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Thursday, July 31, 2008

Lost Colony Baptisms to be Commemorated Aug. 17th

The first Protestant Baptisms in the New World to be commemorated on August 17th.

Image Credit:
© 2008 Episcopal Life Online

The Diocese of East Carolina will hold "The Commemoration of the Baptisms of Manteo and Virginia Dare at the Lost Colony" on August 17 at the Waterside Theatre in Manteo, North Carolina.

Little certainty surrounds the fate of the English settlers who inhabited Roanoke Island's lost colony, but it is known that in August 1587, Native American Manteo and English baby Virginia Dare were baptized. Manteo's baptism was the first recorded baptism of the Church of England in North America, while Dare was the first child born to English settlers on the North American continent.

"The baptisms of the lost colony mark a peaceful beginning to multi-cultural relations in North America," says East Carolina Bishop Clifton Daniel 3rd. "A commemoration of this event allows us as a people to reflect on this beginning and the changes that have shaped our nation and shed light on the challenges we face today," he said.

http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_99569_ENG_HTM.htm

Monday, July 28, 2008

Documenting the American South


The Westover Manuscripts:
Containing the History of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina;
A Journey to the Land of Eden, A. D. 1733; and A Progress to the Mines.
Written from 1728 to 1736, and Now First Published:

Electronic Edition.

Byrd, William, 1674-1744

Ruffin, Edmund 1794-1865

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Sir Walter Raleigh - To His Love When He Had Obtained Her


Now Serena be not coy,
Since we freely may enjoy
Sweet embraces, such delights,
As will shorten tedious nights.
Think that beauty will not stay
With you always, but away,
And that tyrannizing face
That now holds such perfect grace
Will both changed and ruined be;
So frail is all things as we see,
So subject unto conquering Time.
Then gather flowers in their prime,
Let them not fall and perish so;
Nature her bounties did bestow
On us that we might use them, and
'Tis coldness not to understand
What she and youth and form persuade
With opportunity that's made
As we could wish it. Let's, then, meet
Often with amorous lips, and greet
Each other till our wanton kisses
In number pass the day Ulysses
Consumed in travel, and the stars
That look upon our peaceful wars
With envious luster. If this store
Will not suffice, we'll number o'er
The same again, until we find
No number left to call to mind
And show our plenty. They are poor
That can count all they have and more.
Sir Walter Raleigh (1554–October 29, 1618)

Friday, July 25, 2008

TGG Interview Series IX - Ana Oquendo Pabón


The ninth and final edition of the TGG Interview Series is with Dr. Ana Oquendo Pabón. Dr. Oquendo Pabón is DNA and Historical advisor to the Lost Colony DNA and Research Group, and is an Administrator or Co-Administrator to numerous DNA projects. Her bio is can be seen here.

In the following interview, Dr. Oquendo Pabón discusses her introduction to the field of genetic genealogy, her own experiences with genetic testing, and her thoughts about the future of genetic genealogy. It’s a terrific interview, so read on.

TGG: How long have you been actively involved in genetic genealogy, and how did you become interested in the field?

Ana Oquendo Pabón: I have been involved in genetic genealogy since very early in 2003. My brother and I have been traditional genealogists for about 28 years. Due to the excellent records on the island and hard research, we had long known all of our 64 grandparents except for one and all except 4 or 5 couples of our 128 ancestors. I had been keeping track of the news online concerning the “new science” and unique way of tracing your ancestral roots. I think everyone had heard about the Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings story by that time. I had also read about a particular genealogist named Bennett Greenspan’s own amazing quest to confirm his paternal DNA with an individual in Argentina and how he had started a genetic testing company to help others accomplish what he had done using yDNA. In 2003, I decided to give my brother a DNA kit as a combined birthday and anniversary present. We were among the first ten thousand genetic genealogy pioneers to take advantage of this new way of research. This spurred the idea of helping others in our field of expertise which was the genealogy of Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican Project (Proyecto ADN de Apellidos Puertorriqueños) was born.

TGG: Have you undergone genetic genealogy testing?

AP: I initially had the mtDNA HVR1 + HVR2 in 2003 as well as the biogeographic test. Since then, I have had the complete mtDNA and all autosomal markers available. My brother has had 67 markers and SNP testing. My son, daughter, grandson and I also have had testing through SMGF.

TGG: Were you surprised with the results?

AP: Yes and no. As an admixed individual of European (mainly Spaniard), Taino and African cultures, I expected to find a tri-cultural diversity in my personal DNA. Yet, where one test did find African heritage, another found none despite a known slave in the fifth generation and in others. The test did however find that I was 24% East Indian which could only mean my indigenous ancestry. The indigenous fact was definitely not a surprise since my ancestors had been on the island since the colonization but the high percentage was. Without a doubt, DNA can broaden our perspectives as to our ancestral origins and where to look further but it must go hand in hand with the traditional genealogy.

The greatest personal satisfaction to me is that by emphasizing mtDNA which was not even considered relevant to genetic testing as paternal yDNA Surname Projects of that time, we were able to make it an important aspect of our own project from the outset in 2003. Through mtDNA testing, we were able to dispel, one member Native American result after another, any notion of the complete extinction of the people who first greeted Columbus to the New World. After five years of intense recruiting, we have proven through our project that our Taino and indigenous ancestry is very much present in our people in a very large way. In fact, we have one of the highest frequencies of indigenous ancestry ~62% of Haplogroups A, C, B and D for such a small geographic area. We have also been able to determine the DNA of many of the first Colonos and Criollos, the first Spanish Colonists and their descendants who intermarried with Taíno or indigenous women and of other European colonists and immigrants from the 16th century forward.

TGG: Did the results help you break through any of your brick walls or solve a family mystery?

AP: Through my personal mtDNA or my brother’s yDNA, we have not. Neither of us has any exact high resolution matches. Since our mother was an orphan, and our father lost his father when he was three, our personal quest has been to determine the DNA signatures of our other lines through close relatives. In that way, we have been able to confirm our traditional genealogy and determine many of our other great great plus grandparents’ DNA. In fact, of the 300 members in our Puerto Rican DNA Project, we are probably related to ~75 % either on the paternal or maternal side due to our island’s geographic isolation during large periods of history and the high level of consanguinity and endogamy.

