Our Peaceable Kingdom
How?
This page will focus on methods. There is a lot that has to happen for land to be granted, willed, deeded or divided. The documents involved leave all kinds of clues with virtually every word, number, name and date. These clues take on a life of their own as they are gathered until a larger view is revealed. Irving Wonder taught me that. There seems to be a straight line from persistence to epiphany. For Irving and I, the epiphanies have mounted up over the decades. They're in a filing cabinet and it's stuffed full. This entire site is really the result of the need to organize it.
The methods used for land transactions are predicated on the notion that someone is there to occupy it. That's a bold assumption given the perils of crossing the sea. Mr. How is very interested in how immigrants got here and will offer us some enlightenment in that regard.
All along the way, from untamed wilderness to mapped parcels, the spot was there. A country followed by a state, a county, a smaller county and a township all closed in around our spot until it had a mailing address. How did all of that happen? We'll go there as well.
Mr. How has a lot of scope in comparison to most of the other honest-serving men. He can help us understand the methods used to leave the clues and then how to decipher the clues that were left. Mr. How, often along with Mr. Why, can provide a deep pool of essential methods and reasons for everything and be correct about all of them. The shape of any given outcome usually depends on many factors so it's helpful to learn as much as we can. It can also result, for better or worse, in discovering things that could not mean less to the outcome. It can take a lot of sluicing to find gold.
Obtaining Land
Before Time Began thru Lord Granville
The ever-present generosity of spots is absolute. There was no legal apparatus for owning land before the beginning of time and throughout eternity. Territory was simply claimed and defended. Spots always comply without question. Eventually...
... as colonies were being established, populating them was a paramount concern. Before our independence, land could be purchased from the Crown but most of it was granted through "Headrights". Land was granted based on the number of settlers brought in to settle. Land in Carolina was administrated by eight Lord Proprietors who were rewarded by King Charles II for their help with his ascendence to the throne in 1633.
The Black Gum tree pictured (right) is a corner marked with three slashes and a blaze. The tree is represented in deeds going back over a century. It still stands.
Counties Close In
As was the wont of Kingdoms who planted their flags on foreign territory, King James granted two charters, one to The London Company in 1606 and the other to The Plymouth Company in 1607. Conquering continents required more than gumption, it took private investment. The King sought to establish lasting settlements in North America. The Plymouth Company failed to prosper but the London Company eventually persevered through extreme adversity. By 1617 the seventeen hundred original settler's numbers had fallen down to three hundred and seventy-one. Tobacco was the product they found to exploit for their gain. Their hard work and savvy business acumen created enough promise to raise their population back to over twelve hundred by 1622 and led to the permanent settlement at Jamestown on the Chesapeake Bay. It was footholds like these that through time gave residence to the persecuted. That was the rub. The world was in need of a different paradigm as the masses became spiritually, and otherwise, enlightened. The old world was not all that welcoming to free-thinking rugged individualism... but our spot's continent was.
In 1627 King Charles I (successor to King James), encouraged by the successes in Virginia, granted a charter to the Barbados Company to establish a settlement on the uninhabited island in the Caribbean. As with other settlements in the Caribbean islands, sugar was grown with great success.
When King Charles II granted a charter to eight Lords Proprietors, our spot did not notice the year was 1663. He named it in honor of his father. Carolina derives from Carolus, Latin for Charles. It was bounded on its North by the Colony of Virginia, on its South by Spanish Florida, to the East was the Atlantic Ocean. The western boundary went to the Pacific Ocean but it could have been Mars. Our spot was somewhere in between biding its time. Its first two counties, Albemarle (the northern half) and Clarendon (the southern half), were established at the coast with no real line between them in 1664. North Carolina was still a long way from united statehood. The first inclinations of that boundary were codified in 1712 when Carolina was split, north and south, and the "Province of North Carolina" came to be.
In 1750 Anson County was formed encompassing the western portion of the Province. In 1752 it was further divided North and South. The Northern part was named after Matthew Rowan, the acting Governor. The western border was still undetermined. Our spot was now said to be in Rowan County, it did not object.
