Further Back Blackshears (Week 13)

Tracing Back the Blackshear Line, part 26

Today we are going to look at the life of Alexander Blackshear during the early 1760's.  

This decade was a somewhat tumultuous time for the American colonists.  The French and Indian War continued until 1763, at which point Great Britain issued its infamous Proclamation telling all of those westward-looking men that they couldn't claim any of the lands east of the Appalachians that had just been acquired from the French.  

Now you can imagine how the men of North Carolina felt about that.  The majority of the men had moved there to escape other colonies that were rapidly filling up, or had come from Europe (a huge number from Scotland) looking for land.  There was still land to be had in the colony in 1763, but I'm sure everyone was aware that it was beginning to dwindle and what on earth were their sons going to do when they came of age?  For a man with four or five sons, a couple hundred acres would only stretch so far.

So.  There was that.  And then, in order to pay for the war that in King George's eyes had been fought to protect the American colonists, the taxes began.  

In 1764, Parliament passed the Sugar Act, followed a few months later by the Currency Act, which prohibited the colonies from printing money and gave Britain control over the colonial currency system.  

In 1765 came the Stamp Act, and the first Quartering Act, which mandated that the colonies provide barracks and food for the more than 10,000 British troops who had not returned home after the French and Indian War.  

1766 saw the Declaratory Act, which repealed the Stamp Act but asserted that Parliament had the right to tax the colonies in any way it pleased.  

The following year, 1767, the Townshend Acts were imposed.  These not only led to new taxes and colonial boycotts of British-made goods, but also punished New York for failing to comply with the Quartering Act by suspending their colonial government.  I'm sure that created a bit of a panic when the news reached the other colonies.

Then, in 1768, in response to the unrest taking place because of the Townshend Acts, 4000 British troops were sent to Boston.  This of course eventually led to the Boston Massacre, and we all know where things went from there.  

So, things were really ramping up toward the American Revolution during this decade.

I can just see Alexander Blackshear sitting in a tavern with his adult sons and their neighbors, discussing each successive law and what it meant for their lives.  Of course, we don't have some miraculously-saved journal to tell us what he was thinking (not that he could have written one anyway), but we will see later on that he and his family were on the patriot side of the whole affair, so I can well imagine his viewpoint.

We really don't have much to tell us about Alexander's life during these years, but we'll look at what I've found and see how those documents fill out the picture.

Okay.  1760.  That's when we see Alexander in the records again, this time with a deed of sale:

Alexander Blackshear
Deed to Roads 
Craven County
Deed Book 1 pages 590-591

I know this is a bit blurry (okay, maybe more than just a bit), but it is the only version of this deed that I could find online.  Not only is it blurry - or maybe because it is blurry (!) - but it also has some phrases that really don't make a whole lot of sense to me, and I don't mean because of legal jargon.  Okay, actually, part of it is legal jargon, and part of it is handwriting, and part of it is just plain not making sense.  If this is actually a transcribed copy of the original, there might be some words missing.  If it is the original, well, I don't know what to say.  At least we'll get some basic information from it!

The deed shows that on December 31, 1760, Alexander Blackshear, a planter, sold 100 acres of land "on the West edge of Trent River on Tuckahoe" to Henry Roads, also a planter, in exchange for 100 two year old hogs.  The deed states that Alexander already had the hogs "in hand," and acknowledged that the amount due had been fully satisfied.  

Now, when I first read this, I was like, Hogs?  He sold his land for hogs?  But then I stopped to actually think about it and it seemed pretty brilliant, really.  Since there was a shortage of coin in America, each colony printed its own money.  And since each colony printed its own money, and set its own value, this "proclamation money" couldn't be used in any other colony.  According to the colonial money exhibit at the University of North Carolina, 

"England's mercantilist monetary policies kept its colonies coin-poor. What the American colonists wanted was coins; what they got was paper money.

Nobody wanted or trusted paper money. But paper money had to do. Perhaps unwanted, it nevertheless was carefully preserved as it circulated. This North Carolina 1761 note, as it became worn, was backed by a piece of scrap paper and its tattered pieces sewn together. Sometimes the pieces were pinned together. These three repairs served as an eighteenth-century version of scotch tape."

Okay, so paper money wasn't the most desirable.  But on top of that, hogs were actually an investment, like putting money in a savings account (back in the day when we could actually earn interest on our money).  

