Presbyterians in North Carolina: Race, Politics, and Religious Identity in Historical Perspective

1. Old World Origins and New World Horizons

Chapter 1 old World origins and New World Horizons europeans first settled on the coastal plain of North Carolina, and Presbyterians eventually established their first congregations in this tidewater region. Punctured by inlets and encompassing wide and shallow sounds that catch the waters of all the mainland rivers except the Cape fear River, the terrain of the tidewater and coastal plain is generally sandy, covered with pine forests, and supported rice, tobacco, cotton, and corn cultivation. The sounds, streams, and ocean supplemented these products, providing a bountiful and generally reliable harvest of fish, waterfowl, and shellfish. These sounds and rivers also acted as barriers to east-west travel while facilitating north-south transportation. The Albemarle sound was the scene of some of the earliest settlement in North Carolina, as immigrants from virginia moved south, residing in the edenton area in the 1660s. located on the Pamlico sound, Bath became the first incorporated town in North Carolina in 1705. Decimated by european diseases and defeated by european firearms, the Algonquin, Iroquoian, and siouan native peoples of eastern North Carolina ceased to impede the expansion of european settlement by the mid-eighteenth century. With the cessation of these threats and with the supplanting of proprietary supervision by royal control in 1729, eastern North Carolina was poised to become the most influential region in the state. Between 1729 and 1850, development of black slave labor provided the foundation necessary for the system of slavery in North Carolina and the rise of plantations in the Albemarle and Cape fear regions. Meanwhile, eastern North Carolina saw the emergence of some small towns, with Wilmington becoming the state’s largest city. However, old World origins and New World Horizons 2 the rhythms of farming and traditionalism remained dominant on the eve of the Civil War. Atlantic World Contexts Presbyterians first came to the British colonies of North America because of the availability of land and the relative level of religious toleration. During the eighteenth century, the Church of england was the established church in Great Britain as well as in its colony of North Carolina. The strength of the religious establishment in North Carolina fluctuated according to the interests of the royal governor as well as ecclesiastical and political officials in london. But land, formerly hunted on and occupied by Indians, became increasingly available throughout the 1700s, and its availability enticed more and more settlers—persons of differing ethnic backgrounds but often of a common Reformed religious heritage—to leave for North Carolina. The Reverend John Urmston, an Anglican missionary to North Carolina, attested to the existence of Presbyterians in the colony as early as 1711. Urmston lamented that only a few Anglicans, several Presbyterians but mostly many “anythingarians ” composed the colony’s political assembly. This Presbyterian presence in eighteenth-century North Carolina derived from the rich resources of the British and Continental Reformed tradition. for example, in 1705 a small group of Huguenots, Calvinists from france who had initially immigrated to virginia after the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685, was among the earliest inhabitants of the town of Bath. In 1707 or 1708 another much larger Huguenot contingent from Manakin Town, virginia, led by the Reverend Claude Philippe de Richebourg, settled on the Trent River. This latter group drew the attention of naturalist and surveyor John lawson, who applauded their industriousness. little came of these Huguenot settlements, however, as some soon moved with their coreligionists to south Carolina, while others drifted out of the historical record, leaving no trace of organized religious life or distinctive settlement. other groups of Reformed Protestants came to the region and helped to organize the town of New Bern. Baron Christoph von Graffenried sponsored a plan for swiss and German Reformed Protestants to immigrate to North Carolina, where he hoped to found the town of New Bern in honor of Berne, switzerland. To this end, Graffenried reached the Neuse River in the fall of 1710 with 100 swiss colonists. earlier that same year, a substantial contingent of Reformed Protestants from the Palatinate region of Germany had arrived as well. An at- 3 old World origins and New World Horizons tack by Tuscarora Indians in 1711, however, halted the growth of the fledgling New Bern community, decimating its population and temporarily scattering the remainder. Although the swiss colonists of 1710 had not yet formed congregations, the Palatines gathered together for services in their homes. The Palatine...