Mecklenburg!

                                                         

                                      

Preface***During the  mid seventeen hundreds, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians fled Pennsylvania as German Lutheran immigrants  flooded the colony and swept away  precious land and resources. The two religious sects could not co-exist. Moreover, the  Presbyterians sought  freedom from the relentless grip of King George II and the Church of England... as did their fathers before them. Leaving all they had known behind, they packed their Conestogas and trekked along the Appalachians to  the open green valleys of North Carolina.

Members of the Potts family of Chester County, Pennsylvania were a part of that massive migration to  a southern frontier of large land grants and sprawling plantations.
And so we begin with James Potts (1719/1720-1781)  as he enters the Piedmont Section, circa 1750 to the home of his cousins Henry and Moses...later moving just south of there to begin a farming empire that will  become Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.

Note***This post is based on information from free historical websites, personal written accounts , genealogy, cemetery records, land transfers and wills...all double checked for accuracy. I  hope that  errors are few. Some imagined scenes are valid conclusions based on facts.

            Part One:

                                             

James Potts is a young man  accustomed  to the orderliness of Philadelphia and Pottsville. Now he has left civilization far behind ...five hundred  miles back up the Great Wagon Road. He is deep on the Occaneechi, the trading  path of the Catawba Indians of the Carolinas.

Although the Catawbas are peaceful enough,  they can grow agressive under the influence of white man's  rum, and they watch in the distance. Then as the moon rises,  the wild bright  eyes of  panthers and wolves flash in the darkness as they slink through a primitive  forest as endless as time. The settlers are weary, but they dare not rest.

James and  others in the family  quicken their pace. Soon now they will arrive at their first new home with relatives at  the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains .West of this "low country" toward the Great Smoky Mountains is the land of the Cherokee. Close by  is the fertile Catawba River Valley which will one day be a vibrant force in the prosperity of the family.

The Cherokees   watch from their mountain top,  as this latest stream of Scotch-Irishmen trudge through the valleys below . They treasure their territory on the west side of the Smokies and will defend it  with the spilling of blood if they must. For now, they are still...watching, waiting.

Cousins Henry and Moses are excited to see their relatives and make them welcome in their cabin. James, although in his early thirties, is without a wife as yet and focuses on the planting of crops with brother John and the cousins. By harvest time the next fall, there will be an abundance  of indigo, corn, wheat and tobacco as far as his eye can see. The soil is rich here in the backcountry of the Piedmont, and  it is easily tilled. The endless forests of elm, beech and yellow pine are home to deer and wild turkey;   countless streams are filled with fish.  Food is plentiful and James thrives. To the west, within walking distance, the terrain rises to the foothills of the Great Smokies...a land  with  rolling hills of limestone and clay intertwined with  fast flowing rivers.

Fellow settlers are remote here deep into the backcountry, and although they are isolated,  James is a member of the close knit, self-reliant  Potts clan. Most likely,  he  thinks of  the crowded colony of  Pennsylvania while breathing  the sweet air of this new land. He decides  that he will live out his days in this utopia... this colony they call North Carolina.

We can easily imagine that James family helps him in the construction of a home.  (The Scotch-Irish  learned much from their German neighbors in Pennslyvania.) Large logs are squared with broad axes and dove tailed at the joints with no need for nails. The spaces between are chinked with woodchips, stones and mud so James will be warm and snug in winter and relatively cool in  summer. Although he does not yet know, this first humble home will precede three  plantations and large tracts of  land as  James one day progresses south to what will become Mecklenburg County. The next decades will be ones of explosive growth , land speculation and danger.

We wonder: If James Potts could foretell future events yet unseen, would he have  trekked over five-hundred miles to this wilderness frontier?

Part Two:


"My heart is the room and in it she may be. And she may unlock it without any key..." (words to an old Scotch-Irish ballad.)

Margaret Mc Kee proves to be a good and worthy match for James Potts. Although she is thirteen years younger (birth :1732, death: 1795), she is from the same thrifty, hard working stock as he, and they are wed  in North Carolina early 1750s. James refers to her in his will as his "beloved wife" Margaret.

They most likely meet at one of many "socials" that eases the back-breaking monotony of carving a home from the wilderness. The Scotch- Irish are  fun loving  and so are their weddings. A rather stuffy Anglican  describes  them as "vile, ignorant and void of manners, education or good breeding." (Yet many other accounts describe the Scotch-Irish colonists as "hard working, honest, good hearted, pius. ") 

William Attmore notes "It is very much their custom in North Carolina to drink drams of some kind or another before breakfast, sometimes gin, cherry bounce, egg nog etc." (whether or not the Potts family followed these customs we do not know. Family, take no offense. The Potts appear to have been a sober clan, but   at James and Margaret's wedding, most likely some guests  tipped a jug of ol' Rattle Skull or Whistle Belly out back.)

We can almost hear the fiddles playing as wedding guests dance to a reel. We can almost feel the couple's embarrassment as the "shivaree" begins afterwards....pots and pans banging outside their window, neighborhood boys serenading loud, lewd songs.  So given the traditions of the times, we might safely assume a raucous beginning to James and Margaret Potts married life.

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During the next few years, three children are born to James and Margaret. First comes William, last is Jean...and most significant to us, the middle child who happens to be in our direct lineage: John, 1753-1839...a boy who grows up to become a hero in the eyes of many. We have no record of any other children born to them, although  there may have been others who died in infancy. (Small pox epidemics spread to the colony in 1753 and reoccurred every few years.)  Small pox is  devastating with fevers and sores that cover the entire body of its victims . The disease takes its toil on the settlers ....especially the babies and children, and it also kills thousands of Catawba Indians who have no naturally acquired immunity .

The Cherokees remain west, shielded by the Smoky Mountains and, as yet, unscathed by smallpox. Yet soon this powerful tribe will come to hate the Europeans in the valley beyond them, and life will become quite different for all.

Family life continues. Colonial life is simple yet difficult. James plants the crops and tends the sheep and cows along side his relatives. Margaret cares for the children, keeps the hearth fire going continuously and weaves the "linsey-woolsey" cloth for coverlets  and every day clothing.

The family profits from tobacco and indigo exports, and when John is ten years old, James purchases 443 acres from Col. Edward Fanning, an infamous Tory tax assessor-collector and land speculator . Much of the Potts tract lies farther west in the newly formed (1762) Mecklenburg County... near the swift  flowing Catawba River!

(Parts three and four next week)