Tracing Back the Blackshear Line, part 25
Today we are back to looking at the life of Alexander Blackshear. The last time we talked about him, it was 1754. That was weeks ago (okay, okay, months), so I think we had better do a quick review.
Alexander Blackshear left Delaware and moved to North Carolina sometime during the 1740's. We know this because he and his wife Agnes were last seen in Delaware on the 14th day of May, 1741, when they went into court to prove the deed to the land that they had sold three months earlier. The next time we find him in the records was in Craven County, when he witnessed the will of John Fillyaw on August 31, 1747.
Now, earlier I had told you that the next time he showed up in the records was in March of 1748, when he received a warrant for a survey of 100 acres that he thought was in Onslow County, but was actually in Craven County. But, while looking through all of those court minutes over the past few weeks, I actually found two entries dated 1747. Here is the first one:
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| Craven County, NC Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions March 1747* |
This shows that Alexander Blackshear appeared in court to give his oath as a witness that the will of John Fillyaw was valid. I put the whole page up so that you could see the top portion with the date. It says, "the third Tuesday of March, being the 15th day of said Month in the Year of Our Lord One thousand Seven hundred & forty Seven."
(Please imagine the sound of a record scratching now.)
March of 1747?!?! I thought the will was barely made in August of 1747? Oh, that's right. There was that whole Julian calendar mess where the first of the year was March 25th in the colonies up until 1752. Okay then. So this was March of the year that everywhere else considered to be 1748. (That makes a whole lot more sense!)
But now we have to backtrack, because the other entry was from September of 1747, which was really . . . 1747. One month after Alexander witnessed the will, and six months before he appeared in court to prove it.
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| Craven County, NC Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions September 1747 |
This one needed a whole lot of editing to get the top readable. It says, "that Sundry Persons as underneath inserted having been duly warned to give in their Lists of Tithables for the year 1746 failed to do the same. Ordered that a Sumons issue to Compel the said Delinquents to appear at the next Court to Show Cause why they did not give in their List of Tithables." And then, about halfway down in the central column, it shows Alexander's name. He was one of 58 men who did not turn in their list of taxable persons for the year 1746. Now, maybe Alexander hadn't been in town very long and, not having any sons old enough to be taxed yet, didn't think he needed to submit a list. (North Carolina required all males over 16 to be taxed, and Delaware, where he had come from, at that time didn't tax males until 21 unless they owned property!) But then again, maybe not. It appears that not only did these men not turn in their lists, but it looks like they also did not pay the taxes owed either, because this is calling them all delinquents.
So what we have here is a new piece of evidence that shows that Alexander Blackshear was already in Craven County by 1746. I looked up the tax law for the time (and let me tell you, that was not an easy endeavor!) and it appears that in 1746 they were still operating under the 1722 law. That law stated that, within five days after June 30 (it was changed to May in 1750), all constables had to go door to door in their district and ask each person for a written list of tithables. A complete list of all households and their tithables then had to be submitted by the constable, along with a list of anyone thought to be "concealing" their taxables, to the county sheriff by the 5th of August, and then the taxes were collected between the first day of January and last day of April in the following year.
(And, on a side note, you would not believe how many things I found today, just one day after I put up my post about the court minutes, that answered so many of the questions I had! For example, I came across a whole article about North Carolina constables - it was quite enlightening and also NOT boring, so you should read it, and if you decide to do so, you can find it here.)
I also found a 1740 law about taxes on people who were not white, or white people married to non-whites, and it was saying something about them having to pay the tax as long as they entered the province by the first of June. So, I think June 1st might have been the cutoff date each year.
This tells us that Alexander was already settled in Craven County by June 1st of 1746. (Not only would he have had to have a door for the constable to come knocking on (meaning his own house), but I think that if the constable knocked on Alexander's door and Alexander told him that he barely moved into the county in the past month, the constable wouldn't have put him on the list of delinquents.)