To date, we have confirmed through both traditional genealogy and DNA, our maternal mtDNA: L1c1a, paternal yDNA: E1b1a*, maternal grandfather: J2, mother’s paternal grandmother: Haplogroup C, another maternal ggg grandmother: Haplogroup A, our 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th maternal great grandfathers: E1b1b1 (E3b1), R1b1b2 (R1b1c), J1, R1b1, T (K2), J2a2 and our paternal great grandfather’s R1b1. However, it takes time, knowledge of the history and connections between families of the period, the genealogy of surnames of the period and not just your own and recruiting the correct individuals who themselves have well documented records.

continue interview

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Carolina Land Grants

Carolina Land Grants, 1684 - 1688

26 March 1684
Grant from the Proprietors of Carolina of 3,333 acres to Mary Biggs. Signed, Craven, Albemarle, Bath (for Lord Carteret), P. Colleton.

11 July 1684
Lords Proprietors of Carolina to Governor Sir Richard Kyrle. Warrant for grant of lands to Thomas Ferguson, who is removing with divers other families from the North of Ireland to Carolina. Signed, Craven, Bath (for Lord Carteret), P. Colleton.

25 July 1684
Lords Proprietors of Carolina to Governor Sir Richard Kyrle. Warrant for a grant of land to William Thorogood. Signed, Craven, Bath (for Lord Carteret), P. Colleton.

14 April 1685
Lords Proprietors of Carolina to Governor Joseph West. Warrant for a grant of 500 acres of land to James Du Gué. Signed, Craven, Albemarle, P. Colleton.

14 April 1685
Lords Proprietors of Carolina to Governor Joseph West. Warrant for a grant of 300 acres of land to Isaac Fleury.

16 April 1685
Warrant of Lords Proprietors of Carolina for the grant of 600 acres of land to Charles Franchomme. Signed, Craven, Albemarle, P. Colleton.

17 April 1685
Warrant of Lords Proprietors of Carolina for the grant of 500 acres to Isaac Lejay. Signed, Craven, Albemarle, P. Colleton.

22 April 1685
Warrant of Lords Proprietors of Carolina for the grant of 3,000 acres of land to William Shaw.

23 June 1685
Warrant of Lords Proprietors of Carolina for the grant of 100 acres of land to Nicholas Languemar. Signed, Craven, P. Colleton, Tho. Amy.

30 July 1685
Lords Proprietors of Carolina to Governor Joseph West. Warrant for the grant of 3,000 acres of land, gratis. to Jean François de Genillat, the first of the Swiss nation, who has announced his intention of settling in Carolina. Signed, Craven, Tho. Amy, P. Colleton.

20 September 1685
Warrant of Lords Proprietors of Carolina for grant of 3,000 acres of land to James le Bas. Signed, Craven, P. Colleton, S. Sothell.

1 October 1685
Warrant of Lords Proprietors of Carolina for a grant of 1,000 acres to Andrew Perceval. Signed, Craven, P. Colleton, S. Sothell.

2 March 1686
Warrant of Lords Proprietors of Carolina for the delivery of three thousand acres of land to Josias Forrest. Signed, Craven, P. Colleton, Tho. Amy.

15 April 1686
Warrant of Lords Proprietors of Carolina, for the delivery of two hundred acres, sold to James Nichols, alias Petitbois. Signed, Craven, P. Colleton.

20 April 1686
Grant of the Proprietors of Carolina of five hundred acres of land to Charles Colleton. Signed, Craven, P. Colleton, Tho. Amy.

30 April 1686
Memorandum of Lords Proprietors of Carolina. A patent of Langrave was granted to John Price on this day.

30 August 1686
Grants by the Proprietors of Carolina of one hundred acres of land to Isaac le Grand, Sieur d'Anarville, and the same to Mr. James Le Moyne, they having each paid five pounds for the same. Signed, Craven, Albemarle, P. Colleton.

4 September 1686
Warrant of the Lords Proprietors of Carolina for the grant of three thousand acres of land to henry Augustus Chastaigner, Seigneur de Cramaké, and Alexander Thezée Chastaigner, Seigneur de Lisle. Signed, Craven, P. Colleton, Tho. Amy.

29 October 1686
Warrant of the Proprietors of Carolina for the grant of twelve thousand acres to Mons. John d'Arsens, Seigneur of Wernhaut. Signed, Craven, Albemarle, P. Colleton.

2 November 1686
Warrant of the Proprietors of Carolina for the grant of one thousand acres to Maurice Matthews, in consideration of his having purchased the lands from the Indians. Signed, Craven, Albemarle, P. Colleton, Thos. Amy.

7 December 1686
Warrant of the Proprietors of Carolina for the allotment of three thousand acres of land to James Mantell Goulard de Vervaut. Signed, Craven, P. Colleton, Tho. Amy.

7 December 1686
Warrant of the Proprietors of Carolina for the grant of twelve thousand acres of land to James Mantell Goulard de Vervaut. Signed, Craven, P. Colleton, Tho. Amy.

13 May 1687
Lords Proprietors of Carolina to Governor James Colleton. We have agreed to grant Mr. John Price forty thousand acres of land on certain conditions herewith transmitted to you. Signed, Craven, Albemarle, Bath (for Lord Carteret), P. Colleton, John Archdall, Tho. Amy.

13 July 1687
Order of the Lords Proprietors of Carolina for the grant of 626 acres of land to James Boyd. Signed, Craven, Albemarle, Bath (for Lord Carteret), P. Colleton, Tho. Amy.

14 July 1687
Order of the Lords Proprietors of Carolina. That the grant of land made to M.M. Genillac and Bruneau shall be a free gift. Signed, Vraven, Bath (for Lord Carteret), P. Colleton, Tho. Amy.

10 October 1687
Order of the Lords Proprietors of Carolina for the admeasurement of six hundred acres of land in Jameston precinct to Joachim Guillard. Signed, Craven, P. Colleton, Tho. Amy.

19 June 1688
Warrant of the Lords Proprietors of Carolina to Governor James Colleton, for the grant of 12,000 acres to Doctor Chritopher Dominick, he having paid £600 for the same. A rent of one penny per acre to be reserved. Signed, Craven, Bath (for Lord Carteret), P. Colleton.

