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CHAPTER II
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF WARRENTON
History records that during the American Revolution "there
were no Tories in Bute," and its patriotic people could not endure the
name of Bute, that being the name of the former favorite, friend and Prime
Minister of George III. In 1779 the county of Bute was divided (the line
being run by a Mr. Christmas) into the counties of Warren and Franklin.
Their patriotism, however, seems not to have been sectional or local, but
national, as the names of the two counties indicated. Warren was named for
Dr. Joseph Warren, the patriot and soldier who fell at Bunker Hill, and
Franklin for "sleek Ben Franklin," the Boston patriot, the great
philosopher, and America's greatest statesman of that era, the son of a
tallow chandler and soap boiler.
Warrenton, the county seat of Warren County, was incorporated in 1779. A
plot and survey of the streets and lots and public squares was made in
that year by William Christmas, a citizen of Franklin County, and
afterwards a state senator from that county.
The act of the Legislature (1779), appointing commissioners and trustees,
namely, William Johnson, Philemon Hawkins, Edward Jones, John Faulcon,
Adkin McLemore, and William Duke for laying out and carrying on the
town, provided that they should lay off and set apart, out of the one
hundred acres already purchased, a lot or square convenient and
sufficient for courthouse prison and stocks; and also to lay out one
hundred other lots, each to contain one-half acre, with convenient streets
and squares, the surplus of land, if any, to remain as a common for the
use of the town. The lots were numbered and sold by subscription at
fifty dollars per lot, no one person to be permitted to subscribe for more
than six lots. The subscribers afterwards drew by lot or chance for the
several plots. There was a stipulation that a forfeiture should be
incurred in case any subscriber or purchaser should not build within three
years upon his lot a brick, stone, or well-framed house, not less than
twenty feet long, sixteen feet wide, and at least ten feet pitch, with a
brick or stone chimney. I have no information as to the time of the
erection of the courthouse, jail and stocks. By an act of the
Legislature, April 1, 1783, special tax was allowed to be levied on the
property of the county for that purpose. Until the courthouse should be
erected the act provided that the courts should be held at the home of
Thomas Christmas.
From all that I can learn it is probable that at the time that Warrenton
was laid out there was not a single residence house standing on its site.
There was a granary, used for the storage of grain collected from the
taxpayers for war purposes, what was known as the grain tax. There had
been a small settlement at the forks of the Shady Grove and Halifax (the
old stage coach line) roads, consisting of a storehouse containing
groceries, commonplace dry goods, tobacco and liquors, blacksmith and
wheelwright shops for repair of vehicles and shoeing the horses of the
stage line, and for the convenience of the surrounding country people.
From the forks of the roads the stage coach line was diverted from its
course in a northwest direction to the new town, one half mile off. Before
the town was incorporated the old stage line (Halifax road) ran from the
forks of the roads in a southwest direction along the southern border of
the Col. William R. Johnson place, afterwards the home of William Eaton,
Jr., to a road running southward to the old William R. Johnson place,
afterwards the Kemp Plummer, Jr., residence, and now the property of John
Hudgins. It then continued its course . across Fishing Creek, at the ford
at the well remembered "swimming hole" of the town boys ; then on by the
John Watson place and the Alexander S. Jones home (Woodley) to the place
known as the Gilliam Wilson store, on the road to Salisbury, over Tar
River, where Louisburg now stands, and on to where Raleigh is now
situated.
The information concerning the settlement at the forks of the roads was
given my husband by his old law partner and friend, William Eaton, Jr., as
they stood on the spot in one of their afternoon walks, he pointing with
his cane to the old roadbed still visible in the field, in the direction
of his home.
The new stage road entered the town from the southeast, and delivered' the
mails to the postoffice, for many years located on the ground where
now stands the residence of Mrs. Henry Williams. The stages left the
postoffice by a road running west across Front Street, between the old
Davis store and the Somerville place (which in 1870 was enclosed and
cultivated), thence along by the Somerville burying ground, in the
garden of the residence, and across the fields over the Horse Branch, on
the road that now leads to Louisburg from Warrenton.
For the first fifty years of the town's life its means of communication
with other towns and markets were very limited, the old stage line from
Richmond to Columbia being the only important track of commerce or travel.
Between the time of the settlement of the town and the building of the
Petersburg and Weldon Railroad, freights were hauled from Richmond and
Petersburg by wagon, and those who traveled between Warrenton and other
parts of the country did so by private conveyance more than by the stage
coach.
A very primitive method of transporting tobacco from Warrenton and
adjoining counties to the markets at Petersburg and Richmond prevailed at
that time. The hogsheads containing the tobacco were cylindrical in shape,
about five feet long and four feet in diameter, and made of pine staves
the length of the hogshead, four of five inches wide, and three-fourths of
an inch thick, bound together by hoops made of splits of white oak timber.
