When you consider the coming of the American Revolution to the colony of North Carolina 250 years ago, you might be tempted to take for granted the remarkable circumstances that had to come together in short order to create what some have called “the miracle of America.”
One of those things was the sheer demographic make-up of the colony. Since it was a royal colony of Great Britain under the rule of King George III, it’s easy to think in broad terms that North Carolina in 1776 was very British. When you look closer, however, you’ll see a vastly different picture. How the people of North Carolina and their representatives moved to independence is an amazing thing when you look at who they were and the time frame in which they united.
Two points have struck me about the influx of settlers, who they were, and how this influenced the Declaration of Independence:
First, when North Carolina entered into the American Revolution, many of its residents had lived there for only one generation. Most of the colonial towns like Halifax, Hillsborough, Salisbury, and Cross Creek were chartered in the 1750s and 1760s. That’s only 20 to 25 years before the Revolution. Think of our recent memories. Fifty years ago, things many of us remember very clearly like the end of the Vietnam War, Watergate, the break-up of the Beatles, and the oil-shortage crisis, were already in our rear-view mirror. The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 were 25 years ago.
Second, the make-up of the colony was not a homogeneous mix of English subjects as we might suspect — people who believed the same principles, spoke the same language, and had the same religious background. Instead, the colony was a mix of various ethnic backgrounds such that when you consider it more closely, it is hard to fathom how they came together in a very short period of time to throw off the rule of the British Empire.
Let’s break it down. North Carolina was chartered in 1663 and was controlled at first by British Lords Proprietors. Then in 1729, it became a royal colony. Historians estimate the Province of North Carolina grew from 15,000 people in 1710 to 110,000 by 1760.
Clearly, the make-up of the early royal government in North Carolina was centered in the coastal region, culminating in the building of Gov. Tryon’s Palace in 1770. A good percentage of the residents in that area were British, not necessarily all speaking the same dialect. What I have come to appreciate about the settlement of the rest of the colony is how many varied groups of people immigrated to North Carolina from 1725 to 1775. Then, this mix of people started a revolution. In researching the migration of various people groups to North Carolina during that time, you’ll find that these are people who dreamed of living in a place free from the religious and political persecution they fled from in Europe. They dreamed of new opportunities and a better and safer place to raise their families. Take a look at the differences:
Welsh settlers
In the 1730s, Welsh settlements appeared in southeastern North Carolina in Duplin and Pender counties.
German settlers
Lutherans and adherents of many other religious sects came to the colony, usually via Pennsylvania, and settled the backcountry around Salisbury down to Charlotte (along today’s I-85 corridor) after traveling south on the Great Wagon Road.
Moravian settlers
Primarily settling in North Carolina in the area around today’s Forsyth and Davie counties, the Moravians came from Saxony in Germany, with roots originally in Moravia (today’s Czech Republic). They were original followers of early religious reformer John Hus.
When the Moravians arrived at Bethabara (today’s Winston-Salem) in 1753, they reported wolves and panthers in the area and built a palisade of logs for protection from Indian attacks. In the 1760s, they built the settlement of Salem.
Highland Scot settlers
Many are familiar with the story of the Highland Scots from the dramatic TV series and book “Outlander.” The Scots fled British rule after they lost the Battle of Culloden in April 1746. They settled mostly in the Sandhills area of North Carolina near today’s Fayetteville.
Scotch-Irish settlers
Primarily, Lowland Scots were forced to settle in the Ulster area of Ireland in the 1600s. A poor economy and clashes with Irish Catholics motivated them to leave for America, where many of them settled in Pennsylvania. From there, they traveled down the Great Wagon Road to North Carolina’s Piedmont region. Others came down the Fall Line Road (close to today’s U.S. Route 1) into eastern North Carolina’s Fall Line counties.
Quaker settlers
The Quakers were early English settlers who fled religious persecution and settled in northeastern North Carolina, primarily in Perquimans and Pasquotank counties above the Albemarle Sound in the 1680s. They were joined in the colony by other Quakers coming down from Pennsylvania in the Guilford County area in the 1750s.
Swiss settlers
Baron Christoph von Graffenried led a group of German Palatine and Swiss refugees fleeing persecution to settle the area around today’s New Bern on the Neuse and Trent rivers.
French Huguenot settlers
The Huguenots were a Protestant denomination that was heavily persecuted in France and fled to England and America for safety and freedom. They settled primarily in South Carolina, but many were reported in the towns along the coast of colonial North Carolina.
Summary
Of course, there were other early immigrant peoples who came to colonial North Carolina to join the English settlers that existed here under the control of the British Crown, but hopefully you can visualize just how many different types of people were circulating and carving out an independent existence in the colony in this short period of time from the 1720s to 1776 — a period that culminated with the Declaration of Independence.
Think of the voices you would hear if you traveled from Wilmington to Fayetteville, including people speaking the Scottish Gaelic brogue. Think of traveling to the Moravian area and hearing German and Czech dialects while trying to do business there. Imagine heading to New Bern and trying to figure out what the Swiss and German Palatines were saying. Or traveling further south to the “Welsh Tract” and trying to understand Welsh. That’s just the language difference.
Think of the different religious denominations. If you were English, you were most likely an adherent of Anglicanism, the official state religion. If you were Scottish, you were probably Presbyterian. The Great Awakening religious revival had happened, so you would have been exposed to the new ways of Baptists throughout the colony. The Lutherans, Moravians, Dunkards, Quakers, and others were settling the Piedmont. And the cultural picture goes on and on.
Another part of this picture was the African American enslaved peoples in the eastern farmlands and the cultural differences they brought to the mix.
What a vibrant picture of energy and vitality from peoples that all came together in a very short time to support “independency” from Britain in 1776.
What was the common denominator among all these different groups? They all had a dream that they had acted on. Maybe it was keeping their families safe from religious or political persecution. Maybe it was the making the most of economic opportunity they could not realize in Europe. Maybe they were lured by land speculators’ tale of riches and brought into false promises. Who knows. But they all sought some degree of freedom and opportunity that they had not enjoyed wherever they had been, and North Carolina became their beacon of hope for themselves and their families’ futures.
If that’s not a major part of the miracle of America, I don’t know what is.