Fortescue, J. W., ed., Calender of State Papers, Colonial Series (Volume 11), America and West Indies, 1685-1688, Preserved in Her Majesty's Public Record Office (Vaduz: Kraus Reprint Ltd., 1964) First Published London: HMSO, 1898. pp. 611, 667 and 670; Fortescue, J. W., ed., Calender of State Papers, Colonial Series (Volume 12), America and West Indies, 1685-1688, Preserved in the Public Record Office (Vaduz: Kraus Reprint Ltd., 1964) First Published London: HMSO, 1899. pp. 29, 30, 32, 59, 71, 95, 100, 157, 173, 182, 233, 239, 270, 271, 298, 366, 397, 451, 561.

More information about land grants in the Carolinas can be found in the books:
Province of North Carolina 1663-1729 Abstracts of Land Parents
and:
Warrants for Land in South Carolina, 1672-1711
from website

Monday, July 21, 2008

England's First View of America


British Museum Exhibition of
John White Watercolors

A New World: England's First View of America
July 15, 2008 - October 15, 2008

Jamestown Settlement

Jamestown Settlement will exhibit the 16th-century watercolor drawings of John White from the British Museum’s “A New World: England’s First View of America” July 15 through October 15, 2008.

The drawings are the earliest visual record by an Englishman of the flora, fauna and people of the New World. White accompanied a number of expeditions sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh to Virginia in the 1580s and was governor of the short-lived colony at Roanoke Island, part of modern North Carolina. He departed for England in 1587 to obtain more supplies, but war with Spain delayed his return until 1590. By then the colonists had vanished, and Roanoke became known as the “Lost Colony.”

Jamestown, America’s first permanent English colony, was established 17 years later, about 100 miles away. White’s depictions of the Algonquian-speaking people of the region have been an important resource in the development of Jamestown Settlement’s gallery exhibits and outdoor re-created Powhatan Indian village.

Additional Reading:


Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Supporting Lost Colony Drama is a Family Tradition

Fearing family continues tradition of support for The Lost Colony


Keeping the longstanding Fearing family tradition of generosity and support for The Lost Colony, Mollie A. Fearing & Associates has again renewed their $5,000 corporate sponsorship to offset overall costs of the production.Fearing's family ties to The Lost Colony story pre-date the symphonic drama. In the late 1920's her great uncle, the late D. Bradford Fearing chaired a committee that organized "The Pageant of Roanoke". The idea inspired Fearing and others who persuaded Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paul Green to write a play about Roanoke Island's famed "lost colony."


The elder Fearing, a local merchant and politician, oversaw the production its inaugural year and served as producer and general manager for many years until his death."When you're in our family, you are in service to The Lost Colony," said Grizelle Fearing, president of the Manteo insurance company. "As a kid, I saw The Lost Colony almost every night. Half of the family was in The Lost Colony every summer as costumer, actor-tech, principal, or board member and I was often there to help."Grizelle Fearing's mother, the late Mollie A. Fearing, was one of the production's greatest champions. A gifted hostess, "Miss Mollie" organized The Lost Colony's opening night receptions, board dinners and other social events for years, in addition to serving as a long-time officer and board member.


Fearing's husband, Tom McDonald (grandson of the late Irene Smart Rains, the show's former costumer) has long lent a helping hand, from creating exhibits at places like the Outer Banks History Center, alumni committee work, and even donating items for fundraising auctions from their personal collection. He performed in the show in his youth.


First staged in 1937, The Lost Colony tells the real-life story of America's "lost colony" of men, women and children who sailed from Plymouth, England, in 1587 to establish an English colony on Roanoke Island (N.C.). Predating Jamestown by 22 years and Plymouth by 35 years, the settlement disappeared with hardly a trace, leaving historians and archaeologists with a mystery that has never been solved.



Cont. here:

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Acknowledging the Lumbee Indians

Dr. Jack Campisi
Anthropologist consultant, Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina
Testimony before the Committee on Indian Affairs
United States Senate
Legislative hearing on S.660, “To provide for the acknowledgment of the Lumbee Tribe
of North Carolina, and for other purposes.”
July 12, 2006


I hold a doctorate in anthropology, have dedicated my career to research in tribal
communities, and have taught these subjects as an adjunct professor at Wellesley College.
Between 1982 and 1988, I conducted a number of studies for the Lumbee Tribe of North
Carolina. Each of these included fieldwork in the community for periods of time varying from a
week to three weeks. In all, I spent more than twenty weeks in Robeson County carrying out a
variety of research projects. Besides being responsible for synthesizing the thousands of pages of
documentation collected during the ten years it took to carry out the archival research, and for
designing and carrying out the community research, I had the honor of writing the petition that
was submitted on December 17, 1987, to the Branch of Acknowledgment and Research (now the
Office of Federal Acknowledgment) under the federal regulations that govern acknowledgment
of eligible Indian tribes, 25 C.F.R. Part 183. Specifically, I drafted the Historical Narrative
section, and researched and wrote the sections dealing with community and political continuity.
Subsequent to the completion of the petition, I continued research with the Lumbee Tribe, most
recently in 2002. The material that follows is based on my twenty years’ research on the Tribe’s
history and community.

Over the course of the past twenty-five years, I have worked on 28 tribal petitions for
federal acknowledgment. None has exceeded the Lumbee petition in documentation and no
group has exhibited more evidence of community cohesion and political continuity than the
Lumbee Tribe. It is my professional opinion that the Lumbee Tribe exists as an Indian tribe and
has done so over history. I will outline below the main arguments and evidence in support of this
conclusion.

An Overview of Lumbee Tribal History:

Monday, July 14, 2008

Lumbee Refuge

Refugees

Bladen County encompassed a portion of what is today Robeson County, and the Lumber River was at this time called by English colonials, "Drowning Creek." After the violent upheavals of the Yamasee War of 1715-1717, and the Tuscarora War of 1711-1715, families of Waccamaw Indians had left South Carolina Colony in 1718, and had very likely established a village west of present-day Pembroke, North Carolina by 1725. The “mixed crew” that Rutherford observed in 1754 were located in the same locale as the earlier Waccamaw settlement.

