyone could sue him for five pounds proclamation money.  (I assume this is to prove that they were his own?)

The end of the law states that all owners of horses, cattle, or hogs had to have their own unique mark and brand which had to be recorded with the county clerk.  And, if anyone purchased said animals from somebody else, they had to be rebranded in front of two "creditable" witnesses who would then sign a certificate.   

Aaannnnd the law had to be read at least twice a year, and if anyone tattled that the county court didn't do so, the court would have to pay a fine of twenty pounds (a very hefty sum) to the said tattler.

It goes on to say what would happen if somebody's animals wandered into someone else's cowpen, and ends with the clause that, if any servant or slave, whether Indian, Negro, or Mulatto should be found guilty of the crimes laid out in the law, their punishment would be, "for the First Offence, suffer both his Ears to be Cut off, and be publickly whipt, at the Discretion of the Justices and Freeholders before whom he shall be tried; and for the Second Offence, shall suffer Death."

Yikes.  They really weren't messing around, were they?  It never ceases to amaze me how, in some ways, our colonial ancestors had much more in common with people of the Middle Ages than with our civilization today!

And, just so you know, this law would be especially relevant to Alexander Blackshear in the years to come.

So, speaking of crimes and punishments, the weird thing is, in 1751 this appeared in the court minutes:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

1751

Surely they weren't barely building these things for the first time.  Craven County was officially given county status in 1739!  Whether they were just building them or they needed new ones, they did get used every once in awhile for things other than cattle and hog stealing:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

1753

Two hours in the stocks and a fine for coming into court drunk. This just goes to show that, even though North Carolina wasn't known for being religiously strict, people did take certain instances of immorality seriously in those days. Although, poor Humphry here was punished more harshly than William Dean ten years earlier, who was only given the fine for the same offense. 

 But maybe they just had different priorities back then:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

1741

This guy just swore two oaths and he was indicted by the "Grand Inquest" and arrested.  Then, of course, he behaved "Indecently" (more cursing perhaps?) in the presence of the justices and so he received a fine of ten shillings and was incarcerated until the fine was paid.

As we saw in the hog stealing law above, though, punishments for slaves were very severe.  The following excerpt is for a case in which two negro men (possibly slaves, although it doesn't say so specifically) broke into a store and stole two pocketbooks with papers, some "Ribbonds", and a penknife:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

1763 or 1764

If I am understanding this correctly, the penalty for the break-in and theft was death.  So one of the guilty parties was to be whipped on three consecutive days, fifty lashes each time, and the other was to receive the same whipping, but then have his ears nailed to the whipping post and then cut off, and then he was to remain in the "Goal" (the clerks consistently misspelled gaol - jail - every time it was in the minutes) until his fees were paid and he was sent to Philadelphia.  

There was another case in 1761, in which two slaves conspired to poison their master - there were four very interesting pages of minutes giving a narrative of what happened (you can find the first page here if you are interested), and although the punishment was not death, it was harsh enough that it was acknowledged that death might be the result.

I was surprised that the court minutes gave such detail on the case, because the minutes from Craven County were usually quite vague - sometimes I couldn't even figure out what the person was on trial for.  

Here are some more examples of the types of cases heard:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

1749

Petit Larceny, breaking the jail (too funny), and extortion.  Pretty run of the mill.  

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

1762

This one shows a woman being found guilty of assault.  There's no telling who she assaulted and the minutes don't say what her punishment was.  There is also no indication of whether or not she was married, but apparently sometimes those colonial wives could be quite the source of grief for their husbands.  Take poor Mr. Wilson, for example:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

May 1752

This one is my absolute favorite.  The courts remanded one Elizabeth Wilson into the custody of her husband, who had to "Remove her out of the Town" within ten days unless he posted a bond for her good behavior, and if she remained in town and did not behave, she would be sent back to Prison.