Do you all remember that 1748 document from the Robert Blackshire in Craven County who was asking to be excused from paying taxes because he had been in poor health for the previous eighteen months? And do you remember how I said that, if that Robert was Alexander's father, then they would have had to have made the move to North Carolina before he became in poor health, because who in their right mind would drag an ailing parent on a move of 355 miles in colonial America? Well, eighteen months before March 1747/48 would have been October of 1746, but a smart man would have made the move well before winter. So. The fact that we know for certain that Alexander was in Craven County by that time is one more bit of evidence to lend credence to the idea that Robert Blackshaw/Blackshire did not die in Kent County, Delaware, but instead moved with his son to Craven County. (I'm just saying!)
But just because we have no evidence that he was there earlier, doesn't mean that he wasn't. I actually found the article that I had read way back when about land acquisition and surveying in early Pennsylvania (which included Delaware), and it had this to say:
Eventually, as the frontier stretched further away from Philadelphia, the likelihood increased that purchasers would squat upon and improve lands first before requesting an official application. Squatters could sell their improvements, such as clearings, fences, cabins and outbuildings, which could be worth up to ten times the purchase price. These sales often took place after the squatter had attained a warrant but before formally patenting the land. Courts typically recognized squatters’ rights to first purchase of a tract of land if the squatter had “quiet possession” (uncontested use) of the claimed land for seven or more years.
As I've mentioned before, due to the large gap in years between the commonly accepted birth date for Alexander and the first record of his obtaining land, I think is is quite possible that Alexander did just such a thing back in Delaware. And if he did, or did not but was used to seeing people do so, he might have figured that he could do the same when he arrived in North Carolina. The fact that people were still obtaining substantial patents in the area into the 1760's tells us that there was plenty of land to be had in the 1740's, so probably nobody would have complained.
Okay. So then 1750 rolled around and Alexander had 100 acres of land, a wife, and 6 children, one (or possibly two) of whom was a teenage son, and one a teenage daughter who had either just married or would be marrying quite soon. We next see Alexander in the records in 1754.
Ah, 1754. Alexander had acquired another daughter by this time, giving him seven (living) children, but his oldest son James had gone out on his own the previous year. His son Elisha was now definitely a teenager, as was another one of his daughters.
In March of that year, Alexander received another land grant of 100 acres, and he also purchased an additional 181 acres. (If you missed my earlier post about it, you can read it here.) And then, in May, this was recorded in the court minutes:
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| Craven County, NC Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions May 1754 |
Why does this matter? Well, according to the article I just found, which is called "To Ride the Wood Mare: Road Building and Militia Service in Colonial North Carolina 1740-1775," it was usually men of different ranks in society who served in these roles, with the commissioner having a slightly higher status than an overseer. However, both positions entailed “few discretionary powers but with some limited authority over subordinates” and “both of these middle-rung officers normally were chosen from the ranks of smaller and middling property holders.”
This makes sense, since Alexander had about 400 acres of land at this time, but some of his "neighbors" had well over 1000. (Those would be the men who got the positions with real power - justice of the peace and sheriff.)
(The article goes on to talk about how the actual road work was generally performed by people of the lower classes and slaves, due to the various exemptions that allowed men of the upper and upper middle class to be free of the responsibility. The article is much more academic - translate as boring - than the one about constables, but it is pretty enlightening, so those of you who enjoy studying history should check it out, here.)
Anyway, Alexander Blackshear must have been well-respected as a competent and responsible man, or he wouldn't have been chosen for such a position, right?
Before we move on with the rest of the 1750's, though, I did want to mention that another thing I discovered (yesterday now - I'm on day two of writing this post) is that the law allowed men to be called for up to twelve days per year to work on the roads. Now, that doesn't sound too bad, does it? Of course, there are surviving documents that show men in some counties complaining to the courts that they were being called up way more than this - one such complaint stated that they were being required to work every single weekend! Now, I'm sure this wasn't the norm, but here's something to think about: compulsory road work was basically a form of taxation. And you know what else was, too? Militia service, which included the regular musters.
As I mentioned way back when, the number of musters wasn't set by law until 1758, when governor Dobbs realized in the middle of the French and Indian War that the colony's militia was an absolute mess. He drafted a bill that "required at least eight musters per year - four for each company and four general musters per regiment."