The research of the noted anthropologist, John R. Swanton of the Smithsonian Institution corroborates much of the oral tradition of the Lumbee Indians of Robeson County. Swanton posited that the Lumbee were the descendants of Siouan peoples of which the most prominent were the Cheraw and Keyauwee. These communities that would later comprise the Lumbee would also have included Siouan refugee groups of the Eno, Shakori, as well as coastal groups such as the Waccamaw and Cape Fear Indians. Interestingly, colonial migrants to the present-day Robeson County Lumber River basin came into contact with an acculturated population of Native Americans who reportedly spoke some English, owned European trade goods, and used primitive English-style farm tools in their agricultural pursuits. By then, English, Gaelic speaking highland Scots, and Welsh colonials had begun to make their way from present-day Fayetteville, North Carolina, to Laurinburg, North Carolina, and eventually, to Drowning Creek, or the present-day Lumber River. Critical to keep in mind is that at the same time that Native peoples were fleeing into the Robeson County region and seeking refuge from the incalculable destruction of warfare and disease, European colonials were in pursuit, attempting to gain a foothold, then wrest control of the resessed region of Robeson County.

By the mid-eighteenth century, Indians continued to populate the Lumber River basin area and its numerous tributaries. whites slowly moved into and established settlements, but overall, they initially lived on the periphery of those lands to which the ancestors of the Lumbee had managed to secure title with the colonial administration of North Carolina. The main Indian settlements during the late eighteenth century were Prospect and Red Banks. Individual land ownership by Native Americans had far-reaching consequences for the history of Robeson County in that Native peoples were less subject to the political and economic dominance of whites, managing to live in a homogeneous network of settlements that provided social and cultural security.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robeson_County,_North_Carolina#Refugees

Sunday, July 13, 2008

USA Archives for Every State

Thanks to Joy King for the following:


From Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter 7/13/08
http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/History_Family/State_Genealogy.shtml

Has URLs for the Archives of every state.

Friday, July 11, 2008

Public invited to see 500-year-old artifacts This Saturday

MORGANTON - People gathered around a woman and shouts of "hey, hey, hey" went up at the Berry archeological site on Thursday.

David Moore, lead archeologist at the site, was standing about 75 yards away. When he heard the shouts, he made his way over to the group.

What got the crowd excited was a find by Jeane Jones, of Dalton, Ga., of a tiny blue Spanish glass bead believed left behind from the first European settlement in the interior of what is now the United States.

It was the second glass bead found last week. One man found a piece of metal believed to be from the same era.

On July 12, the public will get a chance to take a look at the glass beads and other artifacts found at the site, as well as observe archaeologists at work. Archaeologists will be on hand to discuss the site and lead tours. Primitive skills experts also will demonstrate how native people crafted their weapons and tools.

Warren Wilson College and Western Piedmont Community College Archaeology Field School is sponsoring the open house.

Full Article Here:

http://www.morganton.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=MNH/MGArticle/MNH_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1173355790954

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

If Wishes Were Ancestors

What if you could handpick the people sitting in your family tree? Would you choose rich ancestors? Beautiful ones? Ancestors who could get you the best seats at the finest restaurants or the kind whose mere mention would get you out of a parking ticket? Would healthy relatives be your choice? Great storytellers? Or would you just want to have relatives you might have had a chance to meet because they lived to be 100 years old—or more?
We challenged four family historians with the task of selecting people for their own dream trees—but we did so with a hitch: each would be relative would have to fit very specific criteria. Albuquerque Tribune columnist Mary Penner was asked to pick ancestors because of the material goods she would have inherited from each. Katherine Hope Borges, founder of the International Society of Genetic Genealogy, was to select ancestors because of their DNA. Aha! Seminars president and author of The Official Guide to Ancestry.com, George G. Morgan, was asked to pick ancestors simply based on the fact that each left a great trail of records. And Ancestry Magazine columnist Myra Vanderpool Gormley was asked to fill her family tree with people whose lives and tales would make good cocktail party conversation. So who did they choose? See for yourself.
Cont. here:
http://www.ancestrymagazine.com/2008/07/features/if-wishes-were-ancestors/
The Lost Colony DNA Project websites are:

http://the-lost-colony.blogspot.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Colony_DNA_Project

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~molcgdrg/

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Persons of Mean and Vile Condition pt. 4

Bacon's Rebellion was the result of discontent among backcountry farmers who had taken the law into their own hands against government corruption and oppression. Many Virginians were debtors. Borrowing on the strength of paper money was stopped by the British Government, leading to more discontent against the merchant classes.

Historians have pointed out that one of the most important reforms made during Bacon's government was the recognition of the right to keep and bear arms, so that the common man could defend himself from hostile Indians but also to oppose a despotic regime. After Berkeley's resumption of power, this right was one of the first he repealed. Miller suggests it was Bacon's Rebellion that may have served as one of the motives for later colonists' insistence for the right to bear arms. Historian Stephen Saunders Webb suggests that Bacon's Rebellion was a revolution, with roots in the English Civil War and with consequences including the American Revolutionary War.

It was largely the indentured servants and poor farmers (most of whom were former indentured servants or their descendants) who rebelled. Before the rebellion, African slaves were rare in Virginia, chiefly due to their expense and the lack of slave traders bringing Africans to Virginia. Africans were often brought as indentured servants, becoming free after serving their term of labor. Indentured servants from Europe continued to play a role in Virginia after the rebellion. Due to the demand for labor and a decrease in immigrants from England, African slave imports grew rapidly. New Virginia laws made slavery lifelong and a status inherited by one's children, creating a racially based class system with Africans at the bottom. Even the poorest European indentured servants were above them. This broke the common interest between the poor English and Africans of Virginia which had existed during Bacon's Rebellion.

The rebellion strengthened the ties between Virginia south of the James River and the Albemarle Settlements in present-day North Carolina, while creating a long-lasting animosity between the two colonies' governments. The Albemarle region offered refuge for rebels in the aftermath. In the long term, North Carolina offered an alternative to colonists disenchanted with Virginia.

From Wikipedia

Bacon's Rebellion demonstrated that poor whites and poor blacks could be united in a cause. This was a great fear of the ruling class -- what would prevent the poor from uniting to fight them? This fear hastened the transition to racial slavery.

But it also led to the formation of an incubator for revolutionists. In North Carolina, these rebels joined forces and causes and their descendants would turn the tide of the American Revolution at Kings Mountain. Ragtag and undisciplined they may have been; nevertheless their highly irregular warfare tactics won the day and contributed greatly to winning the war.