It was about this time that records pertaining to our spot's concentric few miles began to emerge in the form of land grants from Lord Granville. For decades until he died in 1763 all land grants in Western North Carolina came from Lord Granville. Deeds of that time were drawn with virtually all lines going NSEW at Lord Granville's insistence. Over time those lines morphed into more pragmatic interpretations, in turn various disputes emerged. By 1776 it was all a moot point.
In 1776 the western border became more tangible when the "District of Washington" was declared. That year is deservedly considered notable, but our spot yawned blissfully unaware it was now in one of America's original thirteen colonies. The next year, Burke County was cut out of Rowan and our spot had a new County to go with its new Republic. It remained unimpressed.
Over the next decades other counties were formed from Burke but our spot's designation did not change until 1841 when Caldwell County was formed. In 1847 Alexander County was chiseled out of Caldwell, Wilkes and Iredell Counties. Our spot has remained in Alexander County since. I'm sure the spot would say Alexander county was formed to include it. Our spot would certainly be correct.
John Carteret
Lord Granville
As exploration crept west, the formation of the Queen's counties followed from the east. Our spot was very patient by nature.
In or about 1729 the Crown bought back the Province of Carolina from seven of the eight Lord Proprietors. One of them, John Carteret, refused to sell. Carteret was a man of wealth and taste. He was 2nd Earl Granville and 7th Seigneur of Sark. Our spot, who resided within his purview, knew him as "Lord Granville". Eventually a deal was struck and Carteret maintained his one eighth share. It went from Virginia on the north to the parallel of 35° 34' on the South. To the east were the established coastal counties and to the west, the Mississippi River... wherever that was.
Settling In
Our Spot was starting to feel underfoot as the first settlers settled in.
Jonathan Barrett was an early pioneer who entered a large tract of land North of the Catawba River and East of the Middle Little River. Today it is called Barrett's Mountain. Back in the day, the Middle Little River was called "Barrett's Little River". Most of what we know about Jonathan Barrett, we know from August Gottlieb Spangenberg. He was a German Bishop who helped establish settlements to the North of Mr. Barrett's entry. He purchased 100.000 acres from Lord Granville for the Moravian church to settle. According to Spangenberg's diary from his travels in 1752, Mr. Barrett built a road "leading from a point on the mountain and along the crest of the bank of the North Canyon of the Catawba River to the Little River." Our spot is just across the Middle Little River on the West side. His was an "Ax Entry" and not a grant. He set his boundaries using an ax to mark trees like the Black Gum pictured up the page. Bishop Spangenberg bought land he had yet to delineate. Various Indian tribes, mainly the Catawba, had their say as well. Such was the dynamic for early pioneers.
Mr. Why has more to offer about the reasons settlers were here at all but once they were, something started to happen in homes of the brave. It fizzed. When the lid blew off, we became land of the free.
By 1776 a lot of land was already owned and settled. There was a lot to sort out. Thirteen British colonies were now thirteen states united in purpose. The states' boundaries and jurisdictions remained largely in tact. States could sell or grant their land and administer the process according to their bureaucracies. Any territory west of the Appalachian Mountains previously claimed by British colonies was ceded to the federal government. That land was considered public domain.
"The Louisiana Purchase", a war with Mexico and other events followed that set the course for an expanding America. As one of the original 13 colonies turned states, North Carolina is our focus but many things about those times had an influence on our spot.
After the Revolutionary War all real estate required a reset. The old rules were subject to a new interpretation. The Queen's colonies along with her governors, proprietors and tyrants were no more.
The Process
The first step in the process of obtaining a piece of our new country was to apply. This was done by the applicant entering his (or her) claim. They would describe the acreage as best they could, work out the arrangement for payment, submit it to the "Entry Officer of Claims" for the corresponding County, get a receipt and wait. Often the applicant already lived or farmed on the entry. Any "Improvements", such as a house, were listed and included in the transaction.
If the application was approved, the next step was a survey. The appropriate entry officer would summon the appropriate surveyor with a warrant to survey the tract. The survey was then recorded with the relevant land office.
The final step towards ownership of land in the private sector was the Patent. It served as the official title. It was filed in the Land Patent Book and issued to the proud owner. With the certificate in hand, the first American land owners filed their paperwork with the local land office and realized their dreams. This completed the process from the government to the private sector for spots everywhere. From then on, spots would be transferred by a deed or inheritance.
