Becoming Americans

by Donald Batchelor

  The weather had turned cold, and guests at Elizabeth Williams's Christmas feast crowded into her house, warmed by the roaring Yule log and the fellowship of family. Only James was absent, and he only for the hour that a quick repair at the mill required—the tides were as demanding as the wind. Light from the fireplace and from all the bayberry candles Elizabeth could gather for the occasion flickered through the haze of smoke and steam. Her pewter was cleaned and laid out, as were the four sets of sparkling glass cups and saucers that she owned, reserved for Grandma Mary and Mister Cherry, Ann Harbut, and Nancy Williams.

  Junior was nostalgic and anxious at the happy occasion. It was unlikely that this scene would ever be repeated. For the first time in his life it touched him that time was quickly passing, and that one day some of these people would be gone. He watched the children playing and wondered if his own were well and happy on this holiday. His nostalgia was surpassed by the prospect of his next day's trip to Suffolk, and that next day's wedding. His mind was brought back to the present by the anger of his cousins.

  "The British soldiers treated father like a servant!" Joseph said to the group he stood with by the fireplace. "One of them knocked his hat off with a sword and spit tobacco at his feet!"

  "It was shameful to see," his brother William added. "It shamed him awful. I'd have sooner worked the mill today, but he wanted to be there by himself."

  "For two hundred feet of lumber! They wouldn't do that in England!"

  The condescending attitudes of the British soldiers had galled the populations of all the colonies that they'd come to save from the French and the Indians. They'd heard reports, but this was the Williamses' first exposure to British soldiers.

  Joseph had taken their brutish treatment of his father personally. The Williamses were Englishmen, too, after all!

  "America's for draining and using, that's all," William said. "Father says there's real trouble ahead if they don't start treating us as brothers"

  "Is that the way they treat family!" Joseph's rage wouldn't cool.

  Pompey burst into the house with a terrible look on his face.

  "Master…. He fell…down the ladder."

  Screams and shouts for help came from across the creek. Elizabeth was the first to burst through the doorway, followed and outpaced by the men.

  Junior was the first to reach the mill. He saw the blacksmith and his wife standing by the open trapdoor to the gears and cranks below. A tool belt dangled from the door. He pushed the couple from the opening and saw his uncle caught between a beam and a crank that was baring down on him.

  The crank had slowed from the resistance of James's body but threatened to move further. James looked to Junior and opened his mouth to speak, but the wheel moved on and blood spurted from his mouth.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Margaret Williams was born to be a wife and mother. Junior realized that soon after they returned to the Sapony house. His children flocked to her as if she were a shiny present he'd brought them from Virginia. The baby, Eliza, cooed, and Sol, the youngest boy, held onto Margaret's leg.

  In fact, Margaret was much like a shiny present, delicate in features and carriage. Junior had discovered the extent of these characteristics when he'd stopped the cart at a farmhouse on the much-traveled road south from the Nansemond port town of Suffolk. He'd held her underneath the straw and they made love for the first time, she with a modesty and reserve that was unlike the unrestrained passion of his first wife. Junior tried to restrain himself but couldn't, afterwards feeling brutish and guilty.

  Mathias was relieved to see his former son-in-law back in Edgecombe, and more than willing to help Junior search-out land to buy. But Junior had returned with plans already made.

  Less than a mile upstream from Father Manning were two hundred acres of unsettled land owned by William Ruffin, of Northampton County. Ruffin had bought the land from a wealthy neighbor, James Pittman, several years earlier, establishing a private title that began prior to Granville's possession of his oneeighth of the province. Ruffin was a Baptist who was unashamed of worldly gain, and he was a friend of Junior's mother. William Ruffin had been Nancy Williams's brother-in-law during her first marriage, and they both belonged to the same congregation in Isle of Wight County, coming to the Particular meeting house from different directions on fifth Sundays.

  The growing denomination of Particular Baptists was strict and severe in its adherence to Calvinistic principles of predestination, and eager that its beliefs be circulated in the congregation of General Baptists. Some of the General congregations were not even insistent that church membership be reserved for the born-again. Ruffin had not been convinced of Junior's selection to the Elect, but his friendship with Nancy, and hopes for an ally amidst the unenlightened Baptists of western Edgecombe, moved him to sell two hundred acres on the north side of the Sapony for twenty pounds of hard Virginia money.

  ***

  Margaret's first child, a daughter they named Elizabeth, was born on a cold March morning of the next year, 1756, as Junior paced outside in heavy rain, deep in memories of the birth that took his Mary.

  Junior's mind often returned to memories of Mary. Although Margaret was still as beautiful as she was that first time he'd seen her in Tom Biggs's house, she was lifeless, somehow. When he lay with her in private, it was like he was the only living person in the room. So unlike his Mary. Elizabeth would never romp in the stream with him, he knew.

