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Sandhills' Families: Early Reminiscences of the Fort Bragg Area
Cumberland, Harnett, Hoke, Moore, Richmond, and Scotland Counties, North Carolina

by
Lorraine V. Aragon

February, 2000
Cultural Resources Program Environmental and Natural Resources Division
Public Works Business Center Fort Bragg, North Carolina
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Cover painting by Martin Pate, Newnan, Georgia. XVIII Airborne Corps and Fort Bragg, North Carolina
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Dedication and Acknowledgments
This research project is dedicated to the kind Sandhills people who gave their time and cooperation to facilitate its accomplishment. It also is dedicated to their kin and
ancestors: to all the remarkable individuals who ever lived or worked on the vast, beautiful, and difficult lands purchased by the United States Army to become Fort Bragg.
The implementation of this oral history project would have never occurred without the support of Dr. Lucy A. Whalley of the U. S. Army Construction Engineering
Research Laboratories, and Wayne C. J. Boyko, Beverly A. Boyko, and William H. Kern of the Fort Bragg Cultural Resources Program. Excellent project assistance was provided
by Beverly A. Boyko, W. Stacy Culpepper, and William H. Kern at Fort Bragg, and by Mark Cooke, Larry Clifton Skinner, and Elizabeth Eguez Grant at East Carolina
University. I am further grateful to Charles L. Heath, Joseph M. Herbert, and Jeffrey D. Irwin of the Fort Bragg Cultural Resources Program for their input on logistical and
historical data.
Lorraine V. Aragon, Ph. D. East Carolina University
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Abstract
This project contributes to historical documentation of Fort Bragg lands through archival research and oral history interviews with descendants of early settlers of the area prior to
its purchase by the United States Government. Approximately two hundred individuals of African, European, and Native American descent were contacted for information about
their family ties to Fort Bragg lands. Of this total, twenty-four individuals were available and considered good potential sources of information about varied regions of the
reservation or about families with diverse social histories. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and tape-recorded for detailed analysis. Interviewees were questioned
about their genealogy, familial subsistence patterns, recollections about former building structures, aspects of social history, knowledge about cemeteries, and present ties to the
Fort Bragg lands. A Transcription Summary was made of each taped interview to facilitate comparative analysis and aid future historical research. The interview
Transcription Summaries and final report, which includes Brief Summaries of each interview, aim to assist future historical archaeology investigations of reservation lands as
well as to contribute new data and perspectives to the general, multiethnic history of the Sandhills region.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CAMP MACKALL & FORT BRAGG Historic Roads and Points of Interest 6
INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 7
Introduction 7
Historic Physical Sites of Archaeological Concern 9
Native American Prehistory and Regional Group Disruptions 10
Initial Settlement of the Fort Bragg Area by Highland Scots 15
Long Street, Sandy Grove, and Other Fort Bragg Churches 17
Pioneer Subsistence Patterns in the Sandhills 20
Pine Trees as Wealth: The Naval Stores Industry 22
African Americans: Enslaved and Free People of Color 24
Revolutionary War (1776-1783) in the Fort Bragg Area 29
Antebellum Period (1783-1860) in the Fort Bragg Area 30
"War Between the States" (1861-1865) in the Fort Bragg Area 31
Reconstruction and Subsequent Changes in the Fort Bragg Area 32
The Fort Bragg Purchase 33
RESEARCH METHODS 34
THE INTERVIEWS 36
General Overview 36
Brief Summaries of Individual Interviewees 37
1. Mr. LeRoy HAMILTON 37
2. Mr. Samuel Cameron MORRIS 39
3. Mrs. Margaret Cameron KEITH 40
4. Mr. Paul Delton GOINS 40
5. Mr. Dougald McFADYEN 42
6. Mrs. Melba Cameron HICKS 43
7. Mr. Julian H. BLUE 44
8. Ms. Ammie McRae JENKINS 46
9. Mr. Alexander Wilbur CLARK 48
10. Mr. John Marshal THOMAS 48
11. Mr. James Angus McLEOD 50
12. Mrs. Rachel McCormick BROOKS 51
13. Mr. Howard L. MURCHISON 53
14. Mr. Marshal Levon CAMPBELL 54
15. Mrs. Mary Harlan BATTEN 56
16. Mr. James A. SINCLAIR 58
17. Mr. Charles F. HALL 60
8. Mr. Leroy SNIPES 61
19. Mr. John TUCKER, Sr. 62
20. Mr. Albert GOINS 63
21. Mr. Willie CARTER 64
22. Mrs. Emma Louise Faulk FRYE 66
23. Mr. Wilson GOINS 67
24. Mrs. Vilona Whitehead BLEDSOE 68
CONCLUSIONS 69
Theoretical Issues 69
REFERENCES: 75

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CAMP MACKALL & FORT BRAGG Historic Roads and Points of Interest
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INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Introduction
Existing historical literature concerning the Fort Bragg or "Sandhills"
area of North Carolina focuses on early Highland Scot settlements, battles
related to wars in U. S. history, urban centers such as Fayetteville (formerly
Cross Creek and Campbelltown), and regional trends in economic
development (e. g. Meyer 1961; Oates 1981; Parker 1990). Some excellent
documentation exists concerning colonial era economy and household
subsistence patterns, but it is scattered and usually not referenced to the
160,000 acres of land that presently comprise the Fort Bragg and Camp
Mackall military reservations in Cumberland, Harnett, Hoke, Moore,
Richmond, and Scotland Counties. The intent of this historical summary is to
localize documentation from some of the written sources on the area's settlement,
an aim pursued elsewhere by Abbot et al. (1996), Heath (1999), Loftfield (1970),
Fort Bragg (c. 1967) and Nye (n. d.). An additional aim is to expand certain facets
of existing written social history in light of the research and twenty-four
audiotaped interviews conducted for this preliminary oral history project.
In contrast to the European-oriented records, there is scant written
history concerning historical African and Native American residents on the lands
that ultimately were incorporated into Fort Bragg. Yet one of the cemeteries
located in the western segment of Fort Bragg, identified as the Goins Cemetery
(Boyko and Kern 1999), is associated through grave markers and oral history

with a local Indian family of the same name. Some records of slave ownership
by local European descent settlers also exist, particularly census reports that
enumerate slaves in households, and privately-owned wills that bequeath
blacks as "property" to white family members. Additionally, this research
project has found that many parcels of land sold to the government beginning in
1918 can be identified through names, oral history, and families' genealogical
records as having been owned by particular African American or Indian
families resident in North Carolina. In the absence of historical literature that
documents the full range of settlement, this oral history project contributes to the
reconstruction of a broader and more dynamic culture history of the area. It
also presents information that may aid in the development of a model of how to
recognize ethnic and racial diversity of settlements in the archaeological record
when most residents of the same time period were relying on similar ecological
and economic adaptations. Hundreds of historic
archaeological sites likely exist on Fort Bragg lands yet there is insufficient
documentation by which to assess the significance of these sites.
Archaeological sites must be evaluated for eligibility to the National Register of
Historic Places primarily on the basis of the integrity of deposits and their
potential to contribute to the overall history of the area. This could result in
numerous sites being considered eligible for the National Register pending further
evaluation. Although many of these sites are located in training areas,
management strategies are developed in conjunction with Fort Bragg's training
mission to manage these cultural
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resources. If sites can be evaluated efficiently and consistently with
reference to a written historic context, then the number of sites considered to be
potentially eligible for the National Register will decrease overall while sites
of significant merit can be more readily preserved. Given the temporal
limitations of oral history data, this project is most likely to contribute to
eligibility evaluations that post-date the Civil War.
Contemporary Fort Bragg encompasses approximately 160,000
acres of land. Most of the area was purchased in 1918 when Camp Bragg
was established in the Sandhills region of the Coastal Plain of North Carolina in
response to the military effort for World War I. The area lies within the
southwestern portion of the Cape Fear River drainage system. Additional
purchases that became base land, such as the Northern Training Area, the Training
Area northeast of Murchison Road (Highway 210), and Camp Mackall,
were made by the U. S. government in later decades, between the 1930s and
1980s. This oral history concerns all the portions of Fort Bragg now located in
Cumberland, Harnett, Hoke, and Moore Counties, plus Camp Mackall located in
Moore, Richmond, and Scotland Counties detached from the main base
area. The newly purchased Overhills Estate, formerly owned by the
Rockefeller family, is not a targeted subject for this research, but will be
treated separately in other reports. The main chronological focus of this study
begins with the period of European settlement in the early 1700s and ends in
the early 1900s when the U. S. government purchased most of the Fort
Bragg lands. A few project interviewees,

however, are associated with reservations lands purchased up through
the 1980s. For an accurate evaluation of
early records it is important to note that although most of Fort Bragg now is
located in Hoke County, Hoke was formed only in 1911 from Cumberland
and Robeson Counties. Between 1754 and 1911, focal years for this project,
Cumberland County included all of contemporary Fort Bragg's base lands
except for Camp Mackall. Cumberland County itself was formed in 1754 from
Bladen County. Moore County was formed from Cumberland County in
1784. Harnett County was formed from Cumberland in 1855. Scotland County
was formed in 1899 from Richmond County, which in turn was cut from
Anson County in 1799. Anson in turn was formed out of Bladen in 1750.
Therefore Bladen, which was carved from New Hanover County in 1734,
encompassed the entire base area just prior to 1750 (Corbitt 1950). In sum,
many early documents pertaining to this study refer to lands in Cumberland
County, lands that are now part of newer, adjacent counties such as Hoke,
Moore, and Harnett. Although published primary and
secondary documentation on specific Native American and African American
peoples in the area is limited for the time period relevant to this study, some
primary sources are available in regional courthouses, university, and state archive
collections. Evidence from cemeteries, land deed maps (Fort Bragg 1919), wills,
and other archival documents indicate that Fort Bragg lands were inhabited by a
multi-ethnic and multi-racial population by the time they were subject to
government purchase beginning in 1918.
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This preliminary oral history study therefore aims to develop a more
comprehensive historical context based on present-day interviews with
representatives of various local family and ethnic groups. The families' own
genealogical documents and reports also are included.

Historic Physical Sites of Archaeological Concern
Significant architectural and other archaeological evidence of early
colonial habitation (circa 1730-1775) at Fort Bragg is sparse and rarely has been
located in archaeological surveys to date (Heath 1999). Although many of the
initial land grants to, and purchases by, Highland Scots in Carolina were small,
the British Crown offered 600-acre land grants to families who built mills of any
type. Therefore, the remains of these types of structures may be buried on
some of the earliest settlers' properties. Early settlers' churches, homesteads, and
"ordinaries" or in-home taverns are mentioned in historical records. The
early colonial homes, however, are recorded as simple log cabin structures
(Lefler and Powell 1973: 184) that may have left little in the way of preserved
remains. Only in the late 1700s and early 1800s after sawmills were installed did
plank-on-frame construction become more common (Kelly and Kelly
1998: 93; Meyer 1961: 103). Even as more wealthy planters and naval stores
producers began building elaborate frame-construction homes, poorer rural
people continued to reside in log cabins through the Antebellum period
(Olmstead 1904[ 1856]: 368-369). Given general preservation factors, house

remains are most likely to include hard, non-organic objects such as sandstone or
brick foundation piers, hearths, and chimneys. One Antebellum house built
circa 1835, the Charles Monroe House (a. k. a. the Malcolm Monroe House), was
recommended for archaeological investigation because of its connection to
the Civil War battle of Monroe's Crossroads (Barrett 1987 [1963];
Loftfield 1979). Archaeological investigations in 1993-1994, showed it
to be a frame house, probably of less than 1,000 square feet, that was elevated
on sandstone piers with a brick fireplace and chimney (Scott and Hunt 1998).
The remains of naval stores production sites may be numerous on the
reservation. As is discussed in a separate section below, the naval stores industry
that sought pine timber, tar, and pitch began to flourish at the outset of British
colonial occupation, and it continued in modified form after the American
Revolution until the early twentieth century. Beginning in the late 1700s,
after the Revolution, Highland Scot colonists began erecting one-room
schoolhouses, often affiliated with churches, whose remains possibly may
exist on Fort Bragg. Most of the historic sites thus far
identified on Fort Bragg date from after the Civil War (Heath 1999). The ever-increasing
population in the Sandhills and the splintering of white planters'
properties after Emancipation help account for the higher number of later
home sites, as do general preservation factors given their relative recency. Later
historic sites that have been located on Fort Bragg generally are very shallow
and include some nineteenth-or twentieth-century glass, metal, ceramic,
and architectural artifacts (Clement et al.
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1997). The listing of property owners and now-razed churches on the 1919
map should assist in the future discovery and assessment of these possible
historic sites (Fort Bragg 1919). Land purchases made in the
recent past, such as the Northern Training Area, the Training Area
northeast of Murchison Road (Highway 210), and Camp Mackall are most likely
to contain preserved house foundations or remains of other structures such as
one-room school houses. Additionally, there is the greatest likelihood of
corroborating site information through oral history research in these more
recently purchased areas.

Native American Prehistory and Regional Group Disruptions
Native American settlement of the Fort Bragg area can be traced back at
least to the Paleo-Indian period beginning around 12,000 B. C on the
evidence of a Clovis point. Discussion of prehistoric Paleo-Indian, Archaic, and
Woodland period artifacts and key sites in the study region can be found in a
variety of archeological reports (G. E. C. and Southeastern Archaeological
Services 1997; Irwin et al. 1998; Loftfield 1979; Phelps 1983).
Determining exactly which Native American groups would have been
utilizing Fort Bragg lands in the centuries just prior to the arrival of the
first European settlers is a difficult task because southeastern North Carolina
represents the intersection or liminal boundary between the reported
Iroquoian, Algonkian, and Siouan Indian territories. Moreover, even these larger
linguistic groupings devised by scholarly

observers often refer to late-appearing Indian confederacies, which developed
as a result of European contact and incursions.
Some writings suggest that the Sandhills region fits within the former
territory of the eastern Siouan-speaking group identified as Waccamaw (Phelps
1983: 37). An 1867 report on the Cheraw branch of the eastern Sioux locates their
territory west of the Cape Fear River and as far north as the Little River (Gregg
1867; Loftfield 1979: 20). Later sources, however, suggest that the Cheraw
territory was located only farther west, in the western piedmont or foothills
(Swanton 1979[ 1946]). Indeed these Native American "territories" may never
have been geographically fixed over time, the way the Europeans attempted
to delineate and draw them. A party of British explorers led by Captain William
Hilton attempted to colonize the Lower Cape Fear River Valley in 1662 but
apparently the British were repelled by Siouan Cape Fear Indians when they
persisted in capturing and selling natives into slavery (Williamson 1973[ 1812]).
Subsequent English settlements beginning in 1664 along the Lower Cape
Fear River largely were abandoned by 1690, because of lack of financial
support and violent confrontations with Cape Fear Indians (Lee 1965;
Williamson 1973[ 1812]. Oates (1981) explains initial
reductions in the possible past distribution of the Siouan groups by
claiming that the Cheraw were sent westward by the Governor of Carolina to
join the Catawba branch of the Sioux before the Highland Scots entered the
Upper Cape Fear area in the 1730s. Oates asserts, therefore, that the Scots
never had "to deal with the Indians"
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because they had already migrated further west (Oates 1981: 6). In addition
to direct colonial pressures, the Siouan-speaking Cape Fear Indians also were
driven south by battles with Iroquoian groups (Lee 1963, 1965) such as the
Seneca and the Tuscarora who were angered by the Cape Fear groups'
alliances with English colonists during the previous Tuscarora War.
The post-contact era Tuscarora may have used the Sandhills area, at
least for travel, hunting, and trade, prior to their defeats by the British-led armies
of Barnwell and Moore (which were comprised of about 80% Native
Americans from other groups and 20% European soldiers). Barnwell's treaty
with the Tuscarora in 1712 specified that the Tuscarora were no longer to make
use of the land between the Neuse and Cape Fear Rivers (Barnwell 1908; Oates
1981: 7). On the basis of Barnwell's (1908) account and recent archaeological
excavations, Parramore estimates the Tuscarora population between the
Roanoke and Neuse Rivers (northeast of the Sandhills area) to have been at least
8,000 individuals (Byrd 1997: 2; Parramore 1982). The second phase of
the Tuscarora War of 1712-1713, when the British defeated the Tuscarora
residing along Contentnea Creek near present-day Snow Hill in Greene
County, resulted in the dispersion, fragmentation, and a partial northern
migration of this Iroquois group (Parramore 1982; Rights 1957). The
federally-recognized Tuscarora Nation now reside in New York State, while
those who sided with the British in the Revolutionary War received a reserve in
Ontario, Canada. The descendants of those individuals of Tuscarora heritage
who did not migrate north to the U. S.

and Canadian reserve regions became disenfranchised. Thus they are
recognized neither by the official Tuscarora groups nor by the U. S.
government despite any biological or ethnic heritage claims they can make.
Historical reports suggest that late seventeenth century Tuscarora may
have traded with Cape Fear coastal Siouan Indians or other Iroquoian Indian
groups residing in the highlands of western Carolina, as well as with Siouan
groups in the Piedmont and coastal Algonkians (Lawson 1767[ 1909]; Rights
1957: 45). Indeed, many Native American sites that have been found on
Fort Bragg are scattered along the central west-to-east, highland-to-coast ridges.
Several interviewees for this project identified paths along these same ridges
as the "Indian" or "buffalo" trails, which became the earliest colonial roads. A
crossing north-south Indian trail is said to run from Virginia to South Carolina,
sometimes being designated on older American maps as Patriot General
Nathaniel Greene's Path to the Pee Dee River (Fowler 1955: 28, 46). Thus both
east-west and north-south Indian travel paths through the Sandhills were
established at the time of early Highland Scot migrations.
After European settlement of the upper Cape Fear River region beginning
in the 1730s, Native American habitation in the Fort Bragg region is poorly
documented except for later references to the Henry Berry Lowry Gang
incidents related to Native Americans who now are identified as Lumbee. The
Lumbee people, who mostly live south of the project area in Robeson County,
sometimes identify themselves as an Indian group of mixed extraction
including Algonkian Croatan or Siouan
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Cape Fear heritage and English heritage from the Lost Colony settlers (Blu 1980;
Dial 1993; Dial and Eliades 1975; Evans 1971). By contrast, Sider (1993)
associates the Lumbee closely with Iroquoian Indian communities who now
call themselves "Tuscarora." Blu (1980) suggests that, because the area now
known as Robeson County was largely ungovernable during a North versus
South Carolina border dispute between 1712 and 1776 (Lefler and Newsome
1963), it became an early refuge and amalgamation center for all nearby
Indian communities fleeing European soldiers, colonists, and their imported
diseases. Thus the beginnings of a generic "Indian"identity apart from
earlier political and linguistic groupings likely dates to that time period and is not
just a contemporary fad and epiphenomenon of contemporary social
politics. The first Cumberland County taxables list in 1755, for example, listed
a man with the Indian name Lockalear [sic], now commonly considered a
Lumbee name, along with ten others in the "mulattoe" or "free blacks" category
(Parker 1990: 4, 15). In 1835, the State of North
Carolina disenfranchised "free people of color" who then could no longer vote,
bear arms, testify against whites in court, sit on juries, attend state-funded schools,
or select their own ministers. These legal changes resulted in many land losses for
the ancestors of the present-day self-proclaimed Tuscarora and Lumbee
Indians who began raiding white plantations by the onset of the Civil War
(Sider 1993: 159-160). Increasingly, Robeson County Indians and other "free
persons of color" were pressured to labor, albeit with a daily wage, along
with African American slaves on

Confederate military projects such as Fort Fisher, near Wilmington (Evans
1971: 3-4; Mallison 1998). After the war, as racial tensions and lawlessness
increased, a group of Lumbee Indians from Robeson County under the
leadership of Henry Berry Lowry became caught in a chain of thefts and
acts of violent vengeance. An incident occurring in the northwestern section of
present-day Fort Bragg in 1870 was blamed on the Lowry gang when some
individuals shot Daniel McLeod and his brother Neill before robbing their home
(Nye n. d.: 71-72). Although these murders, along with many others have
been widely blamed on the Lowry gang, some contemporary local newspaper
reports indicate that the Lowry gang were unlikely perpetrators of the Bragg
area crime against the McLeods (Evans 1971: 175). Despite the general view
among whites that the Lowry gang were nothing but murderous thugs, in the
1960s and 1970s Henry Berry Lowry became viewed by many Lumbee as a
culture hero who helped alter their racial status from "mulatto" or "colored"to
Indian (Sider 1993: 157-176). Various Native American
populations, including but not exclusively those who identify
themselves as Lumbee, still reside in all counties near to Fort Bragg. The 1980
census listed 3,900 Lumbee or Tuscarora living in Cumberland County, many
residing in East Fayetteville (Parker 1990: 4). These self-identified Indian
populations are potentially a significant source of oral history about the presence
of Native Americans among early European and later American settlements
in the upper Cape Fear River drainage. As many historical records and
the interviews conducted for this project
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suggest, groups classified by outsiders as Iroquoian, Siouan, and Algonkian
became newly dispersed and variously consolidated after European conquests.
In the Fort Bragg area today, Native Americans contacted identify themselves
not by particular tribe as much as generically "Indian," and often as
members of particular County Associations for Indian Peoples. They
identify each other primarily through certain family names, particular
residential neighborhoods, and separate "Indian"churches that are affiliated with
various Protestant denominations. Although County Associations for
Indians clearly are recent social and political institutions, the tribal groups of
Sandhills colonial history also likely were porous as native peoples migrated,
traded, battled, and intermarried in nonconcordant ways that continue to
stymie outsiders' tribal classification schemes.
The 1910 Census records "Croatan" Indians--often interpreted by
scholars as originally of Algonkian heritage but later politically and legally
reclassified as "Cherokee"Indians who were interpreted as of Iroquoian heritage.
These Croatan Indians were numbered at 48 in Cumberland County, 74 in
Scotland County, 213 in Sampson County, and 5,985 in Robeson County
(Oates 1981: 7). Such records must be considered cautiously given the shifting
nature of ethnic identities and the early state's motivations to reclassify or
undercount minorities, but they do indicate the continued presence of a
Native American population in the Fort Bragg area.
A final issue that must be raised for Native American history in the
Sandhills region is enslavement by

