Chapter 4

May 21

Having concluded business in Westham yesterday, we paid to be ferried across the river this morning, including the wagons carrying everything I had purchased, as well as the eighty-seven female slaves I was able to buy. Several of them knew how to ride the horses I bought, but most rode in the wagons.

Rather than go west towards Lynch’s Ferry, once we ferried across the river, we followed the road southwest. Aside from it being a shorter route home, it would take us through towns and cities that we had not yet visited.

May 23

While shopping for rifles and tools in Petersburg two days later, I noticed several Negroes from town talking to the Negroes in my group. That wasn’t unusual as the Negro men with me did most of the searching for female slaves I might be able to buy. I turned my attention to buying weapons and tools.

Petersburg was a surprise. It was the first city where I was unable to buy any female slaves. Instead, nineteen families of free Negroes joined us, as well as six single Negro females and a dozen single males.

While free Negroes were accepted in Petersburg, they were only paid a fraction of what a white man earned for doing the same job and were lucky to eke out a subsistence existence. The men with me had assured them that everyone at my Manor was treated the same and explained that I was buying single female slaves at the request of the more than three hundred free Negro men living and working at the Manor.

One of the new Negroes was a blacksmith so I bought everything he needed to open another smithy at the Manor. Even with the two that Father sent with us, and one more who had since joined us, we had grown enough that we needed at least one more.

The men I left at William and Mary College caught up with us in Petersburg. “Obadiah said that the second metal is zinc,” they said. “He wrote out instructions for Asa about the best way to separate the three metals,” he continued, handing me a thick packet of pages wrapped securely in oilskin.

May 28

Continuing south, we crossed the Roanoke River and turned west. Along the way, we continued to visit small farms, and even two plantations. We found a flock of sheep at the second plantation, something several people had commented that we should raise more of for the wool. I knew that some of the wool from the Reynolds Estate was sold to ship captains for hard to come by cash.

When we left the plantation, we were herding two dozen young ewes and two rams. I was grateful that we were already more than halfway home.

Half a day after buying the sheep and the three dogs to control them, I left three men to guide the sheep home while we went on ahead. Even cattle were faster than sheep. Even walking backwards all day was faster than herding the sheep. Those things are the slowest, laziest animals I have ever dealt with, and seem to be incapable of walking in a straight line. I was starting to have reservations about my decision to purchase them. If wool wasn’t such a sure source of income, I might have taken them back to the farmer.

June 17

Home! Finally!

Well, the sheep will be a few more days, and I’m surprised to see that our flock of sheep seems to have nearly doubled in my absence. Our original flock of thirty was compliments of my brother. Turns out that the men I sent back from Norfolk with the cattle also happened upon a plantation with sheep, and bought two dozen ewes and two mature rams, as well as three herding dogs. I laughed since that was exactly what I purchased.

Word had arrived from New Bern that South Carolina agreed to sell me the remaining Cherokee lands--cheaply.

Great, now I had to find the main Cherokee villages and talk to each of the chiefs. After visiting the Cherokee village on my property, I breathed a sigh of relief. They had already sent messengers to the main Cherokee leaders to explain my offer.

“What do you intend to do with our lands?” one chief asked.

I explained, as best I could, about creating a trust for their lands. While I would buy the land, I wouldn’t own it and the land would be held in a permanent trust for the Cherokee people. The trust wouldn’t allow me, or any white man, to sell any of their land or allow anyone else to buy any portion of it. The Cherokee would be required to allow up to six wagon roads through their lands so pioneers could pass through them safely.

“What will that accomplish?” he asked.

“It preserves the lands for your people. If gold is found on your lands, white men will not be allowed to invade the land to search for it. They cannot hunt on your lands, cut down trees, or build farms. Unless your people give permission, no white man can use your lands for anything other than traveling across them on one of the six roads you establish.

“In addition, the agreement does not prohibit your people from charging travelers for using your roads. You should choose roads that allow them fast and easy passage and make sure they are wide enough for two wagons to pass each other. You should set up camps that are an easy walk each day for the travelers to use at night and that are near water and have a place for their livestock to graze. You could ask them to give you a steel knife, a hatchet, a blanket, tobacco, or something else that is inexpensive to pay for their passage, unless the travelers have large herds of animals with them. Then you could ask for a little more,” I suggested.

June 18

Today was spent reviewing everything that had been accomplished in my absence. Knowing that I planned to buy more cattle, additional pastures had been fenced in. The sheep were in one of them. The milking shed had been extended and the women were hoping to get enough additional milk to make cheese.