  Junior had tired of his new wife quickly. He was bothered by the many ways she differed from his first. She often burned the food. Without the help of his children the garden would have strangled in weeds. She sometimes left the baby lying in its filth. Junior felt forced to speak to her about that, and, as his heat rose, he spoke of many other things. She sank to the floor in tears and remained there until he lifted her and carried her to the bed. He left her there and fetched Elizabeth Manning to tend her, then left for Lamon's Tavern. He increasingly avoided Margaret, except on those drunken nights when he took his privilege with her.

  Tom Harbut arrived soon after Junior did, and after spending a fortnight visiting relatives and friends who'd already settled, he made a pallet in the sleeping loft with Junior's oldest sons and began helping Junior girdle and fell trees. Neighbors pitched-in and, by springtime, there was room for Margaret to plant peas, corn, and other vegetables and herbs for the table and the "physick" chest.

  For some slight, real or imaginary, that Tom inflicted on a man of Corbin's, he found it impossible to buy land in the Granville District. He fell back upon the trade of his father, and worked at crude carpentry with the few tools he'd not sold, sewing the Virginia pounds into a coat for safekeeping.

  He did well from the start. Edgecombe was the most populous of North Carolina's counties, it was said, and there were houses and barns and mills popping-up throughout. Junior soon joined forces with him—partly to avoid his wife—and they quickly accumulated so much corn and tobacco in barter that Junior left his own crop in the field, lacking time and help to tend it.

  Their first trip to Halifax with the hogsheads of tobacco and barrels of corn was an education. An official of the king's weighed their goods and charged his own fee against the price they'd dickered. Another man was there to levy duties, and another charged for use of the dock. There was no pretense to hide the fact that these men—the courthouse ring—were being charged less, or nothing at all, in fees for their own crops.

  In the minds of Junior and Tom, the town was mostly thieves and taverns and high-priced harlots, and by the time the cousins rode the two-wheeled cart back south through the ruts from Halifax, they shared only a few shillings of profit and were planning ways to avoid the town in future. They knew that other men carried their crops to Virginia, where a higher price was paid but where extra duties against Carolina tobacco were still charged. One of many ways used to avoid these duties was to roll the barrels across the province line at out-of-theway places and have Virginia friends or relatives pass t
hem off as their own. A month after that first trip, one of the Ruffin brothers did that for Junior and Tom, charging only one-tenth of the sale price as a tithe for his Particular church. Junior thought it was an awful lot of trouble for a handful of coins, he told Margaret, but Tom could get excited by a pence, he said.

  Junior's children had become his joy in life. When little Mary spoke her first words, he subtly made sure all the neighbors knew of it. The children spent most of their days with their Grandma Manning, while Margaret piddled at her chores. Sometimes he took Sam, Billy, or Stephen along with him to the fields or to a building project. He'd started off by taking only Sam who, at the age of nine, was already responsible and serious. Billy, a year younger, listened to his brother and the two boys worked well together. Stephen, at six, would do anything his brothers asked. All the children were eager to please their father.

  The children fascinated Junior. They weren't anything like he was as a child, he often thought. He and his friends had been competitive. They'd fought, and cursed, and had even gotten drunk by the time they were as big as Sam. But these children were like bees or ants, Junior thought. They ran from place to place together. They took on a task as a team, whether cleaning Margaret's garden, or the house, or stacking staves. They must have learned that from Manning, he'd decided, and worried that they'd learn too much from Manning.

  He did not begrudge the time his children spent in church with their grandfather, but he took them there himself, on many Sundays, although he paid more attention to the proceedings after services than he did to the sermon.

  Any questions that had arisen in the community were discussed and voted on at meeting. There was always discussion, even if it was only to upbraid a tardy member or a weak confession. Everything was agreed upon by vote after the matter had been thrashed out in a meeting. Every man's voice was heard. Everyone was expected to speak his or opinion. Everyone's status was equal. Every speaker's vote was equal. The discussion and the voting were the only part of church that Junior enjoyed. Much of it was funny, when he thought of it.

  Bill Tucker was accused by his father-in-law of over-indulgence in drink. Tucker confessed, in tears, and repented, to the joyful embrace of his wife and friends. An angry neighbor accused Sarah Stancil of over-indulgence with food— to which she happily agreed—but Sarah finally became tearful when convinced of the gravity of her sins. With promises to foreswear gluttony, she was welcomed back into the warmth of fellowship. Adultery was the sin that was most heartily condemned by the pastor and his flock, but redemption from this sin, too, was promised and celebrated after the sincere repentance of the sinner.

  Junior wasn't so fast to confess his sins as he once had been. He had lived in near-suffocation for too long under the close eyes of his in-laws and the church to submit himself to that procedure again. He noticed that the people who were first to expose their own sins were the older people, and they were quickest in pointing-out the flaws in his own generation. But Junior agreed with the old folks that the children would grow up to be different and be better than all of them.

  As important as the uprooting of sin was, more heat was raised by the incursion of Particular Baptists into the county. The Philadelphia Association had sent two preachers of that persuasion, Vanhorn and Miller, to spread the word in Edgecombe. Some local folks had become converted to that belief, and these preachers had asked permission to speak in the churches. There was outrage the first time that proposal was mentioned to Reverend Parker and his congregation. A firm "no" was the answer agreed upon by vote, after very little discussion.