While we are on the topic of court cases, let's talk about juries for a moment.  Pretty much the same men seemed to be called over and over and over again.  I don't know what that was about.  I also noticed that it was very common for more than one person from the same family to be called at the same time, so maybe they were calling from different precincts.  And get this - even though there were usually only three or four justices presiding at each term of court (three were required in order to hold court), there were actually somewhere around ten different justices and the grand jury almost always included some of them, even ones who were presiding over that same term of court!  Conflict of interest, much?

And here is another example of conflict of interest:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

July 1763

I honestly couldn't believe it when I saw this.  These were the members of a jury that heard cases in the July 1763 term of court. 

And at the bottom of the page:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

July 1763

This was a case in which John Fonville was suing somebody else.  "The same jury as in the last course" gave a verdict.  The same jury that included both David and Isaac Fonville.   John Fonville's sons?   His brothers?  His father or uncle?   Hmmmmmm.  I feel bad for the defendant.

And speaking of juries, here are some excuses men gave for skipping jury duty:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

September 1749

So let's see, not being freeholders (that means they didn't own land and thus could not vote or serve on a jury), illness, not even summoned, being a cripple, and, my favorite, "for want of a Horse."

Having a horse would have been pretty important, since some people did a lot of traveling in order to attend court:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

1754

This poor guy had to come to court five times for one court case, travelling a distance of 35 miles.  Hopefully that was all together and not each time, since 35 miles is like a whole day's ride!  (Now that I think about it, if you had to be a freeholder to be on a jury, why did that guy up above not have a horse?!)  Anyway, just like today, jurors got paid for each day of service (plus mileage!).  But unlike today, testifying witnesses were also paid for each day they attended court:

 

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

November 1753

Not only did people get paid for attending court, but they got fined for not attending when they were summoned:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

September 1749

 Yikes.  Ten shillings!  And do you know who else, besides jurors and witnesses, had to attend court and were fined if they did not?

Constables.  In the excerpt below we can see that there were several constables who chose not to show up at court and were fined 20 shillings - twice the amount a juror playing hooky was slapped with:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

May 1757

Now, you might be wondering, like I was, whether 20 shillings was a lot of money or not.  Well, let's compare that 20 shilling fine to the county tax from two years prior:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

May 1755

Okay. So every tithable (taxable person = free males aged 16 and over, slaves both male and female aged 12 and over) had to pay 4 pence (a pence was 1/12 of a shilling) to go toward a town fence, 1 shilling & 6 pence to go toward paying jurors, 1 shilling to build/maintain the prison and stocks, and 2 pence for law books.  That's a total of almost 3 shillings.  Now, sometimes extra taxes were levied if they needed money for something else:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

1753

This tells us that, in 1753, the county was needing to build a proper court house and prison, and so they decided to make each tithable pay an extra 1 shilling in addition to their regular county taxes.

I guess 20 shillings was quite a hefty fine then.  I doubt any one of those constables would even consider skipping court a second time!

 But who were these constables and what, exactly, did they do?

The dictionary says a constable is "a peace officer with limited policing power, usually in a small town."  

Here is an excerpt from the court minutes showing some of the duties of the constables in Craven County:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

September 1740

Okay.  So they patrolled the town to prevent any disorderly conduct.  And here is another one:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

1752

Here we see a constable being fined for "refusing to Execute a Summons" for one of the court justices.  So, constables attended court, patrolled and kept order, and served summons.  Kind of like the deputy sheriffs of the 1800's, then.

And here is something interesting that I discovered while reading the court minutes - constables were appointed by the courts, and the minutes recorded the names of men who were being appointed, sworn in, or resigning.  And from the number of names I recognized, it appears that the constables were nearly always young men.  Alexander's sons James and Abraham both served as constables (it's possible Elisha did as well and those court pages are just missing), as did two of his sons-in-law, Benjamin Simmons and Ezekiel Clifton.  They all served when they were around 21 to 23 years old, except for James who was in his early 30's but was relatively newly married, so maybe they had to be young and/or in their first five years of marriage.  (Oooh, what a great topic to research for a master's thesis!)