The original documents were saved in a shuck. Those archives were transferred to microfilm and then subsequently digitized in the early 2000's. The Land Patent Books were filed with the Secretary of State. All of this is now available and searchable online.
There is a veritable treasure of information included in the documents. Mr. When is plum giddy as is Mr. Where albeit his work requires a bit of puzzling. Mr. Who is very satisfied and Mr. Why is feeling patriotic and proud.
From the documents we can learn when the land was entered, the date the warrant for a survey was issued, the date the tract was surveyed and the date the patent was issued. We learn the name of the applicant, the name of the land officer who issued the warrant, the name of the surveyor and most of the time the name(s) of adjoining land owner(s). We learn the number of acres, the file number, the grant number and the entry number as well as the book and page numbers where the patent is filed. We learn the metes and bound of the tract and features like creeks, rivers, ridges, hollows, springs and trees of every kind.
Mr. How walks us through the process with the 100 acres granted to Martin Keller who had a mill at the fork of Rock Creek and Jumping Run. He was already living there and operating his mill when he enter the tract. Continue below for further clarification with images of the actual documents, transcriptions and explanations.
Land Grant - A Transcribed Example
This is the shuck which contained the documents associated with the grant. The monumental task of archiving the original paperwork to microfilm began in the 1940's. In the 2000's, the microfilm was digitized. Now it is all online.
Somewhere along the line, some documents like the shuck shown here were updated in typewritten form. Many of the grants themselves were recorded on printed forms. Guttenberg's press was perfected in 1450 so the practice was available to bureaucracies who wanted to use them.
The shucks were kept by the land offices in the order of their file number.
The Starnes Journey
Frederick Starnes Patriarch To A Dynasty
Frederick Starnes was ten years old when he crossed the Atlantic with his father Adam, and uncles Nicholas and Valentine. They came to what was not yet the United States of America from the Southern Palatinate which was still a century and a half from becoming Germany. By the time they set sail from London in the Spring of 1710, young Frederick and his family were nearly a year into their journey. It began in the Alzey-Worms district of the Rhineland Palatinate. "Palatine" was the title given to the ruling family for that area of the Holy Roman Empire. The term "Palatinate" refers to the various regions of the Palatine districts within the Empire.
He and his family were part of one of two groups of Palatine families who boarded a barge headed down the Rhine River to Rotterdam early in 1709. The trip took just over three weeks. Another such family along with the Starnes' were the Goldmans, Conrad and Anna. Their daughter, Mary, and Frederick Starnes would eventually marry in or about 1721. On August 6 after a month or so in Rotterdam they sailed across the North Sea and up the River Thames to Blackheath in South East London. It was a Tuesday and if average weather conditions mean anything the high that day was about 74 degrees and there was a 46% chance of rain.
Londoners didn't exactly welcome the Palatines who arrived uninvited. They didn't trust them. The immigrants were eager to work but found little. They stayed in warehouses or in any shelter they could find. The Board of Ordinance supplied some military tents. Some residents took pity and helped with food, clothes and essentials. The Palatine families likely would not have survived without the generosity of these kind people and what government aid was offered. But it was a bad situation at best for these struggling families. It dragged on.
The Queen was in a quandary. It was Colonel Robert Hunter who, on September 9th, proposed the Immigrants be sent to New York. Col. Hunter was the freshly appointed governor of the Queen's colonies of New York and New Jersey. His proposal was for the Palatines to be employed in the production of tar and pitch for the Royal Navy. The Board of Trade approved the plan in just three days. The proposal came first thing on a Monday morning and by week's end it was a done deal. It sure looked like the bureaucratic wheels were turning and resolution was imminent.
On December 25, 1709 ten ships arrived to take the 3000 or so immigrants to the British Colony of New York. Boarding began that night but one bureaucratic demon after another caused delay after delay in their departure. Meanwhile, Frederick and his family spent the cold winter on a cramped, rat-infested ship docked on the River Thames. Finally with political concerns resolved, on April 10, 1710 they set sail for New York. It was a glorious Thursday and surely the sun was shining but the journey ahead was far from over. It is believed that Frederick's mother was one of the 446 passengers who did not survive the journey. They arrived at New York Harbor on Saturday, June 14 after spending over six months living on the ship, half of them at sea.
