STRANGE MEN AND A GHOST TOWN
A Scottish Giant and His Bow-Legged Friend
By Nat Jones - Herald Staff Writer  
The Herald-Sun 04 Jul 1948, Sun - Page 23
Transcribed by Myrtle Bridges

	Red Neill McNeill, the big red Scottish giant, one day in 1761 lay down in his coffin and died. Little Archie Buie, the bow-
legged little Scotsman who was the giant's constant friend, resounded to the terrible death with a wild skirling of his Highland bag-
pipes. Red Neill McNeill always loved Little Archie's playing. In a way, it took him back to Scotland and to the quietness and people 
he knew in his youth. But Red Neill died, and he was forgotten for almost 100 years until the time when Sherman's army came marching up 
the Cape Fear River, constantly insisting on proving that "war is hell."
	Red Neill had done his work. He had been one of the first settlers to venture up into the Cape Fear Valley, which was known soon after 
that as the "Valley of the Scots" and is known now only in the counties of Moore, Lee, Harnett, Hoke, Cumberland and Bladen. He and his 
legion of restless men, which included such men as Felix O'Neal, wild and very Irish, who was to die with a laugh on his lips and a chip 
on his shoulder, and men like the reformed pirates James Battle and Steed Bennett, and Archibald McDonald, the tall soldier; and Hendrik 
Gaster, who is remembered in ancient records as the tough Dutch Voortrekker. After two hundred years since their deaths, most of them rest 
in unmarked graves within an hour's drive of Durham.
	They and the Red Giant McNeill began to roll up the Cape Fear Valley in separate Little bands in 1739, just after the province of Carolina 
was split into North and South Carolina and after Gabriel Johnston, another Scotchman, became governor of the province of North Carolina. They 
were the trailblazers, the ones who explored the wilderness and tamed the Indians. They asked no odds and accepted no rewards. They were simply 
restless and they came up the valley, point by point, settling in a spot until it became "civilized" and then moved on, cleared more land, drank 
more brandy, and sang more songs.
	The clans would meet and separate again, intermingling and mixing the records for those who, 200 years later, were to try to follow their 
trails by the records. But, Red Neill McNeill and Archie Buie always kept very close together.
	In 1753, Red Neill decided to sit down awhile; he actually bought a piece of land. He bought 60 acres lying on the east side of the Cape 
Fear River near Smilie's Fall, at a place which now is known as Harnett County. He made this his headquarters. Every now and then the word would 
go out for the "Legion of Restless Men" to gather. Red Neill McNeill was to give a barbecue. He is, by the way, the one to whom credit is given 
for introducing barbecue itself to this section. He is said to have brought the dish from the West Indes and that barbecue was one thing which 
he loved even more than wandering. The tale is told of how he would walk up to a beef animal and hammer it senceless with one blow of his mighty 
fist. The whole animal then would be barbecued to his taste. During his latter years these barbecue feasts became outstanding events in the lives 
of his fellow wanderers.
	Invitations, now and then, would spread out over the still-untamed valley, and from all directions the men of the valley would head toward 
the focal point, which usually was the 30 gallon keg of apple brandy which set on a platform at the spring just below his house.
	Abraham Carter, who was said to be Red Neill's West Indian mulatto shadow, would prepare the barbecue and superintend the process of roasting 
the beef animal over the several hours needed, but Red Neill himself would join his companions in the much more serious business of drinking to 
one another's health, and finally to everybody's health.