Janet Crain



Persons of Mean and Vile Condition pt. 3

By Janet Crain


Where did the rebels go after Bacon's Rebellion? That is those who managed to escape their servitude and virtual enslavement. According to these articles at Wikipedia,


"A significant number of rebels fled to the Albemarle Settlements of North Carolina to an area known as Rogues Harbor."

========================================

Bacon's Rebellion Aftermath

The Declaration of the People was established, echoing the Commonwealth of England, which had ended 16 years earlier. Bacon died on October 26, 1676, of the "bloody flux" or dysentery. The rebellion continued until several well-armed London-based merchant ships, loyal to Berkeley, arrived in Virginia. These were trading ships whose captains were not aware of the rebellion until they arrived. A fleet of the Royal Navy set sail for Virginia upon hearing of the rebellion but would not arrive until several months after the merchant ships. With these merchant ships, cannon and crews, Berkeley was able to put down the rebellion. In the aftermath, before the arrival of the Royal Navy, Berkeley tried and executed many rebels in what began to resemble a reign of terror. When the Royal Navy and Royal Commissioners arrived, Berkeley's revenge campaign was halted and mass pardons were issued.

The Declaration of the People was established, echoing the Commonwealth of England, which had ended 16 years earlier. Bacon died on October 26, 1676, of the "bloody flux" or dysentery. The rebellion continued until several well-armed London-based merchant ships, loyal to Berkeley, arrived in Virginia. These were trading ships whose captains were not aware of the rebellion until they arrived. A fleet of the Royal Navy set sail for Virginia upon hearing of the rebellion but would not arrive until several months after the merchant ships. With these merchant ships, cannon and crews, Berkeley was able to put down the rebellion. In the aftermath, before the arrival of the Royal Navy, Berkeley tried and executed many rebels in what began to resemble a reign of terror. When the Royal Navy and Royal Commissioners arrived, Berkeley's revenge campaign was halted and mass pardons were issued. A significant number of rebels fled to the Albemarle Settlements of North Carolina.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon

Albemarle Settlements

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Albemarle Settlements were the first permanent English settlements in what is now North Carolina, made in the Albemarle Sound and Roanoke River regions, beginning about the middle of the 17th century. The settlers were mainly Virginians migrating south.

Albemarle Settlement Region

In 1653, the Virginia Assembly granted one Roger Green a tract of land on Roanoke River south of Chowan, to be located "next to those persons who have had a former grant." In 1662, George Durant purchased lands from the Indians in this region and there is evidence to indicate that others had done the same.
When it was learned that the Albemarle settlements were not included in the Carolina proprietary grant of 1663, a new charter was granted in 1665 which included them. A Government was instituted in Albemarle in 1664 and within a decade settlements extended from the Chowan River to Currituck Sound.
During Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, the Albemarle Settlements offered assistance and refuge to the rebels. The rebellion's strongholds were mostly south of the James River, a region linked to the Albemarle Settlements by roads and rivers. A road linked "southside Virginia" to Edenton, North Carolina, skirting the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp. The Blackwater River of southside Virginia flowed south to the Chowan River, providing another link.

The Albemarle Settlements came to be known in Virginia as "Rogues' Harbor".[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albemarle_Settlements

Coming Next:

The conclusion of the series Persons of Mean and Vile Condition

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Persons of Mean and Vile Condition pt. 2

by Janet Crain

This is the second part of a series about the conditions which lead up to Bacon's Rebellion, felt by some to have precipitated the American Revolution by one hundred years.

================================================

It was a complex chain of oppression in Virginia. The Indians were plundered by white frontiersmen, who were taxed and controlled by the Jamestown elite. And the whole colony was being exploited by England, which bought the colonists' tobacco at prices it dictated and made 100,000 pounds a year for the King. Berkeley himself, returning to England years earlier to protest the English Navigation Acts, which gave English merchants a monopoly of the colonial trade, had said:

... we cannot but resent, that forty thousand people should be impoverish'd to enrich little more than forty Merchants, who being the only buyers of our Tobacco, give us what they please for it, and after it is here, sell it how they please; and indeed have forty thousand servants in us at cheaper rates, than any other men have slaves....
From the testimony of the governor himself, the rebellion against him had the overwhelming support of the Virginia population. A member of his Council reported that the defection was "almost general" and laid it to "the Lewd dispositions of some Persons of desperate Fortunes" who had "the Vaine hopes of takeing the Countrey wholley out of his Majesty's handes into their owne." Another member of the Governor's Council, Richard Lee, noted that Bacon's Rebellion had started over Indian policy. But the "zealous inclination of the multitude" to support Bacon was due, he said, to "hopes of levelling."

"Levelling" meant equalizing the wealth. Levelling was to be behind countless actions of poor whites against the rich in all the English colonies, in the century and a half before the Revolution.
The servants who joined Bacon's Rebellion were part of a large underclass of miserably poor whites who came to the North American colonies from European cities whose governments were anxious to be rid of them. In England, the development of commerce and capitalism in the 1500s and 1600s, the enclosing of land for the production of wool, filled the cities with vagrant poor, and from the reign of Elizabeth on, laws were passed to punish them, imprison them in workhouses, or exile them. The Elizabethan definition of "rogues and vagabonds" included:
... All persons calling themselves Schollers going about begging, all Seafaring men pretending losses of their Shippes or goods on the sea going about the Country begging, all idle persons going about in any Country either begging or using any subtile crafte or unlawful Games ... comon Players of Interludes and Minstrells wandring abroade ... all wandering persons and comon Labourers being persons able in bodye using loytering and refusing to worke for such reasonable wages as is taxed or commonly given....
Such persons found begging could be stripped to the waist and whipped bloody, could be sent out of the city, sent to workhouses, or transported out of the country.

In the 1600s and 1700s, by forced exile, by lures, promises, and lies, by kidnapping, by their urgent need to escape the living conditions of the home country, poor people wanting to go to America became commodities of profit for merchants, traders, ship captains, and eventually their masters in America. Abbot Smith, in his study of indentured servitude, Colonists in Bondage, writes: "From the complex pattern of forces producing emigration to the American colonies one stands out clearly as most powerful in causing the movement of servants. This was the pecuniary profit to be made by shipping them."

