Bladen County NcArchives Biographies.....Family History, Bedsole ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/nc/ncfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: J. D. Bedsole jdbedsole@gmail.com October 8, 2010, 8:28 pm Source: J. D. Bedsole Author: J. D. Bedsole BEDSOLE October 1, 2010 BEDSOLE HISTORY, ANCESTORS AND DOCUMENTATION FROM 1673. © COPYRIGHT: 1996,1997,1998,1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003,2004,2005,2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. JD Bedsole. All Rights Reserved. Copying this booklet is free for your own use, but copying it, or any part of it for sale, or incorporation into something else for sale, is absolutely not permitted. Author EMAIL: jdbedsole@gmail.com Or jdbedsole@oppcatv.com Betzold/Bedsole Deutchland/Germany Wappen Der Provinc Brandenburg Vas Der Betzoldz Ich Bin Ein Deutchlander BETZOLD /BEDSOLE COAT OF ARMS (German; Meine Vorfahren kamen aus Deutschland) ( English; My ancestors came from Germany) "NOW EACH OF YOU CAN SEE, HOW IT IS, YOU CAME TO BEE" J.D. Bedsole CURRENT VERSION; October 01, 2010 BEDSOLE HISTORY FROM 1673 WITH DOCUMENTATION AND LIST OF ANCESTORS, AND DESCENDANTS RESEARCHED, COMPILED, ANALYZED, PREPARED AND OWNED IN ITS ENTIRETY, SOLELY BY MYSELF: DR. J.D. BEDSOLE, ASME, BSBA, BSVE, MSEA, PhD ANSWERS TO MY QUESTIONS ABOUT THE EARLIEST BEDSOLES IN THIS COUNTRY, SUCH AS: 1. How did they get here ? Where did they come from?. Who were they?. Where did they settle here? Did they move around, and if so, where to ?. How did they live?.What was it like ? What were they like ? Was life hard for them ? What hardships did they incur ?. Have things improved for us since then ? 2. Locations, names, relationships, kinships, and documentation on early Bedsoles with records of early Marriages,Census Data,Tax Lists, Land Transactions, Cemeteries and etc 3. References for current and future Bedsole Researchers (If any ever have the grit to do it). NOTE; In order to save time, if after you have read this, you want to email me and tell me how you are now more confused than ever, how stupid I really am, did I really talk to some people in Germany, and how this was all such a huge waste of time, please don’t bother. I have already been told those things at least a hundred times by those Bedsoles to whom I had freely given a copy. Thanks anyway though, for the thought that I am a tee-total Idiot of the highest order. No need to tell me that though EITHER, as I am already well aware of that !!. But I do thank you for that thought too. BEDSOLE HISTORY As you can see, not being a computer Czar, I cannot control the location of the page numbers in this book. When I type it, its fine, but when I transfer it to a file, it gets all out of whack. Then, when I transfer it to you, it will not stay as typed, and the numbers may be any place on the page, and names, dates and etc., move around between computers and format changes, as they please. I have no idea how to keep all that from happening. Apparently. no one else does either and I have asked every one I know who even MAY know. Anyway, the numbers are theoretically at the bottom of each page. At least we can use the numbers as location markers, so we can say "Its between numbers 156 and 157" or whatever. That will prevent having to guess where something is located. Since this is my last version and I have been all over the internet asking for information from other Bedsoles, and receiving next to nothing, if you see something which is wrong or you have additions to make to the List in Part Two, please tell me about it. Remember, until I croak, I will keep a master copy of this book on this computer. When and if I find new information, it will be added to this Master copy from time to time. In the beginning, I just wanted to know where I got this name. But as time went on, and I learned more and more about our ancestors and all the unbelievable hardships they endured, I realized that unless I researched,documented and wrote this History and the related Ancestor And Descendant list, all the current and future Bedsole descendants would never know what those ancestors went through and would never know their true roots either. But I also knew that if I did'nt do it, then it would never be done, because I knew that few people have what it takes to spend that many years of their lives to produce this kind of information on their ancestors and descendants, much less have the grit required to do it. Does that make me some kind of super-human you ask, and that you should bow down in front of me ? …YES INDEED it does in fact. I began this project in 1950. This History and List and especially the List, represents more than 58 years of the most demanding, expensive, time-consuming, frustrating, and maddening work I have ever encountered in my life. Now, I give it to all you Bedsoles and relatives most of whom I don't even know, for nothing. I hope you truly appreciate what went into it, and what it represents. I know how priceless it really is and I hope you do too. Believe me, it becomes more valuable to the point of being absolutely priceless, as you get older. So, keep it, treasure it, and pass it down to your children. But always remember who produced it........ME and me alone. Although I do greatly appreciate the information provided by a precious few who emailed some info to me, regarding the List. Many thanks to those few. As you will read further on though, with the exception of those precious few, those I wrote and called for information, were generally suspicious, rude to the point of being hateful, and would tell me nothing useful. To them I also say, thanks a lot, for nothing. In the absence of most-needed documentation and by reading, researching, analyzing and documenting what little Bedsole information was available, together with all the old records, books, websites, and other relevant historical sources I could find, then flying to Germany twice and researching there, because my Dad had said Bedsole originated in Germany, I have put together my best, educated and informed guesses in many cases, at what I feel is very close to the facts back then. Some of my conclusions may prove to be wrong in the future, but I invite anyone to prove anything I claim to be true, is actually wrong. The only acceptable proof from someone that I have something wrong however, would be their own documentation and not their best guess. Any best-guess by anyone else, would not be as accurate, and certainly not more accurate than my own and I guarantee that. This Book Was A Long,Time-Consuming And Expensive Project Here are only a few reasons why one can spend so much time and money looking for the older Bedsole records and never find any. First of all, there are no less than 55 counties in NC alone, where I discovered by accident, the first ones arrived (Bath County) from Germany. Many counties were created or partially created from Bladen County, where, in 1950, I first found the Bedsoles. To add to the fun, almost all counties were created from parts of one to seven other counties at various times. Then, many counties changed their names in some cases several times. Just trying to find some records on Bath County, NC alone (which became Beaufort County) where the first Bedsole appeared, I ran into this: What few records did exist for Bath County are scattered in the courthouses of some of its early precincts, and in the Archives in Raleigh. No one knows what is where, or if in fact, any records at all exist. Bath County's earliest recorded deeds for example, date from 1700 and are included in Beaufort Co. Deed Book One (1701-1729). However, several other early Bath County deeds and other documents, some dated before 1700, were found in the records of Albemarle County and scattered among its various precincts, and there are likely some in other unknown counties. Most of the earliest records of Craven and Hyde Counties (Created from Bath) have not been preserved at all, and they surely had many Bath County records too. Beaufort and Hyde Precincts are known to have held joint sessions of court for and including Bath, apparently in Beaufort county. Eighteen Bath County Wills (1702-1718), mostly for both Beaufort and Hyde Precincts, were recorded in Beaufort Precinct and may be found in Beaufort County's Land Deed Book (Terrific logic) # 1 and, although they are Wills, they are not recorded in the Will Books in the Beaufort County Clerk's Office, as you would expect. Also ten of the eighteen do not appear (Is’nt that great?) in Grimes' "Abstracts of North Carolina Wills 1663- 1760" probably because the originals of the ten were never sent to the Secretary of State as required by law. In fact, over 60 more Beaufort County Wills dated 1720 to 1760 were retained in the courthouse and later copied into the Old Will Book and thus they also do not appear in Grimes' volume. Only a few of the Wills proved before 1700 have survived in the records identified in the NC State Archives as "Secretary Of State Wills" (?). A majority of the North Carolina counties have transferred all or part of their surviving original wills (If any) to the State Archives, however, some counties did not do that and have kept all or part of them, and looking and researching is the only way to determine which county did what or has what, and which have nothing at all on file. There is no one and no place you can go to, to find out what is where. And by the way, Good luck on finding any of them. The only way to be certain though, is to go look for yourself, and for that, you need about 50 years and more than a million dollars for motels, gas, food and etc., not to mention determination, grit and patience the likes of which you have never seen or heard of before. So, just finding out where documents may be located takes an unbelievable amount of time and even if you find where they may be, they still may either be buried somewhere in the county records but no one knows where, may not exist at all, were destroyed years ago, or are physically located in some other unknown counties, places, basements, boxes, or categories. Additionally, to add to the mess, the Bedsoles until about 1950, went by all kinds of surnames and nicknames such as Betsol, Bedsowl, Bletsoul, Batsoal and "Cotton", "Jeter", "Scooter" and etc. On top of that, way too many of them went by half-names such as "Liz" and/or middle names, while way too many went by first, middle and last names none of which had anything whatsoever to do with their real name(s) and all of which were major and time-consuming problems. For example, how do you determine who the Scooter Bedsole in 1768 actually was, where and what family he goes under, who he was married to, who his children were and at what point they were born into that family when there is no one to ask?. In addition, there were many with identical whole names, living at the same times and places (William Bedsole, William Bedsole and William Bedsole). Good luck at deciding which one you are looking at, at any given time. At this point, the vast majority of older Bedsole documents no longer exist at all because they were burned when their respective courthouses went up in flames, and those that do exist, may be stored helter-skelter in boxes upon boxes of records in dark courthouse basements, in no kind of order and with no one there, who knows anything about what is where. All that is what I was up against in 1950 and did not find it out until I had done many years of very difficult and frustrating work, and all that is what you will be up against if you decide to research anything about the Bedsoles for yourselves. So when I say good luck, its because you will need it. In my case, it was dogged determination which had nothing at all to do with luck and had everything to do with pure Grit. There has been major loss of both recorded and original wills, land records, and etc. from fires, wars, and natural disasters, but by far most of all, from sheer carelessness and deliberate arson. All those problems contributed to the fact that I could find next to nothing on any Bedsole by any name, until 1700. Later, one then two, then three of them appeared in Russell and Spotsylvania counties in Virginia, on land records, as Bledsoes, where they