Our mint was still operating both day and night. It was difficult to believe how much gold and silver had been mined and smelted into crude ingots in the last two months. The smelter at our fledgling lead/zinc/silver mine did their best to separate the metals. Since the silver required the highest temperature to melt, the first part that melted, the lead and zinc, was poured off into other crucibles. For now, the gangue from smelting the combined ore was being saved in case Asa learned that it needed to be smelted again to recover more metal.

Houses were still being built. With the influx of new people, we were once again a long way from having a house for everyone, and most of the single men lived in barracks. The arrival of the single Negro women should soon see many of the single men moving out of the barracks and into houses once they were built.

The catwalk around the inside of the stockade was complete, as were two forty-foot-high watch towers.

The sawmills and brickworks were operating at full capacity. While I did not visit them, I had heard that two new sawmills were operating on the property north of the river. I could see dozens of Indian women working in the produce garden and fields this morning.

Hemp had been planted so we could start making rope like they did at the Reynolds Estate in Virginia. It was yet another industry Grandfather and Benjamin had that I had wanted to start but had waited until the more important things were finished--like housing--although we needed more houses again.

About the only industry they had that we were missing was making maple syrup. That was because we were unable to find any sugar maple trees. Instead, I had my brother send me seeds so we could plant our own. We started them in clay pots and planted them in areas where we had cleared trees from hillsides in the forest. Still, it would be decades before we could begin tapping the trees.

The number of smokehouses had increased, again, now up to twenty-four. The hunters must have been busy since they were all full. In addition, we still have six wagons loaded with salt.

“We filled eight at the salt deposit. When the people in Salisbury learned that we brought back salt, everyone in town wanted to buy some so we sold one wagon load to them, and one has already been distributed here. The bags of salt from the other six have been unloaded into the brick storeroom we built just for them,” Ralzieman told me.

The salt storeroom now had a brick floor and then wooden pallets to keep the bags of salt off the bricks, which would get damp.

“What else do we need?” I asked, looking around at everyone working.

“Probably more Negro women. We already used clay pots to plant seeds for apple, peach, plum, and cherry trees. We have people clearing hillsides so we can transplant the saplings this winter. We should have enough hillsides cleared by this winter to plant the small orchards of chestnuts, hickory nuts, hazelnuts, and black walnuts that you want to grow. We already planted two hundred seeds of each in pots.”

Looking around, I felt a burst of pride. I could see that most of what I originally felt would take a decade or more to accomplish was done or nearly done. Yeah, I had been lucky to find the gold, but it was going to a good cause. I was building a Manor, an estate really, where hundreds of people could live a comfortable and hopefully, safe, life.

Looking to the future, I rode around the area, and then to the top of the slope where our housing was. We chose this hill as the site to build our housing because it had a gradual slope and was high enough that it would take a flood necessitating the building of an ark to endanger us. The stockade which now surrounded us was well over two hundred feet above the level of the Yadkin River, which was nearly five miles away. Even the nearby creeks were more than a hundred feet below the level of our stockade. While I had not planned for it at the time, it meant that anyone trying to attack us would be fighting their way uphill.

The only problem was that the area directly outside the stockade was currently covered with our gardens and fields, providing places for attackers to hide, even though the vegetation wouldn’t provide cover from our bullets or cannon shot. That meant we needed to move the garden and fields next spring, putting them farther from the housing and necessitating a longer walk for the people tending them.

July 7

The last of the messengers I sent to the Cherokee leaders returned today, along with the Chief he had been sent to find. I have spoken with the leaders who have already arrived, explaining my proposal. Whether they believe me or not, I have no idea.

July 8

My presence was again requested at a meeting with the Cherokee this morning. Once more, they asked the same questions that I had already answered--repeatedly.

This time, I brought a judge from Salisbury that I asked to help explain the trust to the Cherokee leaders. He gave them the same answers that I had already given.

I finally concluded what we had to say. “You already decided last winter not to continue your attacks against the colonists. I’m only offering to reward you for that decision. I could buy your land without your permission if I wanted to use it for myself. While I spend the winter in some of the northernmost parts of your lands, with the permission of the local villages that we help, your lands are too far from mine for me to use. Yes, I have been buying more and more land here where I live, but it is all connected. Most of the land I’m buying here is to provide the increasing number of Cherokee, Tutelo, and Catawba who live here more room for their villages and more area to hunt. Even a few Tuscarora and Powhatan have joined us after being driven out of their lands.

“We allow them to join us or to build their own villages. Most work with us and we share our food with them. We supply them with blankets, steel tools, iron pots for cooking, and many other things because they work as hard as everyone else. I have even given their best hunters better rifles like the ones we use. All I ask of them is to cooperate with us and not to bother other colonists living nearby.