After signing the indenture, in which the immigrants agreed to pay their cost of passage by working for a master for five or seven years, they were often imprisoned until the ship sailed, to make sure they did not run away. In the year 1619, the Virginia House of Burgesses, born that year as the first representative assembly in America (it was also the year of the first importation of black slaves), provided for the recording and enforcing of contracts between servants and masters. As in any contract between unequal powers, the parties appeared on paper as equals, but enforcement was far easier for master than for servant.

The voyage to America lasted eight, ten, or twelve weeks, and the servants were packed into ships with the same fanatic concern for profits that marked the slave ships. If the weather was bad, and the trip took too long, they ran out of food. The sloop Sea-Flower, leaving Belfast in 1741, was at sea sixteen weeks, and when it arrived in Boston, forty-six of its 106 passengers were dead of starvation, six of them eaten by the survivors. On another trip, thirty-two children died of hunger and disease and were thrown into the ocean. Gottlieb Mittelberger, a musician, traveling from Germany to America around 1750, wrote about his voyage:
During the journey the ship is full of pitiful signs of distress-smells, fumes, horrors, vomiting, various kinds of sea sickness, fever, dysentery, headaches, heat, constipation, boils, scurvy, cancer, mouth-rot, and similar afflictions, all of them caused by the age and the high salted state of the food, especially of the meat, as well as by the very bad and filthy water.. .. Add to all that shortage of food, hunger, thirst, frost, heat, dampness, fear, misery, vexation, and lamentation as well as other troubles.... On board our ship, on a day on which we had a great storm, a woman ahout to give birth and unable to deliver under the circumstances, was pushed through one of the portholes into the sea....
Indentured servants were bought and sold like slaves. An announcement in the Virginia Gazette, March 28, 1771, read:
Just arrived at Leedstown, the Ship Justitia, with about one Hundred Healthy Servants, Men Women & Boys... . The Sale will commence on Tuesday the 2nd of April.
Against the rosy accounts of better living standards in the Americas one must place many others, like one immigrant's letter from America: "Whoever is well off in Europe better remain there. Here is misery and distress, same as everywhere, and for certain persons and conditions incomparably more than in Europe."

Beatings and whippings were common. Servant women were raped. One observer testified: "I have seen an Overseer beat a Servant with a cane about the head till the blood has followed, for a fault that is not worth the speaking of...." The Maryland court records showed many servant suicides. In 1671, Governor Berkeley of Virginia reported that in previous years four of five servants died of disease after their arrival. Many were poor children, gathered up by the hundreds on the streets of English cities and sent to Virginia to work.

The master tried to control completely the sexual lives of the servants. It was in his economic interest to keep women servants from marrying or from having sexual relations, because childbearing would interfere with work. Benjamin Franklin, writing as "Poor Richard" in 1736, gave advice to his readers: "Let thy maidservant be faithful, strong and homely."

Servants could not marry without permission, could be separated from their families, could be whipped for various offenses. Pennsylvania law in the seventeenth century said that marriage of servants "without the consent of the Masters .. . shall be proceeded against as for Adultery, or fornication, and Children to be reputed as Bastards."

Although colonial laws existed to stop excesses against servants, they were not very well enforced, we learn from Richard Morris's comprehensive study of early court records in Government and Labor in Early America. Servants did not participate in juries. Masters did. (And being propertyless, servants did not vote.) In 1666, a New England court accused a couple of the death of a servant after the mistress had cut off the servant's toes. The jury voted acquittal. In Virginia in the 1660s, a master was convicted of raping two women servants. He also was known to beat his own wife and children; he had whipped and chained another servant until he died. The master was berated by the court, but specifically cleared on the rape charge, despite overwhelming evidence.

Sometimes servants organized rebellions, but one did not find on the mainland the kind of large- scale conspiracies of servants that existed, for instance, on Barbados in the West Indies. (Abbot Smith suggests this was because there was more chance of success on a small island.)

However, in York County, Virginia, in 1661, a servant named Isaac Friend proposed to another, after much dissatisfaction with the food, that they "get a matter of Forty of them together, and get Gunnes & hee would be the first & lead them and cry as they went along, 'who would be for Liberty, and free from bondage', & that there would enough come to them and they would goe through the Countrey and kill those that made any opposition and that they would either be free or dye for it." The scheme was never carried out, but two years later, in Gloucester County, servants again planned a general uprising. One of them gave the plot away, and four were executed. The informer was given his freedom and 5,000 pounds of tobacco. Despite the rarity of servants' rebellions, the threat was always there, and masters were fearful.

Finding their situation intolerable, and rebellion impractical in an increasingly organized society, servants reacted in individual ways. The files of the county courts in New England show that one servant struck at his master with a pitchfork. An apprentice servant was accused of "laying violent hands upon his ... master, and throwing him downe twice and feching bloud of him, threatening to breake his necke, running at his face with a chayre...." One maidservant was brought into court for being "bad, unruly, sulen, careles, destructive, and disobedient."

After the participation of servants in Bacon's Rebellion, the Virginia legislature passed laws to punish servants who rebelled. The preamble to the act said:
Whereas many evil disposed servants in these late tymes of horrid rebellion taking advantage of the loosnes and liberty of the tyme, did depart from their service, and followed the rebells in rebellion, wholy neglecting their masters imploymcnt whereby the said masters have suffered great damage and injury....
Two companies of English soldiers remained in Virginia to guard against future trouble, and their presence was defended in a report to the Lords of Trade and Plantation saying: "Virginia is at present poor and more populous than ever. There is great apprehension of a rising among the servants, owing to their great necessities and want of clothes; they may plunder the storehouses and ships."

Escape was easier than rebellion. "Numerous instances of mass desertions by white servants took place in the Southern colonies," reports Richard Morris, on the basis of an inspection of colonial newspapers in the 1700s. "The atmosphere of seventeenth-century Virginia," he says, "was charged with plots and rumors of combinations of servants to run away." The Maryland court records show, in the 1650s, a conspiracy of a dozen servants to seize a boat and to resist with arms if intercepted. They were captured and whipped.

The mechanism of control was formidable. Strangers had to show passports or certificates to prove they were free men. Agreements among the colonies provided for the extradition of fugitive servants- these became the basis of the clause in the U.S. Constitution that persons "held to Service or Labor in one State ... escaping into another ... shall be delivered up...."