intermingled with all the true BLEDSOES who had arrived here in 1630, from England. All that should give you a very vague idea what you will be up against in Bath County, much less all the other counties in NC and other states and counties where the Bedsoles moved to and lived, when you try to either prove me wrong, or if you simply want to add to, clarify, or expand on what I have said or found. We won't even talk about what you will not find in Germany, as I learned the hard way and, as you will learn by reading everything I have written about that below. Country Of Origin For Bedsole Is The Brandenburg Province Of Prussia Which Became Part Or Parts, Of Germany IMPORTANT NOTE; Throughout the 60 years I spent on this project, I did NOT make copies of the documents I came across. I have typed them here from my pen and ink notes, exactly as they were originally written. So please don’t contact me to ask for copies of documents. For the years and years, I spent writing this book I was doing it for myself and no one else. Consequently, I did not need copies of documents. However, as the years passed, and more and more people wanted copies of it, they also wanted copies of the original documents too. Unfortunately, I do not have them and never did. But I did see and read them. Quick German History The Celts are believed to have been the first inhabitants of Germany. They were followed by German tribes at the end of the 2nd century B.C. German invasions destroyed the declining Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. One of the tribes, the Franks, attained supremacy in western Europe under Charlemagne, who was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 800. By the Treaty of Verdun (843), Charlemagne's lands east of the Rhine were ceded to the German Prince Louis. Additional territory acquired by the Treaty of Mersen (870) gave Germany approximately the area it maintained throughout the Middle Ages. For several centuries after Otto the Great was crowned king in 936, German rulers were also usually heads of the Holy Roman Empire. By the 14th century, the Holy Roman Empire was little more than a loose federation of the German princes who elected the Holy Roman Emperor. In 1438, Albert of Hapsburg became emperor, and for the next several centuries the Hapsburg line ruled the Holy Roman Empire until its decline in 1806. Relations between state and church were changed by the Reformation, which began with Martin Luther's 95 theses, and came to a head in 1547, when Charles V scattered the forces of the Protestant League at Mühlberg. The Counter-Reformation followed. A dispute over the succession to the Bohemian throne brought on the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), which devastated Germany and left the empire divided into hundreds of small principalities virtually independent of the emperor. The Rise of Bismarck and the Birth of the Second German Reich Meanwhile, Prussia was developing into a state of considerable strength. Frederick the Great (1740–1786) reorganized the Prussian army and defeated Maria Theresa of Austria in a struggle over Silesia. After the defeat of Napoléon at Waterloo (1815), the struggle between Austria and Prussia for supremacy in Germany continued, reaching its climax in the defeat of Austria in the Seven Weeks' War (1866) and the formation of the Prussian-dominated North German Confederation (1867). The architect of this new German unity was Otto von Bismarck, a conservative, monarchist, and militaristic Prussian prime minister. He unified all of Germany in a series of three wars against Denmark (1864), Austria (1866), and France (1870–1871). On Jan. 18, 1871, King Wilhelm I of Prussia was proclaimed German emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. The North German Confederation was abolished, and the Second German Reich, consisting of the North and South German states, was born. With a powerful army, an efficient bureaucracy, and a loyal bourgeoisie, Chancellor Bismarck consolidated a powerful centralized state. Wilhelm II dismissed Bismarck in 1890 and embarked upon a "New Course," stressing an intensified colonialism and a powerful navy. His chaotic foreign policy culminated in the diplomatic isolation of Germany and the disastrous defeat in World War I (1914– 1918). The Second German Empire collapsed following the defeat of the German armies in 1918, the naval mutiny at Kiel, and the flight of the kaiser to the Netherlands. The Social Democrats, led by Friedrich Ebert and Philipp Scheidemann, crushed the Communists and established a moderate state, known as the Weimar Republic, with Ebert as president. President Ebert died on Feb. 28, 1925, and on April 26, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg was elected president. The majority of Germans regarded the Weimar Republic as a child of defeat, imposed on a Germany whose legitimate aspirations to world leadership had been thwarted by a worldwide conspiracy. Added to this were a crippling currency debacle, a tremendous burden of reparations, and acute economic distress. Adolf Hitler And WWII Adolf Hitler, an Austrian war veteran (Corporal) and a fanatical nationalist, fanned discontent by promising a Greater Germany, abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles, restoration of Germany's lost colonies, and the destruction of the Jews, whom he scapegoated as the reason for Germany's downfall and depressed economy. When the Social Democrats and the Communists refused to combine against the Nazi threat, President von Hindenburg made Hitler the chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933. With the death of von Hindenburg on Aug. 2, 1934, Hitler repudiated the Treaty of Versailles and began full-scale rearmament. In 1935, he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations, and the next year he reoccupied the Rhineland and signed the Anti-Comintern pact with Japan, at the same time strengthening relations with Italy. Austria was annexed in March 1938. By the Munich agreement in Sept. 1938, he gained the Czech Sudetenland, and in violation of this agreement he completed the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. His invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, precipitated World War II. Hitler established death camps to carry out "the final solution to the Jewish question." By the end of the war, Hitler's Holocaust had killed 6 million Jews, as well as Gypsies, homosexuals, Communists, the handicapped, and others not fitting the Aryan ideal. After some dazzling initial successes in 1939–1942, Germany surrendered unconditionally to Allied and Soviet military commanders on May 8, 1945. On June 5 the four-nation Allied Control Council became the de facto government of Germany. Prussia, Where It Appears The Bedsoles Originated. According to its history, Prussia was a region in central europe, extending from the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea to the Masurian Lake District. Today its previous land makes up parts of Russia, Germany, Poland and Lithuania. The Vikings inhabited parts of Prussia at one time. Historical books record Prussians as early as the year 1072. Many attempts were made over the centuries, by various "Conquerers" to capture and occupy Prussia, without success. By Adalbert of Prague, Boleslaw of Prague, and various others during the years 997, 1015, 1147, 1161, and 1166. Prussia was finaly conquered by the Teutonic Knights. In 1492, "The Life Of Dorothea Of Montau", became the first printed publication in Prussia. The whole country became the Kingdom Of Prussia in 1701. In 1871,during the creation of The German Empire and the Unification Of Germany, Prussia became part of Germany. But in accordance with the Potsdam Conference in 1945, following World War II, the Prussian region was divided between Russia and Poland. Consequently, the country of Prussia was dissolved and ceased to exist in 1947. This provides some historical background for understanding me when I tell you that the surname BEDSOLE, by any variations in spelling, originated in Prussia, not in Austria, Germany, Russia, Ireland, England and etc., as is claimed by a variety of superficial "researchers" of the Bedsole ancestors.The Kingdom Of Prussia, was a German Kingdom from 1701 to 1918, and from 1871 it was the leading state of the German Empire, occupying two-thirds of the lands of that Empire. The Prime Minister Of Prussia was also the German Chancellor. It is important to keep in mind that, with the constant splitting-up of Prussia, and its final elimination as a country, there are no meaningful written family records to research. However, I can tell you that those few Prussian records I did come across, as in the History Of Germany, I found the same time-consuming research problems with misspellings of surnames as I did in the U.S., prevalent also in Germany. In addition, very cute problems like this; When Prussia became part of Germany, some parts were not included, the names of towns have been changed half a dozen times, geographical landmarks disappeared, and were replaced with new and different ones and etc. I did not want to become bogged down with that. I needed to find Betzold or some misspelling of it in Germany and I did not find a version of it in the few documents I did find of Prussian origin. My research efforts in Germany became so bogged down and expensive, I gave that up as a very bad idea; So for our purposes, suffice it to say that; "Bedsole originated by whatever spelling in Prussia, which became the Brandenburg Province of Germany, so lets concentrate on the U.S. area, where they initially arrived at and spread to" and which, not coincidentally, it was not as expensive to search. I believed my Dad when he said the first Bedsole came here from Germany. It turned out he was correct. For years and years, I tried my best to prove him wrong, because I did'nt want them to be from Germany, but the more I tried to do that, the more I proved him right. Then, in the London, England Genealogy Library, I obtained a copy of the Certificate For Country Of Origin for Bedsole. It states that Germany is the country of origin. Actually its Prussia which was before Germany, but why quibble when at least most of Prussia became Germany ?. I flew to Germany twice to research the Betzold name. First, in 1993 and again in1994, to see for myself. Parts of Germany were called Prussia and Allemandia and perhaps other things prior to becoming Germany and without proof, we must assume the Bedsole name actually originated some time prior to "Germany". I received the following from cousin Charles Bedsole, an attorney in Dallas,Texas, who kindly gave his permission to include it in this book. What Charles says is very interesting and quite true. In addition, it shows that our roots are in Germany and I'm sorry to say that, because I do not admire Germany for Hitler and the Holocaust, among other things. This is what Charles said in response to my question about whether "Bedsole" and "Bledsoe" could be related ; "One thing I find interesting is the early date of the Bletsoe name in the year1086 (That really is 1086) in England. According to some of the first English Court Cases, apparently a community named "Bletsoe" was there before William the Conqueror brought his army from Normandy; and, if so, it would make Bletsoe an Anglo-Saxon community. Further, if it was Anglo-Saxon, that would give Bletsoe a German connection because the Angles and the Saxons both emigrated to England from Germany. It was the Angles in fact, who gave us the name "England" ("Angle Land" was over time, shortened to England).The Anglo-Saxon folks were Germanic, while the people that emigrated when William conquered England were former Vikings from Scandinavia who had settled in France. They were initially called "Norse Men" (Northmen) and the area of France where they settled became "Normandy" (the land of the Northmen). However, being from Scandinavia, they spoke a version of German and were out of the same tree as the Germanic tribes who settled in what became modern day Germany (previously "Allemandia"). The Bletsoe family name, in theory, could have been an Anglicanization of an earlier Germanic name, e.g., Bletzold or Betzold". Many thanks to