Consider these facts that I learned about swine today: 

A female hog (called a gilt, which was equivalent to a heifer) would produce her first litter at about ten months old, so a two year old sow would be be young and healthy and producing good-sized litters.

Each sow would bear two litters a year, and each litter would have been about eight to twelve piglets.

 A two year old sow would have about six more years of piglet-bearing ahead.

So, if even half of the hogs paid to Alexander were sows, that means that his drove would increase exponentially each year.  Let's do the math - assuming once again that half of each litter was female and that some of those piglets would not survive, those 50 sows could turn into an additional 250 gilts and 250 sows by the end of the first year alone.  By the end of the second year, those original 50 sows plus the 250 sows that they bore in year one could have had an additional 6000 piglets, half of which might have been female (and the other half of which would have made some really good bacon).  And those 250 gilts from the first year would have had their first litter and become sows during the second year, adding an additional 1250 female piglets or so.  

You can see how the numbers could add up, and quickly.  The best part about the whole thing is that the pigs were allowed to roam free in the woods and swamps and didn't really require any care - other than the marking of the ears, which would have taken quite a while for that many hogs!

Oh, and here's a revelation I had when I read this deed:  Way back when, I mentioned that North Carolina was so short on money that it couldn't buy provisions for its militia during the French and Indian War.  It actually had to drive hogs along with the troops into Virginia to be sold/slaughtered there.  Hmmmm.  1760 was in the middle of the war.  Alexander sounds like a pretty savvy businessman, doesn't he?

Okay.  Enough about the hogs.  The deed says that the land was "by patent."  The fact that it says "by patent" and does not name the patent holder implies that Alexander was the original patent holder.  If you remember, he had 200 acres of patented land at this point, from two separate grants.  The deed describes the land as being on the "West edge of Trent River on Tuckahoe," and "land that lies on both sides of Rattlesnake swamp with a plantation on it with the houses fences orchards meadows woodways water underwoods . . . "  At least, I'm pretty sure that's what it says.  I'm not entirely sure about that west edge part.  This description tells us that this was the land in Alexander's original 1748 grant.  

There is one more phrase in this document that has me totally confused.  Maybe someone reading this can tell me what in the world it is talking about: "[legal jargon saying this land is given to] Henry Roads and to his Caleb Pence 300 acres (Carteret?) (Content?) joining (Rich?) (Bush?) ipsu planu Running up the River and then up a swamp . . ."

Was this saying that the land was bordered by Caleb Pence's 300 acres where they joined with the land of somebody named Rich or Bush?  The whole Carteret thing doesn't make sense because, although that is an adjoining county, this land was by the border of Onslow, not Carteret.  Of course the word Content doesn't make a whole lot of sense either.  Surely this wasn't saying that Alexander gave 100 acres to Henry Roads and another 300 to Caleb Pence, right?  Because that doesn't make any sense either.

Ah, the joys of deciphering old documents.  

Craven County, NC
Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions
January 1762

For some reason this deed wasn't proved in court until almost exactly one year later.  (Not that that was uncommon or anything, but I do wonder why sometimes people did that!)  Here (on the left) is a copy of the court minutes showing that.

And now we are going to have to backtrack, because Alexander shows up in the historical record a few times during 1761.  

Craven County, NC
Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions
January 1761

At the very start of the year, Alexander was called for jury duty.  (See image on the right.)  Once again, he was chosen to serve on the grand jury, not the petit jury.  

We can't tell if he actually served or was excused like the previous times, because there are no little x's next to any of the names.  That's a whole lot of names, though, so obviously they didn't all sit on the jury unless they had a different group of men for each case that was being heard.

1761 was also the year that Alexander was named as one of the

executors in the will of his son-in-law, Benjamin Simmons.  In case any of you missed it when I put it up several weeks ago, or in case anyone wants to look at it again and doesn't want to have to go searching for it, here it is:

Detail from Last Will & Testament of Benjamin Simmons
Craven County, North Carolina
August 1761

For any of you who didn't read my previous post or have already forgotten all about it, we proved that Alexander's name was sometimes mistakenly spelled as "Elexander," so we know for sure that this is one and the same person.  (And if anyone is still doubting this, just look at the next image.)

