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Down the Blue Ridge
By the
middle of the eighteenth century the
Talbots, the Meads, and the Hailes were settled in Lunenburg County,
Virginia (in the region which later became Bedford County).
Although it was another center of Quakerism, the families became
active Baptists. They held various county and municipal
offices. Nicholas Haile served as County Justice in 1749, William
Mead took up surveying, became a county official and lieutenant in the
militia. Eventually he acquired the rank of colonel in the
Continental Army. Talbot and Haile undertook a grist mill on what
is still called Hale's Mill Creek. In about 1752, Nicholas's
widowed daughter Mary married Talbot's son Matthew jr.
(1729-1812). In 1750, Nicholas Haile was charged to draw up a List of Tithes for Bedford
Town. It includes his inlaws the
Merrimans as well as another Baltimore family, the Wheats, who now
resided at "Haile's Fork" of the Otter River, which flows through
Bedford town.
Although they still looked back
to Baltimore County as home, the Nicholas Hailes had now removed well
beyond the fall line of the James and the Rappahannock Rivers. On
the map (below), colonial Virginia extended all the way to the
Mississippi River. Governor Spotswood had followed Indian trails
into the back
country in 1716, and had named the territory after George II's mother,
Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. Augusta County lay on the path of the great
migration
down the Blue Ridge from Pennsylvania into the Carolinas, called the
Great Philadelphia Road, or just the Great Wagon Road.
Quakers were not the
only dissenters settling here. Presbyterians originally from
England, driven from there into
northern Ireland, hence called Scots Irish, had also shipped to
Pennsylvania. Among them was a
McClure family, my maternal
forebears. Coming down the Great Philadelphia Road, they entered
the
Shenandoah Valley via Staunton, Virginia. Here lay a
vast tract
which in 1736 had been granted in the name of George
II to William
Beverley on the condition that he induce permanent
settlers into the back country. The McClures
must
have struck Beverly as
substantial folk. Although he had put
land up for sale at ₤ 1 sterling per
40 acres, the McClures appear to have got it at a tiny fraction of that. The first known
schoolhouse in Augusta County
was on James McClure's tract "at the foot of a hill in the meadow."
The McClure school may illustrate
a second stage in Virginia education. As I have explained,
education was hitherto a family responsibility within the legal
framework of apprenticeship and indenture contracts. Tutors were
no doubt required, and schools called upon. But increased
reliance on schools signifies not so much the beginning of
education as the frailty of the families in the wilderness. These
battered Scots Irish
newcomers offer an enlightening example. They had been repeatedly
torn from accustomed surroundings in England and Scotland,
endured a grueling,
months-long North Atlantic crossing from Ireland, and spent some years
wandering the Pennsylvania back country. Their immediate concern
for spiritual guidance, their alacrity at setting
up
a
school, surely
reflects
anxiety about their families. That James
McClure had a school in Tinkling Spring may say something
about this Donegal tailor's own intellectual stature in the community,
but in any
case it is evidence of frontier preoccupation with the transfer
of culture to their children. The school was only one part of
their concern.
James became a charter member
of the
Tinkling Spring Presbyterian Church at its founding in
1740. One of the church's
first
tasks had been to obtain a Presbyterian minister from County Donegal,
the
thirty-year-old John Craig.
That
church is still thriving. It is situated near the
Fishersville exit from I-64 on the way into Waynsboro . A few miles east of the church,
along the South River, young Andrew McClure took 370 acres in
1738. Andrew was the son of James, who bought an adjoining 408
acres in 1739, and another
359 acres
in 1749.
This James McClure (1685-1761) had been a tailor in Raphoe, County
Donegal. When he sailed with his
wife Agnes and seven
children into Delaware Bay, his may not have been
the only McClure family among the large Scots Irish emigration to
Pennsylvania. In 1732, his 72-year-old father, James Arthur
McClure, died at sea. Was this on the same ship with his son's
family?
Where the McClures had
settled in the Shenandoah Valley lay just beyond the Blue Ridge from
where Nicholas and Anne Long Haile would soon
found their new home.