European colonists and the political and legal pressures that were placed on
Indians to become ghettoized along with local African American populations.
New laws following the revision of the North Carolina Constitution in 1835
defined Indians along with former slaves and their descendants as "free persons of
color," and created additional pressures on Indians to associate with African
Americans. Post-Civil War "Jim Crow"laws also sought to reestablish white
supremacy through "white" versus "colored" segregation rules. In turn,
these legal restrictions created a backlash response where some Indians worked
hard to distinguish themselves from the African American targets of European
American discrimination, while at the same time being legally and socially
congregated with them. Some intermarried.
Only recent historical investigations (e. g. Blu 1980; Forbes
1993; Sider 1993) have broached the sensitive topic of mixed-group people ,
but they provide substantial evidence on the difficult history of those colored-and-white
people known in North Carolina as "mulattoes"or "melungeons." As Forbes
(1993) makes clear, the precise definition of these terms (as well as
several related ones such as "mustees," usually specifying an African and Native
American mix) varied both among the eastern U. S. state laws, and over time
from the colonial era to the twentieth century. Recent genealogical efforts by
some self-identified "melungeons" have been aimed to demonstrate that their
dark-skinned and dark-haired ancestors likely were Spanish or Portuguese Moors
sent to the New World after the Spanish Inquisition of the 1500s (Arthur 1994).
Interviewees for this project who grew
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up being identified with one of the three major groups (Native American,
European, and African descent) did not feel comfortable with past inter-racial
unions. Yet such unions producing children occasionally occurred in the
genealogical records of all three groups interviewed in all three possible
combinations. An unusually thorough family
history submitted by members of the Walden-Goins Indian family suggests
that an Indian woman (with family in upstate New York) named Ann Walden
was married by a second generation Scottish Highlander named Duncan
Murchison (Hendrix-Frye n. d.). They produced a child named Polly Walden
but Duncan's prominent position as landowner and local sheriff required that
he renounce his Indian wife. Polly Walden is thought to have had six
children: William, Eliza, Berry, Evander, Eli, and Marticia, by an unknown first
husband. Polly Walden then married David Goins in 1849 and they had a son
named Laurence Goins. The three graves in the Goins Cemetery that bear unusual
"Indian symbol" markings may be the graves of Polly Walden Goins, her
second husband David Goins, and their son Laurence Goins (cf. Boyko and Kern
1998). The circumstantial evidence for
this possible Walden and Goins family origin is as follows. Kenneth Murchison
Sr. 's first child by his first wife, Catherine McIver, was named Duncan
Murchison (1776-1857). Duncan Murchison was sheriff of Moore County
between 1820 and 1832 and he served in the General Assembly of North Carolina
in 1833. He lived on Plank Road in the same vicinity of the Walden and Goins
family, but neither of his documented

wives was named Ann Walden (Kelly and Kelly 1998: 270). The U. S. Census
of 1800 lists Duncan Murchison as having one "free person of color" in his
household, and Hendrix-Frye (n. d.: 15-16, 35) wonders if this was not Ann
Walden (born 1780). The first Waldens to be listed as "heads of household"in
North Carolina were Ann Walden, James Walden, and Jonathan Walden in 1810.
Ann Walden, the mother of Polly Walden and grandmother of Eli Walden,
remained in the Pocket Creek area of Moore County according to later census
data, living until 1860 when she resided with Lucy Goins, her grandson Eli's
mother-in-law (Hendrix-Frye n. d.: 36). The first Goins to appear as
"head of household" in North Carolina was William Goings listed in 1790 as a
Robeson County "free person of color"along with members of the Lockilear and
Oxendine families (Hendrix-Frye n. d.: 35). The name Goins or its alternate
spellings such as Goings also is found in areas of eastern Tennessee and variously
are considered of Portuguese "melungeon" or "Croatan Indian"
ancestry. Although many hope to tie the Croatan or early mixed European-Indians
to the illustrious Lost Colony sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1587
under the leadership of John White, many other less well-known marriages
among Indians and early Europeans undoubtedly took place and also are
possible sources of "Croatan" ancestry (Rights 1957: 146-147).
No matter what their initial origin, the Goins and the Walden
families have an approximately two hundred-year history of intermarriage
between each other and among themselves. Both families lived in the
same area as Duncan Murchison
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between 1790 and 1860, but the property there all appears to be in Duncan
Murchison's name. Duncan Murchison received a contract in 1847 to build the
Plank Road into what are now upper Moore and Lee Counties. Hendrix-Frye
(n. d.: 36-37) questions whether Duncan Murchison negotiated privately with Ann
Walden's family, either for these Indian families' right to continue living in this
area without formal property deeds, or for his own rights to construct the Plank
Road along the Indians' ancestral "highway." Official land deeds and
individual property rights generally were unknown to Indians of the region until
colonists began to receive titles all around them beginning in the mid-1730s
(Rights 1957: 147).

Initial Settlement of the Fort Bragg Area by Highland Scots
The predominant European group to settle in the area now owned by Fort
Bragg were Highland Scots whose first date of settlement on the Cape Fear
River is probably 1732 (Meyer 1961: 72). James Innes from Caithness received a
grant of 320 acres in Bladen County in 1732 and another 640 acres the
following year. Hugh Campbell and William Forbes each received 640-acre
grants in 1733. The actual settlement of these lands may have occurred several
years later (Fowler 1986: 20; Kelly and Kelly 1998: 83). By that point, most
Indians had been driven away from the area by British forces, and the most
feared pirates marauding the Carolina coast, Edward Teach (Blackbeard) and
Stede Bonnet, were dead (Lee 1965). Between 1734 and 1752, the
Royal Governor of North Carolina was

Gabriel Johnston, a Lowland Scot who encouraged Protestant Scots to settle in
his domain by touting the virtues of a warm climate, free land grants, and a
ten-year exemption from taxation (Meyer 1961: 82-83). The earliest
Highland Scots were given large land awards, regulated by the British crown,
of at least fifty acres per person brought to the colony. The earliest settlers were a
mix of Scottish "gentlemen," their client tenant farmers, and indentured servants.
After three to five years of labor, servants were freed and then entitled to
claim land grants of their own (Meyer 1961: 107-108). Those Scots who came
initially as tenant farmers would receive tools and access to plots in exchange for
the right to keep one-third of the crop yields and all the increase of the
livestock they tended (Abbot et al. 1996: 20). These all-European groups,
generally without any African slaves, entered the colony by way of
Wilmington, or Brunswick sixteen miles downstream, and then rowed smaller
boats about ninety miles up the Cape Fear River to reach the Sandhills region.
In 1736 Alexander Clark migrated to the Upper Cape Fear with a
group of fellow Highland Scots and reported some Scotch settlers already
there (McLeod 1923: 4). Among those mentioned were Hector McNeill, living
where Bluff Church later was located, and John Smith, living on the south side
of Yadkin Road about one and a half miles from where Long Street Church
later was located. John Smith's son Malcolm later built the house now
referred to as "the Monroe House," (one of several historical sites to receive that
name), said to be across the road from the original Smith house. John Smith's
daughter Janet, or "Jenny Bahn"
15 Page 16 17

meaning "Jenny the Fair," married Archibald McNeill of the Barbecue area.
Reportedly, Yadkin Road was created by 1756 from an old west-to-east buffalo
trail that largely avoided the deep waterways (McLeod 1923: 6).
In 1739, the first large group of 350 Highland Scots known as the
"Argyll Colony" departed from Cambeltown, Scotland for Bladen (later
Cumberland) County. They voyaged on a boat named "The Thistle" that was
piloted by Neill Du MacNeill. These pioneers apparently flourished with their
transplanted Scottish communities and more ships from northern Scotland
followed. Apparently the more fertile lands in the Lower Cape Fear Valley
already were occupied with English settlers. The town of Cross Creek was
settled by Argyll colonists beginning in 1739. Another smaller town one mile
away called Cambelltown was established in 1762. The two would be
combined in 1783 to become the present city of Fayetteville.
Cross Creek was the more successful of the two pioneer towns,
becoming a pivotal trading center between Wilmington and the Piedmont
settlements (Lee 1965). Cross Creek developed as the major trading hub
among Wilmington to the south, Virginia to the north, and the Piedmont
region to the west. Merchants from Wilmington set up storehouses at Cross
Creek for goods that would be traded inland to the Germanic Moravian
settlements near what is now the Winston-Salem area (Parker 1990: 10-
13). When the British Royal Governor commissioned maps of key locations in
the Colony in 1770, Cross Creek was drawn with over thirty buildings

including gristmills, a brewery, a tannery, and a jail.
Although the early Highland Scot settlement population was low, their
migration to eastern North America escalated during the decades following
the English defeat of the Scottish army at the Battle of Culloden Moor in 1746.
Some historical studies emphasize that conquered Scots were allowed to take a
loyalty oath and migrate to the American Colony (Martin 1829: 48; Oates 1981: 44-
46). Meyer (1961), however, argues against this "exile theory" and insists
that the rationales for Highland Scott migration were more complex. Meyer, as
well as Kelly and Kelly (1998) further cite the importance of changes in clan
alliances, rent increases, evictions of tenant farmers, the commercialization of
sheep farming, unpredictable cattle prices, rapid population growth, and
increasing unemployment due to the new livestock-raising and agricultural
practices in the Highlands. After 1749, a man named Baliol of Jura managed a
ship, which sailed every year between Campbelton, Scotland and Wilmington.
This ship delivered many new Highland Scots to settle in what are now
Cumberland, Bladen, Robeson, Richmond, Montgomery, Moore, and
Harnett Counties (Patterson and Carswell 1925: 13-14)
As most early Scotch immigrants spoke only Gaelic, printing presses in
North Carolina issued many eighteenth century documents in Gaelic, and Gaelic
speakers were hired as translators for the post office at least until 1828 (Lefler and
Powell 1973: 93). Those Highland Scots who had been educated in British
schools prior to their immigration knew English, but commoners in the 1700s
often knew Scottish Gaelic exclusively,
16 Page 17 18

and few British materials were printed in that language (Meyer 1961: 118). The
New Testament, which had been printed in English centuries earlier, only was
printed in Gaelic in 1767. Several families interviewed for this project
reported Gaelic Bibles as one of their families' most treasured heirlooms.
In 1755, shortly after Cumberland County was created, sheriff
Hector McNeill reported the county's residents as "302 white males, 11
"mulattoes" by family name, and 63 [unnamed] Negroes" (Parker 1990: 8).
White females were not counted in these lists, and the term mulatto at this time
could refer variously to descendants of mixed European, Native American, or
African heritage (Forbes 1990: 190-200). These relatively few individuals,
however, owned thousands of acres in what are today Cumberland and Hoke
Counties. Estimates of the Highland Scot population in North Carolina circa 1776
range widely from 5,000 (Watson 1996: 5) to 50,000 (Kelly and Kelly
1998: 81), although the conservative estimates seem more justified by the
land grant records (Heath 1999; Meyer 1961). When the first U. S. census was
conducted in 1790, Cumberland County's total population had increased
to 8,671 people, with about a third of the names recognizable as belonging to
Scottish Highlanders (Parker 1990: 8). By the early 1800s, Highlands Scots
appear to be the largest and most cohesive population residing in the
Upper Cape Fear region.

Long Street, Sandy Grove, and Other Fort Bragg Churches

Long Street Church was founded on what is now Fort Bragg land
following the visit of a Presbyterian missionary from Pennsylvania in early
1756.

The Reverend Hugh McAden arrived at the home of Alexander McKay and
requested a night's lodging and an opportunity to preach to the local
Highland Scots. His request was granted and the first service was held on January
20, 1756. McAden reported in his journal that the settlers were very cordial
and grateful to the preacher. Yet he called them "hypocritical" because they
proceeded to drink and swear heavily at Alexander McKay's tavern after the
church service (McLeod 1923: 7; Fort Bragg n. d.: 7; Samons n. d.). McKay's
tavern or "ordinary" was located at the crossroads of the west-east Yadkin road
that connected the Piedmont to the coast, and a local north-south road. Taverns
attached to early settlers' homes "were the colonial equivalent of television,
fast-food shops, a night on the town, motels, and political clubhouses" (Parker
1990: 17). Cumberland County licensed ten such establishments in 1756.
17 Page 18 19

Reverend McAden returned to Pennsylvania after his visit to McKay's
tavern and persuaded a Gaelic-speaking friend named Reverend James Campbell,
originally from Argyleshire, Scotland, to assume the spiritual leadership of the
fledgling Sandhills community. Twelve local men agreed to guarantee
Campbell's yearly salary of one hundred pounds paid in lawful North Carolina
currency (Meyer 1961: 114). Reverend Campbell began preaching in Gaelic
from his new home opposite from where Bluff Church would be erected
(McLeod 1923: 8). Soon, however, Reverend Campbell was preaching at
three regular locations: Bluff (a. k. a. Roger's), Barbecue (a. k. a. Clark's), and
Long Street (a. k. a. McKay's). These three conjugations became ordained as
churches with the first elders of Long Street being Malcolm Smith, Archibald
Ray, and Archibald McKay, the son of Alexander McKay, the tavern owner. On
his preaching circuit, Campbell gave separate sermons in English for the
benefit of some Scots-Irish, Lowland Scot, and English residents (Watson
1996). The Long Street congregation
was organized in 1758 and the first log church building was erected on Yadkin
Road in 1765 and 1766. In 1770 another native Scot, Reverend John McLeod
arrived with more immigrants and joined the ministry. These men worked
together until 1776 when they parted company over the Revolutionary War.
Mr. Campbell, who championed the cause of the colonists found himself
threatened by the local Loyalists and so left the county (Fowler 1955: 26).
Reverend McLeod ultimately departed home for Scotland and his ship may have
been lost at sea (McLeod 1923: 10). The

next four pastors of Long Street Church: Crawford, McDairmid [sic], Lindsay,
and McIver, also were Scottish-born, and the last five: McNair, McKay, McQueen,
Fairley, and McLeod, had Scottish heritage on both sides of the Atlantic.
The original Long Street Church burned down in the early 1800s and was
replaced by a frame structure (Fort Bragg n. d.: 7). It was built for a third time in its
present two-story Greek Revival form between 1845 and 1848, just off the
original Yadkin Road. The Church's largest and most thriving congregations,
numbering about 700 members, occurred just prior to the Civil War when the
Longstreet Road population itself was at its height (McLeod 1923: 14; Fort Bragg
n. d.). The church also developed its nearby primary school dating from the
late 1700s into a preparatory school named Longstreet Academy in 1849.
The Academy, which offered classes in Greek, Latin, and philosophy was short-lived,
however. At the onset of the Civil War the Academy teacher, Major
Murdoch McLaughlin, and his students joined the Confederate Army in Virginia.
Long Street Church and its surrounding population never fully recovered after
the Civil War. For sixteen years afterwards no children were presented
for baptism. Many congregation members moved away. Some shifted
their attentions to another, newer church farther west on the reservation land,
Sandy Grove Presbyterian Church. Some area residents, however, continued to
visit the cemetery and attend the church until, and even after, its purchase by the
Army in 1918. A few older individuals of Highland Scot descent interviewed for
this project were baptized at Long Street Church or attended services there in their
childhood.
18 Page 19 20

From their almost entirely Gaelic beginnings, church sermons in the
Sandhills began to integrate English segments although many churches
continued the use of Gaelic until the 1870s or even into the early 1900s. Kelly
and Kelly (1998: 108-111) suggest that Gaelic continued as a living language for
home use in Highland Scot families for about three generations after migration,
with two or three more generations continuing proverb and song traditions.
The use of Gaelic in church seemingly dwindled quickly after the Civil War.
Between the 1940s and 1970s virtually all elders still commanding some Gaelic
passed away from their communities. Sandy Grove Presbyterian
Church was an offshoot of Long Street Church planned mostly by second and
third generation Scots who settled further to the southwest.

After a few years of home services, a church building was completed off Plank
Road in 1854. The original membership was twenty and the three ruling elders
were Peter Monroe, Archibald McLeod, and J. L. Campbell (Patterson and
Carswell 1925: 18). General Sherman's soldiers destroyed the Church's early
records, so little else is known. As the Sandy Grove Church did not establish a
high school, many key congregation

families such as the Blues, the Rays, and the Campbells began to migrate outward
to areas such as Sanford or Raeford, often in search of a better education for
their children. Church membership thus declined from 120 in 1894 to only 43 in
1905 (Patterson and Carswell 1925: 38). Falling into disrepair by 1916,
Sandy Grove Church was remodeled with a steeple into its present form
through donations by both local and emigrant families. Having just rebuilt the
church, congregation members were reluctant to leave it at the time of the
U. S. Army purchase. Services continued until January 1923 although most of the
remaining congregation moved to Raeford in 1922 (Patterson and Carswell
1925: 55). Both the Long Street and Sandy
Grove Church buildings and cemeteries are now protected by the U. S. Army,
which supports annual reunions organized by descendants of original
congregation members. Staff at the Fort Bragg Cultural
Resources Program assist visitors to the church buildings and cemeteries.
The Long Street and Sandy Grove Presbyterian Churches had the
most vibrant and powerful congregations at the time of the Army purchase in
1918, which undoubtedly is why they were preserved on the reservation land
until today. The 1919 Map and a base landmarks map in Loftfield (1979) also
indicate the former presence of numerous other churches. These include:
Beulah Missionary Baptist Church, Chapel Hill Church, Cumberland
Seventh Day Baptist Church, Friendship Presbyterian Church, McCrimmons
Chapel, Piney Ridge Church, Rock (or Rocky) Hill Church, Rock Rose Church,
and Zion Wall Church. Some of these
19 Page 20 21

churches, like the Wayman's or Wyman's Chapel reported by
interviewees for this project (but not appearing as such on any known map),
were oriented to separate congregations of African or Indian descent. The Army
removed all church buildings other than Long Street and Sandy Grove after 1923
(Heath 1999). The records of the two main base area churches, Long Street
and Sandy Grove, in addition to the maps of the now razed smaller churches,
provide significant historical data on past Fort Bragg area population centers,
migration paths, ethnic mosaics, and economic dynamics.

Pioneer Subsistence Patterns in the Sandhills
Virtually all early European settlers in North Carolina practiced
agriculture or a related industry such as barrel making (Lefler and Newsome
1973). Although many of the early Scottish settlers were tradesmen in
Scotland, most relied upon subsistence agriculture once in North Carolina. The
sandy hills of the Upper Cape Fear region were not very fertile, but the
bottomland near the waterways could produce adequate crops of Indian corn
(maize) and some European grains. Most early land grants were located along the
rivers, which also were the primary means of transportation until roads were
developed overland upon old buffalo or Indian trails in the late 1700s (Meyer
1961: 96; Cumming 1998). New farming techniques were
necessary for the Highland Scots to survive in the Sandhills frontier. The
majority of the lands obtained were longleaf pine forests in sandy ridges,

little suited for crops other than grapes, which were native to the region. The
initial process of house building both provided family shelter and began land
clearing for farm activities. Longleaf pine trees were felled for log cabins that
were weatherproofed with clay between the beams. These homes were very
small, simple buildings with only one or two rooms, sometimes with an additional
loft or shaded veranda (Lefler and Powell 1973: 184). After sawmills were
built, these log cabins gradually were replaced with clapboard houses by those
who could afford them. Even until the 1850s, however, the inhabitants of
Sampson County, for example, were said to live in very spartan houses without
brick, glass, or stone construction. Doors and windows often remained opened and
huge hearth fires were necessary in winter to compensate for that exposure
to the elements (Johnson 1937: 224-225). Rather than continuing the
difficult process of clearing land by felling the innumerable pine trees, early
settlers practiced "tree-ringing." A ring of bark was removed near the base of
undesirable trees, which caused the trees to lose their leaves and die. Once the
needles had dropped, sunlight could reach the ground and this allowed the
planting of crops without the laborious effort of widespread tree removal. The
tree later could be felled and burned in a tar kiln for the production of "naval
stores," meaning gum products as well as shipbuilding timbers.
Although a few Highland Scotch settlers owned and used plows, most
simply used hoes and other hand tools because the tree-ringing procedure left
so many obstacles in the ground (Meyer 1961: 103-104; Schaw 1939: 163). Crops
planted by the early colonists included
20 Page 21 22

maize, wheat, oats, sweet potatoes, legumes, and flax. Because land initially
was so abundant, farmers often simply switched to other plots when soil fertility
was exhausted by any particular crop. The European practice of using manure
for fertilizer largely was abandoned and crop rotation was employed mainly
among corn, legumes, and wheat (Meyer 1961: 104). Corn was grown primarily
for home use and for animal feed. Gristmills were constructed near Cross
Creek both to produce meal from local corn and to process wheat grown in the
Piedmont, forty miles to the west (Merrens 1964). The meal and flour
produced was consumed locally or traded downstream to Wilmington and
Brunswick (Lee 1965). Foraging in the Sandhills
provided early colonists with wild fruits, especially grapes, and a variety of game
including deer, rabbits, turkeys, pheasants, ducks, geese, and fish (Meyer
1961: 109). Hunting was described as excellent by English visitors who
marveled at how the tall longleaf pines prevented undergrowth and allowed for
mounted hunters to ride unimpeded through the game-rich forests (Meyer
1961: 75-76). Highland Scots also relied heavily upon livestock that were allowed
to graze freely, being only rounded up for slaughter or sale (Meyer 1961: 105-
106). Cumberland County records of the late 1700s are replete with references to
sales of livestock including hogs, cows, and horses (Parker 1990: 16).
Lands adjacent to crop areas were utilized for the grazing of livestock,
particularly for animals that roamed largely untended and could forage
independently. Early records such as wills indicate that these roving, unfenced
animals were hard to monitor. Some

settlers placed salt out once a week to lure back their stock, and yearly round-ups
allowed settlers to brand their livestock with marks registered by the
colonial authorities. Horses, cows, hogs, and poultry all were raised but hogs were
more successful than cows because they could remain healthier despite the benign
neglect practiced by the colonial farmers (Cathey 1974: 10-11; Lefler and
Newsome 1973: 94-95). It is said of the Southern colonist that:
Game he often depended upon, beef he liked, and dairy products
were welcome. Yet when he "ran out," hog meat was the item
considered so important that he went into debt to buy it. (Hilliard
1972: 92)
Estate inventories reported by Meyer (1961: 105-106) indicate that
many Scottish farmers in the late 1700s owned several horses, dozens of cattle,
and hundreds of hogs. Hogs could forage efficiently in the back lands away from
the precious waterways, and they only were fed corn to fatten them beginning
about six weeks before slaughter. Pork then was smoked and kept in a
storehouse to provide protein for the farming family throughout the winter.
Meat also was salted and pickled in barrels, some of which was sold via
Wilmington to the West Indies when salt was sufficiently available (Meyer
1961: 106). Because of the infertility of most
Sandhills soil, neither the crops produced nor the colonists' diet ever
became very diverse. Before the introduction of modern farming aids,
neither cotton nor tobacco grew particularly well. Even throughout the
1800s, the settlers' diet mainly consisted
21 Page 22 23

of corn and pork, supplemented by collards and some wild fruit and game
(Olmstead 1904[ 1856]: 359-390).