Did you notice the title of the article about the road commissioners up above? To Ride the Wood Mare is a reference to a punishment used widely during the colonial period that was particularly tortuous. In other words, the combination of road work and militia service was a terrible burden on the men (particularly men from the lower class) of colonial North Carolina, which actually had the highest tax burden of any other colony and western Europe at the time!
According to the article, each "public" muster would take about a week's time (including travel to the muster and the actual mustering). Four "private," or local, musters generally used up another week all together.
Wow. That means that, in 1758 and the following years, men were spending almost two weeks a year working on the roads, and approximately five more weeks attending musters. That's nearly two months each year that they would not be able to do their regular work! Luckily, there were changes made to the laws in 1764, 1766, and 1774, by which time men were only required to drill twice a year.
But we are still in the early 1750's here, so Alexander and his sons were possibly not mustering that much yet. On the other hand, maybe they were, because they were at the beginning of the war, and I don't know about you, but if I were going to be in charge of a group of men who might get called up at any time to fight, I'd be making them practice every once in awhile!
On to 1755. The Blacksheariana skips from Alexander's 1754 land purchase to an indenture he made in 1760. But I actually stumbled upon something else while looking through the indexes in the front of the deed books. (I discovered that the early books only list alphabetically for the person selling the land, so if you want to find a buyer, you have to read through all of the entries.)
This deed can actually be found in two different books - the original, and a copy made sometime (most likely) in the 1800's. Here is the original index page:
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| Craven County, NC Deeds Index 1754-1759 |
We can see that seven lines down this says "Wallin John & Elas Wallin to Elicksandor Blacksher .... Folio 227."
Huh. I guess the name Alexander was rare enough that every once in a while somebody had no idea how to actually spell it. (Remember the "Elexander" in the Benjamin Simmons documents?)
We can also see that his last name was spelled wrong as well, and one of the sellers was supposedly named "Elas." Now, here is the later copy of the index:
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| Craven County, NC Deed Books 9-10 Index, 1753-1763 |
Oh, so now we have "Alis" selling land to "Elcksander Blackson."
(Do you see how my picture captions are suddenly different? Do you know that Blogger "upgraded" everyone to its new format a few months ago, and although I am ecstatic that I can now drag pictures into any size I desire, the code to put multiple pictures in a row on the page doesn't work anymore. I just spent three hours looking up and trying suggestions of patches before I finally found a combination of code snippets that actually did the trick! Of course, then I discovered that I had accidentally done something that made my sentences type backwards . . . oy! As you can see, I finally fixed that too!)No wonder the Blacksheariana missed this! Sometimes looking at multiple copies of the same document feels like playing telephone. The two copies of the actual deed have the same problems with the spelling. The copy called him Elicksander Blacksore, Blacksher, Blackson, and John's wife Elias or Ales. All in the same document! Of course the original called him Elicksander Blacksire, Blacksher, blackser, and even blacksee! Here is the original deed:
Okay. This deed, just like most earlier deeds is really, really wordy. I don't know why they thought all of that "appurtenances priviledge and advantage to the same belonging or appertaining" and "to all and singular the said land Premises Every part and parcel thereof" and "in his own Right of a good sure and absolute Estate of Inheritance in fee Simple of and in all the Premises aforesaid" stuff was necessary.
The deed was signed on November 22, 1755. It was the first deed in which Alexander was named as a planter, a change in status that undoubtedly contributed to his appointment as a road commissioner. The purchase was of 50 acres and the parcel was Alexander's first on the north side of the Trent River. We don't know how much he paid for the tract, because the clerk wrote out all the words and forgot to go back and fill in the amount. It does say "proclamation money," though, so we know he didn't pay in silver or commodities. The deed was witnessed by three men, one of whom was Alexander's son, James.