Charles for that information. At this point I won't even try to define the relationship of Bedsole and Bledsoe, further than that. But I do define it near the end of this book. In the same email, Charles was kind enough to send me the internet address of the first english court records. In reviewing several of those cases, I came across one wherein Elizabeth Bletsoe was a witness in a rape trial, dated in the year 1061, in England. I also noted that she lived in a "Bledsoe Community". The surname Bledsoe, although claimed by the Bledsoe researchers, to have originated in England, actually originated in the same place as Bedsole did, and as noted elsewhere, at some time in the past, there is no doubt in my mind that we, the Bedsoles, Bedsauls and Bledsoes, et al, all share a common ancestor at some time and place in the past. That place is most likely to have been Prussia. In researching any family name that far back, you learn to arrive at conclusions, based on several factors. As the old saying goes, "If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks and acts like a duck, then its most likely a duck". Similiarly in looking for the Bedsoles prior to 1950 or so, and you find a man with the name, if the man had roughly the right name, was at the right place, was there at the right time, and had certain relatives and/or dates, then its most likely him. In genealogical research, especially in the time prior to 1900 in the U.S., the most likely method becomes a method of proof, in the total absence of any documentation. As I said elsewhere, the accuracy of the Bedsole List, in Part Two, much of which was and is, based on Most Likely, has been proven time and time again to be amazingly accurate, with few exceptions. That’s amazing because that list has thousands of Bedsoles whom I never even heard of, much less know who was kin to whom and how they were kin and/or related to each other.That accuracy may surprise you, but knowing how I made determinations from all the research that went into it, its accuracy does not surprise me at all. However, I hasten to add that accurately determining who is kin to whom and how they are kin, without birth, marriage, death, and other records, no one to ask anything about it, and doing it 300 years later, is definitely not easy. In Germany, the Brandenburg district was Prussian land. It is from that district that the Betzolds seemed to originate. Germany is divided into States (Länder). These states are subdivided into Landkreise or Rural districts, which are made up of municipalities (Gemeinden) and Kreisfreie Städte, or free urban districts. In some states municipalities are combined into Ämter and Grossgemeinden (larger bodies, but the individual municipalities still exist). Arrival Of The First Bedsole When the first Bedsole arrived in this country, he arrived when NC had only formed its initial 5 of 100 counties of Bath, Currituck, Pasquotank, Perquimans and the beginnings of Chowan. The first Bedsole into the U.S. arrived by English ship from Germany, at the settlement of Bath, NC, on September 11,1700. He was listed by the ships captain William Barrow, as; "Abraham Bessow.....a Pal". The abbreviation "Pal" at that time meant Palatine from Germany.The name the captain listed was his version of what the reply was from "Abraham", when asked his name. In reality, the reply was more likely something like "Abramz Betzold". They most likely spoke no english and the English captain most likely spoke no German and those few handwritten words on that scrap of paper, are the only thing we have to go by,take it or leave it. I take "Bessow" to have sounded like Bess-oh to the Captain, and Germans do pronounce Betzold like we pronounce Bedsole. Therefore, I took "Bessow" to mean Betzold, or Bedsole. Obviously, he was given his first name by Captain Barrow. Bestowing made-up English names upon non- English arrivals in early America, was a common practice among ships captains until about 1930. As it turned out, I found "Abrahams" last name over the ensuing 30 or so years following that landing at Bath, spelled as Abraham Batson, Betson, Betsel, Bedsoe, Bedsole, Betso, Bledsoe, Bedsoal, Bedsoul and Bedsowl among other spellings. When you see that name spelled so many different ways, you must determine if thats the same man, or an entirely different one without any proof whatsoever, and that is true no matter what name you are researching. I assume his last name was Betzold, but we will never know what his real first name was. I also know that it was very common for all ships captains back then, to bestow english names on non-english immigrants as they pleased, with the knowledge that no one would ever be the wiser.They had no one to file the passenger list with anyway. It was through determination and luck that I found the tiny piece of paper with 4 or 5 handwritten names on it, including Abrahams, in the first place. Also, that I found his name arriving at Bath again, about 8 months later,on May 1, 1701. That time however,he was dubbed "Abraham Batson" and was accompanied by his wife "Rose" and child named "Elizabeth", both more than likely also made-up English names, by Captain Barrow. However, despite all that, I stayed with my belief that he was a Bedsole, and traced it as described in this book. Then, I traced it backwards too. It still led me to "Abraham Bessow". So, its most likely true that he really was our first ancestor in this country. When Abraham and his sons William and Isaac acquired land in Virginia (1719-1726), the clerk there listed their last names as Bledsoe, he being certain that the english name Bledsoe, was really their last name, and they being unable to read, write, spell, or to speak English, could‘nt have cared less. However, that allowed the Bledsoe researchers to also claim that all 3 were actually Bledsoes, and were their own ancestors from England. Therefore, without documented proof, therein lies an endless argument between them and us. In any event, there is no doubt in my mind, that the Abraham listed above is our first "Bedsole" into the United States. When I flew to Germany, England and Ireland in 1993 and again in 1994. I tried to research Bledsoe and Bedsaul along with Bedsole, because of the similarities in spelling. But as the names Bedsole, Bledsoe and Bedsaul are misspelled in their early english spellings in this country, they also suffered the same fate in Germany, and England, as there are various misspellings of them over there to the point you don't know which name you are looking at or if it is correct and which misspelling of the name(s) it is actually related to. In other words, you can't be certain the "Betzold" you are looking at is actually a Betzold or a Betzall, Betzaul, or really a Bletzoe, along with all the misspellings, such as Blettzo, Blettzel, and etc. Running into those problems caused me to ignore and forget those spellings, because the Translators I had hired at $100 per hour each, were rapidly bankrupting me. However, I did satisfy myself that Bedsole absolutely did not orginate in Ireland, Austria, Bavaria, Bulgaria, England and other countries as so many amateur researchers claim without a smidgeon of proof. I found nothing really new in Germany, because so much of its record systems had been destroyed in all the fires from the wars that country has been involved in, together with the mad-house absorption and conversion of Prussia into Germany and other countries. But the real problem is the huge prohibitive amount of time and expense involved in German-to-English Translaters (Translators from Old German to New German had to be employed first, then from New German to English). However, I did look up, meet and talk to several Betzold descendants, including a Wilhelm Heinrich Betzold (William Henry Bedsole), who had in his storeroom, an original 1650 Betzold Coat Of Arms which I drew by hand, and a copy of which you see above at the beginning of this book It is important that you understand that anyone back in the old days of Heraldry, could register any number of coats of arms for any surname. Contrary to popular American belief, It was the design on the Coat, and not the surname, which was not allowed to be duplicated. Therefore, there could be any number of BEDSOLE coats of arms (or any other surname for that matter). The "Official" coat of arms for a surname however, is described in great detail in the Certificate For Country Of Origin for that surname. I have the certificate for Bedsole and the coat it describes, but I dislike the design and colors of that one immensely. So I do not claim the "Official" Coat. Instead, I claim the one you see at the top of this document. I do however, have a copy of the Official Coat. Nevertheless, I am certain there is a common ancestor for Bedsaul, Bledsoe, Bedsole and variations and misspellings, somewhere in the past. I know that the evidence that there is or is not such an ancestor, does not exist in the United States. I believe such an ancestor existed most likely in Prussia. Anyway, back beyond Germany as we know it, there is no paper trail. Therefore, conjecture becomes meaningless. So, after only 3 weeks in Germany, my total costs had exceeded $25,000 and I left. What I did learn was, if you hire a translator, first have your info ready so you are not paying them by the hour to find basic stuff for you, and to pick out only that info you want translated. That alone takes so much time it will quickly bankrupt a very rich man. In addition to all that, to find out anything about passenger shipping records from Germany, England or Ireland, from as far back as I could find information up to about 1800, the period I was most interested in, one needs to know at least the following: The exact names of passenger(s) as listed on ships records, keeping in mind that Scribes at the time wrote and spelled the names the best they could guess from what was said, because people in general could neither read nor write, much less spell. Names of the ships they sailed on (many ships had the same name), the owner(s) of the ships, the country of the ships registry. Do you have any idea how long that alone would take and how much you would spend, finding that out, if you could find it at all?. You also need to know the date of departure, port of departure, passengers destinations and where they actually ended up, ports of arrival, name of arriving ship, dates of arrival and etc. As if all that were not bad enough, prior to 1900, Germany had thousands upon thousands of its citizens who supposedly shipped directly to the United States, and others via England. So shipping records in Germany may show their destination to be England. Then you have to go to England, and hope you can find all the above shipping information from there to the U.S. Naturally, thousands of those you would be interested in, stayed in England, thousands more changed their minds in England, and went back to Germany, and more of them changed their minds altogether and went to countries other than the U.S. or England or back to Germany, having left from Germany and/or from England on different ships with various names, from various ports, on various dates and with various people accompanying them. In other words, they could have gone from Germany to any country on earth, under any name, on any ship. Who knows. On top of all that, in England and out of necessity, passengers were held in "Holding Pens", until they had enough to completely load a ship, before they were allowed to board one. That usually meant they were held for several weeks, or they got fed up and boarded any ship to anywhere, just to get out of that Pen. Based on all I know about it, my conclusion is this; If you already possess all that shipping information, you don't need to go over there to find it out. But if you do decide to, therein are another million research problems, requiring thousands upon hundreds of thousands of dollars and who knows how many years, to research. Another overseas research problem is this; Several ships sunk enroute, drowning some or all aboard, many became disabled and put into the nearest port, where passengers were left to fend for themselves, and I have included an article of a court case regarding that fact. So be forewarned if you