By the time Frederick Starnes was eleven years old he was grizzled beyond his years and blessed before them. The young man's prospects were very much improved as a result of his arduous journey.
Frederick's family stayed at Livingston's Manor on the Hudson River and then to the Livingston Manor's West Camp Palatine settlement on the West bank of the Hudson by Spring of 1711. The area today is still known as "Village of West Camp, NY" and is about 40 miles South of Albany. The families worked in these camps to pay for their passage. By early Spring of 1713 their obligations were met. The Starnes along with some other Palatine families moved Northwest up the Mohawk River and settled at Gerlach Dorf in what would become Schoharie County in 1795. Gerlach Dorf was named for Johann Christian Gerlach who had been a listmaker for tar making in one of the early settlements.
By then Governor Hunter was having second thoughts about his suggestion to Queen Anne. He now considered the Palatines to be troublemakers. He did not appreciate their move inland to what had come to be known as the "German Flatts".
The Palatine settlers held a different view. After over four long insufferable years they finally had control of their own destinies. They were quickly building one-room cabins with earthen floors and animal skins for doors. They were settling in as fast and hard as they could. The Palatine families weren't all that fond of Governor Hunter either. They didn't trust him or the government in general.
These first seeds of rebellion were undoubtedly inspired by the bountiful opportunities these families, and many others, saw before them. They were sown with hope and fertilized with the dream of freedom but the fruition would not be realized for another sixty-three years. Still, the unalienable rights they felt but never imagined owning, now seemed possible. Very smart men began to think very hard about these things. It's impossible to know exactly when this new concept of liberty for every single human, no matter what, took root but it's very easy for each of us to understand why. What we know for certain is, in the end, it happened. Frederick was part of the progeny of this grand endeavor. He came of age in conditions far different from his own parents. His generation would go on to rear the generation whose children fought the Revolutionary War... but right now Frederick was only thirteen.
(To continue reading about the Starnes family and their generational journey to our spot, scroll down and read on. Or, you can use your browser's back button to return from whence you came.)
From Frederick Starnes Sr. To Joseph Starnes Jr.
While there was a germinating discontent it would not be fair to characterize the Monarchy's position as uncompassionate. When the Palatines docked in London, the bureaucrats took responsibility for their meager well-being, arranged for their future and ultimately made it happen.
After a decade in the German Flatts the Palatine immigrants were there to stay, time proved to be on their side. A successor to Governor Hunter, William Burnet, received orders from London to give the Palatines land that would meet their needs. Governor Burnet responded accordingly and arranged for "Indian land in the Mohawk Valley" (The German Flatts) to be allotted to the Palatine immigrants in one hundred acre lots. On March 28, 1723 ninety-two individuals were granted these hundred acre tracts. Frederick was assigned lot #24. By then Frederick was married with a son. He married Mary Goldman in 1721. They had their first son, Valentine, in 1722. Today, thirty acres of that lot sits in the center of present day Herkimer, NY.
Frederick and Mary continued to live in NY for nearly twenty years, they had seven children. On November 17, 1733 Frederick was appointed Ensign in the Militia of Albany County, New York by Governor William Crosby. He was a part of the effort to defend and preserve the American Colonies. He and his family, both immediate and extended, were already Americans. They had taken sides.
In 1740, or soon thereafter, Frederick, Mary and Mary's brothers moved South and made settlements in the Juniata Valley of Pennsylvania. The land between the valley's mouth to the North and the Blue Hills to the South, Shamokin, was revered by the Indians who hunted on those sacred grounds. Frederick Starnes and company likely understood this but they were bold frontiersmen whose families took unimaginable risks on a leap of faith, they were all in. Sometime in 1742 the settlements were discovered by the Delaware Tribe. The conflict was ultimately handled diplomatically. The Delawares made their concerns known to Governor Thomas of Philadelphia through the Six Nation Council deputies, and prevailed. They argued the Starnes' presence violated a 1682 treaty with William Penn. Richard Peters, the Secretary to the Proprietors, under orders from Governor Thomas caused the Starnes to be driven out in June of 1743.
