Becoming Americans (41 page)

      Anne prayed forgiveness for her willfulness, then arranged for word to arrive from Joseph, begging for the temporary help of Richard.

      "My boys stick together," Anne told James. "You know that."

      Within three years of the Fewox arrival, "Going over to Batts Grave" became synonymous with going to visit the Devil, for the few pious souls of Albemarle. Anne never called herself pious, but she didn't like to be ill-thought of by the few people—other than the Quakers—who made any pretensions to religion. Some people called themselves Presbyterians, but few Carolinians even bothered to do that.

      "Going to Batts Grave" meant going to the huts and to the shed Fewox and the boys had built for sheltering patrons and observers of cock fights, wrestling and gouging bouts, dog fights, bull baiting, and the occasional bear baiting. Quaker-dominated Assemblies made laws to stop these sports, but fortunes were still made and lost by the bettors of these events; lives were made and lives were ruined.

      Apprentice, servant, slave and master might rub shoulders at a match as spectators, but the participants in contests were generally separated by class and status. Anne would hear complaints about this democratic mixing from gentlemen patrons, just off a boat. She'd sympathized with their view and tell them that, in this backwater colony, even the leaders had started from the same stock and circumstance as many of the common people. There was no hierarchy, here, based on birth. It was the fault of being a mere proprietary colony, she felt.

      Usually a smirk of dismissal answered her unsolicited opinions. Anne Fewox—the granddaughter of Mister Cade Ware, the daughter of the respected John Biggs—turned forty-six years old in 1694, and condescending reminders of her present status stung deeply. Finally, she lost the constant battle with her better side and spoke out to insist that her husband record his headrights and claim his land acreage. It was land ownership, only, that brought respectability.

      The General Court session of February 1694 was remarkable, in some ways. It was at this Court that Anne was finally successful in getting James to register his headrights. As was often the case, Court was held in the home of Diana Foster, another tavern-keeper, but it was at this Court session that wills were proven of two giants of the times—ferocious enemies for years—George Durant and the still-hated Seth Sothel. Their closely-spaced deaths were the occasion for both grief and jubilation in Old Albemarle, and both sentiments brought profit to the Fewox business. Word had arrived that the Proprietors might send Archdale back—one of their own, although a Quaker—to be Governor, and that challenges would be issued to ancient land patents. Old Governor Berkeley must be turning in his grave, Anne thought, knowing that his widow had sold his Proprietary share in Carolina to a Quaker! As did everyone else, she wondered what land patents would be challenged. Fewox's claim to Batts Grave was locally recognized as stretching back to Nathaniel Batts's purchase from the Indians, but there was no paper. Should Fewox lose Batts Grave, where would they be? After the Court's approval they had headrights to 350 acres of unclaimed land which wouldn't be challenged.

      Anne's cause of concern for haste proved justified in August when the crop of corn that she, Edy, and Edward had so carefully tended was invaded by hogs belonging to Benjamin Laker, Esquire, a man related to the Deputy Governor. In drunken inspiration, some of the Harveys and the Durants goaded James, reassured him, then pressed him to sue their friend Laker—only as a legal formality—to establish his title once and for all. They, too, had similar, ancientlyheld lands.

      At the General Court session for September of 1694, James Fewox sued Benjamin Laker—himself a member of the Council—for trespassing. To assure a fair trial, his father-in-law, Deputy Governor Thomas Harvey, excused himself from the case. But then, to the amazement of the Fewoxes, gentlemen friends of Laker—patrons of the tavern!—swore that Laker had legal claim to the island, and that Fewox lacked a fence, anyway. James held no hope in fighting against both the intriguing old-timers and the pious Quaker powers in the precinct who'd have
all
amusements and recreations outlawed. Word had come that the Quaker Archdale was, indeed, now Governor and James lost his case. He was allowed two months to abandon the island but was immediately affirmed in his claim to the additional headrights of Richard—who had returned at his mother's summons— and of John Haswell, won in a bet.

      Anne was not distressed, she was relieved. Soon they would have tobacco land. She held on to the hope of a better life for her grown children. She'd been especially worried about Edy.