want to go overseas and trace our ancestors, take a ton of money and be prepared for several YEARS of research. As for our own National Archives, for the Bedsoles, even for immigration records, there is nothing in the way of ship passenger lists prior to about 1880-90, which was very surprising. Knowing all that now does it mean you should bow down and be forever grateful to me ? ....YOU BET !!. Latest Information On The Name(s) Our cousin Charles Bedsole, the lawyer in Dallas, Texas came upon some interesting information and forwarded it to me. It was regarding a Khristoph or Christoph Besold or Besold, (In his last name, the Z is pronounced as an S in German and the D is silent. Making him a "Bessow", or Bedsole, since in Betzold the D is also silent), 9/22/1577-9/15/1638, who was a famous German Legal scholar and who became a Professor Of Law at Lubingen University in Germany. He served as legal advisor to the Emperor of Austria and the Duke of Wurttemberg. Bezold was also one of the founders of the Rosicrucian movement, although late in life he converted to Catholicism. He was described as extremely learned in Arabic, Hebrew, and Islamic culture. Besold's library was acquired by Salzburg University in 1648 and became the cornerstone of the university's library. Besold's Thesaurus Practicus is a mammoth work, covering both Roman law and German law. It was first published in Tubingen in 1629, and by the time of the last edition (Regensburg, 1740), it had gone through eight editions. My purpose in telling you all this is because it takes no great leap to go from Betzold to Bessow to Besold to Bedsole as a surname. Is Bedsole related to Besold ? That answer is many times more likely to be "Yes" than it is to be "No". I have found there is a whole different online world with the Besold spelling, as with Bedsole. There is also another surname world online under Betzold, if anyone is inclined to research those spellings. My thanks again, to Charles for that information. The Lack Of Documentation Records of birth were not even required here until about 1912 and marriage, death, and land records were frequently thrown away, or deliberately burned along with their respective courthouses, if a courthouse existed at the time. The Bladen County Courthouse in Elizabethtown, N.C, for example, where many early Bedsoles lived, was intentionally burned down 5 times between 1750 and 1893. In 1850 in desperation, the Court Clerk, took the records home with him for safekeeping, but his house was burned down and again, so were the records he tried to save. Apparently, the primary intent of the Arsonist(s) was to get rid of legal records in order to avoid lawsuits for various crimes, not the least of which were for theft, rustling, murder, illegal land dealings, abandonment of family, sharecropper and landlord problems and so forth. As for marriage records, for the earliest Bedsole's, getting married only required the couple to say their "Banns" three times in church. That is, they repeated that they accepted each other as husband and wife. Most church records disappeared over the years, as their pastors simply left, or died.Therefore, older records of marriages, births, deaths, wills, and etc. for Bedsoles are practically non-existent, prior to 1850. That leaves land records, which provide precious little information to a researcher, with zero information about any name other than the buyer and seller. In addition, the majority of those made no distinction between a Senior, Junior, Second, Third, or anything else, and with people naming their children after themselves, their brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents, and etc., you cannot determine with accuracy or with absolute certainty, which persons land record you are looking at when those with the same name, either both or all, lived at the same time and usually in the same place at the same time. In addition, determining kinships and relationships as in Part Two of this book was another very major problem which took years to complete as I have presented it. Following the burning of courthouses back then, those landowners and others who had kept some kind of records, could take them back to the new courthouse and have them re-recorded. Some did and some didn’t. Counties were supposed to have a record also transferred to the states capitol. However, some did not do that either. Consequently, many records were never recorded in counties or at capitols of some states in the first place. In addition, for those courthouses which were repeatedly burned down, even when some records were re-recorded, they were repeatedly destroyed and over time, fewer and fewer such records survived, and fewer and fewer were recorded at state offices. Additionally, the creation of several other counties from parts of one or more other counties,only added to the confusion and loss of vital records. Apparently, no one at the county or state levels ever audited or worried about correcting any errors or missing documents which existed between the two levels. The USGENWEB site has a continuing effort and program, to transcribe census data and place it on the internet, so perhaps that and other data will become more available in the future, provided enough dedicated volunteers can be found to do all that hard work. That means though, that the data must first be located which I am willing to bet, never happens, primarily because it does not exist. The absence, especially of land records, compels me to conclude that, although land to them was cheap,or free from the government, the vast majority of Bedsoles until about 1950, were share-croppers and agricultural workers.That is, they worked primarily for other, more affluent landowners and that was one of the major reasons so few land records for them were ever found. They never existed in the first place. Those that did were very few and very far apart. As I studied the movements of the early Bedsoles in NC (1700-1850), I could see that they moved from Bath, to Dobbs, Bertie, Edgecombe, Duplin, Bladen, Johnston, Sampson and finaly to Brunswick counties in NC, indicating a steady and predictable fan-shaped movement south and southwestward from Bath, now Beaufort, County. Ending at Brunswick County, near the state line with South Carolina, the fan-shaped movement is a familiar and predictive one when you are reviewing first settlements of new places. Reading about NC in general and Bath County in particular, I found that repeated Yellow Fever epidemics and fierce, barbaric, antagonistic and warlike indian tribes in and around NC and especially Bath back then, without law or military protection,were also good reasons for these early arrivals to move and to move frequently. However, the fact that original counties were subdivided and other counties created from them, also erroneously gives the impression people were moving, when the truth is, the subdivisions were occurring instead. As you will see, documentation on Abraham, Elizabeth and Rose, ceased to exist after their arrival at Bath in May, 1701 and until their arrival in Virginia. That fact created a problem in determining who the subsequent children of Abraham and Rose actually were. Their son William appeared on paper in Russell County, Virginia in the form of a handwritten land deed in 1719. Abraham and William both appeared the next time, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia in 1726, on a land record for 1,000 acres. Their last names were written on those land records as Bledsoe. The logical reason for that is that all record-keepers were English, and they wrote and spelled names they were familiar with, and since Bledsoe was in England as far back as the year 1061 and perhaps earlier, they were very familiar with that spelling and freely assigned that spelling to anyone pronouncing their name even remotely like "Bledsoe" or "Bedsole". In Virginia, the trail became very muddled, with the appearance of several apparently bonified Bledsoe's, who became mixed with bonafide Bedsoles. Then, due to english Scribes, their last names were freely interchanged among them all. Some were changed deliberately by the persons being named. After all, no form of identification nor records of such existed. After that, the efforts to keep track and definition of the bonified Bedsole's and the bonified Bledsoe's required quadrupling of time, efforts, research., study and analyses. All that required quadrupling again after they all had sons whom they named after themselves, each other, their uncles, parents and grandparents. It all became a royal mess, keeping track of who was whom. Through extensive use of the "Most Likely" research method, I did decide who was whom, as related to Abraham, at least to a point, thus producing the List Of Names in the second half of this book. THE CONFUSION OF BEDSOLE AND BLEDSOE SURNAMES According to Bob Bledsoe, the apparent expert Bledsoe surname researcher, the first Bledsoe here arrived about 1650 from England, which is 50 years prior to the arrival of our first Bedsole, from Germany. That defines two distinctly different lines with similar surnames. However, I have been to Germany and I know that at some point in the past, Bledsoe and Bedsole had a common ancestor, most likely in Prussia. But that point is moot in my opinion, because in this country we are talking about two separate lines which nevertheless became intermingled here. From the start to current times, the North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas Census data repeatedly show Bledsoe's and Bedsole's living among each other and when one moved, the others either went with them, or shortly afterwards, to the same place. That indicates to me that most, or at least many, Bedsoles and Bledsoes were either related or were freely using each others last name(s), or both. A very major problem caused by all that uncertainty, was the inability to determine with any degree of certainty in most cases, if the "Bedsole" being researched was really a Bedsole or Bledsoe. And that is something which one must frequently decide without much or any, additional information. On the List in Part Two, if the Bedsole in question had decided to use Bledsoe and I knew that, I listed them as Bledsoe, but kept them on the Bedsole list because they actually were Bedsoles. Another research problem for example, was when a "John Bedsole" was listed on the 1790 Census' for Wake, Cumberland and Anson counties, inclusive. With 3 listed, It is likely that one of those Johns was the one born about 1730 and the other is the one born in 1753. Or one or more Johns moved during the Census counts or that third John is either the same guy counted twice, or there was a John Jr. or Sr. in one or more, of those counties. It is also possible that they counted John Bledsoe in one and John Bedsole in the other, misspelling Bedsole or Bledsoe, or both. After all, how would Census Takers determine the various physical county boundaries, as they roamed the unmarked countryside? From studying all this and everything else I've come across, it makes me think that the early, and consequently many current, Bedsoles and Bledsoes are intermixed to the point of impossibility in defining them, with any degree of certainty, beyond ones best guess. Currently, there is a seperate line of Bledsoes, another of Bedsauls and one for Bedsoles. That seperate line is further strengthened by the fact that many earlier Bledsoe's eventually moved north to Indiana, but the Bedsole's moved south from NC to either Tennessee, or southward. The Bedsole's initially moved almost simultaneously, from North Carolina to Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Texas and Georgia. Despite that separation, some with the Bledsoe name or spelling are also in those same southern states at the same time as the Bedsoles. A big problem is, theres no way to know which of those in the north or south were born as Bledsoes and which were born as Bedsoles, and worse, even when born, they may not have actually been a Bedsole or Bledsoe to begin with. It gets incredibly confusing, when you are trying to figure out who is whom, 300 years later, with no one to ask for clarification and, as in my own case, those you do contact are suspicious and will not provide