Their youngest
child had been born in Baltimore County in 1743, their eldest daughter
married up
in
Bucks County in 1750. Their move down the Blue Ridge occurred just after the
middle of the century,
when the colonists
were being drawn into England's
quarrel with France. France was
allied with the hostile
Delaware Indians. The Delawares defeated the young Colonel George
Washington at a
battle on the Monongahela in the summer of 1754. Their
subsequent
ambush and destruction of General Braddock's forces at the forks of the
Allegheny and Monongahela posed a dire threat to the entire route
along which
families were settling in Virginia. The young mother of
one such family, Mary Draper Ingles, was robbed from her home by the
Shawnee. While her captors were rushing
her down the Ohio River, she gave birth to a
little boy. When she finally made her
famous
escape into present-day Indiana, she had to leave this son
behind.
Mary Draper Ingles' trek home was long and arduous, as she had no
choice but
to follow the Ohio, walking around its tributaries. Her travail
occurred in in the same month and year as Braddock's defeat. Contemporary
correspondence (below) concerning
nearby
Bedford offers aother
perspective on the problem.
Virginians were
held to a scrupulous policy toward the Indians, even in the face of
their depredations. In
an attempt to shield the colonists, Colonel Washington
founded a "chain
of
forts" from Maryland along the Blue Ridge down into North Carolina.
Among Washington's
correspondence are letters from John Blair (1731-1800), president of
the Governor's Council in Williamsburg (Blair would later become one of
the signers of the Constitution and, after Washington became
president, a justice of the United States Supreme Court).
Blair encloses letters from two colonial defenders against the Indians,
Matthew Talbot and William Mead. In May of 1758, young Blair
wrote to Washington on the subject of funds
and recruits for the colonial militia. As he was writing, more
pressing business arose:
Last
Saturday brot. me an Accot. of a large party of Indians who in passing
thro' Bedford spread themselves in smaller Companys many Miles wide and
Robb'd every Plantation they came at. This provoked the
Inhabitants to a great degree; Col: Talbot sent out Militia to protect
them, who came up with a Party of them and seeing some of their Horses
demanded restitution; but the indians answered they must fight for
them, and fired and killed one Man; whereupon they fired upon the
Indians and killed some of them. But to save my writing I
send you the accounts I received, having ordered a strict enquiry to be
made above, by Col: Read, Colo. Talbott and Col. Maury, which when
transmitted to me I purpose to send by express to Govr. Lyttleton to
beg his Assistance, to prevent the disaffection of the Nation and the
ill consequences that might ensue on a misrepresentation . . . You may
assure them if our Men were the aggressors they will be severely
punished and if the Indians were guilty of what is charged upon them
the Wise great Men our good Friends will not blame what was done, but
think they brought it upon themeselves by their own folly.
. . .
I am Sir Your very humbl Servt.
. . .
John Blair
The Colonel Talbot whom Blair mentions is Nicholas Haile's
partner and Mary's father-in-law, William Talbot, age
fifty-nine.
The first of
Blair's enclosures is a letter which Colonel Talbot had addressed
to
the
clerk of Lunenberg County on May 3, 1758. Begging
for reinforcements. Talbot writes
I do everything I can to keep
a few men out on the frontiers of this County but alass I fear it will not be long they
wil Continue indeed it is very hard for men to be from there
plantations at this time of the year when they Should be planting Corn
to make the bread for their families . . . I am very uneasy
about the Cherokees there was about fifteen Came through the
Settlement where I Live and Spread themselves at least ten miles in
breadth and went to Every plantation in their way I Cant Say they did
much mischief or behaved very ill but their presence frithen the women
very much So much that if they be allowed to Come without white men . .