Pine Trees as Wealth: The Naval Stores Industry
In this very section about old Sandy Grove Church there
flowed a stream of gold from the round pine timber in the form of
turpentine and rosin. Later the lumbering industry stripped the
hills, leaving only the blackjack [oaks]. (Patterson and Carswell
1925: 53)
Although the Sandhills soil was not fertile enough for early commercial
agriculture, it hosted innumerable long leaf pine trees (Pinus
palustris) whose gum products and timbers were treasured

by the colonial era shipping industry. The colonial government encouraged the
establishment of water-powered mills by issuing a 1736 proclamation that offered
a 640-acre land grant to anyone who constructed a gristmill or a sawmill in
the Cape Fear Section. Forty sawmills were reported to the Board of Trade by
1764 (Meyer 1961: 104-105). Sawmills either were owned individually by large
landowners, or else were cooperative ventures where Cross Creek area settlers
combined resources and shared profits for timber exported down the Cape Fear
River to Wilmington (Merrens 1964). "Naval stores" included both
gum and wood products. The gum product was oleoresin that was drained
from cut and "boxed" trees, then distilled to produce turpentine and rosin.
The wood naval stores included lumber, tar drained from burning dead pine wood

(" lightwood"), and pitch, which was refined from tar by boiling (Harmon and
Snedeker 1997: 145). Tar was needed on all British colonial ships to seal the
rigging from water decay. Pitch was used to caulk both the interior and exterior
hulls of the ships. Carolina long leaf pines contained far more gum than New
England pines so the British trade shifted south and escalated after 1705 when
Swedish naval stores supplies were less available to the British government.
In addition to its naval uses, pine products had myriad other pioneer uses
including tar for sealing animal wounds, honey and pine tar remedies for human
bronchial infections, and resin or "brewers' pitch" to line beer barrels or
fruit juice kegs (Butler 1998: 216-217). Pine wood charcoal was used for tooth-cleaning
powder, a meat purifier, laxatives, and beverage filtration agents.
Many of the medicinal uses of pine gum as salves or chewing agents, and the use
of gum as an adhesive glue, apparently were borrowed from Indian practices
(Butler 1998: 218). Crude gum was needed for the
colonial manufacture of yellow soap, and turpentine was used in the early 1800s as
a key ingredient in lamp oil. Turpentine was replaced as a lamp oil by kerosene
in the 1850s due to turpentine's smokiness and volatility (Butler
1998: 219). Turpentine continued to be used, however, as a household cleaning
agent, insecticide, and home remedy for a variety of skin and respiratory
problems. Pine oil, produced from the steam distillation of lightwood stumps,
also was used in processing wool and cotton, as well as a general cleaning and
disinfecting agent. After 1812, demand shifted as
turpentine production increased relative
22 Page 23 24

to tar and pitch production (Sharrer 1981: 253-254). The increased use of
paints and varnishes on frame buildings during the 1800s led to greater demands
for turpentine production and export in the Carolinas (Perry 1947: 147). In
general, cut and "boxed" trees could be tapped for oleoresin for about a dozen
years before they needed to be cut to produce tar or pitch. Sandhills tar,
however, was of poor quality and received a relatively low price because
many impurities were introduced in the cooking and draining processes (Butler
1998; Olmstead 1904[ 1856]). By the mid-1800s, even though
demand for turpentine was still high, many North Carolina forests, including
those in the Fort Bragg area, began to be depleted. Some turpentine merchants
then moved farther south to Georgia and Florida in search of new trees to exploit.
The Civil War further wreaked havoc on the turpentine industry as wood was
badly needed for military purposes, trade was disrupted, and much wooden
infrastructure such as railroads and bridges was destroyed. Moreover,
soldiers often burned turpentine camps as part of their military campaigns
(Barrett 1987: 299). Although the turpentine industry as a whole is said to
have recovered after the Civil War (Harmon and Snedeker: 1997: 147), the
Sandhills region seemingly did not fully participate in the recovery due to
increasingly depleted pine stands and economic hardship in general. Moreover,
when the shipbuilding industry shifted from wood to steel vessels in the 1880s,
the demand for tar and pitch quickly dwindled (Sharrer 1981: 269).
Like farming, turpentining could be performed on a modest scale, for
home subsistence use only, or on a much

larger, "plantation" style scale. While Sandhills soil did not support the cotton
or rice plantations that created the demand for African slaves elsewhere in
the South, pine management and turpentining was messy, hot, and
physically difficult work that became a major commercial basis for slave labor
in the Upper Cape Fear region. Before the Civil War,
turpentining occurred on white-owned plantations with most of the work
performed by slaves. After the war, turpentining was done in camps that
were small communities of shanty houses set in the woods by the pine
resources. Most of the workers still were of African descent. Turpentine camps
often had their own nearby cemeteries where vehicle axles or pieces of
lightwood became the headstones for the deceased. Butler (1998: 127-139)
describes the humble conditions in which these workers survived. Everyone
rose by 4 a. m. to begin preparing food and mule wagons. Children hauled
water, women cooked and packed meals, and men prepared their animals and
tools. Women tended kitchen gardens containing sweet potatoes, greens, and
beans of various types. Woodsmen hunted squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, and
gophers to add meat to their family tables. Everyday clothes were made of
flour sacks that had to be boiled routinely to remove pine gum stains.
Some turpentine factory owners built a one-room primary school for the
turpentine workers' children, or sometimes a church where lay preachers
would hold services. Often children did not finish school because, by seven to
ten years old, they were needed to help their parents with turpentine production.
23 Page 24 25

Food, clothing, work tools, tobacco, matches, and lamp oil were sold
at the turpentine camp commissary where workers purchased items with the
tokens or credit chits that constituted their daily pay. Workers rarely were paid
in cash unless their commissary account was fully paid off. Most camps were so
isolated that workers would have been unable to reach a public store in any
case. Often turpentine workers and their families were destined to remain
perpetually in debt to their boss through inevitable commissary purchases.
Indebted workers could not leave their employers without risking jail, although
severe indebtedness sometimes prompted workers to flee in the night or
have themselves smuggled or bought out by a rival turpentine boss. Sometimes
bosses used alcohol as a reward for extra work, contributing to occasional
lawlessness and violence in the camps. Some Southern turpentine camps
included stockades and others, especially in Florida throughout the 1800s, were
known to lease convicts for turpentining as part of their penal system. In sum,
while the pine products industry brought considerable wealth to some large
landowners, it also created a difficult life, especially for poor black workers
with few civil rights and opportunities for mobility.

African Americans: Enslaved and Free People of Color
Historians generally associate the high rates of African American slavery
in Virginia with tobacco plantations, and high rates in Coastal South Carolina with
rice plantations (Crow 1996: 1). Most Sandhills soils in North Carolina could

not support these crops in the colonial period. Additionally, Atlantic sandbars
too treacherous for abundant slave ship landings disadvantaged much of the
state's coastline. Only the demand for naval stores production in the Sandhills
made the purchase of African slaves from Wilmington, which was not
impeded by sandbars, and other more distant ports an attractive option for the
early European settlers. The
Colonial Records of North Carolina (III: 154-155, V: 320, 575,

603) indicate that the Sandhills counties contained few African Americans in the
first years of Scottish settlement, that is during the 1730s (Meyer 1961: 73, 178:
n. 20). Given the relatively poor soil and the early establishment of subsistence
rather than commercial plantation farming, initial slave holdings in the
Sandhills were small although definitely extant by the late colonial period. In
1755, whites were numbered at 1,238, or 90% of the population, while blacks
were numbered at 140 or 10% of the population in Cumberland County (Kay
and Cary 1995: 221; Heath 1999). The Cumberland County taxables list of 1755
recorded 63 slaves and 11 "mulattoes" or free blacks. County records of 1758
mention two free blacks by name, a freed male named Antone and another named
Gideon Cumbo (Parker 1950: 4). Records indicate that some free blacks worked as
boatmen, cart pullers, or other types of paid servants. Some trusted slaves of this
time period were licensed by their owners to carry guns, and many were
skilled tradesmen such as blacksmiths, carpenters, butchers, tanners,
wheelwrights, boatsmen, or coopers (Crow 1996: 7; Schaw 1939: 185).
Reportedly house slaves and craftsmen slaves absorbed the caste system of their
24 Page 25 26

white masters who generally depreciated the relative value of the farming or field
hand slave (Fowler 1955: 120). Wills of Highland Scots dating to
the 1760s already record the inheritance of black slaves. By 1790, 717 slaves in
Cumberland County were owned by residents with Scottish Highlander
names (Meyer 1961: 108). Some slaves even learned Gaelic, much to the
surprise of newly arriving Scots, some of whom feared that their skin too would
turn black (Dunn 1953: 138; Meyer 1961: 118-119). The 1765 tax records of
Cumberland County list 866 "white taxables" and 366 blacks and mulattoes
(Oates 1981[ 1950]: 68). Indians were coded with African Americans under the
"colored" column until the 20 th century so there are no definitive records for
their populations until then. While white Patriots looked upon
the Revolutionary War as a bid for their independence from England, colonial
blacks viewed the War as a struggle for their freedom from slavery (Crow
1996: 55-63). Patriots fearing slave uprisings in North Carolina resolved in
1774 not to import any new slaves who could be planted troublemakers. By 1775
Patriot committees were disarming all Negroes and fending off slave uprisings
fomented by British promises of freedom for those joining His Majesty's troops
and helping to restore order in the British Colony. Adding to the African American
insurrections were the emergence of North Carolina Quaker protests in the
1770s that decried the institution of slavery altogether. North Carolina
Quakers began freeing their slaves although many were re-enslaved through
rulings of the General Assembly. Only those freed slaves who agreed to join the
Revolutionary Army before 1777 could

legally retain their freedom (Crow 1996: 62-63). Thus free blacks tended to
join the Patriots to preserve their freedom while slaves tended to support
or join the British in the hopes of gaining freedom as a reward.
The majority of blacks who fought warred for the Patriots, some few
slaves even being sent as surrogate soldiers for their masters in exchange for
the promise of future freedom (Crow 1996: 65). It is recorded that a few
African Americans from the Fayetteville area who fought for the Patriots drew
pensions from the U. S. Government for the rest of their lives. Free "Negroes"
were allowed to vote in North Carolina between 1776 and 1835 although their
movements were restricted and the only other population with whom they could
intermarry was Indians (Oates 1972: 695-697).
Those who joined British troops under Cornwallis, either as fleeing
Patriot slaves or as slave labor donated by Loyalist supporters, usually worked in
support positions rather than as soldiers because they were rarely trusted with
weapons or horses (Crow 1996: 73-77). Many blacks, however, simply used the
chaos of the war to escape their masters' grasp. Ultimately the British leadership
after the war decided that those blacks who had served in the British Army
would be freed while those captured on Whig plantations would be returned as
slaves. Thus as many as 5,000 black Loyalists sailed from America to the
British Caribbean, New York, London, Halifax, or joined the Seminole Indians
in Florida (Crow 1996: 80). In North Carolina after the
Revolution, a backlash arose against the idea of slaves being freed and the
voluntary emancipation or
25 Page 26 27

"manumission" of a slave by an owner was illegal unless adjudicated as a case
of exceptional merit by the county courts. Slaves, proselytized by Methodist
and Baptist evangelical missionaries as part of the Great Revival, began to
understand the organizational and revolutionary potential inherent in the
Christian religion (Genovese 1974: 587-597). In 1797 Fayetteville town
commissioners responded to increased black assertiveness by legislating lashes
for Negroes who congregated, played ball, or entertained in their homes on
Sunday or after dark (Crow 1996: 86; Johnson 1937: 551). Perhaps these
stringent measures in the Sandhills area helped to keep local blacks isolated from
the chain of slave rebellions that erupted farther north beginning along the
Albermarle Sound in 1802. The slave trade escalated after
the Revolution in an effort to compensate for slaves lost during the
War. By 1790, the black slave population of 717 owned by persons
with Highland Scot names was approximately one-fourth that of the
Highlander population of 2,834, while in North Carolina generally there was one
black for about each three white individuals (Meyer 1961: 108). Census
returns from 1790 indicate that the largest Highland Scot slaveholders
owned up to about 50 slaves each. One hundred and four slave sales were
recorded in Cumberland County between 1745 and 1790. During the 1790s, the
black population of North Carolina grew at the highest rate of any antebellum
decade (Crow 1996: 82). Slaveholders in North Carolina
generally are said to have owned less than five slaves each in 1790, and less
than ten by 1850 (Johnson 1937: 55),

although the larger plantations in fertile riverine areas outside the Sandhills
region were exceptions to this pattern of small slave holdings (cf. Redford 1989).
In the Harnett area in particular, the 1780 tax records list 251 taxable whites, of
whom only 62 owned the total of 282 slaves. As noted by Fowler (1955: 119), a
pattern emerges where only the wealthiest white families residing on the
fertile bottomlands by the rivers could afford to own ten or more slaves, while
most whites owned few or no slaves. Owners of the most slaves in the Harnett
area included the Buie, Campbell, Clark, McKay, McNeill, Murchison, Smith,
and Williams families. In two known cases of families who were considered
cruel to their slaves, the African American families owned or formerly
owned by those white families refused to use the masters' family names as their
own. This act of slave resistance reported by Fowler (1955: 120) was
reiterated to me independently by several interviewees.
Some local writers suggest that slavery in the Sandhills region was more
familial and distinctly less brutal than reported in many accounts of Southern
plantation life (Fowler 1955; Oates 1972). Other historical reports, however,
offer accounts of North Carolina slavery that detail not only the harshness of work
shared by white and black residents alike but the inferior conditions of blacks'
daily life. Restrictive laws forbade free movement and supported the splintering
of biological kin through the mercantile process (Bassett 1899; Crow 1996;
Crow, Escott, and Hatley 1992). Few Cumberland County
individuals were listed as "free colored" until 1820, after which that group
increased by five fold, with 95
26 Page 27 28

individuals listed as free colored in 1810 versus 564 individuals so listed in
1820. These sharp increases in the free colored population listing might be
caused by a number of factors including the attractiveness of Fayetteville's
booming port economy to seasonal or mobile laborers seeking anonymity
(Abbott et al. 1996: 23-24). Franklin (1995[ 1943]: 35) indicates that seventy
percent of the free Negro population in 1860 consisted of mulatto individuals,
thought primarily to be the children of white men and Negro slave women.
Some white slave owners provided well for their children with slave mothers by
willing the children property and declaring their emancipation, thus
increasing the numbers of the "free colored" population (Franklin
1995[ 1943]: 35). Many of these individuals migrated away from
plantations to make their fortune in towns where they were less likely to be
considered a "poor example" by slave owners (Franklin 1995[ 1943]: x, 15).
After the abortive slave insurrection led by Nat Turner in
Virginia in 1831, restrictions on North Carolina slaves increased. Public
meetings or slave social gatherings were curtailed, and travel beyond the owners'
lands without written permission was punished by white patrols called "Patty
Rollers" (Fowler 1955: 120). For Cumberland County in particular,
population statistics for 1850 indicate that approximately sixty-one percent of
inhabitants were white, thirty-five percent were black slaves, and four
percent were free blacks. The largest increases in Cumberland County
populations were experienced among all three groups between 1810 and 1820,
and for whites and slaves between 1840

and 1850 (Population Statistics of the United States, 1872, as presented in
Abbot et al. 1996: 22). Frederick Law Olmstead's report
from the 1850s describes regional social life in detail and categorizes classes of
blacks and whites in the Sandhills around Fayetteville (Olmstead
1904[ 1856]). Olmstead divides whites into a "great mass" who inhabit the
forest as "entirely uneducated, poverty-stricken vagabonds" and a second group
of small proprietors, "a grade superior" who own houses still without glass
windows but with a few pieces of heirloom furniture, more hogs, and some
slaves (Olmstead 1904[ 1856]: 388-390). Olmstead's personal view of the black
slaves working in the turpentine industry was that they were more intelligent and
generally "superior" in character to what he called the white "vagabonds." His
deduction was that through their close association with the white small
proprietors, the Sandhills slaves showed greater "intelligence" than those owned
by wealthier but more segregated whites that he had viewed elsewhere in the
South. Olmstead even reported seeing the casual mixing and dining of whites
and blacks in worker and trader camps near Fayetteville (Olmstead
1904[ 1856]: 398). Olmstead concluded from his
observations near Fayetteville that slavery there "loses much of its
inhumanity" because slaves were partially integrated as family members,
gaining or losing with the tide of their white masters' fortunes. In what can be
seen as a prescient economic and social analysis, Olmstead associates the
relatively good position of some Sandhills slaves to the fact that the poor
soils and isolation of the region kept
27 Page 28 29

most whites from accumulating enough wealth to more fully exploit blacks
within the Antebellum slavery system (Olmstead 1904[ 1856]: 408). In an area
where cotton did not produce well enough for large-scale farm plantations,
large numbers of harshly treated slaves who would need to be carefully guarded
were not cost-effective for most white landowners. Franklin (1995[ 1943]: 196)
echoes this analysis when he notes that the small farms prevalent in Antebellum
North Carolina led to more personal slave-master relations that resulted in
later-enacted, less strict, and more loosely-enforced Negro laws.
Because ward population statistics were not documented until
1870, free and slave populations in the Sandhills prior to the Civil War cannot
be documented with precision (Clement et al. 1997; Heath 1999). Even the total
1860 Fort Bragg area population can only be estimated at 2,291 individuals,
based on population statistics from the 1870 census (Clement et al. 1997: 51).
What is clear, however, is that the ratio of enslaved blacks to free whites was
escalating in the antebellum period, especially as turpentine became a major
avenue of profits (Johnson 1937). Between 1790 and 1850 the black slave
to free white ratio in Cumberland County shifted from roughly 1: 3 to 1: 2
while the free blacks are estimated at only 5% of the total population in 1850.
The exact 1850 Cumberland County census figures are 12, 447 whites, 7,217
slaves, and 946 free Negroes (Wheeler 1851: 124). In 1870 the Cumberland
County total was 17,835 divided into 9,520 whites and 7,515 (now all free)
blacks, including still the Indian and other "colored" people. Of those 17,835
people, 4,660 resided in Fayetteville

with the remaining 12,375 living in the rural areas of the county (Branson 1872;
Loftfield 1979: 22). By 1890, the black population of 12,341 began to
approximate the white population of 14,952 in the Cumberland County total
of 27,293 (Branson 1896: 213). The end of slavery by the Civil
War ironically also led to increased racial tensions and social segregation
under Jim Crow laws. After 1865, agents of the Union League, which organized
blacks politically, supported African Americans in their bids for equality.
Reportedly any complaints against rebellious blacks in the Harnett area
were redressed with barn burnings or thefts of livestock (Fowler 1955: 121).
Retaliation then came in the form of local orders of the Klu Klux Klan, which
first was organized in Pulaski, Tennessee. In Harnett County, two local
chapters termed "deer" were formed in Averasboro and near Neill's Creek
Church. Both chapters dissolved following murders and identification by
federal agents. Schools for black children were
instituted quickly after the Civil War, allowing some African Americans to
move off the plantations into urban trades. By the end of Reconstruction in
1876, however, most blacks who stayed in rural areas such as Harnett County
simply rented plots of pine trees from white land owners and, once more,
tended them for turpentine (Fowler 1955: 123). A few of these turpentine
workers were able to use their earnings to educate themselves or their family
members into teachers or preachers, the earliest professions to draw in African
Americans. By the 1920s, near the time of the U. S. Army purchase of Camp
Bragg, about one third of the African
28 Page 29 30

American farmers in Cumberland County owned their own farm land
(Parker 1990: 98).

Revolutionary War (1776-1783) in the Fort Bragg Area
Highland Scot settlers who resided on what is now Fort Bragg land
fought on both sides of the American Revolutionary War, and several battles
were fought in the Fayetteville area, including what would become
reservation land. Kelly and Kelly (1998) suggest that early, pre-1760s migrants
were most apt to be Patriots (or Whigs), while those who arrived after the mid-1760s
were more likely to be British Loyalists (or Tories). Later immigrants
to the western part of Harnett County generally supported the British, while the
earlier immigrants in the east supported the Patriots (Fowler 1955: 24-25). By
1775, the Royal Governor and the British Board of Trade asked new
migrants to take oaths of allegiance to the Crown and offered land incentives to
those who joined the North Carolina Royal Regiments. As the Revolutionary
War approached, some Highland Scots feared possible vengeance on their
families back in Scotland if they did not remain loyal to the House of Hanover
(Meyer 1961: 152). One of this project's interviewees also suggested that
Highland Scot families, while debating the merits of both sides in the
Revolution, consciously split their allegiances or remained neutral. By this
strategy, not all of them would be on the losing side, as they were after the Battle
of Culloden Moor near Inverness, Scotland, in 1746.