By Spring of 1744 Frederick and Mary, a daughter and five of their six sons (eldest son Valentine stayed in PA) were in Washington County Virginia on the West side of what was then called Woods River, today it is the New River. Frederick was a pioneering adventurer who entered much land in the entry books. In 1744, he entered two 100 acre tracts, each with a different partner. Then 400 acres, then 200 on Crab Creek and 200 acres more below the little horseshoe.
His wife Mary surely was an amazing person, these years required a lot from her and she embraced every bit of it as a wife and a mother. In 1744 their son Fredrick Jr. was 20; Leonard was 18, Joseph was 14, Adam and Thomas were 12 and 10. Their daughter Sarah was 6.
In August of 1753 Frederick obtained 85 acres and moved his family to the East side of the river because of growing conflicts with Indians. Between 1754 and 1756 attacks by Indians on settlers became relentless. The French and Indian War was raging between the French colonies and the English Colonies who were each allied with different tribes. The closest refuge from Indian attacks for these early pioneers of the New River was "Vause's Fort", a small Fort at the head waters of the Roanoke River.
On July 3, 1755 Frederick was attacked by Shawnee Indians while tending his fields and harvesting grain. He was shot and wounded but returned fire and managed to escape with his life. Later the same month the Cherokee laid waste to settlers in Draper's Meadow. The Cherokee were aligned with the British who encouraged these attacks.
In August of 1755 Colonel George Washington was appointed commander of the Virginia Militia. He was twenty-three years old. Frederick Starnes as County Commissioner served the militia by procuring and providing beef to the roughly 700 men under Washington's command. They were defending 350 miles of frontier.
[The Cherokee Expedition that began in 1759 largely ended these relentless attacks. Frederick's sons: Frederick Jr., Joseph, Leonard and Adam all participated in that effort.]
Frederick sold his 85 acres on the New River to George Teetar for ten pounds on February 12, 1768. He lived out his days on the middle fork of the Holston River and was buried in what is today Chilhowie, VA in 1774.
Leonard was the first of Frederick's sons to come to North Carolina. His migration South occurred around 1767 but he returned to Virginia in 1774 when his father died. From 1784 on, many of Frederick's and Mary's descendants arrived to settle in what was then Mecklenburg County and became Cabarrus County in 1792. They settled near the Morning Star Lutheran Church and in an area near St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church in what is now East Concord, NC. The latter is marked as an historical site founded in 1745 by Lutheran Minister Adolph Nussaann. Some Starnes settlers no doubt belonged to these churches.
Brothers Frederick Jr. with his wife Mary, Joseph along with his wife Katherine, and their families, remained in Virginia. Mary and Katherine were likely sisters. Their surname was Carlock. It can also be reasonably deduced their brother Adam married a third sister, Caroline.
The Wittenberg's Journey
Henry Michael Wittenberg was born about the same time Frederick Starnes sailed from London. Henry and Frederick were of similar age (Frederick was nine years senior) and their families both fled persecution as Lutherans. Perhaps the families knew each other then but there is no doubt the families would be neighbors within generations on lands encompassing our spot.
Henry was over forty when he crossed the Atlantic on the ship "Shirley" in 1751. He had far more choice for the passage than did young Frederick. He and his wife Maria Elisabetha, whom he married in 1735, paid their way up front. They had four sons (Frederick, William, Joseph and Conrad) and a daughter (Elisabeth). The captain for his journey was James Allen. Like Frederick, Henry's trip started with a trek to Rotterdam but it took a different route from there. Captain Allen sailed the northern route around the United Kingdom as opposed to the southern route via London. They navigated across the North Sea to the Orkney archipelago of Scotland. From there they sailed to America arriving on September 5, 1751 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was a Thursday. Their fifth son, John Henry, was born in Pennsylvania.
Henry and Maria's second son, William, settled in North Carolina about fifteen miles from our spot in 1783. His plantation was on Lyle's Creek in what was then Lincoln County. Today it's the Rock Barn area of Catawba County. William attained great wealth. Mr. Where can show you where. William and his wife, Maria Barbara Jonas, raised a large family. Amongst their sons was Daniel.
