The Nicholas who
settled on the Corotoman died young (ca. 1628-72), but the younger son who went
to Baltimore was granted a long life (1657-1730). His grandson the
chapel builder, who became a Quaker in
Pennsylvania and a pioneer in Virginia, died at middle age ( (ca. 1702-52). But the great
grandson, Nicholas of Watauga (1724-1818), born during the reign of
George I, while the American colonies were
still
no more than a narrow fringe of settlement along a rim of coastline, lived
through the reign of George II, saw George III overthrown and a
new
American
republic established on unheard of principles. He experienced
the presidential administrations of all four founders. His
birthplace swelled with new immigrants. The wilderness was no longer
impenetrable, opportunities beckoned all the way to the Mississippi
basin. Nicholas lived
on
to see one more Virginian, James Monroe, assume the presidency.
His family had moved from Baltimore to Virginia while Nicholas was
still a
boy.
Already at
sixteen he married a Baltimore girl, Ruth Acre. Their first
children were born in Virginia (Richard, Elizabeth, William, and
Sarah). In their eyes, the whole country may have seemed on the
move. New settlers arrived in Bedford, and pioneers were passing
on southward
down the Great
Wagon Road. The young couple together with friends and
relatives--the
Talbots, for example--themselves explored on down the Blue Ridge into
Rowan
County, at that time still a part of North Carolina. Three more sons
were born to them there, Nathan, Amon and, yes, a Nicholas. They
found the Carolina
backwoods in the latter half of the eighteenth century much wilder than
the Virginia countryside where their parents had
settled. Along with fellow Englishmen from the tidewater,
Carolina took
more
recent immigrants from Pennsylvania, or even directly from
Europe. It was a more diverse populace, and developed a new class
consciousness. The long
familiar distinction between
gentry and servant became blurred in the backwoods.