And here, from February of 1756, is the entry in the court minutes showing that the deed was proved and registered:
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| Craven County, NC Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions February 1756 |
Then, in February 1759, we see Alexander again, in this entry:
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| Craven County, NC Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions February 1759 |
This page shows the men who were summoned to serve on the grand jury. There were twenty-three men called. Eleven of the men have a little x next to their name. I am guessing that the x means that they showed up, but were not chosen and sworn in.
There are two reasons why I am thinking this. First, the minutes always say "a jury of twelve good men." Second, there were three men on this list who were excused - two say "Excused," and one says "Excused being Sick." All three of those names are preceded with the x. (Besides, don't we usually use an x to mean that something has been crossed out?)
I find it interesting that Alexander was called for the grand jury, not the petit jury. This tells us that he was respected for his wisdom and good judgement - remember how I mentioned a few weeks ago that sometimes multiple justices of the peace sat on the grand jury. (I actually have another reason for saying this, and I'll share it in just a bit.) Oh, and I think that this was actually for the Superior Court, not the Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions, which was the Inferior Court - none of the lists from the 1750's specified this, but the ones from the 1760's did.
And in the same term of court:
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| Craven County, NC Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions February 1759 |
Here we see Overseers of the Roads being appointed for twelve of the districts in the county. (This order of business was done in the afternoon, but prior to the midday adjournment, twenty-six other road overseers were appointed. This makes me think that, at least in this case, an overseer was just somebody who was in charge of maintaining already existing roads, bridges, and creeks.)
Alexander is the second one on the list, and it says that he was to serve from Crooked Run to the Royal Oak. (What is it with these guys and their trees?!)
That's because Alexander's 1754 purchase of land was east of Cypress Creek, closer to the modern town of Comfort, and his previous two tracts of land were even further west of that. You can see on the map below the two (modern) towns and the two creeks marked in red:
There is approximately five to six miles between the two creeks, which at first seemed like a huge distance to me, but I guess doesn't sound so bad when I really think about it, considering that there may have only been one or two roads to maintain, one creek to clear, and maybe one bridge in that whole area. (Of course, since we don't know where that Royal Oak sat, his district could have stretched east of Cypress Creek as well, but I don't thinks so because some other guy had the district from Cypress Creek to John Fillyaw's property, and John Fillyaw was a neighbor of Alexander when he had only his first tract of land further west on Rattlesnake Branch.)
Then, on May 9th of the same year, Alexander was once again mentioned in the court minutes:
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| Craven County, NC Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions May 1759 |
This is pretty hard to read. I had to blow it up really big to figure out what it says, which is, "Ordered that Alexander Blackshire heretofore appointed Overseer of the Road leading from Crooked Runn to the Royal Oak be Discharged from his being Overseer of the said Road that part of the road leading from Crooked Runn to the Branch next below Phillip Miller's and That he Continue to serve as Overseer from the Branch next below Phillip Miller's to the Royal Oak [including] and that Humphry Wilks serve as an overseer of the Road leading from Crooked Run to the Branch next Below Phillip Miller's including the said Branch."
So, apparently, Alexander's district was too large for one man to manage, so the courts divided it into two sections, with Alexander remaining overseer of one (southern? western?) section, and Humphry Wilks (who just so happened to own 300 acres at a place called Crooked Meadow) overseeing the other section. Now, I just can't control my curiosity, so after looking up the deed record for Humphry Wilks, I looked up the deed for Phillip Miller (who was a cooper) which had a worthless description aside from the fact that it named the original patent holder, so I looked up the patent and lo and behold, I discovered that it was on Indian Branch . . . which is no longer on any modern maps. So I guess I will just have to be content knowing that apparently somebody in the courts either made a mistake or somebody (Alexander, maybe?) complained that the area was too large to take care of and so they cut it in half.
Funny thing is, before I enlarged the image and tried very carefully to figure out exactly what it said, I thought he was being completely removed from the position. Being just three months after he was appointed, I was wondering just why that might be. (See, we should never make assumptions based on a cursory reading of an old document!)
In August of 1759 Alexander appeared in the minutes yet again:
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| Craven County, NC Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions August 1759 |
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| Craven County, NC Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions August 1759 |
(I have no idea why there is all of that empty space under the images - I can't get rid of it and still have the two images side by side. This blog template has a mind of its own!)