	Little bow-legged Archie Buie would be one of the first there, and all the while his Highland pipes would moan and drone the 
wild melodies of the Highlanders. The irrepressible Irishman, Felix O'Neal, would perform the famous "bottle trick" which, actually 
consisted mainly of converting a quart of brandy into a pint without having to remove the bottle once from his lips.
	By late afternoon the barbecue would be ready. They would gather around the long outdoor table of split poplar logs and enjoy the 
charcoal-broiled beef, the cornbread made from water-ground meal, and pweter mugs of ale with which to wash it all down. By midnight 
the singing of old ballards would begin and by daybreak the more hardy would be scattering once more down their lonely trails. Only 
the weak, it is said, would be slightly indisposed with a hangover, which could always be cured by a hair of the dog that bit them. 
And Archie Buie would keep right on with his Highland pipes, and Red McNeill would never stop listening.
	But fancy parties, to most of the legion, usually meant that civilization was creeping in. There was no use for civilization to 
them, and so, as the years passed on, fewer and fewer of the men showed up for the parties. Most of them crossed the river to the 
west side and entered the Pee Dee country where the wilderness was luring them once more. Aaron Burleson was one of them. A descendant 
of his later became Postmaster General of the United States. He left the valley for the Yadkin Trail where he met death via Indians in 
what is now Mitchell County.
	In 1760 the big red Samson threw his last party, for in that year there came creeping out of the river mists and fogs carrying a 
fever such as those people had never seen. It gripped strong man like Red Neill McNeill and turned them into children again. They 
burned with fever one moment and shook with tooth rattling, bone breaking aches the next. As the fever progressed, the victims vomited 
blood in great spasms. The tale is told of two men, who, defiant to the last, lay propped in their bunks carrying on a contest of that 
kind. Death won. In the sad years of 1760 and 1761, the Scots had no way of knowing that this was scarlet fever.
	It was high time Red Neill and Archie Buie were moving on across the river with the rest. There were new wildernesses to tear apart, 
and civilization was now boring to the red giant. But his friends were all dying. The only doctor in the territory, Andrew Crawford, had 
been one of the first victims.
	Red Neill went about his sober tasks with thoughts on that unexplored wilderness across the river. The fever from the river finally 
touched him also, but he was bigger and stronger, and he died slower and, perhaps harder.
	Little Archie Buie heard of his illness and came rushing down the river to the Red Samson's cabin. Once more Red Neill McNeill's 
cabin resounded to the wild skirling of the pipes.
	Red Neill got Little Archie Buie to cut for him a hugh gum log 10 feet long, and saw it lengthwise down the middle. Between spells 
of fever the red giant sat before the split halves and hammered away with a chisel and mallet while Little Archie Buie droned doleful 
laments on his pipes.
	Finally his coffin was finished. He lay down in it to see that it fitted. Finally he bored holes so that the two sections could be 
pegged together. Before the job was finished, the Rev. James Campbell came by to speak words of cheer and Biblical counsel to the giant.
	"Ye are welcome as a friend, dominie." Red Neill told him, "but I want none o" yer pauling" prayers or yer 
religious cantin." I ha'e ne'er called on Him when I was strong, and I'll be dom'd if I go whimperin" like a coward to Him now!"
	The man of God, who knew and understood the giant, nodded his head gravely and uttered a mental prayer in Gaelic, and for good 
measure added another in English.

	A hurricane is recorded to have come storming in from the West Indies in September of 1861. It tore a new inlet below Wilmington 
and sprayed salt water and sea sand as far up as Elizabethtown. Finally the hurricane flooded the river and it took the fever away 
with it.
	At the height of the storm the sick giant called Little Archie Buie to him once more. "Now bury me across the river, near the 
wilderness." He told the little piper, "an" on the brow o" Rattlesnake Hill where it faces west. When ye ha'e buried me, speed me on 
my wa wi' a skirlin' o' the pipes."
	But Little Archie Buie couldn't do all that he was asked. The river was still up and it was impossible to get the coffin across to 
where the wilderness lay. He and Abraham Carter, the West Indian mulatto who had always prepared the barbecue feasts, scooped out a 
grave near the cabin and put the giant to rest. When he had finished . heaping the mound of dirt he stood at its head and his piper 
wailed the doleful notes of the McNeill Lament:
	"Here lie I, Red McNeill;
	Hae mercy on my soul, Lord God. 
	As I would do were I Lord God.
	An' ye were Red McNeill."
	Little Archie went away, thinking surely he could come back some day and be able to carry out the last wish of wanting to be buried 
on the west bank of the river. Little Archie died, however, and for 100 years the red giant lay where he ought not to be.