Since we are talking about appointed officials, let's continue with that thread.

Justices of the peace, constables, and various inspectors were appointed for each county.  The sheriff was elected, but from what I could tell, three men were chosen to be recommended and they had to be approved by the governor before they could stand for election.   (Or maybe it was the other way around.  It was all very confusing!)  All of these men had to post a bond or have a person agree to stand as their security before they could take office.  They also had to swear an oath:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

March 1740

The bottom portion of this excerpt shows the oath that the clerk of the court took.  The justices had to take the exact same oath.

I guess that each man had to swear that . . . he was not a Catholic?  

Well, okay then.

The inspectors, however, actually took an oath that was relevant to their duties:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

November 1755

There were two inspectors sworn in this day, one to serve at a place called Bush Landing (that was actually Hardy Bush, the first husband of James Blackshear's soon-to-be wife, Katherine), and one at Newbern.  They were inspecting barrels of pork, beef, rice, tar, pitch, turpentine, lard, and indigo, as well as staves, heading, shingles and lumber.  They had to determine that the product was "lawful" before they could give it a stamp of approval.  The inspectors' oath stated that they would perform their duties with impartiality and with their best judgement and skill.   I really like this entry, because it shows exactly what types of goods were being produced by the residents of Craven County.  The pork and beef would have come from all of those cattle and hogs that people had, the rice was grown on swampy plantations, and the rest (lumber products and naval stores) all came from those pesky trees that covered a large portion of everyone's land.

In addition to the guys who inspected goods being shipped out of the county, there was a guy who served another important function:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

October 1766

This was the first and only mention I found of this position, so I don't know if it was newly created in the 1760's or what.  Remember, the 1741 law about the stealing of cattle and hogs said that the county clerk was supposed to keep a record of stamps and brands.  Maybe, as the population dramatically rose over those twenty some-odd years, they decided they needed somebody to be in charge of just that sort of thing.

Before we move on to a new topic, I'd like to skip back to taxes.  As I mentioned, every free male over the age of 16 was considered a tithable and, if living on his own, had to pay taxes, or, if still living with his father, the father was responsible for paying his tax.  The minutes show that the heads of household were required to declare to the constable (or, if there was no constable in his area then a justice of the peace) each year how many tithables they had, and the constables then had to report their lists to the court:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

Jun 1751

(You should remember this, because we will talk about it again in relation to Alexander Blackshear in my next post!)

And during the 1750's (I never saw this in the later years), a lot of men went into court and reported how many people were in their household:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

1754

I'm not sure exactly what this was about.  It says that Mr. Cope's family had twelve white persons, which can't possibly mean twelve tithables, unless some of those "white persons" were indentured servants. 

Sometimes people got into trouble, though, for not reporting all of their tithables:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

March 1750

This is an interesting case.  Apparently there was a mulatto (he could have been part black or part American Indian) who was accused of "Concealing his Taxables" which is kind of weird because this sounds like he himself was the concealed taxable!  His defense was that he lived with his father who was unaware of the current law.  I looked up the law (I can't help it.  Curiosity just gets the better of me.  You can read a transcription of the whole 1750 law here.), and it turns out that a new law had just been enacted in March of 1750.  So, since this appeared to be from the March 1750 term of court, that doesn't really make sense and this might be one of those instances where pages from a different term of court were mixed up in the microfilm.  Anyway, lucky for him, his defense was accepted and he didn't have to pay the back taxes or court costs.

Now, do you all remember that petition I shared way back when that showed Robert Blackshire of Craven County requesting that he be excused from paying taxes?  (If you somehow missed it, you can find it in this post.)  This actually happened a lot.  See?  

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

1763 or 1764

Here we see a young but infirm man and and "Aged Poor infirm" man asking to be excused from paying public taxes.  It says that it was granted by the court "and ordered that he have a certificate to the assembly" made. 