Two months later, in the October term of court, Benjamin's will was proved and Alexander qualified as executor:

Craven County, NC
Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions
October 1761

This image is just really boring probate stuff, just like all of the other probate stuff in the minutes that was really boring.  You know, just stuff like so-and-so's will was proved in court by such-and-such, a witness to the signing of the will, or so-and-so qualifies as executor, or so-and-so, the executor, asks permission to sell the perishable part of the estate and so on and so forth.  The only interesting bit about this entry is that Benjamin named three people as his "Soul Executors" (which almost makes a really bad death pun, doesn't it?) - his brother Emmanuel Simmons, John Simmons (who could have been a brother but it is not quite clear), and Alexander.  Yet, only John and Alexander were named as executors by the court.  

Maybe Emmanuel didn't want to do it, or maybe the court only ever let two people take on the role at the same time.  (I'm trying to remember if I ever saw three people named - I know there were plenty of cases where there were two, but I'm thinking I only remember one with three, and that was a case where the wife was once of the executors.  Maybe it was also a case involving a huge estate or something.)

In the same term of court, Alexander Blackshear was appointed as a member of a road jury:

Craven County, NC
Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions
October 1761

This is really hard to read, even with adjusting the contrast.  I am going to put the best transcription I could come up with - most of the names I could figure out from seeing them time and again when reading through the old records, but some were unfamiliar so I took my best guess.  I also added commas between the names even though those weren't in the original.  It pretty much says:

"Ordered that a Road be Run (of?) in the following manner to wit to (?) of the road on the Sth side of Trent about half a mile above Busset Plantation and across the River at Wilkes Landing and then into the Road on the No side at or near Jumping Run by the following persons viz: John Wilcocks, Tobias Blount, Edw Bryan, Philip Miller son Tobias Miller, John Bryan, Jas. Bryan Martin, Danl Shine, Fredk Hargett, Humphrey Wilkes, Alexander Blackshire, Stephen Wil??? and ordered that Francis Blount Serve as Overseer of the Road"

Most of these men were substantial landholders who were quite wealthy and some came from families whose members served as justices of the peace (remember, these were the judges of this court and, along with the sheriff, were the most highly respected members of the community).  So he seems to have been keeping up with the Joneses so to speak.  

Who knows . . . maybe Alexander might have been recommended for an appointment as a justice himself if he had only been educated!

Or, maybe, he was just really, really good at organizing and overseeing the work.  Maybe he was put in charge of the roads so often because he was very well respected by the middling and lower classes that made up most of the laborers, and he served as a buffer between the workers and those other, hoity toity gentlemen who were put in charge!

Okay.  Now back to 1762.  We saw the deed up above, which was proved in January.  Then, in April, Alexander was called for Jury duty again:

Craven County, NC
Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions
April 1762

This time he was called for the petit jury instead.  I don't recognize most of the names on these lists, which is weird, because usually I recognize at least several last names.  

Also, it looks like this time, the x's denote the men who actually served!  I say this because there are thirteen men with an x (sometimes the records say that from one case to the next there is one different person on the jury), and only like nine who don't have an x, which wasn't enough for a jury.

In addition, in the same term of court, Alexander is named as being on a jury that ruled on a specific case:

Craven County, NC
Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions
April 1762

See?  I just actually read this for the first time since I found it and downloaded it two months ago, and the weird thing, though, is that some of the names on the jury came from men who were x'd on the list of men called, and some of the names are from the ones on the bottom left that look like they were written at a different time.  

Maybe this was one of the times that jurors just didn't show up and they had to grab some men who were standing around!

In July of 1762, Alexander, acting as an executor of Benjamin Simmons's estate, appeared in court to return his inventory:

Craven County, NC
Court of Pleas & Quarter Sessions
July 1762

So, here is something interesting - The court minutes say Alexander Blacksher, Executor of the estate of Benjamin Simmons.  But if you remember, there were actually two executors.  John Simmons was the other one.  So what happened to him?  I assumed that he was the one who actually wrote up the main three pages of the inventory and signed Alexander's name for him on the document, so I would think he would be there to return it "into Court on Oath."  

So here I am wondering this, when I decided it would probably be a good idea to look at this page of the minutes again and see what it says since I had completely forgotten the details.  (I just looked in my file of court records and pulled out the next one in chronological order, and the file name said what it was, so that's how I knew to stick it up here. Oy!)