The land destined to become Fort Bragg was a pivotal region for both Tory
and Whig support activities. Francis Marion, nicknamed "Swamp Fox," used
the area to headquarter the Marion Brigade, a Patriot unit that harassed the
British throughout the Revolutionary War (Fort Bragg n. d.: 2). Drowning
Creek, near present Camp Mackall, was a campsite for Patriot regiments, militia
foraging, and fighting under General Horatio Gates in the summer of 1780
(Heath 1999; Wellman 1974). After the Battle of Guilford
Courthouse in 1781, British General Cornwallis retreated through the present
Fort Bragg, pursued by Colonel Henry Lee to the Little River near the edge of
what is now the reservation. Cornwallis reportedly spent the night in what is
known as the "Malcolm Smith House" or "Daniel Monroe House" on Yadkin
(or Longstreet) Road, on his eventual path via Wilmington to Yorktown,
where he surrendered to George Washington (Loftfield 1979: 25; Fort
Bragg n. d., n. d. b). Colonel Duncan Ray, a local Tory, reportedly helped General
Cornwallis obtain the supplies and rest he badly needed at the "Malcolm Smith
House" where Ray resided at the time of the Revolution. This house was removed
by the military sometime after its purchase.
The key Revolutionary War skirmish that occurred on Fort Bragg
lands is the Piney Bottom Massacre, when a group of Tories took revenge on
a Whig camp in 1781 (see Carruthers 1854; Heath 1999; Nye n. d.; Oates
1972). Local Tories caught and killed nine Patriots. These victims apparently
were militiamen under General Nathaniel Greene who had recently fled
from the Battle of Guilford Courthouse.
29 Page 30 31

Following the Piney Bottom Massacre, local Whigs attacked known Tories in
the area and seven citizens were killed in a series of vengeance attacks. The exact
location of the Piney Bottom Massacre is still in doubt. Historical records pinpoint
its location at the intersection of Piney Bottom Creek and Morganton Road, but
the creek and the current Morganton Road cross at three places. Moreover,
the location of Morganton Road has shifted since 1780.

Antebellum Period (1783-1860) in the Fort Bragg Area
After the Revolution, trade was stimulated in the Sandhills by means of
regional fairs called "Scotch fairs," held twice a year, that were the traveling
urban shopping malls of their day. These fairs allowed rural people to obtain a
half-year's supply of some imported good or sell a comparable amount of
their own produce. They were the sites of festive entertainment and trade for
about one hundred years between 1783 and 1883, at which time they were
abolished (Kelly and Kelly 1998: 98-99). In 1832 a post office was begun
at the Longstreet Road community of Highland Scots, registered under the
name Monroe. In 1833, the post office site's name was changed to Argyle,
under which designation it continued until 1918 (Stout 1975: 1-2). The only
other reservation area community large enough to establish a post office was
Inverness, which began in 1854 and continued in operation until 1912. The
Inverness community was located just south of the Daniel McLeod property at
which the purported Henry Berry Lowry gang killings took place in 1870.

The town of Fayetteville was created in 1783 from Cross Creek and
Campbelltown. In 1818 the first steamboat connection between
Wilmington and Fayetteville was established. In the 1840s and 1850s,
twelve-foot-wide wooden plank roads set between drainage ditches were
constructed in the Sandhills to further east-west trade (Oates 1972: 370). Local
landowners rented out their slaves to build the 129-mile Western Plank Road
between Fayetteville and Salem, North Carolina (Wellman 1974). In the absence
of fully developed rail lines, the plank roads helped insure that inland produce
could reach processing plants and ports on the navigable rivers, such as the Cape
Fear. As carriers of produce, turpentine, and cotton passed between the Piedmont
and Fayetteville, local landowners collected tolls bringing profits to many
inhabitants of the reservation area (Nye n. d.). These improvements to regional
transportation helped spur both economic and population growth.
Increases in the Cumberland County population, further aided by regional
railroad development in the 1850s, triggered the creation of Harnett County
in 1855. Although cotton did not grow
well in the Sandhills, cotton ginning, spinning, and weaving became a viable
commercial enterprise in the early 1800s, processing cotton grown mostly in the
Piedmont (Parker 1990: 61-64). Several factories started up in Cumberland
County employing hundreds of workers to produce yarns and sheeting. Small,
agile workers were sought to arrange threads under low machinery, thus
creating work for many Scottish-descent women and children through their
teenage years.
30 Page 31 32

The discovery of coal deposits near Sanford, North Carolina, was
another incentive to build an early railroad, the Cape Fear and Yadkin
Valley Railroad line, which ran from Fayetteville west to the Piedmont.
Despite continuous efforts beginning in 1832, however, the Western Railroad
Company did not successfully link Fayetteville to the Egypt Coal Mine in
Lee County until just prior to the Civil War (Parker 1990: 57). The family
members of several interviewees for this project were involved in railroad
construction near the Sandhills area and a few, mostly Indians, sought work in
the coal mines.

"War Between the States" (1861-1865) in the Fort Bragg Area
The State of North Carolina seceded from the Union in May of 1861
and State Militia troops, comprised of all white males between 18 and 45, quickly
seized the munitions from the Federal arsenal in Fayetteville (Oates 1972).
Many slaves from the Sandhills area were drafted by the Confederacy to do
support work such as building fortifications around Wilmington
(Fowler 1955: 121). Although the slaves were not paid for their work, their
owners were compensated instead. The Civil War Battle of Monroe's
Crossroads occurred on the present Fort Bragg in March of 1865, only a month
before General Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox (Barrett
1987[ 1963]; Belew 1997; Loftfield 1979; Fort Bragg n. d.). After his march
through Georgia, General Sherman headed northward into South and then
North Carolina, creating much

devastation en route. Sherman's forces destroyed the Fayetteville Arsenal and
all its associated factories and railroad lines (Oates 1972). Highly flammable
turpentine factories and stills were set afire. Sherman's troops also burned the
Cumberland County cotton mills as they marched through the Sandhills,
destroying a flourishing textile business that never recovered in the region. The
Confederate government even resorted to burning its own stockpiles of cotton and
naval stores to deprive Sherman's troops of any further victories.
Four of Sherman's brigades, under the command of Major General
Judson Kilpatrick, were camped at the Charles M. Monroe House (inherited
from his father Malcolm Monroe) about six miles west of Long Street Church at
Monroe's Crossroads on March 9, 1865. The site is just east of Nicholson Creek
and south of Morganton Road (tract 311 on the 1919 map of Fort Bragg). Just
before dawn of March 10th, Confederate forces led by General Wade Hampton
attacked the Union soldiers under Kilpatrick. The battle, which took place
over two plantations, Rocky Mount and Green Springs, was initially a victory for
the Confederates but the Union troops rallied and recaptured the camp. It is
estimated that about one hundred men on each side were killed and many times
that number were wounded (Fort Bragg n. d.). Neill S. Blue (see BLUE interview
below), a boy of fifteen at the time, hid in the swamp and witnessed the battle.
He later set up some pieces of sandstone over the graves. Many of the
Confederate dead were eventually buried in Long Street Church Cemetery while
the Union dead were buried on the battlefield. Heirs of Charles M. Monroe
sold the land where the battle took place
31 Page 32 33

to Neill S. Blue in 1881 according to Blue family sources.
Reconstruction and Subsequent Changes in the Fort Bragg Area
The surrender of the Confederacy resulted in social upheavals where
whites resisted their loss of privileges and blacks struggled for improvements
in their situation (Escott 1985). In Cumberland County, Confederate
soldiers returned to ravaged homes, farms, and infrastructure, and had to
figure out how to run their farms and turpentine factories without slave labor.
Whites in the Fayetteville region initially attempted to reinstate Antebellum laws
restricting African American gatherings and travel, but blacks sought aid from
the Freedmen's Bureau (Parker 1990). Established in March 1865, the Bureau
of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, commonly known as the
Freedmen's Bureau, was created by the U. S. Congress. It was designed to
oversee the transition from slavery to freedom, assist both impoverished freed
blacks and white refugees, and administer all lands that became U. S.
government property through military occupation or abandonment (Berlin et al.
1993: 76). Many freed African Americans
simply became tenant farmers or sharecroppers on the lands of their
former owners or on a neighboring farm. Yet some freed blacks were able to
acquire ownership of their own land, presumably through the gradual tendency
to reduce farm size as cash-poor whites sold off parcels of land that they no
longer had enough low-cost labor to profitably farm. I discovered that all of

the families of African Americans I interviewed for this project obtained land
shortly after the end of the Civil War. I also found that, by matching the names
of many black and white families on the 1919 map (Fort Bragg 1919), I could
document a pattern of small African American owners whose tracts were
carved from the larger farms of the earlier Highland Scot settlers.
Union General Hawley who was in charge of Cumberland County revived
turpentine and tar production for a few more decades during reconstruction by
economic incentives given to both whites and freed blacks. The timber
industry of the Sandhills also surged as people tried to quickly rebuild the war-torn
railroads and buildings. The majority of historic building sites that
have been identified by archaeologists on Fort Bragg date from this post-Civil
War time period (Heath 1999). Prior to the Civil War, slavery
allowed even inefficient and wasteful farming practices to be somewhat
profitable (Olmstead 1904[ 1856]). New fertilizers, deep plowing, and irrigation
techniques introduced after the war, however, began to make formerly
impossible cash crops such as cotton more productive. Finally, the access to
trade markets permitted by developing railroad lines in the 1890s led to an
increase in cattle, dairy, and fruit farms (Parker 1997: 107-110). Discoveries that
fruit could be profitably grown in some Sandhills areas, and problems with the
boll weevil in cotton farms, led to increased efforts to farm peaches,
dewberries, pears, cherries, grapes, plums, and strawberries (Abbot 1996: 23-
24; Perkins, Davis, and Davidson 1925). Hoke County, named after
Confederate Major General Robert F.
32 Page 33 34

Hoke, was created in 1911 from western Cumberland and northeastern Robeson
Counties (Corbitt 1950). With its center in the new town of Raeford, Hoke
County attracted many Highland Scot descendants from eastern Cumberland
County who were in search of new farm land, factory jobs, or higher educational
opportunities.
The Fort Bragg Purchase
It had been falsely reported to governmental authorities that
these lands could be bought for a song, a few dollars per acre. The
government land agents came to find that this could not be done,
except in cases of colored land owners and a few others who
seemed to have been frightened into selling out. (Patterson and
Carswell 1925: 53)
By the time the U. S. government began buying the first lands for Camp
Bragg in 1917, population in the area had dropped considerably with possibly
only a couple of thousand people in residence. The Fort Bragg military
historian W. S. Nye (n. d. b: 73) reports that at the time of the first Hoke and
Cumberland County acquisitions only seven percent of the acreage was being
cultivated and only about 170 families were still residing in the area (see also
Loftfield 1979: 22). Some had left once timberlands had been depleted, others
moved off in search of better educational or job opportunities. This made the
relatively vacant land seemingly ideal for purchase as a military training camp.
Many of the official landowners already had moved their homes and families to
larger towns such as Fayetteville or

Raeford. The remaining inhabitants were largely tenant farmers or turpentine
workers, many of African American descent (Roy Parker, Jr., personal
communication). Some of the landowners in a patriotic frame of mind
were willing to sell their ancestral land as long as they received what they
considered a fair price. There was, however, some
resistance to the Army purchase, especially among members of the Sandy
Grove Church who, once the Armistice was signed, could no longer see the need
to lose their land for a military base (Patterson and Carswell 1925: 53). As
some landowners were unwilling to sell for any price, condemnation proceedings
were brought against some, affecting about four hundred families in all. As
one individual of Highland Scot descent reported to me, the federal government
in 1918 was still looked upon as a Yankee institution that allowed
Northerners to dictate the rules by which Southerners were supposed to live. Some
legal battles ensued until prices could be negotiated and accepted. Camp Bragg
became permanently established as Fort Bragg on September 30, 1922 (Nye n. d.,
Fort Bragg n. d.. New sites for Camp Mackall were selected in 1939 from
lands in Scotland and Richmond Counties that were even more sparsely
populated. These areas included only a few tobacco farms, a peach orchard, and
the DuPont Hunting Lodge (Loftfield 1979: 32-33). During World War II and
afterwards, additional purchases were made to expand the base at its
peripheries, and families with properties neighboring the reservation often were
compelled to sell off part or all of their family land to the U. S. government.
33 Page 34 35

RESEARCH METHODS
Cultural Resources Program reports (especially Boyko and Kern
1998), Fort Bragg maps (particularly Fort Bragg 1919), published genealogies
and histories of the Sandhills region, unpublished family documents possessed
by interviewees, land deed documents, and some North Carolina state and
county public records were consulted for the Oral History Project.
The primary data collected for the Oral History Project was obtained
through the interviewee selection process was guided by a strategy for
maximizing information about the base lands and social history. The 1919
landholders' map and its accompanying acreage ownership key provided a list of
names of large and small landholders spread throughout the initial purchase
domain (Fort Bragg 1919). Interviews were sought with descendants of both
large and small landowner descendents, as well as individuals who did not own
but rented or worked on the land. Interviews were also sought with
individuals connected with the more recently purchased peripheral zones of
the base: the Training Area northeast of Murchison Road (Highway 210)
purchased beginning in the 1930s, Camp Mackall purchased in the 1930s and 40s,
the Southeast extension purchased in the 1950s, and the Northern Training Area
purchased in 1985. The recent purchase of the Overhills Estate was not included
in this research project, except where the information overlapped with questions
about the Northern Training Area. Finally, individuals who held a diversity
of knowledge about the ethnic and

family groups who came and departed from the reservation lands were also
interviewed. An initial list of potential
interviewees was compiled with the aid of Fort Bragg Cultural Resources
Program records concerning individuals who had participated in recent Long
Street or Sandy Grove Church reunions, or individuals who had contacted the
base regarding visits to Fort Bragg cemeteries. These individuals were
almost entirely of Highland Scot descent and, generally, they were eager to have
their family histories documented by this project. A press release concerning the
Oral History Project was published in two local newspapers, the Fort Bragg
Paraglide, and the Raeford News-Journal.
Attempts to contact individuals of Indian descent were made through the
Cumberland County Association for Indian Peoples. The Goins Cemetery in
the northwest of the main reservation area (see Boyko and Kern 1998) is
associated with local Native American families. Potential Indian interviewees
were sought through ties to the name Goins or other names such as Chavis,
Whitehead, and Walden which appear in Fort Bragg land documents and are
associated locally with Indian heritage. Individuals of both Indian and
African American descent were contacted through leads from other
interviews. An attempt was made to find African American interviewees through
letters and calls to two area churches and pastors, but these inquiries were not
immediately productive. Ultimately, a few African American interviewees
presented themselves to the Cultural Resources Program in pursuit of their
ancestral land history or family
34 Page 35 36

gravesites. One factor making it difficult to locate African American and Indian
interviewees is patterns of outmigration during the past century. On several
occasions, interviewees stated that the descendants of base-related African
American families had moved North in search of better opportunities. Similarly,
descendants of Indian families often were said to have moved to Robeson
County, Cherokee County, or to more distant Indian community areas such as
Oklahoma or Virginia. With the consent of the
interviewees, each interview was tape recorded. Taped segments of interviews
ranged from a half-hour to over 90 minutes. Usually the entire interview
process lasted over two hours. Interviews generally began with general
conversations, genealogical questions, and an examination of maps and family
documents before hooking up the microphones. Hand-written notes were
taken during the interview and used to check the precision of the Interview
Summary Transcriptions and to document non-taped segments of the
conversations. Family documents or
photographs loaned to the Oral History Project were scanned digitally or
photocopied, and then returned to the interviewee as promised. Copies of such
documents were stored at the Fort Bragg Cultural Resources Curation Facility, or
in the interviewees' files along with hand-written interview notes and the
interview forms. Graduate student assistants
working on the Oral History project, Mark Cooke and L. Clifton Skinner,
dubbed each original tape at the East Carolina University Media Resources
Center. The original was returned to Fort

Bragg for curation while the dubbed copies were used to create a Summary
Transcription for each Interview. The approximately thirty-five
hours of taped interviews were not fully transcribed but were summarized in
chronological order of topics with references to the counter numbers of the
tapes. This method will allow future researchers to search the Summary
Transcriptions, created in Microsoft Word 6.0 and then printed, for particular
topics of interest documented in the taped interviews. Mr. Cooke and Mr.
Skinner prepared the Summary Transcriptions which were then
reviewed by Dr. Lorraine Aragon. Analyses for this report are based
on a composite of all collected materials including published histories, family
documents, taped commentaries, and interviewer's written notes.
Occasionally, interviewees' taped comments conflicted with the written
documents they provided or with each other's reports. In such cases differences
were resolved as accurately as possible. Notes were made in the Interview
Summary Transcriptions where an interviewee might have forgotten or
misspoken some point concerning his or her genealogy. Following general
comments to begin the analysis, this report presents a Brief Summary of each
taped interviewee. The draft copies of the Brief
Summaries were mailed from Fort Bragg to the interviewees, where possible, for
verification prior to the final report. Sixteen of the twenty-two interviewees
alive at the time of the final report mailed or telephoned additions or
corrections to their Summaries. Of the remaining six who did not respond, three
were known to be in poor health and
35 Page 36 37

three could not be reached in time for comment.
In some cases, interviewees had only minor corrections to make. In other
cases, the Summaries prompted the interviewees to continue their family
research after the interviews. They then provided significant additional
information or corrected what they considered inaccuracies from their
interviews or materials compiled into the initial summary drafts.

THE INTERVIEWS
General Overview
The Oral History interviewees varied greatly in ethnic identification or
heritage. Generally, descendants of Highland Scot heritage are very focused
on the early arrival points and accomplishments of their first ancestors
to come to North Carolina. Many own detailed genealogies and numerous
historical documents concerning their families. They were familiar with, and
sometimes still followed, the Highland Scot naming pattern where the first male
child is named after his paternal grandfather and the first female child is
named after her maternal grandmother. A surprisingly large number of the
Highland Scots contacted have made journeys to Scotland to visit their
ancestral homelands. Their excellent genealogical records and knowledge
appear related to European Scottish traditions where oral clan histories were
not only treasured, but also were part of daily discourse, moral lessons, and
household entertainment. Several interviewees explained that their
childhood Sunday afternoons were passed with an elder female relative who

spent hours reciting who were their cousins, who were their great aunts and
uncles, and so forth. Both men and women descendants of Highland Scot
heritage held these genealogical interests although men often were presented to
me as currently most knowledgeable, while earlier generations of women
(their aunts and grandmothers) were said to be the teachers of the current male
genealogists. Highland Scot interviewees often
know a great deal about their ancestors' family farms, timber plantations, and
other land holdings. Their portrayal of their family's accomplishments often
concerned the remarkable ability to carve out a good living from poor soils given
the limited technology of the past. They ascribed their ancestors' successes in this
regard to their family ethics of hard work and faith in God.
Descendants of Highland Scots generally are enthusiastic in their
Presbyterian Scottish heritage, and enthusiastic in their Confederate military
heritage. Interviewees had ancestors who fought on both sides in the
Revolutionary War— some even suggested this was to insure that some
family members would emerge on the winning side. Yet virtually all
interviewees upheld their Confederate allegiances and some defended them
unapologetically. Many recollected stories of General Sherman's atrocities
in North Carolina, family homesteads laid to ruin, and the miserable poverty of
Reconstruction. Several suggested that the U. S. Army purchase of Fort Bragg
land beginning in 1918 was resisted in part because it was perceived as a
continuation of Northern aggression begun in the War Between the States.
The Federal Government was, and still
36 Page 37 38

sometimes is, perceived as an outsider or Yankee institution.
Interviewees of African American heritage, by contrast, are less
focused on their early arrival in the Sandhills region. In some cases little is
known about their slave passage or first colonial owners. Even if some details are
known, however, the antecedents of freedom are an unpleasant issue to
consider or discuss (Hurmence 1998). Their focus, by contrast, is on events
after the Civil War when their ancestors were able to own Sandhills land, or at
least work on it as free men and women. African American interviewees generally
began their family history with an ancestor who purchased land after 1865.
The positive aspects of their narratives concerned how their ancestors beat the
odds; not to conquer the poor soils, but rather to conquer their social
disadvantages to become upstanding or renowned black land owners, preachers,
or other individuals of distinction. The interviewees of Indian
heritage generally were less familiar with their ancestral ties, not only to Fort
Bragg lands, but also to places and peoples in general. Much family
knowledge seems to have been lost through migrations, alienation from the
state educational system, and periods of social tensions and intermingling with
whites and blacks. Their current social concerns focused on their generic Indian
identity, historic regional difficulties, and unified Indian communities.
In addition to these general differences in heritage or ethnic
affiliation, the interviewees varied into three groups according to their history of
residence: 1. Descendants of early settlers who have remained in the
Sandhills region; 2. Descendants of early

settlers who migrated away from the Sandhills region, usually before the
Army purchase; and, 3. Descendants of late arrivals to the Sandhills who remain
in the area just outside the reservation. These three groups provided information
about differing time periods of reservation society, and often held
differing perspectives on the difficulty of survival on Sandhills land. In addition,
although individuals who had migrated far from the reservation often still
treasured their family ties to area sites and events, they generally held a more
detached and critical perspective about earlier political issues and institutions,
such as slavery, in which their ancestors were involved.