the answers, give you any information, nor help you to arrive at answers. When a Scribe back then showed up at some Bedsoles house, after 15-20 years for whatever purpose, selling something, land transfers, trades, census, legal problems, whatever, who knows what our ancestors answered when asked for their last names and ages. On top of that, who knows what was written, after he heard their answer, trying to spell it like it sounded, when the Scribe was English who spoke no German and the person answering was German, who spoke no english. For example, the Scribe somehow asks "What is your name ?". The answer the best he can understand it is like this: " Vilhelm Bahssow, Bessow, Bhatson, Blitzuh, zumzing like zatt". Scribe:." Do you know how to spell it" Answer: "Nein, nein sprechen sie englishen". So what do you think the Scribe wrote for the persons name ?. Now, 300 years later, along comes J.D. Bedsole, trying to figure out not only who all these people were, but how they were all related, where they lived and when, with no one to ask, and all he has to look at to figure all that out is what that Scribe wrote that day and nothing else, in too many cases. FIRST BEDSOLE HERE The first Bedsole in this country was "Abraham Bessow" as written and spelled by an ships captain from England. Abraham was born about 1673 in Germany and died about 1740 in Virginia. Although I know his German name was not Abraham nor Bessow, I'll use that without knowing what it really was. However, in German, Bedsole is BETZOLD. From all my readings I believe that in Germany, the Betzold family were farm laborers who worked on farms and in grape vineyards. Agricultural workers. They were probably desperately poor and lived in mud-brick huts. Abraham, his parents and siblings wore wornout and patched homemade clothes and all of them usually went without shoes, the father being far too poor to acquire shoes for himself or his family. Abraham had heard wonderous stories about a "New Land", the future United States, being advertised by the government of England. It was described as " beautiful and a land of plenty". Over a period of many months, they also heard that the English government was giving free and cheap land to any and all who went there to settle and to live out their lives there. Little did he or anyone else yearning to go, suspect that the English merely wanted the settlers to go, clear off and farm the land and start producing goods needed by England, such as tobacco, cotton and tar so they could receive these products and also coincidentally, so they could tax such settlers, thereby fattening their own governments coffers. Then it was made known that the English government would also allow such settlers to leave the new land to their children as entitlements from the parents, when the parents died. I'm sure it seemed too good to be true and Abraham began to dream of the new land and to make plans to go there to live. His parents encouraged him, but also warned that it would not be easy, going to a new land with practically nothing except the clothes on his back, to travel and live among total strangers, with so many inherent dangers and unknowns involved, and the inhuman hardships and suffering that were bound to be incurred. He never dreamed how the suffering and hardships would be proved without question and many times over. So, true to his German ancestry he was stubborn, and one day in 1700, he said goodby to his family and together with a friend his own age, began the trek to look for some way to catch a boat to the big seaport and to leave for the new country. Abraham and his friend probably found a small commercial boat working a river and convinced the owner to transport them downstream to the seagoing port in return for a week of manual labor helping the owner load and unload trade goods with which he bartered, bought, sold and made a living on the river. At the seaport, when their fare was finaly paid, they were on their way. At that time, the captains of the large, seagoing ships had learned they could transport new settlers to what later became America and collect their fares upon arrival, from earlier and richer settlers who needed laborers here. (During the period 1700- 1712, there was a huge influx of Palatines from Germany into the U.S). Note: Sailing From Germany To "The New Country" A Typical Trip To America Went Like This Too Often:.From An Old English Admiralty Court Case I included this to show how they were mistreated back then. It also explains why one cannot find ancestors whom they thought shipped from England or Germany to the United States. James Hogg's brother settled in Wilmington, N.C. many years ago and at his solicitation James decided to also go settle there. When this was learned in Caithness England, many people applied to Hogg to freight a vessel (rent it) to carry them all to "The Carolina's". Accordingly, on 24, Aug., 1773, Hogg contracted with Inglis to freight the ship, Batchelor of Leith, Ramage Alexander, Master, to carry James Hogg of Borland in Caithness, his family and servants, and 200 emigrants from Thurso to Wilmington, N. C. Hogg agreed to pay for himself, wife, Mrs. Alves (his mother-in-law) a specified rate, another for his children, a third for his servants (the latter being restricted to six in number), a fourth for emigrants above the age of eight, and a fifth for emigrants under the age of eight (excepting children at the breast for whom there was no fare). The vessel was to be ready to depart Leith, England in July and was to proceed from Leith to Thurso Bay on Scrabster Road to load the passengers. Hogg arrived in Leith on June 15th and hung on until August 26, waiting for a full load of passengers. The vessel Batchelor then went to Thurso and was boarded by Hogg and his family and servants, and 204 emigrants (many from the County of Sutherland).They sailed two months behind schedule, from Thurso on Sept. 14, but they were soon forced to harbor from contrary winds at Stromness in Orkney, where they put the passengers ashore for eight days. On October 3, two days after leaving Stromness, due to storm damage to the ship, they were then obliged to put into Vaila Sound in Shetland where the passengers were again put ashore. Here the Batchelor was again damaged by a storm from which they were sheltering. Hogg, his family, and the 204 emigrants wintered at Vaila Sound. The following Spring, April 20, 1774, eight months after initially boarding, they departed for Leith in order for the ship to have the necessary repairs made. At Leith, Inglis declared the contract at an end and declared he was entitled to the fares upon landing them at Leith as he would have been had he landed them at Wilmington, NC. The vessel lay without repairs, and on 28 May, Hogg entered a protest against Inglis. Many of the children of the emigrants, Hogg claims, died during their winter of hardships in Shetland. Now, he says, the emigrants have been turned ashore in Leith, 200 miles from home, and many of them with no means of returning home or of procuring another vessel to carry them to America. Imagine being one of those passengers with a spouse and 5 children and no money, or anything else for that matter. In Admiralty Court, James Inglis alleged damage by stress of weather prevented him from continuing on a voyage with emigrants, and suggested that the commencement of this action by Hogg has terminated their contract. He also stated that he had no concern whatsoever with the emigrants nor were they party-contractors to him; that his contract with Hogg was for freight of a certain number of emigrants who were to board his vessel as passengers to America, but that he had no concern with how they were to be employed, where taken in America, and so forth; that to him the passengers stood in the same relationship as goods or common freight. Inglis alleges that the real dispute is between Hogg and the emigrants. Hogg and his family took another vessel sailing from Port of Greenock, but the other poor emigrants dispersed, with some to seek their way home, and others to endevour to gain their bread in the low country, and some of them attempted to procure their passage from Greenock. Generally, some emigrants died during the voyage before their arrival in Shetland and others died after the vessel was stranded.(There are 32 pages just about that] In this case, Inglis alleged that he had advised Hogg from the beginning that the vessel Batchelor, then on a voyage to Memel (modern Klaipeda in Lithuania), could not be ready early, for the voyage to N.C. He says that the date the vessel sailed was in fact a good season to set out for North Carolina.He denied that public spirit motivated Hogg to arrange for emigration of upward of 200 Scots, and suggested that Hogg's brother had purchased 12,000 acres of land and wanted settlers for it. He said Hogg had been discussing "these questions himself in newspapers and periodical publications." He also Alleged that 2/3 of the emigrants stayed aboard the vessel at Stromness and were provisioned by the master of the Batchelor. He further said that the emigrants angrily advanced against Hogg and Captain Ramage in the Vice-Admiralty Court of Shetland, and quoted from Hogg's defense there, in which Hogg refers back to a 1772 emigration from Sutherland that lay two weeks at Stromness without being provisioned from the ship's stores. He said ships with emigrants had only 9 or 10 weeks provisions, and says that several of the passengers aboard the Batchelor saw at Stromness from Capt. Ritchie and Capt. Smith's ships that that was the case. He stated that deaths of several passengers came from small-pox and not neglect. He said he instructed Captain Ramage on January 1,1774 to return the emigrants to their home, but that they refused "to a man" to disembark at Thurso; that he tried to assist the emigrants at Leith, "but cannot help mentioning that they are in general so indolent they do not care to work if they can get a subsistence by any other means". (Sounds like that attitude continued on for way too many years, to this day, in the U.S. ) He contended that Hogg, by taking ship for America from Greenock, had abandoned prosecution of the action. All that is just one example of the horrible hardships and treaments of our early ancestors who came or tried to come, here. Abrahams Trip From Germany Now, back to our ancestor, Abraham; So, the ten or eleven-week trip across the ocean to what later became Bath, North Carolina began in Germany, on a cold day about the first of July,1700. The ship was English, made of wood and powered by sails. It was one hundred two feet long, twenty-five feet wide and twenty feet deep and the cracks between its many wooden planks were sealed with tar and tar-soaked twine. It was a miracle it could even survive such a hazardous trip without falling apart, considering the beating it was certain to incur from the constantly heaving, frothing, rushing and thrashing water of the open ocean for such a long period of time. For this trip, it carried a passenger load of 106 settlers and a crew of twelve men. Think of it; 118 Men, women and children on a vessel that small for ten to twelve weeks or longer under such conditions; With almost all passengers being sick and some even dying during the trip, no toilet facilities except for buckets tied to ropes, no privacy and no provisions for taking a bath except for buckets of salt water dipped from the ocean. These were accepted hardships and baths were generally ignored. These ships were also loaded with trade goods, fresh water which always became stagnant after only a few days, food, a few medical supplies, and the few pitiful household goods of the passengers. Many times the ships captains would steal the best baggage carried by the passengers and sell it or load it onto a different ship for a price, with the settlers pitiful belongings never seen again by the owners. Their baggage usually contained dried fruit, butter which turned into a mess during these sailings, other foodstuffs, clothes, tools and money which they had planned to use to live, eat, pay for their fare and for supplies upon reaching their destination. They were not aware that their pitifully small amounts of money would be next to useless in