      Edy Williams turned twenty-five in 1694. She'd developed dexterity with hoods and scarves and handkerchiefs and laden trays and bundles of laundry—or just with her posed or fluttering hands—to hide her face. Not only was she badly scarred from the pox, she'd been kicked by her cow, Lady, and had lost two of her front teeth. Edy seldom spoke, thinking that she sounded worse than had Old Shaw, and that this was God's curse for having urged her mother to marry the old man.

      The last months on Batts Grave were revealing to Anne. She saw in her husband what he'd not let her see before. Once, he knocked a servant senseless, and twice he knocked
her
to the ground.

      James was humiliated by the betrayal from the wealthy patrons he'd considered friends. He was of better birth and background than these Carolina rogues! How dare they set themselves above him? The self-inflicted sting, though, came from the knowledge that he had let himself serve as tool for the likes of the Durants and the Harveys, who were eager for their friend Laker to have Batts Grave and who were hoping to win approval of the new Governor.

      "The debauchery has become too public," they rebuffed James. "Perhaps you could be more profitable across the Sound?"

      James's simmering resentment exploded on a snowy night in December. Chunks of dried mud had fallen from in-between most of the logs, and snow sifted through the cracks to make damp spots on the dirt floor. Edy and Robert were rolling a large piece of wood toward the daub and wattle fireplace, when an earthenware mug flew across the room and hit the crouching young woman in her head, knocking her unconscious. James ran to Edy and, when he was certain she was alive, rose to pounce upon the drunken patron whose mug it was: Thomas Philpott, a member of the Durant faction, and a friend of Benjamin Laker.

      James pushed through the smoky room of drunken men and knocked the pleading Philpott to the ground, wrapped the man's long curls around his fist and began banging the man's head into the packed sand. Philpott struggled to throw off the older man, but James straddled him and, with his thumbs, tore into the corners of the man's eyes, popping one of the spheres from its socket. Philpott screamed as his friends struggled to pull James away and to get help for Philpott.

      James went back to Edy, where Anne was now kneeling with a cloth, pressing it against the deep gash in her child's forehead. Though breathing, the girl had not come around. They carried her limp body to the house as Philpott's friends lifted him and dragged him to a boat.

      For a month, Edy lay on her straw pallet and recuperated, as the Fewoxes and Williamses prepared to abandon the island to Laker. They went back and forth across the Sound, acquainting themselves with the southern shore. It was a time in which James Fewox cemented ties to old patrons that he'd previously made some effort to be wary of before his betrayal by the "better sorts."

      The Albemarle Sound and, to the south, the even larger Pamticoe Sound, encompassed a fist-shaped, swampy peninsula. The area was home and open highway to scores of pirates. Their smaller boats could easily pass through and over shallow inlets to the sea, chase and capture bounty-laden cargo ships, relieve those of goods and treasure, then return to their havens in Carolina. The governments of Virginia and South Carolina were outraged and terrified by the blatant harboring of these pirates by the people and government of North Carolina. But the pirates were an important source of goods to the Albemarle colonists. Ships from England rarely bothered to tempt the shifting shoals, and the New England traders who did come charged double prices for goods. The pirates—though a class to be publicly condemned—performed a valuable service by delivering much-needed supplies and much-coveted luxuries. Everyone profited from this silent cooperation, and many North Carolinians applauded the misery ladled out to their arrogant neighbors to the north and to the south.

      The Scuppernong River flowed from this fist into the south side of the Albemarle Sound, was almost directly across from Batts Grave and, like the island, was on the border of Perquimans and Chowan Precincts. The Scuppernong, like the Yeopim River and Yeopim Creek, emptied into a bay, although this broader bay held no large islands. The western headland cupped the bay, curved further back to the west, and rose above the marshland and swamp that fell behind it. The Scuppernong River, itself, was navigable for a short distance southward, then turned sharply to the south and east, fed by the low, swampy land that bounded it. James Fewox staked-out the high, western headland of the bay, and 350 acres of swamp and land between this headland and the northern shore of the western stretch of the Scuppernong.