Brief Summaries of Individual Interviewees
1. Mr. LeRoy HAMILTON of Fayetteville, born Jan 15, 1922, is a
retired psychiatric social worker. Mr. Hamilton reports that he is a

descendant of John Monroe, whose family arrived early by ship to the
Longstreet Road section of Fort Bragg in approximately 1735. Several branches of
the Monroe (also spelled Munroe) clan settled in the Sandhills but Mr. Hamilton
37 Page 38 39

says his family was not any of the branches described in Kelly and Kelly
(1998). Mr. Hamilton reports that his ancestral family received a land grant,
likely purchased slaves from the coast, then farmed and processed timber for
turpentine. Subsequently the Lindsay and McNeill families arrived to become their
neighbors. John Monroe's son was named Daniel and he reportedly was
involved in burying the victims of the Piney Bottom Massacre. Daniel's son,
Malcolm Monroe, fought in the Revolutionary War at Piney Bottom, and
lived at the west end of the present reservation in Moore County. Mr.
Hamilton believes that his family split sides in the Revolutionary War so as to
lessen the impact of any punishment against allies of the losing side. Some
records indicate that Malcolm Monroe purchased slaves in Marion County,
South Carolina, and he was a relatively educated trader and Justice of the Peace.
He was charged by the State Legislature to plan the town of Carthage as the
Moore County seat, and he owned an "ordinary" or tavern which also may
have served as a post office. Mr. Hamilton notes that the early "towns"
listed on colonial maps such as Argyle were really just post offices at a
crossroads. Malcolm Monroe married a daughter from the powerful local
McNeill family and he helped organize local agricultural or "Scotch fairs" after
the Revolutionary War. His son Patrick also married a young woman from the
McNeill family and one of Patrick's four sisters married Dougald McDougald.
Patrick Monroe received 100 acres in Cumberland County along the Rockfish
Creek in 1764. Patrick Monroe's brother-in-law, Dougald McDougald
rented 15 African American slaves from

Kenneth Murchison to build the toll road that passed through Cameron and Vass
to Fayetteville before the Civil War (see MURCHISON). An epidemic killed
twelve of those men. Because those slaves were valued at $2-3,000 apiece,
Dougald McDougald declared bankruptcy as a result of their deaths just
prior to the Civil War. The Monroes who remained in the northeastern section of
the reservation regularly did business with large landowners such as Mr.
Kenneth Murchison and Mr. Will Sykes. Patrick Monroe's son Jefferson Davis
Monroe, born and baptized just after Jefferson Davis was sworn in as
President of the Confederacy, was important to the early leadership of the
Long Street Church. Both Jefferson Davis Monroe and his brother Edward
married women of the Lindsay family, another Highland Scot family who
settled in the Longstreet area in 1839. Jefferson Davis's wife, Isabel Lindsay
Monroe, had a sister whose husband went to work in the cotton mills after
they left their farming and turpentining life on the reservation lands. Those who
moved to Cameron tried to produce dewberries as an alternative to
turpentining. Mr. Hamilton's Uncle John followed the timber and turpentine
industry to Georgia, and a cousin did the same in Florida. Jefferson Davis
Monroe's daughter, Ruth Monroe, was Mr. Hamilton's mother. Ruth Monroe
was a second cousin of Bess Sykes, the daughter of Will Sykes a large
landowner and speculator. Mr. Hamilton's Uncle Ed married Maggie
Lindsay, from the same general neighborhood.
38 Page 39 40

Given the difficulties of traveling in the Sandhills, many marriage pairings
between local neighboring clans repeated through the generations. When the
Monroe family had to move off the reservation land, some went to
Lillington, some to Rockfish to farm, and others moved to downtown
Fayetteville. Mr. Hamilton says that the average selling price for Sandhills land
sold to the Army in 1918 was $. 97 an acre. The interviewee believes that, prior
to the Highland Scot settlement, Indians from the Cherokee hills used to travel
through the reservation area along buffalo trails towards the coast in pursuit
of salt. Also, he says that people living on the Bragg lands who later were
considered to be local Indians, such as the Chavises, attended Baptist churches
such as the Cumberland Seventh Day Baptist Church located east of the
Longstreet area. Mr. Hamilton still maintains a close association with the
Long Street Church and its annual reunions.

2. Mr. Sam Cameron MORRIS of Raeford, born January 16, 1918, is a
former printer, U. S. Army soldier, and a current newspaper columnist for the
Raeford News-Journal.

Mr. Morris reports that he is descended from several early Highland Scot settlers
including Archibald McKay who was born in 1720 at Kintyre Argyll, Scotland
(Kelly and Kelly 1998: 168). He also is descended from John Merchant
Cameron, a merchant and a millwright who emigrated from Scotland to Moore
County in about 1775 (Kelly and Kelly 1998: 213). According to Kelly and
Kelly, Archibald McKay's father, Alexander McKay, came to North
Carolina in 1739 in the party lead by Neill Du McNeill. Alexander's son
Archibald is reported to have joined him in 1752. Archibald McKay was one of
the first three elders of Long Street Church. Mr. Morris's family is also tied
to another family who emigrated from Scotland in the 1700s, the McKeithans
(also spelled McKeithen, etc.). The McKeithans to whom Mr. Morris is
related moved off the reservation prior to 1919 to pursue education in Raeford.
Many of Mr. Morris's family members are buried at Sandy Grove Church
39 Page 40 41

cemetery and in other plots on the reservation. Mr. Morris is active in the
organization of the Sandy Grove Church reunions.

3. Mrs. Margaret Cameron KEITH of Raeford, July 9, 1893-March 3, 1999,
was formerly an elementary school teacher.

She was a 105 year-old resident of the Open Arms Rest Home at time of her
1998 interview. Mrs. Keith was the mother's sister of Mr. Sam Morris (see
MORRIS) and shares his Highland Scot genealogy. Mrs. Keith's father, Samuel
Johnson Cameron, and mother, Lovedy Margaret McKeithan, raised livestock
such as pigs and chickens, farmed all their basic foodstuffs, and produced
turpentine. Mrs. Keith was born and grew up on the Fort Bragg reservation
prior to its 1918 purchase. She remembered traveling to Sandy Grove
Church by horse and buggy every Sunday. Mrs. Keith moved to Raeford at
the time of her marriage. Her family moved off the reservation entirely at the
time of the Army purchase. Most moved to Raeford although some went to

Virginia. Mrs. Keith recalled a one-room schoolhouse near Alex Blue's place
about two miles from the Cameron homestead. School teachers for that
school boarded at the Camerons' house when she was young. Mrs. Keith recalled
that her family would hunt foxes for sport. Their nearest neighbors were the
Campbells and the Blues (see CAMPBELL and BLUE). Mr. Sam
Morris assisted with this interview at Mrs. Keith's rest home.

4. Mr. Paul Delton GOINS of Fayetteville, born 1946, works with
piping systems.

Mr. Goins reports that his father's side of the family likely settled on reservation
land between 1680 and 1700, prior to the Highland Scot immigration. His paternal
great-grandfather John Goins fought in the Civil War for the Confederacy and
then around 1867 he helped clear land for a turpentine factory located near the
Goins Cemetery (Boyko and Kern 1998). Mr. Goins believes that the remains of a
Goins family's house, mill, and turpentine factory should be near the
cemetery. Eventually John Goins moved to Oklahoma to join other family
members who moved there after the
40 Page 41 42

Indian Removal Act was passed by President Andrew Jackson in 1830.
Many Indians were pressured to cede their lands and move away at that time
(Rights 1957: 184-198). Remaining family members practiced subsistence
farming of corn and cotton, hog raising, and turpentining. Mr. Goins suggests
that some lived and worked the reservation area lands without official
ownership deeds. Mr. Goins believes that his paternal grandfather, John
Goins's son named William Henry Goins, lived near the Goins Cemetery on
what is now Fort Bragg. Mr. Goins's maternal relatives, also named Goins,
considered themselves Keyawee Indians, who were Siouan-language speakers.
Some of these Goinses moved away to Virginia while others remained in North
Carolina. Mr. Goins's maternal great-grandfather, King David Goins, owned a
freight line of wagons and possibly about 3,000 acres of land in Moore County.
Before the Civil War, Mr. Goins's maternal family were Methodists, but
after the war they converted to Baptists. Mr. Goins's maternal grandfather was a
minister named A. C. Goins (see Wilson GOINS). One of Mr. Goins's cousins
remembers that A. C. Goins's brother Frank Goins lived on Fort Bragg at the
time of the purchase and was disgruntled that his and his wife Emma Goins
Goins's land was taken away while the nearby Rockefeller family was allowed
to keep their property. A 1943 legal document owned by Mr. Goins
designates his family, specifically his father, Charlie T. Goins, paternal
grandfather, William Henry Goins, and paternal great-grandfather, John Goins,
as Croatan Indians and longtime residents of Moore County.

Mr. Goins visits the Goins Cemetery and suggests that some of the symbols on the
older gravestones might be related to the Cherokee syllabary. Mr. Goins says that
his family lived largely separated from the Highland Scot settlers, but some
associated families of Indian heritage included the Waldens, Chavises, and
Morrisons. Cumberland County land title records (Deed Books 99: 303-305,
395-398) indicate that the intermarried Goins and Walden families held a
business partnership with "company land" in the vicinity of James Creek,
Silver Run, and Piney Bottom (Loftfield 1979: 29-30). Once the Waldens sold
their interest in the company it was called Martin Goins and Brothers,
appearing on the 1919 map as tract 430. Various individual members of the
Walden and Chavis families also are listed as property holders on the 1919
map, as is a Dora Whitehead Goins. Mr. Goins's family is active in the
Cumberland County Association for Indian peoples.
41 Page 42 43

5. Mr. Dougald McFADYEN of Vass, born 1926, has worked as a machinist
and farmer.

Mr. McFadyen reports that he is descended from Archibald McFadyen
(son of Daniel) who was born in Scotland on the Isle of Islay in 1754. The
McFadyen family sided with the British Tories during the Revolutionary War.
Archibald, a fuller and hat-maker, arrived in Wilmington in 1785 and then
settled in Cumberland County at Fadyen Springs (Kelly and Kelly 1998: 304). Mr.
McFadyen is descended from Archibald's youngest son Dougald, born
to his second wife Nancy McNeill. Dougald, who was a teacher at the
Longstreet School and deacon in the Long Street Church, married Annie
Black Lindsay who was born mid-ocean from the Isle of Islay in 1838 (cf. Kelly
and Kelly 1998: 305). Mr. McFadyen's father, Dougald Alexander Stephen
McFadyen, could still speak some Gaelic taught to him by his mother, Annie
Black Lindsay McFadyen. Dougald Alexander Steven McFadyen lived on
the reservation land raising cotton, corn, and sheep. His brothers and sisters
together owned about 2,000 acres in the Longstreet Road vicinity before the 1919
purchase.

The family traded at the Manchester General Store to obtain salt, sugar, and
coffee. The women spun their own wool and cotton to make clothes at home. The
McFadyens associated with other nearby Highland Scot families including the
Monroes, Rays, Thomases, and Clarks. During the Civil War, the family sided
with the Confederacy. Mr. McFadyen's uncle, John Fleetwood McFadyen born
in 1860, was the first child of Dougald and Annie Lindsay Black McFadyen.
John Fleetwood McFadyen inherited over 1,000 acres of reservation area land
that he managed for his turpentine business (Johnson 1984). He also was an
elder in the Long Street Church and served as Cumberland County
Commissioner between 1914 and 1918. John Fleetwood McFadyen was one of
the first landowners willing to sell to the U. S. Government; he thought the Army
base would benefit the region economically. John Fleetwood and his
wife, Ursula Howard McFadyen, had ten children, the oldest of whom, James
Scott McFadyen, served in France during World War I. James Scott McFadyen
later purchased the Blount music business in Fayetteville, renaming it

McFadyen Homeplace Vicinity of Long Street Church
42 Page 43 44

McFadyen Music House. James Scott McFadyen served as mayor of
Fayetteville between 1931 and 1935, and again between 1941 and 1947. In the
1950s, he initiated the annual reunion at Long Street Church and worked to
ensure the church's preservation and maintenance (Johnson 1984). When the
McFadyen family was required to leave the reservation land after 1919, Mr.
McFadyen's father bought land in Vass, while some other McFadyens moved to
Raeford or Fayetteville. Mr. McFadyen's maternal uncle moved to Georgia to
continue the turpentine business that was now largely exhausted in the Sandhills.
Two African American families, (see FAULK and THOMAS) who had owned
nearby properties on the reservation land, moved with Mr. McFadyen's father
to Vass to become tenant farmers. In the 1930s, once off the reservation, farmers
such as Mr. McFadyen's father shifted from growing cotton and corn to
growing tobacco and dewberries. At that time dewberry and scuppernong grape
wine became popular, and Cameron became dubbed the "Dewberry Capital
of the World." The McFadyens continue to be interested in the original McFadyen
homestead on the base which is located to the west of the south end of McKellar
Road on a knoll a few miles from Lamont Road. The family also has a
strong interest in the Long Street Church and Cemetery where many of their early
ancestors are buried.

6. Mrs. Melba Cameron HICKS of Vass, was born May 28, 1914 on
reservation land owned by the Cameron family just one mile from Sandy Grove
Church.
Mrs. Hicks moved to Vass at age 4. Most of her family moved to Raeford or
Montrose when they had to leave the reservation but her mother, Emma
Adeline Monroe Cameron, and Aunt Annie Monroe chose to settle in Vass.
Mrs. Hicks is descended from three early Highland Scot families: the Pattersons
descended from Duncan Patterson who arrived from Argylshire Scotland in
1745 and purchased 150 acres of land on the Cape Fear River (Patterson 1979),
the Camerons (see MORRIS and KEITH), and the ancestors of Mrs.
Hicks's mother's father Malcolm Monroe who owned 600 acres east of
Rockfish Creek and is buried at the Sandy Grove Church Cemetery (see
HAMILTON). Malcolm Monroe married Margaret Patterson Monroe who bore
him seven daughters before she died in childbirth. Malcolm Monroe fought as a
soldier in the Confederate Army, leaving one slave, Charley Monroe, to tend his
daughters while he was at war. One daughter (Mrs. Hicks's Aunt Margaret
Anne Monroe) married James P. Chapel who dammed the Cabin Branch River to
run the water wheel of his gristmill on what had been the Malcolm Monroe
Estate. Another daughter (Mrs. Hicks's Aunt Martha Monroe) married Martin
Patterson who ran a cane mill for making sugar syrup. Mrs. Hicks's father, John
McNeill Cameron, farmed cotton, and kept a store and post office in Linden.
He briefly tried to work in the turpentine business in Georgia, but returned to the
43 Page 44 45

Sandhills. Besides farming, Mrs. Hicks's family raised sheep and goats, sheared
and spun the wool, and wove cloth for apparel. They hunted wild turkey and
deer, raised hogs, and cured and stored their own meat. Two processed hogs
would feed a family of five for an entire winter. They traded in Fayetteville for
sugar, coffee, and matches. Mrs. Hicks notes that there was little movement out
of her pre-1918 Sandhills community, which limited marriageable partners and
friends to distant cousins and other neighbors. Mrs. Hicks attends the Long
Street Church reunions and her maternal grandparents are buried at the Sandy
Grove Church Cemetery.

7. Julian H. BLUE, Jr. (known as "Buddy" Blue) of Raeford, born 1930,
has worked as a realtor.

Mr. Blue is descended on his father's side from Duncan and Margaret
Campbell Blue who came from Argyllshire, Scotland circa 1769 and
settled at Lakeview, outside the present Fort Bragg reservation (Blue n. d.). The
Blue clan was known in Scotland as millers. The Lakeview Blue family sided
with the Loyalist Tories during the Revolutionary War but then took the
oath of loyalty to North Carolina in 1782. On his mother's side, Mr. Blue is
descended from Daniel Smith, the youngest son of Malcolm Smith, who
came with his father John Smith in the first colony of Scots to migrate from
Argyll in 1739. Malcolm Smith was an early elder of Long Street Church. The
Smiths all were Whigs in the Revolutionary War and Colonel Daniel
Smith's children moved off the reservation to Alabama in the 1820s. The
first of Mr. Blue's paternal clan, the "Lakeview Blues" (see Kelly and Kelly
1998: 227), to move to the Fort Bragg lands was Neill McKeithan Blue, the
interviewee's father's father's father's brother. Neill McKeithan Blue was one
of John Campbell Blue's sons who married Eliza Smith and moved in 1850
to her family's land at Piney Bottom, site of the Revolutionary War massacre.
Neill McKeithan Blue was a planter and a charter member of the Sandy Grove
Church (Smith n. d.). The family practiced subsistence farming until the
1850s when turpentine became very profitable. The older sons of Neill
McKeithan Blue fought for the Confederacy but the youngest, Neill
Smith Blue, in his mid-teens, was instructed to hide with several slaves in
the woods where they witnessed the Battle of Monroe's Crossroads in 1865
(Belew 1997). During the war, Neill S.

John McNeill Cameron and family
44 Page 45 46

Blue stored seed, collected abandoned livestock, cured meat, and hoarded gold
coins such that after the war he quickly was able to plant crops and harvest early.
He then used these profits to hire black and white labor for turpentining and
succeed in the naval stores business.

Neill S. and his brother John Blue began the Aberdeen and Rockfish railroad line,
connected to Raleigh, to transport their naval stores. Neill S. eventually sold his
railroad partnership to his brother and concentrated instead on farming and
timbering. Neill S. Blue then moved to Raeford, a watering stop for the
Aberdeen and Rockfish railroad line, so that his children could be educated at the
Raeford Institute. Neill S. Blue was on the board of directors for the Bank of
Raeford where his family members were the principal stockholders. After the first
Raeford Hotel burned down, Neill S. Blue built another and named it the
Bluemont Hotel. Neill S. bought out many other landowners in the Sandhills
such that he was the largest landowner of future Fort Bragg lands at the time of the
1918 purchase. When the government pushed to purchase all of his Fort Bragg
area land in 1921, Neill S. resisted their offered price and a trial ensued to

left to right: unknown hired hand, John A. Cameron & Marcelus (in arms), wife Annie Blue, mother-in-law Mary Blue and children , Alex and Leon.
At home located near Campbell's Crossroads.

45 Page 46 47

negotiate an acceptable purchase. While the Blues contended that the land was
unspoiled and valuable, witnesses for the Government called it "so poor a possum
would have to carry his rations with him if he started to cross it." Eventually a
settlement was reached. Neill S. Blue was an elder in the Sandy Grove Church,
where he passed away listening to a service in 1929. Mr. Julian H. Blue, Jr. is
extremely knowledgeable about most of the settlers on the lands initially
purchased by Fort Bragg, and he attributes much of that knowledge to
weekly childhood visits with his grandmother, Christian Catherine
Cameron Blue, and his Aunt Sarah Keithan on Sundays after church. Mr.
Blue notes that after the Civil War many outsiders, including white carpetbaggers
from the North and freed blacks from Marlboro County, bought small
properties listed on the 1919 map. Mr. Blue is a member of the Sandy Grove
Church reunion planning committee.
8. Ms. Ammie McRae JENKINS of Durham, born May 28, 1941, owns a
health and beauty spa.

Ms. Jenkins is descended on her father's side from Willis McRae, Sr. who was
born into slavery in North Carolina as a field worker but in 1882, purchased 658
forested acres of land. This large area of land in what is now the Northern
Training Area near the Overhills Estate was purchased from William and
Elizabeth McPherson. Willis McRae, Sr. is listed in the 1870 census as a
"mulatto" and at that time he owned just twenty acres in the Barbecue Township
of Harnett County. He lived there with his first wife Gracie McLean, considered
to be a Cherokee Indian, who was a mother of twelve children and a house
slave before the Civil War. By 1880, his first wife Gracie had passed away and
Willis McRae, Sr., owned seventy acres of land in Johnsonville Township of
Harnett County and lived with his second wife, Cynthia McGregor McRae,
who was Ms. Jenkins's paternal great-grandmother and the mother of eight
children. Four of Willis McRae, Sr. 's ten sons, Steven, Willis Jr., Daniel, and
Neill Sr., helped Willis McRae, Sr. to pay off the cost of his large land
purchase by working in tar and turpentine production. Neill McRae, Sr.
was Ms. Jenkins's paternal grandfather. The McDiarmid family whose property
was near the McRae land owned one of the turpentine plantations where the sons
worked. Steven, Willis Jr., Daniel, and Neill Sr. each were sold a hundred acres
of their father's farm before Willis McRae, Sr. 's passing in 1906. Willis
McRae Sr. is buried at the McLean Cemetery in Harnett County, north of the
Bragg reservation boundaries. Willis McRae lived on a road called "Monroe
Road," now named "McRae Ride Road," and the extended family community
became known as "McRae Town." Ms.
46 Page 47 48

Jenkins describes the one hundred-acre farm of her paternal grandfather Neill
McRae, Sr. as agriculturally diversified and self-sufficient. Structures (a few of
whose foundations remain intact on the reservation) included a house, hay barn,
mule stables, smokehouse, wood shed, ice house, chicken coop, cane syrup mill,
and privy. Besides grains such as corn and wheat, the family raised livestock
and a variety of fruits and nuts such as pears, grapes, peaches, apples, plums,
blackberries, dewberries, persimmons, pecans, and black walnuts. These items
were grown for family consumption, and also sold directly off the farm to local
customers, as was honey gathered from the orchard bees. Deer, rabbits, squirrels,
and raccoons were hunted for recreation as well as for meat to supplement the
homegrown beef, pork, and poultry. When additional cash was needed,
family members would work the tar kilns or plant more cash crops such as
corn, cotton, or later tobacco. Some family members went to work on the
Overhills Estate once the Rockefeller family purchased the land. Ms. Jenkins's
cousins worked on the Overhills farm with Mr. Albert Goins (see Albert
GOINS). Other family members worked at Overhills as cooks, housekeepers,
groundskeepers, stable workers, horse trainers, fox hound caretakers, golf
course workers, and chauffeurs. The brother of Ms. Jenkins's great-grandmother,
Cynthia McGregor, was a cofounder of the Spout Springs
Presbyterian Church, the main family church. Other relatives attended the
Johnsonville and Bethel AME Zion Churches near the Murchison plantation
(see MURCHISON). Much of Willis McRae Sr. 's original land gradually was
alienated from the family when harvests

were poor or deeds changed names in order to raise tax payments. After the
death of Ms. Jenkins's father, Neil McRae, Jr., wealthy investors and land
speculators became interested in the area. Ms. Jenkins's widowed mother and
her seven children reluctantly moved to Spring Lake. Most of Ms. Jenkins's
family who were required to leave reservation lands have moved to
surrounding towns such as Raeford, Lumberton, or Vass. Some have spread
out farther, however, and reside in twenty-three states around the country.
Ms. Jenkins is actively involved in documenting her family's historical
importance to the development of the Sandhills region and her great-grandfather's
status as one of the first African American large landowners in
North Carolina.

Because the Northern Training Area was not acquired by the U. S. Army until the
1980s, several house foundations remain on the McRae family land and Ms.
Jenkins can recall some details about the settlement and farm configurations. Ms.
Jenkins has co-authored a biographical report on her family's history (Jenkins
and McRae n. d.).