	In those hundred years Red Neill McNeill, the man, was almost forgotten. People began to disbelieve. He became first a legend 
and then a ghost story, for it was said by many slaves in that section that they could see the form of a big red giant sometimes at night 
standing above a sunken place in the river bank and pointing to the west side of the river. That was enough, it seemed. Red Neill was a 
myth then, and stories of him had supposedly been created only in the over imaginattive minds of lazy people around tobacco barns at night 
who had nothing of any consequence to talk about.
	The years past quietly and the ghost of the red giant began to be of less and less importance. Then 100 years after his death, the 
armies of the North decide to vacation in the South. In the Spring of 1865, William T. Sherman, general, crossed the river at Fayetteville, 
and came looting, burning and destroying up through Anson, Richmond and Scotland counties. Incessant rains came with him. The river rose 
once more, and there took place a flood which is to this day known as Sherman's Fresh.

	When the water receded and Sherman's men had all gone 50 miles north to Durham, where they were to accept the last surrender 
of that war, the banks of the river minds of lazy people around Only a were once more visible.
	Across the river, on the west side near the wilderness, a huge gum log was found lying on the bank where the flood had carried it. 
The pegs of the peculiar log river's bank, rests somewhere over his body. The pegs of the peculiar log had come out and the huge gum log 
was split down the middle. Inside was found the remains of a giant of a man nearly seven feet tall. His hair on his red curly head had 
not faded and the beard on his face was scarlet colored. 
	No one after that ever claimed again to have seen the ghost of the big red giant standing on the east bank pointing across the river. 
The only tales they tell is that Red Neill got to where he wanted to be, and that was all there was to it. Now he lies in an unmarked 
grave across from where the lower Little River empties into the Cape Fear. Only a grown stone, as big as two fists and very much like any 
other brown stone found on a river's bank, rests somewhere over his body.

	One mile down the Cape Fear from where the red giant lived, and one year before the fever began its destroying journey through 
the Valley of the Scotts, a settlement called Averasboro is recorded to have sprung up on the east side of the river. By the 1800's, 150 
years later, the settlement grew into a city, one of the State's most important cities, and in 1880, it vanished. Now it is a ghost town, 
or not even that. Now it is a cornfield, a cottonfield, and a place where some excellent wheat is grown.
	Farmers plow there everyday, and the children of the farmers go there to hoe the grounds where once there was the thriving little city 
of Averasboro. "Where's the old Post Office site?" you ask one of them. "We ain't go no Post Office. Nearest Post office's in Erwin, I reckon."
"You mean you never heard of the big town of Averasboro?" "There's Erwin, Lillington, Buies Creek, Dunn Coats and Bunnlevel around here. If 
any of them is the ones you're talking about."
	But Old Averasboro was there. The records show that a settlement of Red Neill's followers settled there and after not too long, a 
vote was taken over the State to decide on a good location for the capitol of the State. Averasboto missed out on two counts, one of 
which was the fact that the town was not officially chartered. The town was chartered, however, in 1791 and a portion of the layout of 
the city can be found on a map in the office of the register of deeds of Harnett County in Lillington.
	In the very early 1700's John Avery, the noted pirate, had been playing hell with slashing raids on coastwise and West Indies-bound 
shipping off the coast of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Weary of paying toll to him and his likes, the South Carolina 
indigo and rice planters organized an expedition against Captain Avery and his men. In a bloody battle off the present town of Southport, 
which is located at the Corner of Cape Fear River and Atlantic Ocean, the South Carolinians permanently liquidated many wreckers, robbers 
and pseudo-owners of the Atlantic. Some of the pirates were killed outright; others were taken to Charleston and, "After proper Tryall were 
hanged as Fitt." Captain John Avery, however, and others, "escaped up ye River to ye Interior of ye Provynce."
	One source believes that this is where the old city got its name. Averasboro was one of the most stirring, most ambitious and promising 
towns in North Carolina. Time was when handsome homes lined its wide, tree-shaded, semi-urban streets. In its business section were, standing 
hub to hub, high sided wagons laden with cotton, tobacco and wheat, corn and oats, bales of hides and bags of wool from the farms and plant-
ations of the countryside. Up the Cape Fear, at its front door, steamboats with chunking, tireless paddlewheels came and went, or paused, Pine 
knot smoke billowing from the stacks of their lightwood boilers. Now and then their whistles moaned hoarsely for clearance or warning, the basso 
profundo arias of the age-old operas of river commerce. And now it is a wheat field, and a corn field, and cotton blossoms in the sunlight there.

