Becoming Americans (67 page)

      Nancy worked in furious silence.

      In March of 1744, Willy Biggs rode from the river landing to tell Stephen the news that a big change was happening to their part of the colony. When the Crown bought out the Proprietors in 1729, making North Carolina a Royal Colony, John Lord Carteret—recently become Earl Granville, with the death of his mother—had refused to sell his one-eighth of the province. In 1742, King George II had commanded that the district be surveyed, and finally that was happening.

      Earl Granville's portion was the eighth part of North Carolina that was included from the Virginia border to a line about sixty miles south of it, having no western boundary. This private holding included the oldest settled parts of North Carolina, with two-thirds of its population. Granville's agent, Francis Corbin, was already in Carolina to supervise the survey and had opened an office in Edenton to collect quit rents and issue patents, thereby re-establishing some of the prestige to the town that had gone when the Assembly moved to New Bern. Stephen had been sent an offer to join the survey party. Edward Moseley was one of the Commissioners for this survey, too.

      Edward Moseley continued to be among the most powerful men of the colony and, like many of his class, had moved south to the Cape Fear region as the center of power and of opportunity had shifted there. Since 1739 the former precincts had been made counties and the Assembly had been meeting more often in New Bern than in Edenton. Governor Johnston had large land holdings near the Cape Fear. The competition between the old Albemarle counties and the Cape Fear counties had increased and was growing more bitter. Legislators from the southern counties were determined to lessen the hold of the older region, and were pressing to make a southerly town the seat of North Carolina government. In one small effort to assuage bitterness, Mister Moseley had called upon Albemarle residents to join the survey team. Stephen Williams was a logical inclusion, Willy explained.

      Stephen was desperate for the wages and was desperate to be away from the silent rage of his wife.

      By the end of 1744, the southern boundary of the Granville District had been drawn from the Outer Banks, through the old Machapungo pines of Richard Williams, to a point just north of Bath. Bath, itself, had never acquired the status that was hoped for it, but Reverend Thomas Garcia, of Bath's Saint Thomas Church, was always ready for a chance to exhibit the church.

      Stephen sat quietly, his eyes following a line of square paving tiles as they passed his pew, up the aisle to beneath the alter. Two silver candelabra and a chalice sat in shining relief to the rough brick walls of the unfinished church. Reverend Garcia's heavy voice was slow and thickly accented. Stephen understood that "duty" was the sermon topic, but the voice had become sound without words, but sound with rhythm; a rhythm like footsteps. Walking and cutting, cutting and walking. He looked at his leather breeches and torn hose.

      Richard Williams nudged his nephew and smiled. Stephen wiped his eyes. It would be no good to snore at Reverend Garcia while seated as a guest in a vestryman's pew. He glanced past his uncle to Samuel Swann, then back.

      Richard Williams was an old man. He wore no wig, but his long white hair was bound and tied as elegantly as Mister Swann's peruke.

      Not all of the survey team had stayed in Bath for the prayer of celebration offered by Reverend Garcia. Some of them were in a great hurry to return home, others were alienated from the Established Church by other church loyalties or by disbelief. Stephen had stayed to be with his uncle. He felt this would be his final time with the last of that Williams generation.

      When the service was over the congregation filed out, stepping carefully around piles of brick and sand that were going into the bell tower over the front door. Men came to greet Mister Swann and to talk of the survey and of raucous affairs in the New Bern assembly, others came around Richard to talk of their land speculations and to swap stories of old times. Some of the men had known him before the Indian war.

      Stephen felt like an old man, himself, when he'd come into Bath. Little was as it had been when he was there before. The church was new; a small but solid structure that might eventually be beautiful. Other buildings were gone or had changed beyond recognition. He wasn't sure if the Lawson house was gone or remodeled. Hannah and her children were gone, he'd been told. Old, rotting pilings stood in the creek, and other, new wharves lined the bank.

      Richard pointed out faces to him in the crowd that were people he'd have heard of, but Stephen stopped looking when he saw two faces that made him catch his breath. Two of Teach's men were among the congregation, and the old instinct of flight took Stephen for an instant. The faces of the pirates were different from what he remembered. They were cooler, calmer faces. They were happy faces. That thought was puzzling to Stephen, and he avoided eye contact with the men.

      When the time was right, the three guests went to an ordinary for meat and drink. Stephen was thirsty and he felt stupid with these men of accomplishment, so he drank his dark rum punch as the other two talked. The rum softened the older man and he spoke freely. Richard wanted Stephen to move south with him. He had sons about the age of Stephen, Junior. They'd be a big family. Samuel Swann had become Speaker of the House, a powerful man, the first Speaker from outside the old Albemarle, but Swann was taken back to his younger days by the rum, and the exploits he'd shared with a younger Stephen made him speak as if they were equals.

      "The Granville District will be trouble, mark my words. Earl Granville's quit rents detract from the common good," Swann told him.

      "The southern counties, Nephew. That's where you want to be. Boundless opportunity for a man with your experiences. Building everywhere. Traders and merchants tripping over each other in search of help. Surveying! Town lots, grants, wills…."

      "Pirates! The King's ministers are robbing us like pirates. Taking what they can because they can. It isn't right!" Swann's voice carried around the room.

      "It's more like South Carolina than it is Albemarle." Richard was less motivated by politics.

      "If the Crown proclaims that a hundred pounds of my tobacco will bring me ten shillings of Proclamation money, why is it that with that bill I cannot buy over two sterling shilling's worth of sugar on the Brunswick dock?"

      Stephen heard the men talking but his thoughts were elsewhere. Seeing the two old pirates in church had been a surprise. Men who'd stolen anything not tied down, who'd burned ships, and who'd killed others many times were sitting at peace in church, old men with their wives. Something was wrong. They shouldn't look so at peace with themselves, he thought.