Here we have two lists of men. The one on the right was on the back of the page on the left. For some reason these don't say what they are, but I know that they are jury lists because pages just like this appeared at the beginning of each court session and they were always jury lists. Alexander is on the list on the left, and he is the only one that says excused. (I'm wondering if he was excused because he was busy working on a road project?) I think that the left-hand list is for the grand jury once again, because there are several men on it who held positions of authority (like militia captain) or who came from extremely wealthy families whose members served as court justices and sheriffs. Those seem like the kind of people the courts would want on the grand jury.
Also, you will see that the right hand list contains the names of Alexander's son, James, as well as his son-in-law, Abraham Bailey, both younger men. I pretty much didn't recognize any of the other names on that list (and you would be surprised how many names of the men in colonial Craven County I can actually recognize after spending so much time looking through old documents!), which means that perhaps they were mostly young men or men who did not own large amounts of property. And those seem like the kind of people the courts would call for the petit jury.
And that is it for the 1750's. As the decade came to a close, Alexander was a planter with 431 acres of land. As I mentioned in one of my first posts about him, he was probably involved in a combination of farming, raising livestock, and producing naval stores such as tar, lumber, and turpentine, all of which came from trees (you know, the ones that had to be cleared before farming could take place).
He appears to have been a well-respected member of the community and a competent leader of men - he was appointed twice to be a road commissioner/overseer, and in case anyone has forgotten or just never read my earlier post (which you can find here), he also held the position of sergeant in the militia during this time.
By 1759, he and his wife had two young daughters (probably aged about ten and five) and at least one teenage son still living at home. His oldest son James had recently married (his first or possibly second wife), and his oldest daughter, Eleanor, had most likely been married long enough to have given Alexander and Agnes a couple of grandchildren. Another daughter (who was possibly named Agnes) had married, had a daughter, and died within the last couple of years. And his son Elisha, the only one for whom we can't pin down a birth date with as much certainty as his siblings, was somewhere between the ages of 18 and 23, and was either recently or soon to be married. (Yes, yes, I am going to have to try to figure this out!)
I would also like to throw out there that, if indeed the Robert Blackshire that I was talking about at the beginning of this post was Alexander's father, he would have died at some point during the time period that this post covers. He would have been buried on one of the tracts of land that Alexander owned - which one would have been determined by what year he actually died and what lands Alexander had acquired by that point. I know that he would have been buried in a family plot, because there was a law in North Carolina that was created because "the Burying of Servants privately may occasion much scandal to this Government and bring divers Innocent persons under suspicion of useing Indirect means towards the procuring such persons deaths."
Wow. People being suspected of conveniently murdering their servants? And enough were dying to warrant a law being made? The statistic that only 40 percent of indentured servants lived long enough to complete their contracts really hits home now, doesn't it? The law stated that every plantation holder had to create a fenced-in burial plot on their property in which to bury people. (It is actually a very interesting law, which is why I shared it, and if you click here, a copy of it will open in a new window for you.) It's no wonder that when you look at a topo map of the area there are cemeteries all over the place - and can you imagine how many now-unmarked graves are scattered across the countryside?!
But back to Alexander Blackshear - the last thing I wanted to mention is that, for some reason, the clerks of the court for pretty much the entire decade thought Alexander's last name should be spelled Blackshire. (Hmmmm. Just like they spelled Robert Blackshire's name . . . . I'm not letting this go, folks!) As we'll see, this continues for a couple of years and then, during the middle of the 1760's, it begins to be written with the Blackshear spelling that would be handed down through each successive generation.
And that is exactly what we are going to delve into next time - the 1760's. We will continue tracing Alexander's comings and goings, and we are also going to begin looking closely at his son Elisha Stout, since he is my 5th great-grandfather and all. I'm not sure yet if I want to do the two men separately or just cover them together as we move along chronologically. I guess I'll just start writing and see what happens. See you then!
- Therese