The Wittenberg Wills
The Wittenberg's will are shown in this gallery. Use the arrow to select the will you seek and then click the image. There are also arrows to scroll through the documents from the full screen view.
The wills are listed in the following order:
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William Wittenberg (4 pages)
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Daniel Hayward Wittenberg (1 page)
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David Wittenberg (2 pages)
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Daniel Monroe Wittenberg (3 pages)
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David Ransom Wittenberg (1 page)
Back From Spencer Tract
To D.M. Wittenberg's Will
David Spencer bought his land on August 16, 1969 from Walter and Cora Lail. The gallery travels backwards in time. As you page through the deeds, each previous grantor is revealed. The last reference is to the Will of Daniel M. Wittenberg.
The blueprint for this research was unearthed from the file cabinet. The gallery begins there. Four sheets of graph paper were scotch-taped together for the pencil-drawing from who knows when. It had all the names and numbers.
Puzzles
Putting the Pieces Together
How can we figure out who lived where, when? What were the boundaries of their tracts of land? Why does genealogy play such a crucial role in a spot's history? In a sense, those answers are in the questions. They are concluded, to the degree possible, by the presence of the six honest-serving men and the fruits of their labor. Agreement is hard.
As with many endeavors, this one is encouraged by Irving Wonder and Beatrice Fascinated. I knew who we bought land from and wondered who owned it before they did. I was fascinated to figure out how those tracts were split from larger tracts and who owned those. Once I started, there was no turning back.
A deed holds many clues and they are all public record. The metes and bounds are spelled out. They can be drawn to scale with a pencil and paper, protractor and ruler. I dig that, so I did that and kept doing it. Most of the time deeds will reveal how the seller acquired the tract in question (the back title). That usually is expressed with the book and page numbers of the corresponding deed. Then we look that up. It may use the exact same description for the exact same parcel or it may say something like, being tract #5 in the division of Mr. Who's estate. Irving tells me to keep drawing, Beatrice walks into the room.
This process is repeated until a dead end is reached. The clues, if you can find the deed at all, get more cryptic the farther back you go. There are a gazillion forks, twists and turns along the way. It's a maze chock full of dead ends but there is a way through with enough persistence... sometimes. Uncle Irony awaits at the exit of the maze to inform us its destination is a dead end.
That's how it all starts. Along the way, adjoining property owners are revealed but unless you can get Mr. When to agree with Mr. Who and Mr. Where, it means little. The adjoining lands may be a division of an estate as a result of a Special Court Proceeding. Other times the deeds lead back to a will.
Genealogy weighs in heavier as we go back in time. Families tended to marry within communities. Maiden names disappear from the records but if you know them through other records then it helps a lot. So many names are common, especially the surnames, it's crucial to differentiate between individuals. Likely, it's the one in the family from the next farm over. I suppose we need to draw that one too.
From the process of exhausting possible ways through the maze to the dead end, a story emerges. It just fizzes up, a hundred of them do. From a critical mass of details like a common oak tree corner or a named creek, or a ridge, hollow, a common mete or bound, the puzzle pieces begin to fit. Maybe a road or even a stone by the side of the road will be the clue that connects one tract to another. The paper drawings can be cut out with scissors and literally be put together like a puzzle. [I hope I'm not alarming anyone by embracing such relics like pencils, paper, scissors and real live cut-n-paste.] We end up drawing, or at least reading, deeds we only think we might know the location of, so now even those come into play. County maps can be printed to the scale of the puzzle pieces. And then the puzzle pieces laid atop the map to find placement from lines that still exist but you have get Mr. Where and Mr. When to agree. That is where our puzzle analogy fails miserably.
To the horror of puzzling enthusiasts everywhere, we have to torture the analogy to understand the challenge, cool. Imagine a puzzle of the same landscape where each piece may or may not, partially or entirely, be the same shape depending on when you put the puzzle together. There you have it.
We're finally at a dead end but have a noggin bubbling over with data soup. We can live for another day. What to do? We leapfrog back to land grants and work both ends against the middle.