I went through what appeared to be the March 1747/48 term of court very carefully, looking for a reference to Robert Blackshire since we know that he had a petition sent to the General Assembly because the North Carolina Archives had it in a box of General Assembly papers.  I didn't find any mention of it (or course!), but maybe way back then people were just having their local justice of the peace prepare the petition and forward it directly to the assembly instead of having the county court approve it first.

Here are a few more examples of these petitions:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

June 1751

This man asked to be excused from "Publick Duties and Paying all (Levys?) hereafter" because his old age and infirmity made him barely able to earn enough money to live on.  It was granted, as every single one of these (and there were a lot) was.

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

May 1756

This man asked to be excused from paying taxes "on account of his having lost the use of one of his arms."  And then, there is this one:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

 1756

Here we have the court reading the petition of Daniel Simmons.  Remember him?  It was his militia company in which Alexander Blackshear served as a sergeant.  This says that he, too, wanted to be excused from paying taxes "on account of his age and Circumstances."  This is very important for two reasons, folks.  First, I saw a lot of family trees online that had Benjamin Simmons as the brother of Daniel and son of John.  But if Benjamin Simmons was just getting married around 1758, is it possible that this Daniel was his brother?  And second, if Daniel Simmons was already in such "circumstances" that he needed to be excused from taxes by 1756, that would mean that the militia roll would have had to have been from 1754 or 1755 at the latest, which narrows down our age range for Elisha Blackshear by a few years.  

Well, you know me, I decided to look for the will of Daniel Simmons and see what it said.  I found one dated 1769, and it said that that Daniel Simmons had two sons named Daniel and George (who was still an infant, which just meant under the age of fourteen from what I've seen in the records).  So I guess this was the petition of Daniel Simmons Sr., not the younger one.  We still don't know if this was Benjamin's father or maybe an uncle, but figuring out whether this man was the captain of the militia would help us know whether or not to keep as an option the later years of our proposed range for Elisha's birth.  (Oh, and I just have to say, that if this was indeed the Daniel Simmons who died in 1769, he must have had some very unusual "circumstances" because the inventory of his estate suggests that he was quite rich and would have had no trouble paying his taxes - which just goes to show that if you do some sketchy stuff, chances are somebody will read about it 265 years later and call you out for it!)

And now we come to a petition that was requesting an excusal, but not from taxes:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

September 1749

This man complained that he was "upwards of Sixty six Years of Age" and "very Infirm" and was requesting to be discharged from mustering and working on public roads.  This is actually pretty strange, because only men under sixty were required to serve in the militia anyway.  (We'll get to the working on the roads part later.)  As we've seen, men looking to be excused from stuff usually just sent in a petition, but this man seems to have gone into court himself.  Maybe it was because he wanted the justices to see how old and infirm he really was, or maybe it was because he was also requesting that his son, who had been "Born a Cripple" and couldn't work be excused from paying taxes as well.

It wasn't just men coming into court with petitions requesting to be discharged from doing public works or paying taxes, though.  Men and women both came into court and petitioned for all kinds of things.

But you know what?  This post is getting to be quite long, and it's already been three weeks since my last post, so I think I will wrap this up here and do a part two for my next post.  We'll look at those petitions, as well as excerpts about roads and orphans and some other really interesting things I found.

Before I go, though, I'll leave you with this weird poem that was inside the front cover of one of the minute books.  It was (allegedly) written by one James Green, who just so happened to be one of the justices of the peace at the time:

Craven County, NC

Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions

1750

Unfortunately, the matching page from the other side was missing, so we don't know what those words of wisdom at the bottom actually said.  And, just in case anyone is wondering, the "Esquires" mentioned in the rhyme is a word that referred to lawyers and justices, as well as other men who were deemed to be important for some reason.

See you next time!

                                                                                                                                            - Therese