	Where young corn two feet high is growing this Sunday, John Robinson's great circus once pitched its tents and played for 
several days in the square surrounded by Smith, Groves, Jackson and Church Streets. There were 13 public buildings in the city. Twelve 
of which sold whisky. (One of the 13 was a school and another was a church. It is not on record which is the one that did not sell whisky.) 
The four main streets were 132 feet wide (Main Street in Durham is 40 feet, according to the City Planning Department
	But that fair city also had its roughness just like any other city. The crash of gunfire could be heard above the clamor of river-
trade, as exuberant planters celebrated an occasion of large or small import. Sometimes the blasts of gunss left lifeless forms of innocent 
or not-so-innocent men in the dust of the streets or sprawled on barroom floors. 	
	And if any one wanted a fist fight, he could always be accommodated in old Averasboro. Even preachers were not immune. Records state 
that one one occasion the Rev. William Byrd, pastor of the Baptist church there, had the tip of his nose bitten off in a furious fight. He 
was hauled before the Association and charged with "conduct unbecoming a minister of God." The clerk of the Association, however, happened 
to be thoroughly acquainted with Averasboro and its wild citizens.
	"Brother Byrd," he inquired, "how long have you lived in Averasboro?" "Three years," replied the preaacher. "Is this the first fight 
you've had since living here?" "It is." The clerk turned to the assembled Elders. "Brethern," he said, "any preacher who has lived in 
Averasboro for three years and has had only one fight deserves praise instead of censure." The charges were dismissed.

	In the 1780's Averasboro grew in leaps and bounds. The city was the last stop of river traffic and a large salt market had 
been established there. Then the heated dispute arose involving the location of the State's capitol. The losing of the voting was bitterly 
attributed by the grumbling inhabitants to one Joel Lane, who is alleged to have served them a deceitful concoction of apple toddy and 
cherrybounce. Their stomachs, long used to hot Highland whisky and homemade rum, could not cope with Lane's smooth article.
	When they regained control of their fuddled faculties, Lane's faction had the location on the State capitol in their pockets. They 
went back to their hard liquor and were content with having a happy city instead of a capitol.
	Finally, many, many years later, a man put some railroad tracks down upon the ground and they did not run through old Averasboro. 
Salt and other supplies were shipped by rail and the river was rendered almost useless. That was in the 1800's. The railroad went to a 
town which at that time was known as "Tearshirt" because no one, supposedly, could go into that town without getting his shirt torn by 
roughnecks. Then the citizens turned more law abiding, and the town was known as "Luck Now." The city was Dunn, and even today there is 
a square there which is known as "Luck Now Square." The railroad later was known as the Atlantic Coast Line.
	Averasboro is gone now, and so is the red giant, Red Neill McNeill, and his little piper, Archie Buie. Creeks and towns are named 
after them, however, but don't ask the people who live there how the places got their names. They'll think you are mad with the fever 
called "Lie" unless you bring out to them the huge volumes and yellow deeds and letters proving that there really ever was any such 
place as Averasboro, or any such giant as Red Neill McNeill.

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