the "New Land", because "Trade" was the most prevalent "money" in this country at that time. The fare for the poorer passengers was guaranteed by the more affluent settlers already in the New Land, and who were in great need of laborers and who would pay the Captain upon arrival in what was called "The Bath Settlement" which later became Bath, NC, in this case. Aboard ship, the passengers were crammed into very tight quarters. At first, they sat on the top deck sitting on lashed-down household goods, boxes and bags of cargo, and personal belongings, as they grew tired, sleepy and hungry, they wandered all over the ship, both above and below decks . Being powered by sails, such ships usually found themselves becalmed for several days and nights during these trips. Because such sitting and waiting for the wind to blow may last for two days at a time. That was a total nightmare always waiting to happen and too often it did. Twenty five cannons were also lashed on deck, by the ships crew. They were needed to fight off any Spanish ships they were liable to encounter on the trip in view of the fact that Spain and England were at odds at that time. Leaving port, the ship was heavily loaded, and with its sails full of wind, it slowly headed out into the open ocean. The next morning about two a.m., no surprise to the crew of course, they awoke to find the ship groaning, cracking, popping and creaking as it heaved, tossed, pitched, rolled and yawed from side to side wildly, with loud crashing sounds, in the opening round of its long battle with the heaving, frothing ocean. By the end of the first day and with the exception of the experienced crew, all aboard were already deathly seasick and were lying below and above decks. They vomited until they were just heaving, but with nothing coming up. They were already pale in color and listless. Most of the adults were already having second thoughts about making this trip. But they were all committed now, as the ship thrashed slowly along gaining foot by foot, in its beginning fight for and against, the wind. This was a life or death fight they, and the ship faced. As they plodded along day after day, the hapless passengers did their best to deal with the never-ending heaving, pitching, rolling and yawing of the ship. The front end would point skyward as it climbed wave after wave, then dive down the other side, until the bow was terrifyingly underwater, then it would rear up again, pointing skyward, as thousands of gallons of salt water rushed across the decks from front to rear, sometimes injuring some of the more foolish passengers who ventured out on the heaving deck, by slamming them against the rigging, freight, cabin and bulwarks of the ship. Practically all the women and children spent most of their time below deck with the women tending to the constantly sick children, who would vomit as soon as they ate anything at all. Many of them were running a fever, from drinking the already-stagnant, untreated and contaminated fresh water onboard. They, and many of the adults were lying and sitting, staring listlessly, in a brew of vomit and human excrement in the ships hold, for days. Some for weeks. The ships captain and crew advised the passengers to eat only rice, or bread, but no meat or anything greasy for the first 3 days or more. Of course, the passengers had no desire whatsoever for anything greasy and the mere thought sent most running for the "slop jars" used as commodes and toilets by all on board. These usually rolled and fell over, emptying their odorous mixture into the hold and on the flooring and all over any nearby passengers and their clothing. The stench below deck was indescribable. With no way to treat the passengers, everyone on board watched helplessly as child after child and adult after adult slowly died, over the next 10 weeks. With no other choice in what to do with the dead bodies, they were simply dumped overboard and left at sea. The suffering, sorrow and heart-wrenching, gut-twisting anguish, of those who had to do that with the bodies of their dead relatives, children and spouses, can only be imagined, as they watched the bodies bobbing and floating slowly away with the waves. Six weeks went by and several of the adults were now dead. Some of those were husbands, traveling with their families, leaving their hapless wives and children on their own in the middle of the ocean, among strangers, headed for a totally unknown land and the terrifying, unknown, unplanned, and as proved later, disastrous consequences which awaited them. So it was, that this nightmarish trip finaly ended near the end of the eleventh week at sea, when the ships Lookout yelled from the "Crows Nest" that he had spotted land. At this news, the passengers who were still able to move, rushed to the side of the ship to look, with the joyful thought that this total nightmare was about to end. Little did they know their nightmare was only just beginning.The ship approached land cautiously, the captain not being certain of the exact layout of the body of land the Lookout had spotted. Searching for the mouth of the Pamlico River and a fort with more than a hundred earlier settlers already there at Bath, NC, was not easy, with no navigational methods, except intuition and memory. He ordered the crew to lower sails and drop anchor, to allow an exploratory party on a dinghy to paddle closer in to the shallower water and get a look at the land. Suddenly, from around a finger of land, sailing towards the English ship, was a Spanish Man-O-War ship, bristling with deck cannons. Upon seeing the English ship, the Spanish commander, ordered his crew to lower sails, come to a halt and drop anchor, perhaps 2,000 feet away, and then dispatched two row boats to the English ship for boarding and investigation. However, the english ships captain indicated his ship was English, in free waters, and not subject to any authority of the Spanish king, and ordered his crew to fire on the Spanish ship with two of the deck cannons. The two shots missed. The fire was answered almost instantly, with a volley from the Spanish ship, with one of the shells striking the main mast of the English ship, causing it to drop to the deck, killing three of the settlers and injuring 3 others, who had gathered to watch the confrontation. Working desperately to bring its cannons to bear amid all the tied-down household goods on deck, the English ship returned fire, but this time with five deck cannons. Two of its shells struck the Spanish ship almost amidship and severely damaged the vessel. With that, the Spanish captain waved the white flag, indicating surrender, but the English captain, not wanting to incur the problem of having to control the Spanish crew while trying to deliver the settlers to land, ordered a hasty departure from the area, picking up his exploratory boat and crewmen before doing so. Continuing his slow search, for the mouth of the River, the ship finaly approached the entrance and continued sailing up the river. They eventually approached a wooden fort, triangular in shape, measuring four hundred feet by four hundred feet by four hundred feet, constructed of logs set into the ground with sharpened tops pointing skyward and within which there were sixteen small, one-room log cabins with dirt floors. At each of the 3 points on the forts triangular walls were guard and lookout towers for protection against marauding Indians who attacked them from time to time. Within the fort, there were perhaps seventy- five surviving settlers and outside its walls, the remainder, wildly cheering, shouting and waving a welcome to the ship and its newcomers, in the mistaken belief that the ship carried food, medicine and supplies for the forts current occupants. The captain ordered his crew to lower the sails and drop anchor, in six fathoms, thirty-six feet, of water, about 300 feet from shore. The captain ordered the rowboat lowered and again three crewmen were sent ashore to determine a satisfactory anchorage location for the ship which would allow the passengers to unload. Shortly, the three men returned with the news that the anchorage was satisfactory where the ship had stopped and its passengers would have to be unloaded a few at a time, and carried ashore in the ships two small rowboats, because of shallower water near shore. Already with inadequate supplies, especially foodstuffs, these additional settlers just meant increased suffering and hardship for all concerned, for those already in the fort were desperately short of food and clean, fresh water. In addition, many among them were seriously sick, with nothing left in the way of medicine. The paying passengers were unloaded first, with all their belongings. The ships Captain, knowing that there were some among those already on shore who had money furnished by The London Company, a private english business, and that they desperately needed able, manual laborers and helpers, offered the remaining passengers and their children to the highest bidder on shore, who would pay their fares. Upon striking a bargain, the hapless victims of this auction, were required to sign a twelve-month contract, to perform free labor in return for the highest bidders payment, as the bidder should see fit. The "Sheriff" at the fort was also present to enforce the contracts. Families of men who had died or were killed during the overseas trip, were then offered to the highest bidder as "Servants". Most such families had to be separated and split up, because the winning Bidder could not provide and care for another family of a mother and children and his own too. Therefore, many families were thus destroyed at the fort, as those children and mothers were split up and assigned to several different bidders.The heartache of the mothers watching their children being divided up among different, unknown and unfamiliar families and as learned later, to have them leave the fort for parts unknown, never to be seen again by her or each other, must have been horrible. Within the fort, life was a living hell. It was cold at the time and it rained just often enough to keep the grounds of the fort and the floors of the cabins in a swirl of nasty, sloppy, sticky mud almost knee deep from all the activity and people constantly moving about inside the fort. Over the next few weeks, sickness from the lack of adequate food and nourishment, contaminated water, exposure to the weather and contagious diseases, steadily decimated the population. Restful sleep was out of the question, due to the constant noise, sickness, misery, hunger, cold, Indian attacks and worry. With no medical care, these luckless people could only pray for their loved ones and themselves to get well, with no hope of a better life in the future. By now, they all realized they were helplessly lost in the situation and that they had no choice but to go forward and hope for the best. As time went on, a few brave men ventured away from the fort and settlement, sometimes traveling a few miles and back, looking for a route to move their families southward so they could obtain their own land as they had heard could be done. They wanted desperately to get out of that hellish fort and start their own lives, for they considered it certain death to remain there. So, in early spring a few and sometimes several in a group would leave the fort and seek their own future. Later, oxen, mules, carts and wagons would be available to travel, but at that time, walking was the only way to travel, so the trip they made, looking for their own land, and carrying all they owned on their backs was another long and difficult trial, having only animal and Indian trails to follow, which lead in the southerly direction desired. They traveled in daylight and camped at night, cautiously avoiding all contact with the Indians if at all possible. Many Indians were murderous and would kill any and all white people on sight, no questions asked. When Indian contact could not be avoided, all in the settlers groups, held their breaths, never knowing if they were about to be killed until it was too late for many. The settlers always tried first to trade their way out of any such confrontations, offering trinkets, beads, whatever they had brought for the purpose. The Indians, having