. with them I do not blieve our County will Stand a month Longer
there Came about nine or ten to my house they reley Seemd to me as if
they Came to See what white men and negroes we have and so see what our
Strengthe we are of, the people in general Seem to fear the return of
them with more force they made for Stanton [over the mountains,
about 50 miles north] they went to a
house where there was not any body but a man and his wife and rensacked
the house of every thing they thought Proper to take and I expect to
hear of Some murder Committed by them when they Get to the outward
Inhabitants . . . My son Matt [Mary's husband] is endeavoring to raise men to goe out
after the Indians and to lie in wait for them and tell me he is
determind if it be possible to goe till he get Some of there Scalps and
or Leave his he imagines to get about five and twenty men . . . he will
have none but what is Select Gunners and . . . good woodmen I know he
refuses Several who offer to goe because they are not Such he seems to
be very ambitious that way and I Cannot forbear incouraging him in it .
. .he will leave his wife and Children with me or at Charles. . . .
MATTW. TALBOT
As the marauders moved north, they would threaten settlements
around Winchester, where the Crank family was now located. By
"outward inhabitants," Talbot means people like the McClures who had
been
brought into the back country as a buffer against the Indians.
The Beverley Patent lay right at the gap in the Blue Ridge which these
Indians would use as "they made for Stanton [Staunton]."
Blair had also received a
note of distress from
William Mead (Anne's husband), dated May 8th--
With Sorrow I inform you . . . that
the Indians has taken all Thos. Morgans family and all are Carried away
or killd. and all the Goods Carried away and destroyed and it is the
opinion of the men that Some are Killd. by the Signs they Saw--and as
you render the Good of your Self and Country beg youl Send men
immediately . . . to relieve the Poor distressed Prisoners . . .
WILLIAM MEAD
Blair
also told Washington of a pitched battle on May 10th,
and enclosed a report
from Col. Talbot to the county clerk:
DR.
SIR
in
what Manner Shall I Represent to you the Horror and anxieties that
at this time reigns among our Inhabitants (indeed as I have not words I
must be Silent and Leave it to your imagination). Occasioned by
these banditties of Cherokees who daily are traveling through our
County . . . they Rob our houses of all things they Like So that
oftentime they Leave us not one rag of Cloaths to Shift our Selves
withall nor never a horse to goe mill or plough withall, yet these
people are Called our friends our people will bear it no Longer Indeed
I
think they have bore it to Long allready and I do not know but the
persons who have exerted them Selves in defence of their rights and
properties may be Called to a Strict account for it [he cites some examples, then
returns to his own experience] Last
Sunday there passed by 33 Indians in another parcel which Robed and
pillaged as they went Capt. Mead [Anne's husband] with
Seventeen men went in pursuit of them and wrote to me to beg I would
Send him Some assistance . . . and if they Come up with the Indians as
I expect they will and the Indians will not deliver the Horses and
other things they have Stole a Battle will insue for our people is
determined to bear Such usage no Longer . . . I beg if this Come to yr.
Hand before you Send to me that youl be so good as to Send Isham [Matthew's 20-year-old son by
a second marriage] up to me
to be Some assistance to me in these troublesome times for I am very
much afraid I must move my wife and what Small effects to some place of
Safety and I wish you would be pleased to Look out for a west house
a Small one would do for my wife and I though I will be hear as Long as
I
Can Yr. Complyance will Greatly
oblige Dr. Sir yr very Hble
Sert. MATTW. TALBOT
Ps SIR I beg youl Hasten up what men you design for our relief Dr Sir I
beg youl Let Isham Come up to me directly and be So good as to Send me
a 100 flints and if you have not a horse to Spare Let him Come afoot
the Bearer if you order him will goe to Wmburgh with the Letter to the
President--I this minute Recd yrs by Hicks and alas See our frontiers
(as you observe) is Little regarded . . . if I had the Eloquence of
Cicero I Could not tell you the anxiety of my Soul at this time for my
Self family and Inhabitants here--Keith Daughter is dead Likewise I am
informed to day that Bruff wife is Likewise dead.
Among other
entreaties, Blair sends along to Washington letters from the colonel's
older son, Charles (he and Matthew, Jr. were thirty-five and
twenty-nine at this time).