      At their parting Stephen promised Samuel Swann that he'd return in March to continue with the Granville District survey. He embraced his Uncle Richard, thanking him for his lifetimes' affection and friendship and promising to consider the idea of moving south.

      In the summer of '47, the Granville line survey stopped at the Haw River,

200 miles from the ocean, and Stephen Williams rode home to bad news.

      Nancy's brother, Mathias Manning, had stopped to visit while moving with his family to the three-hundred-and-fifty-acre grant in he'd bought in Edgecombe County. Elizabeth, his wife, was ill and had lingered with a daughter, Mary, as Elizabeth Manning regained her health.

      "I'm pleased that you're better, Elizabeth, and glad you've been here to keep my Nancy company," Stephen told her.

      Nancy and her sister-in-law sat on the bed. Mary and Junior sat on the bench by the table. The women were silent after telling Stephen why the visitors were there. The children kept still, with downcast eyes.

      Junior spoke up.

      "Mary and I are to be wed."

      Stephen sat in his chair. He was confused at first. He'd spent such little time with his son that there was no immediate reaction. Was he to be angry at the impetuosity of his seventeen-year-old son, or was he to congratulate the boy? His reaction came more as an effort to please his wife and their visitor than from emotion for his son.

      "A beautiful and wise choice, for so young a man," he said. "I look forward to many beautiful grandchildren."

      The women blushed and Junior slid forward on the bench.

      "Your first grandchild will come in January," Junior said, then slid back.

      "I see," Stephen said, and glanced at Mary's smooth stomach, counting backwards on his fingers.

      "And when Father Manning returns to fetch his women, I'll be leaving to work his land above the falls," Junior said.

      "I see," Stephen said, and looked around the house. His eyes stopping on the many examples of Junior's work; work that Stephen had seldom appreciated. He felt old, again.

      He left the house—"To look about the fields," he said—and went to a secluded, sandy opening by a branch that drained his fields into the local Deep Creek, a tributary of Fishing Creek, which flowed into Tar River. Cold water rippled over the sandy bottom of his three-foot stream. He owned fields in two colonies that fed two Deep Creeks. His past. His future.

      He raised his eyes to see a flock of turkeys grazing for acorn and pine nuts. Two old cocks threatened each other on opposite sides of an opening, their beards flowing on the ground, their two-inch spurs ready for combat. Junior came through the brush and the turkeys flew away, with much noise.

      "Uncle Willy died while you were gone," he told his father.

      Stephen looked at him for a while.

      "You chased away a flock of turkeys," he said, and looked away.

       When Mathias Manning returned for his wife and daughter, he was less sanguine about his daughter's condition that Stephen had been when he was told. Stephen's resignation to the fact was an acknowledgment that the couple was beyond his control, and would have been if he'd stayed at home. Mathias made it personal, and in his anger he revealed an attitude of Stephen's neighbors that Stephen hadn't known. The political differences between the counties of Old Albemarle and those to the south had become open, political rebellion, and Stephen was associated with the enemy faction of Old Bath and New Hanover.

The Albemarle representatives had defeated a bill in the Assembly of June,

1746 that would have fixed a permanent capital of the province in New Bern or Bath, both points south of the Granville line. Governor Johnston ordered that the Assembly reconvene in Wilmington the next November, a busy time of year and a most distant location for the burgesses from Albemarle. Only fifteen of the fiftyfour members answered the roll call at Wilmington, not enough to constitute a quorum under all precedents of the legislative body. But Samuel Swann, the Speaker—Stephen's friend—declared the presence of fifteen members sufficient for a quorum, and the Assembly of southern representatives proceeded with the business of the session.

      Two acts were quickly passed. The first declared that only two representatives would be allowed from each county, and gave one each to Edenton, Bath, New Bern, and Wilmington. The second act declared that New Bern would be the site of the courts, although not prescribing that the office of the governor be in New Bern, nor that the Legislature be convened there.

      In defiance, at the February election, the residents of Albemarle elected five representatives, as they had always done. A new election was ordered, but the citizens of Albemarle simply stayed away from the polls. Since the new Assembly contained no representatives from Albemarle, the people there refused obedience to any of its enactments. Stephen Williams was an associate of Samuel Swann and the usurpers in the southern counties. People who knew him knew that he was, Manning told him.

      He wished his cousin Willy were alive to help him. Willy had always kept his ear to the ground and he'd understood political intrigue. Stephen's interests had been more personal. Willy had talked to him about politics, but he'd never paid attention. To Stephen, politics was for town-dwellers. He knew that people were pouring into the county, that the northwestern part of Edgecombe had been made into a new Granville county, and that merchants in the area had laid out a town up the Roanoke. They'd named it Halifax, in honor of Lord Halifax, a member of the Board of Trade. But, Stephen had not known the extent of hostility that his neighbors felt toward the southern counties.

      When the Mannings left for their land west of the Tar River's great falls, Stephen, Junior walked away with them. Nancy bit on her apron. Her only child was leaving and the barbs thrown by her angry brother still stung. There was solace, though, in that her son would be watched over by her brother. His newfound Baptist religion was stricter that her own, and might influence Junior to give him some direction.

      Stephen heard a horse's hooves splashing in the puddles down the road. He opened the door and watched the rain while he waited for the rider to get within sight. He cursed Tony for not being here, then ran out to lead the animal to the barn while the stranger stood beneath the eaves of the house and shook out his long cloak. He hurried back to the house to discover who the stranger was.

      "That wasn't necessary, Williams. I won't be long," the man said.

      "Sit, Stranger, and let me have you cloak," Stephen said.

      "Corbin told me in Edenton that the survey was over and that I'd find you home," the man said. "My name is Battle, Elisha Battle, and I own this farm."