“While I’m not offering to buy rifles and other goods for your people, I am offering to buy your land to prevent other colonists from buying it. Once I buy it and put it in the trust, nobody else will be able to use it without your permission. The only conditions are that you refrain from attacking travelers who are just passing through your lands and that you create six roads for colonists to use, as I have already explained.”

“Thank you for your generous offer. We accept,” one of the chiefs I had spoken with previously said.

I pulled out four copies of the proposed treaty that had been sent to me. Each of the chiefs signed them, as did I. The treaties had already been approved and signed by the colonial governments of both North and South Carolina. Now I just had to pay for the land, requiring yet another trip to New Bern, and then to Charleston.

Once the agreements were signed, I located the four groups of men I had prepared in advance to survey the Cherokee lands. I had already made a rough estimate of how vast those lands were based on reports of how many days it took to walk from one end to the other, and from one side to the other. Of course, that would make a rectangle, and I knew their lands were not a rectangle. Their borders were usually rivers or mountains.

July 11

It took us three days to make sure we had everything we needed for the trip. Aside from the North Carolina paper money, we carried saddlebags full of gold coins, ingots, and nuggets. I doubted that South Carolina was going to accept North Carolina’s paper money for the land.

The four survey teams left yesterday, their equipment, supplies, and rough maps carefully stowed on packhorses. I was surprised that they were to be accompanied by several warriors, but I guess it only made sense. They wanted to make sure the surveyors were safe and would make sure they surveyed the correct borders. My agreement with the governments of the two states was that I would pay initially for how much land I estimated was involved. If the survey indicated that their lands were bigger, I would pay for the difference. If they were smaller, the states would add to the Cherokee lands. By then, we should have minted enough new coins to pay any extra if it was needed.

July 19

We have arrived! The only problem we had during the trip was with an aggressive mother bear when we accidentally ventured too near her cubs. I found out that my modified Brown Bess rifle was a great permanent bear deterrent. Fortunately, the encounter occurred only two days from home. I left five men to deal with the three carcasses while the rest of us continued our trip to New Bern.

One of those men rode back to the Manor and got more help, including a wagon. Once the extra help arrived, the men I left behind hurried to catch up with us.

My first order of business upon reaching New Bern was to take a copy of the treaty to the recently elected Governor, Richard Caswell.

“Well done,” he congratulated me as he shook my hand. My next stop was to buy the land, with the Governor eagerly accompanying me. At least it only cost me paper money, and not gold. I figured that was fair since the land wasn’t currently being used by the state or settlers.

I also bought the eleven rifles waiting for me. The gunsmiths in town knew that I would buy any decent long rifle, especially .48, and .62 caliber ones, as well as an occasional .25 caliber rifle for small game. Whenever they were not busy with something else, they made long rifles to sell me. I obliged them and stopped in every time I was in the city and had my men do the same. This time, there were two new gunsmiths working in town and the original smiths each had added at least two helpers.

July 22

Since the men I left to deal with the bears had caught up with us and had a full day to rest themselves and their mounts, we set out to the south shortly after sunrise, each of us well-rested and recently bathed.

We could have caught a ship headed to Charleston harbor, but I chose to take the extra week or so that I expected the overland trip to require. While I did want to get home, I had not visited any towns or cities south of here since the battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge, and had never visited south of there, especially into South Carolina.

This would give us a chance to buy things we still needed--but no more sheep! If we needed more sheep, we would just wait for them to reproduce unless we found a farmer within a day of us who was willing to sell some. Two of our men at home were charged with tending the sheep. With four rams, they would make sure the offspring of each ram were bred by a different ram. Yeah, we would need to buy new rams in a couple of years, but I hoped herding a lone ram was easier that herding two dozen sheep. I could tie him up inside a wagon if necessary.

On this trip, I hoped to find men looking for work, especially experienced craftsmen, as well as more female slaves. I also wanted more cattle, horses, and guns. It goes without saying that I wanted more powder. My father and brothers were unable to produce enough niter to make all the powder we were going through teaching the Negro men to use the rifles, maintaining our own proficiency, and doing all the hunting we did. Our own niter beds hadn’t begun producing yet. Several of the Negroes showed enough promise with both their marksmanship and their woodland skills that I was considering inviting them to join us for this winter’s long hunt.

Once I was compensated for the supplies and trade goods I bought for the long hunt, three-quarters of the remaining money earned by the men on the long hunt belonged to them. The remaining quarter was shared by those who remained behind because they kept the manor operating all winter while we were gone.

The men who mined and panned for gold also received extra pay from the gold we sold, as did Asa, his sons, and the men working with them. The new Negro women panning gold also receiving the same bonus. Only two of the former Negro troops that had come with me had since set out on their own. The rest realized that they could earn far more working for me than even most white men could hope to earn elsewhere.