never seen such shiny things, treasured them very highly and such trades were frequently successful, allowing the settlers to proceed on their journey. As for our ancestor Abraham, he was destined to leave shortly. In his opinion to say that was good, was a gross understatement. After working for several months, he decided he liked the countryside there and he acquired some land as "Squatters Rights", along with several other newcomers. His log house was attacked several times by Indians, mostly hunting parties of six to eight men, but he managed to get his flintlock rifle and fire a shot at them. A few times, he killed an Indian. But it was the noise that drove them away, for they didn’t know what else that noisy thing might be able to do. Perhaps wipe them all out. Several times, the Indians were drunk on whiskey which they had traded for at the fort and in such cases, were not as afraid of his gun. Travel from place to place, county to county, state to state: Traveling with wagons full of their meager supplies, tools and household goods, all the men carried muskets, powder and shot and these weapons usually saved them from the Indians when a shot was fired. It terrified the indians even more when one or two of them were killed by these weapons, but it also made the Indians hate the settlers more and made them more murderous. With two men going on ahead of the group to hunt deer and any other edible thing they could find along the planned trail, including trading with Indians, the group lived from day to day and traveled that way. When deer were found, the group could handle four or five, depending on the size of the deer, by dividing the meat to be carried among themselves. They had to eat the meat within two days, or it would begin to rot. They could have preserved it longer than that by smoking it, but that would have taken too much time. Also, the smoke and smell of the meat would sometimes attract Indians and dangerous wild animals such as bears and panthers. Early spring squash, corn and other vegetables were traded and acquired from the Indians and from a few trading posts, along the trail. They also found wild turnips and polk bushes could be cooked like turnip greens and eaten, after boiling to remove most of its poisonous juices. Ironically, we owe a lot to the indians for helping our early settlers, to survive. During the trip, a few streams were flooded and many crossings were disastrous at best for the travelers, wagons, animals and supplies, even with the wagons loaded, they would easily half-float and just as easily overturn during any crossing attempt. Thus, they had to be kept upright by ropes tied to them and being stabilized on both sides by mules, horses, or oxen and riders, keeping the ropes tight. Sometimes people drowned while the wagons were attempting such crossings and overturned in the fast-flowing water. Small children and especially infants were in the greatest danger during these crossings and many of them and some adults also died in the process, being caught in, and under, all the freight and household goods on the wagons. After 3 days of travel, the advance hunting party had killed six deer and hauled them to the trail along which the wagons would soon be traveling. While waiting for them, the hunters skinned and butchered the fresh meat and made it ready for consumption. Every day a couple of hours before dark, the travelers stopped the wagons and formed them in a protective circle. Some men set to work gathering feed for the oxen and mules and watering the animals, while others cut and stacked enough firewood for the night. Meanwhile, the women and older girls prepared places to sleep and cooked supper. After supper, the men watered the animals again and secured them for the night by tying them with "pigging strings" which were wires or ropes strung between two trees, or "hobbles" which simply means tying the feet of the animals together, to prevent them walking or running off during the night. The hobbles also served as a hindrance to any Indians who tried to make off with the animals, because the animals could not walk, or even trot. Knowing that Indians might steal their livestock, the wagonmaster assigned two shifts of night guards for the camp and the livestock for the night. Finaly, just before midnight, all people not working were asleep and the night sounds of crying babies, chirps of crickets and small animal sounds were all that could be heard. A small fire was kept burning all night in order to scare away the bigger wild animals. During the night, the mosquitos buzzed incessantly around the heads and in the ears of those trying to sleep. Some nights it rained all night and everything stayed wet, making the travelers more miserable than would otherwise be the case. With muddy trails, mosquitos, snakes, cold weather, rain, sick children, overturning wagons, lack of trails to follow, indians and things staying wet, the increased pain, misery and suffering quickly became a way of life. On any typical day, everyone on the wagon train was up at 4 a.m. and immediately set to work, repeating the jobs they had done the night before; Feeding and watering the animals, and filling all the water barrels while the women prepared breakfast, usually consisting of hoecakes, fried meat and coffee for everybody. Then the children had to be cared for and fed. After breakfast, everything had to be repacked, reloaded and lashed down on the wagons, the livestock had to be rounded up and kept together until the wagons began moving. The hunters went first. By the time the group was ready to go, most people were already tired from lack of sleep and from all the work that had been done at the beginning of the day. The night guards had most of the day to try for some sleep, but that was not easy on a loud, bumpy and very uncomfortable wagon. Finaly, with the wagon train on the move, the loose livestock were a huge problem because of the little control the settlers were able to exercise over them. Keeping them on the trail of the wagons required constant chasing, steering and caring for them all day. Along the way, they passed a few outposts and supply/trading posts which were built of logs and occupied usually by previous settlers who found living along the route to be a little easier by buying, selling and trading goods such as tools, weapons, animal hides and edibles from the Indians and other settlers, and the passing wagon trains. In the absence of money, the trade of goods was the prevalent way of doing business. These outposts also served as sources of information to all travelers concerning other settlers, indians, forts, and directions, but most importantly, they provided information on Indian troubles and trouble spots such as trees down, trail washouts, stream crossings, or landslides, or large trees across the trails ahead HOW THEY LIVED BACK THEN Upon arriving at a new destination, the travelers learned that the government would sell frontier land at a low cost per hundred acres, with the stipulation that the buyer would clear and plant 3 acres of the land every calendar year, for every hundred acres received, up to a limit of about 260 acres per family, depending upon the number of people in the family. Prior to the establishment of local land offices, no limits existed on acreage for new settlers. From earlier settlers in the area, they learned that although the land was free, many of them worked as share-croppers, or at other work for various periods of time. Some worked as carpenters, wagon makers, "coopers" (barrel makers/carpenters), seamstresses, tailors, blacksmiths, shoe makers and so forth. But most worked as share-croppers and that means performing back-breaking, common labor, farming someone else’s land for them, for half of whatever is produced, after expenses are subtracted. The prevalent crops were corn, peanuts, tobacco, cotton, and tar or pitch, but with tobacco and cotton being the principal crops. However, The English government wanted lots of tar, which the settlers harvested from the abundant pine trees in the area. England would buy this production for a pittance, and take trade in payment too. In acquiring title to public land being transferred for the first time by the Government back then, the buyer received a "Patent". But when transferring ownership of that same land after that, the new buyer would receive a "Deed". Therefore, these first arrivals received Patents, sometimes referred to as "Grants". But Grants were usually free land acquired from the government, for some service rendered. The acquisition of land, or a job, was the first step in a monstrous, lifetime work project for everyone concerned, for the land had to be cleared not only of trees, but also of their stumps and many large rocks. Digging up and moving stumps is a hugely demanding job and I speak from personal experience. It takes two strong men about one hour of fast, hard work to expose all the roots of the stump of a mature tree. Once all the roots are cut loose from the main stump, there is almost always a very deep, long and large taproot, which grows straight downward from the base of the stump, meaning you cannot get at it to cut it because the stump and its upper roots cover it from above and it is so deep that much back-breaking digging with shovels, and chopping with axes is necessary. Once the stump has been cut loose however, a two-mule team was chained to it and if they were strong enough it could usually be pulled up. Then it would have to be dragged down into the swamp and left there, or stacked in the field to be burned after drying out for four or five weeks. One hour for one stump, when there are hundreds, usually thousands of them, meant a huge, back-breaking and time- consuming job which produced no food or any other benefit of any kind in the short term. But, with shelter being the immediate need on a new tract of land, the settlers set about working in teams, first clearing their spots for log houses. Those rich and fortunate enough to own wagons were lucky, because crude Lean-to’s made of sapling trees were the first shelters for the less fortunate. Those with wagons could live for a time in the wagon and even expand its space by attaching a lean-to to it. The location of their log houses was important and they were located as close as possible to a source of good drinking water, preferably a spring. Having to dig a forty or fifty foot-deep well, was a luxury which could be ill-afforded, when they didn’t even have a house to live in. They worked together to get the jobs done, handling the big, heavy logs, working on first one house, then the other, cutting the trees down, trimming them and dragging the resulting logs to the house site. The debarking and splitting of the logs and putting up the framework and then making hundreds of thousands of handmade wooden shingles for the roofs, took several weeks. Dirt floors sufficed at the time. Houses were crude and consisted of only one room. Wooden floors and porches were luxuries which would have to wait. The clearing of land and construction of houses took several of the summer months and the settlers were hard-pressed to get the houses done and a supply of firewood cut for the 4 to 5 months of winter which lay just ahead of them, beginning in November. They also needed lots of animal hides, dried and cured, prepared for the winter, by the women and children. Teamwork among all concerned was an absolute necessity and meant the difference between life and death most of the time. Syrup and cornbread for breakfast, turnips or grease/gravy and cornbread for lunch/dinner and the same for supper, were their primary foods. Meat was a rarity because of the small supply of gunpowder and shot, which were expensive and needed for protection from Indians which was a priority. That forced them to use traps for wild animals and meat. Meat was preserved by smoking it for a week or more, but that required a small smokehouse and lots of wood, then someone to attend to the smoking process. Vegetables were mostly non-existent most of that first summer season. At that time, they had no means of communicating over long distances with each other except by runner and in cases of Indian attacks, which occurred too frequently, the runner