      Anne chose the spot for the house, near the point of this western side. It would face the east, toward a sun rising over water. Richard and Edward wanted to make her feel a connection with home, too, so they named a small creek that drained into the bay behind the house, "Deep Creek." But the lodging that Fewox and the boys built was worse than the embarrassing hovel Anne had once occupied in Norfolk County. James lacked the skills, he admitted, and he lacked the resources to build better. This was a temporary shelter, he assured her, and things would get better. His first concern was with re-establishing the business he'd had across the Sound. Here, away from prying eyes of Quakers and authorities, he could easily provide his now-favored clientele with the services and goods they wanted. He began by buying cattle from William Powell, on the eastern side of the river, and driving them back to his land for slaughter, milk, and gaming.

      Bull baiting was a popular sport and, second to knife fights, the favorite of pirates. A roaring bull was tied to a stake inside an enclosure, and then six or eight dogs were let loose upon the animal to torment it, to bite and tear at it until the dogs were killed, or the larger animal subdued. Heavy and ferocious bulldogs were bred for the purpose, and dogs that survived several matches were valuable properties. Pups sired by those animals fetched a large sum. Fewox's new establishment soon became known as the site for the most exciting, highestwagered bull baitings. The meat from these exhausted bulls was tender and delicious, and the tallow saved from the fat had a value, too, for more than lighting or for making soap.

      Pirates paid well for the tallow when time came to careen their boats. Fewox allowed his new friends to sail into the Scuppernong, into and around the hidden turn to where the river narrowed and the sailors could beach the ships. Sometimes they used ropes and pulleys attached to nearby trees to lay the ship on a side for scraping away worms and barnacles it had collected in tropical waters. They melted tallow to coat the hull. A busy ship might require this overhaul three times in a year. Most of a ship's year of illegal enterprise was spent in the waters near New Providence, Bermuda, the home base for many pirates whose range of operations carried them from the busy Spanish Main to the equally prosperous and crowded trade routes of the Red Sea. The greatest delight of Anne's Anglican patrons was the arrival of an occasional captured Turk, brought here from those distant raids. With them came exotic goods: silk, spices and scents.

      Anne had protested at first, then turned her head when James began trading with the pirates. Ale, spirits and trading goods were payment for homecooked meals, sport, and salted pork and beef for the sailors to take with them on their longer raiding voyages. Their behavior seemed no ruder than most of the patrons'. She remembered that her first husband's friend—the renowned Captain Bartholomew Ingolbreitsen—was not a man of pure reputation and, at last, her daughter, Edy, was finding happiness with one of them. His name was Thomas Carman.

      Thomas Carman was an on-again, off-again pirate. He was loud, he was vulgar, and he was exceptionally offensive to behold. The pox had left him more scarred than Edy, and—worse—his last twenty-years diet of nothing but pork—so typical in Carolina— had given him the eating-away sickness of yaws, to the degree that most of his nose was gone. A patch, sometimes, covered the place where his right eye had been; a loss in battle, for which his captain and crew had paid him the traditional five hundred pieces-of-eight. Anne was talking with Carman when her daughter finally awakened from the month-long sleep and looked up, saw him first, and never looked her mother's way. The possibility of her child having happiness made Anne think differently and less hastily.

      Anne had talked with Thomas Carman on the many occasions he'd drunk at Batts Grave tavern. He spent freely and he paid his bills—frequently, in gold. Carman was from the town of Maidstone, in Kent, where Anne's father was born. His was among the many peasant families who'd been evicted from their small land holdings when, during the last century, peasant families were being displaced by flocks of sheep to supply England's booming textile industry. The starving Carman family sold Thomas to a ship's captain to serve as cabin boy, but the boy was soon taken by Dutch privateers during the conflicts of the 1660's. He was recaptured by an English privateer the next year and sold to a Virginia planter. But the boy craved the sea, by then, and after suffering in the tobacco fields of Lancaster County for the rest of his indenture, he signed on with an English merchant who had traded with his master. When this ship, too, was seized by pirates and the crew was offered an opportunity to join-up, Thomas Carman gladly swore his oath of loyalty to the new captain, crew, and to their black flag.