Bertie COUNTY NC BIO "Zacheus W. White Ancestors, Bertie County, NC (1700-1913) A Brief Sketch by James E. Cowan". Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Paul Johnson http://www.usgwarchives.net/nc/bertie.htm This is from an unpublished typescript in the public library in Windsor, on the White family: "Zacheus W. White Ancestors, Bertie County, NC (1700-1913) A Brief Sketch by James E. Cowan". In the year 1760 an eagle soaring above central Bertie County would have looked down on a monotonous green sea of pines. This green mantle would have been broken here and there by a "meadow" (one William White in later years would be deeded land in the "meadows of Pell Mell") and by other clearings where hardy settlers had begun to carve out homesteads. This green monotony was also broken by the deeper green of oak, cypress and gum that grew along the watercourses: Red Bud Branch on the north, Guys Hall Swamp and White Oak Swamp on the south; also further north was Cucklemaker Swamp, a tributary of Wills Quarter Swamp which bordered the area on the west. Shown on the map today as Hoggard Mill Swamp, Wills Quarter is said to have been named in the early 1700's for a William Byrd who owned a quarter section of land on the swamp. Red Bud was so called as early as 1743, possibly from the flowering shrub of that name. On May 11 that year the county court held a session at the house of John Collins near Red Bud Branch just west of the modern village of Askewville. About that time a site was being considered near Red Bud for location of the Bertie County seat, Bertie then including what is now Hertford County. John Collins, one of the earliest settlers, left a will describing some of the local land, a goodly portion of which he owned, and leaving a Bible each to two of his sons whom he evidently cosidered to be in danger of hellfire. This area was then beginning to be called Pell Mell or Pall Mall or Pelmel Pocosin; sometimes it was also called the Piney Woods. It was a vast area of huge loblolly and longleaf pines traversed by sparkling unspoiled streams, a country then remaining just as God had made it. The Macrae-Brazier map as late as 1833 still showed no road through Pell Mell Pocosin. That map showed a road leading from Windsor to Pitch Landing in Hertford County skirting the western side of Pell Mell. Another road skirting the southeast side of the great woods ran from Windsor north of Wills Quarter Swamp (approximately the course of the Bull Hill Road today.) The Edward Moseley map in 1733 showed only one road traversing Bertie Precinct which included what is now Bertie and Hertford Counties. The soaring eagle in 1760 would have seen no road at all. True there were cart paths here and there but they were of insufficient breadth to cause a break in the green canopy. Where did the name Pell Mell come from? Who knows? Judge Francis D. Winston, the Bertie historian who never published his history, said the name was a parody on the Pall Mall section, then a fashionable borough in the City of London. Hence the name applied to an isolated backwoods in the back of nowhere was a term of derision. And so it remained into modern times. To be termed "Pell Meller" were fighting words to natives of the area.