himself would become the prime target of the Indians. Before long however, those who could afford one, had put a large iron bell up on a 30 foot pole at the edge of their yards which were rung by pulling a rope. About noon every day, the ringing of these bells meant come and eat, to the field workers. With houses so far apart, it was clear whose bell was ringing. If the bell rang at any other time, especially at night, it meant an emergency had occurred at that particular house, and anyone hearing it ran to help. Five peals of the bell meant come and eat. Ten meant emergency here, need help. Twenty, meant a life or death situation had developed at that house and when an emergency occurred some rode their mules at a dead run, whether in daytime, or the dead of night. But when the bell rang at night, it filled everyone with dread, for it was a sure sign of very serious trouble at that house. The house was on fire, someone was dying, they were being attacked by Indians, or other disasters were occurring. The settlers were collectively hard working people who supported and cared for one another. Each depended on the others for help if anything happened because the situation could easily reverse tomorrow and usually did. Women worked themselves to death for their children. Everyone starved because of the lack of adequate and nourishing food. Most mothers were too starved themselves to feed the babies much and breast milk or cows milk were painfully inadequate and usually not available. Cows milk was very scarce. Medical care was non-existent and even if they could find a doctor, he was either too busy, gone to take care of someone else, or they had no money to pay him. Besides he usually only had herbs and/or Indian cures for medicine. So people, especially young ones, mothers and babies most of all, were sick a lot on top of the miserable lives they lived. During childbirth, women were almost always attended by other women and many died from excessive loss of blood and infection, following childbirth. More died from being undernourished. In the absence of adequate medical care, many babies died from all types of sicknesses usually brought on by their own malnourishment, lack of medical care and unsanitary living conditions. Everybody usually went barefooted. Most but not all women, had one pair of shoe's called "Sunday go to meeting shoe's", because church services, visiting, marriages, or funerals were about the only times they were ever worn. Although the early settlers had no schools, when one was finaly built, the children had to walk back and forth to it every day. Sometimes, that was a long distance and school was usually considered a waste of time. With this country being primarily agricultural then, that attitude prevailed until the 1940’s. Very few children went higher than the second or third grade because they were needed to work in the fields and little knowledge was needed for that.This was a case of "strong backs and weak minds". Consequently, even two hundred years after the early Bedsoles arrived here, many still could not read or write and for the few who could, they had very little "book learning" and usually forgot what little they knew in a short period of time, because their primary way of life was farming. So, the vast majority of them never went to school at all. Those who did had to endure unmerciful hounding and being laughed at by all the others, who spent any free time ridiculing and pointing at each others bare butts, and falling-apart, ragged, hand me down, faded, hand-made pants, shirts, coats, dresses and blouses, which were made either of cloth, leather, or canvas-like material, usually held together with wire and pegs or nails. Girls, although barefooted like all the rest, usually wore dresses made of the lightest cloth available at the time. Unfortunately, this was usually also canvas-like, leather, or hand made cloth. In the winter, everyone suffered mightily from the lack of shoes, socks and winter clothing designed for the purpose. Although the soles of their feet were tough from going barefooted, their feet almost froze in the winter and when thawed-out, all the children cried for hours with the throbbing pain in their feet. Back then, winter clothing was very inadequate and the majority of earlier settlers made them from deer and bear hides. Covers for their beds were also animal hides in the winter. Any such hides not properly cured, were infested with bugs and worms and this was a continuing problem for them. Imagine having to sleep on a bed made of tree limbs, lying on and under animal hides which were infested with these parasites, which you had to listen to crawling around in your bed all night. Boiling the hides killed these bugs, but made the hides extremely stiff and unpliable. The women did learn to make shoes from heavy canvas-like cloth by triple-layering the cloth and sewing them several times. These were usually made only for the men because of all the walking they did in the fields and woods. However, such "Shoes" only lasted perhaps 4 weeks. Later, as softer cloth became available, shirts and dresses were made of fertilizer or flour sack material, in addition to "Store bought" cloth. The fertilizer sack material was so rough, thick and stiff, it was like wearing sandpaper. After turning their heads a few times, the necks of wearers would be raw and sore. Consequently, the fertilizer bag material was immensely disliked. Almost all clothing was hand-made by the women, regardless of how crude such clothing was and appeared to be. In the fall, several women would get together and make quilts by suspending a framework from the ceiling of the house and then sitting around this in wooden, straight-back chairs, they sewed together the thousands of small pieces of cloth they had collected all year, into a bottom sheet. This was then layered with cotton from which they had removed the seeds. This was then covered with another piece of cloth and Finally the finished quilt was sewed. The problem was, there were always small bugs, weevils and mites in the cotton and no way to get them out, except by boiling in lye soap, otherwise everyone lived with them. At night, they could be heard moving around inside the quilts and pillows. Storing And Preserving Food There was no way to store, preserve, or save vegetables except for dried peas, onions, corn, beans and potatoes. But even those were eaten by pests. Barns were filled to the roof with corn in the fall, but in the three months of December, January and February it was just about gone. Much of it eaten by the rats and mice. As the Bedsoles acquired additional livestock and had more children over time, this problem was magnified due to the initial houses, barns and cribs being painfully small and no longer capable of holding the increased need for an adequate supply of food and feed and the lack of vegetable preservation for long periods of winter weather.This of course, necessitated the enlargement of existing, and/or construction of new, larger storage buildings, all of which added to the already terrible daily workload. In short order, with no way to protect their buildings from termites, rats and other destructive pests, and due to leaks in the roofs, the barns and cribs became ramshackle, falling down, dilapidated buildings, sitting close to the ground, full of grub worms, weevils, rats by the thousands, snakes, beetles and other bugs coming in through the thousands of holes and cracks in the walls, floors and roofs. These pests were all eating the corn and other winter food which had been saved for the families. Bears quickly learned that the smokehouses contained meat and they lost no time in ripping and tearing their way into these flimsy structures and eating, scattering, spoiling and destroying the contents. This required immediate attention when it happened, because meat was a commodity which was widely and highly treasured as food and for trade. Many times the protection of the meat meant someone had to stay up and guard the smokehouse every night. This also meant one less person to work in the fields to produce food. Whatever corn could be salvaged for food, had to be taken to a mill or hand-ground with rocks into meal for cornbread from time to time. Since one-third of the meal had to be given to the miller in payment for the grinding, too little was left for the family to last out a long winter season. Because of all the bugs and rats, when the women started to cook bread, they had to spend an hour before that picking the weevils, worms, bugs and especially rat excrement out of the meal. Nobody worried much about things like rat and mice droppings though, which were too small and numerous to pick out of the meal. It was just considered "Flavoring" for lack of a better word. There was no way to keep green vegetables through the winter months, but potato's were stored by digging a hole in the ground about 4 feet across and 3 feet deep, lining it with dry pine straw, filling the hole with potato's, then covering them with more pine straw. The turpentine in the straw would keep out the rats, bugs and worms. Hand made wooden shingles were made and stuck in the ground around these holes at an angle leaning towards the center so they formed a kind of teepee. The shingles were then covered with about a foot of dirt. But the problem was, if just one potato started to rot, as they usually did for any reason at all, the entire lot was lost within 3 to 5 days. In general, the most the farmers could hope for was half of what was stored to last long enough to be eaten. That meant they had to produce and store twice as much as they needed in order to have enough for the winter months after spoilage and pests were taken into consideration. But that meant more cleared land, more planting and constant cultivation until harvest time. The various but increasing needs of these families constantly demanded more and more time and labor. Dried Peas and beans could be kept in bags but many times those were not available. When they were, the rats soon ate holes in the bags and pests of every kind got to them and into them too. In the summer, everybody had so much work to do they had little time to prepare, plant and take care of a garden. Work in the fields was a twelve months a year, seven days a week, fourteen hours a day job. Hunting was limited to meat for food, or animal hides, for clothes and bed covers. It was generally not done for fun or pleasure. Many people could not afford a gun and with so many kids around all the time, they were afraid to have one. However, due to the danger from Indians and wild animals, almost everyone eventually acquired a gun from necessity to acquire food. But with the smaller wild animals such as rabbits, possums and raccoons and the inaccuracy of the guns at longer distances, sometimes the only choice for getting these small animals was traps and animals were usually too smart to fall for traps. So meat was a real rarity and a huge treat when acquired. Invariably though, all the neighbors came over to share when it was acquired by any family, if they did'nt live too far away. In due time, a log store was built near the Beaverdam settlement and trade became a way of life. The settlers and Indians traded with and among the store and themselves and of course, the people all traded with the store owner. They traded cloth, sugar, salt, grease, eggs, skins, leather, vegetables, fruit, lead, gunpowder, clothing, smoked meat, corn, lumber, shoes, farming tools and etc. and in a constant stream, more and more such goods made their way from the supply ships and ports from England to ports in Louisiana, Virginia, North Carolina, New York, Philadelphia and other ports in the "New Land" and then to the frontier settlements via wagon trains. Marauding Indians quickly learned to rob and steal these supplies and many times, to kill the accompanying people. The addition of guards to these wagons followed, but this necessitated higher prices being paid by the settlers and farmers for the goods being transported, due to the cost of the guards to the transporter. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/nc/bladen/bios/familyhi187bs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/ncfiles/ File size: 100.2 Kb