Into these hogsheads the leaf tobacco, stripped from the stalk, nicely
cleaned from dust and dirt, and bound together in small bundles, with a
smooth leaf of the tobacco holding the bundles together, wrapped around
the top of the stem ends, was placed in regular order and pressed by a
beam and screw so closely and tightly as to weigh from twelve to eighteen
hundred pounds. Spikes of iron, oak or hickory, seasoned, were driven into
the center of each end of the hogs-head and answered as axles, around
which were fastened the ends of a piece of hickory or white oak split,
forming a pole to which was harnessed horses or oxen, the motor power by
which the hogsheads were rolled to the end of their journey.
The tobacco farmers themselves would generally ride horseback in
attendance upon the caravan, and frequently by concert would get together
in companies and have a kind of outing or pleasure journey, as well as
attend to the business of the sale.
After the completion of the Petersburg and Weldon Railroad, and the spur
from Hicksford to old Gaston, Weldon and Gaston became depots for the
freight of Warren and the adjoining counties, until the completion (in
1839) of the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad, which ran within three miles of
the town.
The growth of the town was very slow for the first twenty-five years of
its existence. Only a few scattered houses were built in that time
(notwithstanding the requirement in the Act of 1779, that a house should
be built on each lot) none of any pretension, and very few of two stories.
In architecture they followed no style, the plan -of each being original.
If a second story was added it was after the pattern of the "salt-box
houses" of New England, so called because of the resemblance to the box
made to hold salt and kept hanging on the kitchen wall. (This style of
house was adopted to evade the tax put on two-story houses built in the
colonies.)
The salt-box house was of the two stories in front, the back part of the
roof sloping down so suddenly as to make a half story, and. then down over
a single story, the protruding eaves of which formed the back porch.
At the early period of the town the families of means and prominence lived
on their estates in the country, many of them large, and cultivated by
their negro slaves. They only visited the village to attend the court
sessions, or to trade at the small retail stores. Theirs was the idea
expressed in the Act of 1779 .that the town was made for the residence and
benefit of traders and artificers.
In this connection it will be interesting to refer to a habit or custom
then, and until after the close of the war 1861-65 natural and usual, but
now obsolete, that of the town people visiting in the country on holidays
and Sundays (Sundays especially) for social enjoyment and festive
occasions. The reverse is the rule now. Everybody who can, has left the
country and lives in the towns and cities; and the people of the country
districts enjoy few of the real comforts, and scarcely any of the luxuries
of life.
There were a number of persons of foreign birth included in the small
population of Warrenton in its early days. In Ellen Mordecai's sketch of
the town, History of Hastings, she describes several individuals,
emigrants from England, Ireland and France, and a Hessian who was a
teamster and carpenter. With the exception of Henry Falkener's family
(English) there are no descendants of those people there today. In those
early days, too, quite a colony of Scotch people settled there, and some
of the old residences are known by the names of the original settlers.
Those Scotch were induced to settle in Warrenton through the influence of
Peter Mitchel (my grandfather) who emigrated from Elgin, Scotland, in
1797, and arrived at Warrenton in the early years of the nineteenth
century, having gone from Norfolk, where he landed in this country, to
Petersburg, where he remained a few years, and Thomas White, who had come
from Kirkaldy, Scotland. These two gentlemen had gone into general
merchandise business in Warrenton, had succeeded, and had married ladies
from the county My grandfather had married my grandmother, Elizabeth
Person, and Thomas White, Sallie Johnson.
The members of this Scotch colony landed at, or near, Norfolk,' and, then
found their way to Warren-ton. I can recall the names of some of these
Scotch people: Anderson, McRorie, Jeffreys, a friend of my grandfather
Mitchel, who died unmarried and was buried in the Mitchel burial ground,
about four miles east of Warrenton; the Coopers, who moved to Granville
County, the Reynolds, and, I think, the Varells. There is an old burial
spot near the town, about one hundred yards south of the residence of the
late Dr. Joel King, where some of these Scotch emigrants were buried. It
has been abandoned many, many years, and there is nothing in sight except
a few sunken mounds. Indeed, the road from the town to John Hudgins's
home, the Kemp Plummer, Jr., place, runs across some of the graves. I have
seen the place. As, at that time and for many years afterwards, all who
owned homes used a corner of their own garden as burial places for the
members of their own family and kinspeople, it can be easily seen that
some of these foreigners who did not own their homes, or were perhaps
without families, as I knew of several that were single men, would be
buried in a plot prepared for that purpose.
An instance illustrative of the Scotch clannishness was told me by one of
that birth in reference to the death of one of those Scotch settlers. One
of the friends of the dying man was anxious to go into the room to see and
be near him, but being denied that privilege by those in attendance on
account of his violent and noisy grief, he threw himself on the floor
outside and placing his mouth at the crack of the door prayed lustily that
God would spare his friend, and that if "He must take some one, must have
a victim, there was a 'cuppen' (cow pen) full in the town that could be
very much better spared."
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