Stacy Culpepper and Ammie Jenkins at McRae home place, 1998
47 Page 48 49

9. Mr. Alexander Wilbur CLARK, born 1913, is the former Mayor of
Fayetteville, now retired.

Mr. Clark was born on present-day reservation land and baptized at Long
Street Church. He is descended on his father's side from Neill Alexander Clark
who was born 1822 or 1823 in Alabama to parents who had moved from
Cumberland County in the early 1800s to pursue the naval stores business. Neill
Alexander Clark returned to Cumberland County to become a bookkeeper at the
Fayetteville arsenal during the Civil War. It is probable that Neill Alexander
Clark's father was the Daniel Clark who married Catherine Monroe in
Cumberland County in 1817 because, when Neill Alexander Clark died of
typhoid fever in 1864, his children were raised by Neill Alexander's first cousin
named Thomas Monroe (Clark 1998: 5; see HAMILTON). Neill Alexander
Clark likely descended from one of the early arriving Highland Scot Clarks
listed in the 1755 or 1790 tax lists, perhaps relatives of Alexander Clark
who arrived from Jura in 1739 with the original Argyll colony ship piloted by

Neill Du McNeill. The name "Clark" originally was an occupational surname
given in the British Empire during the 1500s to clerks, or those literate enough
to read and write for the crown— so some Clarks are related while others are
not. Mr. Clark's father was Neill Darrow Monroe Clark, one of Neill Alexander
Clark's sons who was raised by Thomas Monroe. As a young man, Neill Darrow
Monroe Clark taught in a private school near Cameron to which he traveled from
the reservation area (tract 104 on the 1919 map) by horse and wagon. Mr.
Clark's mother was Elizabeth Jane McFadyen Clark, daughter of Annie
Black Lindsay McFadyen and Dougald McFadyen who married in 1860 (see
McFADYEN). Mr. Clark's paternal grandfather had purchased land from the
Monroes to become a full-time farmer. The family then farmed wheat and corn,
raised hogs, and produced tar and turpentine for home use. All family
members helped on the farm. Mr. Clark remembers that one African American
tenant family still worked there during his childhood. When Mr. Clark's family
was required to move by the U. S. Government, his relatives dispersed to
Vass and Fayetteville. Unlike some interviewees, Mr. Clark considers the
forced removal from the reservation to have been a blessing in disguise. For
many families, farming the poor soil was a great struggle, and being forced to
leave helped them reach areas with higher schooling facilities. Moreover,
the Fayetteville area population and economy boomed following the World
War II development of Fort Bragg.
10. Mr. John Marshall THOMAS of Vass, 1914-1999, was a retired farmer at
the time of our interview.
48 Page 49 50

Mr. Thomas was born on the 25-acre property near Longstreet Road owned by
his maternal grandfather Wesley Thomas (tract 158 on 1919 map), but his family
was required to move off when he was four years old. When the Army came to
survey for Camp Bragg, they knocked out the back wall of the Thomases' barn
in order to shoot their survey lines. Mr. Thomas was descended on his mother's
side from William Thomas, father of Wesley Thomas, who owned about 25
acres of property in the Longstreet Road area before 1919. Mr. Thomas also was
descended from Millie and Anthony Faulk (see FRYE), his maternal and
paternal great-grandparents who purchased 50 acres in the Longstreet
Road area for $162.50 from Alex Murchison in 1867 (Deed Books 57: 207;
see MURCHISON). Mr. Thomas grew up with his mother, Pearlie Thomas, and
her family who attended the Wyman (or Wayman) Church located east of the
Long Street Church. Mr. Thomas remembered that one of his mother's
brothers was buried in a cemetery between the Thomas and Ray
homesteads, not far from the Long Street Church. He also remembered an old
prison camp, where inmates were kept in chains, near his homestead. Mr.

Thomas's maternal grandfather Wesley Thomas worked in a large turpentine
business. Family members also sharecropped cotton and corn, some of
which was kept for home use while the remainder was marketed in Fayetteville.
Mr. Thomas recalled that many people in his neighborhood died in the worldwide
influenza epidemic of 1917, and that some members of his family experienced
smallpox but survived. Between the end of the Civil War and before 1919,
Wesley Thomas and members of the Faulks and Holiday families bought and
farmed several small plots of land on the reservation near the properties owned by
uncles of Mr. Dougald McFadyen (see McFADYEN). Mr. Thomas's paternal
grandfather, Bill Holliday, was the first African American mail carrier on the
Manchester to Fayetteville postal route. Neighborhood friends of the Thomas
family in the reservation area included Neill Chavis and Hemp Chavis. Besides
grains, the Thomas family raised hogs and chickens, fruit, cane for syrup, bees
for honey, and grapes for wine. A good orchard that had just begun producing
had to be abandoned at the time of the Army purchase. The U. S government
purchased 51.5 acres from Wesley and Dolly Thomas for $1,514.50 in 1919.
Some of their family land had been purchased in 1911 from C. L. Bevill
(Deed Books 156: 544). Mr. Thomas noted that the family farm did well
economically because they always could afford to own horses and none of the
women needed to work outside the farm in cash jobs. Most of the Thomas family
went to Vass to farm with the McFadyens and reside on land purchased
for them by Alex McFadyen. When the Thomas and Faulk families moved to
Vass, they re-formed their Wyman
49 Page 50 51

Church congregation at the Oak Ridge AME Zion Church.
11. Mr. James Angus McLEOD of Houston, Texas, born August 11, 1943,
is a Presbyterian minister and businessman.

Mr. McLeod is descended on his father's side from "Buffalo" John McLeod who
migrated in a group from the Isle of Skye, Scotland, to North Carolina in
1802, probably on a ship called the "Duke of Kent" that arrived in
Wilmington that year. Buffalo John McLeod came to North Carolina with
the families of his brother Donald McLeod, and his sister, Margaret
McLeod McNeill. His sister's husband, a former British soldier named McNeill,
intended to join a friend named John Gillis who also had served in General
Cornwallis's army. Donald McLeod settled with his wife Margaret McRae
(see JENKINS) first near his friend Gillis along the Rockfish Creek on land
near the old A. K. McLeod homestead (now on the reservation near the Sandy
Grove Church) that later was owned by a Malcolm Monroe (see HAMILTON).
The Donald McLeod family owned an African American slave named Calvin
McLeod who lived until 1916 and became a Presbyterian elder. John

McLeod occupied land by the Buffalo Creek, just northwest of the reservation
borders and married Nancy McCrimmon, twenty years his younger.
Buffalo John had been a cooper by trade in Scotland. In addition to his native
Gaelic, Buffalo John could speak English as well as read Latin and Greek,
possibly because his likely paternal grandfather, Brewer McNeill living in
Dunvegan, Scotland, was a classical scholar. The McLeod families found
wild turkey, deer and fish to be ample, and livestock was fed easily with wild
pea vine. Growing grain for the family's bread was more difficult. Only Indian
maize or corn produced well, so the Highland Scots were forced to use it.
Buffalo John's sister, Margaret McLeod McNeill, was widowed and one of her
daughters, Mary (a. k. a. Polly) married a John McDonald who had arrived on the
same ship from Scotland. The family regularly attended the Sandy Grove
Presbyterian Church in the 1850s. Four of Buffalo John's children served in the
Confederate Army and one died there. None of Buffalo John's children
remained in North Carolina. Some moved to Arkansas, while others
migrated eventually to Texas. Mr. McLeod is descended from Buffalo
John's youngest son, Angus McCrimmon McLeod, whose first wife,
Mary Jane Serena McPhatter McLeod, died prematurely in 1855. His father's
sister, Helen McLeod, known as "Aunt Eileen" raised their son John Daniel
McLeod. Mary Jane Serena McPhatter McLeod may be buried on the
reservation, possibly in an unmarked grave at the Sandy Grove Church
Cemetery. Angus McCrimmon McLeod moved to Arkansas in 1859 but his son
John Daniel McLeod was raised in the
50 Page 51 52

old Buffalo John McLeod homestead by his aunt. John Daniel McLeod married
Amanda Currie, daughter of Margaret Keahy Currie and John Calvin Currie
who lived along Mountain Creek in western Hoke County. Union General
Sherman's army burned both the Currie and Buffalo McLeod family homesteads.
John Daniel McLeod's son, William Angus McLeod, Sr., was Mr. McLeod's
paternal grandfather and the source of much of the family's written history.
William Angus McLeod Sr. was a member of the Bethel Church and then
helped found the Shiloh Church. He became a Presbyterian preacher and
migrated to Texas in 1897. Mr. McLeod notes that life in the Sandhills became
difficult for Democrats who became Populists. That is likely why his great-grandfather
John D. McLeod and family, including his grandfather William A.
McLeod, Sr., then a twenty-one year-old man, left North Carolina. Mr. McLeod
notes that his grandfather's personal diaries (but not his formal report of
family history; see McLeod n. d.) mention that nine African Americans
migrated with the family to Texas. Before 1936, William Angus McLeod,
Sr. wrote lengthy diaries and later a formal paper about the family titled "The
McLeods of Buffalo" (McLeod n. d.). These documents were passed on
through William Angus McLeod Jr. to the interviewee. Mr. McLeod says his
paternal family connections to the reservation area include the McPhatters,
McCrimmons, Curries, McNeills, McRaes, Blues, Bethunes, and
McPhauls. Although many of the North Carolina McLeods are not closely
related, Mr. McLeod believes that he is a distant relation of the McLeod family in
Robeson County who allegedly was

attacked by the Henry Berry Lowry gang members in 1870. Mr. McLeod has
carefully preserved his family's diaries and history reports, and he returned from
Texas with his daughter in 1998 to visit their ancestral North Carolina homeland.

12. Mrs. Rachel McCormick BROOKS of Spring Lake, born 1928,
lives at the old home site, a part of the family's remaining Sandhills land
adjacent to Fort Bragg's Northeastern Training Area.

Mrs. Brooks is descended from John MacCormick who came in 1791 from
Argyllshire, possibly from the village of Knapdale. John MacCormick intended to
migrate to Baltimore, Maryland, but his ship was blown off course and landed in
Charleston, South Carolina. John MacCormick traveled to Cumberland
County, North Carolina to visit the Murchison family (see MURCHISON).
During this visit, he was stricken by typhoid fever. When he recovered he
decided to remain in North Carolina with his fellow Scots and abandoned his plans
to go to Baltimore to join his cousin Duncan MacCormick. John
MacCormick bought property near the Murchisons' land in what is now the
Northeastern Training Area. His
51 Page 52 53

bachelor son Duncan became a member of the State Legislature, serving from
1831 to 1836. He was a land surveyor and purchased properties most
extensively in the Sandhills area. John MacCormick's son Hugh also bought
land in this area, and in the Linden-Slocomb area of Cumberland County.
John MacCormick's son Daniel bought land in what is now Harnett County.
Some of John MacCormick's daughters also made land purchases, and all the
children and grandchildren continued to be involved in the family timber
business. Logs and barrels of tar produced from their pines initially were
poled down the Lower Little River and Cape Fear River to be sold in
Wilmington. Later, barrels of tar were transported to Fayetteville by mule and
wagon to the turpentine distillery. The family also farmed oats, corn, wheat,
chuffers (a legume similar to peanuts), sugar cane, and tobacco. Soybeans
became an important crop during and after World War II. They also raised
chickens, ducks, pigs, sheep, and cows, as well as a variety of fruits and
vegetables. Mrs. Brooks's paternal grandfather was Archibald Alexander
McCormick from Harnett County, a great-grandson of John MacCormick.
Her paternal grandmother was Luola McCormick McCormick [sic], the
daughter of John McCormick's son Hugh and Harriet Elizabeth Bell.
Archibald and Luola were separated not only by a generation gap but also by a
two-day trip. They met at their ancestral home, and later married and raised a
family there. Some of Mrs. Brooks's relatives in the Bell family fought in the
Confederate Army. Mrs. Brooks' maternal great-grandfather Hall was
imprisoned at Fort Fisher during the

Civil War, and the family recalls widespread food shortages during that
time. Two of Mrs. Brooks's McCormick uncles and her father fought in World
War I, and both of her brothers served in the armed forces during and after World
War II. Archibald Alexander and Luola McCormick had eight children including
Mrs. Brook's father, Dougald Stewart McCormick. Dougald and his older
brothers and sisters were taught at home by a private tutor until a time when their
father was instrumental in building the Edinburgh School on a part of the family
property that is now inside Fort Bragg. Dougald Stewart McCormick earned a
M. A. degree in History from the University of Virginia and a M. A. degree
in school administration from UNC-Chapel Hill. He worked with the North
Carolina school system and also as a surveyor in the summers. Mrs. Brooks's
family lived on the east side of the Cape Fear River during the school year but
moved back to Sandhills on the west side of the river during summers. During
World War II, approximately one third of Mrs. Brooks's family land was
expropriated by the Army for a new Training Area northeast of Murchison
Road (Highway 210). This represented a difficult loss for the entire family. John
McCormick's descendants hold an annual reunion held alternately at
various Presbyterian churches in western Harnett County. They feel especially
close to the Barbecue Presbyterian Church where so many of their ancestors
are buried. Other related families include the McNeills (John MacCormick's
daughter Jane married Hector McNeill), the Harringtons, and the Bells.
52 Page 53 54

13. Mr. Howard L. MURCHISON of Spring Lake, born 1946 works for
Walmart as a district manager.

Mr. Murchison is descended on his father's side from Isac Murchison, and
on his mother's side from Levy King. In the early 1800s, Mr. Murchison's
ancestors on both the Murchison and King sides were slaves on Kenneth
McKenzie Murchison. After the Civil War, however, they became owners of
future reservation land in their own right. Mr. Murchison's maternal great-grandfather
Levy King married Katie McNeill King. Their son Willie E.[ or L.]
King, who is thought to have been part Indian, became owner of a parcel of land
that is now on Fort Bragg. Willie King raised hogs, cows, and chickens, owned
a horse and buggy, and eventually worked as a butcher on Fort Bragg.
Willie King, who died in 1925, married Liza Agnes McLean King who did
domestic work and survived him until 1968. Their youngest daughter, Lorease
King Murchison, was Mr. Murchison's mother. Her family helped establish the
Williams Chapel Baptist Church in 1901. Mr. Murchison's earliest known
paternal ancestor was Isac Murchison who worked for Kenneth McKenzie
Murchison, Sr. on the Holly Hill

plantation. Kenneth McKenzie Murchison was born on the Isle of Skye,
Scotland, circa 1753 and died in Moore County circa 1834 (Kelly and Kelly
1998: 269). According to a Last Will and Testament copy in Mr. Howard
Murchison's possession, Isac was bequeathed to Master Kenneth's son
Duncan while his probable older brother Jackson was left to a grandson and
namesake, Kenneth Murchison. Jack's mother, named Sylla, and his sister Jane
were bequeathed to the Master Kenneth's second wife, Catherine
Campbell Murchison who is buried at the Long Street Church Cemetery
(d. 1852). Jackson Murchison, who claimed to have been born in 1795 and
died in 1922 (which would have made him 127 years old), lived a most
remarkable life (Murchison n. d.). Trained in genteel speech and Southern
manor protocol as a house servant at Holly Hill, Jackson became a "wedding
gift" to Margaret Murchison and her husband the Reverend Dr. Neill McKay.
Jackson Murchison married a woman named Annie prior to 1861 and the
couple had eleven children. When Jackson Murchison finally received his
freedom in 1865 (whether just before or after Lincoln's Proclamation is
uncertain), he purchased a large tract of land on the Lee-Harnett County line,
now Olivia, for .25 cents an acre. There he began clearing land with an ox,
farming, and building his own independent church, first known as
Jack's Chapel, later as Murchison's Chapel. Reverend Jack financed the
church himself, without help from the Freedmen's Bureau, and began a small
African American community known as Murchisontown. Jack's brother, Isac (or
Isaac) Murchison, had a son named
53 Page 54 55

Duncan born in 1850 who married Amanda Fairley of Robeson County,
born in 1855. Duncan and Amanda Fairley Murchison had five children
named George, Lula, Nannie, Isac James, and John. Isac James Murchison,
the interviewee's paternal grandfather, stayed in the Manchester area near the
reservation land and worked as a sharecropper. When required to move
away from the reservation area, Mr. Murchison's relatives moved to Spring
Lake, Raeford, and Bunn Level. Mr. Murchison is active in the church his
great uncle Jack began, Murchison's Chapel, which in 1910 affiliated with the
African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church Conference. It is now also called
the Bethel AME Zion Church. A second church that branched off from
Murchison Chapel was the Pilgrim's Rest Holiness Church, begun by
Reverend Jack's son Evander Murchison. Mr. Murchison has a great
interest in his family's history, especially with respect to their early role in the
development of the area's African American churches, and also in the
Scottish descendants from the Murchison Plantation (see McINTYRE).

14. Mr. Marshal Levon CAMPBELL of Mobile, Alabama, born 1930, is a
retired furniture businessman. During the 1600s the Campbells were the ascending
rival clan to the MacDonalds in Highland Scotland, and the original
"Argyll Colony" that left Scotland in 1739 for North Carolina departed from
the port of Campbeltown (Kelly and Kelly 1998: 9-10). Mr. Campbell's
paternal great-great-great grandfather was Alexander Campbell (born 1750)
who emigrated with his brothers Reverend James Campbell and Farquard

Campbell from Campbeltown, Argyll, Scotland. Alexander Campbell owned
640 acres of land in Cumberland County. Reverend James Campbell preached in
Gaelic and organized the Long Street Church in 1758, as well as the
congregations at Roger's Meeting House and the Barbecue Church in Cumberland
County. Most of the Campbells are reported to have been Loyalists during
the Revolutionary War. In 1788, James Campbell was appointed as tax collector
in Captain McAllisters's, Neil Smith's, and Captain McFerson's district.
Alexander Campbell had a son, born in 1795 named Murdoch Campbell (1795-
1862; the name Murdoch is also spelled Murdock in census reports and some
other documents) who married Margaret Christian McNeill in 1816. They had
three children, Alexander, Sarah, and Christian. This second Alexander
Campbell (1817-1859), Mr. Campbell's paternal great-grandfather and son of
Margaret and Murdoch Campbell, is interred in the earliest dated grave at
Sandy Grove Church Cemetery. Alexander Campbell (II) is buried at the
Sandy Grove Church Cemetery beside his wife, Effee Ray Campbell (1815-
1900). A memorial to Alexander's father Murdoch (1795-1862) is erected nearby.
Mr. Campbell remembers that his father reported that the second Alexander
Campbell owned about 60 slaves who worked in his turpentine business.
Alexander and Effee Ray Campbell had four children: Hector (b. circa 1843),
Mary (b. circa 1844), Murdoch Christian (1847-1930), and Margaret Campbell
(1849-1864). Murdoch Christopher was listed in the 1850 Census as a farmer
with $1,500 worth of property and in 1893 he was made the superintendent of
the Sandy Grove Church Sunday school.
54 Page 55 56

The reservation lands owned by Campbells prior to 1919 are in two
separate locations: a D. J. Campbell and a M. M. Campbell owned 650 acres
southeast of Long Street Church, while a Campbell Estate, a N. A. Campbell and a
William C. Campbell owned a total of about 420 acres northeast of the Sandy
Grove Church. Murdoch Christian, Mr. Campbell's paternal grandfather, owned
a farm on reservation lands and also a turpentine factory. Murdoch Christopher
Campbell married Flora A. Ray in 1872.

They had seven surviving children: McCoy Alexander (b. 1875), John M. B.
(b. 1879), Daniel Walter (b. 1881), Louanna (1885-1934), Christopher
Fairley (b. circa 1885), Mattie Lee (1887-1917), and Murdoch Scott, a
miller by trade. Two young children that did not survive to adulthood, Archibald
Murphy (1875-1882) and "Infant daughter" (b. and d. 1887) are buried in
the Sandy Grove Church Cemetery. The oldest son McCoy Alexander Campbell
became a teacher by 1900. Murdoch Christian Campbell's farm property in
the reservation area had a gristmill although his son, Murdoch Scott
Campbell, took the millstones with him

on an oxcart when he migrated to Natural Bridge, Florida. The entire
family migrated south along both sides of the Florida-Alabama border circa
1905. The pine trees for turpentine production in the Sandhills were largely
exhausted by that point and, like many local families, the Campbells sought to
shift their turpentine industries further south to more productive forests. Mr.
Campbell's father, Murdoch Scott Campbell (1889-1977), was only about
16 years old when he left North Carolina. After migrating south, he met
and married another Sandhills emigrant, Ella Iowa Leonard, in 1911. Mr.
Campbell does not know if his father and grandfather took all or most of his
African American labor with them when they migrated or contracted new workers
upon arrival. Some family records indicate that two African American men
named Dudley Nix and Billy York migrated with them from North
Carolina. Another African American, William Warrick, also came from
Cumberland County to Walton County, Florida to live on nearby land given to
him by Murdoch Campbell. According to Junior Jefferson Hamilton (a grandson
of Murdoch Campbell), William Warrick, called "Uncle Billy," worked
with Murdoch, ate with the family, and was asked to look after Annie Lee and
Nettie Belle Holder when their mother died and they came to live with their
grandfather Murdoch Campbell. The family continued their turpentine
production business with an African American labor force of about twelve
families in both Florida and Alabama. Sandhills area Scottish families related
to the Campbells are the Rays, the Leonards, the Holders, and the Priests.
Much of the genealogical documentation

Murdock C. Campbell family Walton County, Florida
55 Page 56 57

on this branch of the Campbell family has been compiled by Mr. Marshal L.
Campbell aided by his nieces, Wavelyn Pippin and Paulette Cauley of Grand
Bay, Alabama, and his cousins Jimmie D. Hemphill of Crestview, Florida, and
especially Virginia K. Trawick of Shalimar, Florida.