These were fairly typical circumstances all along
the
mountain ridge down to the Carolinas. Nicholas's younger
brother George (b. 1712) also moved his large family from Baltimore the same
three hundred
miles down to Bedford (then still Lunenburg) County in Virginia. From one of his
Tennessee
grandchildren we
learn that George purchased eight Irish bondsmen in Baltimore, and took
them along to the Watauga (Crowe, p. 31). This was exactly the
way the
family had come to Virginia a hundred years earlier, providing
themselves with the labor to develop land grants.
Another of our maternal forebears, the
Crank family, had followed nearly the same migratory route as the
Hailes. Matthew Crank's son Thomas (1735-1782),
m. Elizabeth Richardson (b. 1745) moved beyond the fall line of the
Rappahannock into
Goochland County. Their youngest child, William (1772-1854) m.
Tabitha Poindexter (1775-1854), can also be traced by their childrens'
birthplaces: a daughter and two sons just up the river in Louisa
County;
but a third son, down the Blue Ridge in Amherst County. Amherst lies
just north of where the Hailes had located at Bedford. By the
time of
Thomas Jefferson's
administration, the Cranks had moved all the way to Halifax County,
right on
the North Carolina border. All these families
were following the Great Wagon Road, an extension of the Philadelphia
Road taken by the McClures. One can scarcely help
wondering whether these people had not made acquaintance in
those days.
They shared the same
hopes, had similar means for accomplishing them.
Furthermore, they were all, eventually, of English stock, perhaps of
the same English culture. The large German population through
whose settlements the Hailes
and the Cranks were passing are still attested by Virginia place names,
but there was no intermarrying with them.
Their destination was the Watauga
region of (then) North Carolina. Mary's husband
Matthew Talbot
became a very large
landholder both in Virginia
and on the Watauga. Although he
had been raised in the
Church of England, Talbot
became a Baptist preacher and founded a church on Sinking Creek.
His was
the generation drawn up into the War
for Independence. Talbot built a fort
on
his Watauga property which served as staging ground for the Battle of
Kings
Mountain, in which he fought. Matthew's oldest son, Haile Talbot,
moved out to
Missouri and became involved in the Missouri move for statehood.
In
subsequent
Talbot generations, Hale / Haile continues to recur as
given name,
sometimes as
a
middle name for the girls.
Ann's husband, William Mead, was a
prominent figure in the development of New London (about 15 miles east
of Bedford). We have met Colonel Mead as an
important defender of the settlement. As a youth, he had already
figured in
the
campaign at Fort DuQuesne. He would go on to serve in the War
for Independence. Ann bore William seven children before her
death
in
childbirth. Mead married the widow of
his sometime boss William
Stith (chief surveyor in Bedford) and fathered six more
children. Having accumulated immense
land
holdings, Mead at last moved to Georgia, where he again accumulated
large
estates.
Nicholas's
name, on the other hand, even though Virginia records are now
more abundant, ceases to turn up among them. One must assume that
Nicholas did not survive his
fifties, as his wife returned to
Baltimore and remarried there in
1760.
It may be that problems
of health had already contributed to his restlessness, even to his
religiosity. While his son-in-law Mead, offspring of Quakers, went on to
a
very secular career, Nicholas's own son
Nicholas (included in the Bedford
County tithes mentioned above) founded a Baptist church in
Watauga, as had his brother-in-law Matthew Talbot.
The Indian troubles these fellows
described
in the letters above may have figured in the families' move to
Watauga.
It certainly put a great fright
into The Scots Irish settlers up at Tinkling Spring, where a general
exodus was
prevented only by the stalwart encouragement of their Reverend John
Craig. Samuel McC.ure was one of several
who
left the Tinkling
Spring Community. By 1757, Samuel had made it to Hanging Rock
Creek, just across the border
from North into South Carolina. In that
year he married a local girl, Sarah Rankin. Samuel, although James
McClure's youngest son, was James's first
child
born
in America. Samuel's
children remained in this vicinity until after the War of
Independence.