  As the competition for souls in Edgecombe County intensified, another wedge was driven into the community with the arrival of Stephen Williams, Senior.

  With the death of James Williams, his son John had been granted future rights to his Uncle Stephen's two hundred acres in Deep Creek, as set out in his Grandfather Joseph's will. John was eager for immediate cash and, in an agreement that had disappointed his brothers, John and his uncle combined their legal rights and sold the land. Stephen brought his twenty pounds of Virginia money to Edgecombe County, hoping to buy land on the Sapony, near his son.

  The old couple arrived to stay with Junior and his family while Stephen looked for land. Within days, it was obvious that there were problems. Junior's daughter, Mary, was afraid of her new grandmother and begged to stay with Grandma Manning. Eliza, the baby, seemed frightened too, and screamed whenever held by Nancy, who'd become an awkward crone. Nancy Williams stared at the girls, sometimes, and thought of her own girls, lost so long ago. Her tears only frightened the children more. How precious they were to her, she told Junior, but there was little that he could do. There was immediate hostility, with Junior caught in the middle.

  Mathias and Elizabeth Manning thought of the Williams grandchildren as their own. The moral teaching of the children had been left in their hands, so far, and the presence of Particular Baptists in the household of their vulnerable offspring was disturbing.

  Few of the old friends of the elder Stephen Williams came to call. Most land was unavailable for them to purchase, but Junior finally convinced his friend, John Hatcher, to part with a portion of land he had downstream.

  The old man was happy. Even though he'd paid twenty pounds for only one hundred and sixty acres, Stephen was satisfied. There was already a small cabin, the land was on both sides of the creek, and a good portion of it was low, swampy, pocosin. Most of the rest of it was pine trees. Stephen felt comfortable on such land. He'd always been able to eat and make a living trapping and trading. At his age, he had no taste for felling and planting. God's bounty was always available for the taking.

  Sometimes, still, Junior poled his corn down to the river and to Duncan Lamon's mill. The creek passed by his father's cabin, and going that way was an opportunity to visit. Often, there were several horses tied-up at the cabin and Junior poled on by. His father's visitors were Particulars and Junior wanted to avoid their evangelical ways. It was difficult enough to listen to the sermonizing of his mother and father alone.

  Usually, he loaded the cart and hitched his horse to it, knowing full well that he'd leave the cart at Lamon's and let the horse carry him home, asleep, giving him an excuse to return for the cart, and another trip to the Tavern.

  Lamon's was a busy place. There was need for other mills and other ferries, people said, but by the end of 1758 no one had built one, and it was unlikely that another mill or ferry would be as exciting as Duncan's. At his mill, there were be loud arguments about religion; inside the tavern, talk was more often about politics.

  The county was in near-rebellion. It had been divided again, the northern part being renamed Halifax County and taking with it the borough and market center of Halifax Town. That left no seat of government for Edgecombe; its courts still met at Halifax. Plans called for a court seating in Redmon's Old Field, near Howell's landing, but there was no courthouse, no jail. What little order there had been seemed to be falling apart, and Junior was glad his friend, Robert Tucker was now a constable, affording some protection to friends, if needed.

  The French were on the run, travelers reported in the winter of 1758. All of New France would soon be taken and nearly the whole of America become English. The Indians were yet to be convinced of that, but they would be!

  "North Carolina troops should take care of its own and slaughter all the Indians! They proved their worth in battles up north."

  "Governor Dobbs should bring back Major Waddell and set him on the Cherokees and Catawabas."

  "Let the Germans and the Scots who live out there take care of their own Indians," Pridgen said.

  The old man's white beard was stained tobacco-brown from his mouth down below his chin. He'd fallen from religion after his wife and children died, and he sometimes tried to pick fights. His neighbors generally humored him and tried to ignore his contentious attitude.

  "I'm not so worried about the Indians as I am about taxes," Hugh Stancil said. "After paying for this d
amn war, I can't buy powder for my own gun, much less one that might be run off with by a Frenchman or an Indian!"

  The drinkers grunted in agreement, but wished someone had said it other than the cheapest man they knew.

  A well-dressed gentleman at a table stood up and raised his glass.

  "Well said, Sir. Well said. I am William Williams, and as your representative in the Assembly I have often tried to state the matter in such understandable terms. I toast your wisdom."

  Cheers went up for the gentleman, and his self-introduction opened the floor for anyone's complaints.

  "It's not just the King and Granville," Stancil said above the crowd. "It's Moir and his English Church. Taking the side of Corbin against the people!"

  Another cheer went up for Stancil. Moir, the churchman, was too involved with politics and money. And, he was on the wrong side.

  Pridgen didn't want to hear religious arguments, calling both sides "fools." Folks said his mind stayed in fantasy.

  "I heard a man come through here say that Doctor Franklin's got a plan to bring all the colonies together, to act as one."