15. Mrs. Mary Harlan BATTEN of Emerald Isle, born January 28, 1929, co-owns
a real estate company on Emerald Isle.

Mrs. Batten's maternal great-great-great-grandfather was Daniel McIntyre (or
MacIntyre; 1745-1815) whose family settled in what is now the southeast
extension of Fort Bragg, which was purchased by the Army in 1954. Daniel
McIntyre was a blacksmith who arrived in Cumberland County from Scotland
sometime before 1773, when his presence is documented in a courthouse
record. Daniel McIntyre and a partner named Stewart filed a lawsuit against the
sheriff of Cumberland County for defaulting on a payment due them for
attaching and removing shackles from a prisoner who was hanged. Daniel
McIntyre's partner likely lived near Stewart's Creek, a waterway close to
Daniel's land. Daniel McIntyre's land holdings included what is now the

McIntyre Cemetery on Fort Bragg. Their blacksmith business was called
"McIntyre and Stewart." Daniel's younger brother Alex (1756-1823) also
may have worked with them. Daniel McIntyre fought with the Tories in
Captain Thomas Hamilton's Company in Wilmington during the Revolutionary
War. After the war, Daniel was triple-taxed in Cumberland County for not
signing the oath of allegiance, as was his neighbor, Neill Monroe (see
HAMILTON), whose relative, possibly son, Daniel Monroe married Jane
McIntyre (1805-1826; Boyko and Kern 1998: 33), daughter of Daniel McIntyre.
Both Daniel McIntyre and Neill Monroe quickly signed the oath of allegiance to
the United States after the Revolution to avoid future high taxes. Daniel McIntyre
bought and, in some cases, sold many plots encompassing several hundred
acres of land during his lifetime. The family became centered, however, on a
plantation near Stewart's Creek that was purchased from Peter Monroe. Daniel
raised cattle and watered them in what is now known as Hutaff Lake. The 1800
Cumberland County Census records for Daniel McIntyre's household list nine
males, four females, and no slaves. Daniel McIntyre and several close
kinsmen are buried in the McIntyre Cemetery on Fort Bragg (Boyko and
Kern 1998). Daniel McIntyre's second wife was named Mary (maiden name
unknown; 1776-1835) and one of their sons, William M. McIntyre (1792-1869)
married a Margaret McIntyre McIntyre [sic] (1798-1856). As a young man,
William McIntyre lived and worked on the reservation lands. After his marriage
to Margaret McIntyre, however, he
56 Page 57 58

moved to town and owned a brick store about one block from the First
Presbyterian Church in Cross Creek, now downtown Fayetteville. Family
records indicate that William McIntyre owned a pew in the church, but never
otherwise joined the congregation. His wife Margaret was the daughter of
Isabella Ferguson (1777-1850) and James McIntyre (1765-1829). James
McIntyre was baptized at the Balquhidder Church in Perth, Scotland.
The Macintyres and Fergusons intermarried often in Scotland prior to
their emigration to North Carolina. The McIntyre clan was established by the
1200s, often known as carpenters, foresters, and bagpipers associated with
the Stewarts and the MacDonalds (MacDonald n. d.). An 1810 census
listing of James McIntyre's household that is owned by Mrs. Batten documents
two males, four females, and three slaves. In 1793, James McIntyre joined
the Fayetteville Independent Light Infantry, a local military unit that acted
like police. James McIntyre's son Robert McIntyre became a lawyer, and Mrs.
Batten supposes that James McIntyre also might have followed that

profession. Both James and his wife Isabella are buried at Cross Creek
Cemetery Number One in Cumberland County. Daniel's son William, who
owned a store on Cool Spring Lane in Fayetteville and his wife Margaret
McIntyre had a daughter named Mary McIntyre who married James Madison
Williams. James Madison Williams fought as a Confederate captain in the
Civil War. He was stationed at Roanoke Island but, when he became ill, he was

sent home. James Madison Williams's brother named John D. Williams married
Isabella Jane Murchison, daughter of Duncan Murchison and granddaughter of
Kenneth Mackenzie Murchison I (see MURCHISON). The Murchisons of
Manchester operated a profitable naval stores business along the Lower Little
River, floating products downstream to the Cape Fear River. Colonel McKenzie
Murchison II went into business with his sister Isabella Jane's husband, John D.
Williams. John D. Williams became the first president of the Bank of Fayetteville
in 1849, owner of Merchants Mill on Blount's Creek in 1877, and president of
the Little River Manufacturing Company in 1878. He co-owned the John D.

Mary McIntyre Williams
57 Page 58 59

Williams Store in Fayetteville and the Williams and Murchison Co. in
Wilmington with Colonel Kenneth McKenzie Murchison II (L. Johnson
1978: 68-70, 1992: 36-37; Oates 1981: 853). Another brother, George
Washington Williams, may have been the owner of 112.2 acres located in the
very southeast section of the 1919 map of Camp Bragg. George Washington
Williams also built a very large home in the city of Wilmington. James Madison
Williams and Mary McIntyre Williams had a daughter named Eugenia Hill
Williams who was early orphaned and went to live with her uncle, John D.
Williams at his Westlawn Estate. When grown, Eugenia Williams married
George Harriss, Jr. from Wilmington. Their daughter Eugenia Harriss, who
was Mrs. Batten's mother, married Howard Harlan, Jr., of Fayetteville.
Because they became merchants and married into urban households, Mrs.
Batten's branch of the family moved from the reservation area into
Fayetteville prior to the Army purchase in 1919. Mrs. Batten is particularly
interested in her Highland Scot genealogy and in the McIntyre Cemetery
where many of her early ancestors are buried.

16. Mr. James A. SINCLAIR (sometimes pronounced "Sink-ler") of
Raleigh, born October 23, 1931, is a college instructor. Mr. Sinclair is
descended directly from several early Highland Scot settlers to the Sandhills
area, including John Smith (1700-1749) and his son Malcolm Smith (1718/ 22-
1778) who migrated with the 1739 Argyll Colony and became elders in the

Long Street Church; Archibald McKay (1720-1797), the farmer and tavern-owner
who became an early elder of Long Street Church; Neill McKeithan
Blue (1812-1892), one of the first "Lakeview Blues" to occupy reservation
area land (see BLUE); John Patterson (1730-1812; Kelly and Kelly 1998: 201),
one of the guarantors of the salary of Long Street Church Reverend James
Campbell; and Andrew Sinclair [sic] who owned about 1500 acres near
Lumber Bridge in Robeson County south of the reservation area. Mr. Sinclair's
paternal great-great-grandfather, Andrew Sinclair was born in Scotland, arrived in
North Carolina in the 1780s or 1790s and owned his Robeson County land by
1801. He also became one of the first elders of St. Paul's Presbyterian Church
(see McGeachy 1987[ 1899]). Andrew Sinclair married American-born
Catherine McMillan Sinclair (1776-1858) and they had a son named Neill
Sinclair. Neill Sinclair married Elizabeth Patterson (1816-1892; daughter of
Daniel Patterson and Margaret Graham). They had a son named John Thomas
Sinclair, the interviewee's paternal grandfather. John Thomas Sinclair was a
farmer who fought for the Confederacy. John Thomas Sinclair was married to
Eliza Newell Blue (1843-1920) who moved with many members of the Blue
family to Raeford in the 1880s. Eliza Newell Blue was the daughter of Neill
58 Page 59 60

McKeithan Blue (1812-1892; buried at Sandy Grove Church Cemetery) and
Eliza Smith Blue (1809-1891; buried at Sandy Grove Church Cemetery). Eliza
Smith Blue was the daughter of Revolutionary War Patriot Colonel
Daniel Smith (1764-1841) and Ann (Nancy) McKay Smith (1768-1844),
both of whom are buried at the Smith-McKeithen Cemetery on Fort Bragg
(Boyko and Kern 1998: 169-170). Mr. Sinclair identifies his grandmother's
land on the 1919 map as the 101 acres inherited from the Blue family that were
deeded to his paternal grandmother, Eliza Newell Blue Sinclair (tract 464 on
the 1919 map). She lived at the "battlefield" with her parents. Mr.
Sinclair's father was Neill Blue Sinclair who "worked turpentine" as a youth and
married Jessie Currie McPhaul (a. k. a. McPhail or McFoil) of Robeson County.
Some of the earliest McPhaul settlers, who resided between today's Raeford
and Red Springs (Antioch community) in an area known as McPhaul's Mill,
were John McPhaul and his son Neill who arrived in North Carolina prior to
1761 (Kelly and Kelly 1998: 295). Upon their arrival in the Sandhills, they
encountered a widowed tavern-keeper, Ann Perkins, and her daughter Mary or
"Pretty Molly." Mr. Sinclair says that the Perkins were English settlers of the
1720s who predated the Argyll Colony settlement of 1739. John McPhaul
married the mother, Ann, while his son Neill married the daughter, Mary.
Reportedly, Patriot forces under General Nathaniel Greene had cleared many
Indians out of the area to make way for safer European settlement. Mr. Sinclair's
father referred to the remaining Native Americans in the Sandhills as Croatans.
Mr. Sinclair's ancestors fought on both

sides of the Revolutionary War. British Captain Alexander McKay II was a Tory
who reportedly hosted Cornwallis in his home. Alexander McKay II and his
brothers were captured at the Battle of Moore's Creek and their property at Red
Bank was confiscated. The British government gave Alexander McKay II
money and land in the Bahamas as restitution. He moved, and is buried
there. By contrast, Colonel Daniel Smith was a Whig whose family owned over
570 acres abutting the Lower Little River at the northern border of reservation
lands. He also owned thousands of acres of land in Cumberland County, including
land near Piney Bottom, site of the Revolutionary War massacre where Tory
citizens were killed. Many members of the Smith family moved to Alabama
between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. Much of their land was
inherited by the Blue family who were only moderately pro-Tory and took the
oath of loyalty to North Carolina in the early 1780s. Several of the Blues fought
for the Confederacy in the Civil War. After the War, their money was
worthless and their former slaves sometimes became tenant farmers on the
same land, sharing expenses and income. All the former owners had left was their
vast land, which was poor for most crops and mainly good for turpentine
production. Between the 1880s and early 1900s, most of the Blues and Sinclairs
moved along with the McKeithans and Grahams (see HALL) to Raeford either
for education or in search of new farm land once the U. S. Army began buying
property in their area. The Grahams had lived at Cabin Branch, known as the
location of a schoolhouse and a voting place. When Mr. Sinclair's relatives
stopped farming operations on the
59 Page 60 61

Sinclair farm, it continued to be the home of Bud Sinclair, an African
American descendant of "Uncle" Aaron Sinclair, who always had worked on the
Sinclair farm and was buried with the Scottish Sinclair family in Buffalo
Cemetery. Many African American tenant farmers who had worked for
Scottish families on reservation lands migrated with their employers to
Raeford where they were first paid in script that could be traded at their
company's store for cash or groceries. The tenant farmers ran up a bill
throughout the year and were taxed when they purchased goods, and then taxed
again when they paid their debts. Some families later went to work at the White
Cotton Mill in Raeford that became Burlington Mill. Mr. Sinclair attends the
Sandy Grove Church reunions and maintains extensive records of his
ancestors' history.
17. Mr. Charles F. HALL of Raleigh, born 1926, is retired.

He served in the Army and was stationed at Fort Bragg before working for the
North Carolina criminal justice system. Mr. Hall's maternal great-great-grandparents
were John and Mary Black Lindsay who migrated from the Isle of
Islay, Scotland, to the Long Street

Church area in 1839. They were one of the last Highland Scot families to
migrate to the Sandhills (Kelly and Kelly 1998: 307). Their daughter, Annie Black
Lindsay (1838-1925), was born mid-ocean and married Dougald McFadyen
(see McFADYEN) in 1860. Reportedly, Annie Black Lindsay's household was
threatened by a Union soldier who damaged the plaster fireplace with a
bayonet. The soldier later was punished by his commanding officer with a horse
whipping. Annie Black Lindsay McFadyen is buried at the Long Street
Church Cemetery. By 1919 the McFadyens owned several large
properties obtained by the Army but only two, both near Yadkin Road in the
Longstreet Road area, were still deeded in the Lindsay (or Linsay) name: about
67 acres to J. C. Linsay and 95 acres to John Linsay. One of Dougald and Annie
Black Lindsay McFadyen's eleven children was Catherine Ann McFadyen
(b. 1866), the interviewee's mother's mother, who married Charles Hugh
Graham, Sr. in 1893. Mr. Hall recollects that Catherine Ann McFadyen Graham
could still speak Gaelic. He also recalls that she and her husband Charles Hugh
Graham, Sr. initially farmed but then moved away from the reservation lands
to Fayetteville during the 1890s. Charles Hugh Graham considered the wet farm
fields detrimental to his health. Some of the Graham family moved with their
neighbors the Blues to Raeford (see SINCLAIR and BLUE). In 1919, the
remaining reservation lands in the Graham family were 107 acres on the
eastern border just south of the Murchison Plantation (See
MURCHISON) deeded to Annie Y. Graham (tract 35), and about 76 acres on
the northern border at the Lower Little
60 Page 61 62

River near the McFadyen properties that were deeded to Daniel Graham (tract
133). Perhaps that latter area was the wet region that Charles Hugh Graham found
intolerable. Reportedly a gristmill was located in the area. Ten marked graves
related to a Graham family are located at the Long Street Church Cemetery (see
Boyko and Kern 1998). Some Grahams were living on the reservation area
during the Civil War because Mr. Hall recalls that one of the Graham relatives
reportedly hid in the swamps to avoid service and died from exposure to the
elements instead. Charles Hugh Graham studied theology and Greek at the
Fayetteville Academy on Raeford Road and then preached at the Highland
Presbyterian Church in Fayetteville by 1914. His daughter, Mr. Hall's mother,
Jeanette Graham, was born in Fayetteville and married Frank Hall from
Tennessee, who was a soldier stationed at Fort Bragg. Mr. Hall's parents
occasionally visited the Long Street Church after 1919.

18. Mr. Leroy SNIPES, Sr. of Niagara, born 1922, has retired from the milk
business. Mr. Snipes's parents were relatively recent immigrants to the Fort
Bragg region. His father, J. V. Snipes, of English descent, migrated in 1906 from
Bynum, North Carolina. J. V. Snipes was a salesman of fruit trees, primarily
peaches, who moved to Niagara and became the postmaster and a railroad
agent. The town of Niagara was named
after a variety of grapes produced there. Mr. Snipes's mother, Mary Morgan
Snipes, worked as a grape-packer when she first moved to the town in 1914. At
the turn of the twentieth century, the area also was attracting labor to work at the

Pinehurst golf course begun in 1895, and to work on the Seaboard Line Railroad
(now CSX) running through Niagara. Mr. Snipes remembers that many local
people became caddies at Pinehurst, and African Americans were paid about 20
cents per day to build the new railroad line. A mostly African American
cemetery still exists between Niagara and Manly, near the intersection of
Highway 1 and the railroad tracks. The Rockefeller family, who enjoyed playing
golf at Pinehurst, purchased the Overhills Estate in 1913 and initiated a
new railroad line from Sanford. When the peach orchards no longer produced
well after about two decades, many local commercial farmers shifted to planting
tobacco (see A. GOINS). Mr. Snipes's family initially purchased a single cow
from a Mrs. Carter to provide milk for the household, but gradually expanded to
create a family-owned dairy business. Early trade was conducted at Manly,
prior to the establishment of the town of Southern Pines. Although Mr. Snipes's
genealogy is not directly associated with the reservation lands, his early
recollections and family experiences highlight the new industries, such as
commercial fruit-growing and dairy farms, and dramatic economic changes,
such as Pinehurst and the railroad, that occurred at the northern periphery of the
reservation area at the turn of the twentieth century.
61 Page 62 63

19. Mr. John TUCKER, Sr., of Hoffman, born 1930, is a farmer and
retired wildlife technician for the Sandhills Game Land preserve of the
North Carolina Department of Wildlife.

Mr. Tucker's father, Martin Willis Tucker (b. 1870), migrated to the main
reservation area just a few years prior to the land's purchase by the U. S. Army.
Then, the family's second Sandhills property near Hoffman became
surrounded by Camp Mackall during World War II. Of German descent on his
father's side and English descent on his mother's (Smith), Martin Willis Tucker
was a late migrant to the Sandhills area. He established a new tobacco farm just
before the U. S. Government required him to leave it. Martin Willis Tucker
first migrated from Cabarrus County shortly before 1915 and purchased 154
acres of farmland near what would become the Nijmegan Drop Zone at Fort
Bragg. Martin Willis Tucker had been a sawyer at a sawmill back in the steam
engine era. He also knew how to make brick and forge metal. Martin Willis
Tucker's first wife, Lucy Virginia Barringer, originated from Mount
Pleasant, and gave birth to two sons in

Cabarrus County and then two daughters, in 1915 and 1919, at their
original homestead on the present Fort Bragg reservation. After she died, Martin
Willis Tucker remarried to Mr. Tucker's mother, Lizzie Kluttz, whose Cabarrus
County family originated from the Netherlands. Martin Willis Tucker's
older brother was Paul Wilburn Tucker, a Methodist minister in Cabarrus
County. The family initially lived in a tent while they built their homestead and
prepared their first farm in the reservation area. Mr. Tucker remembers
that his father "got tired of rolling rocks around with a plow" in Cabarrus County
and thought that farming in the Sandhills might be less tiresome. Mr. Tucker
believes that his father was the first individual to raise tobacco in the main
reservation area, and he was not pleased to have to leave his house and farm
behind so quickly. The 1919 map shows that 154 acres in the very western section
of Camp Bragg were deeded to M. W. Tucker, the interviewee's father (tract
566). A 107-acre plot very nearby is deeded to P. W. Tucker (tract 572), most
likely Paul Wilburn Tucker, the interviewee's uncle, although Mr.
Tucker did not know that his uncle also owned land in that area. When Mr.
Tucker's father arrived, the timber boom was largely over and most landowners
were shifting their commercial efforts to farming. Peach farms were popular for
about fifteen years but then, as the trees died off, farmers began switching to
other cash crops such as cotton and tobacco. Mr. Tucker recalls that there
was a flu epidemic circa 1919 that led to many deaths. He says that often people
were buried right in their house yards. Mr. Tucker's family moved to Hoffman
in 1921 after purchasing 81 acres of land
62 Page 63 64

for $2,250. Mr. Tucker remembers that the money received for his father's 154
cleared acres on the reservation was insufficient to cover the 81 acres
purchased in Hoffman, which had a three-room house and only 10 acres
partly cleared for farming. The family, with no hired labor, again cleared land,
just west of what is now the Rhine Luzon Drop Zone, for farming food and
tobacco. Mr. Tucker's family began by felling pine trees, cutting the feeder root,
tying a pole and log chain around the root, and using a two-horse team to
circle the stump until it broke loose and could be removed. Corn and hay was
grown for family and farm use. The family owned three or four milk cows,
and several hogs were kept to provide sausage and ham. The surfeit was sold at
the curb market in Rockingham. Mr. Tucker's mother raised butter beans and
sold them to buy items such as coffee, sugar, and salt. Most of the tobacco
raised was carried by horse and wagon to Aberdeen. As World War II began,
Camp Mackall was built all around Mr. Tucker's family property in Scotland
County. They lived in dread that the government again would come ask for
their land and force them to move a second time. As the Army exercises
intensified around their home, Camp Mackall sometimes sent jeeps to take
Mr. Tucker to and from the school bus stop. Soldiers often performed
maneuvers in the family's yard, and Mr. Tucker's mother often fed hungry
soldiers. Only after World War II ended did the Tuckers learn that they would be
allowed to keep their land. The Tuckers assumed that they were permitted to stay
only because the Army already had asked them to move one time before.
When 57,000 acres of Camp Mackall

was deeded back to the state for the Sandhills Game Land preserve, Mr.
Tucker became a Forestry Aide, and then a Wildlife Technician, for the Wildlife
Commission between 1948 and 1993, at which time he retired. Although Mr.
Tucker inherited and operates the family farm abutting Camp Mackall, the family
now resides in a house that is located more conveniently in Hoffman, away
from the reservation maneuvers.
20. Mr. Albert GOINS of Spring Lake, born 1901, is a retired gas station
manager and tenant farmer who planted tobacco for thirty years on the Overhills
Estate formerly owned by the Rockefeller family.
The U. S. Army paid $29.4 million in January 1997 to purchase 11,000 acres
of the Overhills property (Miller 1997). Mr. Goins was born and raised in
Martinsville, Virginia. Both his and his deceased wife's families lived along the
Virginia-North Carolina border. Mr. Goins's family raised corn and tobacco
at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Tobacco replaced cotton there in the
early 1900s when it became far more profitable. Mr. Goins already was
married and had three children before he migrated to the Sandhills in the 1920s.
63 Page 64 65

Mr. Goins first worked as an inspector at a cigarette factory in Winston-Salem
when he was only seventeen years old. He remembers being paid 42 cents an
hour. He then was hired as a tenant to farm tobacco in Harnett County but "had
a falling out" with his employer and moved to Spout Springs. In 1926, Mr.
Goins was hired to plant tobacco at Overhills for Stillman Rockefeller. At
that time, tobacco was a relatively new cash crop in the Sandhills, and the
Overhills Estate superintendent was interested in Mr. Goins's expertise with
that plant. Much of the Rockefeller farmland was cleared from past farming
of corn, cotton, wheat, oats, and rye. Mr. Goins says that both African American
and European American workers were hired to work under him to grow the
newly planted tobacco on approximately 400 acres. He recalls that both groups
were paid daily at equal rates. Mr. Goins remembers that one of the African
American tenant farmers he worked with was from the King family (see
MURCHISON). Mr. Goins also knew Neill and Willis McRae (see JENKINS)
whose land was purchased for Fort Bragg. Mr. Goins and his family lived on
the Overhills property, but his house and the feed barn eventually were destroyed
in a fire. When Mr. Goins retired from farming tobacco at Overhills circa 1956,
after 30 years, there were 26 other tenant farmers employed there. Approximately
two years later, the Rockefellers discontinued farming tobacco and began
farming strawberries. The feed barn near Mr. Goins's Overhills house became
used to store equipment for strawberry

farming. When he was tenant farming for the Rockefellers, his boss was Archie
Cameron who replaced L. W. Jackson as superintendent. After World War I,
Captain Miller became superintendent of the farms and the farm bookkeeping was
done by Mrs. Windsor, both of whom were English. Mr. Goins remembers that
Percy Rockefeller and dozens of his friends would hunt foxes with hundreds
of hounds, play golf, and play polo at Overhills every winter. Mr. Goins recalls
that the Rockefellers contributed a great deal to their workers' community,
making contributions to the local churches and to individuals' hospital
bills. Mr. Goins used his savings from working for the Rockefellers to lease and
run an Esso gas station on Highway 87. Mr. Goins's family in Virginia were
members of a Pentecostal Holiness Church and he discovered a preexisting
branch in the Sandhills when he arrived. He has continued as a deacon for his
local Pentecostal Holiness Church for 25 years. Mr. Goins says that he is not
related to any other Goins family in the Fort Bragg area (see P. D. GOINS and
W. GOINS) and has no connection to the Goins Cemetery on the reservation. He
says he does not know his ancestral heritage but a lawyer friend with whom
he hunted once suggested his family was of English descent.
21. Mr. Willie CARTER of Hope Mills, born December 28, 1922, bagged
and loaded flour into railroad boxcars for the Cole Milling Company during World
War II.
64 Page 65 66

In successive jobs after the war, Mr. Carter did carpentry on Fort Bragg,
managed a pool hall, delivered beverages for the Fleishman Distributing Co., and
worked for a moving and storage company. Mr. Carter grew up on
Murchison Road, within a half mile of the Camp Bragg border, about 2.5 miles
from Simmons Airfield. According to the 1919 map, about 145 acres of
reservation land in the northeast near Simmons Field were bought from an
Amos Carter, but Mr. Carter does not recognize that individual as a close
relative. Mr. Carter remembers that Army representatives came to talk to his
father about their land but never asked them to move from their home, which
was beside a commercial peach orchard. Mr. Carter's father and great-uncle John
were horse breeders and traders. Mr. Carter's Indian and Irish father, Willie
"Bud" Carter, and his Indian mother, Margie Seaberry Carter, were originally
from Sampson County. His paternal grandfather, Jim Carter, first migrated
from Dunn to farm and sell vegetables near the State Normal School (now
Fayetteville State University). His father, too, later migrated to work in a peach
orchard. Mr. Carter and his father used

to travel the reservation by horse and wagon in search of "lighter knots," dry
pine kindling that would be used to ignite the green oak wood cut for
household fuel. They purchased additional firewood at a sawmill off
Murchison Road. They trapped rabbits, hunted squirrels, and fished on the
reservation, sometimes at Mott Lake or at a millpond behind the Simmons Farm.
Mr. Simmons was an African American who made cane syrup and originally
owned the land that became Simmons airfield. Like some other local Indian
families, Mr. Carter's family worshipped at the Cape Fear Baptist Church. The
church had a one-room schoolhouse located off Highway 53 behind what is
now a Winn-Dixie. Many Native Americans lived near that schoolhouse.
After some years, Mr. Carter's father moved to Fayetteville to tenant-farm
cotton and vegetables such as butterbeans, corn, and tomatoes. Del
Sutton who received a 500-pound bale of cotton as rent each year owned the land.
Hogs were killed in the fall, and fat dried for lard. Sometimes the family bought
loads of ice and packed it with food underground to keep their produce from
spoiling. Willie Carter, Sr. prepared gardens with a horse and plow for others
in the area and earned about $1.00-$ 1.50 for a half-day's work, which they
considered good pay. Once when he and his father were selling vegetables near
the State Normal School, a dean who regularly bought their vegetables urged
Mr. Carter's father to send young Willie to school. Like many local Indian
families, however, they did not want to send their children to colored-only
segregated schools. So Mr. Carter just learned his alphabet at home mostly.
Only when weather did not permit
65 Page 66 67

farming was he ever sent to school. Mr. Carter says that his Indian
community in Sampson County considered themselves Tuscarora,
whereas in Robeson County, they call themselves Lumbee. Many members of
these rural Indian communities migrated to Charlotte for jobs. When his health
permits, Mr. Carter attends programs at the Senior Center of the Cumberland
County Association for Indian Peoples.
22. Mrs. Emma Louise Faulk FRYE, born 1927, raised her children before
earning a practical nursing degree.