Land grants are similar to deeds but the grantor is a government or a kingdom. They are essentially the foundational deed. The genealogy factors a little less and the geography factors in more. We learn about mills, fords, ferries and roads that no longer exist but things like ridges, creeks and hollows generally do not move. That and the preponderance of much larger, squarer tracts make the puzzle somewhat more manageable. The thing that makes them more difficult is the reluctance of Mr. Where. Unlike following deeds back in time, following land grants forward in time does not begin from a known spot. The challenge is to find something, maybe a creek etc., to anchor a tract to. Keep drawing and keep noticing "a small hickory near a spring" or "two Pines on a ridge" or "a maple on the west bank of the Middle Little River". The saturated noggin knows and hopefully recognizes certain unique features to help unite related spots. This time, the puzzle pieces tended to grow into larger pieces. Often 6 or 8 or more grants would obviously go together resulting in 2 0r 3 big ol' puzzle pieces to lay over a map. We may have known where one person lived but by virtue of the connections within these larger pieces, we now know where someone else lived.
Our journey forward to the middle shifts from trying to figure out how a person acquired land to how they disposed of it and to whom. Mr. When informs us that with regard to our spot, the dead ends are around the time of the Civil War. The first grants could be a century prior but were recombobulated after the Revolutionary war. That means the leapfrog zone amounts to 75 years or so. That represents a lifetime.
Take Jesse Starnes for instance. We were able to construct a map of his land by looking at land he sold in his lifetime. The dead end provided no record of how he acquired the land, we just know he owned it. Jesse was born in 1799. Because of the fork that joins Rock Creek to Jumping Run, there is reason to believe part of his land was originally granted to Martin Keller in 1792 and 1794. Another major land owner during Jesse's life was Daniel Wittenberg who we know had land adjacent to Jesse. They surely knew each other well. We think Daniel married Martin's daughter Catherine. It is reasonable to assume Jesse got part of his land from Daniel Wittenberg. Even if we can't connect all of the dots, we can at least conclude the land did not pass through too many hands during that time period.
Mr. What has examples of all of this for us that pertain directly to our spot. Mr. Where has the maps.
How We Bought the Farm
Yikes!
Our farm began with 37 acres purchased in a blind auction in 1985. It included an old small house in disrepair and a fairly new apartment on a very large concrete slab. The apartment was used as office space for a greenhouse that would become our boarding barn. The former business was called JEBCO and owned by Carl Brooks Jr. The 37 acres consisted of three tracts, the barn tract, the house tract and the driveway. The 20 acre barn tract was one of three 20 acre tracts all owned by the heirs of Carl Brooks Sr.. Those three tracts were made from two 30 acre tracts in 1950 after Mr. Brooks bought them.
JEBCO went belly up and was auctioned on the courthouse steps. The Farmers Home Administration won the bid and eventually held their own sealed auction....
... Excuse me...
Hello Beatrice!
I found something fascinating! This wasn't the first time our spot has been auctioned on the courthouse steps. Those two 30 acre tracts that Carl Brooks Sr. bought in 1950 were two of six tracts that went to the heirs (5 daughters, a son, plus dower rights) of David Brinkley after he died in 1908. A few of those tracts, including where the house and barn now sit, were the same or overlapped with parts of six former tracts that were bequeathed by Jesse Starnes to his six daughters after he died in 1878. All along the way, our spot was dragged through the mud in court. No worries, spots dig mud. Mr. Where shows us where the entire estates, as best we can tell, of both Jesse Starnes and David Brinkley resided and how they were divided. He shows us how what went to who. I just love the way those honest-serving men help each other out!
Ladies and gentlemen, Bea Fascinated! Thank you for that Bea!
On the night of August 2, 1986, two young women were returning home to Hickory from the Blowing Rock Horse Show. One of them knew a band, they were playing that night in Lenoir at "The 1890 Club". The other was game, they stopped in for a drink. That's when the piano player and the horse show girl met. By 1990 the piano player bought the 20 acres on the East. In 1997 we added 22 acres on the West. And then there's the river. That saga is described below.
You can see these boundaries and learn more on the pages linked below.
Twenty Years and Flowers
The River