Anyway, the entry above the one that names Alexander caught my eye because it also says "Simmons."  Well.  It says that John Simmons had died.  I guess that answers my question then.

Now, I showed you a detail of the actual inventory that was submitted in a previous post, but here it is again:

Inventory of the Estate of Benjamin Simmons
Craven County, North Carolina
1762

This was actually a separate piece of paper that was attached to the second page of the three page inventory.  Notice how it says at the top, "Inventory of Part of the Estate . . ."  Just part of the estate.  And not a very big part, either, since it only covers seven lines (although some lines contain more than one animal).  Unlike the rest of the inventory, which shows prices for each item, including the Sheriff's commission (implying that those were not the appraised value, but what the item actually sold for at auction), this only shows prices on two lines.  It also says "not sold" and "in hand" on two others.  So I don't know if this part was added later and that is why it was on a separate piece of paper - which would mean that maybe Alexander took the whole inventory and somebody just wrote it all down for him - or if John Simmons did the most part before he died and Alexander only did a small part. 

The inventory is super interesting and tells us all kinds of stuff about what would be found in the household of a young man from an upper or upper middle-class family.  For example, he had a whole lot of tools, two guns of which one was a "rifle" (that sold for a whole lot of money), quite a few horses, some dishes, some barrels of foodstuffs, some clothes (but not nearly as much as one would expect!), but absolutely no furniture except for a bed, a chest, and a box.  

Now, maybe he had more possessions that just didn't sell or that family members decided to claim as their own, or maybe he had moved back in with his parents - or even with Alexander and Agnes - when his wife, (Alexander's daughter) had died sometime in the two years before.  I'm inclined to suspect that something like that might have happened, because I really can't see a young man back in the day cooking and cleaning and raising an infant/toddler all by himself.  Plus, Benjamin's daughter, the only one we have evidence of, was born in 1759, so if she was the firstborn, Benjamin and Alexander's daughter would have barely been married three years before, and yet Benjamin refers to Alexander as his "loving father" in his will.  This implies that Alexander played, and continued to play, a big role in Benjamin's life up until his death.

And speaking of Benjamin's wife/Alexander's daughter, do you know what was on the inventory?  Two spinning wheels.  A bonnet.  A side saddle.  Those had undoubtedly been used by his wife.  I love the side saddle item, because it gives me a picture of a young colonial woman who goes riding with her husband and doesn't just sit in the house cooking and spinning all day!  Altogether, the items that sold brought in 77 pounds, which was a decent amount of money to be left for his child (Alexander's granddaughter).  

Alright.  The last item for 1762 was a bit of a pleasant surprise for me.  I actually downloaded it a couple of months ago when I was browsing through a bunch of records on FamilySearch that had come from the North Carolina state archives but hadn't been reviewed yet.  It was just four microfilms with a ton of file folders under the title Civil Action Papers, but they had all kinds of random stuff in them.  Some of the folders are dated, but some are not, which means you pretty much have to look at and scan through every single image (thousands of pages).  While looking through them, I came across a jury summons for James Blackshear, Alexander's son, which had a a copy of the actual summons and I thought, Hey, that might be interesting.  And anyway, since I found it, I might as well download it and put it up on Ancestry so his direct ancestors can see it. 

So there I was today, looking through my file of court records, and noticed that it was dated 1762.  Then I noticed that there were three different pages and for some reason I decided to open the one labeled as the summons.  And, do you know, the minute I opened it up my eye was drawn to the little hole in the center and what do you think jumped out at me?  The name Alexander Blackshear.  I was like, Holy cow!  I almost completely missed ever seeing that!  Here is the document:

North Carolina Court of Chancery
Warrant to Summon a Jury
for the Lunacy Trial of Carolina Johnston
July 1762

The back of this folded document says, "Warrant to Summon a Jury of Twenty four men to enquire - whether Carolina Johnston is a lunatick or not - "  The list of twenty-four men was included, and I tried to put it up here for you, but just like the last time I tried to put a "gallery" of images on this new Blogger, everything started typing backwards afterward.  (Uuuggghhhh.)  

Anyway . . . this says "Twenty four Honest and Lawful men of the province and county aforesaid On Tuesday the 10th day of August next by (?? this is where the hole is!) O'Clock in the forenoon of the same Day at the House of Alexander Blacksheer Situate in the County aforesaid then and there upon their Oath to enquire of the Lunacy of the Said Carolina Johnston and asale such other matters and things as shall be given them . . ."  