She worked first at Fort Bragg and afterward as a private nurse. Mrs. Frye's
paternal great-grandfather, Anthony Faulk, and her paternal grandfather,
Elizah Faulk, owned about 140 acres of land in the Longstreet Road section that
were bought as estates in the initial Camp Bragg purchase. Family tradition
says that Anthony Faulk originated in Norfolk, Virginia, and hauled turpentine
in addition to subsistence farming and livestock-rearing. Cumberland County
land records indicate that he bought fifty acres of land for $162.50 from Alex

Murchison, probably the son of Kenneth Murchison, Sr. (see Kelly 1998: 271; see
also MURCHISON) in 1867 (Deed Books 57: 207). Anthony Faulk was
married to Millie (possibly McDougal) Faulk who was born and raised on
Chicken Road.

Millie Faulk possibly had some Blackfoot Indian heritage (Faulk n. d.).
Her only known relative was a sister who married and lived in
Murchisontown (see MURCHISON). Millie Faulk was known for her skills
with herbal medicines. Family records indicate that she was born in 1826 and
passed away in 1930 or 1932, surviving a hundred years. Anthony and Millie's
family attended the Wyman (or Wayman) Chapel that was set up near
the Long Street Church to accommodate the community's African Americans.
Mrs. Frye suggests that the relationships between black and white residents of
Longstreet Road, and their descendants, were very congenial. Black and white
children played together and their families acted like kin and helped one
another. Anthony and Millie Faulk had fourteen children but only one son,

Millie Faulk
66 Page 67 68

Elizah F. Faulk, survived to adulthood. In the years just prior to 1919, many died
from smallpox or the worldwide influenza epidemic. Elizah F. Faulk
married Tilly Gillis Faulk and they had twelve children, many said to be buried
in the Long Street Church vicinity, either beside their homes or by Wyman's
Chapel. Cumberland County Land records indicate that Elizah F. Faulk
bought 123 acres for $92.00 from Sallie McNeill in 1911 (Deed Books 180: 284),
and he and his wife Tilly sold 28 acres to William Jones for $28 in 1914 (Deed
Books 180: 28). Elizah F., therefore must have died between 1914 and 1919.
Several of Elizah F. 's children moved to Vass, including Mrs. Frye's father,
Sandy Jarvis Frye (born September 7, 1904), and the grandmothers of Mr. John
Marshall Thomas (see THOMAS), Dolly Faulk Thomas, and Rachel Faulk
Holliday. A Scottish emigrant from the Longstreet Road area, Dougald
Alexander Steven McFadyen, the father of Dougald McFadyen (see
McFADYEN) assisted with their families' land purchases in Vass. Some
other family members went to Rockfish and Raeford when compelled to move,
but all remained in close contact based on their heritage as the "Longstreet
folk." Several family members took up jobs at the new Fort Bragg Army base. In
Vass, the Wyman congregation was reconstituted as the Oak Ridge AME
Zion Church begun in 1926. Mrs. Frye has been organizing Faulk family
reunions for the "Longstreet gang" for twenty years and has worked on a Faulk
Family Reunion Booklet (Faulk n. d.). She says that she owes much of her early
genealogical and other family information to her father's first cousin,
Naomi Faulk (1907-1990), daughter of

Elizah F. 's sister, Katie Rebecca Faulk ,and her husband, Duncan Rodgers.
23. Mr. Wilson GOINS of Hope Mills, born April 1920, did carpentry assisting
a furniture maker and later owned a business making wood pallets.

Mr. Goins said his family always told him he was an Indian, but he was given
no further information about his particular Indian group. He does know,
however, that some of his family moved west with the Cherokee. Mr. Goins
thinks that some of his uncles (probably great-uncles) served in the Confederacy
during the Civil War. Mr. Goins is the son of A. C. Goins who was a preacher at
the St. Anna Baptist Church in Robeson County. One of A. C. Goins's brothers
named Ivy went to work farther west in the coal mines. Another brother, Frank
Goins, farmed and lived on land that was purchased for the reservation (see Paul
Delton GOINS). Frank Goins, along with his father King David Goins,
worked in turpentine production and also operated a whisky still "for the
government" (perhaps for soldiers' personal supplies). According to the
1919 map, Goins families (L., L. H., and Martin Goins Bros.) owned about 154
67 Page 68 69

acres of land in Hoke County along Yadkin Road. Although there is no
Frank Goins listed on the 1919 map, the interviewee and another relative
independently reported Frank Goins's land ownership at the time of the Army
purchase. One said, however, that Frank did not inherit the land through his natal
family but perhaps owned it through his wife, Emma, who also was a Goins.
When compelled to move by the Army, some Goinses joined relatives already
living at West End, farther west along the old buffalo trail that became Yadkin
and Chicken Roads in the period of European colonial settlement. Besides
preaching and farming, Mr. Goins's father ran a store at West End. The
family raised chickens, turkeys, and hogs. They traded at Southern Pines and
Pinehurst, long before the Pinehurst Golf Resort was established in the early
1900s. They sometimes hunted deer that were stocked by the government in the
Fort Bragg reservation. Other Indian families from the Bragg lands, including
Goinses, moved east of the Cape Fear River and attended the Sandy Ridge
Baptist Church. Mr. Goins's sister Repa's husband was a preacher at that
church. Many of the Goinses and related Indian families gradually moved to Hope
Mills or beside the Fayetteville border on Goins Drive near where Owens Drive
intersects with Cumberland Street. Mr. Goins's wife, Nellie, also was born a
Goins. Her parents' family, who were originally from Chatham County, went
to Oklahoma like many Indians of their generation. Mr. Goins remembers
fishing at a stream on the reservation when he was younger, and he says that
he has visited the Goins cemetery although he cannot add any further
information about the burials there.

Some members of the Goins family worked on Fort Bragg after it was
established, and others enlisted as soldiers at the base. Mr. Goins's
granddaughter, Kathy Decipulo who is married to a Fort Bragg soldier, assisted
with this interview, which was conducted at Mr. Goins's rest home.

24. Mrs. Vilona Whitehead BLEDSOE of Fayetteville, born January
11, 1929, raised ten children and has been active in the Cumberland County
Association for Indian Peoples since the 1960s.

Mrs. Bledsoe's paternal grandfather, John Pervis Whitehead, was raised in
Harnett County and worked as a farmer, sharecropper, and timber merchant. John
Pervis Whitehead told Mrs. Bledsoe that there was a Whitehead family cemetery
on the reservation somewhere near a Whitehead "plantation" and homestead.
Army documents indicate that the Whitehead Cemetery along Yadkin
Road, now represented by a single stone marking the graves of Moses Whitehead
(1837-1905) and his wife, Annie J. Chavis (1839-1909), was near to Moses
Whitehead's property. On the 1919
68 Page 69 70

property owners' map, Henry Whitehead owned 178 acres. Moses Whitehead
owned 26 acres while his daughter, Dora Whitehead Goins (see P. D. GOINS and
W. GOINS), owned a separate plot of over 100 acres that she inherited from
her father. Land title records owned by the Army indicate that Moses Whitehead
purchased land tracts (the ones he later bequeathed to his daughter) in 1869
from George and wife Anna Newton, in 1875 from Thomas J. and wife J. R.
Ritter, and in 1890 from M. N. Campbell and his wife. The former existence of a
church along Yadkin Road near the Whitehead Cemetery and properties is
noted in the tract acquisition records examined by the Army. Although the
Whitehead Cemetery and associated lands cannot be tied conclusively to Mrs.
Bledsoe's close family, she does recall the names Moses and Henry Whitehead
and wonders if they were not brothers or half-brothers of her grandfather. Her
grandfather, John Pervis Whitehead, told that his father had met a lady from
England who purchased land for timbering. Reportedly that great-grandfather
resided with the English lady (whose name is unknown) and helped
run her timber operations. Turpentine was exported from the Whitehead lands
in barrels along the Cape Fear and its tributaries. The Whiteheads in Mrs.
Bledsoe's family have married with Carters, Bledsoes, Burnettes, Maynors,
and Jacobses. Her family once considered themselves Cherokees but
then later were called Coharries. Mrs. Bledsoe believes that Indian people
traded and traveled up and down the rivers, intermingling repeatedly. She has
examined the Tuscarora roll book in Washington, D. C. and found many of the
family names familiar from her own

Indian communities. Mrs. Bledsoe says that in the past century, Indian families
have clustered together, largely separated from the North Carolinians of European
and African descent, although discriminatory laws prior to the 1960s
pushed the non-European groups together legally. Until the Civil Rights
Laws of the 1960s, most Indian children she knew did not attend schools other
than church-related primary schools. Parents who raised cotton often paid
teachers to run lessons in the Indian churches during the slower farm season.
Mrs. Bledsoe grew up in an Indian sharecropping community in Sampson
County, just east of the Cumberland County border, and notes that many of
the nearby Indian families she knew when she was young also migrated to
urban areas such as Fayetteville in search of jobs.

CONCLUSIONS
Theoretical Issues
Recently cultural anthropologists have increased their focus on the
relationship between places and cultural or community identities (Feld and Basso
1996; Gupta and Ferguson 1992). These writings question older ideas that ethnic
communities or cultures can be neatly matched to geographically bound places
in space. They also demonstrate that different groups of people have various
kinds of concerns, knowledge about, or interests in bounded physical territories.
For example, Blu (1996) suggests that Lumbee Indians, whites, and blacks in
Robeson County have rather different ways of conceiving their home
communities and the social attachments
69 Page 70 71

to land and migrations that these conceptions entail. Blu notes that the
Lumbee she knows tend to speak of their communities in much less physically
demarcated terms, putting their emphasis on the Indian community as such rather
than a particular geographically-bound place that, in the past, might have been
taken away from them by more powerful groups. They do, however, identify
people through places. It is just that places represent the location of other
Indians, Indian historical sites, or particular types of Indians, not a visually
mapped space. Blu notes that Lumbee often are vague or even obscure when
describing the locations of particular places, which she explains as resulting
from past efforts to hide from the gaze or subjugation of more powerful white
people, who often had negative views about Indian ghettos or "Scuffletowns."
Blu also notes that the African Americans she interviewed were far less
distressed by the thought of their children migrating away from their home
area for better jobs. While no difference in love or loss of children was implied,
Blu discovered that African Americans were happier to see their children find
good opportunities elsewhere, whereas Lumbee, by contrast, were more
distressed that opportunities for their children did not occur in their Indian
community area (Blu 1996: 206-207). Certain of the findings that Blu
associates particularly with Lumbee communities, for example, that stories
placing people in a particular neighborhood or landscape communicate
a great deal about their social identity and character (Blu 1996: 201), I found to
be generally true of all the Oral History Project interviewees. Blu notes that the
standard Lumbee question to begin a

new relationship, "Where do you stay at?", ostensibly asks about geography
but really intends to open a discussion about family names and household social
connections. I found that this form of questioning also occurs in other eastern
North Carolina groups who do not necessarily identify themselves as
Indians, although they may have some Indian ancestry.
The interviews from this project suggest that Sandhills people, perhaps
given many generations of continued close residence and interaction with a
limited number of related families, all are very concerned with identifying the
connections between family names and neighborhoods. Neighborhoods often are
identified with particular families of particular dynastic histories and moral
characters. Places, families, and moral behaviors are inextricably related. Thus,
what one needs to know first about a stranger is the place or family they come
from. Then one knows how to continue the relationship.
The interviewees met for this project often focused on their
neighborhoods of origin, such as Longstreet Road, or even a town back in
Scotland. Knowledge of these matters provided evidence of character and
social standing that could never be removed throughout one's life, despite
poverty, widowhood, or any other of life's calamities. Those families who
have left the reservation and succeeded in current American terms of success,
that is relative wealth or social position, appear to trace that blessing in part to
their ancestry and its geographical origin. Those families who have left the
reservation and feel themselves as less than successful still seem to take pride in
their ancestral homeland and origins as
70 Page 71 72

early pioneers who contributed the broader success of the entire regional
community. Here, I would suggest, resides the major significance that the
Fort Bragg reservation area holds for all the descendants of early settlers who
lived or worked on a land. While it is no longer legally theirs, the Fort Bragg area
of the Sandhills cannot be alienated from their ancestral histories and current
social identities. In many respects the interviews
conducted for this first exploratory Fort Bragg Oral History Project supplement
and flesh out written historical records. Personal family details corroborate
writings about Native American dislocation and dispersion, Highland
Scot settlement processes, subsistence and economic strategies, African
American and Native American labor forces, Revolutionary and Civil War
history, and late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century economic shifts and
social transformations. Several interviewees of both
Highland Scot and Indian descent made it clear that their ancestors' world was
very socially constrained. It is noted in an interviewee's family history that one
of his woman kin folks who lived during Civil War times had never been more
than thirty miles from her home, just once or twice to the big "Town" of
Fayetteville. With low population densities, racial segregation, and
transportation prior to railroads and automobiles limited to boating, walking,
horses, or mules, related families often married closely. As one Highland Scot
interviewee put it when noting that his/ her grandmother and grandfather had
the same last name and were members of a single lineage, we are a little bit kin to
one another." Several interviewees of

various ethnic identities were highly embarrassed to reveal that there had been
first cousin marriages in their families. They were unaware that this was
customary practice in the rural South during the 1800s and that it is still legal
in North Carolina today. Current state marriage laws are relicts of a time when
families married closely: sometimes for lack of other options, sometimes to forge
alliances with those who were most trusted, and sometimes to preserve
ancestral land estates intact. One interviewee noted that,
among the Highland Scots of the Sandhills, the youngest son usually
inherited the homestead. If there was no son, then the youngest daughter's
husband would inherit the family land. This inheritance principle allows
researchers to better interpret the Sandhills land deeds and, in the absence
of other family genealogical documents, to use these records to predict which
families and individuals intermarried, or perhaps adopted orphan kin.
As almost all Highland Scot interviewees and their ancestors
supported the Confederacy, few had negative comments about the slavery
system. In fact, one interviewee suggested that the tenancy system that
replaced slavery was worse for the African Americans because the white
families no longer looked after the old folks or maintained any feeling of loyalty
to their former workers. Both Scot and African American interviewees spoke of
themselves or their ancestors' children playing with each others' children, and
several Scots told of the fictive kinship terminology used by white children to
refer to the elder "colored" workers on their family property. Many interviewees
of Highland Scot descent remember
71 Page 72 73

being taught as children to address older African Americans as "aunt" or "uncle"
as a sign of respect and family connection. The range of evidence
presented here indicates both historical moments of Scot and non-white
congeniality, as well as incidents of tension and force.
Many interviewees of Highland Scot heritage portrayed their family
farms and naval stores businesses as worked entirely by family labor.
Interviewees often pointed out how many children the early Scottish settlers
had, and how hard everyone worked on the farms. African American slaves or
tenant workers were mentioned rarely, even in response to direct questions on
this subject. One reason for this is illuminated by a comment of Mr.
McLeod's concerning his grandfather's diaries. Mr. McLeod notes that to his
grandfather African Americans seemingly "were part of the
environment$#133; they get mentioned less than the flora and fauna, and yet they
were vital. And when he does mention them, the few times that he does, it is
clear that he understood exactly how important they were to the whole make-up
of both the labor system and the social fabric of North Carolina." With
regard to the regional economy of subsistence farming and turpentine
production, it may be questioned to what extent racial legal boundaries and
sumptuary codes became devised as the key social factors that separated the
otherwise similar working lives of white and non-white settlers.
Most of the African American interviewees spoke of a Native American
ancestor, generally a woman, who appears early in the family genealogy,
during the slavery era. This indicates that

some Native Americans in the region were being integrated into the enslaved
non-white population. The children of those individuals then went on to receive
a "Negro" ethnic identity, largely divorced from their Native American
heritage. Similarly, Indian interviewees spoke of white ancestors who mingled
into their family lines and thus contributed further into the Indian
community. Conversely, one Scot interviewee mentioned the "rumor" that
a female Indian ancestor's children became part of the Scottish family line.
Thus certain essential cultural as well as biological influences in each of the three
partially-segregated populations have become largely hidden within official
family members' presentation of ethnic identities. When given opportunities to
review their Interview Summaries, interviewees both corrected general
errors of fact and often were concerned to remove any mention they had made of
members of other ethnic groups entering their family line.
The 1800s brought many new pressures on Indians, either to cede their
lands and move to Indian reservations or to intermarry with African Americans
and accept a subordinate place among "colored peoples" and "mulattoes"
(Forbes 1993). One interviewee of Scottish descent noted of certain families
known to be Indians in the nineteenth century, "by the twentieth century they
were black." Thus many Indian families or family members seemingly
disappeared from the official record as the numerically smaller Indian
populations became legally absorbed into the two non-Indian populations that
were more explicitly treated by colonial and American law. As Moran notes, the
method of taking the U. S. Census was
72 Page 73 74

revised substantially beginning in 1880, when census-takers were more formally
trained and specifically instructed to identify anyone with even a trace of
African blood as a mulatto (Moran 1986: 62-64; Wright 1900: 171).
Evidence suggests that the attempted legal absorption of Indian
populations in the area resulted in backlash efforts by Indians to preserve
their ethnic heritage by increasing their own segregation, despite their legal
exclusion from Indian groups recognized at the state or federal level. Several
interviewees of Indian descent said that, even into the 1940s or later, their
families did not send children to state schools because they would be forced
into racially segregated institutions for "negroes." Thus efforts were made to
develop distinct heritage identities, even sometimes at the unfortunate expense of
educational and professional advancement.
Although all families owning land or residing on what was to become
the Fort Bragg reservation ultimately were required to sell and leave, people of
color were the most easily and forcefully pressured to sell at low prices. One local
observer and historian suggests that the U. S. government selected the Fort Bragg
location precisely because the land mostly was exhausted for farming and
turpentining and many Highland Scot land owners already had moved away to
Fayetteville or Raeford for better business or educational opportunities.
This observer estimates that there were hardly more than a thousand inhabitants
on the Camp Bragg land when it was purchased in 1918, and most of those
residents were African American tenant workers or small landowners rather than
large landowners. Thus, prior to the

Army purchase, a large portion of the base land was being occupied, or in
some cases even managed or owned, by the non-white population.
Such a situation in conjunction with Civil War history would explain
why interviewees of Highland Scot descent describe their former reservation
land as miserably poor and their ancestors as having endured an
extremely harsh existence. By contrast, proportionally more interviewees of
African American descent suggest that their grandparents were just beginning to
flourish on the land when speculators or the U. S. government arrived and
requested them to leave. The valuable records concerning
church history and memberships, such as those that exist for Long Street
Presbyterian Church, also indicate that the core Scottish descent population
reached its economic and numerical peak just prior to the Civil War. These facts,
in addition to the brutality of the War and the area's retarded economic
recovery process, makes comprehensible the continued anger of many Scottish
descent interviewees over the "War of Northern Aggression" and what is seen
as the Federal Government takeover of their ancestral homeland. Fortunately,
some of these resentments have moderated with time in conjunction with
continuing efforts by the U. S. Government to support the region's
economy and all its interdependent peoples.
One of the striking findings of this research project was the percentage
of interviewees of the African American and Highland Scot groups who conduct
regular family reunions complete with homemade, unpublished family histories
that are circulated at the events. These
73 Page 74 75

reunions are held variously at churches or private homes, and they often center
on a particular male or female ancestor who is considered the regional founder.
The kind of genealogical interest that these reunions generate can be
associated with the increased national interest in "heritage tourism," which
includes visits to ancestral cemeteries

such as those located on Fort Bragg. The interviewees who considered their lives
successful seemed most involved with these types of historical family events.
Participation in such events may serve as an important form of social status
marker in their local families and community.
74 Page 75 76

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