Sometimes, servants went on strike. One Maryland master complained to the Provincial Court in 1663 that his servants did "peremptorily and positively refuse to goe and doe their ordinary labor." The servants responded that they were fed only "Beanes and Bread" and they were "soe weake, wee are not able to perform the imploym'ts hee puts us uppon." They were given thirty lashes by the court.

More than half the colonists who came to the North American shores in the colonial period came as servants. They were mostly English in the seventeenth century, Irish and German in the eighteenth century. More and more, slaves replaced them, as they ran away to freedom or finished their time, but as late as 1755, white servants made up 10 percent of the population of Maryland.

What happened to these servants after they became free? There are cheerful accounts in which they rise to prosperity, becoming landowners and important figures. But Abbot Smith, after a careful study, concludes that colonial society "was not democratic and certainly not equalitarian; it was dominated by men who had money enough to make others work for them." And: "Few of these men were descended from indentured servants, and practically none had themselves been of that class."

After we make our way through Abbot Smith's disdain for the servants, as "men and women who were dirty and lazy, rough, ignorant, lewd, and often criminal," who "thieved and wandered, had bastard children, and corrupted society with loathsome diseases," we find that "about one in ten was a sound and solid individual, who would if fortunate survive his 'seasoning,' work out his time, take up land, and wax decently prosperous." Perhaps another one in ten would become an artisan or an overseer. The rest, 80 percent, who were "certainly ... shiftless, hopeless, ruined individuals," either "died during their servitude, returned to England after it was over, or became 'poor whites.'"

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnvil3.html

Friday, July 4, 2008

Persons of Mean and Vile Condition

By Janet Crain

Many people do not know what it really meant to be an indentured servant when this country was a British colony. They imagine an agreement was made between two adults that in return for the cost of transportation here, the indentured servant would work a period of time, usually 7 years, in return for his or her debt. At first a small acreage was even awarded along with a sum of money and suit of clothes. That was soon phased out. There were many opportunities for the exploitation of this system and most were employed. It became common for people including children to be kidnapped (kid nabbed). The courts sent many persons convicted of crimes large and small to the colonies. Poor children were sent so that they not be a burden on the government. Young women and men were tricked aboard or knocked in the head and carried on board. It made no difference once the ship set sail. They were cut off forever from their friends and families.

Conditions on board were terrible. The ship's captains transported as many as possible, as cheaply as possible, and sold their indentureships once in the colonies. No attempt was made to keep families together. Conditions in the new country were so horrible that as many as 4 out of 5 soon died.

Eventually conditions became so bad that some of these people banded together and rebelled. It was called "Bacon's Rebellion".

Some call this the first stirrings of the eventual American Revolution.


Persons of Mean and Vile Condition

by Howard Zinn

In 1676, seventy years after Virginia was founded, a hundred years before it supplied leadership for the American Revolution, that colony faced a rebellion of white frontiersmen, joined by slaves and servants, a rebellion so threatening that the governor had to flee the burning capital of Jamestown, and England decided to send a thousand soldiers across the Atlantic, hoping to maintain order among forty thousand colonists. This was Bacon's Rebellion. After the uprising was suppressed, its leader, Nathaniel Bacon, dead, and his associates hanged, Bacon was described in a Royal Commission report:
He was said to be about four or five and thirty years of age, indifferent tall but slender, black-hair'd and of an ominous, pensive, melancholly Aspect, of a pestilent and prevalent Logical discourse tending to atheisme... . He seduced the Vulgar and most ignorant people to believe (two thirds of each county being of that Sort) Soc that their whole hearts and hopes were set now upon Bacon. Next he charges the Governour as negligent and wicked, treacherous and incapable, the Lawes and Taxes as unjust and oppressive and cryes up absolute necessity of redress. Thus Bacon encouraged the Tumult and as the unquiet crowd follow and adhere to him, he listeth them as they come in upon a large paper, writing their name circular wise, that their Ringleaders might not be found out. Having connur'd them into this circle, given them Brandy to wind up the charme, and enjoyned them by an oath to stick fast together and to him and the oath being administered, he went and infected New Kent County ripe for Rebellion.
Bacon's Rebellion began with conflict over how to deal with the Indians, who were close by, on the western frontier, constantly threatening. Whites who had been ignored when huge land grants around Jamestown were given away had gone west to find land, and there they encountered Indians. Were those frontier Virginians resentful that the politicos and landed aristocrats who controlled the colony's government in Jamestown first pushed them westward into Indian territory, and then seemed indecisive in fighting the Indians? That might explain the character of their rebellion, not easily classifiable as either antiaristocrat or anti-Indian, because it was both.

And the governor, William Berkeley, and his Jamestown crowd-were they more conciliatory to the Indians (they wooed certain of them as spies and allies) now that they had monopolized the land in the East, could use frontier whites as a buffer, and needed peace? The desperation of the government in suppressing the rebellion seemed to have a double motive: developing an Indian policy which would divide Indians in order to control them (in New England at this very time, Massasoit's son Metacom was threatening to unite Indian tribes, and had done frightening damage to Puritan settlements in "King Philip's War"); and teaching the poor whites of Virginia that rebellion did not pay-by a show of superior force, by calling for troops from England itself, by mass hanging.

Violence had escalated on the frontier before the rebellion. Some Doeg Indians took a few hogs to redress a debt, and whites, retrieving the hogs, murdered two Indians. The Doegs then sent out a war party to kill a white herdsman, after which a white militia company killed twenty-four Indians. This led to a series of Indian raids, with the Indians, outnumbered, turning to guerrilla warfare. The House of Burgesses in Jamestown declared war on the Indians, but proposed to exempt those Indians who cooperated. This seemed to anger the frontiers people, who wanted total war but also resented the high taxes assessed to pay for the war.

Times were hard in 1676. "There was genuine distress, genuine poverty.... All contemporary sources speak of the great mass of people as living in severe economic straits," writes Wilcomb Washburn, who, using British colonial records, has done an exhaustive study of Bacon's Rebellion. It was a dry summer, ruining the corn crop, which was needed for food, and the tobacco crop, needed for export. Governor Berkeley, in his seventies, tired of holding office, wrote wearily about his situation: "How miserable that man is that Governes a People where six parts of seaven at least are Poore Endebted Discontented and Armed."