Almost every day on our trip south, we passed a farm, plantation, village, or town where we could purchase fresh food, especially since we were using gold nuggets. I also arranged to purchase female slaves, cattle, and horses on our return trip, although I planned to send some of my men to complete those transactions. I did not want extra people, livestock, or wagons to slow us down on the way to Charleston.

July 26

Wilmington was a treasure trove of things we needed. I bought so many rifles and muskets, and so much powder that I sent ten men back towards New Bern to complete the transactions I had already arranged. They took five new wagons, along with ten new male slaves who knew how to drive a wagon, and all the female slaves I bought in town.

Reuben, Frank, and Tomas, my top three free Negroes, spoke to the newly purchased slaves and explained what they could expect at Reynolds Manor, although they had started calling it the Reynolds Plantation.

Once that group was on their way north, we continued farther on towards Charleston.

August 1

Georgetown gave us a chance to rest and recuperate--and get a warm bath. It also gave me a couple of ideas. Indigo was a huge money maker, although not nearly as good as a gold mine. A second idea was growing rice. While we had no marshy areas like they had here, we did have nine millponds complete or nearly complete, with more planned, each with shallow enough areas to grow one to two acres of rice. After a little research into indigo production, I quickly decided against it. Like cotton and tobacco, it was extremely labor intensive and depleted the soil as quickly as tobacco did.

While I knew nothing about growing or harvesting rice, I hired a man who did, one of eight men I hired here. Fortunately, all of them knew how to ride a horse, and I found plenty of good horses for sale.

August 5

We finally reached Charleston this afternoon. Despite the late hour, the Governor greeted me excitedly. I was surprised at the low price they asked for the Cherokee land, even less than what North Carolina had asked. Maybe it was because I was paying with gold, and not just redeeming the worthless paper notes.

After that, my men and I found places to spend the night and to eat dinner.

August 10

The last few days have been extremely productive. I have sent five more wagons back to the Manor; one has rice and flax seeds to plant next spring. Along with the cotton we harvest each fall and the wool we will be shearing each spring, the flax can be spun into thread to use for making linen. All three will give the women something they are able do inside, especially when it rains or during the winter.

I purchased dried figs, as well as pear and grape seeds. I also purchased a hundred more female slaves. Between them and what the men who had begun backtracking from Wilmington would be buying, we had probably exceeded the number we needed.

When we finished in Charleston, we followed the road recommended to us that was headed northwest. We had been told that, with wagons, we should meet the Upper Road in ten days to two weeks. Having never seen this area before, I could only guess that it would take us at least another two or three weeks to get home once we reached the Upper Road.

In Granby I was reminded that we would need more bees but decided to wait until this winter to purchase and transport them.

Once we reached the Upper Road, it only took us twelve days to get home. Much of that was spent searching for the goods we wanted to buy. And yes, I even had three men follow us, herding more sheep home. The deal was too good to pass up.

While still far from having a rifle for every man at the plantation, we should have enough for half of the men, assuming we did not get another large influx of new people. We were already returning with forty more men than we started with. Half were Negroes who knew how to plant and cultivate rice. The rest were predominantly men with mining or smelting experience.

October 1

Time for another trip to New Bern. Yes, I know, I’m missing this winter’s long hunt. I could blame it on Penelope, but I’m just as responsible for her delicate condition as she is, a condition that should resolve itself in January.

Our mills are all complete, for now, including one to grind wheat and one to grind corn. People from as far away as Charlotte Town now bring wheat and corn to us to grind.

Another mill has a trip hammer to help the blacksmiths in their work, and one operates a bellows to help the blacksmiths forge better iron or steel from blooms. The rest of the mills cut our timber into lumber. The resulting piles of sawdust are either used in our growing number of niter beds or left to rot for a year before being added to our compost.

In addition to taking another batch of gold coins to New Bern, we are going to pick up the six cannons that I ordered. I had almost given up on getting them because the six Father ordered in Williamsburg had arrived at the Virginia Manor two weeks ago. The messenger from New Bern let us know that the cannons had only arrived three days before he left to tell us. Between the two orders, we would have twelve cannons, a thousand round shot, and a thousand rounds of canister shot.

When the cannons Father ordered arrived, they included a huge surprise. He had also ordered twenty-four breech loaded French swivel guns. The guns were four and a half feet long and meant to be mounted on a stout post. They were loaded with a mug-shaped device that contained both the powder and either square goose shot or slag from when we refined ore. We test fired it using one of the powder-filled quills we will use for our regular cannons. The swivel cannon is designed for use against cavalry or infantry within four hundred yards. Basically, it is an oversized fowling piece.