This document was actually in a folder labeled "Jury Lists - 1762."  So I just figured it was some regular court thing.  However, it doesn't say it on the actual document, but when I did a search online to try to find some records about the case, all I could find was a finding aid - a listing of what was in the archived file boxes for Craven County - and one of the entries was "inquisition of lunacy of Caroline Johnston, daughter of Governor Johnston, in court of chancery - 1762."  

The chancery court was one of the higher courts, and according to the NCpedia website, "The court was composed of the governor, at least five deputies (including a chancery clerk, originally the provincial clerk of court), and sheriffs of the adjacent counties."  Wait.  The governor?  And they were holding the trial at the house of Alexander Blackshear?

I have absolutely no idea why such a thing would be held at the house of a private citizen, and why specifically at Alexander Blackshear's house.  Did the trial need to examine Miss Johnston?  Was she living close to Alexander?  Or even with Alexander's family?  I have been wracking my brains trying to come up with a plausible reason, but I've got pretty much nothing.  I will say this, though:  Alexander must have had a pretty decent house if it could accommodate a twenty-four man jury and a judge, and maybe a lawyer, and some witnesses, and whoever else was needed for the trial.

I couldn't find anything online about the actual trial, other than a statement that it took place. (I guess nobody is interested enough in the topic to write about it!) But not being one to give something up too easily, I kept trying to find more information about the case.  Putting in search terms about the topic gave me nothing.  Putting in the file box number gave me nothing.  So then I went back to my research folder to find out which film I downloaded the document from, thinking I could go back and look to see if maybe I had missed something.  Nope.  But I did notice that the descriptions of the films gave the file box number!  And I noticed that the images of documents from the box number that matched what was on the finding aid was on a different film than where I found the document above!  

So, I went back and found that file folder, and basically it said that an inquisition was held at the home of Alexander Blackshear on August 10.  The case was heard by the 24-man jury, presided over by four of the local justices of the peace, who then reported the verdict to the governor in the October chancery court proceedings.  So the actual governor wasn't at Alexander's house, but it's still kind of crazy that they held a lunacy hearing there, isn't it?  

And now I'm going to share a couple of other bits that I've learned about this case.  In case anyone is wondering why they should care, well, I think I might have figured out why they did this at the home of Alexander Blackshear.  This new file folder contained what I am calling a Writ of Inquisition - a letter from the governor to four of the justices:

So, somebody reported to the chancery court that Carolina Johnston was a lunatic "so that she is not Sufficiently able to Govern herself and her Estate and that during her Lunacy She hath greatly wasted her estate . . ."   Aaaahhh.  Sounds like somebody wanted to take control of her property. 

I did some more digging and discovered that, apparently, Carolina and her brother Henry were the illegitimate children of the former governor.  He did leave them both a substantial inheritance in his 1751 will, though; Henry received one thousand acres of land and Carolina received nine hundred and eighty.  And guess where that land was . . . the will states that Henry's tract was "Lying on Cypress Creek on the South Side of Trent River in Craven County," and Carolina's tract was "on the South Side of Trent."  Well, this makes so much more sense, now!  One of Alexander's tracts of land was also on Cypress Creek south of the Trent River.  I'll bet that if we hunted down the original deeds, we would discover that Carolina's land was adjacent to Alexander's.  Perhaps the justices wanted the jury to walk (or ride) over and see the condition of Carolina and her estate for themselves.  

And in case anyone is wondering how the whole thing panned out, the jury decided that yes, Carolina Johnston was indeed a lunatic, and had been for two years, and because of this had let her estate deteriorate, and that her closest relative was her 25 (or thereabouts) year-old brother who I am assuming was going to be put in charge of her property.  It seemed to me to be less of a let's-commit-this-person trial and more of a we-need-to-establish-a-conservatorship kind of thing.

And that, my friends, is why we slog through all those old documents that appear to be completely irrelevant.  You never know when you're going to be able to add an anecdote to your family story that says And my great great great great great great grandfather once hosted a lunacy inquisition for the late governor's illegitimate daughter in his parlor!

Well, we only got through 1762, but this seems like a good place to stop for now.  We'll pick up where we left off next time!

                                                                                                                                                - Therese