His phrase "six parts of seaven" suggests the existence of an upper class not so impoverished. In fact, there was such a class already developed in Virginia. Bacon himself came from this class, had a good bit of land, and was probably more enthusiastic about killing Indians than about redressing the grievances of the poor. But he became a symbol of mass resentment against the Virginia establishment, and was elected in the spring of 1676 to the House of Burgesses. When he insisted on organizing armed detachments to fight the Indians, outside official control, Berkeley proclaimed him a rebel and had him captured, whereupon two thousand Virginians marched into Jamestown to support him. Berkeley let Bacon go, in return for an apology, but Bacon went off, gathered his militia, and began raiding the Indians.

Bacon's "Declaration of the People" of July 1676 shows a mixture of populist resentment against the rich and frontier hatred of the Indians. It indicted the Berkeley administration for unjust taxes, for putting favorites in high positions, for monopolizing the beaver trade, and for not protecting the western formers from the Indians. Then Bacon went out to attack the friendly Pamunkey Indians, killing eight, taking others prisoner, plundering their possessions.
There is evidence that the rank and file of both Bacon's rebel army and Berkeley's official army were not as enthusiastic as their leaders. There were mass desertions on both sides, according to Washburn. In the fall, Bacon, aged twenty-nine, fell sick and died, because of, as a contemporary put it, "swarmes of Vermyn that bred in his body." A minister, apparently not a sympathizer, wrote this epitaph:
Bacon is Dead I am sorry at my heart,
That lice and flux should take the hangmans part.
The rebellion didn't last long after that. A ship armed with thirty guns, cruising the York River, became the base for securing order, and its captain, Thomas Grantham, used force and deception to disarm the last rebel forces. Coming upon the chief garrison of the rebellion, he found four hundred armed Englishmen and Negroes, a mixture of free men, servants, and slaves. He promised to pardon everyone, to give freedom to slaves and servants, whereupon they surrendered their arms and dispersed, except for eighty Negroes and twenty English who insisted on keeping their arms. Grantham promised to take them to a garrison down the river, but when they got into the boat, he trained his big guns on them, disarmed them, and eventually delivered the slaves and servants to their masters. The remaining garrisons were overcome one by one. Twenty-three rebel leaders were hanged.

To be Cont.

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnvil3.html

Have a great Fourth of July!!!


Here's a great new FREE site:
You can find death certificates and a lot more. I have found all four of my grandparents and some of my aunts and uncles. A good way to find family medical information. Plus the deceased's parent's names and birthplaces.
A real boon for genealogist.
Janet Crain

Happy Fourth of July!!!!!

Click here to view our greeting card!!!!!!

James Revel, the Unhappy Sufferer Who Was Put to Apprentice by His Father

Revel is a well known Lumbee surname.
James Revel

The Poor Unhappy Transported Felon's Sorrowful Account of His Fourteen Years Transportation, at Virginia, in America. In Six Parts. Being a Remarkable and Succinct History of the Life of James Revel, the Unhappy Sufferer Who Was Put Apprentice by His Father to a Tinman, Near Moorfields, Where He Got into Bad Company and Before Long Ran Away, and Went Robbing with a Gang of Thieves, But His Master Soon Got Him Back Again; Yet Would Not Be Be [sic] Kept from His Old Companions, But Went Thieving with Them Again, for Which He Was Transported Fourteen Years. With an Account of the Way the Transports Work, and the Punishment They Receive for Committing Any Fault. Concluding with a Word of Advice for All Young Men.
[York: C. Croshaw, ca. 1800].
Full Text Here:




Click on image to enlarge:

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Lumbee - Lost Colony Connection

In 1914, the Federal government sent special Indian agent O.M. McPherson to look into the Lumbee band.

After studying historical records and talking to county residents, he wrote, "At the coming of the first white settlers to what is now known as Robeson County (in the early 1700s), there was found located on the banks of the Lumbee River a large tribe of Indians speaking the English language, tilling the soil, owning slaves, and practicing many of the arts of civilized life."

McPherson concluded, "I have no hestitancy in expressing the belief that the Indians originally settled in Robeson and adjoining counties in North Carolina where an amalgamation of the Hatteras Indians with Gov.White's Lost Colony(took place)."

The Lumbees are regarded as Indians in North Carolina, and in previous decades have encountered overt discrimination. In the not-so-distant days of Southern segregation, there were three school systems in Robeson County-for whites, blacks, and Indians-three different washrooms and water fountains in the courthouse and three places for the races to sit in the movie theaters. There has been a long-standing tradition here that Lumbees should marry people of their own race and not "marry white" or marry blacks.

Lumbees say that there seem to be other Indian tribes mixed in their heritage, including Cherokees, Tuscaroras and the Eastern Siouan Indians such as the Cheraw and Keyauwee.

Another advocate of the Lost Colony theory was Caucasian historian Stephen B. Weeks, who wrote in 1891 of the Indians along the Lumbee, that "their language is the English of 300 vears ago, and their names are in many cases the same as those borne by the original colonists."

Proponents of the Lost Colony theory argue that the Indian-white group sought refuge in North Carolina swamps and that the forbidding nature of the landscape helped the group keep its identity.

The Lost Colony theory and the Lumbee seem quite well accepted among most of the 82,000-plus Indians, whites and blacks in Robeson County.

The relationship between Indians and whites seems to have been fairly harmonious here until the decades immediately before the Civil War when restrictive laws were passed against nonwhites in North Carolina. Tensions reached a high during the Civil War and the years immediately following when "the Lowrie War" wracked this Carolina swampland. Henry Berry Lowrie, the leader of the outlaw Lowrie Indian Band of this period, has been regarded as a great hero of the Indians here. He disappeared mysteriously in 1872.

The Lumbees have long disputed the contention of whites and some other Indian tribes that they are a mixture of black and white. While Lumbees acknowledge that there are some black ancestors in the group, they say that the overwhelming majority of Lumbee ancestors were Indian and white.

The Indians here bitterly resisted white efforts to treat them like blacks and refused to go to black schools in the 19th century. In 1887 the Indians opened the Croatan Normal School here.

The Croatan Normal School grew and in 1941 was renamed Pembroke State College for Indians. For a dozen years afterward it was the only state-supported four-year college for Indians in the country. Whites were admitted in the raid-1950s after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed segregation. The name of the institution has now been changed to Pembroke State University.